U.S. Department of Education

Government Entity

2026 FIPSE Civil Discourse Grants

In early 2026, the U.S. Dept. of Education—led by the billionaire Trump appointee, Linda McMahon—awarded a total of ~$52 million in grants to 17 institutions for “Promoting Civil Discourse on College Campuses.” According to the Department’s application guidelines, the funding initiative was motivated by concerns that campus protesters were using “disruptive tactics,” “shouting down speakers,” and engaging in “campus takeovers” and “violent riots.”

These so-called FIPSE grants (Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education) have historically been allocated toward things such as subsidies to boost college completion for underserved populations. The 2026 grants fell into three main categories: AI, Civil Discourse, and Accreditation Reform. The abrupt shift in FIPSE’s funding priorities aroused controversy.

Notable Grantees

Davidson College

(received $4 million in 2026 for the “Deliberative Citizenship Network”).

University of Pittsburgh

(received a four-year, $2.7 million grant in 2026 for “Pluralism360@Pitt”).

Campus Policy Context

Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education

On October 1, 2025, Trump’s Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, sent nine universities a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” offering preferential federal benefits to schools that accepted its terms. The compact’s “Marketplace of Ideas & Civil Discourse” section required signatories to foster a “broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints,” revise or abolish units deemed hostile to conservative ideas, and police disruptions on the basis that “the freedom to debate requires conditions of civility.” In addition, the compact mandated the adoption of institutional neutrality policies.

On October 10, 2025, Marc Rowan, a private equity billionaire and Penn donor, acknowledged that he “played a part in the compact’s initial formulation.” Rowan had previously led a donor campaign that contributed to the resignations of Penn president Liz Magill; he also pressed Penn trustees to consider closing academic departments and changing faculty-hiring rules—moves that Penn’s AAUP chapter called a “hostile takeover of the core academic functions.” On July 15, 2025, the Manhattan Institute called on Trump to impose reforms on universities through punishable conditions on “every grant, payment, loan, eligibility, and accreditation”; that same day, McMahon praised the Institute’s proposal as a “compelling roadmap to restore integrity and rigor to the American academy.”

On October 15, 2025, the Knight First Amendment Institute released an analysis of the Compact. The Knight analysis authors cited several major concerns with the document; one of these was that, in their view, a number of the Compact’s terms—including “conservative ideas,” “civility,” and “broad spectrum of viewpoints”—were “unconstitutionally vague.”

The Compact was rejected by most of the universities it initially targeted. By October 24, 2025, Inside Higher Ed counted 17 universities that had publicly refused it.

Trump Compact 2.0

On August 3, 2026, McMahon released “A National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards,” asking every postsecondary institution to publish, before the end of the year, a statement describing adopted and planned reforms. The letter calls on schools to address seven areas, including “free speech and campus protest” and “intellectual pluralism.” It invokes the importance of a “thriving marketplace of ideas,” “open-minded campus discourse,” and protection against “unruly and violent protestors” who disrupt campus operations.

The same day that McMahon’s Call to Action was released, Jenna Silber Storey, co-director of AEI’s Center for the Future of the American University, published a statement saying that she had played a role in it. Storey wrote that she helped facilitate dialogue between the Trump administration and higher education leaders at the Association of American Universities (AAU), which then informed the substance of the administration’s letter. According to Inside Higher Ed, Michael Crow of Arizona State, Andrew Martin of Washington University in St. Louis, Doug Girod of the University of Kansas, and Ronald Daniels of Johns Hopkins helped draft McMahon’s letter or its framework. (Martin later said that he had participated in discussions with the White House but “was not involved ... in the drafting of the letter.”)

Also on August 3, 2026, AAUP and AFT urged universities to reject the administration’s proposal, calling it “Compact 2.0” because it echoed many of the first Compact’s priorities. On August 10, 2026, PEN America and the Alliance for Higher Education launched a sector-wide “Call for Unity” against McMahon’s letter. Nevertheless, on August 18, 2026, Florida’s 40 public colleges and universities submitted a joint response to McMahon, saying that “Florida welcomes your call to action.” That same day, the UNC System responded, calling McMahon’s request “both timely and a reflection of longstanding challenges to the integrity of higher education.”

While the Trump administration’s Call to Action does not involve formal penalties for nonresponse, a White House official told Bloomberg that campuses that respond “could be more likely to be involved in discussions” related to future federal research funding.