The full response from the MIT President is here, and is worth reading. She makes the correct point that scientific funding should be awarded based on scientific merit. Unfortunately, prior administrations have not always observed that principle (recall, e.g., when “diversity” was a criterion [or strong desideratum] for federal science funding), but the Trump proposal goes much, much further in undermining it. In any case, it’s important that this was the first official response to the “compact.”

One issue on which MIT is vulnerable is their “free expression” policy, since critics will point to embarrassing incidents from a few years ago like this. The Administration needs to clearly repudiate past practices inconsistent with an actual commitment to free expression.