The PSC is leading a coalition of college and university faculty and staff from around the New York City area to fight back against the attacks on higher education from the Trump administration. PSC President James Davis led a symposium with academic and legal activists at New York University, and the union hosted a meeting on how adjuncts are under threat in this new McCarthyist era.
One of the biggest targets in this fight is Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, who is considered a major figure behind the new so-called “compacts” the Trump administration is pushing on universities, which faculty and staff believe are attacks on academic freedom. “Many of the ideas included in the proposal – and, in some instances, their exact wording – came from a document circulated last winter at the behest of Marc Rowan, the billionaire financier,” The New York Times reported. “Mr. Rowan has been keenly interested in higher education and, as the University of Pennsylvania was mired in acrimony over antisemitism and pro-Palestinian activism in 2023, he wielded his wealth and influence to help oust his alma mater’s president.”
MAJOR RALLY
PSC President James Davis leads a speak-out outside the offices of Apollo Global Management. (Credit: Paul Frangipane)
The PSC and other academic freedom groups led a spirited rally outside of Apollo’s midtown Manhattan headquarters in November. Dressed in costumes and ceremonially dumping the compact into a trash bin outside Rowan’s headquarters, academic unionists and their supporters made the case that they are united and fighting back.
Naomi Schiller, an associate professor of anthropology at Brooklyn College, said that targeting Apollo was an important effort in the struggle to defend higher education. “We need to call attention to the specific people behind these attacks,” she said during the rally.
“We’ve got to keep organizing,” PSC President James Davis told the crowd outside the Apollo headquarters.
Below are other messages of resistance from the rally.
Just say no
We’re here today outside Marc Rowan’s office at Apollo Management to send a clear message: We say no to Donald Trump and Marc Rowan’s billionaire loyalty oath.
We are students, faculty, staff, alumni, community and parents. We are from community colleges, regional four-year public colleges, big R1 universities, private liberal arts colleges and everything in between. Today there are hundreds of actions just like this happening across the U.S.
So recently, Marc Rowan got it in his brain that he should get to rewrite the rules of our universities. Rowan drafted Donald Trump’s so-called Compact for Academic Excellence. I know, it sounds innocent, but let’s be clear: It’s not about excellence, it’s about control. It’s about turning our campuses into investment portfolios and ideological battlegrounds.
This so-called compact would tie federal funding to political obedience. It tells universities: Comply with our ideology, or lose your resources. It bans DEI, dictates who counts as male or female, limits international students, and demands that universities dismantle programs that conservatives dislike.
PSC members and other academic unionists march for academic freedom. (Credit: Paul Frangipane)
LOYALTY OATH
That’s not reform – that’s a loyalty oath to a radical right-wing political movement. And it was written by the people who’ve spent decades defunding public education and privatizing the commons.
Marc Rowan made billions speculating on debt and extraction. Now he wants to do the same with higher ed – to strip-mine our universities for profit and turn knowledge into a commodity he can control.
Let’s be clear what’s at stake. For faculty and staff, this compact means surveillance, censorship and retaliation for teaching truth. For students, it means fewer opportunities, less diversity and a campus ruled by billionaire ideology instead of academic freedom. For science and scholarship, it means decisions based on politics, not evidence.
And if we allow the federal government and Wall Street billionaires to dictate the terms of our classrooms, then higher education – the engine of democracy and discovery – will become just another asset class in Marc Rowan’s portfolio.
But there’s good news. Across the country, campuses are saying no.
MIT, Brown, Stanford, Chicago and others have refused to sign this corrupt deal. They understand that you can’t buy excellence by selling out freedom.
We’re here to say: We stand with them. We stand for independent universities – run by scholars, workers and students, not billionaires and political operatives. We demand an end to the corporate capture of our classrooms and the privatization of our future.
So today, in front of Marc Rowan’s office, we draw a line. We say to Marc Rowan and every billionaire trying to own higher ed: You don’t speak for us. We reject your compact of coercion. We defend our campuses, our colleagues and our democracy. Because education isn’t for sale – and our future isn’t up for auction.
This is our compact: solidarity, freedom and the right to learn, teach and organize – without permission from the powerful.
PUBLIC GOOD
Our compact is: higher education as a public good and pillar of society. That means free public higher education for all. An end to student debt and skyrocketing tuition. Work with dignity and an end to adjunctification. Fully funded biomedical research infrastructure. Fully funded HBCUs and minority-serving institutions. The right to research, teach and protest on our campuses without Big Brother watching.
Today, students, faculty, staff, alumni, community and parents are rising up across hundreds of campuses. And this is only the beginning. In the months to come we will get bigger, stronger and bolder as we arc toward May Day 2026. Because as higher education goes, so goes democracy.
Todd Wolfson
AAUP President
From Penn
Marc Rowan is the founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm right behind me. Among many other activities, Apollo is the majority owner of the parent company of the University of Phoenix, which is the largest single producer of student debt in the country. Apollo has made Marc Rowan one of the 200 richest people in the United States. He has donated millions to Republican campaigns, including one million dollars to the Trump campaign last year. He also donated $50 million to create the Penn Wharton Budget Model, which is used to fight student loan cancellation. So much for making college more affordable.
ROWAN’S POWER
The billions Marc Rowan has made in private equity have bought him tremendous power. He was a member of Penn’s board of trustees from 2016 to 2023, and is now the chair of the advisory board of the Wharton School at Penn. Those boards are supposed to serve their institution, but Marc Rowan’s actions threaten to upend it. By his own admission, Rowan was a key architect of the Trump compact that would destroy higher education. He put pen to paper, he helped select the schools that were initially targeted and he met with university presidents to try to persuade them to comply.
On my campus, 2,000 of us came together to reject the loyalty oath spearheaded by Marc Rowan, and because we all stood up and said no, Penn rejected the compact. No university has agreed. Marc Rowan has said that “it’s not that hard to destroy a university.” We are here today – educators, students, staff, alumni, members of many unions and chapters – to show him it’s a lot harder than he thinks. Because when we fight, we win. But this is not the last that higher ed will see of Marc Rowan. Billionaire oligarchs can’t be allowed to decide what we teach and what students learn. Education is a public good, and we need to stand up together and fight to take it back.
Lorena Grundy
Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
University of Pennsylvania, AAUP Chapter Vice President
Published: December 11, 2025
