After the Civil War, the United States entered a brief but transformative era known as Reconstruction, an ambitious national experiment in democracy and racial inclusion. For the first time in the nation’s history, the federal government sought to rebuild the country on principles of freedom, equality, and multiracial citizenship. The promises were profound: reunite the Union, abolish slavery, and guarantee newly freed African Americans the rights of citizenship, voting, land ownership, and education. For a fleeting moment, the United States envisioned a future where democracy could be truly universal.
But those promises ignited fierce resistance from those determined to reclaim white dominance. Across the South, Redeemers – former Confederates and white elites – mobilized to dismantle Reconstruction’s gains through terror, fraud, and political manipulation. The Compromise of 1877, which ended federal protection of Black citizens, was the formal surrender of Reconstruction’s ideals. It allowed Southern states to impose Jim Crow laws, suppress Black voters, and restore white supremacy under the guise of “states’ rights.” The massacres in Eufaula, Alabama (1874) and Wilmington, North Carolina (1898) stand as brutal reminders of this backlash – moments when multiracial democracy was literally murdered.
At the same time, this post-Reconstruction project expanded westward. Through Indian boarding schools, the federal government waged a campaign of cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples, removing children from their families, erasing their languages, and attempting to “civilize” them into white norms. These schools not only destroyed cultures and lives – thousands of Indigenous children disappeared or died – but also served the economic goal of clearing Native lands for white settlement. Together, Jim Crow in the South and boarding schools in the West marked the reassertion of white control under the banner of civilization and progress.
Nearly a century later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 inaugurated what many have called a Second Reconstruction. Like its 19th-century predecessor, it sought to restore the democratic promise of inclusion – this time focusing on equal access to education and public life for African Americans and Latinos. Schools, universities, and public institutions became central battlegrounds where America again attempted to redefine itself. Affirmative action, integration programs, and later DEI initiatives were not simply bureaucratic policies; they were the instruments of this renewed vision of justice and shared belonging.
But history has repeated itself. Just as the first Reconstruction was undone by the Compromise of 1877, the new Reconstruction of civil rights is being eroded through a modern compromise, disguised as the dismantling of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Under slogans of “colorblindness” and “merit,” these rollbacks represent a coordinated effort to reclaim institutional power for white elites, particularly in education, government, and business. Across the country, DEI offices have been defunded or eliminated, and Black women – who were among the key leaders and beneficiaries of equity programs – have been disproportionately targeted and displaced. Their recent loss of jobs and influence in academia and corporate America mirrors the post-Reconstruction purges of Black teachers and officials in the late 19th century.
The Compact on Higher Education, promoted by the Trump Administration, continues this trajectory. Behind its language of “neutrality” and “academic excellence” lies the same political logic as the 1877 Compromise – a strategic concession that preserves the primacy of whiteness while claiming to restore order and meritocracy. Like the reclaimers of the 19th century, today’s anti-DEI coalitions seek to reverse decades of progress by cloaking racial retrenchment in bureaucratic and moral rhetoric.
Just as the dismantling of DEI has curtailed Black and Latino advancement in higher education, the erosion of tribal education support represents a continuation of the US government’s long-standing resistance to Indigenous self-determination. Both reflect how the “new Reconstruction compromise” functions: using claims of neutrality and fiscal prudence to sustain racial hierarchies and maintain control over the institutions that shape knowledge, opportunity, and identity.
The story of Reconstruction – both the first and second – teaches a painful truth: every step toward racial inclusion in America has been met with an equally determined backlash. Each period of progress is followed by a compromise, a recalibration of white supremacy to fit new political and cultural conditions. What was once justified through segregation and lynching is now defended through “colorblind” policy and “academic freedom.” Yet the goal remains the same – to maintain racial hierarchy while denying that it exists.
A Call to Refuse the New Compromise
The so-called Compact on Higher Education is not a policy of reform – it is a reconstruction of exclusion, a modern compromise that trades diversity for dominance, and justice for compliance. Like every compromise before it, it asks universities to surrender moral clarity in exchange for political convenience. Accepting it would mean legitimizing the erasure of Black, Latino, and Indigenous progress in the name of “balance” and “neutrality.”
MIT and the eight universities invited to consider this Compact must refuse – unequivocally and collectively. They must not sign it, negotiate around it, or lend it the credibility of engagement. To “compromise” here is to participate in a familiar cycle: the surrender of justice disguised as administrative prudence. Higher education cannot claim to be a beacon of truth while bowing to a framework built to silence it.
This moment demands courage – not consensus. Just as Reconstruction once asked the nation to imagine democracy anew, today’s universities must defend that vision against those who seek to rewrite it. The question before them is not bureaucratic but moral: Will they stand with the Redeemers, or with the unfinished work of Reconstruction?
History is watching.
