A Compact Misunderstanding

The so-called Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education has been in the news. The deadline for feedback is past, and as of today, seven of the nine original universities have rejected it, while two others appear to have demurred including Vanderbilt.

As members of the faculty at Vandy, my wife and I have had several conversations about the Compact and its meaning. In fact, we have been discussing the word “compact.” While the word struck my wife as strange, I was very familiar with it because of my Puerto Rican background.

The word is part of a seventy-five-year misunderstanding. In 1950, the Public Law that made possible the foundation of the Puerto Rican Commonwealth or Estado Libre Asociado, read “[F]ully recognizing the principle of government by consent, this Act is now adopted in the nature of a compact so that the people of Puerto Rico may organize a government pursuant to a constitution of their own adoption.”

Some (namely the founders of the Commonwealth) interpret the “compact” as an agreement between sovereign entities, meaning that Puerto Rico holds at least the promise of plenipotentiary powers. Others (namely the US Congress) disagree and interpret the “compact” as an agreement between parties that doesn’t require equality of power and status.

Much ink, and some blood, has been spilled over this misunderstanding.

The interpretations stem from two different meanings of the word in political theory, and from two different compacts. The first is the Mayflower Compact drafted by the Pilgrims in 1620. This document is an example of an agreement between individuals brought together by external circumstances, namely the arrival to the New World, and by the need to write laws to govern themselves. Etymologically speaking, this document is something closer to a contract: an agreement between parties enforced by an external force or circumstances. Contract is from the Latin for contrahere: to shrink from outside force.

The second is the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, after the compact theory by John Calhoun. In them, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson protested against the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Acts of the same year, claiming that the states were sovereign signatories of an agreement, and as such they had a right to break the compact unilaterally. This was to become the legal basis for the Civil War and later for State’s Rights. Compact is from the Latin for compangere: to bind from inside.

Given these two meanings of the same word, it is not surprising that Vanderbilt has demurred because it seems to interpret the “compact” as an agreement that binds sovereign parties (like the 1798 compact between the States of Virginia and Kentucky), that will continue to refine the agreement until it satisfies all. Vanderbilt’s emphasis appears to be on the sovereignty of the parties involved, and on their influence to craft a document that presupposes their plenipotentiary powers. Their emphasis is on internal consensus.

The other seven universities have refused to sign the compact because they have interpreted the word to mean a contract drawn by a more powerful party forced by external circumstances and one that draws or shrinks the signatories together into an unbreakable and unilateral agreement. Their emphasis is on external coercion.

Perhaps the ambiguous status of Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth offers a lesson here. Clarifying what we mean by a compact is a necessary first step to an informed University response.