On November 7, a coalition of higher ed workers and students stood together outside the corporate headquarters of Apollo Global Management to send a message to its CEO Marc Rowan, a key architect of Trump’s higher ed compact: Hands Off Higher Ed. The demonstration in midtown Manhattan was one of over 100 events organized across the U.S. by Students Rise Up, AAUP, AFT, HELU, and Labor for Higher Ed, in coordination with union locals, AAUP chapters, and campus groups as part of a national day of action against the so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence”: an extortionate and unconstitutional loyalty oath that the Trump administration is attempting to coerce universities to accept in exchange for federal funding. While campus actions called on institutions to reject the compact, members of the NYC coalition took the fight to the home turf of the billionaire who takes credit for authoring it.
Marc Rowan has donated millions to Trump’s election campaign, and his outsized power to shape national policy owes to the vast wealth he has amassed as CEO of the private equity giant Apollo Global Management. Rowan and Apollo have contributed to the crisis of college affordability he absurdly claims the compact would address: Apollo is majority owner of the parent company of the University of Phoenix, largest single producer of student debt in the U.S., and Rowan donated $50 million to create the Penn Wharton Budget Model, used to fight student loan cancellation. From his business activities to his personal attempt at a hostile takeover of the University of Pennsylvania in 2023 (where he chairs the Wharton Board of Advisors) to his role in pushing the Trump administration’s weaponization of Title VI to censor speech, Rowan’s impact on higher education is a case study in oligarchy. Bragging about his part in crafting the current attacks, he has argued—chillingly alluding to the Nazi destruction of European universities in the 1930s and 40s—“It’s not hard to destroy a university. It just takes a period of time.” Higher ed workers and students are proving him wrong, organizing at many institutions to reject the compact. Thanks to those mobilizations, seven of the nine schools initially targeted have refused to sign, hence the Trump administration’s decision to extend this losing proposition to all institutions—clear evidence that the entire higher ed sector has common interests in standing up together, wall to wall and coast to coast.
On the morning of November 7th, workers, students, and families filled the plaza outside Apollo to call out Rowan’s influence on Trump’s attempts at government coercion, censorship, and attacks on free speech, civil rights and trans rights, international students and workers, and the freedom to teach and learn. The coalition included PSC-CUNY, New York State Union of Teachers, New York Metro Coalition for Higher Ed, the American Association of University Professors, American Federation of Teachers, Debt Collective, Higher Ed Labor United, NYU AAUP, Fordham AAUP, AAUP-Penn, AAUP Columbia, Rise & Resist, Strong Economy for All Coalition, Students Rise Up, Frontline for Freedom, CU Stands Up, CU Student Union, Columbia Sunrise, Columbia SDS, and NYU SDS.
Afraid to face the workers and students he attacks behind closed doors, Rowan told Apollo employees to work from home, as the NY Post reported, featuring a shrill animated graphic of the angry mob they envisioned. The tone of the action, meanwhile, was upbeat. Some demonstrators wore inflatable lobster costumes in a nod to a minor scandal surrounding Rowan’s purchase of a lobster shack in the Hamptons, and picketers of all ages danced to accompaniment from NYC marching band Rude Mechanical Orchestra as they marched, chanting “We need teachers, we need books; we need the money the billionaires took”; “Freedom to teach! Freedom to learn!” and “No compact—no tyrants—hands off higher ed!”
As speakers including PSC-CUNY President James Davis and AAUP President Todd Wolfson stressed, the demonstration was not just about beating back the current authoritarian attacks but about winning the system of higher ed we need: democratically run and publicly funded, free to all, without student debt, with freedom to teach and learn and speak, and dignity for all workers and communities. The action closed with some street theater: demonstrators threw a large copy of the compact into the “Dustbin of History” as a large crowd repeatedly chanted “rejected!” to celebrate the verdict of each institution that had refused the compact. While we haven’t seen the last of the oligarchs, the message was clearly received. Immediately following the action, Penn publicly announced Rowan’s successor to the Wharton School’s Board of Advisors when his term concludes. The broader fight will continue not just until every university and college rejects the Rowan-Trump loyalty oath but until workers and students across the sector unite to get the billionaires out of our classrooms and to reclaim and remake higher ed as a public good.