The Trump administration has quietly abandoned the poisonous deal it tried to foist on American universities. Under its so-called Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, the administration offered select universities privileged access to federal grants if they agreed to conform with Donald Trump’s ideology on how they should be run.

Universities widely pilloried the proposal, demonstrating the power of a collective defense. Higher education in the United States certainly needs reform, as many university leaders and the public would acknowledge, but not according to the dictates of Trump.

Yet the administration’s withdrawal of the compact doesn’t mean that Trump has forsaken his crusade against what he sees as bastions of liberalism. Vigilance is still needed.

The compact, originally proposed last October, singled out nine universities. When only one managed to find anything positive to say about it – the University of Texas, a public university overseen by a conservative state government – the administration broadened the offer to other possible takers. But unlike Trump’s successful efforts to entice a handful of wealthy law firms to cut deals with him, universities maintained a more united front. Hardly any took up the offer.

The terms of the compact were to be interpreted by the Trump administration, making its broad language worrying. It arguably required banning preferences for historically underrepresented groups in student admissions and faculty hiring, expanding the campus presence of conservative ideas, prohibiting certain student protests, ending statements on behalf of the university or its units on most public issues, adopting the administration’s definition of gender, and limiting the number........

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