The University of Pennsylvania has declined to sign an agreement with the White House pledging to uphold the Trump administration’s priorities or risk preferred access to some federal funding. 

Penn President J. Larry Jameson said in a statement Thursday that the university has declined to agree to the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” after seeking input from faculty, alumni, trustees, students, staff and others.

Jameson said he also provided “focused feedback” on areas of agreement and “substantive concerns” with the Department of Education.

Penn and eight other schools were asked earlier this month to sign the compact or risk losing out on preferred access to federal funding. The pledge asked them to freeze their tuition rate for five years, ban the use of sex and gender as factors in their admissions process, and cap their international student numbers, among other requirements.

In a statement posted on Oct. 2, the University of Pennsylvania chapter of the American Association of University Professors said the White House letter amounts to a threat.

“Penn must not allow itself to be threatened into ceding its self-determination,” the group said. “Whatever the consequences of refusal, agreeing would threaten the very mission of the university.”

In a statement, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Penn made “the right decision to maintain its full academic independence and integrity in the face of the Trump Administration’s attempts to dictate what private colleges and universities teach and use the long arm of the federal government to censor ideas with which they disagree.” 

Shapiro said he “engaged closely with” university leaders on the issue and supports their decision.

The Trump administration already cut $175 million in funding to Penn earlier this year, but that money was restored after the school agreed to settle a federal civil rights case over transgender athletes.

The University of Southern California, Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also declined to agree to the proposal.Â