California Gov. Gavin Newsom retaliated against the Trump administration’s offer of preferred consideration for federal funding to some of the most prestigious public and private universities in the nation, by threatening to withhold state funding for any that sign the deal.

The memo requires the nine colleges that received it to follow a series of terms that include limiting the number of international students, freezing tuition rates for five years, and banning preference by race or gender in admissions and hiring.

According to Newsom, such an agreement would tie access to federal funding to what the governor said are “radical conservative ideological restrictions” on colleges and universities.

“If any California university signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding—including Cal grants—instantly. California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom,” Newsom wrote in all caps.

The “compact,” Newsom said, is “nothing short of a hostile takeover of America’s universities.”

The governor alleged that the compact would impose strict government-mandated definitions of academic terms, “erase diversity, and rip control away from campus leaders to install government-mandated conservative ideology in its place.” He said it would dictate how schools spend their own endowments, and that any institution that resists could be hit with “crushing fines or stripped of federal research funding.”

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) also issued a statement.

“We were alarmed to read reports that Penn has been “invited” to sign a so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” by the federal government, and that failing to do so would jeopardize federal funding,” the AAUP statement read.

Compliance with the agreement would be subject to ongoing review by the federal Department of Justice (DOJ), and “insufficient obedience” would result in a loss of access to student loans, grant programs, federal contracts, funding for research, approval of visas, and tax exemption, the AAUP-Penn executive committee wrote.

“Decisions about hiring, tuition, admissions, grades, and discipline are made according to shared governance procedures that are essential to the independence and academic freedom of the University.

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