Higher education needs a “hard reset.” That was the message from Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent last week at the American Council on Education’s (ACE) annual meeting. The remarks by a government official offered a stern warning to get on board or get out of the way. “I hope that you all are ready, having made it through the five stages of grief and, most importantly, reaching the final state of acceptance,” Kent explained (while referencing bunk psychology research).
With the pressure on higher ed holding steady, it’s a question of what’s next after over a year of targeted attacks on elite universities. Jon Fansmith, ACE’s senior vice president for government relations and national engagement, thinks that something like a second “compact” is coming. This time, focused on “systemic change” across all 4,000 institutions of higher education rather than a select handful.
The nature of this inflection point was echoed by many in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual predictions. Randall Kennedy, a professor of law at Harvard Law School, called “encroachments on autonomy and freedom” by the Trump administration and by states like Florida and Texas “dangerous and alarming,” questioning whether “righteous resistance can turn the tide.” Dartmouth president Sian Leah Beilock, who has been an outspoken advocate for insider-led reform, emphasized the importance of ”concrete reform” to reclaim public trust. “We have to make our case to the American public, and take concrete steps to prove that the underlying mission of higher education remains as vital as ever,” she continued.
Whether one agrees if the pressure campaign from federal and state governments is legitimate, many argue that at the very least it’s spurred universities to take seriously the problems that academics have been noting for at least the last decade, particularly of ideological skew, mission drift, and DEI overreach.
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Christopher S. Celenza, the dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, explains how this current moment of external pressure and public dissatisfaction must prompt critical reflection to advance internal reform:
The history of universities can’t fix our current problems, but it does suggest lessons. Periods of vitality have come not when institutions defended their dominant frameworks most aggressively but when they asked whether those frameworks still served the search for truth. The pressures universities face today call for the same sorts of responses that earlier generations (when they were at their best) found necessary: not ideological balancing, but institutional self-knowledge, a willingness to listen, and, when needed, the ability to change.
But what exactly that change looks like, and which faction of reform will succeed, is still an open question. Len Gutkin, an editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education, identified another axis of reform beyond the internal and external ones, observing that “Reform comes in two main flavors. The first involves ‘intellectual diversity’ or ‘viewpoint diversity’; the second, the revival of more traditional curricula.”
I see this axis as orthogonal to the internal and external axis. On the viewpoint diversity front, you have internal-led reforms, like what we advocate at HxA, aiming to expand viewpoints on campus, whereas external-led reforms for viewpoint diversity often emphasize bans to correct for viewpoint skew, as I discussed last week. On the “civics” faction of reform Gutkin highlights, we can also observe an internal-external split. When these centers are mandated by (mostly red-state) legislatures, we see a greater emphasis on “civic thought” — reviving more “traditional curricula” within mostly autonomous centers; when these centers are not legislatively mandated (mostly at private universities in blue states), these centers have a greater emphasis on “civic discourse” and skill building.
Essentially, the external front is largely focused on correcting skew by stamping out “divisive” concepts and creating mechanisms to hire more conservative faculty. The internal front is largely focused on expanding the viewpoints (socially) permitted on campus and reviving academic skills that afford meaningful engagement across this viewpoint landscape.
This internal-reform led movement is finally gaining footing on campus, in part due to the unrelenting external pressures from government that many academic insiders feel is a real and existential threat to their academic freedom. As a result, we’ve witnessed a mixed bag of institutional policies attempting to make meaningful change while maintaining institutional autonomy. This week, we see UNC is making headlines with their latest policy aimed at internal-led reform.
The University of North Carolina board passed a new policy defining academic freedom. The response was mixed. While few seem to have issues on what academic freedom is — the freedom to teach and research without undue influence or interference — many seem to hold problems with what the policy states academic freedom does not protect.
The policy states that academic freedom does not protect failure to comply “with institutional policies to which the university is subject,” and “teaching content that lacks pedagogical connection to the course, discipline, or subject matter.” It sounds innocuous, but it’s the crux of the issue some faculty are pointing out: the policy makes space for bans, like what we’ve seen in Texas recently, if the legislature or university system says certain topics are off limits.
On the other hand, with state and federal pressure bearing down, institutions must respond by translating long-held norms into clear policy as both a protective and proactive measure. “You know, we don’t really have a consensus document to point to when issues come up around academic freedom,” UNC Faculty Assembly Chair and UNCG professor Wade Maki said of the policy. “It might be helpful to have one in the belief that all stakeholders are best served when we know what academic freedom is and isn’t before a controversial case appears.”
Many academics implicitly know there are limits to academic freedom. Professor of mathematics at Queen Mary University in London and HxA member Abhishek Saha wrote of this at length in this month’s issue of inquisitive:
Properly understood, academic freedom is a broad individual right vested in scholars. It grants them the prerogative to set their research agendas and to express their opinions on any topic. … Academic freedom also applies to teaching, with some limits. Universities may require coverage of the specified syllabus, disciplinary competence, and basic classroom civility. Beyond that, academics should have wide latitude over teaching methods and course content, and should not be pressured to endorse or reject particular value judgments.
The ongoing process of turning norms into protective and proactive institutional reform is no doubt going to take work and have missteps. But it’s necessary work in this environment. As Maki said of UNC’s next steps for defining shared governance, “If we don’t clearly define shared governance,” he said, “outsiders will.” And that’s exactly the point.
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