Gina’s post on Indiana’s DEI-related law came at a fortuitous time for me, because last week I participated in a panel about State Legislatures, Academic Freedom and Public Universities. The panelists were given about 6 minutes to present some prepared remarks’ and discussion ensued. As far as I could tell there was just one state legislator present, and one administrator; otherwise the audience was students, faculty, and members of the public.
I did write out my remarks, but then I didn’t say exactly what I wrote, so below the fold is an attempt at a rough transcription of what I actually said:
The event that prompted this discussion is the deal that the UW-Madison and Universities of Wisconsin leadership did with the legislature back in December. The legislature took the unusual step of withholding additional funding unless the universities met certain conditions: including capping DEI programming and moving some DEI roles to student success roles [1].
In fact, the deal doesn’t really involve academic freedom as it is usually understood.[2] We normally understand academic freedom fairly minimally, as protecting the ability of researchers to pursue research through their disciplines; and to protect the authority of faculty and instructional staff over curricular and instructional matters. And even then; academic freedom only protects instructional and curricular practices that fall within a certain range: an instructor who gratuitously insults the religious or cultural background of their student cannot usually claim academic freedom as a protection, let alone as a justification. Anyway, non-academic programming is not usually covered.
Step back a moment from the particulars that the legislature was trying to get us to do and stop doing. Should the legislature have any say over how we conduct ourselves?
It inevitably does. We’re a public institution. And the legislature holds some of the purse strings. So it is free to decide not to increase, or even to decrease, our funding, without offering any reasons at all, and without offering us deals.
Being a public institution we should welcome some degree of public accountability. That’s what makes us different from private institutions. And UW-Madison (like other state flagships) is a peculiar kind of public institution. We accept public funding that comes from taxation, and yet we also charge residents substantial tuition fees, and we routinely reject residents who want to attend (and many residents who would like to attend don’t even apply, because they either see tuition as too much of a barrier or because they know they’ll be rejected anyway). Most residents of the state are ineligible for any direct benefits from the university.
An institution like that has a particular duty to be accountable to the public; the public has to be assured that we are fulfilling a mission to serve the whole state, even though we manifestly refuse directly to serve some residents.
So what does accountability to the public mean? The most legitimate representatives of the public are the people they elect to office. As I said, they hold the purse strings, so in a sense we just are accountable to them, whether we like it or not. I do agree with people who would prefer that the legislature wouldn’t meddle too much. And we already have an appointed Board of Regents that (rightly) plays a role in holding us accountable. But public institutions work best when public servants are inclined to, and skilled at, holding themselves accountable to the public: when they are alert to the possibility of public complaint and distrust, conscientious about identifying when complaints and distrust have real grounds, and addressing those grounds. We have to think about what that means for us in a world in which the legislature – and, frankly, the public – is often at odds with us.
There are two ways of seeing last year’s dispute, and I see it both ways.
First there’s a degree of unseriousness from the legislators. Like politicians generally they are not always acting fully in good faith, but are thinking, (as all politicians do) about how their moves play to their base and the people who fund their campaigns. Not all of them are always thinking about the good of the university or even about the good of the public.
The second way of seeing it is that there is a genuine problem of trust in very polarized political conditions and in which the political composition of a public institution is so different from the political composition of the people who live in the state. Its easy to pretend to ourselves that there is no problem because, as we know, the exceptional level of gerrymandering that the legislature has engaged in means that the legislature is not, actually, as representative of the public as it would be in a more sensible – dare I say a more democratic – electoral system. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves. Personally I’m pretty convinced by Kathy Cramer’s work, as well as the survey data that Russ already presented, and from numerous conversations with numerous students, that there really is a pretty serious trust problem with the public, and not just with the legislature.[2] Having a faculty is so politically homogeneous in such a politically diverse, and polarized, state is intrinsically risky. It’s intellectually risky just because the more homogeneous faculty are on any given dimension the more likely it is that they will have collective blind spots about both good and bad ideas. It’s politically risky because it is too easy for us to be complacent about our practice, and too easy for the public (and our students) to distrust us.
Personally what I’d most like to get out of this discussion are ideas about how to mitigate the lack of trust – if you like, how to undercut the position of political entrepreneurs like Robin Voss – and, more abstractly, ideas about what it really means for us to be accountable to the public.
[1] Because some of what falls under DEI used to be considered ‘student success’, the latter part effectively meant renaming some roles.
[2] There is one part of the deal that might pertain to academic freedom – the agreement that the University should seek funding for a position for which it would hire a scholar who studies conservative thought, but this was not the focus of the panel.
[3] Russ, the moderator, had reported various data including evidence from the Pew surveys showing the precipitous drop in public trust in higher education over the past several years, especially among Republicans.
{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
Ben N 04.17.24 at 4:32 pm
I agree with your two dimensions, unserious politicians and real issues of trust.
It’s challenging to solve unserious politicians promoting a popular narrative of ideological indoctrination and left universities, apart from teaching charitable thinking… “yes there may be leftwing or ideological bias at the Universities, no they are not acting nefariously.”
From the perspective of this UW Student: Professors fail to create an environment that elicits diverse and dissenting perspectives in the classroom. Of course, successfully creating this environment is no easy task. The professor first has to believe that each student has something significant to contribute, even if it exists beyond the scope of their knowledge. Some professors believe, evidenced explicitly or implicitly in their methodologies, in imparting their knowledge upon students in a hierarchy. Then, they must form relationships with those students enough to both read the ideological/identitarian composition of the class and to identify those students who are likely to feel in the minority. Having gained the trust of these students, during class discussions or turn-and-talks, they must empower these students to share their perspectives in ways relevant to the class.
I’ve been in both Harry’s and Kathy Cramer’s classes, each professors who may well be part of the homogenous composition of the university (though they’d never say) but who are able to interact and make students of diverse backgrounds feel empowered to contribute to their learning communities.
John Q 04.17.24 at 9:34 pm
Kind of tongue-in-cheek, but why not create a “Conservative studies” program with scope to make its own hiring decisions? If they want to teach creation science, climate denial, Dunning school history etc, so be it. And if conservative students want a safe space to express their views, they would get it.
Something of the sort happened at the University of Sydney when the econ and philosophy departments split into irreconcilable factions, each of which got their own department. The philosophy departments eventually merged, but Political Economy has remained separate.
The underlying problem is that viewpoints can be so different as to preclude useful discussion. US politics in general has reached this point and, to the extent that the university wants to cater to all widely-held viewpoints, that’s going to imply some kind of separation.
engels 04.17.24 at 10:26 pm
why not create a “Conservative studies” program with scope to make its own hiring decisions? If they want to teach creation science, climate denial, Dunning school history etc, so be it
Following the example of Conservapedia, how about a Conservaversity? With a teaching hospital attached where you can get Ivermectin for Covid and other Trump-endorsed treatments.
Harry 04.17.24 at 10:32 pm
I’ve never learned the Sydney philosophy story, which must be great, and had no idea that Economics did the same.
Maybe it helps to specify some viewpoints I think students should encounter arguments for. I’m thinking about students who take my classes about education policy and are surprised (shocked) that reasonable people argue in favour of some degree of standardized testing (about which they have only learned one perspective — that it is racist). The problem isn’t that they believe it’s racist but that they haven’t even learned that some people think it isn’t and can give reasons for making it part of the schooling system. Or that charter schools are simply a plot to undermine public schooling — again, it doesn’t bother me that they believe that, but that they haven’t encountered any other perspective. In both cases, when they do encounter the arguments against the view they have held they are often completely persuaded because, it turns out, they haven’t really even encountered arguments for the view they’ve held. When teaching about the morality of abortion (in philosophy), students not infrequently tell me that its the first time they have encountered arguments that abortion is wrong — and again, many pro-abortion students are shocked by the arguments because they don’t know how to counter them because, it turns out, they don’t actually have reasons for holding their own view.
These things happen often enough for me to think something isn’t quite right. I think that’s roughly the thought behind Gina’s post that so many people were so dismissive of last week.
John Q 04.17.24 at 10:50 pm
It’s certainly valuable to challenge the weakly-based beliefs with which students arrive at university.
My own experience may be relevant. I left school with fairly conventional centre-left views, and was taught economics in a hardline Chicago department. The result was that I rejected some of my previous views (for example, support for fee-free but rationed university education) and toughened up the rest.
So, hiring credible conservatives (a lot harder now than it was then) might be beneficial in challenging liberal students to sharpen their thinking. But I think the Wisconsin legislature is more concerned with protecting conservative students from such challenges.
Alan White 04.18.24 at 3:04 am
Vos (no double ss) and his ilk have long believed that UW is synonymous with being liberal–and have legislatively acted accordingly. UW System has been effectively cut in half campus-wise as a result of downsizing due to underfunding by eliminating the UW Colleges which were 2-years transfer institutions and were extremely effective in their mission for over 50 years. I was a member of that institution’s philosophy department for over 35 years, and we were an extremely effective group of instructors, but now dissolved and remaining tenured members subject to being laid off by the 4-year campuses they’ve been attached to. Academic tenure and faculty governance has been diluted to the point of being non-existent except for the larger campuses like Milwaukee and Madison. These are the political realities of Wisconsin.
I taught ethics. I understood the value of presenting divergent views, and tried very hard to balance them. My students appreciated that, as seen in my evaluations. And no professor worthy of the title should think that indoctrination is equivalent to education.
But convergent lines of truth that clearly show things of a factual nature–evolution, the oblate spheroid earth, climate change, the effectiveness of vaccines–are not matters of genuine controversy, and should never be taught as such in anything claiming to be a university. Yet all these are promoted by some as “political” views. There is a clear line of truth that should not be crossed in many instances. People like Vos do not get that, and should not have the privilege to remake UW in some sort of “fair and balanced” FOX propaganda image.
Harry 04.18.24 at 4:26 am
“But I think the Wisconsin legislature is more concerned with protecting conservative students from such challenges”
I don’t think they are concerned with that at all — in fact I don’t think they even care about DEI. If they did, they wouldn’t have made a ‘deal’ that conceded nearly everything except some verbiage. This is not actually about the students at all. Its about shouting (not dog whistling) to part of their base, and, briefly, aligning with a candidate for the nomination who looked like they had at least a tiny chance of beating Trump. There’s just a lot of playacting.
I also don’t think that the conservative students who come here want to be protected from anything. If they did, they’d make a fuss. But they don’t. (Alternatively, they just wouldn’t come). I occasionally hear stories of really crappy behaviour that one of my students has had to deal with, but even then I never hear it as a complaint, just as a fact of life. Things like the College Fix and David Horowitz’s outfita, though well funded, have no currency. (Of course, other students tell me about equally crappy, if different, bad behaviour).
I’d be happy to hire credible conservatives, but agree with the people who think there’s very little discrimination against them at the hiring level. The issue that can be addressed effectively is instructor intention and instructor skill.
J-D 04.18.24 at 5:16 am
You linked to this where I read this:
Do you think that’s true? If it’s true, I don’t see how you’re going to get anywhere without taking it into account.
engels 04.18.24 at 11:20 am
students who take my classes about education policy…are surprised (shocked) that reasonable people argue in favour of some degree of standardized testing (about which they have only learned one perspective — that it is racist)
I thought standardised testing was (ahem) standard in US graduate admissions (odd if faculties are monolithically liberal and liberals are monolithically opposed to standardised tests).
Harry 04.18.24 at 12:18 pm
We don’t use them actually, though not because we think they serve no use in the education system. This is now common in philosophy. We believed that at best they weren’t helping us make better decisions.
I’ve no idea whether they’re used in ed school admissions.
I guess the ‘all faculty are liberal’ thing here, while true, is only part of the story. All faculty and a preponderance of the students are liberal, which is one challenge. And for any given student if all the faculty they encounter present the same dogma about certain things, and refrain from fostering intellectual curiosity, that’s a specific kind of harm. And, of course, in some areas it has particularly awful consequences (I’m pro-standardised testing, but in childhood I was designated “educationally subnormal” so have some experience of 80 years of eugenicist dogma in psych; the decades of Lucy Calkins dogma on teaching reading has done untold harm).
MisterMr 04.18.24 at 5:21 pm
I think that there should be a distinction between “facts” and “values”.
This book has a green cover -> judgement of fact, quite objective.
This book is interesting -> judgement of value, it depends on many subjective things (like what arguments I’m interested in).
In some cases, like creationism, we are speaking of a judgement about facts, there in no way a working university could or should accept that some teacher says that creationism is right or plausible. Same about, e.g., negating or hiding historical slavery.
In other cases, like whether transwomen are really women, abortions are acceptable or a right, Shakespeare is a great writer etc., are judgements of value, they have a strong subjective aspect that however is mediated by common social judgements (e.g. I might dislike Shakespeare but I have to know that he is usually recognised by society as a good writer).
It is not possible to avoid all judgements of value, but a good academic should be able to note that these are judgements of value and accept that some students might have different views.
On the other hand, if there are disagreements on matters of fact, and these disagreements are motivated by “values” (like creationism), a good academic should never accept this, and point out the difference between disagreements on values and disagreements on facts.
IMHO.
Harry 04.18.24 at 6:05 pm
“Do you think that’s true? If it’s true, I don’t see how you’re going to get anywhere without taking it into account.”
Yes, obviously.
engels 04.18.24 at 8:58 pm
if all the faculty they encounter present the same dogma about certain things, and refrain from fostering intellectual curiosity, that’s a specific kind of harm
I think this shows something bad happened to liberals. I don’t think the solution is to replace them with conservatives, who are in general more dogmatic.
J-D 04.19.24 at 12:17 am
If I personally discovered that people trusted me much less than previously, and that this drop in trust was across the board, I would think it most likely that I had done something wrong and needed to mend my ways (it wouldn’t be absolutely conclusive, but it would be an extremely strong indicator). However, if the drop in trust was evident among one group of people, while others trusted me as much as ever (however much that is! I’m making no claim to having any particular starting level of trustworthiness), the indications would be less clear: it still might mean something about me, but then again it might mean something about the people who no longer trusted me. If, for example, I found that it was conspiracy theorists who had lost trust in me, I would be inclined to regard that not so much as a sign that I had done something wrong and more as a badge of honour.
So, if Republicans have lost trust in higher education, should that be regarded more as an indication that something has gone wrong with higher education or more as an indication that something has gone wrong with Republicans?
The current political position of US higher education is not as strong as that of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 when he made the speech at Madison Square Garden in which he described the groups who hated him and said that he welcomed their hatred. It would be strategically unwise, even if hypothetically it were justified, for you to be equally frank. Still, if we entertain, even if only as one possibility among many, the suggestion that the Republican loss of trust in higher education is a result not of the faults of higher education but of the faults of the Republican Party, what can you realistically be expected to do about that?
Harry 04.19.24 at 12:37 pm
“So, if Republicans have lost trust in higher education, should that be regarded more as an indication that something has gone wrong with higher education or more as an indication that something has gone wrong with Republicans?”
Two things. First, you’re welcome to restrict yourself to allocating blame. We don’t have that luxury.
Second: if you have independent evidence that something is wrong in higher education which, whether or not it is a cause of Republican loss of trust makes the educational experience of students worse (and which, incidentally, might be a cause of loss of trust) you have reason to do something about it.
“I don’t think the solution is to replace them with conservatives…” Right. Neither I, nor anyone else on this thread ( nor, even, the Wisconsin Republicans) have suggested or implied that should be a solution.
engels 04.19.24 at 3:27 pm
Neither I, nor anyone else on this thread ( nor, even, the Wisconsin Republicans) have suggested or implied that should be a solution.
Ok then that’s great. (I should have just said I agreed with Alan White.)
AcademicLurker 04.19.24 at 5:24 pm
The increase in negative views has come almost entirely from Republicans and independents who lean Republican. From 2015 to 2019, the share saying colleges have a negative effect on the country went from 37% to 59% among this group. Over that same period, the views of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic have remained largely stable and overwhelmingly positive.
This seems to be at odds with many other polls. Gallop’s 2023 poll, for instance, shows favorable views of higher education declining across the partisan board. The drop is largest among republicans, but there are drops among Democrats and independents as well. I’ve seen similar results in other polls.
Kurt Schuler 04.20.24 at 1:52 pm
A big part of the issue here is whether students and taxpayers are getting value for money. American universities used to be much leaner in terms of administrative staff. (If you want the data, see the National Center for Education Statistics.) More administrators result in higher costs. What are the benefits sufficient to justify them?
Harry 04.20.24 at 4:07 pm
The statistics on administrative posts are misleading, largely a consequence of reclassification (we have the same number of office staff now as we did 32 years ago when I got here, 5: they’re all now classified as admin, whereas only one was in 1992 — they’re all still underpaid in much the way they were 32 years ago) and changes in staffing patterns — eg, 40 years ago there were lots of typists and gardeners (not classified as admin) and very few IT people (all classified as admin), whereas technological change has resulted in many fewer of the former and more of the latter. Also: increased bureaucratic demands from funders (esp Federal grantmaking bodies) require more administrators, and, also, the shift from an access agenda (admit underrepresented students and let them flounder) to a completion agenda (admit those students and support their success) has resulted in increased student service staff (administrators).
Its true that at research universities faculty teach less than they used to (quite a lot less), and do less student-oriented service: students probably pay for that.
M Caswell 04.20.24 at 7:26 pm
Harry @19:
Why were the additional student support staff not added to the ranks of the faculty, but instead added to the ‘admin’ cohort? Indeed, this is taken to be simply “best practice.” It seems to me a sort of abdication has taken place, in which faculty indifference cooperates with corporate opposition to faculty governance.
Anna M 04.21.24 at 9:49 am
If it is some consolation to those deeply concerned by Republican loss of trust in HE, it seems that many administrations appear to be doing their best to ensure parity by decreasing the trust of everyone else (e.g. Columbia, USC, etc.).
More seriously,
Sure – but that doesn’t really seem to be addressing the goal you claim you want to address.
If you believe that the education of your students would be improved if they had been exposed to more diverse viewpoints on the morality of abortion before they came to your class covering morality of abortion (though wouldn’t that render you class a little redundant?), then I’ll take your word for it. But I don’t see how “I don’t think my students are exposed to enough contrary views” really has anything to do with lack of public trust, and I think you’ve yet to make a particularly strong case for it.
Step one would surely be to identify what the main cause(s) of that lack of trust is (e.g. is it because of the teaching conditions, continuous propaganda from the media, etc.)?
Horizontal and egalitarian accountability is, I would suggest, a better model than hierarchical imposition. Delegation of responsibility is not delegation of authority – elected officials are representative of the public only to the extent that they behave with transparency and regular feedback with the electorate (to what extent do your Republican officials represent the interests of all the public, as opposed to merely those who voted for them?).
To my mind, the nature of much of HE (as currently practiced) is intrinsically antagonistic to accountability – the failure of many institutions to represent the interests of their students and staff (and the frequent prioritising the interests of their boards and funders) demonstrates that. Any attempt to change this will require radical remodelling– and I don’t really see much appetite for that (both within and without).
Harry 04.21.24 at 1:48 pm
“It seems to me a sort of abdication has taken place, in which faculty indifference cooperates with corporate opposition to faculty governance.”
It does look a bit like that, doesn’t it?
“Horizontal and egalitarian accountability is, I would suggest, a better model than hierarchical imposition.”
I agree with this, as I very obliquely imply in the op. Even the best willed legislators don’t have much understanding of how higher education works, and are not well-equipped to regulate it (and, in a small, part-time, legislature, they can’t have the civil service support they’d need). And that’s the best case scenario. I also note, though, that de facto (well, and de jure) the legislature does have the power of the purse, which enables it to engage in hierarchical imposition if and when it wants to. That’s just the reality our leadership has to deal with.
“Step one would surely be to identify what the main cause(s) of that lack of trust is (e.g. is it because of the teaching conditions, continuous propaganda from the media, etc.)”
Several interacting causes, some of which we can address directly (quality of instruction, our own communications, climate, etc) others of which we can’t. Among those that we can address are treating conservative/Muslim/working class/Christian/trans/Black students with respect and ensuring that students in those categories find themselves as welcomed on our campus and in our classes as students in other categories. These things all vary by campus, obviously, but anyone who thinks that conservative and Black students feel as welcomed on my campus as white and liberal students doesn’t spend much time talking with them. Maybe improving the quality of instruction and climate wouldn’t affect public trust. We can do it anyway.
Dr Bill 04.21.24 at 3:10 pm
I am not sure how this discussion can proceed fruitfully or your concerns can be addressed meaningfully unless and until you grapple with the fact that , at least from the outside of the US, it looks like 40+ % of the populace are venal morons supporting blindly a venal moronic crook, and one of your two parties is a proto fascist completely reactionary organization. In other words, your political system is broken (probably beyond repair but we’ll know more in November) and society is under a lot of stress. Additionally, in this environment there are still lots of folks in the presumably sane 50% focusing almost entirely on how to name things, policing how things are named and being completely ignorant about reality outside of campus and “enlightened” ghettos.
In such an environment, if I believed I’m a vault of both knowledge and liberal values, I’d try my hardest to inoculate my charges against the venality and stupidity , despite the fact that this will lose the trust of almost half the population, and would not yield to the language puritans of the day either, which would lose the trust of more folks still. But them’s the brakes. Better go down with the ship that turn it over.
Tm 04.22.24 at 9:59 am
Harry has above claimed that the statement ‘all faculty are liberal’ is true. My comment last week pushing back against this obviously false claim has apparently been lost.
My own experience with US academia is mainly with a Southern state university. Perhaps Madison and other more selective or even “elite” institutions in the US are totally different. But from my experience, there is no question there are plenty of conservative/right-wing faculty in the US. Beside that, those among faculty who identify as liberal are overwhelmingly centrists whose views would be considered middle of the road if it weren’t for the fact that the GOP has gone totally nuts. If students from conservative backgrouds feel shocked by the “liberalism” they encounter at university, that is not because there are so many professors with radical views, it’s because a conservative background nowadays means science-denying bigotry. If faculty are asked whether they support a science-denying fascist cult and most of them say no, that doesn’t really betray a lack of viewpoint diversity. Otoh how how many US faculty are pro-union (universities are notoriously anti-union), critical of capitalism, in favor of strong climate action, etc.?
Another important consideration that somehow never gets mentioned in these discussions is the fact that there are strong conservative structural forces in US academia, in particular the composition of governing boards and the power of rich donors.
The university I mentioned above includes the following institutions:
– The Tyson Center of Excellence for Poultry Science
– The Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences
– The Sam M. Walton College of Business (Walton of Walmart fame)
– The Department of Education Reform (also partly financed with Walton money and with a specific political agenda baked into the deal – the University refused to publish the agreement with the donors)
– The Storm Chair in Petroleum Geology (established by an oil millionaire with a donation of a mere million, enough to exert influence over the academic direction of a whole academic department probably for decades).
Business schools, law schools, agricultural departments, petroleum geology, and so on, these are not liberal hotbeds. There may be some liberals in these disciplines but they are certainly not dominating. And even if the petroleum geology chair thinks of himself as a liberal, his job is still to service the fossil fuel economy, just as the job of the business school faculty is to service the capitalist economy, and overwhelmingly they do, with nary a remnant of critical thinking thrown in.
Debates about lack of viewpoint diversity in US academia that ignore these facts are simply not serious.
Anna M 04.22.24 at 10:08 am
Thank you for the reply – I appreciate the response and thought!
Absolutely – axiomatically, improving things is good, and if you can you should!
There is truth to this, which I suppose leans to my overall points – I think whatever changes that can be made (which, if good, should certainly be made!) are inherently limited by the nature of HE in the US (and, to be fair, this isn’t a US-only problem either!). In which case you end up with being able to only make small incremental adjustments which (again, may well be justifiable and justified anyway, purely from a pedagogical perspective!) will not really achieve any substantial change.
I fully agree this is a good aspiration, and that if students feel unwelcome it is good to determine the causes and find appropriate approaches which – as much as possible – alleviate matters.
I think there are, however, two issues to bear in mind:
Firstly, it is in the context of the broader society (e.g. I think students who are in a state targeting their demographic will intrinsically feel less welcome, even if that isn’t the institute’s fault specifically). So certainly the institute should do its best over what it can control, but there will always be a lot it cannot (I think “town and gown” is the phrase to signify the tension?).
Secondly, and following this point, a lot will depend on how much any given institute actually is willing to defend the interests of its students. Even though an institute may be striving for “objectivity” (however you define that), that doesn’t mean neutrality (e.g. if a state passes a bill targeting certain demographics of students, I think there is a duty of care for the institution to stand up and oppose it – and I think that institutes that fail to do this will lose credibility even if you think that is unfair given the context). To put it bluntly, while there is certainly a “reality to deal with”, to what extent will your staff and administration defend its students – even if that means standing up to politicians and donors? As far as I can tell, most institutions are quite prepared to descend into authoritarian tactics and violence if it is believed to be politically and financially beneficial (to a frankly concerning degree!) – and even in the few (relatively rare, it seems) cases where administrations launch half-hearted vague defences, these are greatly punished resulting in even less opposition to interference down the road.
I don’t intend this to sound like an unreasonable criticism, but merely to make the point that the class interests (both in the economic and the more general sense of the term) of administrators, faculty, untenured staff, support staff, and students are not necessarily well aligned, and frequently in a certain degree of tension. As more outside pressure will be bought to bear (politically, financially, etc.), I think there will be even greater divergence – and an institute which is prepared to side with the state and repress students in service to “unfortunate realities” will degrade trust yet further.
In short, to put it starkly and bluntly, if your administration sends police to beat up protesting students, students are going to trust your institute less – and saying “ah, but we had to do that in order to retain some independence – and we are improving teaching practices as compensation” is not really going to change that outcome (however laudable the intent may be). I realise of course, as you say, it is easy to be critical when I am not the one who is facing the pressures – but I would say that principles are only valuable to the extent that you defend them.
When it is the time of truth, how far will your University go to protect its people? That, I think, will have some influence on how must trust is given (and, to be frank, how much is warranted).
Academics asking this uncomfortable question in the years to come might well, I think, have to face some very hard truths.
Harry 04.22.24 at 1:14 pm
Anna – more later [1], I hope, but I wanted to comment on this:
“I think whatever changes that can be made (which, if good, should certainly be made!) are inherently limited by the nature of HE in the US (and, to be fair, this isn’t a US-only problem either!). In which case you end up with being able to only make small incremental adjustments which (again, may well be justifiable and justified anyway, purely from a pedagogical perspective!) will not really achieve any substantial change”
This is exactly right, and one of my basic assumptions when I think about HE; and especially the more elite parts of the sector. Maybe I should just link to your comment at the beginning of every post about HE, to contextualize what I say subsequently!
[1] looking at the next couple of days “later” might mean “a lot later” to be honest.
Harry 04.22.24 at 1:22 pm
“Harry has above claimed that the statement ‘all faculty are liberal’ is true”
No I haven’t, though I see how an uncareful and determinedly uncharitable reader of the exchange with engels could think so.
TM 04.22.24 at 1:40 pm
Harry at 10: “I guess the ‘all faculty are liberal’ thing here, while true, is only part of the story. All faculty and a preponderance of the students are liberal, which is one challenge. And for any given student if all the faculty they encounter present the same dogma about certain things, and refrain from fostering intellectual curiosity, that’s a specific kind of harm.” etc.
TM 24: ““Harry has above claimed that the statement ‘all faculty are liberal’ is true””
Harry 27: “No I haven’t”.
More evidence for the thesis that this whole debate isn’t serious.
Harry 04.22.24 at 3:30 pm
Read in context, and with a little charity. As I tried to do with you until you made it clear you weren’t interested.
“More evidence for the thesis…”
You’re welcome to move on to something that you find serious. You’re done on this thread.
PatinIowa 04.22.24 at 7:39 pm
What disturbs me about all this is the most about it is the false dilemmas the liberal/conservative distinction impose on a much more complicated situation.
It may be, for example, that faculty and administrators identify as some form of “liberal.” However, when it gets down to cases, you’ll find any number of students, junior faculty, and staff who aren’t white who will tell you that “liberal” doesn’t necessarily mean “anti-racist.” Or “anti-sexist,” for that matter. You can easily see the limits of institutional liberalism when the grad students or the adjuncts try to unionize, and the administration goes all WalMart on them.
Similarly, there are any number of students whose conservatism requires full-throated support of Israel and its policies no matter what, while there are those who will tell you that the Great Replacement is a Jewish plot, funded by George Soros. Some are paleo, some are neo, some are as libertarian as only a 19 year old can be. Some are eager to learn and fun to talk to. Some, not so much.
And there are bullies of every stripe in the classroom and everywhere else.
We can look at the distrust of higher education from a similar point of view. There are many who think that once the academy moved away (to the degree that it did) from Great Books and Whig history, it lost its authority. There are others who look at student debt and the number of students who are here because they feel they need a credential, add to that the doubts they have about higher ed and social mobility and wonder if young people would be better off doing something else in their late adolescence.
Those are very, very different things.
All of this derives from the multitudinous set of tasks we’ve given higher (and indeed all) education in this country. More than it’s capable of, given the society that surrounds it.
Reducing it all to the culture war is a huge mistake. I don’t know what to do about it.
Now retired, I’m gloomy about the survival of the good parts I found in the academy, which I can crudely describe as Chaucer did, “Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.” I know it was never like this. It seems like there were more good moments.
engels 04.23.24 at 6:30 pm
We can look at the distrust of higher education from a similar point of view. There are many who think that once the academy moved away (to the degree that it did) from Great Books and Whig history, it lost its authority. There are others who look at student debt and the number of students who are here because they feel they need a credential, add to that the doubts they have about higher ed and social mobility and wonder if young people would be better off doing something else in their late adolescence. Those are very, very different things.
I think they’re both connected with the move from what John Quiggin pejoratively calls “rationing” (a public system imperfectly addressed to societal need) to today’s usurious market-driven free-for-all.
engels 04.24.24 at 11:57 am
how to mitigate the lack of trust
Knowing your university is still going to be solvent at the end of your degree?
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ministers-urged-ready-response-major-university-going-bust
Moz in Oz 04.25.24 at 3:10 am
engels, I didn’t read Quiggin’s “rationing” as perjoritive, merely descriptive. A lot of countries have done experiments with increased access to university education and the overwhelming conclusion has been that limiting the number of students is necessary. Usually by a combination of merit and money, biased depending on the society/country.
Dealing with the political side of universities is always a challenge, and not just because “the youf” have funny ideas and limited experience. In Aotearoa there’s a long tradition of university students chasing Ministers of Edjimacashin off campus and vigorous arguments about what universities are for and who should pay for them. That part isn’t new.
To me the new part is politicians explicitly saying “we shouldn’t have them at all and we definitely shouldn’t pay for them”. Even if that’s just performative, it’s radical. And it bodes ill for the incrasing split between private “Trump University” type scams, the “Plutocratic University for Current and Future Tax Evaders”, and the residual “Public University for Educating the Smart Kids so They Can Contribute to Society” (at the risk of sounding like Terry Pratchett).
NFI how to navigate the virtue signalling nonsense, but I wish you the best of luck,.
John Q 04.25.24 at 8:58 am
@Moz & Engels
Engels has me pretty much right. I’m in favour of universal access to (and, ideally, near-universal participation in) post-secondary education (university or technical). The only function of entry tests should be to ensure that students are capable of completing their chosen courses: if not they should either take appropriate remedial courses study something else.
I’m similarly in favour of all courses being free at the point of entry, financed by income-contingent loans until we reach or approach universal participation, at which point costs be folded into the income tax system as they are for school education.
And, in response to Engels’ question about solvency, education should be a public service, in which case the question of solvency doesn’t arise.
So, responding to Engels @31 I am quite literally in favour of a “free-for-all” in both senses of the word “free”. Same with schools, hospitals, parks etc. That’s why we have a tax system.
engels 04.25.24 at 11:43 am
Apologies for misunderstanding the “rationing” point. I’m in favour of public provision and universal access but opposed to fees and loans. My main point was I think many of the right-wing grievances (which I’m not endorsing) are responses to marketisation and consumerism but they don’t usually understand them that way (paging Christopher Lasch…)
engels 04.26.24 at 11:31 am
The cash cow to snowflake pipeline:
Her majesty the student: marketised higher education and the narcissistic (dis)satisfactions of the student-consumer
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2016.1196353
engels 04.29.24 at 8:22 pm
One policy that probably doesn’t foster a “culture of free expression” (to quote the concerned Republican legislators): mass arrests
Hundreds of students arrested in US Gaza war protests, scuffles at UCLA
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/28/hundreds-of-university-students-arrested-in-us-as-gaza-war-protests-spread
SamChevre 04.30.24 at 2:12 am
“One policy that probably doesn’t foster a “culture of free expression” (to quote the concerned Republican legislators): mass arrests”
This is the manyth time I’ve seen this bit of nonsensical false equivalency.
Things that are equivalent:
Group 1
Experts giving a speech that criticizes creationism.
Experts giving a speech that deprecates Catholicism.
Experts giving a speech that disparages transgender-inclusive ideologies.
Experts giving a speech that argues that IQ differences between groups account for many observed outcomes.
Group 2
Students protesting against the “Yes means yes” movement by marching around yelling offensive slogans at buildings.
Students protesting Israel/Palestine/Gaza by marching around shouting offensive slogans at buildings.
Students protesting the admission of certain students by marching around shouting slogans at buildings.
Group 3
Targeted harassment of specific people because they are openly gay by semi-organized groups of students.
Targeted harassment of specific people because of their race/ethnicity/national origin by semi-organized groups of students.
I’m not sure which group universities should allow, but the Gaza War protests are not like a Steve Sailer speech; they’re like the infamous “No means Yes” protest at the Yale Women’s Center.