Daniel Diermeier is the chancellor of Vanderbilt University.
The surest sign that a diagnosis has struck a nerve is when the response confirms it.
A year ago, I partnered with the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis to commission an independent committee of leading scholars — chaired by philosopher Paul Boghossian — to examine the state of the humanities and humanistic social sciences. We asked the committee to assess whether ideological commitments were eroding scholarly standards and distorting the objective pursuit of knowledge.
The committee’s central finding in its report released in June was nuanced. It emphasized the continued importance of the humanities and found rigorous scholarship in every field it studied. But the committee also found serious problems across the board, including “a deterioration in scholarly standards fueled by the substitution of political criteria for properly scholarly criteria in the assessment of research and a more general repudiation of long-standing ideals of rigor and objectivity.”
The group, however, noted uncertainty about how much these problems affect the disciplines, cautioning against hasty interventions without thorough assessments.
The reaction to this report has been lively. Some responses challenged its conceptual foundations. Some criticized its evidentiary basis and how it was produced. Others said it should have proposed more reform steps. That is how scholarly debate should work.
But others ascribed sinister motives to those involved or asserted that the report had been commissioned to advance a broader political agenda. A joint statement from members of the American Association of University Professors at Vanderbilt and Washington University called the document a “pseudo-intellectual pretext” for administrators to strip faculty of the power to govern their own departments and asked us to rescind the report. Others alleged guilt by association after the U.S. secretary of education cited it in an open letter in August — a letter published nearly a year after the report had been commissioned.
Ascribing motives without providing evidence or rejecting findings because they are also supported by political opponents are odd arguments to make when criticizing a report’s accuracy. Should one stop being concerned about student affordability just because the secretary of education mentioned similar concerns in her letter?
Some scholars have been refreshingly clear in embracing a political purpose for their scholarly activities. In the American Anthropologist, one scholar argued that the core academic value of anthropology “is not the pursuit of truth, because all truth is subjective,” and that its core value should instead be to serve the interests of those the discipline has harmed. And in July, the AAUP committed itself to political organizing by making its first national political endorsement in its 110-year history by backing Abdul El-Sayed for the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Michigan.
To get a better sense of the evidence provided, it is worthwhile reading the field-specific reports on literary studies, sociology and history. We can debate what evidence would convince us that scholarly standards are being subordinated to political agendas. But what do we make of the fact that professional associations and many departments explicitly endorse such goals?
Consider the following examples. The president of the American Anthropological Association told the group’s members in 2021 that anthropology’s “political project is to challenge the culturally dominant commonsense of capitalist consumerism.”
The president of the American Sociological Association in his 2021 presidential address called for an “emancipatory sociology” centered on white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy and other determinants that traditional European and “white American sociologists” had omitted from their accounts.
The English department at Michigan State University states that its “teaching, scholarship, and service are explicitly committed to advancing equity and justice and questioning established power structures.” Twenty other English departments and programs identified in the appendixes to the literary studies report issued similar statements.
I have long been concerned about the politicization of universities and a strong advocate of institutional neutrality: the principle that prevents universities from establishing an institutional orthodoxy that inhibits the freedom of faculty and students to reach their own conclusions.
The report focused on research, but we have growing evidence that similar problems can be found in the classroom. Universities will not rebuild trust — now at 38 percent, down from 57 percent about a decade ago — by dismissing legitimate questions about their current practices.
So what is the right response? Action, grounded in principle. In June, our Board of Trust adopted a declaration of principles, affirming commitments to free inquiry, institutional neutrality, academic freedom and scholarly excellence as the guiding criteria for appointment, promotion and recognition.
But much of the important work belongs to the faculty. Standards are set and enforced in journals, on editorial boards, in peer review, and in hiring, tenure and promotion committees. Those are faculty-led institutions and activities, and faculty engagement is essential. Scholars evaluate what rigorous work requires — and they have a duty to speak up when work falls short.
There are encouraging signs. In sociology, scholars are engaged in a serious debate about the relationship between activism and scholarship.
That is the response this report deserves. It needs to be read and debated. And where it is right, faculty need to publicly support it — even if someone in Washington has said so, too.
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