John Tomasi is the president of Heterodox Academy. Tyler VanderWeele is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University.
At many American universities, progressive assumptions seem embedded in the machinery of campus life. Left-wing speakers and views are applauded, while conservative views (on abortion, for example) are often treated as beyond the pale.
Yet mission statements and promotional materials tend to describe the university’s purpose in nonpartisan terms. When studies show the dearth of right-leaning faculty, administrations typically insist this is just the result of neutral search processes. A gap has opened between the impartial, truth-seeking role universities claim for themselves and the policies they pursue.
A Gallup poll from June showed public confidence in higher education dropping yet again. A viral article in the Atlantic by a former professor has set off alarms about the depth, and apparent hypocrisy, of progressive commitments at elite colleges. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s recent call for universities to recommit themselves publicly to “rigorous teaching, pathbreaking research, and national service” could be read as an effort to restore public trust by realigning what universities tell the public they stand for and what they do in practice.
McMahon, readers of the professor’s story and disillusioned poll respondents all presumably hope that colleges will respond by reforming campus practices to better align with the ideal of the impartial university.
We share that hope. But if universities are unwilling to abandon the progressive commitments they hold dear, we propose an alternative: Admit it.
There is an ideal of the university, centered on open inquiry, that carries enormous prestige. In this model, truth is pursued impartially through reason and scientific inquiry. All ideas are welcome, but each requires evidence. Campus policies rest on excellence, humility, intellectual pluralism and the free exchange of ideas.
But some universities depart from this ideal, and reasonably so. Religious colleges acknowledge that their search for truth is informed by faith. For instance, the mission of Providence College in Rhode Island states that faith and reason work together to transform lives and enlighten minds. Its policies reflect that mission. Other institutions — including women’s colleges, historically black colleges and military academies — teach and pursue knowledge through their own substantive lenses.
Religious schools are making a bet that the lens of faith will bring them closer to truth. Departing from the open inquiry ideal may cost them a slice of prestige. But they gain respect of another kind by declaring their convictions.
At many elite universities today, a similar but unnamed dynamic is at work. Progressive assumptions influence admissions, hiring, curriculum and student life, but administrations are reluctant to admit it. Perhaps they are unwilling to forgo the prestige of open inquiry, and so hesitate to acknowledge the bet they are making against it.
We propose that universities that are committed to progressive policies simply say so. They should tell students, faculty and the public that, like religious colleges, they have opted to teach and pursue knowledge through a particular lens: roughly, the lens of progressive politics.
Such candor would provide answers to uncomfortable questions. Why are conservative thinkers scarce on many faculties and syllabi? Why do admissions and student-life policies seem to reflect particular theories of identity or equity? Why are some speakers shouted down but not others? Instead of insisting that these lopsided outcomes are the result of neutral academic judgment, universities could acknowledge the principles behind them.
Universities considering this approach might take courage from the American Association of University Professors. Once America’s premier impartial defender of academic freedom, the AAUP recently began taking what looked like political positions, such as when they ended their opposition to academic boycotts at the peak of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. But last month, the AAUP officially renounced their nonpartisan status, for the first time endorsing a political candidate: Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat running for Senate in Michigan.
No doubt the AAUP lost prestige by abandoning their nonpartisan perch. But by going public, they gained a kind of integrity.
Along with the issue of prestige, there is the question of funding. Government support to students through Pell Grants and loans already reaches religiously affiliated colleges and needs not necessarily depend on an institution’s neutrality. Questions around research funding are more complex, as is the question of how such open declarations on the part of colleges would affect alumni giving. Some alumni, no doubt, would love it.
U.S. universities urgently need to reconcile themselves with the public they serve. Again, we hope they will do this by taking up the hard work of reforming their practices to better align with the ideal of nonpartisan truth-seeking. Many are doing so, and we applaud them.
But for those who prefer to hunker down and defend their status quo, we propose this: If some universities want to be ideological, let them. They just need to admit it.
The post Dear universities: Don’t want to be neutral? Admit it. appeared first on Washington Post.
