It is urgent that the leaders of colleges and universities stand up in defense of their interests and the values of higher education. American schools have long trumpeted their contribution to promoting an educated citizenry. Now, as one of the most consequential elections in American history approaches, we must do everything we can to help students work on campaigns and facilitate voting. And we must call out the threats to higher education.
This may seem straightforward, but in the wake of Oct. 7 and controversies over statements (or the lack of statements) concerning the atrocities, many academic leaders have embraced a doctrine of “institutional neutrality.” Recalling the bruising hearings with lawmakers in December 2023 and the campus protests of last spring, it seemed to many safer to celebrate a doctrine that called for silence. Few people, of course, want corporate-sounding university statements that say next to nothing while trying to please everyone, but now presidents, deans, and others are being told not to participate in debates about the issues of the day. After years of encouraging “more speech” as a sign of a school’s commitment to freedom of expression, the fear of offending students, faculty, and, especially, lawmakers and donors has led many academic leaders to retreat from the public sphere.
This is exactly the wrong time for such a retreat. Although academic leaders usually stay neutral about a candidate’s political statements, today’s campaign rhetoric is not politics as usual. The threats to higher education made by former President Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance are not subtle. Although for decades schools have interacted well with Republican and Democratic representatives, the brazen VP candidate has declared that “universities are the enemy.” The Trump agenda promises to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion departments and to punish those schools who do not live up to a right-wing version of civil rights standards. Trump has promised to close down the Department of Education and fire the accreditors who now certify which schools are eligible for governmental support. The folks who brought us the fraudulent Trump University now threaten to dismantle a higher-education ecosystem that is still (for now) the envy of the rest of the world. We must not be neutral about this.
External controlling of the curriculum, monitoring entrance exams, and policing faculty are direct threats to our educational missions, and these are not the only ones. Institutional leaders should also be speaking out against the mass deportation the Republican nominees threaten. So many of our schools have made a place for Dreamers, those students who were brought to the United States as children, and whose status in a second Trump administration is uncertain. Now Trump has promised to deport legal immigrants as well. His nasty nativism is antithetical to the recruitment of international students, a practice that has been a boon to higher education and to the world. We must not be neutral about this.
Educators should give up the popular pastime of criticizing the woke and call out instead the overt racism that has rippled through the Trump campaign over the past few months. The rhetoric about pet-eating Haitians is the most sensational example, but when a presidential candidate speculates about immigrants’ genetic disposition to commit crimes while also calling minorities “vermin,” we are fully in the zone of racist hate. How can we stay silent when a presidential candidate suggests that because of immigration, “we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now”? We must not be neutral about this.
It’s no secret that colleges and universities suffer from a lack of political and intellectual diversity. I’ve long argued that we should have an affirmative action program for conservatives, especially at highly selective schools and especially in the humanities and social sciences. But wanting more conservatives on campus is perfectly compatible with opposing the direct threats to education that we have heard over the past several months. We should not be silenced because of fears of appearing partisan. Anticipatory obedience is a form of cowardice, especially given the promise of Trump and Vance to punish those who oppose them. This week, the candidates spoke of using the military against those who don’t share their views, referring to Democrats as “the enemy within.” As Ian Bassin has noted, “There is not a case in American history where a presidential candidate has run for office on a promise that they would exact retribution against anyone they perceive as not supporting them in the campaign.” We must not be neutral about this.
I am sure there are some university leaders who hope that if they keep their heads down, their institutions will be spared the worst in the event of a Trump victory. Like the German philosopher Martin Heidegger after the Nazis came to power, they may rely on hopeful assertions of the greatness and autonomy of the academic enterprise. But the academic enterprise demands that we defend our students, our faculty, and the freedom that makes educational work possible.
Many fans of institutional neutrality today reverentially cite the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report to legitimate the silence of educational leaders. But even that report noted that “from time to time, instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.” This is such a time. We must not be neutral.
