Ending Conformity on the Quad How Trustees Can Bring Viewpoint Diversity Back to Their Universities

There is no issue more important for higher education than ensuring the free exchange of ideas. Acquiring and teaching knowledge requires the ability to expose facts, theories, and beliefs to intense investigation without political pressure.

Unfortunately, the American campus is in danger of lapsing into a rigidly partisan mentality. In many places, it has already done so; at times, it seems that the ideological bias of higher education is so great that its institutions are beyond reforming.

This rigidity of mind did not appear overnight. Higher education, which depends on collegiality and consensus among faculty, seems especially prone to groupthink—a gradual process in which “majoritarianism tends to produce ideological conformity in a department,” according to former National Association of Scholars president Steve Balch.[1] Since a large majority of faculty already lean to the left, groupthink puts constant pressure in that direction on all.

Subversive Principles in Higher Education

But the politicization of higher education has been intentional as well as organic. A one-sided ideological war has been waged on campus for over a century. In the early years of the twentieth century, political progressives assumed leadership of the faculty; all the founding members of the American Association of University Professors were progressives. They sought to remake society according to what they perceived to be scientific principles. Those “principles,” however, were often wild, overreaching hypotheses, such as the Rousseauian belief that children are natural learners who do not need structured education.

The early twentieth century also brought Soviet-sponsored subversion of American higher education. Estimates by defectors who testified during House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in the 1950s on the infiltration of higher education ranged from at least 1,500 to more than 3,500 faculty members with direct ties to the Communist Party of the United States.[2] According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), roughly 100 professors were fired for “real or imagined communist sympathies during the Red Scare.”[3] That would mean that the vast majority of Soviet-backed academics—likely thousands—remained in their jobs. They may have reduced some of their subversive activities in order to escape detection, but likely continued to indoctrinate students and colleagues when doing so would not expose them. The defectors added that the infiltrators sought out positions of influence within the academy, such as department chairs, hiring committees, and schools of education.

As Soviet-backed academic subversion became less visible in the mid-twentieth century, non-Soviet cultural Marxism landed on our shores. Its proponents wanted to undermine and subvert traditional society via cultural means, since doing so was considered necessary before communism could emerge victorious in the West. Members of the Frankfurt School, the leading proponents of cultural Marxism, were welcomed into American universities even as their Communist Party counterparts faced expulsion. Their ideas transformed the American left; they regarded the American working class as too steeped in capitalism and Christianity for a “revolution of the proletariat,” so workers were cast aside to make way for women, racial minorities, and sexual minorities. These groups formed a new, informal, revolutionary vanguard that aggressively seeks to gain control incrementally from within the system. The proliferation of ethnic student organizations and “studies” departments, programs, and majors (gender studies, African American studies, and so on) that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s is one result of their influence. This new vanguard and its allies and acolytes have been a powerful force for silencing opposition in academia ever since, influenced by such cultural Marxist ideas as Herbert Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance”—a blatant justification for denying the expressions of opinions on the right.[4]

After the political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, academia essentially became a playground for leftists—and a minefield for conservatives. Relatively mainstream invited speakers, such as former U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo[5] or scholar Charles Murray,[6] are now chased off campus by threatening mobs that prevent them from speaking. In 2017, political scientist Bruce Gilley of Portland State University published research at odds with the standard leftist view about European colonialism and then, for his own safety, had to take a year’s leave to wait for the furor and threats to subside. Since then, his colleagues have repeatedly attempted to have him fired, sanctioned, or censured.[7] Such stories are not uncommon, and they serve as warnings for nonconforming thinkers to keep their ideas to themselves or face a firestorm of opposition.

Ideological Imbalance in Practice

Evidence of ideological imbalance is everywhere. Studies show that the disparity of voter registrations in social science and humanities departments has grown dramatically over time, from four Democrats for every Republican in 1972 to 11.5 to 1 in 2016. In the 2016 study, by Mitchell Langbert, Anthony Quain, and Daniel Klein, 39% of the departments in their sample had no registered Republicans.[8] The bias has likely increased since 2016, since Langbert and his colleagues found that the imbalance was greatest among assistant professors (who are likelier to be junior) and least among full professors (who are likelier to be nearing retirement).

Furthermore, voter registrations do not reveal the true extent of faculty extremism. For example, in a 2007 study conducted by sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, 18.2% of social science professors self-identify as Marxists.[9] There are also specific incidents warranting alarm. Dwayne Dixon, an assistant teaching professor in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at UNC–Chapel Hill, was a member of a radical militia that promoted armed resistance to the government when he was hired in 2018.[10] He also claimed to have challenged James Fields with a gun shortly before Fields plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. In 2018, Dixon was arrested twice: once for bringing a gun to a protest in Durham, NC; and once for assaulting a conservative journalist at a protest in Chapel Hill. There are professors at Arizona State University[11] and the University of Arizona[12] who perform in “Drag Queen Story Hours” and promote the early sexualizing of children by such methods as slipping queer literature into the children’s sections of public libraries. And Brittney Cooper continues to teach in Rutgers University’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department despite openly promoting the genocide of white people.[13] Such disturbing faculty members abound; trying to mention them all could fill volumes. Some reformers may wish to improve the intellectual climate on campus through addition only—hiring more faculty and staff committed to free speech and inquiry. Sadly, though, it is unlikely that lasting, meaningful change can be achieved without limiting the number of academics who openly try to undermine free thought.

Much of academia has attempted to narrow the range of acceptable views through the implementation of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) personnel policies. At many medical schools, even highly regarded medical professors must accede to the DEI worldview to be considered for employment.[14] The number of staff employed to oversee diversity policies has exploded: a 2021 Heritage Foundation report looked at 65 major universities and found that they averaged 45.1 administrators assigned to DEI activities, with the University of Michigan having the most, with 163.[15]

This is not to say that all American campuses punish dissenting views. Many faculty and administrators—though liberal—are earnest and fair-minded educators. Pockets of free inquiry remain. But in general, the American university is increasingly an intellectually unhealthy place. Groupthink incessantly pushes the campus in one direction. Self-censoring by both students and faculty is common. Faculty who openly push back must often expend enormous resources for their own defense—or be forced out of their jobs. The conformity imposed today goes far beyond anything that existed during the Red Scare of the 1950s, and now it is ingrained in the academic culture rather than being primarily imposed by the government. A survey of faculty taken in the 1950s revealed that 9% of faculty claimed to “self-censor,” whereas 90% of faculty claimed to do so in a 2023 FIRE survey. Furthermore,“a whopping 1 in 3 reported having been pressured by colleagues to avoid researching controversial topics.”[16]

Yet it is also a time for hope; awareness of the problem is growing, and the political zeitgeist may be shifting.

The Public-Private Distinction

An important consideration is whether a higher-education institution is public or private. Unlike public institutions, private schools are not subject to the demands of popular elections. Prestigious private schools are especially insulated, as they generally have large endowments that protect them from market and social forces.

Public university systems, on the other hand, are ultimately controlled by elected officials and are therefore subject to the public will. Government leaders can pass wise laws and choose board members who will energetically protect intellectual integrity. This means that in states where the people support the free spirit of inquiry, there is ample opportunity to uphold intellectual diversity.

The Board Problem

Public universities were created with boards of trustees, regents, or governors fully in control, deriving their power from the will of the people (who choose the elected officials who appoint board members). But boards have ceded much of their rightful authority to faculty and administrators. For a century or more, higher education has operated under a system known as “shared governance” that divides decision-making among three factions: the board, the administration, and the faculty. The emergence of this system coincided with a dramatic turn to the left and to ever-diminishing acceptance of nonconforming ideas.

Boards have been especially willing to defer to academic professionals when it comes to the intellectual side of academia, limiting themselves to fundraising, finance, capital improvements, and operations. And administrators, often with the backing of accreditors, persuade trustees to “stay in their lanes.”

Board timidity permits the most extreme factions within colleges and universities to control the intellectual dialogue. Much of their reluctance to get involved results from an “asymmetry of information” problem. That is, full-time faculty and their administrative allies have great advantages because of their more intimate knowledge about the inner workings of the university and the academic material, which allows them to manipulate the part-time, less knowledgeable trustees. This occurs even though boards and legislators statutorily have the final say—including the power of the purse—over most of an institution’s concerns.

Another barrier to a proper chain of command is the mindset of board members. Those coming from the private sector tend to judge the university according to similar criteria by which they would judge a profit-seeking business. Seen from the prism of private industry, today’s university may appear to be a well-functioning organization. Revenues equal or exceed expenditures. It may be solid operationally: the lights are on, the bills are paid, the buildings are maintained, and so on. It may appear to be performing well according to many measurables: the endowment is growing, admissions and enrollment are strong, research dollars are flowing in, graduation rates are good, and more. But all this information—which would indeed suggest a first-rate organization in the for-profit sector—may mask the emergence of a repressive intellectual environment.

The main priority of a public university’s trustees is to serve the people of the state. To serve humanity, the academy must remain open to ideas that offend, disrupt, and trouble prevailing political and social sensibilities. Otherwise, it will become a tool for perpetuating current thinking and preserving the positions of those currently in power. Therefore, boards must consider whether avoiding conflict or ensuring that diversity of thought prevails is the more noble path.

Reinvigorating intellectual pluralism is unlikely to be accomplished with single “stroke of the pen” legislation or policy changes. Several decades ago, in part due to David Horowitz’s “Academic Bill of Rights,”[17] there was talk of legislating for some sort of intellectual balance. But there was no viable way to do this, at least not within a framework of academic freedom.[18]

However, that does not mean intellectual diversity cannot be revived. It is a matter of creating and pursuing opportunities for increasing intellectual freedom persistently and on many different fronts. The existing framework for university governance gives board members and legislators many tools with which they can effect positive change.

Board members should expect to face resistance; university leaders who have assembled and maintained the current imbalance may resent and will likely oppose any effort to influence hiring, retention, evaluation, and promotion decisions.

The following suggested reforms are primarily for public universities and university systems, although they may apply to private schools as well.

Board Structure and Control

The power in public universities generally flows from a state’s constitution and/or its statutes. Elected officials typically appoint board members to preside over the university. Boards that have traditionally been ineffective can use this dynamic to be transformed into powerful agents simply by committing to be effective.

Independent Information for Boards

Boards should have a policy-level employee who reports only to the board. This is to counter the asymmetry of information problem that reduces boards’ ability to operate effectively. Board members are usually too busy to perform the research necessary to make proper decisions about programs and appointments; as a result, self-interested or politicized administrators become their main source of information. Having at least one full-time policy person who can conduct research independently can address the asymmetry of information problem.[19]

Board Member Training

Trustees have been willing to relinquish their power partly because their orientation and training are conducted by self-interested administrators. Administrators caution trustees to take a hands-off approach, to “stay in their lane,” and to allow the “experts” to control the curriculum, hiring, and other factors that contribute to the intellectual climate. But that is how the current orthodoxy was created. Board training should instead lay out trustees’ actual roles and responsibilities as written in statutes, manuals, and bylaws, not as interpreted by administrators. Training should help restore board control of their institutions, not hinder it. To accomplish this, trustee training should preferably be organized by the board’s policy employee, mentioned above.[20]

Member Election of Board Committee Chairs

Entrenched interests can diffuse reform energy by having committee chairs—who set the committee agendas—appointed by a single head, such as the overall board chair. This can result in all the chairs having a single view rather than mirroring the diversity of perspectives present on the entire board. Committees should elect their respective chairs to open up discussions and processes.

Direct Board Action

Boards in many states can directly influence very important academic matters—including what gets taught and who teaches it.

General Education

Perhaps no body of pedagogy is more important to the intellectual development of students than the general education program. The main purposes of general education programs are to make certain that eventual graduates possess the most essential knowledge and skills, to promote general competence, and to enhance informed participation in civic life.[21] General education programs can be explicitly crafted by legislatures or boards to achieve those goals.

Today, however, general education programs usually consist of a vast array of choices, many of which are of secondary or minimal importance. These courses might technically satisfy the school’s general education requirements but not the fundamental purpose of a general education program.

There may also be additional benefits to limiting general education programs to the most essential knowledge. Contrast a course about the American Constitution and a course on LGBTQ+ history. The teacher of the latter will almost assuredly lean far to the left, whereas the teacher of the former, through intense study of the thought behind this country’s founding, will likely have a more reasoned or traditional perspective. If the general education programs are limited to only essential knowledge, they will increase the demand for professors who teach such important topics as the Constitution, standard free-market economics, and the great works of Western civilization. Likewise, they will decrease the demand for teachers who teach highly politicized courses on the unsteady fringes of what may be generously called “knowledge.”

Board Review of Programs

One of the most powerful tools available to boards is the right to review both programs and personnel—boards have the final say about what gets taught and who teaches it.

In the past, programs were judged largely on enrollment—popular programs remained, while the only programs eliminated were those that attracted few students (although many politicized “studies” programs manage to survive despite low interest). But this ignored a very important criterion for cutting programs: some are not scholarly, practical, or scientific but are instead political and activist. And such programs are invariably one-sided. Mitchell Langbert commented on his 2016 study mentioned above: “I could not find a single Republican with an exclusive appointment to fields like gender studies, Africana studies, and peace studies.”[22]

Additionally, academic disciplines that are prone to politicization may suffer from low standards of scholarship or offer poor returns on investment, making them low-hanging fruit for elimination by reform-minded trustees.

Board Review of Hiring, Promotion, and Tenure

Many institutions give boards the ability to review potential faculty appointments and reject those deemed unfit or undesirable. Unfortunately, most boards have adopted a long-standing practice of rubber-stamping all faculty appointments, thereby giving faculty and administrators full say over who may teach and publish in the name of the institution. The problem is that many department hiring committees are already politicized and appoint only like-minded applicants. For boards to continue a hands-off approach in this situation means allowing the politicization to exacerbate.

This does not mean that boards should adopt some sort of “conservatives only” approach, which would be difficult to implement and would invite judicial review. Furthermore, doing so would likely be used to legitimize a similar “leftists only” policy when they are in power.

Rather, boards should adopt a practice of considering an applicant’s politics when conducting hiring and tenure reviews in light of how well their scholarship serves the public. Intellectual integrity and diversity of ideas clearly serve the people, and in a university system that already tilts far to the left, it is essential to favor those who will contribute to a healthy intellectual climate by supporting the principle of intellectual pluralism or by adding different perspectives. There are few other operations in most systems where the boards can directly exert some sort of balancing action—this is one place to do so. It is especially important since it occurs before appointees are hired, as their academic freedom protections do not kick in until they are officially employed.

Additionally, boards should review and approve or reject appointments to higher administrative posts. Especially important is that, if bylaws do not permit board oversight of hiring faculty or administrators, the laws should be amended to permit hiring.

Improving the Intellectual Environment

Policymakers seeking to improve intellectual diversity on campuses should understand that most of the work may not be making decisions about specific programs or faculty members but instead creating an environment where intellectual diversity can thrive. The following reforms will help create this environment.

End Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies

Perhaps the most obvious step, given recent attention paid to it, is eliminating all DEI rules and programs. DEI policies twist and pervert aspirations for truth and excellence; they cannot coexist with meritocracy and must therefore be ended. This includes reducing the number of employees charged with enforcing or operating DEI policies. As of May 2024, nine states have passed laws banning DEI mandates in their state universities, and another 16 have bills pending.[23]

Free Speech

Also crucial is ensuring that free speech is fully protected on campus. Universities that do not support free speech—particularly, public ones—must be aggressively pressured to institute free-speech standards such as the Chicago Statement[24] or other standards set by FIRE.[25] Exceptions properly exist for schools that strictly adhere to specific dogmas such as religious beliefs, but such schools are few.

A university should permit all members of its community to express their ideas. It should encourage active dialogue and enable forums where ideas can be presented and debated. This requires an orderly campus that emphasizes proper conduct. There should be substantive penalties for activities that prevent the free exchange of ideas, such as shouting down speakers, harassment and intimidation of those with opposing views, disruption of other campus activities, vandalism, and so on.

Board Review of Statutes, Bylaws, Mission Statements, and Handbooks

Public higher education has an extremely complex system of governance, defined in a wide variety of state and federal laws, institution bylaws, and handbooks. All such rules need to be periodically examined to see whether they contain unwanted loopholes around and roadblocks to free inquiry.

Of particular concern are handbooks and collective bargaining agreements produced by the faculty. They are crafted with a great deal of self-interest and may conflict with rulings by boards, administrators, or legislatures. For example, these agreements may make it almost impossible to fire faculty for academic reasons. At times, they are authorized as official policy—without serious scrutiny—by unwary or weak boards.

Many institutions have been updating mission statements to inject elements of the social-justice agenda that are at odds with the free exchange of ideas. For example, San Jose State University recently altered its mission statement, adding “vision” and “values” statements as well. All three statements are peppered with DEI-oriented phrases such as: “We are committed to and embody the movement for social and racial justice.”[26]

Graham Hillard, editor of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, cautions that “universities that add silly phrases to their mission statements (or delete wise ones) will find that the alterations trickle down to their real day-to-day work.”[27] Mission statements and other policy documents should affirm free thinking and expression, not inhibit them.

Education over Politics

Universities are educational institutions, not political ones. While students should be educated to know how the American political system works, public universities should not aid political activism from any perspective. Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center recently published model legislation called the “Politics out of Schools Act.”[28] Although it is targeted at K–12 institutions, much of it is applicable to the collegiate level as well. For instance, the proposed legislation outlaws allowing excused absences for political protests or activism.

Additionally, faculty should not be permitted to encourage students to attend protests, since in their teaching capacity they are acting as agents of the institution, and this permission violates the principle of institutional neutrality.

Enforcing Academic Standards

For a long time, higher education has served as a pathway for substandard scholars—if they support the social-justice agenda—to achieve influence. This was illustrated recently by the Claudine Gay affair at Harvard, in which the exposure of her plagiarism forced her resignation from the university presidency (despite the solid support for her by the faculty).[29] This highlights another way to improve the intellectual climate on campuses: simply set and enforce serious academic standards. If plagiarists and subpar scholars are gone from academia, it will likely have a positive impact on the political climate, as there is likely to be some correlation between poor scholarship by PhDs and politics. It may be too much to expect board members to personally conduct such reviews of scholarship, but they could be performed either by a board employee or by a growing number of think tanks or academics who would be glad to examine such scholarship for free.

Invited Speakers

Sometimes policymakers can directly create an entry point for alternate ideas to be aired on a campus. One such entry point is by inviting outside speakers. Boards can create new speaker series that are explicitly intended to bring a wider range of ideas to campus. It is particularly helpful to have an outside donor who can fund the speaker series, since the donor can insist that he or she retain control, which can be explicitly defined in the donation agreement. Otherwise, school administrators may seek to co-opt the program for their own ends.

Enable Public Vetting of University Presidential Search Finalists

Many universities and university systems try to keep finalists for a presidential position secret. Even the winner can remain unknown until formally announced. Such secrecy may increase the likelihood that the new president of a university will have views that are contrary to intellectual freedom. If those views are exposed ahead of time, opposition can form. The claim is made that qualified academics will not apply for jobs if their job-seeking is not kept secret, since it may roil their present employers. That may be a necessary cost of badly needed transparency; it would indeed be good to know ahead of time which candidates favor intellectual diversity and which do not.

Take Control Out of the Wrong Hands

Unless boards are willing to proactively take back the ability to make decisions affecting the intellectual climate, the current trend away from intellectual diversity will continue. They must disrupt the system of interlocking organizations, departments, and policies that makes reform difficult.

Independent Academic Centers

Independently funded centers and institutes offer a way around departmental dominance of intellectual matters. Because these centers usually have outside funding—giving the donors some control—and because they often exist at the intersection of two or more disciplines, they can function beyond the boundaries of ordinary department politics. Boards should encourage, recruit, and green-light such units, and they should also direct resources to them and away from departments run by those who reject intellectual pluralism. In this century, there has been a proliferation of centers that promote alternate ideas such as free-market economics and strict constitutionalism, thereby creating sanctuaries and beacons for independent-minded scholars and students.[30]

Alumni Associations

Alumni should be independent voices serving as campus watchdogs, not as administrative lapdogs. Too often, however, administrators have full control over alumni organizations. Boards can help support intellectual freedom by encouraging alumni independence. The board should pay close attention to alumni organization election rules—and rules for alumni seats on the board—to ensure that they are fair and not biased in favor of administration-backed candidates. Independent alumni organizations should be given access to alumni Listservs so that they can contact all alumni during an election. Even a small group of dissident alumni can have a positive effect on campus; the newly formed Alumni Free Speech Alliance now has a presence on 26 campuses promoting the free exchange of ideas.[31]

Accrediting Agencies

Accrediting agencies have become an arm of the federal education bureaucracy contributing to the one-sided domination of the academy, thanks to their role as gatekeepers to federal funding. They support the status quo in governance and do little to improve the intellectual climate. Rather, they promote DEI policies and stifle attempts to innovate. For example, the program accreditor for social work, the Council on Social Work Education, states that a primary goal of programs under its supervision should be to train students to “advocate for justice, equity, inclusion, and diversity.”[32]

Some institutions are attempting to break free from onerous accreditation practices. In 2023, the North Carolina legislature enacted a law that mandates that the state’s public colleges seek different accreditors for every accreditation cycle.[33]

Additionally, it may be best that states certify universities for federal aid instead of accrediting agencies. This is because states are likely to base their decisions on local and regional criteria and the public will of their citizens—not to satisfy federal policies that push conformity.

Reduce Dependence on Academic Professional Associations

Many academic professional associations today impose ideological conformity on their members. For example, Duke University emeritus psychology professor John Staddon found himself removed from a Listserv discussion group of the American Psychological Association for suggesting that there are only two sexes.[34]

The Association of Governing Boards, the main professional association for higher-education boards, is a strong supporter of the prevailing system of shared governance that places intellectual decision-making in the hands of the faculty and administration.[35] Its recommendations for boards tend to focus on noncontroversial matters such as board size, the length of terms, and so on—topics unlikely to improve the intellectual climate.

End Student Control of Funds for Events

Many universities provide funding for student events that are disbursed by the student councils. Certainly, schools wish to foster independence and allow students to pursue the speakers and entertainment they prefer; but very often, student governments are politically leftist, and their decisions may reflect that bias. For instance, in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to hand the determination of abortion policies back to the states, the UNC–Chapel Hill student government prohibited expenditures to any organization that did not support the right to abortion.[36]

Employment

Personnel is policy; this is especially true in the world of ideas. Boards can greatly influence the work environment and hiring practices for faculty. Especially important is ensuring that those who are hired will not tilt the campus even further in the same direction, and that all faculty and staff will abide by the principles of free inquiry and academic freedom—for others as well as themselves.

Loyalty Oaths

The term “loyalty oath” strikes fear in academia. In the 1950s, some schools forced academics to choose between signing an oath of allegiance to the U.S. or losing their jobs.

However, the oath recommended here is not to any political entity or cause but to the spirit of free inquiry. Outside of sectarian schools that hold to a specific set of dogmatic beliefs, there is no higher value in higher education than the free exploration of ideas. Making all new hires commit to this principle should increase the overall level of respect for the diversity of ideas and prevent the use of consensus to silence or harass original or dissident thinkers.

Students should also have to take the pledge when they enroll, and student orientation should include an explanation of the need to respect free speech and intellectual diversity.

Remove Politics from Job Advertisements

Too often, job postings for academic positions contain requirements that eliminate all candidates with nonconforming ideas. They may insist on DEI statements, deterring candidates who cannot in good conscience submit to such demands. One common tactic by politicized faculty departments is to limit positions to only those with specialties that all but guarantee a specifically leftist worldview.

For example, in 2021 the University of Oklahoma made clear who should not apply for a tenure-track Digital Video Storytelling and Production position with an advertisement that stated: “We would be particularly interested in applicants who can bring a knowledge of production and authorship from underrepresented positions, such as specialization in Latinx or other BIPOC perspectives.”[37] Such practices need to end.

Employment Contracts

Another area that deserves scrutiny is faculty contracts, whether or not tenure is involved. Academic freedom protections need to be explicitly spelled out in all contracts so that faculty members with nonconforming ideas—tenured or otherwise—are fully protected. At the same time, such contracts should make clear academic freedom’s limitations so that professors cannot politicize their classrooms with impunity. Academic freedom is a condition of employment, not a constitutional right, and key court decisions give institutions the right to control classroom content.[38]

On the other hand, professors—once hired—should be permitted wide latitude to express their beliefs outside the classroom. (There are exceptions for faculty whose expression indicates a lack of fitness to be a college professor.)[39]

Because higher education’s governance is easily co-opted by faculty and administrators, because of long-running campaigns of subversion by political radicals, and because academia is especially prone to the natural process of groupthink, it has become an institution that favors dogmatic orthodoxy over truth-seeking.

It does not have to stay that way. Legislators and board members have for too long yielded their rightful control over intellectual matters to the faculty and administration. They should take back their power, resisting the cacophony of complaints by entrenched interests that will assuredly result. Employing the reforms above—incrementally and piecemeal, if necessary—will vastly improve the intellectual climate in academia, allowing the free expression of important ideas that need to be heard and discussed, not dismissed out of hand for political reasons.[40]

Please see Endnotes in PDF

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