After decades of conservatives bemoaning the moral decline of the university, there is now widespread agreement that serious reforms are needed. The last couple of years have seen a proliferation of thoughtful, strategic, and bold efforts to reform or rebuild higher education. Some are more defensive in nature, such as steps to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices from public universities. Others aim to build better institutions—whether through new institutional leaders or founding of new universities altogether.
These efforts are often portrayed in the media as “conservative” reactions to “liberal” or “progressive” university policies and culture. The leaders spearheading these reforms—chief among them Florida governor Ron DeSantis—are indeed self-described conservatives. This is not an accurate framing of the issue, though.
As Manhattan Institute senior fellow and New College of Florida Board member Christopher Rufo recently noted in the New York Times, the real dichotomy is between those who understand the university to be a place of truth-seeking and those who understand it as a vehicle for social-justice promotion. This distinction is rooted in the disagreement between modern and post-modern thought: whether there is a truth to be uncovered, or whether there is no truth but only power. If there is no text but only narrative, then—so the argument goes—it is up to those who understand to change the narrative and undermine reigning power structures and social institutions. Higher education reforms that seek to turn institutions’ focus away from promoting social justice and instead toward the dispassionate pursuit of truth, where individuals are judged by the quality of their ideas, are indeed in the spirit of a liberal arts education.
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Yael Levin Hungerford is executive director of the Adam Smith Society, a project of the Manhattan Institute. She earned a Ph.D. in political theory from Boston College, and an A.B. in philosophy from the University of Chicago.
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