Shielded from public scrutiny, America's private college boards are struggling to protect diverse and dissenting voices.
Generally speaking, when a congressional hearing with industry executives makes headlines, something has gone wrong with governance. And something has clearly gone wrong at many of America’s most prestigious universities, most notably with regard to free expression and intellectual inquiry.
Looking back on the infamous 1994 hearing with tobacco executives, the 2010 hearings with finance-industry executives, and the 2018 hearing with social media executives, what stands out is that those testifying—the day-to-day leaders of major institutions—had developed giant blind spots. Because they had operated for years inside an insular community, they didn’t grasp what everyone else was seeing and thinking. Elected officials, hardwired to understand public opinion, are perfectly positioned to exploit the gap between such blinkered views and national sentiment.
But those discussions should have never gotten all the way to the Capitol. These organizations are governed by boards that hire and evaluate executives, set policies, and generally oversee the direction of their institutions. When something is going wrong with an organization’s culture, the board should act long before Congress intervenes. This is one way to understand the conditions at—and solutions for—some of America’s most elite private universities.
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Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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