Advice | The greatest threat to American universities
These are difficult times for American higher education. On the one hand, some students at a handful of elite universities have made harsh anti-Israel statements, some have crossed the line into outright anti-Semitism, and some university presidents have been coy and corny in their responses. As ugly as these events have been, there is not much reason to believe that the quality of education at these institutions—which account for a small share of U.S. college enrollments anyway—is under serious threat.
On the other hand, the State University System of Florida, which has more than 430,000 students, is under intense political attack by the state’s Republican government. The American Association of University Professors recently issued a report entitled “Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System,” which details a takeover of key administrative and supervisory positions by partisan appointees and growing pressure on faculty members to avoid teaching anything that could be considered woke . This political attack will almost certainly worsen the quality of higher education for large numbers of students, in ways I’ll talk about in a moment.
But first, let’s ask the obvious question: Which of these two education issues has consumed our collective attention, and which has largely flown under the radar?
You know the answer.
Consider: America’s total student enrollment amounts to approximately 20 million; all around 70,000 of these students are at the Ivies, with only one just over 7,000 at Harvard.
It is true that we are a much more elitist and class-ridden society than we like to admit, and that graduates of elite institutions have an outsized influence on public life. (Full disclosure: I didn’t get into Harvard — they rejected my application — but was forced to get my undergraduate degree at, er, Yale as a result.) But even given this influence, I’d say we pay way too much attention to institutions that educate so few Americans and are so unrepresentative of the national educational landscape.
What explains this disproportionality? To some extent, this is because the people who shape public debate are often themselves graduates of elite institutions. To some extent, it’s a spillover from celebrity culture: a focus on the lifestyles of the future rich and famous.
To be clear, the resurgence of anti-Semitism among some factions of the political left is indeed troubling. There are people with ugly views on both the left and the right – both anti-democratic and anti-Semitic. While political scientists often criticize the horseshoe theory of politics, which says that the far left and the far right may be more similar to each other than to the political center, I have always found that theory plausible.
And I’m not going to make excuses for university presidents who bungle this issue. After all, navigating their institutions through intellectual and political minefields is largely the job of these presidents.
Still, it’s crucial to maintain a sense of perspective. The extreme left may not be morally better than the extreme right. But in America, the far left has virtually no political power, while the far right controls one House of Congress and a number of states.
Which brings me back to the universities of Florida.
The AAUP report details the legal and administrative actions taken to date by Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and his appointees. But the broad overview is that public higher education has become an important front in DeSantis’ “war on woke.”
What counts as awake? The answer isn’t clear, but that lack of clarity is, in a way, the point. Teaching students anything that could be considered politically liberal or progressive could be construed as wokeness. According to the report, a Florida professor was “told not to teach that the Civil War was a conflict over slavery”—a statement echoed by, for example, Ulysses S. Grant, who knew something about it, would beg to differ. This slippery slope creates a climate of fear that hinders teaching in many subjects and appears to be driving some of the system’s best teachers away.
And anyone who thinks there are clear limits to how far the intimidation can go – hey, maybe it’s a problem for social science and history, but hard science is safe – is naive. Do you really find it difficult to imagine pressure on faculty members to stop presenting evidence for human-induced climate change?
So yes, let’s hold college presidents’ feet to the fire when they stumble on an important issue. And let us denounce the calls for violence, wherever they come from. But let’s also focus on the greatest threat to our higher education system, which comes not from left-wing student activists, but from right-wing politicians.