A University the World Has Never Seen

What if today’s campus conflicts portend something wondrous?

Academic year 2023-24 will likely be remembered as the annus horribilis of American higher education. And the current year is looking difficult, too. I share the dismay of most onlookers regarding the students who use intimidation and disruption rather than persuasion, and the presidents who let things spiral out of control and then call in the police. Still, I hope our current struggles will be remembered as but a stage in a process of historic importance: the birth of a new and better type of university.

It is easy to see today’s campus conflicts as a war for the soul of higher ed—a war that only one side can win. Inflamed by disputes over the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, a deeper dispute about the university has broken out. Is the university a community of imperfect learners, brought together to enlarge their understanding through conversation and study? Or is the university yet another engine for social activism, where raw power determines which political view the university supports? 

Hearing that bell ring, national politicians have begun climbing into the ring, with those on the left largely defending the moral status quo, and many on the right calling for an overhaul enforced by government action (often ham-handed).

Granted, the contemporary campus looks like a battlefield. Too often, Team Truth expresses nostalgia for the good old days, calling for free speech absolutism and an end to all “safe spaces.” Team Social Justice sees all that as cruel and clueless. The former imagines reinstalling a meritocracy that never was. The latter acts as if minority identities automatically confer expertise, that the answers to hard questions are already settled, and thus drives out dissenters with aplomb. Neither side is willing to give an inch, lest it become a campus mile. 

And so we go on. Team Truth versus Team Social Justice: one side or the other, everyone must choose.

However, if we dare to rise up higher and look down at our struggles from an historical perspective, and permit ourselves a smidge of grace about the roles partisans on each side are playing, we might see today’s campus conflicts differently. Perhaps instead of being mere partisans, we—all of us together—are unwitting players in a great unfolding drama of creation. 

Over the last 50 years—the blink of a historian’s eye—universities have become places of extraordinary inclusion. Before the use of standardized tests became widespread in the 1960s, colleges were effectively closed to talented people from the wrong social backgrounds, no matter their merit. So too, it was only in 1983 that the last Ivy League university began admitting women. Jews have long faced discrimination at universities, and Muslim students have only recently begun arriving on campus in any significant number. Today, a majority of undergraduates at Ivies are people of color and, nationwide, faculty are more diverse racially than ever before.

No university system of the past ever attempted inclusion on such a scale. Not Bologna, not Oxford, not Naples or Paris, and certainly not Plato’s Academy. Such inclusion was not attempted by Colonial American colleges such as Harvard or William and Mary; nor was it any serious goal of the American research universities founded in the late 20^th century on the “Germanic model”—such as Johns Hopkins or Chicago. All those magnificent institutions crafted and nurtured knowledge. But each and every one limited participation in ways that constrained the range of viewpoints under discussion, thus undercutting the possibility of their own success.

But while we are finally working toward the Inclusive University, we have so far been making a mess of it. 

Programs set up to promote inclusion—campus speech codes, sexual harassment tribunals, requirements for “diversity” statements for student and faculty positions, student programming at orientation programs and within dorms—even when well-intended, have stunted learning and research, and destroyed the careers of dissenters. No wonder today’s students, instead of reveling in the newfound diversity of their campuses, segregate and self-censor, thus avoiding the new, more expansive explorations that inclusion was meant to make possible.

Scholars are subject to internal surveillance and regulation in the name of progress. Political representation across the professoriate, which skewed 2:1 left to right in the 1960’s, has increased to more than 12:1 now, with ideological diversity facing extinction in some disciplines. Too many campus centers, instead of offering area expertise, have become hothouses of political activism. In every case, open inquiry has been the loser.

Just as the historic “Truth U” was defective in practice, so today’s “Social Justice U” is egregiously failing to achieve its stated aims.

But amid these ruins, I see reason for hope. Perhaps instead of simply fighting, we are all suffering together. We are suffering not only because we are fighting, or because one team is wholly right and the other wholly wrong. Rather, we are suffering because we are struggling to give birth to something the world has never seen: a fully inclusive university that is primarily, unambiguously, and joyfully committed to the communal search for knowledge. 

Adopting this perspective on our campus conflicts would not magically resolve them, nor would it end the pain and anger that so many students, faculty, and alumni currently feel. After all, the generative process is still unfolding. Change on this scale is the work of generations. 

But this shift of view might make our current pains more bearable, because it reveals them as essentially generative. This change in our self-understanding may give us eyes to see healthier and more productive roles that each of us might play.

To move forward on this great project, college presidents must affirm the goal of inclusion while rejecting calls to convert the university into a political actor. These two goals are not only distinct but opposed. Inclusion increases the pluralism on which knowledge-seeking relies. Politicization, which favors some contested views over others, does the opposite. Presidents should affirm the goal of inclusion, while rejecting calls to politicize the university in every form.

Professors must have the courage to declare that identity is not authority, while showing equal courage in defending every inch of ground that inclusion has rightfully won. Talent belongs at universities, no matter one’s race, religion, or social background. Academic researchers must engage politically sensitive topics with integrity, and remind themselves of the value of constructive disagreement. And as professors open themselves up to more complex conceptions of truth, they must not give up the idea that there is a reality worth knowing, and that academic scholarship is our best hope of comprehending it.

Students must recognize that a campus is not merely another venue for political contestation. Instead, a university is a unique and precious thing: a community convened for the purpose of gaining wisdom from the diverse perspectives of those around them. 

And concerned alums, instead of blacklisting undergraduates who behave intolerantly, should devise systems to identify and reward students who practice open-mindedness, intellectual humility, and evidence-based reasoning—skills that are as valuable in the workplace as on campus. 

We humans are indeed slow and imperfect learners, as our current struggles make clear. But if we admit this fact about our condition, and embrace it together, we may find that we have taken a step on the path towards a future with something worth having: a university the likes of which the world has never yet seen.

At Heterodox Academy, this is the university that we seek: the Inclusive Truth-Seeking University. Foundationally committed to the pursuit of knowledge, this university is committed to pluralism too, and it rejects calls to politicize the university as antithetical to that end. If you are a professor or academic professional, we hope you will join us in the great adventure of imagining, and bringing forth, this new type of university. All are welcome.