HxA on the Road
A visit to Western Michigan University.
I enjoy visiting college campuses. A trip to a campus gives me a chance to talk directly with our members, to hear from them about the challenges that are most on their minds, and to talk with them about ways that the HxA team and I might support them in their efforts to improve the campuses they love.
My favorite time to visit a campus is the very start of the semester. It's a time of new beginnings, with a feeling of excitement in the air, as students and professors convene anew on their campuses, with the Great Adventure of new classes (and department meetings), poised to take off, like sprinters in the blocks.
So I was delighted one day late last summer when I received an invitation to visit Western Michigan University, the site of one of HxA’s most active Campus Communities, and with a suggested visit date of February 5-6. Sure, it's Michigan in the dead of winter, but a quick Google search confirmed that this was indeed the very start of their semester. I accepted like a shot.
Arriving in Kalamazoo, I was soon greeted byJeff Breneman, HxA member and energetic Vice President for Government Relations and External Partnerships at WMU. Jeff was the driving force behind my visit, an additional draw of which was Jeff’s idea of inviting members of HxA Communities at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University as well—turning my visit into something of a regional HxA-fest.
Things kicked off with a reception and a dinner for 20 or so the night before my talk. Over drinks, HxA members chatted with me about episodes of Heterodox Out Loud that they’d particularly enjoyed (or disliked), debated the meaning of core HxA concepts such as viewpoint diversity, and asked whether I thought Jon Haidt might next begin campaigning to ban cell phones from college campuses, too.
I especially enjoyed a long conversation about the economics of higher education with a high-ranking Western dean. She told me how, twenty years before, Western Michigan had experienced a drop in enrollment, and in 2021 had won a whopping alumni gift of $550 million—a combination that opened up lots of interesting possibilities. Together, we twirled that fiscal puzzle as though it were a Rubik’s Cube.
At dinner, I was seated next to two members who had made the drive over from Ann Arbor and who were staying in the same hotel as me. One of these Wolverines, Pär Cassel, had recently had a hand in writing an op-ed in the Michigan Daily defending the ideal of institutional neutrality. I told him that someone on our staff posted the piece in our staff Slack channel, and so the team and I read the piece the day it came. He seemed surprised that HxA’s staff had been closely following the work of our HxA members and Campus Community in the successful passing of institutional statement neutrality at Michigan. (Don’t you people know that the HxA mothership team is always cheering you on?!)
The next morning, Jeff arrived bright and early to take me to campus to get miked up and sound-checked for my talk (well, it was at least early—we met in the lobby at 7.00, as I recall). A storm had blown through overnight and one disappointment was that the group from Michigan State, sending in a report of black ice on the highways, was unable to make the trip. “Anything for HxA”, I’ve sometimes heard members say. Well, I suppose there are some limits.
The technical formalities completed, I stood behind the lectern, sipping a coffee, as the doors opened and the audience at first dripped and then poured in. Soon we were a big group, with professors from various schools, a good showing of students (some still a bit bleary-eyed, like me), a roster of deans (including my fiscally-minded friend), and even a pair of trustees. If only there were more universities like WMU, where faculty and students, and even deans and trustees, come out through the snow for a morning talk on open inquiry!
I opened my talk with some facts and figures about Heterodox Academy’s growing membership and our new programs. I had planned to share an anecdote about how three years ago, when I started as HxA’s president, I had used the fact that HxA’s largest membership group was at Harvard as a highly effective East Coast fundraising tool.
But, showing a phenomenon that we’ve observed at many campuses where members created a Campus Community, WMU’s formation of a Community had set their membership on a path of accelerating growth, until WMU reached and passed Harvard, with 71 members to Harvard’s 69.
However, while prepping for this talk, I had learned that WMU had that week itself been eclipsed by another of our campus community groups, the one at University of Virginia, clocking in at 74. So I told a version of that anecdote, but did so in a tone of (mock) chastisement of my hosts for having slipped out of first place. Along the way, of course, I noted that they were for the time being at least still comfortably leading both their instate rivals, Michigan and Michigan State, at 52 and 23, respectively.
The meat of my talk, though, was a serious discussion of different kinds of campus pluralism, and how those forms affect the capacity of universities to pursue their truth-seeking mission. One way to understand campus struggles is as a simple conflict between two teams, one fighting for the good of inclusion and justice, the other working to make central the quest for knowledge.
By contrast, I offered a more communal interpretation of this moment, suggesting that our current struggles are essentially productive, since we are trying to give birth to the world’s first truly inclusive university system that is also explicitly and unapologetically committed to the search for understanding. This is a main theme of my essay, “A University the World Has Never Seen.” It is also the idea that powers a recent short video about Heterodox Academy, produced for us by the Templeton Religion Trust.
These ideas sparked a lively conversation with the audience, and I stayed behind afterward talking with students, deans, and faculty colleagues. I was excited to learn that UWM was set to formally adopt institutional neutrality – based on HxA’s model – later that very day.
As so often with my campus trips, my visit to WMU felt like it was just getting started when it came time to end. As I sat on the runway, looking wistfully out the window at the swirling snow and the ice, I reflected on all the new ideas I’d heard and new friends I had made. As the plane lifted off, I turned away from the window and consoled myself by slipping on my headset, tuned to some old Willy Nelson. “I just can’t wait to get on the road again.”
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