Mountain West HxA Gathering Elicits Diverse Views on Promoting Viewpoint Diversity
What is a university for? That was the organizing question.
What is a university for? That was the central organizing question of Heterodox Academy’s first regional conference, held at Colorado State University in Fort Collins Aug. 14-15 – and as we learned, open inquiry advocates have many different answers to that question.
The Mountain West gathering brought together approximately 70 people from nine universities in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and California, including undergraduate and graduate students, administrators, faculty, and staff. The smart, positive energy in the conference space (which featured a gorgeous view of the mountains) was palpable, with participants dedicated to recognizing the wide range of threats to academic freedom and free expression and to finding solutions to free the inquiry.
HxA President John Tomasi kicked us off with a keynote presenting Open Inquiry U: Heterodox Academy’s Four-Point Agenda for Reforming Colleges and Universities. Tomasi spoke of what unifies HxA’s diverse membership: That we love our universities and want to make them better. Tomasi detailed how American universities are today more inclusive than they have ever been, but he noted there remain barriers to political conservatives in many fields.
Still, he rejected the notion that we should seek to “return” universities to a mythical, supposedly lost “path of truth,” noting that the past isn’t as simple as some make it out to be. In an illuminating anecdote, Tomasi explained that, while Harvard’s long-time motto refers to “veritas,” that originally meant religious “truth” of a very specific Christian variety, with alternative views not tolerated.
In conversation with the University of Wyoming’s Matt Burgess, Vanderbilt University’s Jacob Mchangama went even farther back in time in a session titled “First They Came for Aristotle…Then for Harvard: A Very Short History of Academic Freedom under Siege.” Mchangama argued “free speech might be the most powerful engine of equality that our species has ever stumbled upon.” The ability to challenge authority, he said, has huge “downstream effects,” and so it is critically important that administrators and faculty make clear to students “we have your back.”
The session featuring students from BridgeUSA chapters at the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Wyoming, and Colorado State reminded us all why the work of supporting students is totally worth it. With moderation from CU Boulder’s Peter Newton, we heard from Bay Grobe, Abby Schaller, Ven Meester, Hayden Mackenzie, and Haylee Von Behren as they spoke passionately about how the BridgeUSA platform allows students, in Schaller’s words, to learn to be uncomfortable. When administrators sponsor Bridge chapters, she said – including for example by featuring BridgeUSA in first-year orientations – students build a real sense of community and feel safe to have tough conversations.
“Bridge at its heart is designed to teach people to be okay with disagreement,” Meester told those assembled. “Only through diversity of opinion, only through disagreement can we achieve progress in any field, and that is what Bridge’s goal is.”
Funding from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations has enabled students at several institutions to join with the faculty from HxA Campus Communities to hold special programming, expanding the positive reach. According to Meester, ten percent of the student body at the University of Wyoming has participated in a Bridge campus event.
Asked by Newton to answer the conference’s core question – what is the university for – these students had varied answers. Grobe opined that “the point of the university is to have a place to have these discussions” that span differences. Von Behren said she thinks universities are about “building character” and teaching students communication skills, including how to advocate for oneself. Mackenzie argued universities’ mission should include providing students the structures needed for “exploration of life.” And Meester said “college teaches you how to grow,” how to be uncomfortable, take risks, and change.
The three university presidents speaking at the leadership panel had similar views of their university’s missions, with clear attention to students’ long-term needs. Colorado State’s Amy Parsons spoke of her land-grant institution’s mission to provide access to excellence, saying “the university exists for student success.” The University of Denver’s Jeremy Haefner explained that his (private) school, dedicated to educating many nontraditional students, focuses on helping students build character and developing core competencies needed for their future careers.
Ed Seidel of the University of Wyoming – also a public land grant institution – explained that his faculty and staff have undergone a deep examination of their policies and codes of conduct to make sure they are creating an environment that not only allows but promotes free expression and constructive dialogue. He said he had been asked “by prominent state legislators” to declare his institution “a conservative university” and that he has instead insisted on institutional neutrality in order to support everyone’s ability to research, teach, and learn without fear.
The panel conversation on activism in academia (in which I participated) also necessarily broached the question of what a university is for, with Wyoming’s Spencer Pelton making the interesting argument that university’s mission might be thought of as “curation” – of knowledge, of artifacts, etc. Speaking as an archeologist watching the loss of scientifically and historically important artifacts to questionable claims of “repatriation,” Pelton, an archeologist, said ideally we would have “plurality in curation” while attending to the need to safeguard knowledge and the sources of knowledge for future generations.
Colorado State’s Ann Little said she was “sick and tired of being lied to” by the media and by students and welcomed renewed attention on truth-seeking. Wyoming’s Martha McCaughey seconded the idea of the university’s mission being the discovery and dissemination of knowledge, but also said she could understand why many speak of institutions of higher education as being about the preservation of democracy, as sound democracy depends on sound knowledge.
A panel on AI in education elicited many interesting takes on how we should be thinking about AI in teaching and learning. Nikhil Krishnaswamy of Colorado State researches the underlying principles of AI – as much as possible, given that many of the programs are “black boxes” to protect trade secrets – and he told the gathering, “The more I understand about AI, the less I want it in my life.”
But others on the panel, including Wyoming’s Brandon Roberts and Jennifer Harmon and Denver’s Kerry Peetz argued there are ways to use AI to help students learn to think deeper and present more confidently, necessary skills for meaningful constructive dialogue. (Check out one remarkable option.)
At this year’s Mountain West gathering, regardless of the diversity of answers to the questions of what universities are for and what they should be doing now, the panel of HxA Campus Community leaders made clear that HxA members are unified around what Tomasi identified as the core HxA belief: that “universities are precious institutions that are worthy of being defended not just because of the great things they’ve done in the past but because of the great futures they have in front of them.”
Indeed, McCaughey and Burgess are already planning a follow-up conference for next summer at the University of Wyoming. That gathering will focus on the theme of “How It’s Done” – how to effect specific, campus-based changes for positive progress in the areas of open inquiry and free expression in higher education.
In the meantime, as we continue to work on positive change campus-by-campus, rather than planning a national 2026 conference, HxA will be hosting a number of regional conferences this academic year. Please consider attending our Mid-Atlantic regional conference in College Park, Maryland, Sept. 26-27 and our HxCanada Fall Conference on Oct. 27, in Vancouver and live online. And if you’re an HxA Campus Community member and want to have a regional conference take place in your region, let us know!
Videos from the Mountain West conference will be made available soon at HxA’s YouTube page.