For the past four years, there have been compelling reasons for public college presidents to keep their mouths shut about the epidemic of government-mandated ideological censorship that has targeted higher education.
Public restraint may still make sense in some cases. But with threats to colleges and universities escalating and evolving, and likely to grow still greater in the aftermath of this month's election, the time for private quiescence is over.
"Bend so you don't break" is the key principle effective presidents follow when handling the legislature. The ability to attract and retain government funds, and the canny cultivation of political relationships, are essential to any successful presidency. If a lawmaker raises a concern, conversation and compromise are usually the best solutions. Most of the time, this approach reflects discipline and prudence—putting the institution and its students ahead of a president's ego.
In 2021, PEN America began chronicling the rise of state-level educational gag orders that directly restrict speech on race, gender, and identity in K-12 classrooms and on college campuses. Since then, I've urged sympathy and understanding for college presidents who felt the best way to protect their students, staff, faculty, and institutions was to stay silent about these bills in public, or even in private conversations with lawmakers, opting to let others speak in their defense.
But 2024 changed all that.
As PEN America's latest report explained, new laws enacted this year are very different from those in 2021. Rather than censoring teaching and research directly, they create the same effect by imposing ideological restrictions on every aspect of university governance—banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, restricting the topics of majors and minors, and more. Iowa banned DEI and restricted presidents from opining on a dizzying array of ideas. Utah closed its university cultural centers. Florida dictated the ideological content of teacher education courses. Alabama restricted Black student unions and programming for international students. And Indiana handed politically-appointed governing boards unlimited power to fire tenured faculty they deem insufficiently supportive of "viewpoint diversity."
Beyond legislative restrictions, lawmakers have also resorted to "jawboning," threatening presidents with funding cuts unless they "voluntarily" close their DEI offices or implement other restrictions. Jawboning transforms censorship from a public confrontation into an intimate interaction between lawmaker and president—one that avoids the democratic checks and balances that accompany formal legislation, which can be opposed at a hearing or challenged in court.
In the face of these new threats, too many college presidents have bent, buckled, and broken.
University leaders in Wisconsin, North Carolina, North Dakota, Virginia, Kentucky, and Texas have capitulated to jawboning efforts, shuttering DEI offices and LGBTQ studies programs when they are not required by law to do so. "If you're hearing concerns from policymakers," said a University of Kentucky spokesperson after UK closed its DEI office, "you should act." University of Missouri system President Mun Choi closed the university's DEI office out of fear of "the actions that have been taken in other states," even though the Missouri legislature is so riven by factional infighting that it seems unlikely to pass any restrictions in the near future.
This approach is a serious mistake.
A key responsibility of a college president is to determine which issues merit legitimate compromise with politicians, and which should be the zealously defended prerogatives of the college. There are plenty of topics—student outcomes and safety, completion rates, community relations, responsible money management—where lawmakers should be welcomed into the workings of a public university.
But ideologically-motivated restrictions are another story.
The concept of university autonomy isn't widely invoked in the United States, but it's central to discussions of academic freedom in other countries. The idea is simple—intellectual freedom in teaching and research are only safe when universities resolutely oppose efforts by governments to exert ideological control over their administrations.
As the 2020 Magna Charta Universitatum, a statement signed by nearly a thousand universities around the globe, put it: "Intellectual and moral autonomy is the hallmark of any university and a precondition for the fulfillment of its responsibilities to society. That independence needs to be recognized and protected by governments and society at large, and defended vigorously by institutions themselves."
Appeasing politicians by banning DEI offices, restricting the topics of majors and minors, and censoring faculty speech about race and gender—this is how intellectual freedom dies. I'm not suggesting college presidents abandon realpolitik, or that every instance of jawboning demands a public response. But too many presidents use their limited leverage with lawmakers on the wrong things—advancing their funding priorities without compromise, while giving in to politicians who want to restrict ideas on their campuses.
Presidents are the last line of defense against politicians who bully and browbeat universities into enacting ideological restrictions. Their response should be, "Come back when you've passed a law—and be prepared to defend it in court."
Jeremy C. Young is the Freedom to Learn program director at PEN America.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
English (US) ·