One small thing: it's a single department at Columbia. There is a department of Middle East , South Asian, and African Studies. Not three separate departments. I would really like to know the nature of the conversations behind closed doors. What is the provost now overseeing the department supposed to ensure?
On the overall picture, this all sounds really plausible, and depressing. I just signed a letter at my institution asking that as funding dries up, we prioritize research and teaching, and try to cut first in administration, which over time has grown much more quickly than faculty salaries as a share of our budget. I think it's a good idea independently of the political climate. But it's proving to be controversial in much the way you suggest. Looks like anticipatory compliance, an attack on DEI, etc.
I think the "politics-free" concept of the Universities was something of an illusion caused by conservatives largely conceding the ground the liberals by the time of the early 90s. Conservatives focused on other things, and liberals were not yet too outlandish. Unfortunately, the non-mitigation of the worst impulses of the critical theorists and postmoderns of the late 90s and the 2000s (especially the latter, when coupled with the anti-war and anti-Bush left) led to things going wild. By the time people really noticed in 2010, it was too late for conservatives, as outsiders to academia, to do anything about it. And the few remaining ones within academia were well aware of the need to keep their mouth shut. And by the late 2010s, full on anti-Enlightenment is visible in the upcoming generation, who've been taught that rational argument which comes to a disfavored perspnal conclusion should be rejected out if hand.
Good luck to appealing on academic principles there.
One-party systems always lead to corruption, insanity, and collapse over time. And that's what academia has become since the 90s: a one-party system. It would best if this could be fixed from within, but there's almost no chance of this happening unless you pull all the 60-80 year olds fully out of retirement and get them to tell everyone on the far side of the Xennials to STFU for a while while they fix the curriculums.
(Which, BTW, is kind of what's happened with the 2024 election: A valiant attempt to roll back the "enshittification" of a lot of things.)
If universities won’t reform themselves — and there’s no evidence that they will— then outside pressure is necessary. They don’t have a right to do whatever they want with public money. I don’t get all this handwringing about political interference when they have chosen to become political institutions and doubled down on this for decades. You seem to think the situation is tolerable, so forcing their hand is unjust. And I just don’t see how that could be true given how bad things have gotten.
I've got some sympathy for this; we're firmly in the realm of non ideal theory, so first best options are off the table. If I thought the outcome of this political pressure would be universities generally operating as they should, then I think I'd be OK with the fact that this was achieved via political pressure rather than internal reform.
But look at the definition of antisemitism Columbia is being asked to adopt and enforce. It's awful. What constitutes an unfair double standard should be a matter for academic debate; not title vi adjudication. So I tend to think that the immediate effect of this pressure vis a vis academic freedom will be that Israel is just another topic where there will be orthodoxies that people fear to openly question, alongside race and gender. (Part of my thinking is that the admin doesn't have a scalpel here, so I don't see how they change the culture that leads people to tiptoe around those other topics.) Are you more optimistic about what universities will look like if and when they've jumped through all the hoops the Trump admin is asking them to?
Thanks for both posts. From an academic freedom perspective, it's a shame for us all that Columbia failed to take positive action PRIOR to the Trump administration ultimatum. Their recent administrative behavior really has been indefensible. I suspect that they rolled over here largely because, upon reflection, they realized not that Trump had the power to hamstring them financially (he either does, or doesn't, but that is independent of the particulars here), but that their prior actions just couldn't be successfully defended in the Court of Public Opinion. When in a hole that one wants to escape, it helps to stop digging. And sooner, rather than later. Many have opined that institutions should not "comply in advance" with the Trump administration. My response is that perhaps, depending on the particulars, they should. If one truly wants to defend academic freedom, it pays to be proactively introspective when criticized from outside, regardless of the identity of the critic, and, if there are things one is doing that just will not stand up to continued public criticism, act to make changes before getting to the point where it can't be made to look like anything other than capitulation to an ultimatum. Columbia was just made (or made itself?) the Poster Child for waiting too long to wield some administrative common sense. I hope other universities take note.
Excellent analysis in both this and last week’s posts. Thank you for these.
There does seem to be a tension, however, which I wonder if you can resolve. Last week you argued that reform is needed, and faculty have to do it themselves to preserve academic freedom, but also that they won’t. What does that say about the value of academic freedom, at least in relative terms? Consider the following combination of propositions.
- The purpose of the university is truth-seeking.
- Academic freedom promotes truth-seeking by removing political barriers to inquiry.
- Viewpoint diversity is a basic necessity for truth-seeking, since we must be able/willing to examine problems from multiple angles.
- Academic freedom can be, and clearly has been, used to squelch viewpoint diversity.
- Academic freedom thus can be, and has been, corrosive to truth-seeking.
IOW, the benefits of academic freedom for truth-seeking are contingent. In a situation where viewpoint diversity and academic freedom are at odds, isn’t it at least hypothetically possible that aggressive state intervention in academic affairs can promote truth-seeking? If we grant that possibility, the conversation shifts to when that is the case, and whether the current situation applies, rather than reflexive lamentation on assaults to academic freedom.
FWIW, I am also very troubled by assaults on academic freedom. But I also notice an irritating aspect of some of the commentary (not you, but say, someone like Jonathan Rauch) that offers eloquent exposition of the extent of the problems with the academy, but still land on the normative conclusion that we must still keep deferring to the academy. This won’t satisfy.
Academic freedom is a good in its own right. Having to run your research program past some political commissar to get approval is inherently distasteful to me. To the extent that academic freedom has been infringed from the left, that's bad, too. Viewpoint diversity is also good, both because it conduces to truth and because it's an indication of academic freedom.
I do defend the academy because I think it is still, on net, a very good thing. I am full of sadness at the destruction wrought by those who have made it indefensible.
One small thing: it's a single department at Columbia. There is a department of Middle East , South Asian, and African Studies. Not three separate departments. I would really like to know the nature of the conversations behind closed doors. What is the provost now overseeing the department supposed to ensure?
On the overall picture, this all sounds really plausible, and depressing. I just signed a letter at my institution asking that as funding dries up, we prioritize research and teaching, and try to cut first in administration, which over time has grown much more quickly than faculty salaries as a share of our budget. I think it's a good idea independently of the political climate. But it's proving to be controversial in much the way you suggest. Looks like anticipatory compliance, an attack on DEI, etc.
Thanks for the correction. Making an edit.
I think the "politics-free" concept of the Universities was something of an illusion caused by conservatives largely conceding the ground the liberals by the time of the early 90s. Conservatives focused on other things, and liberals were not yet too outlandish. Unfortunately, the non-mitigation of the worst impulses of the critical theorists and postmoderns of the late 90s and the 2000s (especially the latter, when coupled with the anti-war and anti-Bush left) led to things going wild. By the time people really noticed in 2010, it was too late for conservatives, as outsiders to academia, to do anything about it. And the few remaining ones within academia were well aware of the need to keep their mouth shut. And by the late 2010s, full on anti-Enlightenment is visible in the upcoming generation, who've been taught that rational argument which comes to a disfavored perspnal conclusion should be rejected out if hand.
Good luck to appealing on academic principles there.
One-party systems always lead to corruption, insanity, and collapse over time. And that's what academia has become since the 90s: a one-party system. It would best if this could be fixed from within, but there's almost no chance of this happening unless you pull all the 60-80 year olds fully out of retirement and get them to tell everyone on the far side of the Xennials to STFU for a while while they fix the curriculums.
(Which, BTW, is kind of what's happened with the 2024 election: A valiant attempt to roll back the "enshittification" of a lot of things.)
If universities won’t reform themselves — and there’s no evidence that they will— then outside pressure is necessary. They don’t have a right to do whatever they want with public money. I don’t get all this handwringing about political interference when they have chosen to become political institutions and doubled down on this for decades. You seem to think the situation is tolerable, so forcing their hand is unjust. And I just don’t see how that could be true given how bad things have gotten.
The prior status quo was very bad indeed, but this medicine is not better than the disease.
I guess that encapsulates our disagreement.
Your disagreement might make for a piquant Micro-diggressions episode. :)
It came up in the 2024 rantathon. I don’t think there’s a whole episode there though.
I've got some sympathy for this; we're firmly in the realm of non ideal theory, so first best options are off the table. If I thought the outcome of this political pressure would be universities generally operating as they should, then I think I'd be OK with the fact that this was achieved via political pressure rather than internal reform.
But look at the definition of antisemitism Columbia is being asked to adopt and enforce. It's awful. What constitutes an unfair double standard should be a matter for academic debate; not title vi adjudication. So I tend to think that the immediate effect of this pressure vis a vis academic freedom will be that Israel is just another topic where there will be orthodoxies that people fear to openly question, alongside race and gender. (Part of my thinking is that the admin doesn't have a scalpel here, so I don't see how they change the culture that leads people to tiptoe around those other topics.) Are you more optimistic about what universities will look like if and when they've jumped through all the hoops the Trump admin is asking them to?
Thanks for both posts. From an academic freedom perspective, it's a shame for us all that Columbia failed to take positive action PRIOR to the Trump administration ultimatum. Their recent administrative behavior really has been indefensible. I suspect that they rolled over here largely because, upon reflection, they realized not that Trump had the power to hamstring them financially (he either does, or doesn't, but that is independent of the particulars here), but that their prior actions just couldn't be successfully defended in the Court of Public Opinion. When in a hole that one wants to escape, it helps to stop digging. And sooner, rather than later. Many have opined that institutions should not "comply in advance" with the Trump administration. My response is that perhaps, depending on the particulars, they should. If one truly wants to defend academic freedom, it pays to be proactively introspective when criticized from outside, regardless of the identity of the critic, and, if there are things one is doing that just will not stand up to continued public criticism, act to make changes before getting to the point where it can't be made to look like anything other than capitulation to an ultimatum. Columbia was just made (or made itself?) the Poster Child for waiting too long to wield some administrative common sense. I hope other universities take note.
Excellent analysis in both this and last week’s posts. Thank you for these.
There does seem to be a tension, however, which I wonder if you can resolve. Last week you argued that reform is needed, and faculty have to do it themselves to preserve academic freedom, but also that they won’t. What does that say about the value of academic freedom, at least in relative terms? Consider the following combination of propositions.
- The purpose of the university is truth-seeking.
- Academic freedom promotes truth-seeking by removing political barriers to inquiry.
- Viewpoint diversity is a basic necessity for truth-seeking, since we must be able/willing to examine problems from multiple angles.
- Academic freedom can be, and clearly has been, used to squelch viewpoint diversity.
- Academic freedom thus can be, and has been, corrosive to truth-seeking.
IOW, the benefits of academic freedom for truth-seeking are contingent. In a situation where viewpoint diversity and academic freedom are at odds, isn’t it at least hypothetically possible that aggressive state intervention in academic affairs can promote truth-seeking? If we grant that possibility, the conversation shifts to when that is the case, and whether the current situation applies, rather than reflexive lamentation on assaults to academic freedom.
FWIW, I am also very troubled by assaults on academic freedom. But I also notice an irritating aspect of some of the commentary (not you, but say, someone like Jonathan Rauch) that offers eloquent exposition of the extent of the problems with the academy, but still land on the normative conclusion that we must still keep deferring to the academy. This won’t satisfy.
Academic freedom is a good in its own right. Having to run your research program past some political commissar to get approval is inherently distasteful to me. To the extent that academic freedom has been infringed from the left, that's bad, too. Viewpoint diversity is also good, both because it conduces to truth and because it's an indication of academic freedom.
I do defend the academy because I think it is still, on net, a very good thing. I am full of sadness at the destruction wrought by those who have made it indefensible.