Now that some of the smoke has cleared from the comments of three Ivy League college presidents before a congressional committee, it is time to reconsider what has happened, and is happening to higher education in America.
The testimony of the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Columbia came through on national television for what it was; three very bright people trying desperately hard to walk a fine line between what most Americans believe should be a straightforward answer, and the nuanced rhetoric designed to placate the various attitudes on their campuses.
When President Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania was asked if calling for genocide of Jews constitute bullying or harassment under her university’s policies, she responded that it would be a “context-dependent decision.” No, it is not. Antisemitism is unacceptable and should not be tolerated on any American college campus. Neither should blatant Islamophobic tirades be acceptable.
Why was a simple “no” not echoed by Magill, nor were the sentiment of her answer refuted by Presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard or Martha Pollock of MIT? The answer is at the heart of the straitjacket in which college presidents find themselves when trying to balance the demands of their institutions’ constituencies on the one hand, and the commonsense approach and humane attitudes of most Americans on the other.
How did such divergence among some who populate our college campuses and the attitudes of most Americans become so different?
Academics spend their days on campus interacting with people who have been educated like they were. They consider themselves to be in the forefront of innovative ideas and new social strategies designed to enlighten today’s world. Further, at least some of them feel obligated to stand behind the most current thinking on social trends, historical interpretations or scientific findings so to help move society forward — no matter what. Most on the vanguard of this movement do not necessarily represent many on any campus, but they vehemently present their arguments, often holding sway over college leadership and challenging officials to echo their feelings without consideration to the position in which it places their institutions.
College presidents who try to reconcile this kind of campus thinking with the attitudes of those in the mainstream of public thought find themselves in difficult situations. When the additional constituents of college boards, alumni, accrediting associations, government officials, media and others are thrown into the mix, the amalgam of voices can be deafening.
Those defending presidents by citing the awkward position in which such contrasting constituencies places them often suggests that these leaders are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t. This too is unacceptable. Instead, the leader of a university must have a clear understanding of the basic goals and values of the institution and be able to consistently articulate them in all public utterance.
All colleges and universities have mission statements. Those of large, primarily state-owned institutions are almost indistinguishable from one another. Even some of this country’s most highly rated private institutions, most of which were formed by religious thinkers who hoped to build upon the tenets of their faiths through a college education, have moved far beyond the moral and theological aspirations of their founders.
The good news, if there is any, is that the variety of American higher education has allowed some small private institutions, many of which were founded by resolute pastors, priests, nuns and rabbis and their parishioners, to still adhere to their founding principles and missions with values recognizable to most Americans. Their missions are woven into the curricula and co-curricular aspects of these institutions. They graduate well-educated and well-rounded individuals with the cultural awareness, empathy and more compass that would never allow antisemitism or expressions of Islamophobia to be tolerated regardless of the circumstances.
Unfortunately, it is those very colleges and universities that are most often in danger of closing. In the past 10 years, 200 colleges have closed or merged. That is four times the number in the previous decade. Perhaps it is time for those disturbed by the apparent inability of some institutions, which fail to recognize the basic values of this country, to stop lambasting them, and help see to it that institutions that hold dearly to those principles remain viable.