What is the University For?
The first printing press to make its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the newfound colonies made its home at Harvard University. Higher education and its influence on what we now call American society is older than the formal creation of America the Nation. This makes more sense when we consider the original design of the Nation as a Republic. The knowledge and competence of any nation’s leaders will directly impact the quality of life of the people being led. It was true throughout the formation of the American Republic, and it is true for even the most basic of activities in a modern nation-state.
Take this for example: this week an Alaskan Airlines flight was grounded after a plug-door was sucked out of the plane, leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage. Where did the raw materials come from? How were the parts manufactured? What was the system in place for quality control? Who trained the pilot or monitored the inspection crews? All of these questions are immediately and tangibly non-trivial. For the individuals aboard who immediately felt the imminence of irrepressible fear, these questions now have answers that demand a reckoning.
However, much of the immediacy of erroneous actions is swept away in the complexity of modern life. Many grave mistakes do not exhibit immediate consequences, and often, it becomes debatable as to whether or not the consequences are favorable. This phenomenon softens our consciences and our intellect. If we cannot feel the immediate consequences of our mistakes, it is very easy to ignore or disregard their inevitable arrival. The principles of cause and effect are undoubtedly complex, as there are a great many causes, which all produce a myriad of effects.
The institutions that play a large role in the formation of the behavior and attitudes of the leaders in our communities have some level of responsibility for the consequences of those individuals’ actions. Ultimately, for better and for worse, the decisions of the men and women who are leaders in this country will impact our day-to-day lives in perpetuity. This is basic stuff. Smart people who work hard end up in positions of power, where they exercise such power to either our benefit or detriment. Regardless of what the quality of their character turns out to be, we need leaders, and we need the institutions that equip them with the necessary tools to perform necessary jobs that maintain life in our world today. Thus, our universities are integrally necessary for a functioning society. They provide the mechanisms that almost every specialized job or function must rely upon.
Education is one of many things that has rapidly transformed in the last century, and some concerning developments in just the last few years might be critical in providing the background to ask the question: Just what exactly is the function of the modern university?
Harvard has been making the rounds in the media as of late for the disgraceful exit of their last president. Claudine Gay now holds two Harvard records: she is the first Black woman to hold the office of President, and she has (or had) the shortest presidential tenure. The cause of her resignation and the mix of responses raise some interesting questions concerning the changing nature of university output. Gay’s offenses consist of plagiarizing significant parts of her work. As per usual, the polarization of news sources demonstrates a bias on either side…either it was “minorly inadequate citation,” or it was “ blatant plagiarism.” Ultimately, however, there were large swaths of text that contained identical language to the works she had sourced her information from, with only a few minor adjustments made. We will spare you a full recap of all the charges, as everything has been documented extensively in the news by now, but some of the offenses are outright comical. One such example even reports her acknowledgments as “borrowing heavily” from other works.
The question that remains to be answered is why the resignation took so long, and why it is still so contested. Harvard University is, in many ways, the insignia of American Higher Education. The esteem of the credential attracts the most intelligent and the most ambitious students in the world. Plagiarism is an easily expellable offense for undergraduates, so why is it that the President’s guilt of multiple serious infractions took weeks to force her resignation?
The answer is simple. Claudine Gay is the first black, female president. Just six months ago, she was hailed for her groundbreaking strides in advancing diversity in Higher Ed. Now, those who applauded her progress are scrambling to come up with an answer as to why (out of her 17 publications), 8 have serious accounts of plagiarism. Now that her resignation has been finalized, the movement appears to consist of the following. First, the severity of her offenses must be downplayed. Second, plagiarism must be redefined…ie. “Minor instances of inadequate citation.” Third, the journalists uncovering the story must be labeled as racist, conservative conspirators, sexist, etc…
It is quite simple to see the dilemma. The social progress of diversity is going toe to toe with the pragmatic demand for competency. Ousting Gay from her position defeats the purpose of celebrating her diversity in a significant position of authority, yet there are strong demands for academic competency for the leader of one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Where do we draw the line?
It appears that for Harvard, scandal is perhaps becoming the norm, as two of the past three presidencies have ended in scandal and resignation. Lawrence Summers was asked to resign in 2006. Summers, however, was in a very different position than Gay. His offense? Offering a reasonable explanation to answer the persistent male-female disparity in the upper echelons of STEM academia. Speaking at the Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce, Summers proposed the theory that sexism is not the primary cause of the disparity, but rather it is the “general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity.”
Put more simply, Summers believed that:
The higher-end tenured positions increasingly demand 80-hour work weeks.
Most people prefer not to work 80-hour weeks.
The minority of people who are willing to work such extreme hours are mostly male.
Summers would then conclude that “I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong,” and offered some ideas about remedying the situation regardless of his pessimistic outlook.
For the crowd, however, this conclusion was not enough. He was quickly accused of sexism and “careless scholarship,” an increasingly common phrase used to describe ideas that are deemed unfavorable. One woman even stormed out of his talk before he could finish, saying,
“When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill.” Summers’ call to offer an apology later on went unanswered. The story was picked up around the country, votes of no confidence were held, and inevitably Summers resigned.
It seems that the modern university finds itself in a similar position to the Catholic Church in the era of Galileo. After refusing to affirm that the sun DOES revolve around the Earth, he was placed on house arrest for the rest of his life. Those in academia are now facing a similar bind, though the beliefs are more transient and have no codified priest class, the dogmas are nonetheless essential to affirm, as if they were Holy Scripture. Try this thought, imagine someone in higher-ed offering this reasoning during the middle of the Floyd riots of 2020:
"As tragic as the death was, we should consider that Floyd was breaking the law and was recorded saying "I can't breathe," while standing up with zero restraint on his neck. Also, there is evidence to show that Chauvin was trained to restrain Floyd in the manner that he did. Blindly following orders might not excuse the actions, but it at least shows the situation is complicated."
They might not have lost a job, but it would surely be social suicide to opine on such thoughts. Summers’ story reveals this tension. No matter how reasonably grounded or well-intentioned certain ideas might be if they could potentially lead to answers that defy our culture’s ever-shifting sacredly held “truths,” they cannot be thought, at least not publically.
So again, what exactly is the university for? Well, if we look at the language included in many universities' mission statements, we will often find words like “openness,” “inclusivity,” “diversity,” etc… Harvard includes on its page:
“Through a diverse living environment, where students live with people who are studying different topics, who come from different walks of life and have evolving identities, intellectual transformation is deepened and conditions for social transformation are created.”
Georgia Southern uses similar language:
“We value collaboration, academic excellence, discovery and innovation, integrity, openness and inclusion, and sustainability,” and later in a section specifically subtitled, “openness,” is written: “Georgia Southern University values the diversity of all people, communities, and disciplines with an unwavering commitment to equity and inclusion.”
I think a rather fitting response to both of these statements, as brazenly as it is stated, comes from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov:
“Above all, do not lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
What is openness? Is it kindness? Gentleness? Is it friendship? Or perhaps it is the desire to possess these qualities? I would wager that the modern definition of openness is quickly becoming none of these things. As I have witnessed the phenomenon expressed in individuals over the last few years, I have quickly determined that those individuals who consider themselves to be the most devoted to openness are the least tolerant of anything that they deem “close-minded.”
In an Atlantic Journal article by Chris Bodenner, The Surprising Revolt at the Most Liberal College in the Country, the problems that persist when social justice becomes pitted against academic excellence are made quite clear. His article discusses Reed College (a private school in Portland), and the challenges faced by students and faculty alike in the storm of RAR (Reedies Against Racism). Bodenner writes:
During Martínez Valdivia’s lecture on Sappho, protesters sat together in the seats wearing all black; they confronted her after class, with at least one of them yelling at the professor about her past trauma, bringing her to tears. “I am intimidated by these students,” Martínez Valdivia later wrote, noting she is “scared to teach courses on race, gender, or sexuality, or even texts that bring these issues up in any way—and I am a gay mixed-race woman.” Such fear, she revealed in an op-ed for The Washington Post, prompted some of her colleagues— “including people of color, immigrants, and tose without tenure”—to avoid lecturing altogether.
The inevitability of the mantra of openness is close-mindedness. In a frenzy to accept everything, the one thing that cannot be tolerated is the desire to not accept everything. That someone can make an assertion into the objective…to definitively state what is or isn’t true, or that something is morally wrong, has become a rather dangerous thing to do. As the lines between right and wrong have become increasingly blurry, they have come to rest on the shoulders of the individual, who at any moment can play the “this is offensive” card, where all other moral obligations are immediately transcended by their own immediate desires.
The very same openness that desires the diversity of thought, the equity of opportunity, and the inclusion of people who are quite different from each other, is the very same phenomenon that terrifies professors and students into silence so as not to be deemed offensive. Beyond that, an openness to “the values of all people” raises an important question. There are certain cultural dispositions that produce inquisitive students who want to habituate themselves towards academic excellence. They are the types to ask professors “what can I do to master the material in your class?” There are certain cultural dispositions that produce students who are apathetic towards their own lives and academic growth. They are the types to ask professors, “what can I do to pass your class?” That the University cannot be explicit in recognizing that certain cultural attitudes produce more engaged students is to suggest it is complicit in the worsening of its product and leave us to question its continued diminishing returns.
This problem has been speed run in the years of the 2020 Virus of unspecified origins. Professors welcomed students back onto campus in the fall of 2020, but the students weren’t terribly interested in participating. Virtual classes persisted, class attendance dropped, and even the ones who showed up were hardly present. University faculty have described obnoxious levels of apathy, and not just towards school work…but everything.
People are bored, disinterested, depressed, anxious, greedy, and self-absorbed. The curious spark in many people's eyes has been replaced by a flat effect. Everyone is connected…the AirPods are always in, playing nonstop music, and social media usage is at its highest in human history, but who is to encourage the students that there is more to University than just going through the motions? By the University’s own hazy standards, all student behavior is equal, so while professors might strongly feel that the world is not as it was just 10 years ago, they lack the teeth to push students towards a more rigorous approach to their lives and future careers.
The professors who have spent the majority of their adult lives studying the subject that they have chosen to teach do not have the patience for 18-24-year-old disinterested children…nor should they. The students are the ones paying for the education, yet their demand is that it be a cheap and easy one (lacking quality in all regards). Then, to top it off, most professors are criminally underpaid for their own expertise and the value they offer an institution, yet their own salaries are diminutive, in order that their university can afford great swaths of nebulous administrators, excessive amenities, and various other non-educational functions.
At this point, bachelor’s degrees are becoming so common that they hold the same weight as a diploma from fifty years ago. With the quality of education ever decreasing, more and more schools lower their standards, drop their test score requirements, and accommodate students of lower capabilities with classes of lower rigor. The Wendell Berry quote in our very first piece comes to mind as I survey the university scene today.
“Scared for health, afraid of death, bored, dissatisfied, vengeful, greedy, ignorant, and gullible—these are the qualities of the ideal consumer. Can we imagine a way of education that would turn passive consumers into active and informed critics, capable of using their own minds in their own defense?”
In our first article, we remarked that there is indeed a thumb on the scale. Not only is it harder for us to delay gratification and find true joy when we are sucked into the void of entertainment-based consumption, but it will be almost impossible to act selflessly if we are increasingly urged to fixate on our own self-indulgence.
Many of our universities are now failing their students. In a march to acquire diverse thought, they have stomped out many of the chances for healthy discourse and debate. In an attempt to be “open” to all ideas, they have found themselves closed to perhaps some of the most important ones. And overall, their students look less and less like “active and informed critics,” and a whole lot more like the ideal consumer.
We aren’t suggesting that we possess the solutions, nor are we confident that we have by any means fully elucidated the problem. We are, however, aware that the university is not what it once was. Much like capitalism’s shifting serpent, the mantra has changed.
The world will only be as strong as our best and brightest. In many industries, a void of intelligent and capable of people could be a matter of life and death. A crisis in the University, is next generation’s crisis in every facet of life. May our hallowed institutions recover some sense of identity, and nobly encourage those who will soon inherit the levers of control in this country.
