As our nation moves toward its next election cycle, we call on America’s public universities to make their campuses a “neutral ground” for our nation’s discourse, a place where ideas are exchanged freely and where evidence is examined critically. Universities simply cannot stand by as our nation abdicates the middle ground in politics. The center must be taken and held at all costs, welcoming all comers to participate in the dialogue.
Our new book, Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Common Good, surrounds a series of interviews conducted with land-grant university presidents, the leaders of those public higher education institutions first founded during the American Civil War. The mission given to our nation’s first public universities in the 19th century was to bring science, technology, and the arts to the American people. Our book examines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the 21st-century mission of what we affectionately call “Mr. Lincoln’s Universities.”
Among the nation’s land-grant schools are four dozen of the largest and best public universities in America, including such prominent names as Cornell, MIT, Penn State, Rutgers, Ohio State, Texas A&M, West Virginia, and the University of California. Add to this a significant number of historically black colleges and universities and tribal colleges — in all, almost 300 institutions.
The interviews we conducted for our book coincided with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and many of the presidents expressed frustration about the ways in which universities were being portrayed by the media as being overly “left-leaning” on the political spectrum. We became curious about the degree to which public perceptions of this bias matched reality.
Lo and behold, the polling data from the election indicated that, in general, those communities immediately surrounding college campuses displayed a strong tendency to vote Democratic. Interestingly, those campuses that did lean leftward often existed in a “bubble” within their home county. That is, while the campus voted Democratic, the remainder of the county displayed either more balanced or more Republican tendencies.
We had the opportunity to discuss these findings with the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone, who noted “these universities were little islands of Clinton supporters, surrounded by virtual seas of Trump supporters.” It would be economic suicide, Barone said, for universities to be seen by the public as politically slanted so heavily toward the left, especially in states where so many prospective students hail from vicinities that leaned rightward.
We couldn’t agree more, and not just for economic reasons. As a country, we are at another crossroads, another point where we can either work together or, alternatively, allow ourselves to become so alienated from one another that we suffer through another period of prolonged divisiveness. To be clear, we are not looking to change people’s political affiliations. Rather, we are calling on our public universities to remember their heritage as institutions designed to serve the most pressing needs of the American people.
This means redoubling efforts to provide fair and balanced opportunities for all sides to be heard on campuses, especially because neither side in today’s politically charged climate holds the upper hand on an ethical or moral level, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Those who would proclaim “fake news” are, as often as not, guilty of contributing to the suppression of fact, scientific or otherwise. And those who would declare “safe spaces” and demand “trigger warnings” are making a mockery of free speech on campuses.
Our call to action, now and beyond the upcoming 2018 election, is centered on the notion that we must reassert the original role of the land-grant institution as the “people’s university.” We can and should be counted on to be the adults in the room, pulling people back together time and again to discuss the critical issues of the day.
We must be the open marketplace of ideas emanating from all corners of the political spectrum while simultaneously providing access to scientific tools and processes in ways that help sort out facts from fallacies. Paraphrasing some of Lincoln’s most immortal words, we should be universities of the people, by the people, and for the people.
And that means all people, not just those we happen to agree with politically.
E. Gordon Gee is president of West Virginia University. Stephen M. Gavazzi is a professor of Human Development and Family Science at Ohio State University. The two are co-authors of Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Public Good.
