Conservative criticisms of the modern university are as old as modern conservatism itself. And yet criticism has not led to a reformation of the university. Quite the opposite: Despite conservative complaints, our universities have continued to drift even farther away from the ideas and forms that allowed Western Civilization to give birth to the academy in the first place.
But perhaps we’re nearing a tipping point. The rise in student debt, combined with the increase in campus radicalism, has caused the public’s once-durable support for higher education to slip. A solid majority of Republicans now thinks universities have a “negative impact” on society. But it’s not just Republicans. A survey in early 2017 found that just 14 percent of Americans had a great deal of confidence in higher education—this down from 42 percent in 2005.
We can trace this public skepticism to a genuine transformation in higher education. Scholars have documented the professoriate’s marked left-wing turn over the past decade. We’ve now seen violence break out at premier institutions such as the University of Missouri, Middlebury, and Berkeley. Formerly radical schools such as Evergreen State in Washington have gone from “extremely progressive” to quasi-insane.
And then there mushrooming culture of “diversity” and “inclusion.”
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Superficially, the twin ideals of “diversity” and “inclusion” seem beyond criticism as educational values. But in practice, they’ve simply been the cover story for a new, creeping totalitarianism.
Offices and curricula dedicated to diversity and inclusion propagate the idea that inequality for favored minorities (blacks, the disabled, women, homosexuals, transgenders, Muslims, immigrants, etc.) is traceable to victimization and oppression. Under this theory, the purpose of higher education becomes making victim groups cognizant of their oppression, accusing oppressors of unearned privileges, and promising a world of liberation if oppressive institutions can be destroyed.
Take Boise State University, my academic home: Like other campuses, it’s building an apparatus of victimhood. BSU has established an Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion, overseeing efforts to make sure all on campus feel welcomed and celebrated. Students are encouraged to join clubs based on their ethnic or gender identity and to stroll through the “Tunnel of Oppression.” (Not a joke.) Celebrating diversity will also be the focus of required classes in the university’s curriculum. More reforms are in the offing.
Last summer, as efforts to build a victimhood culture were beginning at BSU, I published a series of reports and articles for the Heritage Foundation about feminism and transgenderism.
Parts of the campus exploded in denunciation, led by those charged with celebrating diversity on campus. In a piece posted on the School of Public Service’s web page, the director of Student Diversity and Inclusion, Francisco Salinas, tried to link my scholarship to the murderous riot in Charlottesville (as well as “genocide”). Salinas continued to suggest that “Not every person who agrees with Yenor’s piece is likely to become an espoused Neo-Nazi, but likely every Neo-Nazi would agree with the substance of Yenor’s piece.” No one at BSU repudiated this denunciation.
In fact, the response was quite the opposite: Following Salinas’s lead, several students penned articles calling for my dismissal. Posters popped up around campus demanding that the university “FIRE YENOR” because of the “BLOOD ON HIS HANDS.” The School of Social Work labeled my supposedly “misogynist, homophobic and transphobic” works “hate speech” in the student newspaper.
Many faculty senators chimed in, accusing me of harboring the holy trinity of sexual phobias. Several faculty senators demanded that I be investigated for hate speech and that the university declare that my scholarly writings flouted university policies. Fortunately, cooler heads have, so far, prevailed in the faculty senate.
My story is depressingly familiar to those who have followed higher education closely in the past several years. I’m protected by tenure, but will Boise State students who would debate—or even defend—traditional marriage and family feel free to share their views after watching my show trial? I doubt it.
But this isn’t even really about traditional marriage or the family. It’s about the spread of illiberal attitudes among radical students and the administrators who coddle them. And universities, including BSU, are doing nothing to combat, and much to inflame, such illiberalism.
Can something be done to counter this latest wave of campus radicalism? Can state and national legislators translate the public’s frustration into higher education reform? Having been through the gauntlet myself, I think the answer is yes.
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Those interested in reforming higher education should aim first and foremost to improve state universities because public universities are directed through state boards of education and supported through tax dollars and grants. It is the point of maximum leverage and possibility.
The short- and medium-term goals for state legislatures should be to protect free speech on campus and to scale back—or end—campus victimization initiatives at the administrative level. The long-term goal must be to cultivate and promote intellectual diversity on campus through initiatives designed to attract those willing to engage in a conversation of ideas and evidence.
State legislators might think this is a hopeless task. After all, university advocates will tell tell them that accreditation concerns virtually compel colleges to take up the mantle of this victimization and tenure makes it difficult to change the behavior of professors. Add to that the fact that most state universities operate under something like a State Board of Education, so they aren’t under the direct control of the legislature. But none of this actually means that state legislators are powerless. In truth, they have a great deal of power in this realm.
The first step for state legislatures is to take up model legislation from the Goldwater Institute that affirms the importance of free speech on campus, prevents administrators from disinviting speakers, provides for disciplinary actions against students who interfere with speakers invited to campus, and puts administrators on notice that any attempt to stifle debate will be met with disciplinary action. Many states have passed such legislation; all of them should.
Second, legislators can apply recent scattered lessons in budgetary and regulatory powers to reform public universities. For example, when the University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s Diversity office sponsored a “Sex Week” and provided pronoun programing, the Tennessee legislature diverted the entirety of the office’s budget to minority engineering scholarships for the 2016-2017 academic year.
The University of Missouri experienced violent protests in the wake of the riots in nearby Ferguson and faculty members were involved in abetting “the muscle” of the protests. As a result, the state legislature cut the university’s budget by $7.8 million dollars and has held the line in successive years. Private donations and enrollments also waned. The result has been a redoubling of efforts to reach out to campus conservatives in the name of civility and institutional mission.
Those are reactive measures; there are proactive pathways for reform, too. In Wisconsin last year, state senators proposed prohibiting the state university system from spending money on “diversity, sensitivity, and cultural fluency” training for students, faculty, and staff—and from creating voluntary programs with similar goals, but funded with student fees.
It didn’t work—Wisconsin’s higher education budget, was, like most state budgets, an omnibus spending bill, making it difficult to reach in and pull out one budget item among hundreds. But the Wisconsin approach points the way: The end goal should be to defund the diversity efforts at public universities, full stop. Within the budget process if possible. The language of such legislation need not be complicated. It could be something as simple as: “No state university shall budget, allocate, commit for expenditure or expend any funding or student fees for Offices of Student Diversity and Inclusion or their successors.”
Deprived of centralized offices whose purpose for existing is to identify racial and sexual grievances, the campus victimization culture would be deprived of its official adult sponsors. Which could be a mortal blow.
Finally, state legislatures can seek ways to build oases on campuses for students interested in genuinely critical education. Arizona State’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership—which is funded directly through the legislature—may provide a model. This program brings balance to campus through a teaching staff that offers a curriculum based on great books and enduring questions.
Conservatives have spent decades exposing the illiberal character of modern campuses. They have spent considerably less time thinking about how to treat, rather than simply diagnose, the problem. It’s time for that to change.
Scott Yenor is a professor of political science at Boise State University and author of Family Politics (Baylor 2011) and David Hume’s Humanity (Palgrave, 2016).
