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.”