Two members of the American Enterprise Institute are advocating that colleges should lose federal funding if they do not uphold free speech.
In an opinion column published by the Wall Street Journal, Frederick M. Hess, a resident scholar and the director of education policy studies, and Grant Addison, a program manager of education policy studies, suggest a new approach to determine the eligibility of a university to keep federal funding.
“Here’s a straightforward idea that would be easy to put into practice,” they wrote. “Require schools to assure free speech and inquiry as a condition of accepting federal research funding … Leveraging federal money is one way to discourage campus speech restrictions. Federal research funds should come with contractual provisions that obligate the recipient schools to guarantee open discourse.”
Hess and Addison point out that students majoring in biology and engineering would be at risk of losing funding for research under this proposal. They hope this would force students to engage more fully in political conversations on campus.
“Tying research funding to free speech would give a stake to serious scientists in fields like engineering and biology. These scholars traditionally have left the campus culture wars to their more politicized colleagues in the humanities and social sciences … Under this plan, they would suddenly have an incentive to help push higher education back to its intellectual roots.”
Hess and Addison discuss the mounting number of campus controversies centered on free speech listing speech codes, student investigations, and campus speakers being shouted down at events. However, they write, there are few people making suggestions as to how to rectify these growing problems.
Threatening universities with the loss of federal funding would pull colleges back to focusing on freedom of expression and academics. For Hess and Addison, this is a worthwhile pursuit.
Aubree Poole
Aubree Poole is a contributor for Red Alert Politics who enjoys traveling and composing music.
