The Storm Ahead

On July 19, Nils Gilman posted a thread on social media that opened with the following warning:

I think most of my friends in academia haven't really wrapped their head around what is coming down the pike if Trump gets a second term.

He continued as follows:

Think what Chris Rufo is doing in Florida, at national scale. Stripping NGOs with more than $5B in assets of their nonprofit status would be a first step—this would be popular in several ideological quarters—but the larger strategy would be to perform a “cashectomy” on universities, especially humanities and social science departments.

Rufo’s response was simple and direct: “you have less than six months.”

That was four months ago.

Now that the priorities of the next administration are coming into clearer view, it is worth pulling on this thread to see what might lie in wait.

Gilman’s reference to Florida presumably concerns New College, which has been thoroughly transformed over the past couple of years following the appointment of six new trustees (including Rufo). The goal is to build a “bastion of conservatism” modeled on Hillsdale College in Michigan, and early steps in this direction involved the elimination of the diversity office, the gender studies department, and gender-neutral bathrooms.

A small school in a public university system is more vulnerable to state action than large private institutions with enormous endowments, but this doesn’t mean that Gilman was exaggerating. A statement by the President-elect that was posted by Elon Musk yesterday clearly identifies means and ends of the incoming administration:

The time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical left and we will do that. Our secret weapon will be the college accreditation system… real standards… will include defending the American tradition, Western Civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions… removing… diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucrats, offering options for accelerated and low-cost degrees, providing meaningful job placement and career services, and implementing college entrance and exit exams… Furthermore, I will direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases… schools that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity will not only have their endowments taxed, but through budget reconciliation I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.

Changes pursued through litigation are time-consuming and costly, but these costs will not be difficult for the federal government to bear. Universities, on the other hand, will definitely feel the pinch. They will be tempted (and perhaps even consider it their fiduciary responsibility) to reach settlements.

The Stand Columbia Society has estimated that federal actions under the new administration could cost the University 3.5 billion dollars a year, which exceeds half its annual operating budget. Two pressure points that can be activated immediately are federal research grants and international student visas. Columbia receives over a billion dollars in government grants and contracts each year, and much of this inflow could be interrupted by executive action at the major funding agencies. Tuition and fees bring in about $1.5 billion each year, with about half of this revenue estimated to come from the roughly 14,000 international students currently enrolled. Denial or delay of visa applications could put a significant dent in this flow of funds.

The goal here is not to impoverish these institutions but to bring them to heel.

What should universities do in anticipation of these efforts? My view is that they should recognize how they are perceived by the public at large, understand that these perceptions are not without foundation, engage in a concerted effort at mission-aligned reform, and then let the chips fall where they may. These changes will not turn universities into conservative academies, and will not satisfy their fiercest critics, but they may raise their standing in the eyes of the electorate and help them become stronger, healthier, and better able to perform their core function of generating and transmitting knowledge.

There are three dimensions on which productive reforms could be undertaken—speech, admissions, and the tracking of achievement.

On speech, a first step would be the adoption and consistent application of institutional neutrality and principles of academic freedom. But this will not address the most serious problems with speech on campus, which stem from self-censorship, the policing of language, presumptions of bad faith, and ad hominem attacks. Greg Lukianoff has recently argued that “institutions of higher education should protect their activists, but they should also prioritize recruiting scholars [with] an open, curious, intellectually humble, and receptive mindset.” This seems like sensible advice.

On admissions, the criteria for selection have to be transparent and defensible in plain language, and universities should restore the requirement that standardized test scores be submitted with applications. These scores need not be used in a mechanical way, and can even help admissions officers “identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants.” As Roland Fryer has pointed out, what he endured to achieve his scores (a father in prison and a mother he’d never met) provide “important context.” The late Lani Guinier made a similar point about the manner in which the Reverend John Brooks hand picked a remarkable cohort of students (including Justice Clarence Thomas) for admission to the College of Holy Cross, based on “ambition, leadership potential, and strong character rather than the right family pedigree or the right test scores.” Since scores need not be used in a mechanical way, and can be combined with other sources of information, the test-optional policy presents a puzzle and invites suspicion about the priorities and motives of academic leaders.

On achievement, it is crucially important for universities to link the lifelong accomplishments of their graduates with their original application profiles to see what does and does not work in furthering the institutional mission. William Bowen and Derek Bok argued almost a generation ago that “the freedom to exercise judgement in choosing candidates on the basis of criteria beyond the usual measures of earlier academic achievement carries with it an obligation to monitor the results of the admissions process,” including “graduation rates, academic performance, and subsequent contributions to society.”

Contributions in later life are especially important to track, given that highly selective institutions seek out “students who seem especially likely to utilize their education to make valuable or distinctive contributions to their professions and to the welfare of society.” Columbia’s mission statement (as inscribed on its iconic Low library) references the advancement of the public good. Stanford was founded to render the greatest possible service to mankind. And the University of Texas at Austin proclaims that its core purpose is to transform lives for the benefit of society. To determine whether admissions criteria are consistent with these goals, it is necessary to “identify the kinds of traits in the applicant pool that are predictive of mission-aligned success.”

One thing that critics of American higher education often lose sight of (or choose to ignore) is that this is one of the few sectors of the economy where we continue to enjoy global leadership if not dominance. There is strong demand from every corner of the world for what our universities have to offer. They are major export engines and magnets for talent. But if they are seen by our political leaders as enemies deserving aggressive attack, they may end up substantially diminished.

This is what Nils Gilman expects. The thread with which I began this post continues as follows:

Such a move would, at the limit, spell the end of the post-WWII global hegemony of American academia. For better or worse, that hegemony—which afforded the United States vast & crucial epistemic advantages—was a cornerstone of American hard & soft power. It's about to go. And once it's gone, it ain't coming back. As we know from Germany—whose hegemonic position atop the global academic research hierarchy before 1933 was arguably as dominant as that of the U.S. since 1945—once an academic system is destroyed, it's very hard to reconstitute. The paradise of postwar American academia has been much denigrated, and rightly so. But let me tell you: we’ll miss it after it gets paved over and turned into a parking lot.

Will the incoming administration kill the golden goose? We will just have to wait and see. But those inside the walls would do well to take a break from training their fire on each other, and focus attention on the storm ahead.