Our Politics Differ, But We Agree: Trump’s ‘Compact’ Violates Academic Freedom

We write as scholars of academic freedom to respond to the proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” We are politically diverse and do not share common views about the wisdom of particular proposals contained in the compact. Nor do we agree on the extent or substance of the reforms needed in American higher education today. We are, however, united in our concern about key features of the proposed compact.

The compact’s demands that universities and colleges eschew foreign students with “anti-American values” and that they impose a politically determined diversity within departments and other institutional units are incompatible with the self-determination that colleges and universities must enjoy if they are to pursue their mission as truth-seeking institutions. So also is the compact’s demand that universities and colleges select their students only on the basis of “objective” and “standardized” criteria. Colleges may of course voluntarily elect exclusively to deploy objective criteria (such as standardized-test scores and high-school or college grade-point averages), but these standards should not be imposed on institutions which, operating within the law, wish to include consideration of nonquantifiable criteria in selecting students.

Furthermore, we believe that certain aspects of the compact violate core principles of academic freedom. Academic freedom comes with obligations and limitations, to be sure; its essence, however, involves the liberty of faculty within the bounds of professional competence to teach and to research as they choose. The architect of America’s public-private research partnership, Vannevar Bush, asserted that “scientific progress” requires “the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.” Some of us believe that colleges today are failing in important ways to promote independence of mind and protect academic freedom, but we are united in the conviction that an attempt to solve this problem by government intervention, even if in the form of conditions for eligibility for grants, will be counterproductive.

Irrespective of our particular assessments of how well colleges are doing in promoting a diversity of perspectives, we share the conviction that colleges need to be sites of continuous debate and disagreement. The diversity these institutions should be seeking is, however, bounded by disciplinary norms of scholarly and pedagogical competence. Within a university, the determination of an acceptable range of discussion must be made on the basis of academic criteria, not on the basis of political ideology (whether left or right, and whether imposed from the outside; by governments, for example; or coming from inside the university). Within a university all ideas and hypotheses need to be subject to intense critical evaluation. No ideas, and certainly no political ideologies, should be immune from critique. The demand of the compact that “conservative ideas” be free from belittlement is inconsistent with this requirement. So would a demand, even if generated from within the university, and even if merely informal, that liberal ideas be free from belittlement or insulated from challenges. No ideas within a university should be free from scrutiny and assessment. To immunize ideas based on political standards is to impose an unacceptable test of ideological conformity. Nothing could be further from the spirit and ideals that we, despite our differences, seek for American higher education.

As recognized for over a century, faculty should be able to engage as individual citizens in extramural speech. Faculty should exercise these rights responsibly and professionally, but when they fail to do so, it is not the role of the government or the university to sanction them. Colleges that censor their faculty will quickly undermine the vibrancy and initiative so vital for teaching and research.

The power to punish extramural speech has been abused against both conservative and liberal speakers in the past. The requirement of the compact that universities and colleges censor students and faculty who voice support for “entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organization” imposes overly intrusive regulation of constitutionally protected speech.

Almost all colleges enshrine the basic principles of academic freedom in contractual agreements with faculty. Elements of the compact seek to use financial incentives to pressure colleges to break these contractual agreements. For a university to bend to this pressure and sacrifice the academic freedom of its faculty is to abandon constitutive institutional commitments essential to both education and the pursuit of knowledge.

Much has been gained, and much more is to be gained, by a partnership between the federal government and colleges as institutions of teaching and research. Both partners need to behave responsibly. On the one side, colleges must strictly comply with reasonable grant conditions, including nondiscrimination requirements and civil-rights laws. On the other side, governments must strictly respect the legitimate autonomy of colleges and the academic freedom of their faculty and students.