I’ve been a college president and higher education needs to embrace diversity of beliefs
"The hostages are back."
This simple declaration, delivered by President Donald Trump in his Oct. 13 speech in Jerusalem, is more than a mere statement of fact. It is a historic — and much-needed — reprieve from the war that has been tearing the Middle East apart for more than two years now, beginning with Hamas’s massacre of Israeli citizens and continuing with Israel’s military operation in Gaza.
Now that a ceasefire has thankfully been achieved, and Israelis and Palestinians alike can focus on recovering and rebuilding, you would hope life would return to normal on American college campuses, too, after several years of violent demonstrations, illegal encampments and widespread chaos.
But that, sadly, may not be the case.
At George Washington University, for example, Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Hamas group, recently staged a protest not to cheer on the end of hostilities but to advance further grievances against the Jewish state and promise more disruption to life on campus. The same was true at many other colleges and universities nationwide on the second anniversary of Oct. 7. And, sadly, too many educators and administrators are still doing too little to restore order and make sure that their campuses provide a welcoming and nurturing environment for all.
This continuing, intolerable situation, explains why Trump made our universities one of his administration’s top priorities. Just the other month, for example, Columbia University, accused by the Trump administration of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in failing to protect its Jewish students, settled with the federal government for $200 million.
It does not take a former university president, who just concluded 45 years of service, to realize that these actions reflect a very serious problem in the way universities conduct their affairs. And as we are still only midway in the fall semester, there is still plenty of time to make resolutions and commit to correcting what must be corrected. Three measures in particular beckon.
First, we ought to stop and ask ourselves a simple, yet profound, question: what is the mission of American universities? If the answer is merely training a narrowing cadre of globally privileged young men and women to hold a thinning number of high-paying positions in corporations and organizations, we shouldn’t be too surprised if our universities continue to find themselves losing trust, respect, clout and applicants. Thankfully, there is a better answer, one that has guided our best institutions from the first: American universities were created to train and challenge young Americans to be proud, committed, informed and industrious citizens of this great nation.
It is a mission that has not changed much, or at all, in a quarter of a millennium, and we would do well to re-affirm it. There are currently 1.1 million foreign students in American universities, most of whom pay full tuition. But universities must address both the needs of American students and their foreign-born peers, while expanding their efforts to welcome populations not traditionally fortunate enough to enjoy an excellent academic education. And, most importantly, they must also deliver a curriculum thick with history, civics and other classes that prepare the next generation to take its eventual place at the helm.
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Second, academia must wean itself, urgently, off its addiction to inflamed ideological convictions. If we are truly interested in diversity — and we should be, because every study at our disposal suggests that diversity makes for greater and more meaningful achievements — we should remember that diversity is also intellectual viewpoint diversity.
EDUCATION SECRETARY LINDA MCMAHON TOUTS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S $200M SETTLEMENT 'TEMPLATE'
Unless our campuses become arenas for the free and unfettered exchange of ideas, unless they enable young men and women to run into a wide array of worldviews and convictions, they will be little more than airless partisan strongholds desperate to affirm their own dogma, no matter how errant.
And finally, and most pressingly, universities, having demonstrated that they can stand up for academic freedom, must now become equally comfortable fighting for academic responsibility. The sights that we have seen for more than two years, coming out of some of our most celebrated schools, are appalling: deans berating and mocking students for standing up to bigotry, or university employees held hostage by playacting "revolutionaries."
None of the above can be tolerated for a moment longer on any American campus, which means that every college and university must now convene its wisest and most committed officers and ask itself whether its processes and procedures do indeed deliver apt protections, and whether the university is geared to meet its academic responsibilities.
None of these steps, to be sure, are easy. All are essential. As anyone truly dedicated to education will tell you, it is in moments of great crisis that great opportunities usually arise. Ours is at hand. Let us not squander it.