Sometimes the Right Is Right

Universities should work with right-leaning critics who want to strengthen academia’s distinctive culture, Jenna Silber Storey and Benjamin Storey write.

By Jenna Silber Storey and Benjamin Storey

Inside Higher Education

April 9, 2024


Universities today feel understandably besieged. State legislators are intervening in curricular debates, members of Congress are taking aim at university presidents, and public support for college is at historic lows. Because criticism of the university from the outside comes most intensely from the right, and professors and administrators on the inside are mostly on the left, it is natural for insiders to respond to external critics by appealing to partisan passions, summoning one another to the barricades, and attempting to repel the barbarian onslaught.


But framing the conflict in simple culture war terms misses important distinctions between the kinds of proposals the right is making for university reform. While some of those proposals would dismantle the university’s exceptional culture and are reasonable to oppose, others go with the university’s distinctive grain and deserve a more receptive hearing. University insiders should make an effort to distinguish between these two different kinds of proposals, even if they are packed into the same bill.


Those proposals coming from the right that would undermine the necessary distinctiveness of the university often pressure the university to conform to the norms of the commercial democracy beyond its gates. Efforts to abolish tenure seek to subject professors to the vicissitudes of at-will employment most others have to face. Drives to eliminate instruction in areas without immediate vocational relevance such as foreign languages and the humanities seek to regulate academic life by a narrowly construed standard of “return on investment.” Attempts to ban instruction in controversial or “divisive concepts” insinuate that intellectual life is political combat by other means.


Such proposals would undermine the university’s character as a community with a distinctive purpose and institutional structures to match. As Dan Edelstein has written, the university’s distinctive goal is learning, so its internal structures should advance scholarly integrity and a culture of wide-ranging debate. By supporting institutions with this exceptional purpose and the internal standards necessary to advance it, the larger society serves itself, albeit “indirectly,” as Robert Nisbet put it. It does so by creating a subculture in which learning, intellectual integrity and reasoned debate have primacy—just as profit, innovation and convenience have primacy in the business world, and power, security and justice have primacy in politics. Proposals that would make the university more closely resemble the rest of our culture would impoverish that culture by making it more homogenous.


Other proposals coming from the right, however, reflect an understanding of the university’s distinctive mission and can serve to strengthen it by giving professors and students the intellectual breathing room they need to do their work better. These proposals include rules to protect freedom of inquiry, to maintain institutional neutrality, and to protect conservative and religious student groups from undue interference. Some advance novel institutional innovations to help colleges better realize their aspirations to promote intellectual freedom and integrity, such as the creation of an independent judicial branch of the university.


But the proposals coming from the right that would most significantly assist universities in strengthening their distinctive cultures while regaining broad public trust are those that seek to help a more capacious range of ideas find a home on campus. Higher education’s trust problem is closely linked to its perceived partisanship; even Americans who love their alma maters do not like to see them become sectarian shops. Academics themselves increasingly recognize that there are important questions that go unasked, papers that go unwritten, and courses that go untaught when the faculty and administrative ranks of the university are drawn, by margins of at least ten to one, from a single side of the political aisle.


However, the attempt to rebuild viewpoint diversity while respecting the university’s distinctive culture is especially difficult, since it necessarily touches on core structural features of academic life such as faculty oversight of hiring and the curriculum. One good strategy to do so has been pursued by the new schools and centers of civic thought recently launched in public universities. All of the currently existing schools of civic thought have been created by Republican-led state legislatures or governing boards, but are led by serious scholars with impeccable records who are building academic programs with high standards. They furthermore attend to a need that is recognized on both sides of the political aisle—to restore university-level civic education—while offering courses in subjects that are especially likely to attract right-leaning scholars, like constitutional law, diplomatic history, and moral philosophy. If the professors designing these schools succeed in showing that their programs respect the difference between scholarship and propaganda—raising questions that might otherwise go unasked on campus, but then following those questions wherever they lead—they will provide a significant example of how the university can reform itself in response to fair criticism without betraying the culture of learning that it exists to embody.


While those concerned with protecting the university’s exceptional character are rightly wary of outside political pressures that interfere with academic life, it is worth remembering that the insider/outsider distinction is not adequate grounds for determining what helps or harms the university’s pursuit of its particular purpose. Forces from inside the university can threaten its work as much as forces from outside. Such internal forces have given us the replication crisis and the rise of campus antisemitism, and have made university teaching into a politically one-sided profession. As the first president of Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Coit Gilman, put it in his inaugural address, “universities easily fall into ruts.” It is often impossible to emerge from a rut without a nudge from outside. Those inside the university should welcome the efforts of reformers pushing the university from the outside when they are pushing the university toward a more complete realization of its integral purpose.


The on-campus left and the off-campus right too often treat the struggle over the university as a zero-sum game: a contest in which heeding the concerns of one side of our deeply divided politics necessarily comes at the price of alienating the other. Wise university leaders will recognize that it is in the nature of communities dedicated to learning and wide-ranging debate to be broader-minded than that. By demonstrating their openness to constructive critique and meaningful reform when it is justified, universities can rebuild some of the legitimacy they will need to resist proposals that threaten to dismantle their essential character.


https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2024/04/09/colleges-should-work-right-leaning-critics-opinion

Davidson College Republican and Davidson College Libertarian Presidents: We stand for free speech at Davidson

March 19, 2025
By Gabriel Russ-Nachamie ’27 and Stephen Walker ’26 The Davidsonian March 19, 2025 Davidson’s public commitment to free expression is admirable, but recent anti-speech actions by the College contradict its guarantees to students and set dangerous pro-censorship precedents. This paradox threatens to stifle the open discourse we as a community all grow and benefit from. For context, a 2021 press release announcing Davidson’s commitment to freedom of expression states the College intends “to build a culture where everyone can participate and be heard” and acknowledges that “freedom of expression can’t exist when some people are barred from the conversation” solely on account of allegations that their speech is seen as wrong or offensive. Davidson’s pledge in the free expression statement itself commits the College to upholding protections of student expression for all because “Dissenting voices cannot and should not be censored.” Recent actions against the College Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter and its president, Cynthia Huang ‘25, threaten to undo these efforts in ways harmful to each and every one of us. In a letter published by YAF’s Davidson chapter, the College accused Huang of “Harassment” for publishing political content online and distributing pamphlets that “allegedly includes misinformation” promoting “Islamophobia” and “Transphobia” that made students report feeling “threatened and unsafe on campus.” Davidson offered to “resolve” the matter by forcing Huang to either admit responsibility for the alleged violation and agree to an “Accountability Plan” demanding action to avoid further sanction or a “Code of Responsibility Council Hearing,” which is reserved for actions constituting “serious prohibited conduct in a single incident or a persistent pattern of less severe prohibited conduct,” according to Davidson’s student handbook. The content that triggered this response was political material responding to ideas and policies the YAF chapter disagreed with. It is wrong to classify disagreement as harassment simply because the disagreement “offended” students. The content in question was meant to spark discourse surrounding certain political policies and ideologies. According to Davidson’s own standards, this content should be protected speech. The content that Huang faces potential sanctions for did not explicitly or implicitly promote any action against specific people or groups on account of their identities. For example, the pamphlet from YAF notes the link between Islamic fundamentalist theology and Hamas. However, this is not “Islamophobic” but a historical and scholarly argument about justifications of violence that rely upon religious interpretations. In fact, Hamas is an acronym that stands for the “Islamic Resistance Movement” and the group uses Islamic theology to justify their actions. Discussing the impact of religion on violence, whether it be Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, is protected speech and not bigotry. The club did not in any way target students and the material was freely available for anyone to engage with or ignore. Serious political disagreement on issues always has and will continue to offend individuals who dislike competing opinions. However, a small group of students being “offended” never justifies institutional backlash against political speech. We are not the only individuals or groups concerned about this restriction on speech. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan national organization dedicated to protecting free speech for all Americans, recently sent a letter to President Doug Hicks ‘90. FIRE urged Davidson to drop the charges against the YAF chapter and change its policies to align with the Chicago Principles of free speech, commonly known as the Chicago Statement which Davidson has allegedly committed to upholding. Adjudicative bodies should not base their decisions purely on perceptions motivated by personal feelings and biases. These actions by the college against YAF risk violating Davidson’s commitment to ensuring free speech and robust debate among students. No threats or harassment against students were included in YAF’s content, and anybody who does not like what they have to say is not being forced to engage with their content in any way. The only discernible motivation for going forward with sanctions is that YAF is a political minority that has questioned political orthodoxies in a way that is upsetting to others. The College’s Commitment to Freedom of Expression was made to protect this type of conduct. The Commitment directly states, “Davidson College’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate, discussion, and deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even most members of the college community to be offensive or unwise.” Sanctioning YAF for political arguments violates our rights as students and has dangerous implications. The aforementioned press release announcing Davidson’s commitment identifies “self-censorship” as a problem for Davidson and a motivator for its creation of the Commitment to Freedom of Expression statement. When students see that the only person who has spoken out against the majority in a political debate is facing sanctions because others did not like the content that student shared, said administrative action sends a message that dissent is unacceptable. This potentially triggers more self-censorship among all those who may disagree with this and countless other political ideas. As the presidents of the Davidson College Republicans and the Davidson College Libertarians, we stand for the free speech rights of all Davidson students. As a leading liberal arts school receiving taxpayer dollars, Davidson has publicly committed itself to upholding free speech rights for students and faculty. We call on the College to uphold its proclaimed principles and reject punishing students and political clubs for speech that some might disagree with or find offensive. We call on the College administration to change the Code of Responsibility to align with the Chicago Statement, as FIRE argued is crucial for Davidson in its letter to President Hicks. Finally, we firmly reject the anti-intellectual, adolescent mindset that has motivated the support for YAF’s censorship. Unwillingness to coexist with peers you may disagree with is unbecoming of students at such a prestigious institution like Davidson. You can’t take away your peers’ rights just because people’s feelings are hurt. Gabriel Russ-Nachamie ‘27 is an economics and mathematics double major from Lincolnton, NC and can be reached for comment at garussnachamie@davidson.edu. Stephen Walker ‘26 is a political science and English double major from Philadelphia, PA and can be reached for comment at stwalker@davidson.edu. https://thedavidsonian.news/1063/perspectives/davidson-college-republican-and-davidson-college-libertarian-presidents-we-stand-for-free-speech-at-david son/

Jeff Bezos Note to the Washington Post

February 26, 2025
"I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:"

Former Governor Weighs In on the Future of DEI at Davidson

February 26, 2025
By James (Jim) Martin '57 The Davidsonian February 26, 2025 As a loyal alumnus, I love Davidson College. There are few things here that I don’t love. Perhaps you feel the same, for similar or different reasons. While privileged to teach chemistry here for twelve years, I got into politics as a Mecklenburg County Commissioner. For five decades since retiring from the faculty to become a member of the US Congress, I followed Davidson mostly in passive ways. My annual giving was modest until I was in a position to increase my donation and deliver a significant gift from Duke Energy while on its Board. This and generous friends endowed Professor Malcolm Campbell’s multidisciplinary Genomics Program and a chair in chemistry honored to support Professor Erland Stevens. While Governor of North Carolina, I received an honorary degree and spoke at graduation. All this is a self-aggrandizing way to say I’m part of Davidson College and fully committed to helping it become the best it can be. This was tested when our Trustees decided that the President and the majority of Trustees need no longer be Christian. I joined eleven other former Trustees in a statement objecting to what we believed would undermine Davidson’s tradition and Statement of Purpose. This angered some alumni, especially recent graduates. You might be amused at how many defended the change simply by denouncing us as “old white men.” This trifling trifecta of accursed identity was true, but ignored thoughtful reasoning. This drew me to an even smaller, unofficial group of concerned alumni, Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse ( www.dftdunite.org ). Since 2018, its founders had petitioned Davidson College to adopt the Chicago Principles on Freedom of Expression. Pleading from a conservative viewpoint, they got little respect. Even with support from hundreds of alumni representing a wider range of interests, ages and viewpoints, DFTD continued to be disregarded. In 2021, President Carol Quillen heeded a similar appeal from several faculty members, whose interests weren’t aligned with ours. She appointed me to a group of six chaired by Professor Issac Bailey to compose a Davidson vision for academic freedom of expression reflecting Davidson’s commitment to ideals of diversity. The resulting document containing every element of the Chicago Principles was deferred until the arrival of new President Doug Hicks. With his calm inspiration, earnest discussions among faculty won growing acceptance. In early 2023, “Davidson’s Commitment to Freedom of Expression” was affirmed by a nearly unanimous vote. DFTD found ways to support greater diversity of viewpoints on campus. A student chapter of Free Speech Alliance was founded and DFTD was pleased to provide funding for their and others’ invited speakers. This led individual students to entrust us with suspected violations of their academic freedom. Most alarmingly, we heard about several dozen academic courses with syllabi requiring students to confess themselves “oppressors,” repent and atone . . . religious conditions irrelevant to the subject matter. Ironically, DEI is Latin for “gods.” We learned from other students about an astonishing “mandatory” order that all Davidson athletes attend a one-sided, provocative documentary entitled, “I’m not Racist…am I?” Its message? If you are white, you are racist. If you’re non-white, you can’t be racist. Melanin matters. While we don’t object to anyone studying such controversial notions, we protested the coercive way highly partisan objectives were imposed as a condition for participating. After several months with no assurance that our concerns were taken seriously, we reported this to our subscribers. Our purpose was to bring about a remedy, not punish or accuse any individual as was making national headlines at other schools. We figured some may have felt they were doing what was expected of them. One of us mentioned this campus issue in an interview on Fox News. This exploded into far wider circulation than we had foreseen or intended. Faculty and administration were flooded with vile communications from hundreds of anonymous individuals. At the time, this threatened to damage the reputation of Davidson College as well as DFTD, likely among opposing factions. I see no consequent injury against the College today, and DFTD’s standing has become more respected or tolerated even among some who dispute us. We made a point to welcome Dr. Chloe Poston as DEI Vice President at Davidson. She listened to our encouragement to explore ways to reform those abuses. Was it fair, in the cause of including diversity, to blame students for past discriminatory practices for which they bore no personal responsibility? We were pleased to discover, not long after the fall term began, that every course whose syllabus had defamed students as “oppressors” had dropped the insulting indoctrination. To us, this was good news, reflecting a less divisive and more welcoming attitude on campus. We commend those among faculty, administration, and students whose thoughtful contributions led to these corrections. Other reforms may need attention. Do any departments still require DEI allegiance in ways that filter out conservative scholars? Do students or faculty still feel intimidated to self-censor their thoughts and questions? Will Davidson adopt institutional neutrality for ideological controversies? There’s now the question whether Davidson‘s more welcoming, less doctrinaire approach to inclusion of a wider diversity of attributes, cultures and viewpoints will survive the national backlash against DEI. The federal government has declared a campaign to eradicate any trace of it. Among our DFTD membership we’ve learned to respect divergent views among friends, but I can tell you there is division over this. Some are convinced the same old divisive malpractices will simply be continued behind new titles, concealing the enforcement of identity politics. Others trust that Davidson’s new approach can be a positive model for others. Davidson can demonstrate a standard of healthier assurance that every student, without regard to their culture, religion, attitude, politics or appearance, will be genuinely welcomed and encouraged to grow intellectually, socially and spiritually. Large universities with massive DEI staffing must choose to fold or fight. If Davidson can restore diversity’s original ideals without the partisan excesses, other elite colleges might choose to defend this more sensible approach. The Davidsonian 2/26/25 by Davidsonian - Issuu
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