Here is where I would recommend legislators start: eliminate as a matter of law all non-essential designations in hiring and university admissions. In short, forbid asking anyone what their race or religion is, and forbid maintaining such designations, even in private databases, on the penalty of law. Including the US census.
We can imagine the crying and gnashing of teeth which the race hustlers (“anti-racists”) will emit when faced with such a development. And we know where the great mass of Americans of all colors and faiths will land on such a question. What we do not yet know is whether or not our legislators will stand for the color blind world they claim to desire. Let’s find out.
Before you charge into the lion's den you need to think about your opponent's strongest weapon and how you plan on countering it. In this case the Left superweapon and undefeated heavyweight champion of American politics and discourse is the Bigotry Accusation.
Every person who thinks about getting involved in any of this needs to prepare for what comes next and how they will react: what do you do when social media unleashes its avalanche of Bigotry Accusations? When your wife/husband says all their friends think you're a "racist"? When all your kids' friends and future colleges think their parent is a "racist"? When you're tarred till death with the scarlet R?
Anyone paying attention to either American academia or letters in the past say 25 years (I'm thinking from the Sokal Hoax onward) knows that Left academia has taken over dept after dept and successfuly deconstructed and dismantled so much of our cultural heritage (and the transmission thereof), but no one has had the nerve to launch a frontal attack and get skunk-sprayed by the inevitable charges of Unbearable Whiteness and causing harms to the poor sad marginalized (cue ASPCA commercial soundtrack).
No Republican in any major capacity, even ones from states under complete Republican control, has had the stomach for cleaning out our academic madrassas and their cadres of Victim Studies jihadists, except maybe DeSantis recently. Instead every single Republican governor, legislature and trustee have sat back thinking about tee times while an entire generation was taught to despise them and the entire history of our country.
And if they try to fight now to get the cow back in the barn years after it's been sold to McDonald's and digested by its customers, they'll either use a dull meat cleaver where a delicate scalpel is needed, or they'll run and hide the moment the local news tries to make them wear the Klan hood.
The assumption that all democrats are progressive, and all republicans are conservative belies the fact that progressivism has seeped into every aspect of our lives making progressivism as impossible to remove without destroying conservativism as it is to remove the weeds from wheat crops without ruining the crop. Our very language is compromised.
What we call liberal is not liberal. What we call progressive is not progressive. What we call inclusion is actually exclusion. What a progressive calls conservative is not recognizable to a conservative, nor is what a conservative calls progressive recognizable to a progressive. Our language has become a weapon in what we now think of politics as warfare.
Political debate, if not all debate, has turned into who chants their slogans the loudest. Democracy has become mob action. Rioting has turned into a public disturbance as a cover for looting, made even more effective when police do the rioting.
Cleaning up the universities sounds like something attainable top down, but it shouldn't take academic research to discover that top down is the least effective method of reform. Universities did not and do not deteriorate from the top. They deteriorated by trying to educate everyone, and everyone is not equally endowed with a mind capable of academic work.
The result of the explosion in enrolment far exceeded the number of academically qualified professors, resulting in an explosion of teaching positions, filled with inadequately qualified professors, teaching inadequately intelligent students, creating a huge demand for coursework which the new teachers and new students could possibly master without obviating in inevitable explosion of worthless degrees.
Thinking Republicans are going to do anything other than lower taxes and serve as a blocking coalition is an indication on how little one understands US politics. The bureaucracy will operate as usual, any "reformers" will be marginalized by the McConnell wing (akin to how AOC is marginalized by Pelosi and co), and things will just become normalized to the point where future generations will just see the current state as the way things are. The most adamant fighters of all this will be weeded out overtime as this is currently happening with purges, and the left who has access to all information gathering and recording points will simply rewrite history to a point where this is simply what America is. That is the future despite objections because the time for objections has long past. They don't call it a cultural revolution for nothing. It is effectively a sea change. Masculine republics --> Feminine democracies --> Tyranny. The cycle repeats itself.
The Republicans are much more interested in lowering taxes (for those who don’t need lowered taxes) and appointing judges who will support their corporatist donors then in dealing with this.
This is not a Republican versus Democrat issue -- this is us normies against the bleeding edges issues. David French’s French Press article today was excellent on the idea that we’ve been captured by extremism from both sides.
I believe we should have much more balance in academia but this essay left a bad taste in my mouth.
What should means nothing unless you are willing to punish those who violate your ideal. And the people who are given the authority to punish do not do so because they agree with the direction of where things are and where they are going to perpetually heading. This is what people don't understand. "People" don't change societies. Elites do. And the elites are all on the same page with changing society within their vision and they are currently punishing anyone who dares challenge it. And the Republicans will slowly just accept the premises of the Left like they always do because Republicans exist to give the illusion of opposition. Republicans don't do anything with power which is why people find themselves in the current state. Because they aren't supposed to win. A wise man once said that the Republicans are the stupid party (I would argue the gullible party) and the Democrats are the evil party (I would argue decadent and compulsive). So basically it's a forced marriage with zero mechanism of divorce in an abusive relationship where one side simply accepts the abuse while the other continues to abuse because it resents the fact that its forced in a marriage with someone it doesn't respect. If Republicans were going to "do something" to balance things out, what the hell was stopping them this whole time? Don't listen to what people say because anyone can pay lip service, watch what they do because that reveals who they truly are and what they truly want. There was never "balance", that is just some myth that old people like to tell themselves. There were people who were in leadership who had morality tied to their power and now the people in power are decadent and abusive. That's reality.
This is one of those "what could go wrong?" proposals. I couldn't escape the cognitive dissonance of two simultaneous reactions: 1) yeah, this is absolutely what needs to happen, and 2) the Republicans are absolutely not the party to do it.
It's a worthwhile effort. But is it unwarranted pessimism to think the GOP's own institutional capture will be what prevents it from checking the kind that has seized the country from the left?
I'm just having a little trouble believing book banners and Christian supremacists answerable to some kingmaker faction of QAnon and pizzagate enthusiasts are the ones who are going to successfully constrain the Wokists' grievance machine.
Is this not a little like hoping that Americans would build nations out of Iraq and Afghanistan?
A worthy effort but we must be aware of perils of outside partisan political legislation. Both its practical limits and its potential for dangerous unintended consequences. Also, the dangers of ever-increasing political polarization, in which the Democratic Party establishment feels it is obligated to defend DEI policies and practices that are attacked by the GOP even though most Democrats know the policies are broadly unpopular and even damaging to their constituents. In these polarized times, nobody, regardless of intentions, comes out of a partisan political fight unscathed.
The proposal I'm most skeptical of is getting CRT/Gender theory out of general education courses. That would essentially result in bureaucracy gaining more power over academics regarding instruction in the academic's field. Protecting viewpoint diversity and neutrality is a legitimate goal for the state; deciding which scholarship in a particular field is valuable or valueless is not.
I disagree with other commenters that Republicans can’t be trusted. We have to play a long game here, and I believe over time those of us in the “politically homeless” camp can reign in Republicans to shift from pandering to the far right to pandering to us. The only other option is to create our own independent institutions, but that is far more costly in terms of both time and money.
Anyway, I have hope with the existence of groups like FIRE. They have the potential to grow in power and gain influence through lobbying.
I applaud you, Mr. Yang, for trying to be solution oriented and while I think Mr. Shampling has identified some real challenges, I think most of his suggestions will create more harm than good.
I think in order to come up with a solution, one needs to correctly diagnose the root causes. Below are the problems I see and some suggestions on how fix them. I'd love to hear feedback. Is any of this resonating? What did I get wrong?
How to break academia:
1. Create incredible profits from heavy demand for degrees + government cash and favors.
2. Use cash to fund ever larger administrative class within universities
3. Fill admin class with ideologues who value pursuit of social justice mission over original truth seeking mission of the university
4. Self-reinforcing cycle brings in more ideologues while others leave
5. Lack of accountability: public is slow to notice drift from mission and will tolerate higher and higher prices for lower quality education. Government finances the whole thing.
Making rules or new laws about permissible behavior/speech at universities seems problematic to me for multiple reasons. Even if they are effective in places, they mostly addresses symptoms and not the structural causes.
So, what can be done? Hold them accountable by:
1. Reducing the demand for degrees from these schools who have drifted from their mission
2. Reforming government money and favors that flow to them
This will create incentives for the universities to return to their core mission on their own.
REDUCE DEMAND for degrees from schools whose mission has been compromised:
1. Encourage alternatives to college degrees. The rise of code schools and other alternative credentials is a good sign. Many industries are already doing this on their own. I think tops-down, one-size-fits-all mandates from government, as Mr. Shampling suggests, will be counter productive. Industry can figure this out, provided government gets out of the way and allows for non-degree solutions.
2. Scrutinize the value of the degrees and graduates. Are schools producing graduates with valuable skills or are they creating ideologues? Hiring managers and organizations have a role to play.
3. Create competitors - offer a college experience that is aligned with truth seeking and enlightenment ideals. The University of Austin seems to have great traction and is popular.
REFORM government money and special favors to universities:
1. Reform federal student loan financing. Without federal student loans, which leave some borrowers in debt for decades, universities wouldn't be able to charge so much for tuition. Perhaps make loans dischargeable in bankruptcy and paid by the institutions where the bills were created? That would make the schools have skin in the game and make borrowers' lives better. Cap the amount available as loans? Get the federal government out of student loans all together?
2. Explore reforms to tax exempt status. Universities get billions of dollars in preferential tax treatment thanks to their tax exempt status. Explore changes to property taxes, taxes on endowments and tax-deductible donations.
3. Reform research grant rules. Tax payers are paying for basic research. Why is so much of that money going to people who are hostile to enlightenment ideals in the form of administrative "overhead" (often 50+%)? While we're at it, scrutinize executive branch departments' research budgets. Much of this research is worthless.
With increased scrutiny from the public and lower demand for low-value degrees, combined with reduced special favors and financing from government, I think we have a chance to "unbreak" universities. They will have powerful incentives to return to their core mission.
The whole issue is contained in your last sentence. The university no longer knows what it’s core mission is. Or we can say, because of the collapse of the spirit that animated its core mission an opposite vision/spirit has taken its place. And why I recommend mastering the core of the crisis through a study of Arthur Lovejoy’s ‘The Great Chain of Being’, the full explanation of recommending this is in my comment above.
This is an excellent proposal. In my view, while the political and administrative solution suggested in the opening essay could work in principle, it's doubtful that the political will exists to do what is necessary to wrest academia back from the woke ideologues. Effort would be better spent building successor institutions that more effectively serve the core functions of academia, which are designed from the ground up to be robust against ideological subversion.
The one modification I would propose would be to incorporate some form of objective ability measurement - letters of recommendation, while certainly useful in various contexts, aren't sufficient in themselves. Standardized testing could be a powerful addition to network based higher education:
I like your essay. Note that the key is to separate testing from ideology. The test need not be standardized. An outside testing agency could grade the essays from a philosophy course. The key is to keep the outside testing agency from getting ideologically captured.
I'm not so sure - the advantage of standardization is that a common measure is being used for all test takers. That said, it's probably sufficient for the standardization to be at the level of an individual testing agency; market reputation takes care of the rest.
I understand your sense of desperation but trusting federal or state GOP legislators to actually improve the situation rather than make it even worse is an extremely unpromising and dangerous strategy. It is, of course, one of the reasons we're in the situation we're in already in. The image of a bull in the china shop comes to mind. To the extent changing laws is needed, the effort is best left to the courts. Legislatures in these polarized and thoughtlessly partisan times are blunt instruments. Ultimately, academia and its stakeholders have to come to their senses, fight the good fight and right the ship themselves. We can cheer them on as best we can but calling in elected politicians will only be cause for regret down the road.
"Ultimately, academia and its stakeholders have to come to their senses, fight the good fight and right the ship themselves. Ultimately, academia and its stakeholders have to come to their senses, fight the good fight and right the ship themselves. "
The premise of the article is that academia is well past the point where it can self-correct. You may not agree -- not everyone will -- but the author is clear that he would not be resorting to the political process if he believed that internal self-correction was in the cards. And the purpose of articles such as this is to provide legislators with informed guidance on what interventions will do good without doing harm, in part by pointing out where such attempts have erred (DeSantis' tenure reform) and where they might be salutary. Licensing reform, drying up the pipelines into crap master's degree programs are two examples that no reasonable person will object to; others are more contentious -- but that's the point of having a debate.
I don’t think measures at external-correction, that do not explain how the university devolved, will or can succeed. The university will not magically renew itself. The external-solutions have to be balanced by a clearly stated account of how liberalism has regressed into left-liberalism. That requires those who would reform the university to themselves embody and exemplify what the university is failing to embody and cultivate. See comment on why I suggest reading Arthur Lovejoy’s classic work ‘The Great Chain of Being’.
I don't believe the solution lies with legislation, either by legislatures or by courts. (See my reply to jt's comment below.)
Only by acknowledging the problems and mobilizing all of the direct stakeholders can real change and reform happen. All of these institutions have governing boards and a variety of elected bodies, representing faculty, students, alumni and, in some cases, employees, as well as campus media. That is probably where the best and most effective change can be generated, but that will take clear thinking leaders, individual courage, hard work and persistence. There are no shortcuts.
You are doing great work in analyzing and exposing the underlying philosophical and ideological roots of the problem we are up against. This is invaluable and brave and is having an impact. The "successor ideology" can be disrupted and defeated. This is already beginning to happen. Your work is vital and so is the work needed to imagine and spread a better vision for the future of academia (and the larger society).
That effort to imagine a new and broadly shared "successor vision" is going on but its direction is far from clear. What is clear is that DEI, (and woke-ism and "WEF-style globalism), along with traditional capitalism and communism, have all failed or are failing to engage the allegiance and energies most people worldwide. New visions are needed and are bubbling about just out of view as we shake off the debris of dead ideologies.
One hopes the new visions will consider lessons from the past but look forward and not backward. One hopes that academia can soon shake itself out of the corrupted corporate, careerist and elitist malaise in which it finds itself and take back its rightful and traditional role of helping lead the culture into a better future.
Personally, I think the courts are the worst place to create legislation. First, their job is, reputedly, to adjudicate the law. And, more important, they are unelected officials who are accountable to nobody, right?
Part of my point is that the blunt instrument of legislation is not a good solution to this kind of problem (political, socio-economic, ideological, historical). A good part of the reason DEI has taken hold in educational institutions is poorly written legislation designed to solve these kinds of problems (political, soci-economic, ideological, historical) that has resulted in multiple unintended consequences. Clearly, when courts ambitiously attempt to legislate solutions to these kinds of problems, they often don't do much better. However, if, as they should, restrict themselves to applying common sense and community standards to deal with unintended consequences, they are perhaps better equipped - being somewhat above the fray - to come up with less blunt and more targeted solutions, to deal with problems caused, in part, by past legislative attempts.
I worked as a soft money researcher (I had to scrounge up my own money, but was well paid and had freedom) at a Research I university. Good gig. The problem with tenure, as I see it, is that times change. We had one dept with 6 full professors and more tenured faculty. However, their field had crashed and they had no undergrad program and a dozen or so grad students. They sucked up a lot of resources and added pretty much nothing to the university or knowledge. Just give long term contracts... 5, 10, 15 years dependent on how good they are and how strong the dept is.
I do like the idea of cutting into admin. Every year there were 2 or 3 new vice presidencies created. The number of students and faculty never really increased, but admin just kept growing. As someone who was actually bringing in money, I never felt that my overhead was justified. In fact, I often felt that the admin was actively thwarting research and teaching just to look busy/relevant.
Tenure was sustainable when a small minority of elites (and the able working class kids) going to tertiary education; and while the Humanities still upheld academic rigor to separate fact from opinion & ideology. The Arts today are little more than a hothouse for developing ideology and proselytizing it to a captive audience. Academic freedom in this context just allows the bad actors to do anything they want.
While university administrations are genuinely afraid of legislative oversight in their home (red) states, it has been easy for them to to run circles around local politicians. The 'progressive' agenda has been reworded into innocuous sounding euphemisms, much of it conducted between the lines and without paper trails; promotions are given to ideological cronies, nonSJWs and not-intersectionally-privileged candidates are never interviewed for jobs (and hence can't be discriminated against) and a lot of the agenda is delegated to student activists as a cover for extremism among university leadership.
It's sneaky, opaque and impossible for the outsider to comprehend, let alone control. Humanities studies were captured 5-10 years ago, there have been no survivors. STEM/Medicine/Law are almost gone. A couple of activist loud mouths among the junior faculty and students is all you need to sway an institution. Conniving administrators angling for the next job are the norm - to move up, you have to demonstrate you've been part of the club all along.
Legislators must make senior leadership personally accountable for ideological balance and DEI abuse. No way around it. There should be audits of classes and admissions policies, whistleblower programs and a total commitment to transparency and merit.
Legislatures should enact laws preventing DEI administrators from punishing people for committing microaggressions. The response to any microaggression should be limited to a private disclosure informing the alleged aggressor that their statement or behavior might have been considered offensive to someone. That should be the extent of their authority. No bias response teams etc. and no allowing students to post an accusation on social media. Any reporting of a microaggression has to be done in confidence in a polite, constructive and non-accusatory way and it has to assume that the accused was not acting in bad faith. And when assessing the microaggression, the right to speak or act has to be valued over the right to be free from harm which means that in order for the DEI administrators to take real action the harm has to be material. Hurt feelings do not quality as material harm.
"no allowing students to post an accusation on social media" - that seems like a pretty chilling restriction on free speech. If student A percieves student B as being rude to them on campus, I agree that there shouldn't be some draconian administrative intervention, but surely A has a right to discuss their perception of the incident publicly. (The *norm* that someone should be called out for the world to see on social media for minor misbehavior is bad, but I don't think banning this behavior is warranted or productive)
I disagree. No one loses any right or ability to correct a harm by not being allowed to make an accusation on social media. It’s using power to pummel your opponent by enlisting an unruly mob.
So, again, Wesley has retweeted Libs of TikTok and similar accounts accusing woke crazies of being woke crazies (usually with video evidence). Billboard Chris is going around effectively publicly accusing hospitals of child abuse. These accusations, whether true or false, have serious consequences for teachers/schools/hospitals when they go viral. It sounds like you are saying this form of public criticism should not be allowed.
1. Because, like Wesley Yang, you, or I, students have free speech rights. Outside of class, students are not like employees at a company during company hours. If this is hard to understand, consider that it’s very normal for one student group to bring a controversial speaker to campus as another student group protests.
2. You made a claim about public accusations of racism not being an instance of free speech (or at least, restricting such statements is not a restriction on free speech). This seemed like a general claim to me
I want the university to limit their ability to publicize their grievance when it comes to serious accusations that can result in reputations damage. I see no harm to them from having to wait until there is some form of adjudication. If you disagree, it just means you value protecting speech more than protecting reputations. I feel the opposite.
You can have a rule where you are not allowed to make public allegations against a fellow student until the matter is adjudicated. I don't see why that would be a problem. It's in a university's interest to maintain decorum and to settle these issues privately & quietly.
But 2 protects the rights of the accused which is there needs to be a gag order in place. Read the NY Times Magazine article on what happened at ASU. If they had a rule like I have described in place, none of it would have happened. Same with Gibson's Bakery at Oberlin.
Could you clarify what your proposal is, though? Does it apply to students not going through adjudication or not? Like if we’re both students and I am an asshole to you, and you have no intention of asking the administration to intervene, are you allowed to post on Twitter or tell your friends “Zach is an asshole”?
It really applies to accusing people of things like racist or transphobic behavior or of sexual abuse etc. Accusations that have serious repercussions that can't be undone so easily. Zach is an asshole doesn't rise to that level.
Using social media to air your grievances is not really about the right to free speech. It's about using power to pummel the other party. So when accusations are about something serious, there needs to be rules in place to prevent people from abusing that power. A limitation among fellow students, or colleagues at work, seems reasonable as there is a need for collegiality.
How they enforce such a policy, whether by prohibiting the use of social media or by imposing severe penalties if someone uses it and them is found to be wrong in their accusations, is a legal question that I am not prepared to answer. But I think instances of serious allegations, an institution like a university can make out an argument that they are entitled to prevent harm to the accused. After all, if they have the power to limit speech that someone claims is a microaggression, it would make sense for them to have the power to limit speech that wrongly accuses people of certain behavior.
Has anyone considered that the best solution is simply walking away? When Oxford locals wouldn't budge some Dons went off to East Anglia once...
The new UATX institution could be one of many. Once the workplace finds out that graduates from such institutions are more useful as employees the weight of enrollments will inevitably follow. The weight of money will inevitably follow.
The simplest solution would be to end all government student loan guarantees, and make student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy. Universities which react to the cutoff of funds by deemphasizing research and instruction (more than they have already) will implode.
Here is where I would recommend legislators start: eliminate as a matter of law all non-essential designations in hiring and university admissions. In short, forbid asking anyone what their race or religion is, and forbid maintaining such designations, even in private databases, on the penalty of law. Including the US census.
We can imagine the crying and gnashing of teeth which the race hustlers (“anti-racists”) will emit when faced with such a development. And we know where the great mass of Americans of all colors and faiths will land on such a question. What we do not yet know is whether or not our legislators will stand for the color blind world they claim to desire. Let’s find out.
Before you charge into the lion's den you need to think about your opponent's strongest weapon and how you plan on countering it. In this case the Left superweapon and undefeated heavyweight champion of American politics and discourse is the Bigotry Accusation.
Every person who thinks about getting involved in any of this needs to prepare for what comes next and how they will react: what do you do when social media unleashes its avalanche of Bigotry Accusations? When your wife/husband says all their friends think you're a "racist"? When all your kids' friends and future colleges think their parent is a "racist"? When you're tarred till death with the scarlet R?
Anyone paying attention to either American academia or letters in the past say 25 years (I'm thinking from the Sokal Hoax onward) knows that Left academia has taken over dept after dept and successfuly deconstructed and dismantled so much of our cultural heritage (and the transmission thereof), but no one has had the nerve to launch a frontal attack and get skunk-sprayed by the inevitable charges of Unbearable Whiteness and causing harms to the poor sad marginalized (cue ASPCA commercial soundtrack).
No Republican in any major capacity, even ones from states under complete Republican control, has had the stomach for cleaning out our academic madrassas and their cadres of Victim Studies jihadists, except maybe DeSantis recently. Instead every single Republican governor, legislature and trustee have sat back thinking about tee times while an entire generation was taught to despise them and the entire history of our country.
And if they try to fight now to get the cow back in the barn years after it's been sold to McDonald's and digested by its customers, they'll either use a dull meat cleaver where a delicate scalpel is needed, or they'll run and hide the moment the local news tries to make them wear the Klan hood.
But I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
The elite universities are a lost cause. Too demoralized and even the wealthy trustees are too cowardly to do anything about it. The best course of action is to start new academies like UATX. https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-rank-the-top-npc-universities
The assumption that all democrats are progressive, and all republicans are conservative belies the fact that progressivism has seeped into every aspect of our lives making progressivism as impossible to remove without destroying conservativism as it is to remove the weeds from wheat crops without ruining the crop. Our very language is compromised.
What we call liberal is not liberal. What we call progressive is not progressive. What we call inclusion is actually exclusion. What a progressive calls conservative is not recognizable to a conservative, nor is what a conservative calls progressive recognizable to a progressive. Our language has become a weapon in what we now think of politics as warfare.
Political debate, if not all debate, has turned into who chants their slogans the loudest. Democracy has become mob action. Rioting has turned into a public disturbance as a cover for looting, made even more effective when police do the rioting.
Cleaning up the universities sounds like something attainable top down, but it shouldn't take academic research to discover that top down is the least effective method of reform. Universities did not and do not deteriorate from the top. They deteriorated by trying to educate everyone, and everyone is not equally endowed with a mind capable of academic work.
The result of the explosion in enrolment far exceeded the number of academically qualified professors, resulting in an explosion of teaching positions, filled with inadequately qualified professors, teaching inadequately intelligent students, creating a huge demand for coursework which the new teachers and new students could possibly master without obviating in inevitable explosion of worthless degrees.
You are windy, and all Democrat traitors should be hanged.
Thinking Republicans are going to do anything other than lower taxes and serve as a blocking coalition is an indication on how little one understands US politics. The bureaucracy will operate as usual, any "reformers" will be marginalized by the McConnell wing (akin to how AOC is marginalized by Pelosi and co), and things will just become normalized to the point where future generations will just see the current state as the way things are. The most adamant fighters of all this will be weeded out overtime as this is currently happening with purges, and the left who has access to all information gathering and recording points will simply rewrite history to a point where this is simply what America is. That is the future despite objections because the time for objections has long past. They don't call it a cultural revolution for nothing. It is effectively a sea change. Masculine republics --> Feminine democracies --> Tyranny. The cycle repeats itself.
The Republicans are much more interested in lowering taxes (for those who don’t need lowered taxes) and appointing judges who will support their corporatist donors then in dealing with this.
This is not a Republican versus Democrat issue -- this is us normies against the bleeding edges issues. David French’s French Press article today was excellent on the idea that we’ve been captured by extremism from both sides.
I believe we should have much more balance in academia but this essay left a bad taste in my mouth.
What should means nothing unless you are willing to punish those who violate your ideal. And the people who are given the authority to punish do not do so because they agree with the direction of where things are and where they are going to perpetually heading. This is what people don't understand. "People" don't change societies. Elites do. And the elites are all on the same page with changing society within their vision and they are currently punishing anyone who dares challenge it. And the Republicans will slowly just accept the premises of the Left like they always do because Republicans exist to give the illusion of opposition. Republicans don't do anything with power which is why people find themselves in the current state. Because they aren't supposed to win. A wise man once said that the Republicans are the stupid party (I would argue the gullible party) and the Democrats are the evil party (I would argue decadent and compulsive). So basically it's a forced marriage with zero mechanism of divorce in an abusive relationship where one side simply accepts the abuse while the other continues to abuse because it resents the fact that its forced in a marriage with someone it doesn't respect. If Republicans were going to "do something" to balance things out, what the hell was stopping them this whole time? Don't listen to what people say because anyone can pay lip service, watch what they do because that reveals who they truly are and what they truly want. There was never "balance", that is just some myth that old people like to tell themselves. There were people who were in leadership who had morality tied to their power and now the people in power are decadent and abusive. That's reality.
*than not then in the first paragraph since I’m on the app and can’t edit.
This is one of those "what could go wrong?" proposals. I couldn't escape the cognitive dissonance of two simultaneous reactions: 1) yeah, this is absolutely what needs to happen, and 2) the Republicans are absolutely not the party to do it.
They may try. They will fuck it up.
The purpose of pieces like this is to give the party guidance on how not to fuck it up.
It's a worthwhile effort. But is it unwarranted pessimism to think the GOP's own institutional capture will be what prevents it from checking the kind that has seized the country from the left?
I'm just having a little trouble believing book banners and Christian supremacists answerable to some kingmaker faction of QAnon and pizzagate enthusiasts are the ones who are going to successfully constrain the Wokists' grievance machine.
Is this not a little like hoping that Americans would build nations out of Iraq and Afghanistan?
A worthy effort but we must be aware of perils of outside partisan political legislation. Both its practical limits and its potential for dangerous unintended consequences. Also, the dangers of ever-increasing political polarization, in which the Democratic Party establishment feels it is obligated to defend DEI policies and practices that are attacked by the GOP even though most Democrats know the policies are broadly unpopular and even damaging to their constituents. In these polarized times, nobody, regardless of intentions, comes out of a partisan political fight unscathed.
The proposal I'm most skeptical of is getting CRT/Gender theory out of general education courses. That would essentially result in bureaucracy gaining more power over academics regarding instruction in the academic's field. Protecting viewpoint diversity and neutrality is a legitimate goal for the state; deciding which scholarship in a particular field is valuable or valueless is not.
I like your thinking.
I disagree with other commenters that Republicans can’t be trusted. We have to play a long game here, and I believe over time those of us in the “politically homeless” camp can reign in Republicans to shift from pandering to the far right to pandering to us. The only other option is to create our own independent institutions, but that is far more costly in terms of both time and money.
Anyway, I have hope with the existence of groups like FIRE. They have the potential to grow in power and gain influence through lobbying.
Thank You. I agree it's *possible.* would be nice. Or it may require a third party. Yeah, I know.. I know...
The courts? Worst bet. The Dems, even worse than *that.*
I applaud you, Mr. Yang, for trying to be solution oriented and while I think Mr. Shampling has identified some real challenges, I think most of his suggestions will create more harm than good.
I think in order to come up with a solution, one needs to correctly diagnose the root causes. Below are the problems I see and some suggestions on how fix them. I'd love to hear feedback. Is any of this resonating? What did I get wrong?
How to break academia:
1. Create incredible profits from heavy demand for degrees + government cash and favors.
2. Use cash to fund ever larger administrative class within universities
3. Fill admin class with ideologues who value pursuit of social justice mission over original truth seeking mission of the university
4. Self-reinforcing cycle brings in more ideologues while others leave
5. Lack of accountability: public is slow to notice drift from mission and will tolerate higher and higher prices for lower quality education. Government finances the whole thing.
Making rules or new laws about permissible behavior/speech at universities seems problematic to me for multiple reasons. Even if they are effective in places, they mostly addresses symptoms and not the structural causes.
So, what can be done? Hold them accountable by:
1. Reducing the demand for degrees from these schools who have drifted from their mission
2. Reforming government money and favors that flow to them
This will create incentives for the universities to return to their core mission on their own.
REDUCE DEMAND for degrees from schools whose mission has been compromised:
1. Encourage alternatives to college degrees. The rise of code schools and other alternative credentials is a good sign. Many industries are already doing this on their own. I think tops-down, one-size-fits-all mandates from government, as Mr. Shampling suggests, will be counter productive. Industry can figure this out, provided government gets out of the way and allows for non-degree solutions.
2. Scrutinize the value of the degrees and graduates. Are schools producing graduates with valuable skills or are they creating ideologues? Hiring managers and organizations have a role to play.
3. Create competitors - offer a college experience that is aligned with truth seeking and enlightenment ideals. The University of Austin seems to have great traction and is popular.
REFORM government money and special favors to universities:
1. Reform federal student loan financing. Without federal student loans, which leave some borrowers in debt for decades, universities wouldn't be able to charge so much for tuition. Perhaps make loans dischargeable in bankruptcy and paid by the institutions where the bills were created? That would make the schools have skin in the game and make borrowers' lives better. Cap the amount available as loans? Get the federal government out of student loans all together?
2. Explore reforms to tax exempt status. Universities get billions of dollars in preferential tax treatment thanks to their tax exempt status. Explore changes to property taxes, taxes on endowments and tax-deductible donations.
3. Reform research grant rules. Tax payers are paying for basic research. Why is so much of that money going to people who are hostile to enlightenment ideals in the form of administrative "overhead" (often 50+%)? While we're at it, scrutinize executive branch departments' research budgets. Much of this research is worthless.
With increased scrutiny from the public and lower demand for low-value degrees, combined with reduced special favors and financing from government, I think we have a chance to "unbreak" universities. They will have powerful incentives to return to their core mission.
The whole issue is contained in your last sentence. The university no longer knows what it’s core mission is. Or we can say, because of the collapse of the spirit that animated its core mission an opposite vision/spirit has taken its place. And why I recommend mastering the core of the crisis through a study of Arthur Lovejoy’s ‘The Great Chain of Being’, the full explanation of recommending this is in my comment above.
You left out an important step in your first list right after "government finances the whole thing," even though you allude to it:
6. Government pays off all student loans to incentivize this monkeyshine even more.
I think we need to create alternatives that are not modeled on existing universities. See https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/white-paper-for-network-based-higher
This is an excellent proposal. In my view, while the political and administrative solution suggested in the opening essay could work in principle, it's doubtful that the political will exists to do what is necessary to wrest academia back from the woke ideologues. Effort would be better spent building successor institutions that more effectively serve the core functions of academia, which are designed from the ground up to be robust against ideological subversion.
The one modification I would propose would be to incorporate some form of objective ability measurement - letters of recommendation, while certainly useful in various contexts, aren't sufficient in themselves. Standardized testing could be a powerful addition to network based higher education:
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/how-to-kill-the-incompetocracy
I like your essay. Note that the key is to separate testing from ideology. The test need not be standardized. An outside testing agency could grade the essays from a philosophy course. The key is to keep the outside testing agency from getting ideologically captured.
I'm not so sure - the advantage of standardization is that a common measure is being used for all test takers. That said, it's probably sufficient for the standardization to be at the level of an individual testing agency; market reputation takes care of the rest.
I understand your sense of desperation but trusting federal or state GOP legislators to actually improve the situation rather than make it even worse is an extremely unpromising and dangerous strategy. It is, of course, one of the reasons we're in the situation we're in already in. The image of a bull in the china shop comes to mind. To the extent changing laws is needed, the effort is best left to the courts. Legislatures in these polarized and thoughtlessly partisan times are blunt instruments. Ultimately, academia and its stakeholders have to come to their senses, fight the good fight and right the ship themselves. We can cheer them on as best we can but calling in elected politicians will only be cause for regret down the road.
"Ultimately, academia and its stakeholders have to come to their senses, fight the good fight and right the ship themselves. Ultimately, academia and its stakeholders have to come to their senses, fight the good fight and right the ship themselves. "
The premise of the article is that academia is well past the point where it can self-correct. You may not agree -- not everyone will -- but the author is clear that he would not be resorting to the political process if he believed that internal self-correction was in the cards. And the purpose of articles such as this is to provide legislators with informed guidance on what interventions will do good without doing harm, in part by pointing out where such attempts have erred (DeSantis' tenure reform) and where they might be salutary. Licensing reform, drying up the pipelines into crap master's degree programs are two examples that no reasonable person will object to; others are more contentious -- but that's the point of having a debate.
I don’t think measures at external-correction, that do not explain how the university devolved, will or can succeed. The university will not magically renew itself. The external-solutions have to be balanced by a clearly stated account of how liberalism has regressed into left-liberalism. That requires those who would reform the university to themselves embody and exemplify what the university is failing to embody and cultivate. See comment on why I suggest reading Arthur Lovejoy’s classic work ‘The Great Chain of Being’.
I don't believe the solution lies with legislation, either by legislatures or by courts. (See my reply to jt's comment below.)
Only by acknowledging the problems and mobilizing all of the direct stakeholders can real change and reform happen. All of these institutions have governing boards and a variety of elected bodies, representing faculty, students, alumni and, in some cases, employees, as well as campus media. That is probably where the best and most effective change can be generated, but that will take clear thinking leaders, individual courage, hard work and persistence. There are no shortcuts.
You are doing great work in analyzing and exposing the underlying philosophical and ideological roots of the problem we are up against. This is invaluable and brave and is having an impact. The "successor ideology" can be disrupted and defeated. This is already beginning to happen. Your work is vital and so is the work needed to imagine and spread a better vision for the future of academia (and the larger society).
That effort to imagine a new and broadly shared "successor vision" is going on but its direction is far from clear. What is clear is that DEI, (and woke-ism and "WEF-style globalism), along with traditional capitalism and communism, have all failed or are failing to engage the allegiance and energies most people worldwide. New visions are needed and are bubbling about just out of view as we shake off the debris of dead ideologies.
One hopes the new visions will consider lessons from the past but look forward and not backward. One hopes that academia can soon shake itself out of the corrupted corporate, careerist and elitist malaise in which it finds itself and take back its rightful and traditional role of helping lead the culture into a better future.
Personally, I think the courts are the worst place to create legislation. First, their job is, reputedly, to adjudicate the law. And, more important, they are unelected officials who are accountable to nobody, right?
Part of my point is that the blunt instrument of legislation is not a good solution to this kind of problem (political, socio-economic, ideological, historical). A good part of the reason DEI has taken hold in educational institutions is poorly written legislation designed to solve these kinds of problems (political, soci-economic, ideological, historical) that has resulted in multiple unintended consequences. Clearly, when courts ambitiously attempt to legislate solutions to these kinds of problems, they often don't do much better. However, if, as they should, restrict themselves to applying common sense and community standards to deal with unintended consequences, they are perhaps better equipped - being somewhat above the fray - to come up with less blunt and more targeted solutions, to deal with problems caused, in part, by past legislative attempts.
You make good points. I'm still squeamish about the courts, given recent results. They've put trans activists in charge, via their legislation, right?
I worked as a soft money researcher (I had to scrounge up my own money, but was well paid and had freedom) at a Research I university. Good gig. The problem with tenure, as I see it, is that times change. We had one dept with 6 full professors and more tenured faculty. However, their field had crashed and they had no undergrad program and a dozen or so grad students. They sucked up a lot of resources and added pretty much nothing to the university or knowledge. Just give long term contracts... 5, 10, 15 years dependent on how good they are and how strong the dept is.
I do like the idea of cutting into admin. Every year there were 2 or 3 new vice presidencies created. The number of students and faculty never really increased, but admin just kept growing. As someone who was actually bringing in money, I never felt that my overhead was justified. In fact, I often felt that the admin was actively thwarting research and teaching just to look busy/relevant.
Tenure was sustainable when a small minority of elites (and the able working class kids) going to tertiary education; and while the Humanities still upheld academic rigor to separate fact from opinion & ideology. The Arts today are little more than a hothouse for developing ideology and proselytizing it to a captive audience. Academic freedom in this context just allows the bad actors to do anything they want.
While university administrations are genuinely afraid of legislative oversight in their home (red) states, it has been easy for them to to run circles around local politicians. The 'progressive' agenda has been reworded into innocuous sounding euphemisms, much of it conducted between the lines and without paper trails; promotions are given to ideological cronies, nonSJWs and not-intersectionally-privileged candidates are never interviewed for jobs (and hence can't be discriminated against) and a lot of the agenda is delegated to student activists as a cover for extremism among university leadership.
It's sneaky, opaque and impossible for the outsider to comprehend, let alone control. Humanities studies were captured 5-10 years ago, there have been no survivors. STEM/Medicine/Law are almost gone. A couple of activist loud mouths among the junior faculty and students is all you need to sway an institution. Conniving administrators angling for the next job are the norm - to move up, you have to demonstrate you've been part of the club all along.
Legislators must make senior leadership personally accountable for ideological balance and DEI abuse. No way around it. There should be audits of classes and admissions policies, whistleblower programs and a total commitment to transparency and merit.
Legislatures should enact laws preventing DEI administrators from punishing people for committing microaggressions. The response to any microaggression should be limited to a private disclosure informing the alleged aggressor that their statement or behavior might have been considered offensive to someone. That should be the extent of their authority. No bias response teams etc. and no allowing students to post an accusation on social media. Any reporting of a microaggression has to be done in confidence in a polite, constructive and non-accusatory way and it has to assume that the accused was not acting in bad faith. And when assessing the microaggression, the right to speak or act has to be valued over the right to be free from harm which means that in order for the DEI administrators to take real action the harm has to be material. Hurt feelings do not quality as material harm.
"no allowing students to post an accusation on social media" - that seems like a pretty chilling restriction on free speech. If student A percieves student B as being rude to them on campus, I agree that there shouldn't be some draconian administrative intervention, but surely A has a right to discuss their perception of the incident publicly. (The *norm* that someone should be called out for the world to see on social media for minor misbehavior is bad, but I don't think banning this behavior is warranted or productive)
I disagree. No one loses any right or ability to correct a harm by not being allowed to make an accusation on social media. It’s using power to pummel your opponent by enlisting an unruly mob.
So, again, Wesley has retweeted Libs of TikTok and similar accounts accusing woke crazies of being woke crazies (usually with video evidence). Billboard Chris is going around effectively publicly accusing hospitals of child abuse. These accusations, whether true or false, have serious consequences for teachers/schools/hospitals when they go viral. It sounds like you are saying this form of public criticism should not be allowed.
What does that have to do with students who go to school together which is the only thing I am talking about? I
1. Because, like Wesley Yang, you, or I, students have free speech rights. Outside of class, students are not like employees at a company during company hours. If this is hard to understand, consider that it’s very normal for one student group to bring a controversial speaker to campus as another student group protests.
2. You made a claim about public accusations of racism not being an instance of free speech (or at least, restricting such statements is not a restriction on free speech). This seemed like a general claim to me
I want the university to limit their ability to publicize their grievance when it comes to serious accusations that can result in reputations damage. I see no harm to them from having to wait until there is some form of adjudication. If you disagree, it just means you value protecting speech more than protecting reputations. I feel the opposite.
You can have a rule where you are not allowed to make public allegations against a fellow student until the matter is adjudicated. I don't see why that would be a problem. It's in a university's interest to maintain decorum and to settle these issues privately & quietly.
Can you clarify what you mean?
1. If a student seeks adjudication neither student is allowed to discuss publicly until the matter is adjudicated
2. Accusations of micro-aggressions cannot be made publicly until after adjudication whether or not the aggrieved student seeks adjudication
1 seems reasonable, 2 would be a blatant infringement on the free speech rights of students
But 2 protects the rights of the accused which is there needs to be a gag order in place. Read the NY Times Magazine article on what happened at ASU. If they had a rule like I have described in place, none of it would have happened. Same with Gibson's Bakery at Oberlin.
ww.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/magazine/arizona-state-university-multicultural-center.html
Could you clarify what your proposal is, though? Does it apply to students not going through adjudication or not? Like if we’re both students and I am an asshole to you, and you have no intention of asking the administration to intervene, are you allowed to post on Twitter or tell your friends “Zach is an asshole”?
It really applies to accusing people of things like racist or transphobic behavior or of sexual abuse etc. Accusations that have serious repercussions that can't be undone so easily. Zach is an asshole doesn't rise to that level.
Using social media to air your grievances is not really about the right to free speech. It's about using power to pummel the other party. So when accusations are about something serious, there needs to be rules in place to prevent people from abusing that power. A limitation among fellow students, or colleagues at work, seems reasonable as there is a need for collegiality.
How they enforce such a policy, whether by prohibiting the use of social media or by imposing severe penalties if someone uses it and them is found to be wrong in their accusations, is a legal question that I am not prepared to answer. But I think instances of serious allegations, an institution like a university can make out an argument that they are entitled to prevent harm to the accused. After all, if they have the power to limit speech that someone claims is a microaggression, it would make sense for them to have the power to limit speech that wrongly accuses people of certain behavior.
Has anyone considered that the best solution is simply walking away? When Oxford locals wouldn't budge some Dons went off to East Anglia once...
The new UATX institution could be one of many. Once the workplace finds out that graduates from such institutions are more useful as employees the weight of enrollments will inevitably follow. The weight of money will inevitably follow.
The simplest solution would be to end all government student loan guarantees, and make student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy. Universities which react to the cutoff of funds by deemphasizing research and instruction (more than they have already) will implode.