Why?
But let me try. University life at its best was both the most serious, difficult, challenging, and maddening existence, and it was the most exciting, lively, rewarding, and fun experience.
It was deadly serious because we constantly examined the most intense human issues: historical and personal tragedies; ethical dilemmas and philosophical complexities; theological mysteries; and scientific wonders. It was hard because it stretches one intellectually and emotionally, makes one question everything, and be changed by that knowledge. And it was difficult because of the enormous workload and demands: assignments, exams, papers, presentations, and seminars. I don’t know of another situation, except possibly the military during a war, where one could be tested so much.
Yet this academic rigor was so exciting, lively, and fun because it developed and fulfilled the most essential part of the human soul, what the Bible calls “Logos” and Aristotle “reasoned speech” of a naturally social being. It was exciting because that individual development occurred within a disciplined but free, intellectual, and social environment. It was full of debate, discussion, argument, and questioning in a community of tolerance and respect, but it also had laughter, joking, flirting, explaining, and learning.
I realize that this “life of the mind” within a rigorous but friendly community is an ideal; there were plenty of dull classes and mediocre professors at every university. But the “system” of academic freedom and its attendant experiences of intellectual growth prevailed.
And the academy did not lack in conflict (as the old joke went: “The fights in academia are so bad because the stakes are so low”). But those battles were over policy or personalities (mostly egos), not the essential basis of the university: free thought and debate. I can’t remember, even in the midst of terrible fights that led to presidents being fired, programs being altered, or board members resigning, that anyone ever questioned the right to free speech, academic inquiry, or liberty of conscience.
Academia was full of eccentric professors with various crazy ideas and habits (some brilliant), naïve students, and pompous administrators, but they all adhered to the same standard of knowledge. This led not just to scientific discovery and technological progress, but to every other kind of progress: economic, political, social, and ethical.
Such an open, lively, productive academic system goes back to ancient Greece and Rome, the medieval European monasteries and universities, and Oxford and Cambridge tutorials, but it was perfected in America. The first really modern university was the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson (and which celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2019). Jefferson said of UVA, “Here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
Similarly, Jefferson’s law professor, George Wythe, taught legal doctrine within the liberal arts context of history and political philosophy. Their formal instruction combined with an informal, personal mentoring that included dinners at the Royal Governor’s Palace, where this “partie quarree” enjoyed classical music and discussions of philosophy, literature, religion, and history, forming, Jefferson remarked, “the finest school of manners and morals that ever existed in America.” He added that it “fixed the destinies” of his life. And the destinies of our nation, as such education prepared Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.
Such a combination of formal education in classrooms and labs with informed mentoring and society became the model for Jefferson’s “academical village” at the University of Virginia and for academic freedom in America. Both effectively have been destroyed by the liberal “political correctness” of the past 30 years, especially during the Obama administration.
This system of thought was codified and weaponized by the largely illegal and unconstitutional expansion of the Title IX regulations in 2014. This was a provision of the Civil Rights Act requiring equal expenditures on college sports along gender lines. It was deftly transformed into a PC blitz by equating “discrimination” with “harassment.” When “harassment” was expanded to include “verbal” harassment, it allowed censorship and punishment of any speech that was deemed offensive or “unwanted” by anyone. Title IX offices at every American university (with names like The Office of Conduct, Compliance, Control, Diversity, Inclusion, and Demasculinization) run Gestapo-like operations of surveillance, mandatory reporting, investigations, and interrogations (without due process) and reprimands, dismissals, and expulsions.
Needless to say, this has had a “chilling effect” on free speech and association. Colleges have turned into social graveyards and intellectual wastelands. The U.S. Department of Education threatened to cut off federal funding to any university that did not enforce these totalitarian policies. Terror reigned. Sadly, the people most hurt by this were the ones it was intended to help: women and minorities. Their education was trivialized and the informal mentoring that prepared them for professional life was lost, as professors had nothing to do with them beyond purely official activity, fearing charges of harassment.
All of this has had a disastrous effect on morale and enrollment, which is down nationwide. When universities, in effect, told young people: “Come here and be continually harassed, abused, and assaulted (or accused of doing such and unable to defend yourself),” it did not seem, along with the high cost and worthless teaching, to be such a good deal.
The negative effects of these Stalinist decrees (on morale, enrollment, and publicity) have caused many universities to hire marketing consultants to clean up their images with slogans and gimmicks. Such fun activities as “Cookie Day” and “The Career Closet” (I’m not making these up) were to present a “safe” and happy image to higher education institutions. But young Americans don’t relish the thought of participating either in a re-education camp or a kindergarten; they want a university. Unless the academy is run by academics, not political activists or marketing consultants, the universities will not return—to the detriment of our entire country.
My guess is that in 10 years, half of America’s universities will be turned into vocational or technical schools or closed entirely (or possibly turned into minimum-security prisons or drug rehab centers). The remaining, I hope, will return to a model similar to the lively, rigorous, and useful universities we once had. Combinations of online efficiency with onsite community may be the best solution. And if secondary schools returned to teaching the best of western civilization (literature, history, art, music, and philosophy), it would prepare Americans who do not go to college to be well-informed, thoughtful citizens, Jefferson’s ideal for American democracy.
I, like my favorite philosophers Jefferson, Hannah Arendt, and Aristotle, remain optimistic that if human beings are rational, social creatures, the academy will survive in some form. I hope so, because without it, American greatness will not survive.