Reforming the research university

U.S. research universities face a uniquely dangerous moment. Radical reform will be required to survive the coming assault. Tl;dr: time to get back (and stick) to the knitting

The American university system is in deep political trouble — deeper than most people realize, especially people inside academia. As I tweeted last summer, in what became my most viral social media moment of the year (to the point of inspiring regular media coverage and much other discussion), MAGA is planning a frontal assault against research universities. It is likely to be successful. And if it is, the adverse consequences will last decades, if not forever. The quality of German research universities, after all, has yet to recover from what the Nazis did to them.

MAGA is unabashed about its motives. It regards universities as a (if not the) chief institutional pillar of their cultural (and thus political) enemies. Undermining universities has been a key political tactic for the authoritarian right worldwide: from Bolsanaro’s Brazil to Erdogan’s Turkey to Orban’s Hungary to Putin’s Russia, purging and defunding universities is a common strategy. In the United States, Chris Rufo’s successful disemboweling of the New College of Florida (a third of the faculty have left in the last two years) is the model that they openly say they plan to replicate across the country. The initial target will be “DEI programs” but MAGA will not stop pushing until no class so much as mentions gender, racial, equity, social justice, intersectionality, etc. The threat and reality of federal defunding will be the method.

MAGA’s coming assault comes against a weakened foe with few allies in today’s political field. Universities are in a uniquely vulnerable position, critiqued today from points left, right, and libertarian. The left believes that the debt burdens that universities impose on their graduates, as well as the partnerships with corporations, make them engines of neoliberal reproduction. The right thinks the universities are woke indoctrination factories who have poisoned American blood with DEI and other “communist” ideas. And the libertarians claim that the hierarchical structure and modes of training make them antiquated institutions, which are just a waste of time and money to attend. Where a generation or three ago investing in universities was a great bipartisan national project, intertwined both with the Cold War and the post-New Deal social democratic expansion, with the end of both of the latter projects, they have now lost their traditional public constituencies.

Without being defensive about these critiques (more on that in a moment), here is what I take to be the critical question facing leaders of research universities today: how can we preserve and enhance what is uniquely valuable about the research university? To answer this, we must begin by defining what is “uniquely valuable” — that is, the thing that research universities do better than any other existing institution, and without which society would suffer badly. I take those uniquely valuable things to be: (a) the creation of highly well-trained experts, (b) path-breaking knowledge creation, and, crucially, though often ignored or even denigrated, (c) knowledge preservation and transmission.

You will note that I do not list “remediation of historic wrongs” or “promotion of social justice” as among the unique value-adds of research universities. This is not because I do not regard these goals as worthwhile, but rather because I do not regard those objectives as ones that research universities are “uniquely” suited to pursue. Those projects, I would argue, are much better implemented either through an explicit political process or through civil society actors with explicit moral missions such as churches, charities, and so on. To those who regard everything, including all teaching and research, as part of the social justice agenda, I would simply say that such a moralizing conception of the mission of the university is a drain if not a stain on the legitimate intellectual focus on research understood as Wissenschaft, which properly understood is about the pursuit and preservation of systematic truth.

To return to the critiques the left, right, and libertarian critiques of the university, it must be admitted that, while each of these critiques is an ideologically-motivated caricature of the research university as a totality, each also contains undoubted elements of truth that universities need urgently to address. To address the left critique, the cost of education (or at least the ever-escalating cost curve) absolutely needs to be brought down. No one likes to say this, but part of how this has to happen is that the services offered to students must be dramatically reduced. To address the libertarian critique, very different standards need to be used to evaluate teaching and research — and these long-twinned elements may need to be more formally separated. (There’s no reason other than a prestige economy for a Nobel winner to be teaching intro Econ or Bio or Physics or whatever.) And to address the rightwing critique, universities need both to enforce free speech principles more rigorously and take a much less forbearing attitude toward “activist scholarship” – a concept which has almost nothing to do with the pursuit of Wissenschaft. This latter point in turn connects with the desperate need for the humanities to reconceive themselves not as a site for remediating bad things about the past, but rather as a site for preserving and transmitting what is worthy about the past.

This last point is likely to be the most controversial element of this post, but it’s arguably the most important, because this is also the only way that the humanities are possibly going to survive and add intellectual value to the university (or society, for that matter). Few people need convincing that breakthroughs in physics, biology, or chemistry are socially valuable activities. But what exactly is the social value of the humanities, and why does it need to take place inside a research university? That’s a real question and my answer is that making sure that the next (and every) generation of students is systematically exposed to and given an appreciation for what was greatest and best about the intellectual and cultural life of the past is an essential part any research university’s mission — and indeed, more broadly, to the project of long-term civilizational stability. Conversely, a loss of commitment to knowing and where appropriate venerating past cultural touchstones (across many cultures) is tantamount to an embrace of barbarism.

In this call for a revisioning — arguably a restoration — of the mission of the academic humanities, I want to be very clear about what I am not saying. This is not a mindless directive to steer attention away from the failures, inadequacies, and exclusions of past modes and products of cultural production. History (and other historically minded fields) should not be a site for the uncritical celebration of the past — whose many failings, both operational and moral (including those of otherwise great men and women), must be open to examination. Likewise, antinomian traditions are indubitably worthy of study, not least in order better to understand why the elements that eventually won did so. (I made a formal scholarly case for this sort of inquiry here.) But what must end is the view that the entirety of the present is best or even adequately represented as the fruit of the poisonous trees of past iniquities. Such cultural pessimism, which in some guises can verge on nihilism, is at odds with the research mission of the humanities, whose primary pedagogic focus must be on providing students with knowledge and models from the past that can help them understand the present in more complete and nuanced ways. A due attention to the highest achievements of the past — I use the hierarchical metaphor deliberately — across many cultures, is the right and proper focus for a renewed humanities.

This then speaks to what is ultimately most important about the research university, and what is most worthy of defense and extension. No other institution ever invented has been anywhere near as good at educating a broad population to a high level of technical competency,¹ nor at creating the conditions for the discovery of new facts about and conceptions of the world,² nor at maintaining the knowledge already created.³ To speak the language of business schools: these are the “core competencies” of the research university, and a ruthless focus on eliminating anything and everything that stands in the way of these three things is the only hope I believe we have for generating a renewed appreciation for the social value of these indispensible institutions, and thus withstanding the onslaught of the barbarians.

1. with apologies to the military

2. with apologies to corporate R&D labs

3. with apologies to various religious institutions