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Evan Goldstein and Len Gutkin
Chronicle of Higher Education
Harvey C. Mansfield, who enrolled at Harvard in 1949, joined the faculty in 1962, and retired in 2023, has been called many things: “great dissenter,” “prophet,” “racist, homophobic and misogynist,” “sophist,” “slipshod.” Mansfield prefers “annoying Socratic gadfly.” A dean once advised that he’d be more persuasive if he argued less. Mansfield says he tried, but it didn’t work. “Retirement seems to strengthen my voice.”
Mansfield spoke to us over zoom from his house in Ipswich, Mass., where he now spends the bulk of his time. Dressed in a suit and red tie, he discussed affirmative action for conservative professors, why the academy needs bipartisanship more than nonpartisanship, and whether old professors stick around too long. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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AI arrived on campus as a crisis but has since become banal. Students can now do basically all their schoolwork automatically with AI—answering scientific problem sets, writing computer code, and drafting essays. Professors like me have no idea whether we are really teaching or just LARPing for students who are also pretending to occupy their role.
I’ve come to the conclusion that something bigger, stranger, and more damaging has been taking place for a long time. AI has combined with two other recent campus crises—the coronavirus pandemic and the research-funding cuts of the second Trump administration—to amplify a deeper truth: American college is incompatible with itself. Americans speak of “college” as if it is one coherent thing. That’s wrong.
Charlie Kirk’s family announced a wrongful death notice Wednesday, paving the way for a potential lawsuit against Utah Valley University officials, who, they allege, did not provide proper security at the outdoor event where Kirk was killed on Sept. 10, 2025, the Associated Press and other news organizations reported.
A rooftop sniper fatally shot Kirk at a university-approved event hosted by his conservative student organization, Turning Point USA. Kirk’s estate and heirs filed the notice against the university, its former president, its police department and the state of Utah, alleging that the shooting “came against a well-known backdrop of risk” and was the result of a “series of stunning failures and reckless decisions.”
There’s a common trope that liberals, especially liberal college students, often support using violence or shoutdowns to stop people they disagree with from speaking. It’s no secret that there are plenty of examples of this behavior. But are those isolated incidents, or do they reflect a broader pattern? Are liberal students more violent?
There used to be a massive gulf in support for violence between “very liberal” students (and democratic socialists, a separate ideology option in our survey) and everyone else, especially conservatives. That gap is gone, replaced by a gender gap, such that every male ideology is now more violent than its female counterpart.
