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Sian Leah Beilock, Dartmouth President
Office of the President
Excerpt: People on and off campus are asking what I think about the battle between higher education and the federal government. A binary framework has emerged—fight or flight—that, I worry, means higher-education institutions aren’t reflecting on what we could do better to further our standing as a trusted beacon for knowledge and truth.
I understand that some see any sort of self-reflection at this moment—anything less than all-out battle—as surrender. I disagree. Given the long, successful partnership America’s research universities have had with the federal government, we owe it to our country to look for ways to move forward, and for solutions that protect our fierce independence as institutions of higher education while improving who we are and what we offer.
Jeff Yass
The Free Press
Excerpt: I am giving $100 million to the University of Austin because the feedback mechanisms of higher education are broken.
Almost every system that works, works because of feedback. Evolution works because helpful mutations survive while harmful ones die off. Democracy works because voters support effective leaders and remove ineffective ones. Markets work because prices tell producers when to ramp up or scale back. Science works because the data from an experiment tells the scientist how likely their hypothesis is to be false.
Graham Piro
FIRE
Excerpt: FIRE has previously argued for colleges and universities to adopt institutional neutrality, both as a boon for the campus climate and as an insurance policy for the university. By declaring itself neutral on major political and social issues, a university ensures that it does not chill potential dissenters on campus by constantly taking official positions on unresolved topics.
But recently, two public universities demonstrated that they misunderstand what institutional neutrality entails. They used the principle to restrict student speech under the guise of protecting university neutrality.
Adam Goldstein
Chronicle of Higher Education
Excerpt: A recent essay in these pages by Charles F. Walker posits that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s rankings don’t actually measure the speech climate of college campuses because they penalize colleges for disruptive speech that is constitutionally protected. Walker’s argument is rooted in a number of misconceptions, not the least of which is that he seems not to understand what the rankings are for. Moreover, he misrepresents the law around disruptive protests. But because the first problem swallows the second, let’s start there.
