Institutional Governance & Accountability

Sean Stevens
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Excerpt: The second edition of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s National Speech Index, released today, finds that both liberals and conservatives are concerned about the future of freedom of speech in the country, regardless of which major party candidate wins the presidential election in November.

The survey also finds that this is where the agreement ends. There are stark differences between liberals and conservatives on the state of freedom of speech in America today and on how often they think colleges and universities should take positions on political issues.

Derek Thompson
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Last month, the Pomona College economist Gary N. Smith calculated that the number of tenured and tenure-track professors at his school declined from 1990 to 2022, while the number of administrators nearly sextupled in that period. “Happily, there is a simple solution,” Smith wrote in a droll Washington Post column. In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, his modest proposal called to get rid of all faculty and students at Pomona so that the college could fulfill its destiny as an institution run by and for nonteaching bureaucrats.

The world has more pressing issues than overstaffing at America’s colleges. But it’s nonetheless a real problem that could be a factor in rising college costs.

Sammy Feldblum
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: The American Association of University Professors has denounced the militarized response to student dissent: “At this critical moment,” the organization writes, “too many cowardly university leaders are responding to largely peaceful, outdoor protests by inviting law enforcement in riot gear to campus and condoning violent arrests. These administrators are failing in their duty to their institutions, their faculty, their students, and their central obligation to our democratic society.”

In an interview for The Review, I spoke with Irene Mulvey, president of the AAUP. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

PFS found this video on May 2; it was filmed on April 23
Video filmed at London’s Conway Hall
Niall Ferguson
 
Excerpt:  I know these words sound nice and nobody wants to be against them, but I have to tell you that in George Orwell’s 1984, words mean the opposite of what they appear to mean.
 
What diversity, equity, inclusion turned out to mean at Harvard was uniformity of thought, no equity, no due process for anybody who fell foul of the inquisition, and exclusion of conservatives and indeed anybody who is deemed to be too far to the right, including classical liberals.”

Michael Brendan Dougherty
National Review

Excerpt: Conservatives have sought to prevent the encampments from spreading by drawing strong distinctions between free-speech protections for the students and standards of manners, anti-harassment regulations, and the like. This may be what is legally required of state universities like the University of Florida, where Ben Sasse made those distinctions as clear as possible.

But it’s entirely inadequate for the role that Columbia and the other Ivy League colleges want to play in our republic. The standard is not just free speech, or more speech to counter bad speech, but truthful speech.

Ted Balaker
The Coddling of the American Mind Movie, Substack

Excerpt: Most of our “DVD extras” are paywalled, but we’re making this one available to everyone. In it, Jonathan Haidt touches on the role universities, specifically administrators, play in encouraging students to think in binary terms, to see the world as battle between good and evil.

Jon references the work of Samuel Abrams, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Abrams conducted a national survey of college administrators who work directly with students. He found that “liberal staff members outnumber their conservative counterparts by the astonishing ratio of 12-to-one.” That makes administrators the most left-lopsided group on campus