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Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s civics school has been controversial since early 2023, when the campus Board of Trustees called to “accelerate” its development before faculty even knew it was underway. The board’s then-chairman said on Fox News he was trying to “remedy” a lack of “right-of-center views” on campus.
The university said it selected the international law firm K&L Gates last summer to review “allegations and concerns” regarding the school. Over more than seven months, the review team analyzed hundreds of thousands of documents and interviewed dozens of people. The report is complete, reportedly at a cost of $1.2 million and running more than 400 pages. But the university is refusing to release any of it—despite calls from students, faculty and media to at least reveal some contents.
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At a time when the average tenure of a college president has dipped below six years, Ronald J. Daniels is beginning his 18th year at the helm of the Johns Hopkins University. He’s weathered numerous crises, though perhaps none as severe as the second Trump administration.
As part of the leadership of the Association of American Universities, Daniels had several discussions with members of the Trump administration about its recent open letter, “A National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards.” I spoke to Daniels over Zoom about his decision to advise on that open letter, how conservative scholars have been “systematically excluded” from the academy, and whether his emphasis on political diversity has come at the expense of racial diversity.
Questioning colleges is normal. There are outstanding concerns about the experience, the education, and the enterprise of higher education: How much does it cost, and is that more than families can pay? Who gets in, and why? Are faculty members treated with dignity? What is college even for? So, although college leaders argue that a few of the concerns voiced in the document are legitimate, they also see within it the bane of Ilium.
On this week’s Radio Atlantic, I’m joined by Jack Stripling, the host of the College Matters podcast at The Chronicle of Higher Education, to consider higher education in the Trump era, and the purpose of college itself.
What is college for? If you ask four different people, you’re likely to get four different answers. Universities teach students how to think. They produce groundbreaking research. They create citizens. They prepare students for jobs. They archive the wisdom of the past. And so on.
However, beneath the veneer of diversity, all university goals ultimately come down to the same thing. At their core, universities are epistemic institutions, committed to the creation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge.
