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John Tomasi
Heterodox Academy
Excerpt: Last week, the Manhattan Institute issued a statement on university reform, calling on the “President of the United States to draft a new contract with the universities.” Many of the signatories hold university and faculty appointments. Two days after the statement was issued, UATX President Carlos Carvalho responded with a forceful endorsement of the statement, which has led to controversy that has already prompted the resignation of Lawrence H. Summers from that institution’s board of advisors.
The Manhattan Institute statement’s recommendations for university reform are not novel; in fact, they are similar to a number of the reforms HxA recommended last month in our Open Inquiry U Reform Agenda. But there are important distinctions between the two reform agendas that must be explicitly called out.
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I recently listened to Ross Douthat’s interview with the philosopher Jennifer Frey. She is a serious thinker and an unusually courageous academic entrepreneur. What she built at the University of Tulsa before it was dismantled is exactly the sort of thing more universities should be attempting. Yet almost every argument she offered for the humanities is, I think, completely unpersuasive to anyone not already on our side of the table.
This report presents findings from a national survey of 1,959 law school faculty at 192 American Bar Association (ABA) approved law schools in the United States, conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). As one of the largest surveys of law faculty on free expression and professional norms, the data reveal a profession that strongly endorses free speech principles while struggling to live them out in practice.
I just returned from the University of Wyoming, where I debated the President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Todd Wolfson over the need for colleges and universities to maintain institutional neutrality. The debate was organized by the Steamboat Institute and was live-streamed.
The formal question presented for debate was: “Is institutional neutrality necessary to preserve the university as a forum for open inquiry rather than an actor in political disputes?” I spoke in favor of institutional neutrality while Wolfson argued against it as a necessary component to higher education.
