\n<\/p>\n
After several decades of writing books and blogs about the culture wars, academic freedom and campus free expression, I\u2019ve started this column to illuminate some of the key debates about these issues, past and present, as I see them. I hope my thoughts spark disagreement and discussion, both of which I welcome.<\/p>\n
Something that caught my eye last week was news of a statement calling for even more government control over higher education from a group of conservatives. This comes as the right fully embraces Donald Trump\u2019s authoritarian commands against universities. Developed by Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute,\u00a0the Manhattan Statement\u00a0was carefully designed using\u00a0public polling\u00a0to create vague, popular-sounding principles (\u201ctruth\u201d \u201cfreedom of speech\u201d \u201cequality\u201d \u201ccivil discourse\u201d \u201ctransparency\u201d) that obscure its plan for massive federal control over colleges and repression of dissent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Manhattan Statement is a recipe for tyranny. Even if some people might agree with its goals, what\u2019s important are not the ends but the repressive means used to achieve them. It calls for \u201ca new contract with the universities, which should be written into every grant, payment, loan, eligibility, and accreditation, and punishable by revocation of all public benefit.\u201d We\u2019ve already seen how the Trump regime has terribly, illicitly abused its power over government contracts to punish colleges without due process. The Manhattan Statement would vastly expand this power to include all federal funding and student loans, making every college held hostage for its existence to any demands of the government.<\/p>\n
Instead of pretending that \u201cantisemitism\u201d somehow justified cutting off federal funds in direct defiance of the due process required under Title VI, the Manhattan Statement would provide a wide array of reasons for political ideologues to destroy a college, with its amorphous calls to abolish \u201cideology\u201d and \u201cactivism\u201d and require \u201cswift expulsion\u201d of anyone deemed to violate \u201ccivil discourse.\u201d<\/p>\n
And what if some poor deluded student still wants to attend a college deemed to have violated the Rufo rules? Sorry, he\u2019s from the government, and he\u2019s here to help, whether you like it or not. The Manhattan Statement demands that colleges give total obedience to the reigning president and his interpretation of what the politically correct ideas are.<\/p>\n
In recent years,\u00a0many conservatives have abandoned\u00a0their past commitments to free speech and the rejection of federal control over academia. The nearly 50 signers of the Manhattan Statement represent a broad range of the alt right and the old right, with celebrities like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro joining serious scholars such as Dorian Abbot, Victor Davis Hansen, Lee Jussim and Eric Kaufmann, as well as several professors whose academic freedom I have defended, such as\u00a0Peter Boghossian\u00a0and\u00a0Joshua Katz. It\u2019s disturbing to see so many thoughtful conservatives that I respect joining a call for massive expansion of government control over colleges.<\/p>\n
One of the signers, Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), is a member (and former chair) of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, a sign that the Manhattan Statement is not some theoretical wish list aimed at reforming universities, but a very real political threat that could easily be enforced on colleges in the near future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, even terrible legislation is too slow a process for these conservatives, who write that \u201cwe call on the President of the United States to draft a new contract with the universities\u201d with these extraordinary requirements. It shows a breathtaking ignorance of basic American civics for so many conservatives to believe that the President single-handedly has the power to impose extraordinary conditions at his whim on any college receiving any grants or student loans, and even personally dictating the accreditation status of colleges.<\/p>\n
To legitimize government intrusion, the Manhattan Statement invents pure historical fiction: \u201cDuring the Founding era, schools of higher education were established by government charter and written into the law, which stipulated that, in exchange for public support, they had a duty to advance the public good, and, if they were to stray from that mission, the people retained the right to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first American colleges were chartered in the Colonial era, not the Founding era, and there is no mention of any \u201cright to intervene\u201d by \u201cthe people\u201d in any college charter. That imaginary \u201cright to intervene\u201d would be prohibited now by the First Amendment. The AAUP\u2019s\u00a01915 Declaration of Principles\u2014revered\u00a0by this Statement\u2019s signers such as Peter Wood\u2014states that politicians and even college trustees \u201chave neither competency nor moral right to intervene\u201d in the professional work of academics.<\/p>\n
The Manhattan Statement claims, \u201cThe American people send billions to the universities and are repaid with contempt.\u201d The \u201cAmerican people\u201d represent a wide range of views. They are repaid for their money with scientific and medical advances of enormous value, with educated students who expand the productivity of the leading economy in the world, and with the general expansion of knowledge. And contempt for the American people is pretty rare among academics. But I oppose this anti-contempt rhetoric on a deeper, moral level. Universities should have more expressions of contempt. We need more arguments on campus, more core disagreements, even when it offends people. If contempt is forbidden, many of the Manhattan Statement\u2019s signers would be the first against the wall. And the belief that universities should precisely mirror the public\u2019s views and identities is wrong, as these same conservatives have repeatedly said when denouncing diversity.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0Manhattan Institute poll\u00a0last month found that a strong majority of Democrats and independents support free speech on campus. But only 44% of Republicans agreed that \u201cit\u2019s more important for universities to protect free speech, even if some find it offensive.\u201d Conservatives are retreating from principles of free speech and limited government because they want to purge their enemies, and the Manhattan Statement is a clear declaration of this move.<\/p>\n
What the Manhattan Statement claims to be the problem\u2014\u201ca new kind of tyranny\u2014one in which ideology determines truth, and the university functions as a political agent\u00a0\u2026\u201d\u2014is, in fact, the perfect description of Rufo\u2019s solution. He\u2019s simply taking a deluded fantasy of left-wing tyranny on campus as a justification to impose a very real proposal for right-wing tyranny.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We are witnessing the worst government attacks on academic freedom in the history of American higher education, as the Trump regime has launched an assault on campus free inquiry that\u2019s unconstitutional, illegal, immoral and indefensible. It\u2019s a moment when all principled defenders of academic freedom, regardless of their critiques of academia, should speak out strongly against repression and the belief that government control can be a solution to academia\u2019s problems. Instead, these so-called conservatives are standing up to applaud authoritarianism, and calling for greater destruction of their enemies, the universities.<\/p>\n
I want this column to be a space for interviews with authors and debates with those who disagree with me, and I encourage readers to write letters to the editor in response (letters@insidehighered.com) and to email me (collegefreedom@yahoo.com) with their own ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After several decades of writing books and blogs about the culture wars, academic freedom and campus free expression, I\u2019ve started this column to illuminate some of the key debates about these issues, past and present, as I see them. I hope my thoughts spark disagreement and discussion, both of which I welcome. Something that caught<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1950,5244,5245],"class_list":{"0":"post-11764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-dangers","9":"tag-manhattan","10":"tag-statement"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}