\n<\/p>\n
In the fall of 1997, the political scientist John J. Mearsheimer delivered the annual \u201cAims of Education\u201d address to the entering class at the University of Chicago. The address is roughly the length of a typical article in The New Yorker<\/em> and is very, very serious. \u201cDeadly serious,\u201d as Mearsheimer says, with good reason, of the university by which he is employed. It is best known, however, for the relatively brief assertion that Chicago, like \u201call other major colleges and universities in this country,\u201d is \u201ca remarkably amoral institution.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cElite universities,\u201d he said, \u201coperate on the belief that there is a clear separation between intellectual and moral purpose, and they pursue the former while largely ignoring the latter.\u201d About nonelite universities Mearsheimer has little to say at this or any other point in the address.<\/p>\n As a matter of historical record, Mearsheimer\u2019s claim is accurate: By the late 20th century, the explicitly moral purpose of many American colleges and universities, most of them associated with various branches of Christianity, had largely vanished. Traditions like mandatory attendance at weekly chapel services or required courses in theology or ethics had disappeared at all but a small number of religiously affiliated institutions. Universities understood their purpose not as producing good people (at which they were never especially adept) but as producing educated people.<\/p>\n In recent years, the idea of the amoral university has been married to a second idea articulated in another of Chicago\u2019s gifts to the world, the Kalven Committee Report, issued in 1967, which famously asserted that \u201cthe university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic\u201d and therefore \u201ccannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness.\u201d Here, it might be said, the idea of institutional neutrality was born, or at least most influentially articulated.<\/p>\n Mearsheimer\u2019s belief that the university should not attempt to shape moral character and the Kalven Committee\u2019s contention that the university should be silent on \u201cthe issues of the day\u201d have today, for many, become combined into the idea that the university should not itself be a moral actor\u2014that it should have nothing to say about what is right or wrong, beyond internal procedural matters like plagiarism, falsified research and student codes of conduct. And so, for example, the University of Minnesota declined to pass judgment on Operation Metro Surge or the killing by federal agents of one of its alumni, Alex Pretti\u2014though it did note, courageously, that \u201cour hearts and support go out to all those close to Alex.\u201d<\/p>\n In a recent essay, John Tomasi, president of Heterodox Academy, insists that \u201cthe university is not a moral agent like other institutions. The core mistake made by critics of institutional neutrality is that they treat the university as a unitary moral actor, analogous to a corporation, a church, or a political association. The university, however, is not bound together by substantive moral agreement, but by specialized procedures and norms designed for the pursuit of knowledge.\u201d The contrast here to corporations is puzzling, since in fact most corporations are not \u201cbound together by substantive moral agreement\u201d but by \u201cspecialized procedures and norms\u201d designed for the pursuit not of knowledge, but of money. Their claim to amorality seems as credible as that of universities.<\/p>\n Note that Tomasi\u2019s argument is different from the one made by Mearsheimer, who focuses on the moral instruction of the individual, and even from that of the Kalven Committee, which makes no specific mention of morality but acknowledges that there are times when the university must \u201cactively\u00a0\u2026 defend its mission and its values,\u201d which sounds suspiciously moral. If I understand Tomasi correctly, he is arguing that because there is typically an absence of substantive moral agreement within a university community, and because that community is formed exclusively for the purpose of learning, the university itself should not engage with broad questions of right or wrong.<\/p>\n Tomasi\u2019s argument might be more persuasive if the university were exclusively in the knowledge-pursuing business. In reality, however, the university is many things: an employer, a nonprofit enterprise, a place where students live, a part of a community that extends beyond its campus. In all these roles, it regularly functions as a \u201cunitary moral actor\u201d in the absence of \u201csubstantive moral agreement\u201d among its many people and parts. When deciding upon working conditions and remuneration, when deciding how far to encroach into surrounding neighborhoods, when deciding where to cut budgets and positions, when deciding how to invest its assets, even when deciding which applicants to admit, it often makes decisions as an entity that have clear moral valence\u2014that are about not merely what can be done, but what should be done. The university does not get excused from the moral responsibility for its actions because it happens to be a place where people teach and conduct research.<\/p>\n The claim to amorality rings especially hollow when it comes to Mearsheimer\u2019s \u201celite universities,\u201d which are as closely and often as covertly tied to money and power as are large corporations. \u201cSo long as universities are going to be networked with powerful business, cultural, and political elites,\u201d the higher education scholar Brendan Cantwell notes, \u201cthey\u2019re necessarily going to be engaging in activities that are political, that lead to cultural controversy, ethical controversy, moral controversy\u00a0\u2026 To an extent, it makes their stances of neutrality farcical.\u201d<\/p>\n What Tomasi actually means, of course, is that university leaders should keep quiet on controversial social and political issues about which people on and off campus disagree and that are likely to attract the ire of some portion of the public and especially of powerful donors and politicians. By this logic, they were right to remain silent and quietly complicit in segregation in 1964, when 31\u00a0percent of Americans disapproved of new civil rights laws. They were right to remain silent and quietly complicit in 1939, when only 39\u00a0percent of Americans agreed with the statement that \u201cJews have the same standing as any other people and they should be treated in all ways exactly like all other Americans.\u201d They are right to remain silent today about the actions of the Trump administration so long as those actions are supported by more than one-third of the country.<\/p>\n The question I am always inclined to put to the strongest advocates for institutional neutrality is whether there is a line: whether there is a theoretical point at which what the Kalven Committee calls the \u201cissues of the day\u201d cross over into so dire a threat to a free and fair society and to the safety of the most vulnerable that amorality becomes immorality and neutrality becomes complicity. Would a university be equally comfortable under democracy and tyranny so long as it were somehow left alone to pursue knowledge?<\/p>\n I would also argue that claiming to be one thing when you are in fact something else is an action with moral implications, and that a good number of ostensibly amoral universities are at the moment guilty of this particular moral lapse. \u201cAt Texas A&M, we are a community where the free and open exchange of ideas and information is valued, promoted and encouraged.\u201d This is demonstrably untrue\u2014I would say laughably untrue were the destruction of a once-great university anything at which to laugh. The University of Florida \u201cbelieves that academic freedom and responsibility are essential to the full development of a true university and apply to teaching, research, and creativity.\u201d Also untrue. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reassures us that \u201cWhere faculty and students once faced dismissal for voicing unpopular ideas or pursuing research that might challenge reigning ideas, universities now embrace the principle of academic freedom for all tenured and non-tenured faculty and instructors to research, discuss, and teach controversial subjects free from internal or external constraints.\u201d Recording classes without the knowledge or consent of the instructor must not be considered a constraint.<\/p>\n By any reasonable standard, these universities are taking actions that carry moral weight.<\/p>\n Finally, and perhaps most important, the emphasis on the negative impact of moral leadership on a university community obscures the negative impact of amoral leadership. Here, a research study done by Matthew J. Quade at Baylor University and colleagues is relevant, and its conclusion is worth quoting in full:<\/p>\n \u201cOur study reveals that amoral management has a damaging effect on employees\u2019 moral courage and often encourages subsequent unethical behavior. This effect is even more pronounced when the organization has policies, practices, and procedures that support and promote ethics. In such a highly ethical environment, amoral managers appear to make an active choice to avoid ethics, given that the environment strongly endorses ethical adherence. This creates a saliency effect, in which case amoral managers are likely to be perceived as being even less supportive of or even indifferent to employees\u2019 morally courageous efforts, which further increases unethical conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAmoral managers are likely to be perceived as\u00a0\u2026 indifferent to employees\u2019 morally courageous efforts\u201d: Few statements more accurately describe the current feeling among many faculty and staff, along with many students, at colleges and universities in the United States\u2014not to mention many employees of large corporations from Minneapolis to Silicon Valley. One of the diagnosed causes of moral injury among health-care workers and members of the military is \u201clack of support\u00a0\u2026 by trusted others,\u201d and in the current environment of fear and anger, there is good reason to believe that the same can be said of workers in other industries, including higher education.<\/p>\n Much has been said and written about the damage done to a university community when its leaders speak frankly about social and political issues that may be roiling the country and even threatening the mission of the institution. Less has been said or written about the damage done when they are silent. No doubt there are many who, like Tomasi, find the spectacle of amoral leadership \u201cbeautiful.\u201d There are also many others\u2014some of whom have lost their jobs, some of whom are afraid for themselves or their families, some of whom are simply outraged and exhausted by the daily assaults on human decency\u2014who find the spectacle less attractive and who are aching for their leaders to use their voices individually and collectively.<\/p>\n Arne Duncan, former U.S. secretary of education, and David Pressman, former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, recently wrote that \u201cMuch as lawyers are guardians of the rule of law, presidents and chancellors are stewards of intellectual freedom and democratic norms.\u201d Most presidents and chancellors would probably respond by arguing that they are, first and foremost, stewards of their own institutions, and they would not be wrong. In a healthy society, these two forms of stewardship would be aligned. What underscores the danger of the current moment is the extent to which they are in conflict.<\/p>\n In the view of organizations like Heterodox Academy and of many (mostly senior) faculty members, Duncan and Pressman and other disappointed people misunderstand the nature of the university. Perhaps. Or perhaps they understand other things: that silence or neutrality or amorality in the face of rampant cruelty is indefensible, whether one is talking about an individual or a corporation or a university; that acquiescence to authoritarianism in the name of safety leads only to greater danger; that leaders are mute at the moment less out of principle than out of well-founded fear of a wildly vindictive government; and that a society ruled by brute force\u2014Stephen Miller\u2019s society\u2014has little tolerance for honest teaching and unfettered research and, therefore, eventually, little tolerance for the university itself.<\/p>\n Colleges might not be held together by \u201csubstantive moral agreement,\u201d but unless they find their moral voice, unless they do become stewards of intellectual freedom and democratic norms, they might find themselves held together by nothing at all.<\/p>\n Brian Rosenberg is president emeritus of Macalester College, a visiting professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of<\/em> Whatever It Is, I\u2019m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education (<\/em>Harvard Education Press, 2023<\/em>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the fall of 1997, the political scientist John J. Mearsheimer delivered the annual \u201cAims of Education\u201d address to the entering class at the University of Chicago. The address is roughly the length of a typical article in The New Yorker and is very, very serious. \u201cDeadly serious,\u201d as Mearsheimer says, with good reason, of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[23303,2945,440,781],"class_list":{"0":"post-45143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-amoral","9":"tag-fiction","10":"tag-opinion","11":"tag-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45143","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=45143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}