Colleges are here to be places of learning, not performative politics 

In December, the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT went before Congress to address antisemitism on campus. Their studied hypocrisy on the issue of free speech triggered a bipartisan avalanche of criticism, ultimately leading to the ousters of Penn’s Liz Magill and Harvard’s Claudine Gay.

The fallout has made the college campus the momentary front line in our polarized culture clashes. This is a good moment to step back and ensure that our principles don’t get sacrificed in the name of point-scoring.

Professors insisting that plagiarism isn’t always “plagiarism” (at least not when it involves right-wingers criticizing the president of Harvard) have risked lasting damage to the principle of academic integrity. So, too, do we risk undermining campus free speech if we’re not clear about what it’s for and why it matters. 

Oddly absent of late has been any evident recognition that the historic rationale for campus speech is not to provide protesters with bucolic backdrops, but to enable scholars to challenge received wisdom, students to ask uncomfortable questions, and classrooms to serve as places of genuine learning.

As Yale’s famed Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression put it in 1974, responding to the excesses of the 1960s: “The primary function of a university is to discover and disseminate knowledge by means of research and teaching…The university must do everything possible to ensure within it the fullest degree of intellectual freedom. The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” 

A lot of questions have now arisen about double standards and free speech, with college leaders drawing well-deserved ridicule when they insist it’s their passion for free speech that stops them from addressing antisemitic chants for genocide. After all, these same leaders have a track record of silencing views that offend campus orthodoxy. Harvard disinvited feminist philosopher Devin Buckley for rejecting transgender ideology. UPenn investigated law professor Amy Wax for promoting “bourgeois values.” MIT canceled a prestigious guest lecture by geophysicist Dorian Abbot because of his criticism of DEI. 

But these snapshots of hypocrisy at high-profile campuses risk distracting us from the bigger problem, which is that colleges are failing miserably at their core educational mission. 

After all, 45 percent of college students say they’re frequently afraid to share their thoughts in college classrooms. When it comes to controversial topics, over half of students say they’re uncomfortable voicing their views in class or disagreeing with a professor in a written assignment. Heck, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government reported that most students aren’t comfortable sharing their views on controversies “related to politics, international affairs, and public policy” in classrooms or seminars. That’s a big problem at a school of public policy. 

There’s been so much focus on what protesters are saying that it’s been easy to skip past the fact that there’s nothing particularly educational about any of it. Indeed, they’ve contributed to a performative culture that stymies robust, formative educational discourse. Unfortunately, thanks to the countercultural conceits of ’60s radicalism, sit-ins and raucous rallies have somehow become the measuring stick of campus free expression. 

This is a problem — one that’s made worse by the students themselves. Campus observers note that many youth today seem more comfortable shouting as part of a mob than speaking for themselves in the isolation of a classroom. Gen Z has grown up inhabiting insular online communities that reward theatrically dissing those who disagree. It can be easier for campus officials to cater to this tendency than to challenge it. 

And campus groupthink may be making things still worse. While there’s certainly plenty of illiberalism on the contemporary right, it’s mostly left-leaning students who are stifling discourse on campus today. Forty-two percent of “very liberal” students say they’ve canceled someone; just eight percent of “very conservative” students say the same. 

This split happens to reflect the ideological make-up of college faculty, who are five times as likely to identify as left-leaning than right-leaning. Faculty biases may not be the only reason why campus culture feels so one-sided, but they aren’t helping. 

These are the essential problems when it comes to campus speech — the stifled classrooms, the groupthink professoriate. So what can we do? 

Colleges should make clear that they’re seeking students eager to embrace academic inquiry and civil dialogue. They should make cultivating these principles a priority from day one — in orientations, seminars and mentoring programs. 

Faculty should model scholarly inquiry and respectful discourse, and should be expected to mentor students accordingly. This suggests a need for big changes in the preparation of scholars, their duties and how they’re evaluated. 

Colleges need to reset their cultural norms, put learning first, and actively recruit scholars and administrators who will civilly challenge groupthink and broaden the discourse. 

In 2024, we have no shortage of outlets for performative politicking. That’s not what we need from America’s colleges. Their job is to be places of learning. That means drawing clear distinctions between free inquiry in classrooms and theatrical flag-waving on the quad. 

College leaders have every right — one might say a professional obligation — to impose viewpoint-neutral restrictions on the where and when of campus speech, in order to protect academic learning and ensure that dogma isn’t displacing discourse.

Nostalgia for the 1960s aside, there’s nothing especially educational about chants, marches or sit-ins, whether organized by the left or the right. If college leaders, who pocket hundreds of billions in public aid, grants and loans each year, cannot grasp that, then public officials have an obligation to help set them straight. 

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.