Universities as Unsettling Institutions

By Jonathan R. Cole*

In a brilliant, concise Report to the University of Chicago faculty in 1967, the Kalven Committee(i) concluded that "by design and by effect, [the university]... is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones... a good university...will be unsettling." If a university's fundamental mission is to create and disseminate knowledge, how is it to foster those ambitions while preventing the natural tendency to suppress ideas that question existing knowledge and power relationships in the society? It does so by articulating, reinforcing, and defending itself against attacks on the core university values of academic freedom and free inquiry.

To many members of the educated public, academic freedom is nothing more than a protective shield that scholars and scientists hide behind to avoid criticism and censure for their offensive speech or research that challenges existing beliefs and dogma. And for that same public, academic tenure represents an inappropriate structural mechanism that protects radical thoughts or incompetence(ii). Such beliefs betray a gross misunderstanding of the history of efforts to suppress free inquiry at universities and colleges, and a lack of understanding of the conditions needed for the growth of knowledge.

Properly understood, academic freedom is as Louis Menand, the Harvard literary scholar, has said: "...the key legitimating concept of the entire [academic] enterprise." It is the mechanism that establishes control and authority over the critical decisions in the university. It places in the hands of highly trained, competent professors, who have met standards set by the disciplines, the power to create criteria for entrance into the profession, to establish what is valued as "high quality work," to determine hiring and promotion standards, to construct examinations, and to determine the content taught in classes run by those professors. Academic tenure, if properly accompanied by rigorous standards linked to promotion, is the final defense against the power of external authorities and those inside the university to purge ideas from the community that they find opprobrious. It should not be surprising therefore that during perilous times the effort to fire or censure faculty members at colleges and universities focuses on the non-tenured and adjunct faculty.

Great teachers challenge the biases of their students and colleagues. They present unsettling ideas and dare others to rebut them and to defend their own beliefs in a coherent and principled manner. The best of America's universities and colleges push and pull at the walls of orthodoxy and reject politically correct thinking. In this process, students and professors may sometimes feel intimidated, overwhelmed, and confused. But it is by working through this process that they learn to think better and more clearly for themselves. The goal of academic freedom is to establish an environment in which it is possible for the inquisitive mind to flourish.

If we are not to stifle the thoughts of those at universities and colleges who hold unpopular views, then we ought to embrace a number of important principles. The university cannot and should not attempt to decide what ideas or perspective are appropriate for the classroom. For one student, a professor's ideas may represent repugnant stereotypes or efforts at intimidation; for another, the same ideas may represent profound challenges to ostensibly settled issues. If we place fetters on the open marketplace of ideas, who is to be cast as the "Grand Inquisitor?" Furthermore, the university is not a place where we exclusively house or train the kind of scientist or scholar who advises the prince - those currently in control of government. Some will voluntarily do so, but it is not the point or the rationale of universities to furnish such advice, nor to have the thematic pursuits of inquiry in the university shaped by the interests of the prince.

Finally, no one speaks "for" the university. There is, in fact, no "university position" on essential matters of science and public affairs. The university does not decide which ideas are good and bad, which are right or wrong. That is up for constant debate and deliberation. For a president, provost, or Trustee to speak "for" the university only serves to stifle debate, alienate those whose views differ from those of the institution's leaders, and create a chilling effect on free discourse.

Unsettling by nature, university culture is also highly conservative. It demands evidence before accepting novel challenges to existing theories and methods. The university ought to be viewed in terms of a fundamental interdependence between the liberality of its intellectual life and the conservatism of its methodological demands. Because the university encourages discussion of even the most radical ideas, it must set its standards for establishing "facts" at a high level. We permit almost any idea to be put forward - but only because we demand arguments and evidence to back up the ideas we debate and because we set the bar of proof at such a high level. Those two components - tolerance for unsettling ideas and insistence on rigorous skepticism about all ideas - create an essential tension at the heart of American universities and colleges. They will not thrive without both components operating effectively and simultaneously. Other national systems of higher learning, like China's, will have to fully comprehend and internalize this necessary tension if their universities are to achieve true greatness.

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i. The Committee was chaired by the great legal scholar, Harry Kalven, Jr. and included a distinguished set of faculty members, including Nobel Prize economist, George Stigler, and the distinguished African American history professor, John Hope Franklin.
ii. Would the public also hold similar views toward tenure for federal judges, and does the public understand why protection of federal judges from political influence is essential for the proper functioning of the federal judiciary?

* Jonathan R. Cole is the John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University and was Provost and Dean of Faculties at Columbia University from 1989 to 2003. A wider discussion of these issues can be found in The Great American University: Its Rise To Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Rose; Why It Must Be Protected (PublicAffairs, 2010)