In stunning irony, the leadership of so many of the nation’s top colleges and universities, initially unable to give a full-throated condemnation of a terrorist attack on Israeli civilians of monstrous savagery, miraculously discovered institutional neutrality and murmured effetely instead. In response to the backlash, they appeal to free expression, but their campuses have only what Penn donor and alumnus Clifford Asness has called “asymmetrical free speech where some have it and some don’t.”

While Penn Carey Law School’s eminent Professor Amy Wax is placed under investigation with serious threat of termination for alleged racial insensitivity, a professor who posted the logo of the military wing of Hamas on Facebook days after that terrorist organization’s horrific attack on Israeli civilians receives nothing more than an email.

Roger Waters, a notorious antisemite, is allowed to speak on Penn’s campus, but young women forced to share a locker room with a biological male are told, “Don’t talk to the media. You will regret it.”

At Harvard, the same President Claudine Gay who was instrumental in punishing gifted African American economist Roland Fryer, who dared to advance a data-driven challenge to the meme of racist policing, says pro-Hamas students will neither be punished nor sanctioned. Carole Hooven, who was canceled for stating a biological fact, might disagree with President Gay’s claim that Harvard “embraces a commitment to free expression.”

When the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) first formulated the principles of academic freedom in its 1915 Declaration, the primary concern was undue pressure on faculty from donors and trustees. Times have changed. Now the greatest threat to free expression comes from within the institutions themselves. Hiring aims at ideological self-replication, and heterodox thinkers who somehow sneak in are punished as heretics if they speak up.

No one is surprised that these schools are ideological silos tilted to the left, but the numbers are still shocking. Only 3% of faculty at Harvard identify as conservative. An astounding 99.7% of political donations made by Penn faculty in 2021-22 went to Democrats.

Our institutions of higher education need reform, and the people inside them have shown little interest in starting the process. Many are in complete denial that anything needs to change. The American people think differently: Only 36% (19% of Republicans) say they have confidence in American higher education.

There are some internal signs of hope, such as the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, but the broader pattern among faculty and administrators is obstinate, self-righteous resistance. Normally, faculty complain that no one reads their work. Now that people are paying attention, the faculty senate tri-chairs at Penn complain that “freedom of thought, inquiry, and speech … are being threatened by individuals outside of the University who are surveilling both faculty and students in an effort to intimidate them and inhibit their academic freedom.” Where were these faculty leaders when dozens of their colleagues and students demanded sanctions against Amy Wax for daring to write that bourgeois values such as being “neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable” are drivers of success? They have been silent while Penn’s tribunal weighs terminating this distinguished professor, who has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court and received Penn’s highest award for teaching excellence.

Unwilling to defend academic freedom when it mattered, the faculty senate speaks now only to insult its donors and alumni. “Let us be clear,” the tri-chairs write: “academic freedom is an essential component of a world-class university and is not a commodity that can be bought or sold by those who seek to use their pocketbooks to shape our mission.” What gratitude! Not to be outdone, the Penn chapter of the AAUP, also silent on matters of academic freedom in recent years, complains about “donors directly contacting academic programs that rely on them financially” and says trustees and donors “have attempted to abuse the power that comes with wealth.” Is Penn holding a competition to see who can chase away the most donors?

The disingenuous administrators and faculty who run our elite academic institutions have had their chance to govern autonomously. We see where they have led us. Now is a time for trustees, donors, and alumni to intervene and give these institutions the gift of reform they so urgently need.

This post originally appeared on RealClear Politics on November 17, 2023.

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Moderator: Douglas Sprei, Vice President of Multimedia & Campus Partnerships, ACTA.

Panelists: Ilana Redstone, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Faculty Director of the Mill Institute at the University of Austin; Pamela Paresky, Senior Research Fellow, Network Contagion Research Institute; and Molly Brigid McGrath, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University.

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Those who attack Jews or Israel are all too often exempt from their excoriation. Hamas terrorists massacred some 1,300 Israelis, took approximately 200 hostages, most of them civilians, and left an additional 3,200 injured, but you would not know it from some university leaders’ missives this week.

At Harvard University, President Claudine Gay has issued three muddled statements, under pressure, on the horrific events. Her first statement was a tepid confession of “heartbreak” that implied an equivalence between the Hamas attacks and Israel neutralizing the terrorists. This embarrassment was signed by all the university’s senior deans. Only after a barrage of online criticism—and threats by donors—did she muster the strength to condemn the child killers. Not content to leave it alone, she has issued another statement, but still without criticizing the 30-odd student groups who professed to “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible” for the murder, rape, kidnapping, and torture of Jews, referring instead to the principle of freedom of speech. Let us be clear that these students have freedom of speech, but so does Claudine Gay. She has the right to condemn their words. In 2022, Harvard denounced in no uncertain terms “the capricious and senseless invasion of Ukraine.” Harvard knows how to speak clearly about Ukrainian victims but not, apparently, about Jewish victims.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik offered a masterfully slippery statement: “I was devastated by the horrific attack on Israel this weekend and the ensuing violence that is affecting so many people.” While all lives matter, the mention of “ensuing violence” is a reference to Israeli targeting of terrorists—putting it on a par with raping and pillaging by Hamas. She implied moral equivalence. 

The moral lassitude and obscurantism of Shafik’s statement trickled down. Columbia College Dean Josef Sorett emitted the following: “The events in Israel and Gaza over the past several days have shocked the world and impacted many of our students.” Dean Sorett’s “events in Gaza” are, of course, Israeli military operations undertaken in self-defense and in an effort to kill murderers, which he places on par with the door-to-door murder of civilians in Israel. 

The dean of Columbia Law School did not outclass her colleague. Gillian Lester wrote to her students and faculty, “The violence that erupted in Israel and Gaza this past weekend is nothing short of tragic,” again implying a moral equivalence between the enemies of the Jewish people and their victims.

At Middlebury College, the senior leadership wrote to “acknowledge the untold pain, suffering, and loss of life unfolding from the violence happening now in Israel and Palestine.” President Laurie Patton seems unclear about who is making the violence “happen.” She goes on to warn against “hate, racism, ethnic discrimination, antisemitism, or Islamophobia.” The equivalence is complete, and we can move on to meet the real threat: Islamophobia. Compare this muddle to the perfect clarity of Middlebury’s official response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine: It “wreaked untold havoc in the lives of innocent civilians. Russia’s aggression against its democratic neighbor is a violation of international law, made only more egregious by its escalation in the face of international condemnation. I join that condemnation in solidarity with our Middlebury community.” How easy it would have been to revise that statement ever so slightly to say that Hamas “wreaked untold havoc in the lives of innocent civilians. Hamas’s aggression against its democratic neighbor is a violation of international law, made only more egregious by its escalation in the face of international condemnation. I join that condemnation in solidarity with our Middlebury community.”  

The University of California–Berkeley, which spends $36 million annually on its Division of Equity & Inclusion, may be the most openly antisemitic campus in the country. Its law school is under federal investigation for discriminating against Jews. Student organizations there expressed their “unwavering support” for the Hamas pogrom. The president refused to condemn this statement. Instead, he expressed his heartbreak at “the violence and suffering in Israel and Gaza,” pointedly comparing Israel’s self-defense to the terrorist attacks themselves, gesturing, like too many others, to the “complex history” of the situation. 

In reality though, no complexity is so great as to obscure the distinction between the intentional slaughter of innocents and targeted strikes against terrorists. Some schools eventually issued careful statements—but their initial reaction—or lack of reaction—is most telling, especially when contrasted with quick and decisive past declarations of outrage.

At Stanford University, the administration has covered itself in special disgrace by adding dishonesty to cowardice, despite finally acknowledging the horror. Criticized for its silence about the weekend’s slaughter, Stanford claimed in an unsigned statement that it “does not take positions on geopolitical issues and news events.” But when Russia invaded Ukraine, Stanford’s president released this statement: “The unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the attack it represents on democracy, is beyond shocking.” He continued, “It has been remarkable to witness the courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people.” Stanford also commented when a child’s skipping rope was found in a tree in 2021, where it had been tangled for some years, officially denouncing it as a “a potent symbol of anti-Black racism and violence that is completely unacceptable under any circumstances.” Stanford discovered the principle of institutional neutrality, it seems, just in time for the Sabbath assault on Israeli civilians.

Under the principle of institutional neutrality, colleges and universities should indeed refrain from speaking corporately on contemporary social or political issues, unless they transcend the institution’s values as a whole (such as the wanton taking of innocent life by terrorists). Higher education’s mission is to encourage diversity of thought. But condemning brutality and savagery, whether the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a policeman, or the civilian carnage Hamas wrought, is not a political statement. No one has asked presidents to endorse Zionism or the two-state solution or anything vaguely geopolitical. They needed only to affirm human decency without which the university is a place of moral chaos.

However serpentine the ongoing contortions of these administrators, what is revealed in these official reactions by colleges is a cancerous moral rot and intellectual confusion. Bothsidesism is a symptom; the root cause is worse.They were perfectly able to rush to condemn the murder of George Floyd, the seedy depravities uncovered by the #MeToo movement, and the brutal invasion of Ukraine—as they should. They pronounce vocally and volubly on the events of January 6, 2021, and on horrible killings at houses of worship. They take flamboyant public positions on everything from affirmative action to climate policy to marriage equality. So why is it so hard to condemn the slaughter of Jewish babies? Why is it so hard to offer proper support and empathy to their grieving Jewish students?

The University of Pennsylvania’s president had no word of censure for Penn’s Palestine Writes festival, which ran between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and featured Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, notorious for exhibitionist antisemitism. Then came the anemic initial response of Penn’s president to the Hamas atrocities. Jon Huntsman, a Penn graduate and donor and a former governor of Utah, pinpointed the cause of his alma mater’s failure: “Moral relativism has fueled the university’s race to the bottom.” If only Penn’s administration possessed such moral (and pedagogical) clarity.

To be fair, some universities have offered proper statements that unambiguously condemn the pogrom of Hamas. But these are few and far between. The United States used to lead in higher education, but now we need to look for leadership abroad, for example in the exemplary statement of the German Rectors’ Conference that noted quickly, clearly, and unambiguously, “We are deeply shocked and appalled by the terrorist attack of Hamas on Israel, the terrible massacres, and the kidnappings. On behalf of all German universities, I would like to express our sincerest condolences and heartfelt sympathy. We are deeply saddened by the senseless loss of life. Our thoughts are with those killed and injured, those still in danger, and their families and friends. As the German Rectors’ Conference, the voice of German universities, we stand in solidarity with the Israeli universities and academic colleges and all their members. We would be grateful if you could share this message of sympathy and solidarity with your member institutions.”

Educational institutions have a responsibility to educate and lead—not only in subject matters but in basic issues of morality. Those who fail to condemn the slaughter of children and fail to show empathy to their students who identify with this slaughter, are failing their mission at the most basic level. 

This article appeared on ReaclearEducation on October 20, 2023.

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On October 17, 2021, Princeton University alumni Stuart Taylor, Jr., and Edward Yingling published a call to arms in the Wall Street Journal, decrying the illiberal intolerance gripping academia and heralding the rise of a grassroots alumni movement aimed at restoring free speech and academic freedom on American college campuses. Their article, titled “Alumni Unite For Freedom Of Speech,” sounded the alarm about the censorship and indoctrination engulfing higher education and put cloistered faculty and administrators on notice that alumni are no longer content to be passive bystanders or automatic cash dispensers. The piece was the catalyst for the establishment of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, an organization that is inspiring alumni nationwide to force a reckoning at their alma maters.

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In March 2023, ACTA’s second annual Alumni Summit on Free Expression brought together alumni free speech activists and higher education nonprofit leaders from across the country to share knowledge, experiences, and resources related to campus reform efforts. In partnership with the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA), this special gathering was designed to further motivate and equip alumni as guardians of the values that shaped their own education, including free expression, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity.

Today’s episode features a panel from the Summit, headlined as A HIGHER ED REFORMATION: CHANGING CAMPUS POLICY AND CULTURE. Along with ACTA’s Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom, Steve McGuire, the discussion featured Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation; Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and AFSA board member; and Dawn Toguchi, executive director of the Open Discourse Coalition at Bucknell University.  The moderator was John Tomasi, president of Heterodox Academy. Together, these experts explored how alumni concerned about campus free speech can influence policy and cultural change within college and university environments.

Download a transcript of the podcast HERE.
Note: Please check any quotations against the audio recording.

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In fact, higher education institutions have tended to view alumni solely as cheerleaders and walking checkbooks who can be entertained and solicited for financial support while their ideas and concerns can be managed or ignored. By treating alumni as branded cash cows, colleges and universities are snubbing the most enduring stakeholder group in the higher education ecosystem.

Alumni consistently report that their college education was not just crucial to their professional lives but to their personal development. And alumni are no small constituency. As of 2021, about 38% of people ages 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree. Alumni, who retain their academic affiliation for a lifetime upon graduation, are also uniquely positioned to hold their alma maters accountable to their core missions. From skyrocketing costs to burgeoning free speech violations, it is clear the higher education system is in serious need of course correction.

That’s why a growing number of alumni are no longer content to write blank checks and cheer from the sidelines. They have become alarmed by the erosion of civil discourse and the abysmal state of free expression on campus and are organizing to revive those essential values in a number of important ways.

Alumni are working to bring accountability back to college campuses in several ways. First, alumni have realized that they can show their gratitude to and exert positive influence on their alma maters through targeted intentionalgiving. While it might seem logical simply to withhold donations from a university when it falls short of its core mission, the potential of a targeted major gift often opens the door to a conversation about the direction of the university and forces the institution to answer tough questions and even change behavior to be worthy of the gift. Donors can, and should, restrict gifts to specific purposes. That does not mean infringing on the very academic freedom they seek to protect: It means setting up the guardrails that protect values the institution ought to cherish.

The savvy donor is informed about the reality on campus, has a clear vision for what the gift should accomplish, and has the patience to take time to fund projects that align with the needs of the institution while reinforcing the vision of a vibrant and intellectually diverse education. Even nonmajor gifts to programs such as the Civil Discourse Project at Duke University indicate to the administration that alumni actively care about free speech. Big money can start a conversation, but donors at any level can make a significant difference by giving wisely.

Secondly, engaged alumni, such as those affiliated with the Alumni Free Speech Alliance , are collaborating to promote and defend free expression policies , host debates and events on campus, mentor students, and invite speakers who represent a variety of viewpoints and who otherwise might be ignored or deplatformed. Having benefited from education grounded in the free exchange of ideas, alumni are living, breathing testaments to the importance of free and open inquiry in higher education and democratic society. Their positive experiences on campus now motivate them to ensure that future generations of students receive a solid grounding in the same values and develop the intellectual fortitude to grapple with ideas that challenge even their most closely held beliefs.

“I think the future of the country depends on the educational system,” said Stuart Taylor, Jr., co-founder of AFSA and president of Princetonians for Free Speech , in a recent video highlighting the national alumni movement. “You would hope that [students] would have a sense of our national heritage and they would have learned some history, but it’s college where they should really learn how free speech works in practice, how it helps you figure out what you think, how it helps you communicate with your fellow students and your professors and the people you go to work for after college.”

Alumni such as Taylor (Princeton ’70, Harvard Law ’77) exemplify the type of citizenship that is at the heart of a liberal democracy.

Now fully awakened to the threats facing free expression on campuses, alumni have mobilized to help their alma maters be better and ready for the future. The esteem in which alumni hold higher education is why administrators would be wise not to take alumni volunteerism for granted and to listen to their concerns about academic freedom.

This piece appeared in The Washington Examiner on September 29, 2023.

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Over the past two years, hundreds of alumni have proactively organized into independent groups—several under the banner of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA)—with the purpose of forming a bulwark against the illiberalism afflicting higher education. Recognizing the power of this national alumni movement to drive positive change on campus, ACTA, in partnership, with AFSA, hosted two Alumni Summits on Free Expression to motivate and equip alumni in their reform efforts. This special publication, made possible by the generous support of the Stanton Foundation, features keynote speeches from both the inaugural 2022 summit and the 2023 summit. With contributions from the Honorable Janice Rogers Brown, Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Rogstad Guidera, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch, past ACLU president Nadine Strossen, and civil liberties attorney Samantha Harris, this resource serves as a useful promotional tool for alumni free speech advocates to raise awareness and recruit fellow alumni to the movement. Download a PDF of the publication here.

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Introduction by Dr. Michael B. Poliakoff | President, American Council of Trustees and Alumni

ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, deeply cherishes its partnership with AFSA, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, because AFSA defends the most vibrant engine of higher education progress and improvement: the free exchange of ideas. Alumni are the guardians of values, whose wise counsel and deep experience are essential for the course correction that America’s colleges and universities so desperately need. AFSA is an idea for which thousands of alumni throughout the nation have yearned, and we are honored to work with its members and its president, Charles (“Chuck”) Davis.

When ACTA was founded in 1995, we actually had a different name, the National Alumni Forum, so strongly did ACTA’s leadership believe that alumni are the key to maintaining high academic standards, fiscal responsibility, and, crucially, campus freedom of speech. When AFSA’s founders, Stuart Taylor and Edward Yingling, unfurled its banner in the Wall Street Journal two years ago, they identified alumni as “the only university stakeholders with the numbers and clout to lead the defense of free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity in campus environments.” They ignited the conscience of the nation. Trustees, as fiduciaries who have the power to set policy and exercise oversight, need the strong voices of alumni to help them focus on the values of generations past that are the soul and lifeblood of the institutions they govern.

What has brought together the vibrant alumni groups that comprise AFSA is love for their schools, a real and pure love that is willing to speak out and admonish when the alma mater has strayed from the principles that shaped their minds and hearts. At the core of that, of course, is the freedom to question, challenge, discuss, and debate, which we must vouchsafe for future generations. At times, the situation on some of our campuses would strain credulity, even in comic fiction: deplatforming, disinvitations, secret online tools for students who feel “offended” to report their peers and faculty. But, together, we can and will reinvigorate the intellectual freedom we knew when we were college students. (Perhaps, sadly, I am revealing my age!)

ACTA looks forward to sharing all its tools and resources with AFSA. We have recently assisted colleges and universities in sponsoring campus debates and orientation programs that focus on freedom of speech. We have advised on the creation of new campus centers devoted to free inquiry and intellectual diversity. We regularly write to boards whose trustees need to be reminded of their duty to protect campus freedom of speech. AFSA’s work is timely and courageous, and it is our privilege to be partners with you.

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In March 2023, ACTA hosted its second Alumni Summit on Free Expression in Washington, DC, in partnership with the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA). More than 100 individuals from various AFSA member groups and other higher education nonprofit organizations attended to support the growing movement to motivate and equip alumni in their efforts to advance free speech at their alma maters. Panelists and speakers addressed the serious challenges facing free speech advocates and how alumni can effectively work with students, faculty, and off-campus allies.

Today’s episode presents the first of two panels recorded at the conference, headlined as “Free Speech Barriers and Legal Remedies: Changing the University.” Moderated by Samantha Harris, attorney and partner at Allen Harris Law, the conversation features Joe Cohn, Legislative and Policy Director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE); Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute; and Cherise Trump, executive director of Speech First. Together, these experts consider ways to improve the free speech climate on campus through potential legal solutions, both judicial and legislative. 

Download a transcript of the podcast HERE.
Note: Please check any quotations against the audio recording.

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