Why is the Trump administration, and the broader anti-intellectual movement that supports him, taking aim at universities? Why are we being asked to sign the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”? There are different explanations and any of them is, of course, controversial. However, it is clear that the conservative “mandate” articulated by the Heritage Foundation opposes several key liberal principles, derived from Enlightenment values (Mandate For Leadership: The Conservative Promise 2023).
One central principle – articulated by Locke, Kant, and Mill, among others – is that the role of the state is to promote the autonomy and equality of individuals in the pursuit of their own conception of the good. In contrast, the contemporary conservative agenda valorizes one conception of the good as imperative for all. For example, in decrying LGBTQ+ rights, they insist on a re-entrenchment of the traditional heteronormative family structure: “Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family – marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like” (Mandate 2023, 13). Another key Enlightenment principle at stake is that the state should be secular and rely on deliberation in terms that all, regardless of religious or cultural background, could, in principle, accept, (Rawls 1996, 139). This principle is key to a pluralist democracy.
There was a time when most universities were supported – and to some extent controlled by – religious institutions, private donors, and governments; the nature and content of research was restricted by those who paid the bills. However, such control over knowledge production is incompatible with inquiry that aims to be objective – to provide knowledge of the world itself. Such inquiry doesn’t always yield convenient truths and can overturn accepted hierarchies, popular business models, and regulatory regimes (consider research in public health, climate science, political economy). The current attack on higher education is an effort to control knowledge production: to suppress evidence that challenges the interests of those in power, to threaten those who do not fall in line, and to defund the projects that reveal the flaws in the vision being imposed on us.
European universities, as early as the ninth century, aimed to provide communities of inquiry that permitted academic freedom and relied on procedures of self-evaluation in order to resist the undue influence of political interests. The model of faculty self-governance over academic freedom and tenure was designed to resist the manipulation of inquiry, and it can serve us well now.
In deciding how to organize our collective life, we should be informed by a wide range of ideas and perspectives, and have the resources to develop new knowledge. However, this requires procedures to weed out confusions and mistakes. Disciplines (and interdisciplinary programs) assess expertise, and tenure guarantees the right of inquirers, once they have proven themselves, to explore unpopular or (initially) unpromising ideas. This is a decentralized process that diffuses power across multiple reviewers, editors, and subfields. Such procedures generate the wide range of ideas needed in a flourishing deliberative democracy. To allow the government, or their plutocratic allies, to manipulate the academy, compromises not just the integrity of research, but also our social responsibility.
The reliance on experts poses a challenge, however. We need experts in our efforts to design and implement policy, but a state built upon expertise that is beyond the epistemic powers of the people would be one in which they are ruled by technocrats rather than self-ruled. This, I believe, is one concern that has motivated the shift to the right in the United States. We are, in some sense, a technocracy governed by economists, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and the like. The workings of the government are beyond our (collective) ken, and thus it is tempting to feel left out, and to look for conspiracies behind the scenes running things.
The question arises, then, how expertise can legitimately function in a deliberative democracy. Of course institutions, including academia, can become narrowly self-endorsing and insulated from the public. It is important to guard against this. But should we sacrifice a commitment to merit-based decisions in evaluating students, job candidates, tenure, and academic programs, in order to promote a particular ideology?
In recent decades the concept of “merit” has been going through a re-evaluation, and rightly so. Our collective understanding of merit cannot be static, for it must be responsive to the evolution of knowledge and the challenges we face. In short, there are procedures internal to the academy for critique and change, and we must rely on those for self-examination and reform. Now is the time to strengthen those procedures: reinforce faculty governance; create firewalls to block funders from topic control; curb administrative bloat; default to open science and conflict-of-interest transparency; strengthen tenure lines and reduce precarity; and create democratic oversight mechanisms that protect inquiry from both state and plutocratic direction.
If scientific inquiry (broadly construed) is considered a standard for public deliberation, and it does not support the conservative agenda, then it looks like there is a practical two-stage process for removing it as a barrier to political power: first, discredit it, and second, use the claim that it lacks legitimacy to destroy the institutions that enable it. The academy has been the target of a crafted effort to undermine trust in research through misinformation and false allegations. And withdrawal of funding has already been incredibly destructive. This not only threatens knowledge production, but our democracy.
The ideal of a democratic state is one that protects freedom and equality to explore ideas and live in accordance with our own values; it is a secular state organized through the exercise of public reason informed by responsible expertise. Academic freedom and open inquiry – without the interference of the state, church, or big money – are pillars that keeps democracy standing. Those who believe in expertise and collective self-government must stand firm in resisting the “Compact.”
