Higher Education's Public Image Problem
Some thoughts about changing culture, not just messaging
With the Trump administration’s recent attacks on higher education, colleges and universities are having to make the case for their value to the broader public. Harvard, for example, recently changed its homepage to highlight scientific breakthroughs and other advances that have come from its research. Earlier this spring, my colleague Abram Van Engen endorsed a similar strategy, arguing that universities should initiate a “campaign targeted at the public” that would “explain the benefits of our work—not just for those who attend college, but for all.”
It’s not the first time that higher education has tried to strengthen its public image. Over a century ago, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure that sought to “enhance the dignity of the scholar’s profession” and set apart the university as more than an “ordinary business venture.” Then, in 1940, the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges published a Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure to “promote public understanding and support of academic freedom and tenure.”
Two of the arguments from the 1940 Statement seem particularly relevant in our current moment:
“Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole.”
“When [teachers] speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligation. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.”
I wonder if President Trump’s assault on higher education would be as politically effective if those of us in higher education came closer to embodying these particular aspirations. To be sure, the scope and speed of the President’s actions are creating massive instability, and their consequences will weaken the nation’s well-being for years to come. But colleges and universities have shown little introspection as to how those of us in higher education might be part of the problem. Perhaps we are contributorily negligent to creating the political culture that makes these vicious attacks possible.
Start with the first aspiration from the 1940 Statement about higher education serving the common good rather than individual interests. I have long criticized appeals to “the common good” in our diverse pluralistic society in which we lack agreement about fundamental questions of purpose and meaning. But even absent a common good, institutions of higher learning could still prioritize partnerships and collective action over “the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole.” Instead, we have seen almost the opposite. Colleges and universities have for the most part focused on maximizing their own wealth and reputations without much thought about institutional collaborations. Tenured faculty often operate as free agents with little commitment to a shared purpose that transcends their individual research and teaching interests. And administrators too often see faculty as impediments rather than collaborators. The point is not that the university is bereft of altruism or public concern. It is that few of those efforts are pursued or prioritized collectively.
The second aspiration from the 1940 Statement is just as elusive today. The “special obligation” of teachers to bear in mind that “the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances” is routinely missing in faculty social media posts and online commentary. And few colleagues counsel one another to “exercise appropriate restraint” or “show respect for the opinions of others.”
Part of the problem is that faculty sometimes confuse academic expertise with political opinion. The difference matters. As Stanley Fish provocatively wrote in his 2008 book, Save the World on Your Own Time:
The academic enterprise excludes no topic from its purview, but it regards any and every topic as a basis for analysis rather than as a stimulus to some moral, political, or existential commitment. Not to practice politics, but to study it; not to proselytize for or against religious doctrines, but to describe them; not to affirm or reject affirmative action, but to explore its history and lays out the arguments that have been made for and against it.
Of course, faculty are also citizens, neighbors, friends, and family members. Like everybody else, we live multifaceted lives that unfold in different contexts. But if we really believe that our privileged positions in the academy warrant the rights of tenure and the protections of academic freedom, perhaps we should more carefully consider the responsibilities that come with those rights—in the words of the 1940 Statement, the “special obligation” that corresponds to our “special position in the community.” That responsibility was hard enough a century ago in the era of newspapers—it’s immensely more complicated in our online era where many of us reach larger and more disparate audiences than our academic predecessors.
Again, this is not to say that all university faculty fail to embody the aspirations of the 1940 Statement. Most of us spend time on what we believe to be furthering the common good, and most of us exercise some restraint and respect in our public communication. The problem is that we lack any collective sense of what we care about or how we ought to exercise restraint.
These shortcomings are fundamentally problems of culture, and you can’t change culture overnight. But if I were an academic leader, I would take some initial steps to build a sense of shared purpose and norms for public communication. Here are three ideas:
strengthen the rhythms and liturgies of the academic calendar that reinforce purpose, mission, and values and require faculty to participate in those rhythms and liturgies
lead faculty in reading and discussing common texts about the university’s purpose, mission, and values
reward public engagement by faculty that reflects academic norms and discourage public engagement that is careless, hyperbolic, and unnecessarily incendiary
These efforts alone will not rehabilitate higher education’s public image. But shifting individual faculty toward a common mission is a precursor to effective messaging. It’s the beginning of culture change.
That’s not to say it will be easy. In full disclosure, I might even resist some of these change efforts. But university administrators have enough carrots and sticks to motivate faculty—even, and perhaps especially, tenured faculty—in these kinds of ways. Perhaps the current chaos and uncertainty will give them enough of a reason to try.
Great post. Two points in particular that resonated.
1. These challenges are fundamentally problems of culture: One leading indicator of this, in my experience, is the difficulty of getting faculty and staff leaders in higher education to articulate the philosophical goals we are striving toward. These goals are rarely named explicitly, and their absence often goes unnoticed. In both higher education and healthcare (a space you and I both think about a lot), we tend to hear much more about functional goals. While these goals are important and well-intentioned, this emphasis highlights a deeper issue: without a shared set of foundational (often simple) values—or a clearly defined culture that we collectively inhabit and aim to cultivate—our outputs remain largely functional. That means publishing for the sake of publishing and promotion, launching new degree programs to generate new revenue streams, or initiating new offerings to keep pace with peer institutions. These are all understandable responses, but they bypass the more difficult, foundational questions and subsequent answers. Interestingly, those outside the academy often see this more clearly than those of us within it, where day-to-day demands dominate attention.
2. Precursory understanding is required for effective messaging: While students are the primary constituent of universities, I think higher ed leaders, and in particular faculty, can lose sight of how deeply universities are embedded within broader economic and social ecosystems. From being major employers to serving as community anchors (especially if there is an affiliated health system), most universities overlook our varied and expansive communal ties. Understanding how people in these ecosystems perceive the mission of the university must come before crafting messages about it.
Thanks for clearly naming this.
I think you are making a good point here, John. I think the current administration's attack on higher ed is misguided, but I'm afraid the academy has mostly itself to blame for becoming a target. Too many faculty confuse scholarship with political activism and think that their expertise in their field gives them special political wisdom. It doesn't. One tragedy of the current situation is that the institutions most vulnerable to the disruption in higher ed are often small teaching colleges (like my own!) that mostly just plug along trying to educate students without being as caught up in all the politicization as many more elite schools that have more resources to weather a storm.
Tangentially, since you dropped the "common good" comment: just because we don't agree about a common good doesn't mean that there isn't one. But it isn't some Platonic form out there waiting to be discovered. It emerges as the outcome of well-designed and well-functioning political structures and process that take pluralism into account and make room for it. That pluralism is itself a part of the common good. My two cents. ; )