Colleges and universities must combat campus antisemitism. Full stop: the problem is real and severe, and it corrupts the principles of the academy. But combating antisemitism must be done in a manner that maintains the essential norms of freedom of expression and academic professional standards. In fact, that campaign can strengthen those norms, and those norms, in turn, are protection against antisemitism.
Higher education is about truth seeking. When it strays from that, it strays from the purpose of its existence. In the words of the C. Vann Woodward Committee report of 1975, “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.” There is no other rationale for the privilege of academic freedom than that search for truth.
As Edward Shils observed, academic freedom is neither a constitutional right nor a natural right. The continuation of that privilege depends on commitment to truth seeking. That commitment is a heavy but essential burden. In the words of the Chicago Principles on Freedom of Expression, it means listening to and addressing ideas that the citizen of the academy may find “offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.”
This is not a license for a behavioral free-for-all that winks at appalling discrimination and courses tainted with instructor bias. It is something quite different. The problem is embedded less in freedom of speech than in lax and feckless student and faculty disciplinary codes, an egregiously flawed and prejudicial system of faculty and administrator recruitment and hiring, and academic administration that winks at biased and prejudicial courses.
Remedies start with a zero-tolerance policy for any action that obstructs the process of teaching and learning. The student code of conduct and the faculty handbook need to be clear that disrupting a scheduled event or obstructing access to classrooms and facilities will be punished by suspension or termination. All members of the college community should read the rules and agree to them in writing (preferably on an annual basis). They must acknowledge that security will videotape campus protests and demonstrations, so that those who break campus rules can be identified. Former Senator Ben Sasse, when he served as president of the University of Florida, set an example for others to follow in his administration’s admonition: “This is not complicated: The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children—they knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences.” What happened at Columbia and George Washington University in 2023-24 must never happen again.
Remedies start with a zero-tolerance policy for any action that obstructs the process of teaching and learning.
Institutional neutrality goes a very long way in putting an end to the seemingly incessant calls for divestment from Israel. It also sends a clear signal that the institution is not subject to the whims of pressure groups. Institutional neutrality must extend all the way down to the department level: it is not acceptable for an academic department to use its web page to espouse a political position, thus signaling to faculty and students what the official position of the department is.
The institution needs to be proactive in rebuilding intellectual diversity. Students will have little chance to break away from antisemitic canards if they are uniformly hearing from faculty steeped in theories of settler colonialism and an oppressor-oppressed binary that views Jews as the oppressors. University governing boards must balance the equation by making appointments of distinguished faculty who will restore the intellectual integrity that is now too often lacking.
Groundbreaking work by Jon Shields, Yuval Avnur, and Stephanie Muravchik shows that “most professors don’t assign readings that reflect the larger scholarly debate around each issue.” One of their case studies was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus, we have an academic accountability problem: courses that are by nature irresponsibly biased, leaving students without the resources to develop opinions that differ from those of their faculty. Every board of trustees needs to assess, independent of the administration, whether such dereliction is present on its campus. It is then the duty of provosts, deans, and department chairs to restore professional standards. Boards can establish a policy that requires academic units themselves (with supervision, of course) to take the responsibility for conducting regular audits to improve intellectual diversity in their course offerings.
This does not violate academic freedom. Rather, it pulls faculty back to the founding document of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP): “the teacher ought also to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question.” It is regrettable that the AAUP itself has abandoned these principles, taking a political stand on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
This does not violate academic freedom.
Trustees must also sponsor their own series of campus programs that advance the opinions and arguments that are not adequately represented on campus. The best remedy for offensive speech is…more speech, as Nadine Strossen has so clearly and eloquently reminded us.
Finally, “moral clarity on the great questions of their time,” to use the phrase of Lawrence Summers, is the responsibility of leadership. It does not violate institutional neutrality to condemn antisemitism and terrorism or to stand for the freedom to practice Judaism or to take pride in Israel free from harassment. What happened on the Harvard campus on October 18, 2023, when an Israeli student was surrounded by a mob and harassed, while the administration kept silent, was an outrage. Universities are too often mired in quasi-official statements on everything from the Dobbs decision to the two-state solution. What they miss are the foundational, nonpartisan moral truths that separate civilization from barbarism.
Michael Poliakoff is president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).