The decline of higher education into an ideological echo chamber has been widely discussed on this and other sites. Polls show record lows in the public trust in our universities and colleges as revenues decline and closures increase. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon responded to this meltdown with a common-sense call for greater transparency and tolerance. The response from teacher unions has been nothing short of hysteria, led by Randi Weingarten at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Todd Wolfson at the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) — two of the most polarizing and political figures in teaching.
Secretary McMahon released a policy statement titled “National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards.” I encourage you to read it. Few Americans would disagree with the call for universities to post policies on how they can achieve greater intellectual diversity and openness in both admissions and hiring.
Not surprisingly, the AFT and AAUP went into a full cardiac arrest at the notion that universities would adopt such policies, let alone work to restore integrity and balance to higher education.
In a public letter, they denounced the policy as “galling.” The letter was a telling moment from the two organizations most responsible for the politicization of education.
The AFT and AAUP merged not long ago, destroying the AAUP’s traditional role as a neutral advocate for academic freedom. Under Wolfson, the organization has become blatantly political, even abandoning its long apolitical stance and issuing its first political endorsement this year. It was for radical Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
I recently debated Todd Wolfson, President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), over the loss of institutional neutrality in higher education. In the debate, I raised AAUP’s own abandonment of neutrality principles, which Wolfson acknowledged. While the viewers overwhelmingly supported a return to neutrality principles, Wolfson was undeterred.
The alliance with AFT and Weingarten is crushingly predictable. Weingarten personifies what I have called the “education cartel,” where teacher unions receive massive contracts and pension agreements from Democratic allies and then turn around and send massive political contributions to those same allies. The losers in this symbiotic relationship are of course the students and their families.
Weingarten is “credited” with turning the teachers’ union into an extension of the Democratic Party, often appearing at political rallies with her signature high-volume screeds:
As public support and revenue for both public education and higher education plummet, these figures are doubling down. The last thing that they want to see is the restoration of neutrality or balance. That is why a policy calling for such reforms is so anathema to them. These organizations are now political organizations that use their dues to pursue radical agendas.
I previously criticized the selection of Wolfson, who promised to make the AAUP more of a “fighting organization” for liberal causes. A Rutgers University anthropologist and former union leader, Wolfson is a political activist who doubled down on the ideological intolerance that now defines higher education.
As promised, the AAUP quickly became a more radical and activist organization. It adopted an anti-Israel boycott policy and unleashed attacks on Trump supporters as “fascists.” It has targeted civics centers as conservative breeding grounds. Trinity College Professor Isaac Kamola, the director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF), explains that they want to unleash “naming and shaming and discrediting and undermining the legitimacy” of such programs.
So, as trust in higher education hits new lows, the AAUP is accelerating that decline by doubling down on ideological bias and political activism. In reality, the AAUP represents only a small fraction of university professors but is often viewed as speaking for the teaching academy as a whole.
I have previously written about the similar liberal agenda of the American Bar Association despite plunging membership among lawyers. The ABA now represents just 17 percent of the bar.
The AAUP currently has roughly 50,000 members. There are an estimated 1.5 million university and college professors in the United States. Both the ABA and AAUP have become captive to the most ideological elements of their membership. That agenda has overwhelmed the original apolitical mission of these groups.
The loss of the AAUP as a neutral arbiter for academic freedom is tremendous. As Wolfson acknowledged in our debate, it was once a voice for neutrality, avoiding ideological and political causes. It was central to the articulation of neutrality principles and core academic freedom values. We need such an organization now more than ever.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
TLDR: Colleges must only have merit based admissions (because we want less blacks to go to college) but need non-merit hiring for faculty (because conservatives are so ethically bankrupt that they can’t get a job otherwise).
Ethical bankruptcy is not confined to or mainly limited to conservatives. It is the current standard of existence for our civilization.
It is the lack of reading, reading comprehension you are displaying which is one of the reasons why education is failing.
Exactly why we homeschooled our 2 girls starting 3rd grade for oldest until they left the nest for college. Both are productive adults now making six figures in their chosen careers It is welllast time to do away with all “ubnions “.
The teachers union is the vanguard of communism. What did you expect from them? Nothing good.
Teachers teach. Right? Imagine that you own an auto mechanics school, and the majority of graduates always lack even an average skill-level. Would you retain the principal and teachers and fight for raises for them? Would you fight to make sure that the students are not allowed to switch to a school with better results? Now imagine that you’re the mayor of a city with public schools, and the majority of graduates are children of color who always perform at a below-grade-level in reading and math. You can call anyone a teacher, but actual teachers actually teach.
This piece by Turley has to be far and away, the biggest crock of hypocritical sh!t he has ever published.
He, and the morons here, constantly whine about the evils of DEI that have supposedly been foisted on higher education, and constantly whine about government imposed requirements for diversity.
And yet here we have Turley praising government intervention to enforce DIVERSITY of viewpoints in higher education.
Here is what Turley says: “Few Americans would disagree with the call for universities to post policies on how they can achieve greater intellectual diversity”
REALLY ?????
The hypocrisy is astounding.
It seems DEI is just fine and dandy when it is used to force inclusion of conservatives !!!
He, and the morons here, constantly whine about the evils of …. and yet here you are everyday. So who’s the hyprocrite?
your name says it all
Diversity for thee but not for me. Pot meet kettle.
As Turley points out, it’s a good thing to accept and dissect opposing views.
It’s another thing to use education or health care to PROMOTE.
Randi Weigarten is a lesbian. Her “wife” Liz Margolies, is a psychotherapist and health care activist.
I couldn’t care less about their private lives, but when they are in positions of influence and selection,
we need not wonder why there has been SO MUCH recent attention to and promotion of the LGBQT+ community, and why there are so many susceptible and gullible students grabbing on to alternative lives.
Why is a minority population seeking to become equal in numbers to a majority?
Is that a serious question?
Hats off to Linda McMahon and her National Call. It speaks volumes at a problem as serious as a heart attack. And carries the clout of brevity. I grew up with Ernie Kovaks and his mastery of the sight gag. He did one that captures the relief of putting down someone or something that really annoys. The camera is on a Hedda Hopper gossip columnist lookalike. She starts to speak and gets it in the face with a big meringue pie. Linda’s National Call is also that pie.
Trump keeps assuming arbitrary powers that the Constitution and NATO charters do not grant him, something a dictator would do.
How can MAGA claim to be against tyranny while supporting a president with arbitrary, tyrannical impulses?
…and when he does he is stopped by the courts. A dictator wouldn’t allow that to happen.
Professor Turley writes, “As public support and revenue for both public education and higher education plummet, these figures are doubling down.”
I know I’ve said it before, but I feel it bears repeating: the left would rather burn an institution to the ground than give it back to those who built it. And it’s not just academia. It’s also true in business: Bud Light, Target, late-night television, CNN, etc. These leftists can’t be fixed. They’d rather lose most of their customers than share any institution with people they regard as subhuman.
Leftism has gone from being a sanctimonious indulgence to a social cancer. Even in the 1960’s, it wasn’t this bad.
From a libertarian perspective, it is their prerogative to lose customers if that is what they want.
I agree, it’s also a conservative’s or libertarian’s prerogative to lose positions or views of customers are not attracted or interesting to them.
“…to lose positions or views of customers are not attracted or interesting to them.”
Trouble structuring and writing coherent sentences,X?
Harvard material, definitely not.
No trouble at all. Apparently you still do.
“ Trouble structuring and writing coherent sentences,X?”
LOL!!
no, georgie. Try again. DID you ever hear of implied subject/predicate in grammar lessons, elliptical construction?
apparently not/
“The subject may be implied instead of explicitly stated in elliptical constructions. Such sentences are called minor sentences or fragments and are common in conversations and informal writing.
Examples:
“Ready for the trip?” “Yes! Can’t wait to get there.”
Context makes the subject clear: “(Are you) ready for the trip?” “Yes! (I) can’t wait to get there.”
“Looks lovely. Thank you.”
“(This) looks lovely. (I) thank you.”
“See you later.”
“(I will) see you later.”
“No way that happened!”
“(There is) no way that (could have) happened.”
https://editorsmanual.com/articles/sentence-implied-subject-grammar/
Yours is just an all out goof, clown. Give it up, X. You are a phony
Oh, sweetheart. Congratulations on discovering Google and learning what an elliptical construction is. It’s genuinely adorable that you pasted an entry-level grammar article to try and cover your screw up.
But copy-pasting a definition doesn’t fix your embarrassing error. An elliptical construction drops words that are completely understood by context. Your post didn’t drop words for flavor or casual shorthand—it was just incoherent, lazy writing. A proper fragment still has to make sense.
didn’t get that from Google, clown.
Sure….if you say so. LOL!
…”Trouble structuring and writing coherent sentences, X?”
X, please educate us. Explain how the above is ” incoherent, lazy writing,”
Also, please explain how the above “proper fragment(?) did not “make sense.”
every day, you fight like a little weasel, fleeing from corner to corner and sinking deeper.
I could explain it to you, but given your poor reading comprehension, it would be a complete waste of time.
oh gawd, X’s typical cop out when he is cornered.
Ha!
X did it again, he replies, “Congratulations on discovering Google and learning what an elliptical construction is.”
This is the EXACT words used against X for his pretend replies to others. MY BET is that X had no idea, NONE, as to what elliptical construction was. You would be X’s fool to believe he ever even heard of it before now.
after getting stomped on yesterday, X today tries an “I agree” tone with certain ones who are more popular than others. Does he think we can’t see through him?
Stomped on? LOL!! Sure. If you say so.
LOL.
Sure george, tell that to CNN when it comes attracting customers.
Dustoff, huh? Do you have a relevant point?
Did you for get this george?
____________________________
I agree, it’s also a conservative’s or libertarian’s prerogative to lose positions or views of customers are not attracted or interesting to them.
What a fool.
What does CNN have to do with it? Last time I checked CNN was not a university. You’re weird.
Troll, to quote a famous Democrat, “You didn’t build that.” It is not their prerogative if it belongs to the citizens or the shareholders. Hijacking is not owning, but leftists–like the man I’m quoting–can’t comprehend that distinction.
Diogenes,
The ‘you didn’t build that’ quote actually highlights the exact point I’m making about shared responsibility and governance.
Public universities do belong to the citizens, and private ones belong to their stakeholders. But ‘belonging’ to the citizens doesn’t mean a temporary political majority in government gets to micromanage the classrooms or police the personal beliefs of the workers inside. We don’t allow politicians to dictate how scientists at public research labs do their math, and we shouldn’t allow them to do it to university faculty.
The people who actually ‘built’ the academic reputation of these schools are the faculty, researchers, and students doing the work. Protecting them from top-down political interference isn’t ‘hijacking’ the institution—it’s defending the exact independence that made American higher education successful in the first place.
“We don’t allow politicians to dictate how scientists at public research labs do their math, and we shouldn’t allow them to do it to university faculty… The people who actually ‘built’ the academic reputation of these schools are the faculty, researchers, and students doing the work.”
This isn’t about math. This is about politics being a litmus test for employment. This is about liberal eggheads purging and blacklisting others who also “built’ the institution. I thought you liberals were supposed to believe in diversity of thought and free speech. I thought you were supposed to believe in tolerance. You don’t and you never did.
The core issue isn’t about ‘eggheads’ or simple math; it’s about institutional independence. When a federal agency demands that a university draft specific, public statements of principle to prove its compliance with a Washington agenda, the government is the one implementing a massive political litmus test. Believing in free speech and diversity of thought means protecting universities from being forced to performatively align with whatever political party currently controls the White House.
Framing natural shifts in faculty demographics as a malicious ‘purge’ or a ‘blacklist’ completely ignores how academia actually operates. Faculty positions are won through open competition, peer-reviewed research, and academic rigor. If right-leaning or libertarian viewpoints are underrepresented, it isn’t due to a coordinated left-wing conspiracy. It is the logical consequence of a political movement that has spent years publicly devaluing higher education, calling universities useless, and discouraging its own scholars from entering the academy.
True tolerance means accepting the results of a fair, competitive marketplace of ideas. Asking the federal government to intervene, micromanage university hiring, and force affirmative action for conservative faculty isn’t defending free speech—it’s throwing a tantrum because conservative ideas failed to win on their own merits.
“True tolerance means accepting the results of a fair, competitive marketplace of ideas.”
Liberals don’t want a fair, competitive marketplace of ideas. Half the time, they even admit it: they want speech codes and censorship. The other half, they send people like you to tell whoppers about liberal intentions to independents. Everything you’ve written today is a shameless rationalization of calculated, political corruption.
You’re terribly confused. Liberals are always open about fair competitive marketplaces. It’s conservatives who get all bent out of shape when things don’t go their way and the first thing they do is start blaming others, like liberals.
Clearly you’ve been brainwashed. Yikes.
“Liberals are always open about fair competitive marketplaces.”
GSX, that is another lie. If that is what liberals wanted, there wouldn’t have been a vast amount of censorship and shadow banning.
You are a liar or ignorant. Choose your poison.
But based on history, we know the answer, There is no doubt, you are both ignorant and a liar.
Spot on…
“Even in the 1960’s, it wasn’t this bad.”
Diogenes, I feel as you do, but in the 60s the far left had much less power than today, and Democrats believed in most of the Constitution and law and order.
Allen, it looks like liberals start turning into communists the minute they think they’re historically inevitable. I used to believe liberals wanted free speech. In recent years, as they’ve gained influence, I’ve started to wonder that they ever did.
Alan Dershowitz and John Turley are two examples of liberals who remain classical liberals. What does that mean? I don’t think all Democrats can continue to think the way the Party does. But they do, based on recent elections and the polls. I can’t explain why.
It’s the left-over kernels of lost souls. The souls’ kernel is trauma. It’s irrational.
There’s a more fundamental question underneath this dispute.
Formation.
Universities don’t just transfer information. They form people. Every curriculum, reading list, faculty hire, invited speaker, institutional statement and classroom culture contributes. Deliberately or not, formation is happening.
So the question isn’t whether universities influence how students think. They will. The questions are: Who is doing the forming? Can students see it happening? And are they exposed to competing ideas strongly enough that they actually have to exercise judgment?
That’s where both sides should make us uncomfortable.
If Washington decides what counts as acceptable “intellectual diversity,” government becomes the institution doing the forming.
But if universities answer that government has no business even asking what ideas are represented on campus, “academic freedom” can become a shield against looking at what they’re doing themselves.
The test is simpler.
Don’t tell faculty what to believe. Don’t tell students what conclusions to reach. Ask universities to show us the environment those students are being formed in.
What ideas are represented? Which aren’t? Can unpopular positions actually be argued? Can students challenge professors? Can professors challenge the prevailing view? Are students learning to weigh different arguments, or just learning which ones they’re supposed to respect?
Universities publish the answers. Families decide.
Transparency doesn’t decide what students should think.
It lets everyone see how they’re being taught to think.
Olly,
Looks like we might be in some agreement, again.
You make a really good point. You are totally right that college should be about teaching students how to think, not just telling them what to believe. It should help them look at evidence and make up their own minds.
But there is a big problem with forcing colleges to publish ‘transparency reports’ to fix this. It turns the deep, natural process of learning into a boring math game. You cannot just sort complex ideas or deep thoughts into simple boxes on a spreadsheet.
If we force schools to make checklists of which political views are on campus, we create a bad system. It forces college bosses to spy on the personal beliefs of teachers just to fill a data quota.
Plus, people are very divided today. These reports would not just help parents pick a college.
Instead, politicians would use them as weapons. They would punish or take money away from schools that do not fit their preferred political team.
The best way to see if a college is fair is not by looking at a government report. It is by protecting teachers’ jobs, letting them design great classes, and encouraging students to debate openly without the government watching over their shoulders.
Students do get to see both sides if an issue in college. They always do. It’s not readily apparent to those actively bashing higher education and those who have not been to a college or university in years. Just because there are no “conservative or libertarian” professors it does not mean they engage students with both sides of an issue.
X, I didn’t argue for telling students what to think. I said the opposite: Don’t tell faculty what to believe. Don’t tell students what conclusions to reach.
And nothing I wrote puts government over anyone’s shoulder. Universities publish. Families decide.
You say students always see both sides. Maybe they do. A professor doesn’t have to be conservative to teach the conservative case fairly. I’ll grant that. But they always do is a claim. Transparency is how we find out.
You also say critics haven’t been on a campus in years. That’s the problem transparency solves. It replaces their guesswork with what’s actually happening.
If the environment is as balanced as you say, publish it and let everyone judge for themselves.
I appreciate your clarification, and I completely agree that your goal is to protect students and keep the government out of the classroom. We both want an environment where students learn how to think, not what to think.
The point I am trying to make is about the unintended consequences of the mechanism you are proposing. While ‘universities publish, families decide’ sounds simple and fair on paper, the process of creating those reports is where the system breaks down.
To publish a report on ‘which views are represented,’ a university has to start counting and categorizing the personal beliefs of its faculty. That naturally forces administrations to police their staff’s viewpoints just to generate the data.
Also, we have to look at the reality of our current political climate. If a university publishes an honest report, that data will not just stay between families and the school. Outside political groups and lawmakers will inevitably use those numbers as a scorecard to target, publicly shame, or defund institutions that do not match their preferred political balance or view.
Transparency is a fine principle, but when it is mandated from the top down, it accidentally turns into a compliance trap. The best way to know if a campus is truly open to all ideas isn’t through a bureaucratic checklist—it is by protecting the freedom of faculty to teach rigorously and ensuring students feel safe to challenge any prevailing view in the classroom. Wouldn’t you agree?
X, I agree with your last paragraph. Faculty should be free to teach rigorously, and students should be free to challenge prevailing views.
Your warning about unintended consequences deserves consideration. But we have to be careful what we call a consequence of transparency.
If an institution has operated for years without much visibility into its formative environment, and transparency suddenly produces criticism or pressure for change, that doesn’t mean transparency caused the problem. It may mean transparency revealed something people couldn’t see before.
I don’t want government counting liberal and conservative professors either. I’m talking about the environment, not the ideology of the people in it. What’s taught, what’s assigned, whether competing arguments can actually be made and challenged.
Make that visible. If people criticize what they see, we can argue about whether the criticism is justified. If government then tries to punish a university because it doesn’t like what it sees, that’s a separate fight, and one worth having.
But I wouldn’t blame the window for what becomes visible when you open the curtains.
Olly,
I understand that your intent is to focus on the educational environment rather than counting heads. However, looking at what is taught, what is assigned, and how arguments are challenged reveals that measuring an ‘environment’ is actually much more invasive than simply counting liberal and conservative professors.
However, the core of my concern is that a state-mandated transparency report isn’t a passive window—it is a frame constructed by whoever is currently in power.
If a university must show ‘what’s assigned,’ someone has to judge whether those assignments are balanced. Does a political science class on fascism have to assign equal pages of fascist text to show ‘competing arguments’? Does an economics class have to give equal weight to failed economic theories just to check a box? Forcing professors to justify their reading lists to a bureaucratic standard directly undermines their expertise and micromanages the classroom. You know what I mean?
To prove that competing arguments can ‘actually be made and challenged,’ you cannot just look at a syllabus. You have to monitor the actual classroom dynamic. This creates pressure to record lectures, audit student-professor interactions, or create anonymous reporting systems where students can flag a professor for not being ‘open’ enough. This doesn’t create a free environment; it creates a culture of fear and defensive teaching. It’s like being under a continuous audit by someone who may have a partisan or cultural bias. Does that make sense?
Academic disciplines are built on peer-reviewed consensus, not 50/50 political debates. Do you agree?
In fields like climate science, public health, or constitutional law, what one person views as a legitimate ‘competing argument,’ mainstream science or legal history might view as thoroughly debunked. Allowing a government-mandated transparency framework to decide which fringe theories deserve equal time in a classroom degrades the actual rigor of higher education. It would, I assume in your view, be an act of manipulating formation someone outside academia. I don’t think you would consider that to be part of what constitutes academic freedom.
Students formation is based not only what is taught, but also by how students are allowed to challenge a view or position and that is always encouraged in academia. Just because the majority of professors or teachers are left-leaning or liberal does not mean they are being solely indoctrinated on ‘leftist ideas’ and only ‘leftist ideas’. Those same professors and teachers do encourage such challenges.
X, I think this is where we’re getting crossed up. You keep describing a state-mandated transparency report, bureaucratic standards, classroom audits, monitoring professors, judging reading lists, and deciding which competing arguments deserve equal time.
But where is that in the letter? It’s not. That’s a strawman you’ve constructed around the letter rather than what the letter actually asks.
As I read it, the Department is asking universities two pretty simple questions: What do you do? And how do you do it?
Those aren’t particularly radical questions. Anyone familiar with Total Quality Management, quality assurance, accreditation, or continuous improvement will recognize them as basic process questions. Tell me what you do. Tell me how you do it. The focus is on the process actually being used, not on somebody outside the organization prescribing the process for you.
And here’s why the “how” matters. Show me the process and I can draw my own conclusions about what that process appears designed to produce. I don’t need the government to make that judgment for me, and I don’t need the university to tell me what conclusion I should reach.
It isn’t saying, “Prove to us that Professor Smith assigned the correct number of competing books.” It isn’t requiring 50/50 ideological balance. It isn’t demanding cameras in classrooms or government review of classroom discussions. And it isn’t asking professors to justify why they teach what they teach.
It’s asking institutions to describe what they do and how they do it. That’s an important distinction.
Now, I think we can reasonably assume that the point of transparency is to make information available to the people who have an interest in it: students, parents, and the public. Then let them decide what that information means.
You say universities already encourage students to challenge prevailing views. Great. Then tell us what you do and how you do it.
As a parent, I don’t need the Department of Education to tell me whether your answer is good enough. I can read it myself.
And if I’m considering spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars sending my child to your institution, I think I’m perfectly capable of deciding whether what you describe is the educational environment I’m looking for.
That’s the marketplace everyone keeps invoking. Give me the information. I’ll make the choice.
OLLY,
Great comment and makes sense.
Going to college I was a little weary of possible indoctrination or leftist leaning professors.
Happy to report I have found none of that. The professors seem truly interested in teaching.
Now, I am not keen on some of the methods they are using, like YouTube, but I get why they are doing it.
I’m impressed you’re back at school. No doubt you are more situationally aware of your learning environment than the average undergraduate. Well done!
Olly, I appreciate the pragmatic approach you are taking here, and viewing this through the lens of quality assurance or accreditation makes a lot of sense on the surface. If this were a simple process question, I would agree with you completely.
However, the reason we are getting crossed up isn’t because of a strawman; it is because we are looking at two different levels of how bureaucratic directives actually function in the real world. You are looking at the letter’s stated text, while I am looking at its structural mechanics.
Even if we accept the premise that the Department of Education is only asking ‘What do you do, and how do you do it?’ regarding intellectual diversity, a university cannot answer those questions in a vacuum. To provide a concrete answer to a federal oversight body, an institution has to standardize its processes.
How does a university administration answer ‘how’ they ensure competing arguments are heard without first auditing their departments to see what is currently being taught? How do they answer ‘how’ they maintain openness in hiring without tracking the metrics of who is being hired?
The moment an institution has to formally document a process for ‘intellectual openness’ to satisfy a federal deadline, the administration is forced to create internal compliance metrics. Those metrics inevitably trickle down into departments, affecting syllabi and hiring rubrics to ensure the university’s public report looks ‘correct’ to the public and to Washington.
Furthermore, higher education already answers the questions ‘what do you do, and how do you do it?’ through the regional accreditation process.
Accreditation agencies already require exhaustive public reporting on institutional effectiveness, curriculum rigor, and student learning outcomes. The marketplace of information you are asking for already exists in public course catalogs, open-access syllabi, faculty publication records, and accreditation findings.
The critical difference is that traditional accreditation is peer-reviewed by educators to ensure academic standards, whereas this specific ‘Call to Action’ bypasses that established system and introduces a direct reporting line to a political executive branch.
Even if a parent just wants to ‘read the answer and decide,’ the mechanism used to generate that answer fundamentally alters the campus environment. By forcing universities to formalize their internal intellectual culture into a standardized public statement, the policy accidentally creates the exact administrative compliance trap it claims to oppose.
X, I keep coming back to Deming’s question: How could you know?
A university can tell us what it does. It can document how it does it. Accreditation already requires a great deal of that, as you point out.
But there’s a third question. How do you know it’s working?
A university can have a beautifully written policy protecting intellectual openness. It can document procedures for handling complaints. It can show an accreditor its curriculum, syllabi and learning objectives.
Fine. But if the desired outcome is an environment where faculty teach rigorously and students genuinely feel free to challenge prevailing views, how does the university know that’s actually happening?
That’s not an ideological metric. It’s basic quality management. What are you trying to accomplish? How are you doing it? How do you know it’s working?
If the concern is that measuring the environment might change it, then I’m not sure how the university itself can know whether the environment you and I both want actually exists.
Without the third question, the first two are just promises.
poor Olly is now hooked based on X’s newfounded politeness and compliments today (after he got shot to hellgroundzero yesterday). They both love the “it’s not this; it is that” paradigm. EIther they are copying each other or they are both feeding off of AI.
Universities are already feeling the heat. Many have stopped hiring as enrollments decline.
More and more HS graduates are opting for trade school. That is good because we have more jobs there than people to fill them. Training to be a plumber is a better choice than a degree in ” Gender Studies”. Supply and demand is at work here and will rule.
Universities will adapt by returning to their teaching roots, rejecting indoctrination , or they will die.
Anonymous, I think you’re making part of my argument. Supply and demand works best when the consumer knows what he’s buying.
If universities are competing for students and families are deciding whether four years of tuition is worth the investment, then transparency matters even more. Show them the curriculum. Show them the range of ideas students will encounter. Show them how disagreement is handled. Show them what graduates are actually getting for their money.
Then let universities make their case and families make their choice. That’s very different from Washington deciding what universities should teach.
Universities publish. Families decide. The market can take it from there.
Universities already publish exhaustive course catalogs, degree requirements, and program descriptions online. Prospective students can readily access detailed public syllabi, faculty CVs, accreditation reports, and career placement data through initiatives like state posting mandates and the federal College Scorecard.
The transparency is already there.
X, that’s fair, but I think you’re describing a different kind of transparency.
Course catalogs tell me what courses exist. A syllabus tells me what will be assigned. A faculty CV tells me who is teaching. The College Scorecard tells families a great deal about cost, graduation and outcomes.
All useful information. Keep publishing it. And your example of state posting mandates shows that required transparency doesn’t automatically become the compliance trap you were worried about.
But none of that tells me much about the environment we’ve been discussing.
Can a student challenge the prevailing view without paying a price for it? Are competing arguments given a real hearing? Does the institution actually practice the intellectual openness it says it values?
You said the best test is whether faculty can teach rigorously and students feel free to challenge prevailing views. I agreed with you.
So we’re down to a pretty narrow disagreement.
You seem to be saying the information already available lets families know whether that environment exists. I’m saying it doesn’t.
A course catalog can tell me what’s being taught. It can’t tell me how students are being formed.
OLLY,
You are correct.
I looked at several schools, their websites.
They did publish their graduation rates for given fields and employment rates of grads.
The syllabus was not available until the first day of class. Had it been posted previously with an understanding of how the class would be taught, I may have opted for a different class taught by a different professor.
Some professors use technology extensively.
Others do not.
Unless it is a on line class, who does and who does not is not known until the first day of class.
Upstate, I come from a TQM background and asking how and what is just the starting point to understanding why schools do what they do. I’d be curious to know if students entering this environment are surveyed regarding their “worldview”, and then surveyed periodically throughout their campus life to see how their views may have changed.
Olly,
Fair point. 👍
Nicely Put, Olly. I have enjoyed reading you points today.
The Department of Education champions “free speech and open inquiry,” the memo simultaneously pressures schools to target or dismantle specific campus administrative structures—such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) frameworks—that the administration opposes.
They want to censor anything regarding DEI, which is ironically what professor
Turley is calling for every time he complains about the lack of conservative/libertarian views in higher education. He wants to force schools through government intervention and/or funding restrictions to include more conservative and/or libertarian professors. He wants affirmative action based on party affiliation or political viewpoint. Crazy stuff.
Does he know Republicans are staunchly against any, ANY DEI initiative no matter its subject? Turley is for DEI for conservatives and libertarians, the same ones bashing the schools he claims are “purging” these poor people. What….the…heck?
Non-STEM education is becoming increasingly irrelevant. The small political parties masquerading as representative unions are, I think, symptomatic of the end of a period of general and so-called higher education in the United States. Those who want and can meet the standards for a STEM education will be able to find the tiny number of specialized schools that are specialized in this. The parasites and drones who seek a loudspeaker for their ideologies of race and gender and other unimportant nonsense will continue to populate schools that are in sharp decline and screech like Ms. Weingarten to smaller and smaller audiences. I believe that what we are witnessing is the widespread and unfiltered flow of information available to everyone through the internet. Most of what’s on the internet, of course, is noise but the information leaks through and soon people will tire of the flood of crap from the internet and its influence will fade away. Also soon to be gone will be the self-aggrandizing and narcissistic, whose momentary prominence has become simply irritating.
Should the indispensable right apply to teacher unions, or should there be an exception?
A call for tolerance and transparency by the Secretary will accomplish nothing, if American history is any guide.
When I was much younger, the United Auto Workers (UAW) seemed to wag the dog of the Democratic Party. They were powerful enough that a single strike could rock the entire U.S. economy. Their wage demands were staggering, and they got whatever they asked for.
Then reality set in: American consumers turned to foreign cars, and domestic automakers embraced automation. The UAW eventually learned that prosperous auto companies yield better long-term wages for workers than months-long strikes. Ultimately, they became pragmatic capitalists.
By parallel reasoning, the AAUP and the AFL-CIO may soon face a similar fate:
The AAUP risks obsolescence simply by colleges refusing to subscribe or engage. While Wolfson may command the faculty, he has yet to organize anything beyond his own wild ideas.
The AFL-CIO, by demanding excessive salaries and benefits while presiding over the decline of public education, is courting the same outcome the UAW once faced. Parents are increasingly choosing alternative schools, and several states are now funding vouchers to help them do so. While Weingarten screams from her pulpit, a fifth column is quietly undercutting her platform from behind.
Sorry, I meant AFT, not AFL-CIO.
Even though 67 votes would be needed to remove Trump from office, the Republican Senators might hate Trump so much for the bad election results in November that they might be motivated to vote for his removal from office.
“Blue Wave? I did this!” – Donald Trump
Ooh, I know my No. 1 fan is going to absolutely love this one. Buckle up…
Once again, Turley delivers a masterclass in irony and hypocrisy regarding the higher education ‘balance’ he’s losing sleep over.
He loves to side with the ‘starve the beast and pull federal funding’ crowd, yet he’s totally fine with the executive branch weaponizing the federal government to force universities into publishing administration-approved ‘statements of principle.’ Apparently, government-mandated ideological intervention is perfectly fine with his free-speech principles, so long as it’s his team doing the intervening. Classic.
He claims the AAUP’s shift toward labor activism destroyed its role as a ‘neutral advocate for academic freedom.’ What absolute BS. As AAUP President Todd Wolfson pointed out, academic freedom isn’t a passive hobby—it requires active defense against political interference, state funding freezes, and partisan mandates. Expecting a faculty organization to stay ‘neutral’ while politicians actively dismantle higher ed is a joke.
The best part? Turley wants to force schools into ‘neutrality’ by using the heavy hand of government. So much for academic freedom. The entire point of academic liberty is the freedom to express ideas. Conservatives and libertarians are more than welcome to join the conversation—if they can actually manage to make their views interesting and attractive to students. But they aren’t doing the work. Instead, Turley’s brilliant solution is to legally mandate affirmative action for right-leaning faculty, forcing schools to hire the very same people who spend all day bashing higher education as a useless waste of time.
Then he calls unions ‘cartels,’ completely ignoring that collective bargaining and political organizing are exactly what the First Amendment protects. I guess free speech only counts when you’re writing a blog post about it.
OT: Still no Jack Smith article? Wow. Shocker. Just sayin.”
If a college produces a poor product, go someplace else. Harvard ’75
I don’t these schools get it.
You went to Harvard? Not with that atrocious grammatical error…
“ I don’t these schools get it.“
LOL!! Harvard. Sure.
You went to high school? Not with the atrocious naivety and susceptibility to AI Leftist propaganda that you display!
LOL!! ROLF! SO CUTE! HILARIOUS!
Sh@@libs I am going to try to engage in wokespeak.
“Transparency and tolerance? Fascists do not deserve transparency and tolerance. JT, this post along with many others supporting free speech shows you are actually a fascist too!”
How did I do s@@tlibs?
antonio
Maybe time to form an alternative to the AAUP?
I call for the OUTLAW of Public Unions
The political Army of the Democrats
Taxpayers shouldn’t have to fight Unions who BRIBE Democrats for special treatment!