PERSPECTIVE ON HIGHER EDUCATION : Institutions Besieged by Invective : The tenor of criticism verges on destructive; as a national resource, our universities deserve rational discourse.
Open any newspaper--and a growing number of books--and one is likely to find some new criticism of America’s colleges and universities: misuse of federal research funds; athletics scandals; spiraling student fees and tuition; racial preferences in admissions policies and faculty appointments; so-called hate speech on campuses and contention over what to do about it; what is being taught to undergraduates and how well it is being taught, and, of course, the durable debate over political correctness.
Criticism is to be expected and even welcomed. Higher education should be no more immune from it than business, government or any other human endeavor, and indeed has much to gain from criticism, however painful, that hits a real target. But there is a disturbing and little-noted dimension of the current debate on higher education that serves no public interest: the tone of voice and the inordinate pleasure with which that criticism is being leveled.
There are many examples. I will mention just one, made more pointed in light of Monday’s resignation of Stanford President Donald Kennedy. In the controversy over whether Stanford University did or did not make legitimate use of federal overhead funds for research, critics have taken uncommon pleasure in the troubles that both Stanford and Kennedy have experienced. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that dispute, the enjoyment bordering on glee that has characterized discussion of the matter, within and outside universities, is not just inappropriate to the seriousness of the issue. More important, it is damaging to one of the country’s most successful and accomplished institutions--and ultimately damaging to higher education throughout the nation.
The simple fact is that Stanford has made, and continues to make, extraordinary contributions to our society through world-class research that has produced, among many other dramatic advances, the first X-ray microscope, the first adult heart transplant in the United States and the basic patent on gene splicing. It is equally true that for more than a decade, Kennedy has been a committed and effective leader of his institution as well as one of the nation’s most thoughtful and articulate spokesmen for American higher education and American science.
And although neither Stanford nor its president is--or would expect to be--exempt from accountability for their stewardship of public or private funds, their difficulties should not be the occasion for spiteful pleasure. The triumphant delight of many critics writing and speaking about the issue--”Overhead-rate bid at Stanford gets U.S. jeer,” reads one recent headline--suggests sharks on the scent of blood rather than custodians of the public good genuinely interested in improving our colleges and universities.
The vindictive tenor of public discussion, the growing tendency to treat higher education as just one more special-interest group, is happening for a reason, of course--in fact a variety of reasons. One is the unfortunate fact that universities have sometimes acted like just another special-interest group. Another is the temptation to make use of real and alleged misdoing as justification for cutting budgets in these dire fiscal times, when very few targets for reduction are offering themselves. Still another is the tendency of universities to appear aloof, even though in no other country in the world is higher education so involved in the practical problems and challenges of its society. And perhaps the very success of higher education has generated the feeling that it has been riding high long enough and is now fair game.
Whatever the reasons, the corrosive spirit of the current debate matters because universities are, paradoxically, remarkably tough and remarkably fragile institutions. Collectively they have weathered many social, economic, political and intellectual threats. But universities, more than most other institutions, depend on a spirit of mutual respect, regard and trust between themselves and the society that supports and benefits from them. Without that intangible but indispensable regard they wither.
American higher education, despite its shortcomings and imperfections, is respected worldwide for the breadth and depth of its accomplishments (as the steady stream of the world’s brightest undergraduate and graduate students into our universities demonstrates). And so it is a curious fact about our society that we seem today to be taking uncommon pleasure in finding fault with one of our nation’s most durable and successful institutions, one that--far from being the ivory tower of popular myth--is on the cutting edge of the major intellectual, cultural, scientific, technological and social forces shaping our world.
The unrelenting cascade of criticism is creating an adversarial climate in which an objective sorting out of what needs to be fixed and what needs to be left alone is taking a back seat to invective and name-calling.
What the debate over higher education desperately needs right now is an injection of mutual respect and civility, along with a recognition that universities are neither always wrong nor always right, but simply institutions subject to the same potential for mistakes and problems as every other institution in our highly pluralistic, democratic and demanding society.
But there are ways in which universities are different and special and vulnerable to harm. They require a spirit of open and reasoned discussion to fulfill the missions that we as a nation have given them. Thus, within and outside the higher education community, we need to raise the level of sensitivity and awareness that we accord each other in deciding where and how universities can improve their performance, and we could constructively begin by lowering our voices.
