Last week, Harvard Professors Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky published an op-ed under the headline, “Harvard Must Take a Stand for Democracy.” They argued that “Harvard must set an example for civil society by making a firm public defense of democracy.”
They called on University President Alan Garber to consider doing three things: “First,” they said, “he could give a high-profile speech defending democracy and condemning the administration’s assault on it….”
“Second, Harvard could take the lead in coordinating a more vigorous collective response among institutions of higher education…. Harvard could also use its prestige to help forge a broad coalition of the country’s nearly 6,000 colleges and universities…to speak out in defense of democracy.”
Third, “the University could use its convening power to defend democratic principles. It could tap into its extraordinary network of faculty, alumni, and affiliates around the world to offer platforms and material support to efforts to promote and defend democracy.”
As I read their persuasive and powerful piece, I thought they had written the right things but addressed them to too small an audience. While it is true that only the president of any college or university can speak for the institution they lead, it is not true that they are the only ones who can speak about the university and its values.
As professors continue to press college presidents to go beyond trying to protect the interests of their own places and take up the defense of democracy and the rule of law, faculty members, speaking through their own governing bodies, should also do so. They should pass and publicize their own statements and resolutions.
If faculty quietly wait for presidents and deans to speak, we—and here I count myself in—risk ceding power and voice to administrators and failing in our own civic responsibilities. How can we expect students, or anyone else, to respect our arguments about what is happening in this country and our urging others to speak out if we remain silent?
As Professor Timothy Kaufman-Osborn notes, the job of professors and the institutions where we teach “is to cultivate an educated citizenry whose members are perpetually jealous of their claim to self-governance.” We need to lend our support to that claim.
Enos and Levitsky are not the only commentators bemoaning what they see as university leaders being AWOL from the defense of American democracy. Last month, Inside Higher Education’s Josh Moody wrote, “While some higher ed associations and universities have responded with lawsuits, college presidents, for the most part, have watched in relative silence. Some have released statements on changes to their institutions’ federal funding or diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives but those announcements have mostly been vague, with little mention of the political forces driving the changes.”
But others worry that such criticisms miss the vital work that university presidents are already doing. Mary Dana Hinton, president of Hollins University, puts it this way: “[T]hese criticisms do not recognize the incredible labor many college leaders are undertaking at this critical moment,” on issues like the tax on university endowments, the attack on science and possible cuts in funds for Pell Grants.
But these criticisms and defenses of college presidents let faculty off the hook. We also need to look in the mirror and ask whether and how we are addressing the situation Enos and Levitsky describe.
“The threat to democracy,” Enos and Levitsky say, “is unambiguous. Like his authoritarian counterparts in Hungary, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela, Trump is purging government agencies like the Justice Department, the FBI, the IRS, and the military and packing them with loyalists.”
Nonetheless, “Democracy’s demise is not inevitable. Authoritarians can be stopped…. But they can only be stopped when societies react. And so far, U.S. civil society—including media, business, unions, churches, and universities—has been stunningly passive.”
Enos and Levitsky go on to urge action. “When democracy and our freedom are on the line, we must do what is right.” They claim that colleges and universities are at their best when they “look beyond [their] gates and contribute to the country’s collective well-being…. Few would disagree that democracy is an essential part of this well-being.”
So, if our presidents are not yet persuaded to take up democracy’s cause, let’s not be passive and wait for them. We should take up Wesleyan University President Michael Roth’s call for “educators at all levels…[to] speak out to defend democracy…[and] defend those who have already become the victims of creeping authoritarianism.”
Professor Henry Giroux agrees. “Surely,” he says, “institutions of higher education cannot limit their role to training at a time when democracy is under assault around the world.”
And, as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) reminds us, college and university faculty are not just “members of a learned profession and officers of an educational institution.” We are “citizens” as well.
The AAUP recognizes that part of the responsibility of college and university faculty is to “speak or write as citizens,” even as it notes that “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.”
What is true for us as individuals is also true for the whole faculty, deliberating, deciding, and hopefully speaking together.
Doing so would not violate the spirit or the letter of “institutional neutrality” statements. As Harvard’s statement explains, “[T]he university has a responsibility to speak out to protect and promote its core function…. They must defend the university’s autonomy and academic freedom when threatened…. And they must speak out on issues directly relevant to the university’s operation.”
Faculty can meet that standard by affirming that threats to constitutional democracy and the rule of law are equally threats to our educational mission.
As Enos and Levitsky suggest, “Our autonomy and academic freedom are now clearly imperiled; the government’s effort to investigate and punish schools that don’t bend to its will directly threatens the core function of universities.” They get it right when they say, “Universities have always thrived in free societies and been smothered in autocracies…. Faced with an authoritarian government…[we] can either retreat into a defensive shell or stand up and help lead our country’s defense of democracy.”
It is time for those who teach to stand up for the rule of law, democratic institutions, and the freedoms and well-being of all who reside in this country. By doing so, we can set an example for others and remind everyone that we are not the cloistered elitists our critics make us out to be.
Leaving that work to college presidents may ask too much of them and demand too little of us.
Let’s get busy drafting statements, introducing resolutions, and joining with our colleagues to do what most college and university leaders are not doing. That way our defense of democracy will be rooted, as it should be, in the democratic practices of faculty self-governance itself.