To strengthen American universities, we should focus on making them more affordable, accessible, and aligned with the needs of students and society. This can be achieved by increasing public funding, controlling tuition costs, and

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Drop caps are styled with a large, uppercase, bold font in a specific color. Horizontal rules use the article border color. The layout uses a grid system for positioning elements like the title, headline, media, standfirst, and metadata, adjusting column widths and areas based on screen size. Main media elements are aligned to the end, have a right border, padding, and are positioned relative within their grid area.This CSS code styles a webpage layout for articles. It adjusts the appearance and positioning of elements like images, captions, headlines, and metadata across different screen sizes. For example, on larger screens, it adds borders and padding to certain sections, positions captions at the bottom of images, and hides or shows specific elements. It also includes styles for lockup graphics and ensures the layout works well on mobile devices like iOS and Android.American universities are facing a major challenge. Billions of dollars in federal funding are at risk, which could seriously affect their ability to support research. However, for top-tier institutions like Harvard, financial resources are vast. Although budget cuts would be difficult, they are unlikely to threaten the university’s survival. The bigger question is how these changes will impact their long-term standing and influence.The question is whether universities can emerge from their current crisis without losing their soul. This situation has been building for over a decade. While both political sides have contributed to the problem, early warning signs appeared in “cancel culture,” the left’s form of campus censorship. More recently, the right has been even more aggressive, as seen in clumsy attempts by the Trump administration and some state governors to control what is taught in university classrooms.

The response from universities has been equally disappointing. They have failed to clearly state what they stand for or how far they are willing to go to defend their principles. Weak administrators and faculty who have lost their intellectual drive have left universities vulnerable to pressure from all sides: angry students, entitled donors, and opportunistic politicians. Large settlements by Ivy League schools may be a quick way to restore federal funding, but they show little commitment to academic integrity. Even worse, monitoring agreements, like the one Columbia accepted, raise serious concerns about how much schools are willing to sacrifice academic freedom just to get funding restored.

When universities do respond to controversies, their statements often sound like they were written by AI, approved by crisis consultants, and tested in focus groups. These bland pronouncements satisfy no one and contradict the very purpose of a university: to provide an open space for testing and debating complex, unresolved ideas. In an age of instant reactions and easy outrage, this role is both harder and more essential than ever.

Meanwhile, public trust in higher education is plummeting. Political scientist Greg Conti calls this the rise of the “sectarian university.” Schools like Harvard, with its $50 billion endowment, aren’t in real danger from criticism, but their authority is becoming fragile and their appeal more narrow. Sectarian universities will cater only to elite circles, much like molecular gastronomy. The result could be the loss of one of America’s great contributions: the research university, dedicated to producing knowledge for everyone.

So what can be done? Universities must reaffirm their core value—academic freedom—and adopt a stance of institutional neutrality to rebuild public trust. This doesn’t mean suppressing speech or protest. On the contrary, individual faculty and students should be free to express themselves as they wish. But the university itself, through its administration, should focus solely on creating an environment where research and learning can thrive.

Right now, universities are inconsistently suppressing speech in response to government pressure. Since 2020, over 1,000 U.S. students have been punished for pro-Palestinian speech—an extreme overreaction. “Safetyism,” once a left-wing idea that treated certain speech as violence, has now been adopted by the right to justify crackdowns on pro-Palestinian activism and other forms of expression. While speech that crosses into intimidation has no place on campus, administrators must take a clear and consistent stand on where to draw the line, and then vigorously defend free speech in all other cases.

If there is any hope of restoring universities to their traditional role…In spaces where political speech is protected, neutrality must prevail—not an opportunistic or selective defense of some viewpoints over others. As longtime advocates of free speech once understood, if you fail to protect all speech—not just the speech you agree with—it is only a matter of time before your own freedom to speak is threatened.

At its core, a university represents a bold experiment in what happens when an institution commits unwaveringly to free speech. Academic freedom is not just another policy rule; it is the defining feature of the modern American university, admired around the world. Yet few universities have fully embraced and defended this value. Administrators rarely champion it publicly, faculty openly question it, and the public has little reason to believe in it if universities themselves do not. To preserve its integrity, the university must change its approach.

What has become of academic freedom?

Consider two recent trends. First, Americans’ trust in universities has dropped sharply—from 57% in 2015 to 36% in 2023. Second, Americans, especially on college campuses, feel less free to speak their minds than ever. A 2022 poll, consistent with other surveys, found that only a third of Americans believed we enjoy complete freedom of speech in the U.S., and about 84% said there is a “serious” problem with people being afraid to speak out in daily life. Students and faculty consistently report frequent self-censorship. This is a far cry from the healthy debate that once defined university life.

How are these trends connected? Universities have come under suspicion for appearing partisan. Critics argue that research from many institutions is not the product of a free exchange of ideas but is tainted by political bias. Whether this accusation is fair or not, it stems from a breakdown in the core design of the university: academic freedom.

The modern concept of academic freedom dates to the early 20th century, emerging from a contentious debate at Stanford over the populist writings of economics professor Edward Ross. The university’s benefactor, Jane Stanford, pushed for his dismissal, likely because his support for free silver challenged the wealth and power of monopolists like herself. Several professors resigned in protest, and soon after, some of them founded the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which remains a leading—though sometimes inconsistent—defender of faculty autonomy and free speech on campus.

As universities take more public stances on social and political issues, faculty and students feel increasingly restricted in expressing themselves.

The AAUP’s 1915 declaration on academic freedom and tenure acknowledged that while many 20th-century universities protected researchers’ freedom of inquiry, several incidents had undermined professors’ ability to express political opinions freely. The AAUP argued that this freedom was essential to ensure faculty were not dependent on the favor of any social class, thereby safeguarding the credibility of their research.

Today’s campus environment falls short of this ideal. In some cases, academic freedom and tenure protections have been directly attacked. Other pressures are more subtle: as schools adopt more positions on social and political issues, both faculty and students feel less free to speak their minds.

These assaults come from inside and outside the university. Institutions themselves have weakened tenure and shown little regard for the academic freedom of non-tenured faculty. For example, at Hamline University in Minnesota, an art history professor was dismissed after showing a painting of the prophet Muhammad in class.During the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford’s faculty senate censured a Hoover senior fellow for opinions he expressed while advising former President Trump. More recently, debates over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have led to faculty dismissals—including several tenured professors—at Muhlenberg College, the University of Illinois, Columbia Law School, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges for expressing pro-Palestinian views.

Such attempts to sanction faculty were rare in 2000, with only four recorded cases, but have become common: 145 were reported in 2022 by the academic freedom watchdog FIRE. Most of these attempts resulted in actual penalties, including 225 terminations, 60 of which involved tenured professors.

External pressures have also intensified. Alongside Trump’s proposals to tie billions in university funding to restrictions on pro-Palestinian speech, laws like Florida’s Stop WOKE Act aim to control what can be discussed in classrooms. At least ten states have advanced legislation to weaken or eliminate tenure in public universities.

However, we believe a more subtle threat to academic freedom comes from the self-censorship of professors across the U.S. Though difficult to measure, a recent survey found that 91% of faculty believe academic freedom is under threat in higher education, with many hesitant to discuss topics like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Institutional attitudes play a key role. First, many universities have adopted policies like requiring DEI statements in faculty hiring. Although this practice has declined somewhat in recent years, especially after the Trump administration’s pushback against DEI programs, some schools still route all faculty applicants through a separate DEI committee. Those who don’t meet the committee’s standards aren’t forwarded for departmental review, suggesting that political alignment can outweigh teaching and research quality.

Second, many faculty feel that universities no longer support them. For example, a few years ago, students at our university organized against a professor who did not intervene when a student used a racial slur during office hours—in the context of quoting a published court decision. While the incident raised important questions about free speech, what stood out was the law school administration’s reluctance to defend the professor. In fact, administrators undermined the faculty member, with one senior official stating that it wasn’t their job to look out for faculty needs. This dismissive attitude reflects a broader cultural shift, further illustrated when university presidents testifying before Congress on antisemitism seemed quick to sacrifice their faculty.

Universities should be more than just real estate operations. The key to preserving them may lie in “institutional neutrality,” a principle often traced to the 1967 Kalven Report from the University of Chicago. The report argued that the university as an institution must remain neutral on social and political issues, allowing individuals within it the freedom to critique society. This criticism is vital and only possible because the university commits to neutrality and openness. The report emphasized that the university should not engage in “collective action,” as that would undermine its role as a space for diverse and dissenting voices.

Though this principle emerged during…The 1960s were a turbulent decade, and the principles that guided universities then remain just as relevant today. At its heart, a university operates on the belief that preserving space for differing viewpoints is almost always worth the cost. Occasionally, that space might give rise to a Galileo; more often, it helps the majority refine their arguments by engaging with opposing ones. In every case, it fosters an environment where novel and thorough thinking can flourish.

Part of the challenge universities face in defending themselves is that their core purpose is unique. Unlike businesses, which aim for efficiency, or activist groups, which champion specific causes, a university’s value is structural rather than substantive. At its best, a university is simply a carefully designed space where other things can happen. Beyond that, it has no single role, goal, purpose, identity, or agenda. It isn’t “for” or “against” anything—except academic inquiry and excellence.

Neutrality plays a role in other sectors, but it isn’t their essence. In recent years, for example, there has been extensive debate about whether businesses should take political stances. These discussions matter, but they aren’t existential. They revolve around whether activism hurts business by alienating customers, affects workplace quality, or influences social policy. Ultimately, these debates are secondary. Nobody questions whether Nike is still Nike if it speaks more or less about social justice—Nike is, after all, a clothing company. A university is different. If it fails to create an environment where ideas can thrive, it becomes little more than an expensive real estate venture with tax benefits.

When the presidents of Penn, Harvard, and MIT were questioned by a House panel about antisemitism on campus, their appearance was widely seen as unfortunate because they seemed to stand for nothing in particular. They didn’t articulate, as the Chicago Principles (a modern follow-up to the Kalven Report) do, that a university must not censor even the most “offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed” views. By neither giving in nor standing up for anything, and by showing little intellectual depth, they left no one satisfied.

In contrast, when Stanford students loudly protested a conservative judge speaking on campus a few years ago, the law school dean demonstrated what true neutrality looks like. She didn’t comment on the substance of the protest or the speaker’s talk but focused solely on the disruption to free speech. Her approach was telling: she wrote a 10-page, citation-heavy memorandum citing key case law to educate students on the history and nature of free speech. Her response was academic in tone, addressed to intellectually curious members of her community, not a focus-grouped public relations message.

Universities aren’t particularly good at being activists. When they try, they often anger their opponents without satisfying the groups they aim to please.

Neutrality can be difficult to advocate for. In 2011, a Harvard dean proposed having freshmen sign a “kindness” pledge—the first required pledge in the college’s history. Fortunately, a former dean led strong opposition to stop it, arguing in an essay that “the right to be annoying is precious, as is the right to think unkind thoughts.” He wasn’t against kindness; his concern was that any pledge, no matter how harmless it sounded, could undermine the university’s fundamental nature. (Would kindness prevent a student from pointing out an intellectual error? Would having an unkind thought violate the code?) Meaningful neutrality means administrators shouldn’t impose even the most benign-sounding pledges on students. This is why we see it.As a core value, academic freedom is especially difficult to appreciate from the outside, which is why it needs strong advocates from within. The university itself is a bet on the importance of this kind of environment. That bet is supported by some bold institutional features—like tenure. The idea behind tenure is that groundbreaking ideas need a special kind of protection and are worth the investment. For every hundred mediocre papers or professors who coast on job security, someone produces work or makes a discovery that justifies the cost. We believe it’s a worthwhile gamble. Even tech and creative companies have sometimes thought so; though they’ve scaled back, their past efforts to foster employee freedom were also bets on a certain atmosphere—expensive to maintain, but often productive. Whether or not the gamble pays off, it’s the fundamental premise of a university.

Recent years have shown that universities aren’t very effective as activists. When they try, they anger their critics without satisfying the groups they aim to please. Returning to institutional neutrality plays to their core strength.

Restoring healthy debate is essential. Trump’s attacks on research funding are an attempt to control what is taught and by whom. Some believe Harvard brought this on itself. But whatever mistakes universities have made, that doesn’t make Trump’s approach right. While many of us see intellectual diversity as the heart of a university, letting the government dictate education policy echoes tactics from Mao’s Little Red Book. That must be firmly rejected.

The problem is, universities have lent credibility to conservative complaints about free speech. This has made them vulnerable in the eyes of their traditional supporters: donors and alumni. Meanwhile, schools that adopt institutional neutrality now—nearly 150 since October 7, 2023, by one count—risk appearing opportunistic, as if they’re responding to pressure or trying to suppress certain views, rather than upholding a deep commitment to their design.

Unfortunately, on campuses where groupthink is common, it’s not just controversial ideas that suffer—creativity does, too. Faculty share responsibility for this.

At elite institutions, liberal dominance is more pronounced than at community colleges or professional schools. Over 80% of Harvard faculty identify as liberal, including nearly 40% as “very liberal,” while less than 1.5% call themselves conservative. Only 9% of incoming Harvard students describe themselves as conservative. The issue isn’t just that faculty lean left—many want it that way. Forty percent would bar anyone who worked in the Trump administration from a faculty position. A third oppose hiring conservative professors to improve ideological diversity, showing little regard for pluralism in research.

Too many of us approach different viewpoints like a child forced to try broccoli.

Academic departments have the right to hire whomever they choose—that’s academic freedom—but such one-sided ideological commitments threaten to make universities irrelevant and deprive them of the vigorous debate essential for intellectual growth. A few years ago, a faculty group at Rutgers started a reading group exploring influential texts across law, policy, and fields like history and philosophy. It was very successful, but when someone suggested reading Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia—a libertarian classic—several colleagues said they diI agreed with Nozick’s policies and had no interest in reading his book. Did I actually read it? No, but I felt I already knew what it said. We’ve encountered similar resistance when trying to invite faculty with conservative viewpoints—like originalist constitutional scholars—to our workshops. The common excuse from some colleagues is that they already know what these thinkers believe and know they disagree, so why bother engaging? This attitude puzzles us, especially since neither of us is an originalist—which is exactly why we’d want to hear from one.

This resistance isn’t censorship. No one threatened us or questioned our right to invite these speakers—our colleagues aren’t like that. They were fine with us reading Nozick. What surprised us was the complete indifference to opposing viewpoints. To be fair, many colleagues did attend when we hosted an originalist speaker and asked thoughtful, substantive questions. But too many approach differing perspectives like a child forced to try broccoli.

We believe there’s more appetite for debate than it seems. When we published articles during the pandemic questioning school closures—a view now common but controversial at the time—we received emails from colleagues at other schools thanking us for being “brave.” Given our tenure protections, we were surprised anyone saw it that way. Their reaction revealed a lot about the current academic climate. Interestingly, we got little direct pushback from other academics, suggesting a culture of avoidance. Criticism usually happened behind our backs, shared with editors or deans.

How did we get here? A significant part of the blame lies with the elite class, which includes university professors. In our recent book, The Weaponization of Expertise, we describe three corrosive mindsets common among elites. First, condescension: a misguided faith in meritocracy leads elites to see the public as ignorant and distrustful of their intellectual superiors. Second, technocratic paternalism: the belief that our biggest disagreements are about facts, and that agreeing on facts will lead to policy agreement. Third, intellectual tyranny: viewing doubt and dissent as products of error or corruption, which fosters a culture intolerant of disagreement and quick to assume bad faith in opponents. These mindsets are interconnected, rooted in an overvaluation of credentials, and equally damaging.

Institutional neutrality doesn’t stop faculty or students from making moral judgments. Instead, it fosters environments where free speech thrives, useful knowledge is produced, and informed citizens are educated. The alternative leaves people unprepared and afraid to engage with complex or dissenting ideas, reducing the university to a partisan actor with little credibility.

At our university, for example, the president issued three bland statements on the conflict in Israel within two weeks. These PR-driven messages, full of platitudes, were a far cry from the slow, research-intensive work universities are known for. Unsurprisingly, they satisfied no one and only sparked more demands with each new release.The president continues to issue more statements. In contrast, we believe the traditional view of universities as neutral, open spaces for free inquiry better reflects their institutional strengths and limitations. Universities are not particularly effective in the political arena. Instead, they excel at allowing competing ideas—even deeply flawed ones—to be thoroughly debated. They are skilled at equipping students with the ability to question and discuss challenging concepts by fostering an environment that encourages inquiry and debate. This is the true essence of the university, and the only one worth defending.

Jacob Hale Russell is a professor of law at Rutgers University. Dennis Patterson is a board of governors professor of law and philosophy at Rutgers University and a professor of legal philosophy at Surrey Law School in Guildford, England. They are the co-authors of The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism (MIT Press, 2025).

Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of helpful FAQs about strengthening American universities designed to be clear and accessible

General Beginner Questions

1 What does it mean to make universities more affordable
It means lowering the overall cost of getting a degree so that students graduate with less debt This includes reducing tuition fees and the cost of textbooks and housing

2 Why is affordability such a big problem right now
The cost of college has risen much faster than inflation and average family income over the past few decades leaving many students with overwhelming loan debt that affects their lives long after graduation

3 What does accessibility mean in this context
Accessibility means removing barriers so that everyone regardless of their income background race or location has a fair and realistic opportunity to attend and succeed in college

4 How can universities be better aligned with the needs of society
It means ensuring that the degrees and skills students learn in college prepare them for the realworld jobs that are in demand like in technology healthcare and green energy while also teaching critical thinking and civic engagement

Intermediate Advanced Questions

5 How would increasing public funding actually make college cheaper for me
When state and federal governments invest more money directly into public universities those schools dont have to rely as heavily on raising tuition to cover their costs This subsidy keeps the price lower for all students

6 What are some practical ways to control tuition costs
Policies can include freezing tuition rates for all four years of a students enrollment setting caps on annual tuition increases and requiring universities to be more transparent about where tuition money is spent

7 Isnt more public funding just a taxpayer burden
While it uses tax revenue its often viewed as a public investment A more educated population leads to a stronger economy higher wages more innovation and lower rates of unemployment and incarceration which benefits everyone

8 Besides lowering tuition what else improves accessibility
Expanding needbased financial aid offering more online and parttime degree programs for working adults and providing stronger support services for firstgeneration and nontraditional students

9 Can you give an example of a university aligning its programs with societal needs
Many schools are now creating new majors and certificates in high

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