Our universities need both free speech and diversity protections to succeed  

With the coming of a new academic semester, campus culture wars are sure to heat up again — and could be made more intense by the Trump administration's anticipated actions. Questions about whether commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion are quenching free speech will be at the heart of those disputes.   

The Jan. 8 report of the American Association of University Professors and the American Association of Colleges and Universities on the state of academic freedom and civil discourse in America’s colleges and universities is sure to stir things up.  

Among its top-line findings are that “More than one out of three faculty report that they feel more constrained, compared with six and seven years ago, in their ability to speak freely.” In addition, “nearly one quarter of faculty think that students express their political beliefs less often in course discussions."  

Adding to this picture, Harvard University reported last fall that 45 percent of the undergraduates it sampled said “that they are reluctant to share their views about charged topics in class. Thirty-eight percent … reported that they are uncomfortable discussing such issues outside of the classroom.” Some people who expressed such reluctance specifically cited Harvard’s “discrimination, harassment, and bullying policies as a source of concern.”  

Students, Harvard noted, “worried that classroom debates could trigger complaints and investigations; consequently, they choose to self-censor. ... Instructors reported special concerns.”

All of these findings are troubling, but I worry they will be misused in the ongoing war on American higher education. Critics will latch on to them as fresh ammunition, charging they offer new proof that colleges and universities have become hotbeds of stifling political correctness fueled by their commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI efforts. 

That is a familiar and simple story that needs to be rethought.  

We need a new paradigm. To put it simply, open inquiry is essential if colleges and universities are to realize the value of diversity. Diversity, in turn, can and should enliven open inquiry. 

This will be a hard lesson for those who want to attack DEI to learn. They are committed to keeping the fire burning.

Examples abound. Vice President JD Vance, for example, reacted to the controversy that led to the resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay by saying of her initial appointment, “What happened at Harvard is a perfect manifestation of the idea that the universities are not so much after the pursuit of truth, as they are about enforcing dogma and doctrine.”

“(I)t’s time,” Vance went on, for the “de-woke-ification” of higher education. 

Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Snyder offer another example of the use of diversity. What they label “DEI Inc.” purveys, in their view, “a safety-and-security model of learning that is highly attuned to harm and conflates respect for minority students with unwavering affirmation and validation.”  

That model, Kahlid and Snyder argue, is “a bellwether of how DEI Inc. is eroding academic freedom. ... When institutions proclaim that academic freedom and inclusion coexist in a kind of synergistic harmony, they are trafficking in PR-driven wishful thinking. In the hardest cases, there is no way of upholding an ‘all are welcome here’ brand of inclusion while simultaneously defending academic freedom.”  

Even the editorial board of the Washington Post has gotten into the act. Last May, it highlighted what it portrayed as an opposition between diversity and academic freedom. It did so in a piece praising MIT’s decision to stop requiring job applicants to fill out diversity statements.  

They wrote, “The very purpose of the university is to encourage a free exchange of ideas, seek the truth wherever it may lead, and to elevate intellectual curiosity and openness among both faculty and students. Whatever their original intent, the use of DEI statements has too often resulted in self-censorship and ideological policing.”

The report cited above seemingly offers even more grist for that mill. For example, only 58 percent of respondents thought that “people who believe that efforts to redress racial inequalities represent anti-white racism or disadvantage white individuals” should be allowed to teach an undergraduate course.

Only slightly more think that people who hold such views should be allowed to give public talks on their campus. These are the disturbing findings that Vance, Khalid, Snyder and others use to drive home their points.

Colleges and universities should commit themselves to addressing such problems, because they believe that diversity on campus means little if people on their campuses are afraid to say what they think to anyone unlike them. In fact, free speech gives life to the hard-fought achievement of opening the doors to everyone. It means that everyone can learn from experiences and histories unlike their own. That is why DEI Offices should lead the charge on behalf of open inquiry.

In turn, free speech advocates should welcome the efforts to make colleges and universities more diverse and inclusive. Differences in history and experience help prevent a suffocating uniformity of views that is antithetical to the most robust exploration of ideas. 

John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher generally regarded as an ardent advocate of free expression, worried about what he called “a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression.” That social tyranny, he said, “leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling.” 

While it is not a guaranteed bulwark against “the tyranny of the prevailing opinion,” diversity is an invaluable resource in the fight against it.  

In 2018, another Harvard group, the University Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, concluded that the “values of academic freedom and inclusion and belonging provide each other with synergistic and mutual reinforcement.” It said they were not “distinct values that must be accommodated to each other” or “antagonistic goals.” 

The American Association of University Professors has warned that “Criticism of DEI statements and other criteria often conflate social and institutional values with imposed orthodoxies. Sweeping or abstract criticisms of DEI criteria fundamentally — and often deliberately — misunderstand and misrepresent this distinction.” Moreover, this group, a fierce advocate for academic freedom and open inquiry, has “long advocated for diversity in higher education.”

In the end, former University of Chicago President Hanna Holborn Gray got it right when she said, “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.” On college campuses everywhere, students, faculty, staff and all the rest of us should remember that diversity, in all its unsettling richness, will not make people comfortable, but it will make them think.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Amherst College.