Zimmerman on “The President and the Universities”

Professor Jonathan Zimmerman of the University of Pennsylvania has a worthwhile essay  on the state of higher education in Liberties (a relatively new journal that is routinely filled with worthwhile material). His essay, “The President and the Universities” begins:

In March of last year, about six weeks after Donald Trump returned to the White House, I traveled to Washington for a meeting of American education scholars. The opening panel focused — appropriately enough — on Trump’s threats to university funding, free speech on campus, and more. Then it was time for questions, and I raised my hand. I said that I agreed with all the critiques of Trump, but I also wondered what those of us who work in higher education might have done — or not done — to bring about this awful moment. Could we use it to look in the mirror, I asked, and not just to circle the wagons?

Dead silence. Then another member of the audience spoke up. “I just wanted to say that I was deeply offended by Professor Zimmerman’s use of the term ‘circle the wagons,’ which connotes a hateful history of Native American displacement and genocide,” she said. More awkward silence. Finally the moderator of the panel interjected herself. “Thank you for reminding us that we need to be careful in the language that we use to describe others,” she said. So the panel began with a diatribe about Donald Trump’s assault on free speech and it concluded with a warning to watch our words.

That signifies a loss of faith in universities themselves. For the past seventy-five years, we have been telling a story about how we enhance democratic dialogue and understanding. Yet we don’t really believe it. If we did, the moderator would have asked the objecting scholar to say more about why she bridled at my phraseology. Then the moderator would have asked me to reply, and after that she would have solicited reactions from the audience. And eventually we might have gotten around to the substance of my question, which concerned the delicate matter of what degree of introspection, what sort of critical self-examination, might be required of professors and teachers amid the current crisis. None of that happened, of course. The moderator drew the panel to a moralistic and satisfyingly evasive close, and we all went out to lunch.

“Out to lunch” is where much of higher education is — oblivious about how we got here and how we might change course. Yes, Trump represents a dagger at our heart; and yes, we must join hands to resist him. But long before he came to power, growing numbers of Americans — and not just Republicans — were starting to see higher education as something of a scam. We charge ever-higher prices for degrees of dubious worth, even as we proclaim our commitment to the public good. To make good on that ideal, we cannot simply circle the wagons. We need to look in the mirror. What role have the universities themselves played in this disaster?

Zimmerman is not the first to raise this question. See, for instance, the work of Michael Clune. His essay is nonetheless a worthwhile addition to the calls for greater introspection and reform in higher education.