President Trump’s second administration has targeted higher education with funding cuts, charging that colleges — particularly prestigious ones — have let antisemitism go unchecked and progressive ideology run amok.
The sector’s leaders have responded by weighing whether to give ground or fight back. Lingering inside that question is another uncomfortable one: Do Trump and his allies have a point?
At the University of California at Berkeley, two professors recently put a version of that query to their peers via survey. The results — obtained by The Chronicle — cut against the stereotype of Berkeley’s campus as an ultra-progressive monolith. Rather, they conveyed complicated feelings among a subset of the faculty about whether and where higher education has gone wrong, and how to course-correct if it has. While some respondents did not think Berkeley should recalibrate on certain issues because of Trump, they did think their university should recalibrate, period.
As one unnamed professor put it: “Over the years, I’ve been confronted by various scenarios that have caused me to mutter to myself, ‘This has gone way too far.’ Do we really have to acknowledge that we are holding a conference on stolen land when it takes place over Zoom?”
‘Universities Made Mistakes’
Chris Hoofnagle, a professor of law in residence, and Will Fithian, an associate professor of statistics, started sending out the survey earlier this year. Called the “Bearometer,” it poses one question every so often to members of Berkeley’s faculty senate, though it’s not affiliated with that body. Inspired by a similar effort at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the goal, as described on the Bearometer’s webpage, is to discover and highlight the views of faculty members, particularly “the reticent and the too busy for senate service,” in order to inform campus discussions.
Berkeley professors can submit questions for consideration, which are then upvoted or downvoted by their colleagues. Hoofnagle and Fithian have procedures in place for keeping the results anonymous. When they’re circulated, they’re labeled with “UC-FEYES: UC Faculty Eyes Only.” (Hoofnagle and Fithian both declined to be interviewed, citing the poll’s internal nature. Both are also involved in a faculty group meant to encourage free inquiry at Berkeley, which has been a growing concern among some on campus.)
In April, according to the results shared with The Chronicle, some 2,560 Berkeley professors, about 1,000 of whom are emeriti, were asked the following: “In the current environment where our university’s mode of operation is being openly challenged by powerful outside forces, do you believe that some of the associated criticisms of higher education are valid and should be acted upon?” They could select one of four answers, not including “other,” and could also write in text responses.
Of the 290 people who answered the survey question, 16 percent indicated that they think the criticisms are “invalid” and should not be acted upon. Fifteen percent said that while “some criticisms may be valid,” no action should be taken right now “because it would undermine university autonomy.”
Over the years, I’ve been confronted by various scenarios that have caused me to mutter to myself, ‘This has gone way too far.’
But nearly half of respondents — 47 percent — answered that some criticisms are “valid” and that action should be taken “deliberately through regular governance processes.” An additional 16 percent agreed that some criticisms are well-founded and think that “we should take action urgently.” (The results note that the poll is not scientific. Text responses do not include names, positions, or indicate whether the respondent currently teaches at Berkeley or is retired.)
Professors who don’t see a need for acting on criticisms said much of the carping about academe is off base or overblown. As one survey respondent wrote, most people “do not understand that DEI includes things like access and accommodations for disabled students” and “changing tables in restrooms.”
Current criticisms “completely miss the outsize benefits of the university for society,” wrote another.
That colleges are “hotbeds of antisemitism” and hostile to conservative views are “false narratives and cover stories to dismantle higher education as we know it,” wrote a third. They should be refuted “loudly and confidently.”
But for other respondents, those narratives are grounded in some truth — at least locally. “I am not a Jew, but if I were, I would be extremely cautious, if not fearful, while being on campus,” wrote one of several people who voiced concerns about antisemitism at Berkeley.
Janet Gilmore, a university spokesperson, said in an email that Berkeley has “demonstrated an unwavering commitment to confronting antisemitism” — pointing to a chancellor’s advisory committee on Jewish student life and campus climate established in 2015 and an antisemitism education program created in 2019. Berkeley is also committed to enforcing laws and policies that bar identity-based harassment and discrimination, Gilmore wrote.
The institution’s lack of conservatives — and the resulting ideological rigidity on campus — was another theme. “I proudly worked for the Biden administration,” wrote a faculty member, “and somehow pass for right wing in our very narrow intellectual environment.” Another professor said that while left-wing constraints on speech “are not equivalent to the Trump administration’s penchant for terrorizing noncitizen scholars with arbitrary deportation,” there “continues to be an unfortunate sense that if you endorse a position that’s associated with the right you are somehow committing a serious faux pas.”
In her email, Gilmore said that Berkeley leaders agree that universities “benefit from a robust diversity of perspectives and voices.” Richard K. Lyons, the university’s chancellor, has called it “the constructive collision of ideas.”
Professors also expressed misgivings about how, in their view, their university, or higher ed writ large, had become yoked to certain partisan ideas and assumptions. One survey respondent wrote, “While I personally agree with the conclusions on which feminist studies, ecofeminism, and technofeminism/gender studies rest, I think universities made mistakes when embedding the ‘feminist’ brand of social justice into the curriculum.”
“Failure to admit that we reward hewing to an orthodox line is to engage in hypocrisy or sheer self-delusion,” observed another person.
Universities are under attack (often by idiots), but they deserve it and should get their houses in order.
Others noted the gulf that exists between the professoriate and regular people. “Some departments have such sealed echo chambers that they cannot recognize that we have lost the general public,” another faculty member wrote. “We have what business people call a ‘bozo explosion’ problem.”
And diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts — particularly diversity statements in faculty hiring, which the University of California system recently said cannot be required for new hires — got a lot of airtime in the responses. “Loyalty oaths to anything are loathsome,” wrote one professor of those statements. Another faculty member who believes in DEI as a goal nevertheless thinks that “WE SHOULD HAVE AN ACCOUNTING TO TRY TO DETERMINE (HONESTLY!) HOW MUCH WE SPEND” on trying to achieve it.
A third person said that DEI-related activities “could probably have benefited from some healthy scrutiny” in the past. Why didn’t that happen? “I sense people have been hesitant to even start the discussion out of fear of being ostracized and labeled, which is the exact opposite of academic freedom!”
And a fourth lambasted Berkeley for what that person sees as a fixation on identity issues du jour, compared to antisemitism: “For years, our DEI police and their faculty deputies have taught us to denounce dog-whistle politics, recognize and decry microaggressions, acknowledge stolen land that we have no intention of returning, and always be sure to specify our preferred pronouns, all the while ignoring or dismissing the frequent fog horns and macroaggressions of antisemitism.”
Had that problem actually been addressed, “we might not have fed the beast that now threatens to devour us, using antisemitism as an entering wedge.”
Gilmore said in her email that Berkeley will follow system guidance around diversity statements in hiring. She also said that responses to the Bearometer should not be seen as representative of faculty views. “As with any organization, not everyone is knowledgeable about all aspects of how the organization works or its efforts to address various issues,” she wrote. “Some individuals may be highly knowledgeable while others may be misinformed, misunderstand, or have biases.”
‘Clean Up Our Own Messes’
Many Bearometer respondents warned against countenancing critiques that they think are being made in bad faith, to damage universities for political purposes. And most everyone who mentioned Trump or his administration disagreed with his tactics. The president is “attempting to subvert, disempower, bribe (‘You get federal funds IF you follow my ideological agenda’), and punish universities for our intellectual freedom,” wrote one faculty member, who urged resistance.
For several Berkeley professors, that resistance is best exemplified by Harvard University, which sued the Trump administration after rejecting its wide-ranging demands. The Ivy League university “is now our champion, speaking truth to power and its abuse,” one faculty member wrote. “We should follow suit instead of piddling around with the minutia in this survey question.”
Even faculty members who expressed concerns about various aspects of academe also said that caving to the federal government would be a mistake. “UC autonomy comes first, after which we clean up our own messes in our own way,” wrote the professor who was uneasy about the “feminist” brand of social justice being embedded in curriculum.
Still, others advocated for serious reflection — not because of Trump necessarily, but because they think introspection is overdue. The academy “decided some time ago, but with a big increase in energy and intensity in 2020, to use the accumulated authority and prestige of our institutions and disciplines to advance ideologically driven political agendas, and we told the lie to others (and often to ourselves) that that wasn’t what we were doing,” one faculty member wrote.
“It would be a shame,” this person argued toward the end of a lengthy response, “to let defensiveness, self-righteousness, and justifiable antipathy toward the current presidential administration prevent us from seeing that our own excesses have degraded the situation of the university and left us with less public sympathy and support than we have ever had.”
Put a bit blunter, by another faculty member: “Universities are under attack (often by idiots), but they deserve it and should get their houses in order.”
