How Colleges Can Prepare for a Chaotic Fall

I hate to say it, but the fall term may be even more disruptive on college campuses than this disastrous past spring. Hostilities between Israel and Hamas could extend beyond the summer and spread to include Hezbollah — or, God forbid, a direct conflict with Iran. That will add fuel to the calls for disclosure and divestment that led to the pro-Palestinian encampments on dozens of campuses. And even if the hot conflict has ended, there will surely be those who use disruptive means, like deplatforming speakers and shouting down college officials, to call into question the relationship between their college and Israel.

But progressives may not be the only ones disrupting campuses in the fall. Conservative groups have surely taken notes on the tactics used by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. They may well be planning their own disruptions. After all, if pro-Palestinian students can establish an encampment, accuse supporters of Israel of endorsing murder, and claim free-speech protections when accused of harassment, why can’t pro-life groups establish encampments and shout “murderer” at staff (and patients) of the university hospital that provides abortions?

Remember, as the fall term begins we will be entering the final lap of what promises to be a historically divisive presidential campaign. It will be high stakes, high tension, and high drama.

How should colleges prepare?

First of all: Don’t rely on free speech as the guiding principle.

Picture two groups of dueling protesters on the quad. Each is earnest in its beliefs and kind to the other. One group holds signs that read “2+2=3.” The other group, in the most civil manner possible, truly hoping to improve their fellow students, responds: “No, no, no: 2+2=5.”

This is an example of free speech. Perhaps it even counts as civil discourse. But no college official would stand in front of these protesters and proudly proclaim, “Now, this is what to strive for.”

And yet, free speech was the most common principle invoked by the college presidents who came before Congress in the antisemitism hearings. Over 70 times, in response to questions about political slogans and insulting language, the presidents said their priority was to protect free speech.

How Gaza Encampments Upended Higher Ed

Read the latest news stories and opinion pieces, and track sit-ins on campuses across the country on our interactive map.

My 17-year-old son is a rising high-school senior and deep in his college-application process. I have told him, in no uncertain terms, that his parents are not going to pay tens of thousands of dollars for him to go to college, meet people with views he doesn’t agree with or fully understand, and shout slogans at them. He can do that for free in a public park.

To protect speech is necessary for colleges — and at public institutions it is a legal obligation — but it is far from the highest ideal a college seeks to achieve. It should not be the dominant principle when we speak about the purpose of a university.

Second, establish pluralism as the guiding norm.

In contrast to “free speech,” the concept of “pluralism” was barely mentioned at all during the antisemitism hearings. The one prominent mention of the term occurred in the written testimony of David Greenwald, co-chair of Columbia University’s Board of Trustees. “Columbia,” Greenwald wrote, “is committed to having a pluralistic and positive environment on campus and to remaining a place where differing views and intellectual challenge are welcome and past and present conflicts are analyzed with an eye toward resolution and improvement.”

Greenwald is right.

A university is about intellectual pluralism — the exploration of the diversity of reality through a variety of methods, the testing of different explanatory frameworks, the consideration of a range of moral claims. It is also about civic pluralism: bringing together people of diverse identities and divergent ideologies in considerate conversation both to improve human relations and to collectively endeavor upon the process of shared inquiry that characterizes intellectual pluralism.

College presidents should do everything in their power to make the pluralism ideal a norm on campus. Send a letter explaining the importance of pluralism to all incoming first-year students. Send a copy to everyone else on campus too, from the custodial staff to your emeriti professors.

Give a convocation address on the centrality of pluralism. Deliver a public lecture at the local chamber of commerce or rotary club on the topic. Make promises about how your institution embodies pluralism to both prospective students and to prospective employers. Start a presidential-level pluralism fellowship. Establish a pluralism requirement within general education. Perhaps even create a minor or a concentration.

Third and finally, college leaders must ensure consistency between their colleges’ commitment to pluralism and its student-affairs culture.

I’ve visited over 150 college campuses, and the reality on many is that the president and her cabinet seek some version of intellectual and civic pluralism, but the student-facing staff seek to inculcate a single, ideologically narrow version of social justice.

Consider this fairly typical scenario. On her first day on campus, an incoming freshman attends the convocation address delivered by the president on how the institution seeks to live out the ideals articulated by William James, Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, John Courtney Murray, and Jane Addams about pluralism. On her second day, she goes to an orientation workshop where she and her fellow students are told to name their privileges, separated into groups of oppressors and oppressed, and told that college life means joining the progressive movement against systemic injustice.

It is a disjointed situation, at best. It would be as if the head baseball coach gave a speech about scoring runs and pitching strikes, and then turned the team over to an assistant coach who told the team to put their pads on for tackling drills. Football is a wonderful sport, but if you are playing baseball, you need to practice pitching, fielding and batting, not tackling, blocking and passing.

For the norm of pluralism to be lived out across a university, it needs not just to be articulated by senior administrators, but implemented by student-facing staff members.

I hope that college administrators take a well-earned break after an exhausting spring term, and I am sure that late June will be filled with discussions about time, place, and manner restrictions on the protests that will inevitably fill the quad come the fall. But I also hope that administrators spend more time asking themselves how they can achieve the ideal of pluralism than they do delineating the punishments for disruption. Our colleges are treasures of American civilization; they should spend most of their time articulating what they are for, not what they are against.