How One College President Confronts ‘The Biases of the Professoriate’

The outspoken intellectual historian discusses what he’s proud of and the challenges that remain in his work at Wesleyan. Under his presidency, the university has created interdisciplinary colleges, breaking through department barriers. It has raised close to half a billion dollars, using much of it for more than 100 new endowed scholarships. Mr. Roth has promoted diversity on campus, increasing the percentages of low-income students and ethnic and racial minorities, and championing them, as well as women, particularly in the sciences. Together with the Posse Foundation, Wesleyan has also enrolled more than 30 military veterans. And that, Roth says, enhances a broader goal of greater intellectual diversity. He has been criticized for advocating “affirmative action” for other viewpoints, but free speech in only a narrowly defined intellectual space isn’t really free, he argues. For a college, Mr. Roth says, the bottom line is whether students feel free to thoughtfully speak their minds without self-censoring.

Alexander C. Kafka is a senior editor and oversees Idea Lab. Follow him on Twitter @AlexanderKafka, or email him at alexander.kafka@chronicle.com.