The Threat From Within

Pui Yan Fong for The Chronicle Review

Universities are a fundamental force for good in the world. At their best, they mine knowledge and understanding, wisdom and insight, and then freely distribute those treasures to society at large. Theirs is not a monopoly on this undertaking, but in the concentration of effort and single-mindedness of purpose, they are truly unique institutions. If Aristotle is right that what defines a human being is rationality, then universities are the most distinctive, perhaps the pinnacle, of human endeavors.

I share this thought to remind those of us in the academy why we do what we do — why we care so much about our institutions and what they represent. But I also raise it to voice a concern. Universities are under attack, both from outside and from within.

The threat from outside is apparent. Potential cuts in federal funding would diminish our research enterprise and our ability to fund graduate education. Taxes on endowments would limit the support we can give to faculty members and the services and financial aid we can provide to students. Indiscriminate travel restrictions would impede the free exchange of ideas and scholars. All of these threats have intensified in recent years — and recent months have given them a reality that is hard to ignore.

But I’m actually more worried about the threat from within. Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country. Not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines — there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.

This results in a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we won’t even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem critique because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about the institutions we serve.

It will not be easy to resist this current. Administrations are continually pressed by faculty members and students to take political stands, and failure to do so is perceived as a lack of courage. But at universities today, the easiest thing to do is to succumb to that pressure. What requires real courage is to resist it.

The university is not a megaphone to amplify this or that political view, and when it does it violates a core mission. Of course, universities must always stay true to the values at the foundation of their missions of teaching and research. History has shown that they must and do speak out when those values are challenged. But they must also remain open forums for contentious debate, and they cannot do so while officially espousing one side of that debate.

What this means in practice is that a university should rarely, if ever, yield to demands that it endorse a particular proposition or position. Of course, universities are never asked to champion positions that are not topics of heated debate. We are not asked to affirm that gravity waves have been detected or that Fermat’s Last Theorem was finally proven. Instead we are asked to weigh in precisely when it is imagined that the weight of the university can sway — or perhaps silence — any opponents.

How can this seem a reasonable thing for a university to do? Shouldn’t it be clear that as long as there remains even the slightest room for rational, legitimate disagreement, the university should not take sides? If there are opponents to be swayed, isn’t that prima facie evidence that there is still room for reasonable debate? Here is where the all-purpose ad hominem comes into play: The opponents have bad motives or have been misled. They are not to be taken seriously.

That may even be the case — though it usually is not. But the university should be the last institution to draw such a conclusion. For that conclusion silences all debate. It is the death knell of inquiry.

The modern university is devoted to a methodology, not a set of doctrines. The methodology, rational inquiry, is intended to uncover truths, but it depends crucially on vibrant debate and disagreement. The university’s responsibility is to nurture the methodology, not to adjudicate its output. The university as an institution does not decide when Fermat’s theorem has been proven or when gravity waves have been detected. Nor does it decide whether humans are causing climate change or if gun-control measures will be effective.

But universities must do more than eschew political positions. We need to encourage real diversity of thought in the professoriate, and that will be even harder to achieve. It is easy to have a dialogue with like-minded scholars. What’s hard is to acknowledge high-quality work when that work is at odds with one’s own deeply held beliefs.

One barrier to achieving this goal is a peculiarly human failing that afflicts us all to a greater or lesser degree. When we encounter an argument or paper whose conclusion we disbelieve, we feel compelled to muster our analytical powers to isolate the author’s flaw. We question the assumptions; we examine the methodology; we analyze the reasoning. Almost invariably we find weaknesses. Few arguments are absolutely airtight. And this scrutiny is good — it is an essential part of the academic enterprise.

But when faced with an argument with whose conclusion we agree, we tend to be more lenient. We may tolerate questionable assumptions; we may overlook flaws in the reasoning. An agreeable conclusion can sap our analytical powers like kryptonite.

There’s a reason for this, and it is not because we are nefarious or dishonest. When we encounter a conclusion we disbelieve, we are faced with a serious epistemic challenge. Rationality demands that we either identify the flaw in the argument or revise our belief. And the more deeply held our original belief, the more urgent the need to uncover the flaw. No comparable motivation impels us to critically assess arguments with which we agree.

This is not dishonorable — it is human. It is ingrained in us from the time we are toddlers exploring the world. A surprising discovery warrants careful investigation, while expected outcomes are, well, expected. But the asymmetry has two important consequences for the academy.

The first concerns how we assess research quality and the consequences this can have on hiring. If a job candidate presents a paper with which we fundamentally disagree, we almost invariably discover flaws worthy of criticism. But when we basically agree with a candidate’s conclusion, we are less likely to subject the argument to quite the same level of scrutiny. The impact may be subtle, but our assessments of quality tend to favor those with views similar to our own.

Over time, this can yield a homogeneity of thought that reinforces itself. The more one’s departmental colleagues share similar views, the less likely new hires will bring true intellectual diversity. This subtle trend toward agreement does not arise from explicit attempts to enforce a given dogma, despite what critics of the academy would like to believe. And it can lead in different directions in different fields. But in the extreme, the effect can be indistinguishable from an outright doctrinal filter.

Of course, this effect is more prominent in some fields than in others. In mathematics, where methodology reigns supreme, the effect may be slight or nonexistent. In other fields, such as medicine or the sciences, the effect may yield homogeneity of thought or approach, but not along classically political dimensions. In still other disciplines, however, the effect is a tendency toward political homogeneity. In principle, it can push in either direction, which is why we sometimes see departments at different universities with distinctly different political leanings.

The second consequence of this phenomenon results directly from homogeneity. In most fields, the only individuals capable of properly assessing a researcher’s methods, assumptions, and reasoning are other experts in the same field. And often the scholars most likely to uncover flaws are those with a personal stake in disproving the results. One kind of stake, though by no means the only one, is when we disagree with the conclusion.

That is why intellectual homogeneity weakens the academic enterprise. It reduces the vigorous discourse that challenges, and ultimately fortifies, our scholarly output. We need to resist this trend, but to do so we must change our approach to both those with whom we disagree and those with whom we agree.

For the former, the solution is not to reduce our critical assessment of their positions. That would compound the problem. Instead it is to take their positions seriously and to address them, genuinely and honestly, on substance. To dismiss research results because of the source of funding, or because they are predictable from other results produced by the same researcher, is simply a sophisticated form of ad hominem attack. Such critiques can be rhetorically effective, but they are no less fallacious for that.

For those with whom we agree — including ourselves — we need to up our critical game. We need to analyze assumptions, methods, and logic with as much vigor as we would expend on results that are diametrically opposed to our own views. If we are not seeing weaknesses and flaws in our own work and in the work of others with whom we agree, it is very likely a sign that we are not looking hard enough.

I fear that the next few years will be difficult for universities to navigate. We need to resist the external threats to our mission, but in this, we have friends outside the university, in government and industry, who are willing and able to help.

To dial back our academic parochialism, on the other hand, we are pretty much on our own. The first step is to remind ourselves, our students, and our colleagues that those who hold views contrary to our own are rarely evil or stupid, and may know or understand things that we do not. To genuinely listen requires an intellectual humility that has become increasingly rare in our society, both on campus and off. It is only by regaining that humility that the university can genuinely fulfill its mission.