To the Editor:
There are only eight Ivy League universities in the world. There are over 4,000 not-for-profit post-secondary institutions in the United States. Despite this, the media, including The Chronicle, has long given the lion’s share of attention to a few very unique and highly atypical universities as benchmarks for our large and very complex industry. The media, and apparently Congress, ignores most higher education institutions that do not look like or aspire to be like the Ivies or other elite universities.
It is also easy for me to unequivocally state that we value respect, integrity, and community for all members of our community and reject hateful speech or actions that are contrary to our values and we have directly responded to the same while also protecting the free speech rights of all viewpoints.
I am very confident that my views are not unique among presidents in higher education and I would go further to state that far more presidents would be as direct as I am on such matters. I remain frustrated that readers and witnesses of the news about Harvard, Penn and MIT presidents would generalize to higher education or university presidents based on what a few highly educated, very articulate and elite institutional presidents said or did not say in a Congressional hearing. May God bless these fine people, but they hardly represent me or higher education and I would hope The Chronicle would make that clear.
Jeff Senese
President
Caldwell University
Caldwell, N.J.
