Tom Ginsburg Reflects on the Last Year for Higher Education and Considers its Future
Oct. 7 Kicked Off a Difficult Year for Higher Ed. How Should Universities Move Forward Now?
In retrospect, perhaps it was inevitable that the horrifying Hamas attack on Israel last Oct. 7—and the escalation of horrors that ensued when Israel invaded Gaza—would light a spark on many U.S. campuses. But few could have predicted the breadth of the repercussions that would ripple out across the world of higher education.
As the vigils became protests and the protests inspired clashes and counterprotests, students and faculty on some campuses split into warring factions while administrators struggled—often unsuccessfully—to honor free speech rights while also protecting students as incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus multiplied.
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The questions are thorny and fraught, to say the least. So on this anniversary of one of the most contentious years in (and for) higher education in recent memory, we asked a range of higher ed leaders and thinkers to consider how the year just past has affected colleges and universities—and how they can, and should, move forward from here.
No consensus emerges here, of course. But we think the responses below, which have been edited for concision and clarity, offer a kind of model for the kind of thoughtful, balanced and vigorous-but-respectful disagreement that—no matter where you stand—represents the best tradition of higher ed and a reminder of why it’s worth fighting over.
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Tom Ginsburg, law professor at the University of Chicago and faculty director of the university’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression
After a monumental year for higher ed, some of the trends are positive, including a major shift toward the principles of institutional neutrality under which leaders and departments do not issue political statements about issues that do not directly affect them. I believe this shift occurred because many leaders were reluctant to take a side on a deeply divisive issue, but this silence made them look like hypocrites after years of public commentary on matters far outside their expertise. A general policy of neutrality is good insulation from pressure to speak.
On the matter of academic freedom, the biggest change is the shift of the venerable American Association of University Professors from a position that opposed academic boycotts to a new one that is formally agnostic, considering boycotts a justifiable tactic in some situations. Academic boycotting of Israel is the not-so-veiled subtext. This shift was a terrible move for an organization whose raison d’être is the protection of academic freedom. Academic freedom includes the right of individual scholars to pursue research and collaborate with whomever they want; even if a boycott is merely targeting an institution, it obviously affects the individual scholars there, who may have no say in their institution’s policies. Individual scholars, of course, remain free to boycott anyone or any institution they like, something the prior policy didn’t preclude. But the AAUP shouldn’t be telling us about tactics. It should be speaking up for individual scholars, wherever they are, whose academic freedom is at risk.
There is plenty of work ahead in this regard, because academic freedom had another tough year. There has been a spate of firings over the last several years, and this year saw significant repression of pro-Palestinian academic speech at some institutions. I distinguish this from protest, which is not academic speech—but in any case, it will be subject to more restrictions going forward, as many schools are passing new rules.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed