It's not easy to found a new university, as Thomas Jefferson...
Niall Ferguson@nfergus
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Jan 03, 2024
~8 min read
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It's not easy to found a new university, as Thomas Jefferson discovered — though it is easier than founding a new republic. The two enterprises have certain things in common. In particular, success depends on constitutional design. nationalaffairs.com/publications/d… 1/22
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Modern universities have demonstrated considerable variety in institutional structure. And yet, despite these founding ambitions and diverse designs, a striking convergence in campus cultures has taken place in recent years: the dis-invitation campaigns; the cancellations of dissident voices; the denunciations of heterodox scholars; and the violations of academic freedom by an unholy combination of "woke" students, progressive faculty, and inquisitor-administrators. 2/22
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The defining feature of the American university is that its governance structure more closely resembles that of a public for-profit corporation than is true of a British or a German one. It has a board of directors (board of trustees), a chief executive (university president), a management team (the provost and deans), and various stakeholders, of whom the most important are stockholders (donor alumni) and the key employees (star professors). 3/22
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The two key differences between the university and a public for-profit corporation are that the former has no single "bottom line," meaning standards of presidential performance are more difficult to establish, and, unlike key employees at a corporation, tenured professors can be discharged only in exceptional circumstances. 4/22
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To understand the defects of this model, it helps to study the history of the most venerable of American universities, not least because any new university would surely wish to emulate their longevity and success — and seek to avoid at all costs becoming what they are today. 5/22
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.@uaustinorg is intended to be anything but a Texan replica of @Harvard . But it is not difficult to see how defective institutional design might inadvertently produce that outcome. A too-powerful but inattentive board, a president more powerful on paper than in practice, too many near-autonomous professional schools, a self-important but practically weak board of overseers, an equally self-important and potentially too-powerful faculty, and a permanent civil service growing in both power and numbers — these are flaws of design it would be only too easy to reproduce (with sufficient billions, of course). 6/22
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Jefferson's hope for @UVA was that it would "form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend." It would be an "institution...based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind" — a place where "we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." We at @uaustinorg have been saying the same thing (though perhaps less eloquently) for two years. 7/22
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The early history of @UVA is a reminder of two major pitfalls that any new university in the South must contend with: that local sentiment may be less aligned with Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit than the founders assume — and that unruly students can be as big a headache as those whose consciousness has been raised by political ideology. 8/22
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What distinguishes @UChicago from other major universities most clearly is the former's unequivocal commitment to academic freedom, enshrined in the "Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression," also known as the "Chicago principles." 9/22
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What @UChicago lacks is any mechanism to uphold and enforce its much-vaunted principles. According to FIRE's most recent survey, 69% of Chicago students say that shouting down a speaker to prevent him from speaking on campus can be acceptable on rare occasions, 60% that they are worried about damaging their reputations because someone misunderstands something they have said or done, and 47% that they have self-censored on campus at least once or twice a month. 10/22
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So the key is governance. All the major U.S. universities have a more or less clear separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. What they all lack is an independent judicial branch. @uaustinorg takes a different approach. Rather than model itself after a public corporation, with a board, a CEO-president, and a collection of stakeholders and employees with ill-defined powers to hold the president to account, the university takes its inspiration from the Constitution of the United States in establishing a clear tripartite separation of powers. 11/22
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There are real checks on presidential power. Under Article I, Section 6, of the university's constitution, "a discretionary decision of the President may be reversed by an affirmative vote of a simple majority of the Trustees," and the trustees may dismiss the president if at least two-thirds of them vote to do so (Article I, Section 7). We thus see the board of trustees as the parliamentary or congressional body, exercising explicit but limited controls over the executive branch. 12/22
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Another novel feature of our university is that the admissions process is not delegated to the bureaucracy — a practice that has led to innumerable abuses. Instead, it is managed by the academic staff, and led by the deans of the various centers (Article III, Section 3). 13/22
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"In all cases of academic or disciplinary misconduct," Article III, Section 10, states, "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public hearing, before an impartial jury composed of six people (four instructors and two students), and shall be entitled to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him or her; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his or her favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his or her defense." The absence of such due process in many academic disciplinary procedures is one of numerous lamentable features of the modern academy. 14/22
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The most important novelty of our constitution is Article IV, which establishes a seven-member adjudicative panel appointed by the trustees but wholly independent from the board. This will be the university's supreme court, to which students and employees can submit petitions if they believe their constitutionally enshrined rights are being violated. 15/22
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These, in turn, are spelled out in Article VI, our bill of rights, the most important points of which establish the apolitical character of the university (Section 1); the criteria for admission, graduation, hiring, and promotion, which are "strictly without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or religious faith" (Sections 2 and 3); the clearly delineated grounds for dismissal of an employee or suspension of a student (Section 4); and the precise nature of academic freedom at the university (Articles V-X). 16/22
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Article VI of @uaustinorg 's constitution prohibits the university as a corporate entity from "express[ing] opinions on religious, political, or social issues, modify[ing] its corporate activities to foster political or social change, or tak[ing] collective action, except insofar as these activities are directly in the service of its mission." Everyone, from the trustees down to the janitors, "may advocate positions on religious, political, or social issues [only] in their capacity as private individuals" — "not in their official capacities as representatives of" the university. 17/22
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To put a stop to the deplorable practice of dis-invitation and cancellation, Article VI ensures that the issue of outside speakers is left to student associational life, where it belongs: "Students are free to form voluntary associations or societies and these associations are free to invite such outside speakers as they wish, so long as it is made clear that the invitation comes from the association and not the university." 18/22
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Section 8 makes clear that faculty and administrators "may not use their authority or their control over measures of academic achievement such as grades or letters of recommendation to exert pressure on students for reasons unrelated to their studies, such as adopting any particular position on religious, political, or social issues." 19/22
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Finally, under Section 9, employees and students are free to criticize the university's constitution. But because academic freedom comes with responsibility, too, "the Trustees, President, Provost, Deans, academic and administrative staff of [the university] must respect and support the Constitutional order that enables the University to fulfill its purpose. They have a positive obligation to model and teach intellectual humility, civil discourse, and open inquiry." 20/22
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There is no system of tenure, as we believe this no longer protects academic freedom but merely creates perverse incentives. In many cases, it breeds conformism before the award of tenure and indolence after it. Professors will enjoy generous compensation, and they will face dismissal only if they are clearly negligent of their duties. So long as their academic freedoms are constitutionally protected, there is no reason why they should have greater job security than other professionals. 21/22
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.@uaustinorg represents an attempt to reinvent the university, beginning with its governance. It is not our aims that are original. Our ideal of a university is, in essence, little different from Jefferson's. The original part is the constitution of academic liberty, designed to ensure that our university adheres to its principles.
If successful, we hope that other institutions will adopt some, if not all, of our innovations. Nothing could be more beneficial to the spirit of intellectual life in America than such a revolution in university governance. nationalaffairs.com/publications/d… 22/22
If successful, we hope that other institutions will adopt some, if not all, of our innovations. Nothing could be more beneficial to the spirit of intellectual life in America than such a revolution in university governance. nationalaffairs.com/publications/d… 22/22