For the past few years, the American principle of academic freedom has been under attack. On campus after campus, these attacks have come from extremists on both ends of the political spectrum. And while university administrators have struggled to cope, most of their efforts have been so ineffectual that zealous activists themselves are now proposing remedies—from even stricter campus speech codes on the Left to convoluted lawsuits on the Right—that will only make the situation worse.
Yet curiously, the international reputation and drawing power of the U.S. system of higher education remains high. Despite fluctuations in world opinion toward the United States as a whole, America’s universities continue to bask in the glow of global approval. As John Waters, former president of the American University in Beirut, once put it, “The word American is to education what Swiss is to watches.”
The American traveler will hear this sentiment echoed everywhere. In Jakarta a few years ago, the eminent Muslim intellectual Azyumardi Azra told me, “Even those Indonesians who oppose U.S. foreign policy have America as their first choice for higher education.” In Dubai, a Lebanese media executive remarked, “Even when Arabs have negative stereotypes of Americans, we dream of sending our kids to an American university.” And in Mumbai, a prominent Indian businessman commented, “Education is an incredibly farsighted form of public diplomacy for America.”