Dear universities: Don’t want to be neutral? Admit it.

John Tomasi, Tyler VanderWeele

A Gallup poll from June showed public confidence in higher education dropping yet again. A viral article in the Atlantic by a former professor has set off alarms about the depth, and apparent hypocrisy, of progressive commitments at elite colleges. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s recent call for universities to recommit themselves publicly to “rigorous teaching, pathbreaking research, and national service” could be read as an effort to restore public trust by realigning what universities tell the public they stand for and what they do in practice.
McMahon, readers of the professor’s story and disillusioned poll respondents all presumably hope that colleges will respond by reforming campus practices to better align with the ideal of the impartial university.

We share that hope. But if universities are unwilling to abandon the progressive commitments they hold dear, we propose an alternative: Admit it.

There is an ideal of the university, centered on open inquiry, that carries enormous prestige. In this model, truth is pursued impartially through reason and scientific inquiry. All ideas are welcome, but each requires evidence. Campus policies rest on excellence, humility, intellectual pluralism and the free exchange of ideas.

But some universities depart from this ideal, and reasonably so. Religious colleges acknowledge that their search for truth is informed by faith. For instance, the mission of Providence College in Rhode Island states that faith and reason work together to transform lives and enlighten minds. Its policies reflect that mission. Other institutions — including women’s colleges, historically black colleges and military academies — teach and pursue knowledge through their own substantive lenses.