The History-Politics Podcast: Putting the Past to Work
"The History-Politics Podcast: Putting the Past to Work" connects past to present, using historical analysis and context to help guide us through modern issues and policy decisions. Then & Now is brought to you by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. This podcast is produced by David Myers and Roselyn Campbell, and features original music by Daniel Raijman.
The History-Politics Podcast: Putting the Past to Work
Free Speech and Academic Freedom in the University: A Conversation with Michael Meranze
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As the war in Gaza rages on, discussions surrounding free speech and the right to protest have surged across the United States, particularly on college campuses. When a pro-Palestine encampment at Columbia University was raided by police, leading to dozens of arrests in late April 2024, university students around the country set up their own protests and encampments, urging for an end to the war and divestment of university funding from Israel.
Join us on this week's episode of then & now podcast as we delve into the history and evolution of academic free speech with UCLA History Professor Michael Meranze. Professor Meranze explores the changing landscape of free speech on campus, the evolving role of faculty in fostering open discourse, and the profound impact of social media on freedom of expression, and considers how the events of October 7th, 2023, have reshaped higher education in the United States.
Professor Michael Meranze is a professor of History at UCLA, where he specializes in United States intellectual and legal history with an emphasis on early America. He published Laboratories of Virtue, an examination of the birth of the penitentiary in the context of the contradictions of the American Revolution and early Liberalism, and is currently working on two long-term projects: one, an analysis of sensibility and violence in the Revolutionary Atlantic and the other an attempt to rethink the history and meaning of the American death penalty from the eighteenth-century to the present.
Welcome to Ven and Now, a podcast by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. We study change in order to make change, linking knowledge of the past to the quest for a better future. Every other week we examine the most pressing issues of the day through a historical lens, helping us understand what happened then and what that means for us now.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to Then and Now. I'm David Myers, Director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. Since October 7th, institutions of higher education in this country and their leaders have been under great arrest. Rising student activism over Israel-Gaza, featuring pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators, has attracted the attention of the wider world, including political figures at local, state, and federal levels who alternately probe, challenge, and vilify the university. Administrators attempt to balance commitments to free speech, academic freedom, and speech norms intended to create a safe campus environment. The level of strain seems to be without precedent, and yet there is a history. The post-October 7th world is not the first time that universities, and especially the norms of free speech and academic freedom, have been under intense pressure. To gain a measure of historical perspective, we turn to Michael Morandz, professor of U.S. history at UCLA, and a keen observer of the past and present of higher education in this country to discuss the history of free speech and academic freedom, key pressure points in the past, and how we might imagine a better future. Welcome to Then and Now, Michael. Thank you, David. I'm really pleased to be here. So let's uh start as it were at the beginning. Um can you tell us a little bit about the source of the American principle of an obsession with free speech, which is indeed part of the problem that we're going to want to try and unpack today?
SPEAKER_05Sure. I mean, I think what we need to understand about the way we think about free speech is that we actually have what is a 20th-century notion of free speech. Throughout the first 125, 150 years of the Republic, the First Amendment, which is where people usually go, um, was not considered uh as absolute as a lot of people think it is today. Um, there were a lot of restrictions on speech, a lot of prosecutions around speech. And so our notion of free speech began to develop in the late 19th and early 20th centuries around political and labor conflicts and protests, and then um became uh more of a congained a constitutional status um after World War I, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. You may have heard of the famous dissents by Brandeis and Holmes that eventually led to um what we tend to think of as the free speech doctrine. Um I think the thing that's important to recognize is that uh our notions of free speech uh in the United States are relatively recent and um are the result of struggles and have always been contested so that it's not like there is a stable unified notion of what free speech is or what the boundaries are. People are always challenging that or trying to restrict it or expand it. And there's a huge amount of legal debate and court cases, but there's also a huge amount of political debate about that.
SPEAKER_02So could we say that Brandeis and Holmes were sort of the foundation for what might be called today free speech absolutism?
SPEAKER_05Well, neither of them were totally absolutist, but they were the foundation for modern constitutional jurisprudence around free speech, which itself is not absolutist. I mean, for instance, you can always have time, place, and manner restrictions. Um, you know, there are limits on libel and slander, there are limits on true threat. You know, free speech absolutism uh I think tends to be um like states' rights. It's the sort of thing that you um you claim when your side wants to say something and deny when the other side wants to say something.
SPEAKER_02The inescapable selectivity of free speech absolutism. Yeah. So what's interesting is it seems that um coinciding with the ascent of this uh new idea of free speech, which gave way to various versions of absolutism, uh, was the idea of academic freedom, which also is a modern idea. How do you understand its evolution and relationship to free speech?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you know, that's a fabulous question, and it's a question that um people continue to argue about. Uh what I would say about that is that the American conception of academic freedom really emerged um in what's known as the 1915 Declaration, which was created very early on by the American Association of University Professors. Um you can trace certain concepts back to the German University of the 19th century, but um the American doctrine is different, and it grew up uh, again, interestingly enough, we don't tend to think of it this way, but it grew out of struggles over, if you will, um employment rights. You know, it it grew up um out of the issue of securing uh tenure and also securing the freedom of inquiry, teaching, and what the AAUP called extramural utterance in the context where boards and um administrators uh were willing to fire faculty or punish faculty if they didn't like their views. And it was part of a of a struggle to gain um secure positions for the professoriate, um, but it was, unlike free speech, uh a claim that was rooted in disciplinary practice. Um that what that in a real sense academic freedom resides in the faculty as a body of scholars who meet disciplinary standards for making arguments and conducting inquiries. So whereas in free speech, in theory, you can say anything you want, whether it's accurate or defendable or whatever, that's not the case when it comes to academic freedom. So, you know, the obvious thing is if you want to go out to um the sidewalk and talk about how the sun revolves around the earth, you can do that. If you say that in an astronomy exam, you will fail. And um there's nothing contradictory about that. It's not denying you your free speech rights to fail you in an astronomy exam.
SPEAKER_02So you're an historian of early America. I'm really curious to know what universities looked like in this regard before 1915, before sort of the evolution of the modern notion of free speech. What was it like to be a professor at uh at a university at the Harvards and Yales in terms of uh the liberties afforded you? Um, you know, the latitude that you had to say what you want and have that uh have that right upheld and protected?
SPEAKER_05Well, you know, that's it's it's interesting. Um colleges and universities in the 18th and 19th centuries um had a lot of dissent, especially by students. Um but your tenure, you know, your your security as a faculty member was very limited. Um you were uh not always expected to um conduct independent inquiry. Uh you would teach things that were assigned to you to teach often. Uh so the the role of the faculty was uh was quite limited. I mean I think one of the important things to recognize in that question is that there weren't universities or um they there certainly weren't research universities, but there weren't universities in the same way that we think of now. Um you know, most colleges in the 19th century were denominational. There were restrictions on what you could say about religion and science. Um so academic freedom is in in many ways an offshoot of the development of the research university, it's spread throughout higher education. Um but it still depends on institutional structures, and if we're being honest about it, some people have more academic freedom than others because they have greater job security. You know, if if you are um a precarious lecturer who can be let go without being given a reason, it you know you will get let go for being controversial in a way that David Myers cannot be let go because he chooses to write in the LA Times.
SPEAKER_02So it's interesting to sort of trace this arc whereby the 20th century university becomes unmoored from um uh its denominational origins in earlier times. And there's therefore a measure of disestablishment uh that occurs of the university. And that coincides with these ideas of free speech and academic freedom, um, which become defining characteristics of the 20th century university. And yet we know that there were very notable episodes or instances over the course of the 20th century when uh those principles were not upheld. Um uh one of the most prominent involving the system to which we belong is uh the introduction of uh the passage of the the Levering Act of 1950 and the loyalty oath that was incumbent upon all employees of the state of California, including uh at the University of California, uh, to uh to sign on to. Um what what what did that moment represent in the story we're trying to tell?
SPEAKER_05I think that that moment um is a is a good indication of the extent to which you can take these things for granted. Um and you know, if you think about it, if you just think about UCLA, for instance, um there was you know real free speech and other repression at UCLA in the 30s as well, um, over student protest and and uh you know uh alleged communist influence. You know, I think that one of the things that uh the loyalty oath reveals um is the extent to which a lot of the things that we consider to be rights are only rights insofar as everyone practices them and that people are willing to contend for them and that the customs are um honored. Uh whereas you can see in uh in the loyalty oath controversy of the early 50s, you can see in McCarthyism more generally, a refusal to consider that certain things were covered by academic freedom. So the the argument was that, well, communists were by definition not intellectually free because they were, you know, it was almost like calling them Catholics in the 18th century. Um they were not intellectually free and therefore they didn't deserve the the right of uh you know the right of academic freedom. And it was made easier, I think, um, say at UC, both by the fact that at that point everybody was still on one-year contracts, and two, um the AAUP at that point had not yet been able to get agreement on the sorts of procedural protections that um professors have now, um, in which there are you know required faculty bodies, um teacher review cases. In the case of, you know, for those of you of your listeners who are not at UC, you know, the university employs a great many what are known as lecturers. Um in their case, they have gained certain rights because of the activities of the American Federation of Teachers. None of those sorts of protections were present earlier. And it just points to the extent to which this is an ongoing conflict, just like free speech.
SPEAKER_02I'm curious to hear um and understand better um how these procedural protections came in place. Was there um a period of reckoning after the loyalty oath controversy when a number of very prominent people decided to leave the university rather than sign the oath? Um was that followed by a moment of reckoning that um that this simply can't be the case, that we can't insist upon this um in the ways that uh had been uh so in the night in the 1950s in the McCarthy era? Um in other words, how did these procedural protections come in place um in the wake of that episode, in direct response to it, in gradual fashion? And I'm thinking this particular the context of what comes really in a sense in the next chapter, which is the rise of the free speech movement in the 1960s. So just can you help us understand the sequencing?
SPEAKER_05Yes. So the the big um or the the largest um agreement on on procedures, really um occurs in the mid-60s. Um there's a uh there's a 1966 statement that is an agreement between the AAUP and many um higher education and uh organizations. Um and I think that there are a couple of different uh things to consider with this. I I do think that to some extent um there was a certain level of reckoning um with the destructive nature of McCarthyism. Uh, you know, universities did suffer, people's careers were ruined when the political system turned against that. You know, there was a certain amount of reckoning. I think on a more prosaic level, that was an era of real expansion in higher education, which meant that you needed um to produce new faculty. Um, universities needed people to teach, and so they needed to offer greater rewards to people who were teaching. Uh, you know, so if you think just of California, in the 50s and 60s, there are several new UC campuses. Uh the origin, you know, one of the crucial things of the 1960 Donahue Act, which is what Californians refer to them as the master plan, was a recognition that graduate education needed to expand because you needed more faculty. And so there's a dramatic increase nationwide in the demand for faculty, which meant that the economics and the and the power relations changed. And so you you see um a new settlement that um gave faculty uh more authority within many institutions, gave them greater security within many institutions, and which starting in the 1970s, administrators started to try to undermine by shifting to more precarious labor.
SPEAKER_02So you have this 1966 agreement. Um, you also have the free speech movement that begins in uh several years earlier and continues into the early 70s. Um, did those two things push forward the principles of free speech and academic freedom to a new plateau that sort of resembles where we are today? Um, in other words, was that the big push forward after which administrators at various points in time have tried to chip away or perhaps hack away uh at uh at sort of that foundation uh uh born of the of the 60s?
SPEAKER_05Yes, I I think that's fair to say. I mean, um you know the the free speech movement uh and the larger, you know, the free speech movement itself grew up out of the civil rights movement in many ways, and um then became connected to um the larger anti-war movement. Um but the free speech movement, and this is something that I think is um very interesting for the way in which universities operate now, um the free speech movement was a demand that students be taken seriously as political actors and that the traditions of inloco parentis at colleges be dismantled to a great extent. And I think, insofar as that the the FSM was a critique of an o overly bureaucratized um university, which from our lights I have to say looks like a very small bureaucracy. Um and to the extent that both the free speech movement and the civil rights movement and the war pushed many faculty further to the left, I think that yes, that then created a sort of a shared push towards um increasing assertiveness of for academic freedom and for individual academic freedom in a way, and also for free speech. And you know, one thing to remember about the FSM the free speech movement. The free speech movement, sorry, yeah, was that A, it was um extremely controversial, but B, when the administration was very heavy-handed, the faculty did come out um in support of free speech and academic freedom. They did not, as a whole, side with the administration.
SPEAKER_02So I want to um sort of build on where we have been. Um we've talked about free speech and academic freedom, and it seems to me like there's a third leg to the triangle of significance uh for our discussion, which is uh the realm of speech. Norms that universities introduced to create what they deem to be safe spaces, or places where members of the university community would feel not threatened or harassed. And it would seem to be that these speech norms have the effect of tempering somewhat the reach of academic freedom and free speech, which we've talked about, which interestingly academics fought for and sought to carve out as robust a domain as possible. When does that occur? And what do you think the impact of that has been? What does that does it in fact temper or scale back the reach of academic freedom and free speech as I just characterized it? I would characterize it somewhat differently.
SPEAKER_05I think it's more ambiguous as to whether or not it tempers academic freedom. But just chronologically, the the development of speech codes and um uh efforts to uh to use your word to sort of temper certain things, you know, begin in the nineties in a serious fashion and continue um through uh through to today in some ways. Um they're complicated because to some extent they were a legitimate reaction to the fact that the university now looked different and was different than it had been traditionally, that it was in fact um socially more complicated, uh it had a much more diverse population, and that uh some of the sort of taken for granted uh practices that in one group might seem to be acceptable were not acceptable in others. Um and so there was a genuine issue of how do you make us a much more uh diverse and um complex population of students and to some extent faculty comfortable enough to coexist to actually have the arguments that you wanted to have. To some extent it became bureaucratized, which is a problem, but I think it was trying to address uh a genuine issue.
SPEAKER_02At a time when the university was becoming more diverse and was articulating the importance of greater diversity.
SPEAKER_05You know, and it's it's it's much like various forms of harassment. You know, I mean, obviously there are norms that um would have been accepted in a university in 1950 that just would not be accepted in a university today. Uh, and I think that these codes and these spaces um were um were attempts to to confront that question, not always in the most democratic way, but they were attempts to confront that question. The difficulty, I think, um becomes when the issue at hand is someone's feeling about an idea as opposed to engaging with the idea. Um, you know, so that there's a there's a way in which there is a problem when uh practices or um uh remedies that are appropriate to dealing with cases of genuine harassment get translated into somebody doesn't like an idea and it makes them feel uncomfortable. And I don't think there's ever been a good answer to that. Most of the speech codes of the 1990s were struck down, um, so they don't exist. But I I certainly think that there um remains uh a lot of open disagreement about what those boundaries should be and uh how one should engage in arguments. Um and unfortunately, people aren't always able to argue about those arguments without getting, you know, falling back into the sort of uh overemphasis on subjectivity. This makes me feel bad.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this makes me feel bad. So I I want to turn our attention to the present, and uh in a bit we'll talk about the world after October 7th and the unique challenges that have arisen since. But I'm wondering what you thought the state of affairs was on October 6th, that is to say, the period before. How did you assess where we were at? Um, and you know, in thinking of these factors that we've been talking about, free speech, academic freedom, um, sort of creating um a framework that was safe and yet encouraging of robust debate, especially in light of the fact that we've seen increasing numbers of contingent uh members of the contingent labor force, uh, lecturers who do not have um uh any degree of job security. Um, we see tremendous pushback against uh diversity as a guiding principle. So, how would you assess the state of play prior to October 7th?
SPEAKER_05What I would say is that um on October 6th, I would have said that um higher education was in the midst of a series of um intersecting crises uh and that there were powerful forces uh that were seeking to um limit, um, shut down, inhibit uh the free production of knowledge and um uh and the authority of faculty to um engage in scholarship and teach, uh that you could see this in the United States, in places like Florida and North Carolina quite explicitly. You could see this in the various efforts to eliminate tenure um in a variety of states like Alabama, Georgia, Texas. You could see it internationally in states like Hungary, Turkey, India.
SPEAKER_02In the name of what vision of the university? Can we just name it? I mean, we're talking about a new uh conservative, even authoritarian regime.
SPEAKER_05It varies a little. I mean, for instance, I I don't think that most um university managers who are replacing um tenure track faculty with contingent faculty have a particular vision of what um those people should teach or do, they would simply say that they're responding to the market. So you could think of that as a market-driven or um, in the terms of these days, a neoliberal sort of university vision in which the prime function of the university is job training, that um students are consumers engaged in a transactional uh relationship with the campuses, and that you need you know, management needs the flexibility to um offer the classes that are particularly popular at any given moment. I think it's very different when you look at places like DeSantis's Florida or Bond's Hungary or Modi's India or Erdogan's Turkey, where what you really are seeing is a type of ethno-nationalist authoritarianism that is seeking to bring the university under its control, and that is therefore um attempting to use the university to reinforce uh a series of statist and traditional values. Uh there's overlap in the two. Um you can see it in the um increased um tendency in both Democratic and Republican states and in um around the world of appointing politicians rather than academics as heads of universities, of insisting that they be run but like businesses, um, in the effort, for instance, by our own regions to minimize faculty input in the choice of chancellors and presidents. Um I do think that there is some difference in the model, uh the effects, uh, and I think that the difference means that certain effects, for instance, what's happening in Florida is much more rapid than what would happen in the normal state of uh of managerial unraveling of faculty status.
SPEAKER_02So you've called attention to sort of managerial intervention and of course sort of the politicization of the university in places like Florida and and and and uh Hungary and Turkey and India. Um I wonder what you think the impact of the media landscape and social media in particular have been on the university? Because I often have the sense that um sort of the fragmentation of the media landscape um, exacerbated by social media, um, has left a deep imprint on the university. Um uh the sort of siloing of our um havens of knowledge that we see in American political culture is also reflected in the university. Um and that really cuts across sort of political divides. Um and it's to me um is a very worrisome phenomenon. Um, we we dwell in the space where we feel most comfortable, which is to say, with those with whom we agree. Um, and it's very hard to step out. And when we do, we tend to regard the other not just as uh someone with whom we disagree, but kind of as the embodiment of evil. Um and it it it strikes me that the university has become not a leader in guiding American society or society in general, but a follower and a reflection of that um media and political culture. Uh, I'm wondering if how you see that.
SPEAKER_05I would be cautious about romanticizing a before. Um, you know, I mean, I think we we tend to have this lens of, oh my God, before all this happened, everybody was being, you know, super rational and we were having serious debates. Um having said that, I completely agree with you. I mean, I I think that um uh social media in general has been very bad for the university. I I think it um it increases the tendency to think and write in sound bites, it eliminates any space um to step back and reflect. It does have the sort of fragmenting quality that you um you talk about, and I think it also has a sort of unrelenting quality to it um that uh blows everything up so that everything becomes politicized. I mean, obviously there are extraordinarily important benefits to it. Um we know far more about something like police, or we can document far more something like police violence than we could before. Um but I do think that it has had the effect of um making it uh much harder for people to have uh longer form engagements with with issues. And I think that it has also served to make it easier to blow things out of proportion. You know, the the notion that um Oberlin students, you may recall this from many years ago when Oberlin students got very upset because something had been mislabeled as a bon me and they thought it was cultural appropriation. And you know, in 1965, that might have gotten a column in the local Oberlin paper. Um when it happened, it became a national echo chamber that was used to beat students up, you know, right and left. So the um, you know, I don't think anybody wants to um romanticize a time when everybody was dependent on the New York Times, but um, you know, I think it is clear that the things that you were pointing at uh are true and that um it has it has also increased uh worries on the part of administrators about how they look in the press or on social media, so that um far too much time, and this is true for faculty as well, far too much time is spent um either um worrying about uh preventing something bad from being seen, or you know, responding to somebody's statement as if it really is that important.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02I want to just um lift up your helpful cautionary note against romanticizing the before time, uh, because that was a far less diverse time. It was an institution that was far more white, far more male, and far more associated with the establishment in many ways.
SPEAKER_05I mean, I don't think we should think about the before what you're calling the before time. You know, the notion that universities were somehow um sources of dissent at all times, I think is a is is a mistake.
SPEAKER_02So you have been a close observer of the university and the University of California in particular for decades. Um uh so I now want to ask you what you think the world uh looks like or what uh changes occurred after October 7th. Uh how do you assess the landscape?
SPEAKER_05I think that what October 7th um and um the Israeli response to October 7th have done in terms of higher education. I mean, obviously you know better than anyone that worrying about American higher education in terms of what's going on in Gaza is a little is a little odd. But um but I think that in terms of American higher education, it has ratcheted up the crisis and the dangers that we face. Because it has empowered, as we can see in the various house education committee show trials, in the um demagoguery of Mike Johnson last week at Columbia, in the you know, craven uh uh elimination of commencement at USC and all the calling in of the police forces around the country. Um you can see that it has empowered the forces that um really would like to destroy any notion of higher education in the way that you and I would think of it, and that um with very few exceptions, we lack um the sort of higher education leadership um to stand up and call this effort out. Um so uh this is a I think a real watershed moment for higher education. And and I I think that the sort of capitulation on the part of most university leaders, um who themselves are you know, in many ways trained in managerial techniques, um has only made it worse. And um it's a very it's a deeply threatening time for both academic freedom and free speech.
SPEAKER_02Right. Just in terms of your critique of university leadership, um it seems uh evident to me that one can certainly apply that to um Minocha Fik's um appearance before Congress and subsequent decision to clear out the encampments by calling in the New York Police Department. Wondering, though, what you think of the first notable instance in which university presidents made their way to Congress, which was when the presidents of MIT, Penn and Harvard came before the House Committee and were grilled by at least Stefanick.
SPEAKER_00Ms. McGill, at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?
SPEAKER_01If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.
SPEAKER_00I am asking specifically calling for the genocide of Jews. Does that constitute bullying or harassment?
SPEAKER_01If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment. So the answer is yes. It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.
SPEAKER_00It's a context-dependent decision. That's your testimony today. Calling for the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context. That is not bullying or harassment. This is the easiest question to answer, yes, Ms. McGill.
SPEAKER_02What do you what what do you make of that? I mean, their answers were at some level quite honest and and and candid.
SPEAKER_05You know, what's striking to me, and and I'd be interested in hearing if you see this differently, is that none of them actually articulated a countervision or defended their universities or challenge the premises? And I understand that, you know, as this is why I called it a show trial. I mean, obviously, when you go into a fixed situation like that, you know, the power is on their side and they're going to cut off your mic and all this sort of stuff. But did any of them make an opening statement pointing out that all these claims were overblown, that the university was functioning, that um, you know, they were confused. Using political differences with questions of racism, that the university, you know, had certain purposes. None of them did that. You know, the first group tried to find technical ways to avoid questions. Then Shafiq capitulated, you know, to try to keep her job. Um, but none of them offered a defense of their universities um or defense of their universities' purposes. And, you know, the problem, you know, as we tell our kids when they're growing up, I mean, the problem with bullies is that if you just let them bully you, they're just gonna keep bullying you, right? So Shafiq thought if she capitulated and called in the NYPD, the Republicans would be happy with her. And the next day they're calling for her to get fired, and Mike Johnson is calling for the National Guard.
SPEAKER_04If this is not contained quickly, and if these these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard. We have to bring order to these campuses. We cannot allow this to happen around the country. We are better than this. We are better than this, and I'll ask the president to do that, and I'll tell him that very same thing. Speaker Akin.
SPEAKER_05I mean, there comes a time when you have to sort of, as a if you're going to assume the leadership of one of these institutions, you have to be a leader. And you have to take the risks of defending the institution. And it's striking that um, you know, Pat McGuire at Trinity um has done some of that. Michael Roth, who I'm not always a fan of, you know, um at Wesleyan, um you know, wrote a very thoughtful um column about, you know, in f in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza, saying, you know, yes, there's institutional neutrality, but sometimes there are issues you have to take a stand on. Um everybody else is either doing the work of repression or sticking their heads in the sand. And it's not gonna work.
SPEAKER_02So as we move towards conclusion, um, I want to ask you if you were Chancellor King for a day, what would you do? What what do you think is uh the policy line that university administrators should be uh adopting? Uh you gave us an indication of that in your last answer, but uh it's more than just it seems to me that the university seems to be um on the brink of falling off a cliff, quite frankly.
unknownUh-huh.
SPEAKER_02Um and the issues um were not born of October 7th, but have been exacerbated. So I'm curious, you know, as you think for forward to the university of the 21st century, where do you think we need to go? How do we manage this crisis uh wisely and uh and move forward to not the romanticized ideal of the mid-20th century university, but a 21st century university that can uh be true to its best self. I'm a bit old-fashioned on this.
SPEAKER_05And I actually am trying to work out this question myself, but I think that what universities and colleges um need to do is to find their way to a new version of themselves as community of scholars, and that the president of the future needs to um be able to um articulate a vision of a university as a place where the purpose is to enable um scholars, and in that I include students, scholars to um to teach and to learn, pursue knowledge, and to expand disciplined inquiry, and that they need to demand of or to request whatever word you want to, they they need to be able to argue to the public that um for this to happen, um universities need to have the resources that will enable um students to attend without going into horrible debt, um, to pursue their intellectual interests, and for the people who work at these places to um have the resources to sustain um their intellectual tests. Now, this doesn't mean every place is going to be an R1, a research-driven university, God forbid. Um, and I don't think it means everyone in the world needs to go to college. I think we need to find other ways for people to pursue young people to pursue interests without demanding that they have a credential that they don't really care about. Um, but it does mean that uh we need to refocus on essential missions and ask ourselves what is it that a university does that other things don't do? And not, as seems to be the way in which we operate now, you know, how can we make a university as much like anything else as possible?
SPEAKER_02Well, Michael, I appreciate you taking up the challenge of that last question to try and think through the future of the university. Um that I think calls out for a further conversation just devoted to that theme. But I do want to thank you for illuminating uh us on the history of free speech, academic freedom, uh, and speech norms on campus, and really thinking through how the university got to where it is today and where it might go in the future. Thanks very much for being with us. Thanks for having me, Dave.
NarratorThank you for listening to Then and Now, a podcast by the UCLA Lutskins Center for History and Policy. You can learn more about our work or share your thoughts with us at our website, luskincenter.history.us.edu. Our show is produced by David Myers and Rosalind Campbell, with original music by Daniel Reichmann. Special thanks to the UCLA History Department for its support, and thanks to you for listening.