The Fiction of the Amoral University (opinion)

In the fall of 1997, the political scientist John J. Mearsheimer delivered the annual “Aims of Education” address to the entering class at the University of Chicago. The address is roughly the length of a typical article in The New Yorker and is very, very serious. “Deadly serious,” as Mearsheimer says, with good reason, of the university by which he is employed. It is best known, however, for the relatively brief assertion that Chicago, like “all other major colleges and universities in this country,” is “a remarkably amoral institution.”

“Elite universities,” he said, “operate on the belief that there is a clear separation between intellectual and moral purpose, and they pursue the former while largely ignoring the latter.” About nonelite universities Mearsheimer has little to say at this or any other point in the address.

As a matter of historical record, Mearsheimer’s claim is accurate: By the late 20th century, the explicitly moral purpose of many American colleges and universities, most of them associated with various branches of Christianity, had largely vanished. Traditions like mandatory attendance at weekly chapel services or required courses in theology or ethics had disappeared at all but a small number of religiously affiliated institutions. Universities understood their purpose not as producing good people (at which they were never especially adept) but as producing educated people.

In recent years, the idea of the amoral university has been married to a second idea articulated in another of Chicago’s gifts to the world, the Kalven Committee Report, issued in 1967, which famously asserted that “the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic” and therefore “cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness.” Here, it might be said, the idea of institutional neutrality was born, or at least most influentially articulated.

Mearsheimer’s belief that the university should not attempt to shape moral character and the Kalven Committee’s contention that the university should be silent on “the issues of the day” have today, for many, become combined into the idea that the university should not itself be a moral actor—that it should have nothing to say about what is right or wrong, beyond internal procedural matters like plagiarism, falsified research and student codes of conduct. And so, for example, the University of Minnesota declined to pass judgment on Operation Metro Surge or the killing by federal agents of one of its alumni, Alex Pretti—though it did note, courageously, that “our hearts and support go out to all those close to Alex.”

In a recent essay, John Tomasi, president of Heterodox Academy, insists that “the university is not a moral agent like other institutions. The core mistake made by critics of institutional neutrality is that they treat the university as a unitary moral actor, analogous to a corporation, a church, or a political association. The university, however, is not bound together by substantive moral agreement, but by specialized procedures and norms designed for the pursuit of knowledge.” The contrast here to corporations is puzzling, since in fact most corporations are not “bound together by substantive moral agreement” but by “specialized procedures and norms” designed for the pursuit not of knowledge, but of money. Their claim to amorality seems as credible as that of universities.

Note that Tomasi’s argument is different from the one made by Mearsheimer, who focuses on the moral instruction of the individual, and even from that of the Kalven Committee, which makes no specific mention of morality but acknowledges that there are times when the university must “actively … defend its mission and its values,” which sounds suspiciously moral. If I understand Tomasi correctly, he is arguing that because there is typically an absence of substantive moral agreement within a university community, and because that community is formed exclusively for the purpose of learning, the university itself should not engage with broad questions of right or wrong.

Tomasi’s argument might be more persuasive if the university were exclusively in the knowledge-pursuing business. In reality, however, the university is many things: an employer, a nonprofit enterprise, a place where students live, a part of a community that extends beyond its campus. In all these roles, it regularly functions as a “unitary moral actor” in the absence of “substantive moral agreement” among its many people and parts. When deciding upon working conditions and remuneration, when deciding how far to encroach into surrounding neighborhoods, when deciding where to cut budgets and positions, when deciding how to invest its assets, even when deciding which applicants to admit, it often makes decisions as an entity that have clear moral valence—that are about not merely what can be done, but what should be done. The university does not get excused from the moral responsibility for its actions because it happens to be a place where people teach and conduct research.

The claim to amorality rings especially hollow when it comes to Mearsheimer’s “elite universities,” which are as closely and often as covertly tied to money and power as are large corporations. “So long as universities are going to be networked with powerful business, cultural, and political elites,” the higher education scholar Brendan Cantwell notes, “they’re necessarily going to be engaging in activities that are political, that lead to cultural controversy, ethical controversy, moral controversy … To an extent, it makes their stances of neutrality farcical.”

What Tomasi actually means, of course, is that university leaders should keep quiet on controversial social and political issues about which people on and off campus disagree and that are likely to attract the ire of some portion of the public and especially of powerful donors and politicians. By this logic, they were right to remain silent and quietly complicit in segregation in 1964, when 31 percent of Americans disapproved of new civil rights laws. They were right to remain silent and quietly complicit in 1939, when only 39 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “Jews have the same standing as any other people and they should be treated in all ways exactly like all other Americans.” They are right to remain silent today about the actions of the Trump administration so long as those actions are supported by more than one-third of the country.

The question I am always inclined to put to the strongest advocates for institutional neutrality is whether there is a line: whether there is a theoretical point at which what the Kalven Committee calls the “issues of the day” cross over into so dire a threat to a free and fair society and to the safety of the most vulnerable that amorality becomes immorality and neutrality becomes complicity. Would a university be equally comfortable under democracy and tyranny so long as it were somehow left alone to pursue knowledge?

I would also argue that claiming to be one thing when you are in fact something else is an action with moral implications, and that a good number of ostensibly amoral universities are at the moment guilty of this particular moral lapse. “At Texas A&M, we are a community where the free and open exchange of ideas and information is valued, promoted and encouraged.” This is demonstrably untrue—I would say laughably untrue were the destruction of a once-great university anything at which to laugh. The University of Florida “believes that academic freedom and responsibility are essential to the full development of a true university and apply to teaching, research, and creativity.” Also untrue. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reassures us that “Where faculty and students once faced dismissal for voicing unpopular ideas or pursuing research that might challenge reigning ideas, universities now embrace the principle of academic freedom for all tenured and non-tenured faculty and instructors to research, discuss, and teach controversial subjects free from internal or external constraints.” Recording classes without the knowledge or consent of the instructor must not be considered a constraint.

By any reasonable standard, these universities are taking actions that carry moral weight.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the emphasis on the negative impact of moral leadership on a university community obscures the negative impact of amoral leadership. Here, a research study done by Matthew J. Quade at Baylor University and colleagues is relevant, and its conclusion is worth quoting in full:

“Amoral managers are likely to be perceived as … indifferent to employees’ morally courageous efforts”: Few statements more accurately describe the current feeling among many faculty and staff, along with many students, at colleges and universities in the United States—not to mention many employees of large corporations from Minneapolis to Silicon Valley. One of the diagnosed causes of moral injury among health-care workers and members of the military is “lack of support … by trusted others,” and in the current environment of fear and anger, there is good reason to believe that the same can be said of workers in other industries, including higher education.

Much has been said and written about the damage done to a university community when its leaders speak frankly about social and political issues that may be roiling the country and even threatening the mission of the institution. Less has been said or written about the damage done when they are silent. No doubt there are many who, like Tomasi, find the spectacle of amoral leadership “beautiful.” There are also many others—some of whom have lost their jobs, some of whom are afraid for themselves or their families, some of whom are simply outraged and exhausted by the daily assaults on human decency—who find the spectacle less attractive and who are aching for their leaders to use their voices individually and collectively.

Arne Duncan, former U.S. secretary of education, and David Pressman, former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, recently wrote that “Much as lawyers are guardians of the rule of law, presidents and chancellors are stewards of intellectual freedom and democratic norms.” Most presidents and chancellors would probably respond by arguing that they are, first and foremost, stewards of their own institutions, and they would not be wrong. In a healthy society, these two forms of stewardship would be aligned. What underscores the danger of the current moment is the extent to which they are in conflict.

In the view of organizations like Heterodox Academy and of many (mostly senior) faculty members, Duncan and Pressman and other disappointed people misunderstand the nature of the university. Perhaps. Or perhaps they understand other things: that silence or neutrality or amorality in the face of rampant cruelty is indefensible, whether one is talking about an individual or a corporation or a university; that acquiescence to authoritarianism in the name of safety leads only to greater danger; that leaders are mute at the moment less out of principle than out of well-founded fear of a wildly vindictive government; and that a society ruled by brute force—Stephen Miller’s society—has little tolerance for honest teaching and unfettered research and, therefore, eventually, little tolerance for the university itself.

Colleges might not be held together by “substantive moral agreement,” but unless they find their moral voice, unless they do become stewards of intellectual freedom and democratic norms, they might find themselves held together by nothing at all.