On Tuesday, Nov. 12, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Agora Institute held a virtual event titled “The Role of Universities in Democracy.” The event is the latest in their SNF Dialogues series, designed to cover topics of civic engagement and discourse. Moderated by SNF Dialogues Executive Director Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou, the discussion explored the role of higher education for democracy, student views on university administration efforts and the nature of academic freedom.
In an email to The News-Letter, Managing Director of the SNF Agora Institute, Stephen Ruckman, explained the Institute’s motivation for hosting the event.
“Universities are where so many have their first experience voting and engaging with our political system, and so offer a unique space for young people to develop and nurture their civic skills,” he wrote. “Over the past year, universities have been scrutinized for how well or poorly they have created space for this development, and public perception of universities’ societal value has become increasingly divided. We thought it would be important — given that context and given this consequential election year — to bring scholars and young people together to explore how universities can serve as sites for democratic enrichment.”
The event opened with remarks from President Ronald J. Daniels, who highlighted the critical role of universities in fostering free expression and civil discourse.
“Our educational service and research mission is grounded in the freedom of expression and thought,” he said. “As part of our obligation, we must equip students, staff and faculty, and all in our communities, with the skills and capacities to engage across lines of difference.”
Daniels also underscored the challenges facing democracies today and urged collective action to sustain a tolerant exchange of ideas on university campuses.
“It will take all of us living in our democracies around the world to take up the project of repairing them,” he said. “I look forward to working together and leveraging the role of the University to restore vibrant civil discourse.”
Following his remarks, Bousdoukou moderated the panel discussion featuring John Tomasi, president of Heterodox Academy; John Holmwood, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Nottingham and co-founder of Campaign for the Public University; Irene Mulvey, professor emerita of mathematics at Fairfield University and the previous president of the American Association of University Professors; and Hahrie Han, director of the SNF Agora Institute.
The panel also included student speakers from various universities, such as Luke McDermott from the University of Nebraska, April Anthony from the University of Delaware, Faith Applegate from the University of Pennsylvania and Anna Oaks from the Columbia Journalism School.
The discussion first addressed the issue of recent protests on American university campuses. Tomasi critiqued what he perceived as inconsistent responses by universities, and drew attention to the fact that university presidents had made various statements on controversial political topics in the past but changed those views or remained silent following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. He identified this approach as presidents committing to free speech on some topics but not on others. Mulvey added to this by reflecting on university administrations’ historical responses to curtail student activism, such as bringing in riot police, during the Vietnam War era.
Adding an international perspective from the United Kingdom, Holmwood partially attributed recent developments surrounding campus protests to the politicization of U.S. universities.
“It was strange to see [presidents] engaging in direct political involvement, such as being called in front of Congress after advocating for free speech,“ he said. “The threat to free speech comes in part from politicians and how they utilize disruption on campus for political ends.”
When asked about universities’ role in supporting free expression and academic freedom, Han emphasized the importance of fostering environments of trust and open inquiry. Notably, however, student panelists like Oaks shared firsthand accounts of disrupted trust between students and administrations during the last academic year.
“When you have an administration calling in hundreds of police officers on their own and prioritizing the concerns of some students over others, there’s a real rupture in that trust,” Oaks stated.
Bousdoukou then introduced findings from a recent SNF Dialogues survey of 1,000 public and private university students, which revealed that 33–55% believed universities should do more to support free expression. Tomasi connected these findings to what he saw as an erosion of nuanced thinking in campus dialogue.
“We’ve seen a rise of shout-downs and de-platforming that’s encouraged black-and-white thinking, often based on identity, instead of promoting a community of imperfect learners brought together to search for truth in a complicated world,” he said.
Tomasi then raised concerns about the declining ideological diversity among faculty and its implications for intellectual inclusivity, to which Han added insights from a survey of Hopkins students. She noted that the survey found that students often felt more constrained by peer pressure than by faculty influence, and stressed the importance of teaching students to engage with diverse viewpoints.
“[Students] feel the most constricted in terms of their ability to openly share views,” she said. “We try to think about how often people are invited into opportunities to really engage in and learn how to contest and deliberate different ideas.”
Oaks and McDermott pointed to the lack of institution-wide discussions on challenging topics as exasperating this constriction, and McDermott specifically cautioned against engaging with viewpoints rooted in misinformation and misrepresentation.
Ruckman also provided his insights on promoting dialogue across ideological differences at Hopkins. He mentioned that the University is better situated than many of its peers in its openness to cross-partisan dialogue and debate, through programming and a diverse faculty that expose students to a range of ideas and belief systems. However, he noted, there remains room for improvement.
“But there is always more we can do, like offer more students the skills to engage on campus with opposing views and engage as citizens with their home communities,” he wrote. “That’s one reason our institute started the Minor in Civic Life — to give students a pathway for developing skills for democratic engagement that they can use in any career field.”
The discussion concluded with a proposal for a student assembly to address University policies and administrative shortcomings. Tomasi expressed his support, stating that more voices allow for a wider representation of political views on campus, and Oaks emphasized the need for stronger student representation during campus crises.
Han concluded by reflecting on the broader role of universities’ role in upholding democratic values and criticizing obstacles facing higher education such as faculty job insecurity and the student debt crisis.
“We train the next generation of professionals who call out corruption in government, so when you’re undermining higher education, it’s really a threat to democracy,“ she said.
Ruckman added that the public perception of American universities, especially their role in upholding democracy, has gradually declined.
“Since 2018, the percentage of people having low to no confidence in higher education has doubled — from 16% to 32% — and that shift has been even greater when broken down along political lines,” he wrote. “We need to do more to demonstrate that universities are places where diverse thought and expression are welcomed and to make the case why universities are needed to tackle democracy’s modern challenges – like rampant misinformation and the increasingly self-segregating political communities that reinforce it, and growing disillusionment with democracy as a form of government.”
Lana Swindle contributed reporting to this article.
