Do American universities lack ideological diversity? Are they bastions of left-wing thought and hostile to conservatives? In early April, the Crimson, the student newspaper of Harvard University, published an article asserting that the university’s conservative faculty are “an endangered species,” which quickly animated establishment concerns about the alleged lack of ideological diversity on American college campuses. But the right is not underrepresented in higher education; in fact, the opposite is true: The modern American university is a right-wing institution. The right’s dominance of academia and its reign over universities is destroying higher education, and the only way to save the American university is for students and professors to take back control of campuses.
Conservatives continually cite statistics suggesting that college professors lean to the left. But those who believe a university's ideological character can be discerned by surveying the political leanings of its faculty betray a fundamental misunderstanding of how universities work. Partisan political preferences have little to do with the production of academic knowledge or the day-to-day workings of the university — including what happens in classrooms. There is no “Democrat” way to teach calculus, nor is there a “Republican” approach to teaching medieval English literature; anyone who has spent time teaching or studying in a university knows that the majority of instruction and scholarship within cannot fit into narrow partisan categories. Moreover, gauging political preferences of employees is an impoverished way of understanding the ideology of an institution. To actually do so, you must look at who runs it — and in the case of the American university, that is no longer the professoriate.
Faculty once had meaningful power within higher educational institutions. In 1915, faculty at American universities organized themselves into the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which championed academic freedom and significant faculty participation in the administration of appointments, peer reviews, and curriculum — a principle that came to be known as “shared governance.” Though it was resisted by administrators and boards of trustees for much of the early 20th century, the shared governance model was cemented within the modern university in the post-World War II era. This was especially apparent in the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, issued jointly by the American Council on Education, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, and the AAUP, which specified that faculty, administrators, and boards of trustees formed a “community of interest” that should share responsibilities to produce well-governed institutions.
But from the mid-1970s on, as the historian Larry Gerber writes, shared governance was supplanted as the dominant model of university administration as boards of trustees and their allies in the offices of provosts and deans took advantage of public funding cuts to higher education and asserted increasing control over the hiring of the professoriate. They imported business models from the for-profit corporate world that shifted the labor model for teaching and research from tenured and tenure-track faculty to part-time faculty on short-term contracts, who were paid less and excluded from the benefits of the tenure system, particularly the academic freedom that tenure secured by mandating that professors could only be fired for extraordinary circumstances.
At the same time, Gerber details, the makeup of university boards of trustees became stacked with members from corporate backgrounds who made opposition to academic labor organizing part of the contemporary university's governance model. These boards exercise enormous power: controlling senior administrative appointments, approving faculty hiring, dictating labor policies, and, most importantly, controlling the university’s annual budget and setting tuition and fees. (Case in point: The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees recently declined to appoint Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones to a tenure-track position following conservative outcry over her work on the 1619 project, documenting the history of slavery in the U.S. As one board member told NC Policy Watch, “This is a very political thing. …There have been people writing letters and making calls, for and against. But I will leave it to you which is carrying more weight.”)
The corporate capitalist regime that controls American university boards today has manufactured the current crisis of higher education by inflating tuition to compensate for state funding cuts while passing on the debt to students; hiring contingent rather than tenure-line staff to pay teachers less while withholding the security of academic freedom; and appointing administrators who are ultimately accountable to the regime.
At Harvard, the “corporation” that exercises significant sway over administrative appointments and policy includes six MBAs and only four Ph.Ds. Harvard’s “Board of Overseers,” which is charged with safeguarding “Harvard’s overarching academic mission and long-term institutional interests,” includes, among artists and doctors, senior leaders from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey & Company, Google, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. It's likely that boards with a substantial number of corporate managers regard “long-term institutional interests” as including vehement opposition to unionization by graduate workers and a sluggish response to students and alumni calling for divestment of Harvard’s assets from fossil fuels. (Teen Vogue has reached out to Harvard for comment.)
Far from an anomaly, Harvard’s corporate involvement is symptomatic of capitalism’s destructive takeover of American higher education. Across all types of institutions — from small, private liberal arts colleges to large public universities — higher education boards remain populated by business executives, bankers, and white-collar lawyers, many of whom lack experience in the classroom. At Oberlin College, widely regarded as one of the most left-leaning and progressive institutions in the country, and a consistent object of right-wing caricature, recent and current trustees include a partner at the investment bank Lion’s Head; the president & COO of a national radio conglomerate; the CEO of the investment bank Marathon Capital; a portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments; and a vice president at Apple. Contrary to Oberlin’s image, the institution is reactionary in its labor policies. And public universities are no different. At the University of Oklahoma, which has recently come under fire from the right for its employee diversity-training program, the seven members of the Board of Regents, the university’s governing board, include not what one would generally describe as “woke” radicals but instead the former president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, the director of a gas company, the president of a manufacturing company, the former president of an insurance company, and a managing partner at the accounting firm Ernst & Young.
(Comments to Teen Vogue from Oberlin College and the University of Oklahoma are included at the bottom of this article).
The decline of faculty governance and the corresponding ascendancy of corporate dominance of higher ed undermines the long-repeated canard about radical dominance of the university. Additionally, there are the recent right-wing efforts to undermine or revoke tenure at public universities, as the Texas legislature is currently considering, and the budgetary challenges facing higher education that have been heightened by the pandemic. It’s clear this is a harrowing time for colleges and universities nationwide.
What is the left to do about the corporate capture of the modern university? First and foremost, it must support and spread labor organizing across the country, building on the momentum established this spring with the strike by graduate workers at Columbia University. Second, relentlessly push the Biden administration toward canceling all student debt and supporting free public college for all. Third, assert shared governance on campus and work toward building a democratic university that secures labor protections and fair wages for all faculty, especially contingent and graduate workers. If we don’t act, the corporatization of universities will destroy American higher education.
Comments to Teen Vogue from Oberlin College Media Relations Director Scott Wargo:
“Oberlin College’s board of trustees is a diverse group of individuals that presents multifaceted and discernable professional expertise and draws on that rich experience to develop strategic initiatives through a rigorous and collaborative process. Among the varied professional experiences represented on the board are scientists, lawyers, artists and non-profit executives, a former college president, chief executive officers and investment officers, former college professors, a librarian, a teacher, and recent graduates who are pursuing advanced degrees.
Wargo added that changes to the contracts of unionized dining and custodial workers stemmed from a 2018 program intended to “build a new level of educational and operational excellence and preserve the institution’s long-term financial health."
Comments to Teen Vogue from University of Oklahoma Media Relations Director Kesha Keith:
“The University of Oklahoma Board of Regents members have diverse backgrounds that include, but are not limited to marketing, accounting, government, teaching, law, non-profit management, fundraising and investment. Among this group the OU Board of Regents also includes a former university president. Each member has a proven track record on how to lead a successful business. This expertise is an integral part to governing proceedings and conducting business for a university with a more than $2 billion operating budget. Oklahoma governing boards have a fiduciary duty for the operation and management of each State System institution or higher education program. This management extends beyond the classroom and into all aspects of universities. … The Board authorizes the presidents and their respective administrations to enact plans that will better serve students, employees, and the state.”
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