We Can Still Save Higher Education
Dear People Who Need to Hear This,
I’m writing to propose an alternative approach to addressing the well-documented problem of political bias in American higher education. To be clear, higher education is hostile to conservative views. The proposal below achieves the Trump administration's goals while positioning universities as models of intellectual integrity rather than targets of federal intervention.
The current binary choice—comply with federal directives on DEI or face funding cuts—creates unnecessary conflict and risks damaging America's higher education system's global reputation. I believe there's a third path that solves the same problem more effectively while strengthening rather than weakening our institutions.
The Core Problem
The administration correctly identifies that many universities present disputed political assumptions as established truth, creating hostile environments for conservative viewpoints. The current approach addresses this through direct federal intervention and funding threats.
A Third Option: New Requirements
Instead of dictating what can or cannot be taught, require universities to clearly label courses and materials when they present politically contested assumptions as fact. This achieves the same goal—ensuring students understand when they're being presented with one perspective rather than settled truth—without triggering institutional defensiveness or accusations of federal overreach.
Practical Examples
Race and Racism Courses: Rather than, for instance, prohibiting courses on systemic racism, unconscious bias, or colorblind racism, require they be titled accurately (or otherwise make their assumptions clear and explicit). A course on "Racism in America" becomes "A Progressive Perspectives on Racism in America." Students receive the same education but will understand they're learning one school of thought among multiple.
Gender Studies: Courses that assume gender is purely a social construct, exists on a spectrum independent of biology, or that pronoun choice is a matter of personal preference would be titled "Progressive Approaches to Gender Studies" rather than presented as objective fact in courses simply called "Gender Studies" or "Human Sexuality."
This Approach Works Better
This solution offers several advantages over the current approach:
Achieves the same outcome: Students and faculty recognize when political assumptions are being presented
Maintains academic freedom: Professors can still teach their preferred perspectives
Reduces institutional resistance: Universities can comply without feeling their core mission is under attack
Enhances America's reputation: Positions our higher education system as a global leader in intellectual honesty
Creates sustainable change: Built on principles of transparency rather than federal enforcement
Implementation
This approach could be implemented through existing accreditation requirements or federal funding guidelines, requiring institutions receiving federal funds to clearly distinguish between settled scholarship and politically contested viewpoints in course descriptions, syllabi, and materials.
One of the benefits of what I’m proposing is that it's ideologically neutral in its application, can be applied evenly, and is therefore difficult to oppose. After all, who can argue against clearly labeling the assumptions underlying academic content? Yet it achieves the administration's core objective of ensuring conservative viewpoints aren't systematically excluded or delegitimized.
I believe this third path offers a way forward that strengthens both intellectual honesty and American higher education's global standing while addressing the legitimate concerns about political bias that brought us to this point.
I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this proposal further and provide additional details on implementation strategies.
Respectfully,
Ilana Redstone
Associate Professor, University of Illinois
Author, The Certainty Trap
To get “public” supports and tax exemptions, the colleges are supposed to be non-partisan.
They are not.
Your ideas will fail, if attempted, because of enforcement—self-reporting is a failure. All the colleges are already lying, each & every tax year, and claiming to be non-partisan.
A better plan is quotas. Congress should define non-partisan as at least 30% Republicans & 30% Democrats, registered 2024 or before. To qualify, the colleges are supposed needs 30% Rep professors, Trustees, administrators.
The requirement to be more honest about facts & opinions becomes a more honest debate when a Dem claims, as fact, that an XY male can actually become a real woman. Among other beliefs that are not facts. The Rep professors will be able to call out these opinions as Not facts.
The illegal discrimination against hiring & promoting Republicans & pro-life Christians has been the real problem since before Roe v Wade, but each year a little worse since then. Opinions wrongly taught as fact is a symptom of that underlying illegal discrimination.
Rather than supporting your proposal or shooting it down, I'd like to see where we could build from it. Obviously, simple disclosure of bias doesn't intend to address the imbalance of bias - up to 30-to-1 in self-identification of liberal ideology among academic fields. As one commenter noted, few want to see their tax dollars largely spent supporting viewpoints they disagree with, disclosure or not. This drives down to the K-12 school levels with state and local conflicts. Today, about 1/3rd of high school students are committed to activism on one side or the other and open-mindedness seems to be about 'change' - change of other's perspectives. Fewer come to college to expose themselves to diverse perspectives these days, but the opportunity remains.
Academics seldom have less than moderate bias and few might have the willingness to teach a balanced course. A single faculty member teaching 'both sides' of an issue is unlikely to satisfy either side. Offering competing courses is impractically costly and just allows students to pick their ideological bubble. Offering balance in schools really does require those with opposing biases to team-teach courses that clearly have potential for bias, including history, sociology, economics, psychology. anthropology, political science, journalism, art and literature.
I find the Overton Window helpful in considering where we are on the trajectory of a social-cultural issue. For example, Gay Marriage has moved from Unthinkable, to Radical, to Acceptable, to Sensible, to Popular, to Policy. Transgender affirming care for minors is still not broadly Acceptable and a jump to Policy backfired. Rejection of Racial Discrimination might be a good example relevant to DEI, as we're struggling at the Policy stage - do we go with equal and colorblind or equitable and race-informed? Framing courses not solely by competing perspectives, but by the processes by which social consensus is gain might help side-step direct ideological clashes. Think of it as studying the MAGA Mindset and Leftist Lunacy if you have to, but give each side a fair hearing in courses.
Back to the idea of building from your proposal... Can we find one major institution willing to create a team-taught ideologically-balanced course track in general Arts & Humanities? That might be tricky, when careers and funding are at major risk in openly espousing a progressive perspective in course content and few conservative faculty trust that they can 'come out of the closet' at liberal-biased institutions.
Some schools have started requiring courses in how to think about differing perspectives and tolerate uncomfortable disagreement, but those are about how to engage with the differing perspectives most often suppressed by their institutions. There's little to engage with after that course.