An Education in Exclusion and Divisiveness is Antithetical to Academic Freedom

I went through high school during very divisive times. During the first half of my senior year (the 1970-71 school year), I was deciding on the universities to which I would submit applications. I already knew what I would major in (psychology) and either double-major or minor in (music). So those considerations figured strongly in my decisions about where to apply.

But my overriding concern was to select a university where I would receive a broad-based classical liberal arts education. An education that would expose me to a broad range of disciplines in the humanities and the sciences, and where the capacity to deeply consider multiple perspectives on all topics (including but not limited to philosophy, theology, politics, and economics) was not merely encouraged but expected.

With those considerations (and a few more that are not relevant to this post) in mind, I selected Alfred University to do my undergraduate work — a small yet academically very diverse university in rural upstate New York. What got my attention over and above all of these considerations was Alfred’s motto at that time: “Majoring in the Human Experience.”

I chose well. I ended up getting a far better education there than I had even dreamed was possible. The main reasons for this were a blend of relatively small class sizes that provided a personal touch, rigorous academic expectations that required multi-dimensional thinking, a deeply civil and collaborative atmosphere in which diverse perspectives were welcomed rather than silenced, a wide range of extracurricular opportunities, and a deep sense of physical and emotional safety that all of these things created.

I grieve over how higher education seems to have largely traded in this classical liberal arts approach for a combination of hyper-specialization, watered down academic rigor and excellence, and dogmatic indoctrination into certain worldviews while tolerating others being viciously attacked and silenced. This recipe is completely contrary to the broad, deep, and demanding kind of academic freedom that was a cornerstone of my undergraduate education at Alfred University.

It deeply saddens me to find myself agreeing with Fareed Zakaria ’s perspective about all this, which he articulately and passionately expresses in the video below. I encourage you to take to heart what he says. One of the things he rightly (in my opinion) points out is that even though the original intention behind valuing diversity, equity, and inclusion, was primarily noble, what this has turned into is anything but noble: it is eroding the emotional (and physical) safety that are preserved when diverse perspectives are deeply explored through the broader backdrop of multi-disciplinary knowledge and wisdom. In other words, what is eroding is nothing short of the very foundations of authentic academic freedom. (And please be aware that I say this having been privileged to receive truly outstanding DEI training that is in some ways remarkably different from what I have seen DEI too often get twisted into.)

My heart aches over all of this. If every college and university student had the kind of undergraduate education I had, today’s United States would be a far more loving, civil, collaborative, ethical, resilient-yet-innovative, politically integrative, and diverse-yet-unified, country than I believe we have become. My perspective is that we have instead become a far poorer country, in large part because the kind of education I was blessed to receive — in both high school and as an undergrad — has become so difficult to find.