Attended this rather curious event today. The organizers pitched the event
Questions of "viewpoint diversity" and "institutional neutrality" are roiling higher education, though the intensity of the debates around these issues too often precludes the kind of honest, nuanced engagement that might yield results.
The panel, straight out of central casting (well, the Chronicle of Higher Education), was lively if not diverse. The panelists were squeamish about "viewpoint diversity" - a Trojan horse for "affirmative action for conservatives," several said, especially in the context of the government assault on the autonomy of higher education. But all accepted that there was some unspecified problem of political imbalance in research, university culture or professional academic societies. (DEI wasn't mentioned, or Gaza, the usual referents of these terms.) Discussion also avoided the grandiose title of the event to focus on the contested "State of Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences" study commissioned by the presidents of Vanderbilt and Washington University earlier this year, one of whose members was a panelist.
Did it "yield results"? All on the dais were in favor of "good research," defined by rigor and openness to alternative interpretations of data. But they worried about the health of the structures (like peer review and professional societies) that in the past promoted "good research" and so sustained public trust in higher education. With the Vanderbilt report, they suggested some of these structures are today captive to ideological interests and eroding public trust. Other interpretations of this loss of trust, or of the place of "political" considerations in higher education, were not considered, nor that the New School proudly calls itself a "progressive" institution. Is the solution to undisclosed problems more hand-wringing events like this?
The discussion was hosted by our university's newest feature, the "Center for the American Experience" - "American experience in all its complexity," one of the founders explained. The other founder introduced tonight's event by talking about Horace Kallen's "cultural pluralism" and how the New School was thus uniquely well-placed to host this discussion. The implication of CAE's pronouncements is really the opposite, though: The New School, once a haven of pluralism, needs to be freed from (unspecified) ideological capture to restore the spirit of free inquiry and debate. I think the weird stencilled image generated for this event (above) conveys their sense of being the radical outsiders now, storming the barricades.
Consider them stormed.