PUBLIC SPENDING IS CENSORSHIP PER SE.

Last week, we picked up the first round of Cato's Neal McCluskey questioning the use of public money for universities, and Inside Higher Ed's Matt "Dean Dad" Reed offering a qualified defense of that use.

There's a second round, which isn't likely to change many minds.  I'm not sure what Mr McCluskey is advocating for (there's a lot of libertarian point-scoring going on, but no simple recommendation) although Mr Reed seems to interpret it as "taxpayer funding isn't desirable."

A former Nevada trustee, Jill Derby, offers an institutional perspective that might not satisfy either strong advocates of public funding or of total privatization of funding.  The government limits its power to censor in the expectation that the professoriate act responsibly.

America’s distinct higher education model is predicated on certain foundational principles -- a key one being independence from external pressures. Boards of colleges and universities are composed of lay members of the public who are the fiduciaries for the institutions they govern. Trusteeship means holding in trust the educational missions of the institutions governed -- not being swayed by external influences that embody separate political agendas. Listening to all stakeholders and constituencies is part of the role of trustees, but policy decisions by boards must, before all else, serve the educational mission of the institutions they govern.

At the heart of the prestige of American higher education, which draws students from all over the world, is its independence from political dominance, influence and pressure, along with the richness and diversity of the curricula offered to students. In many countries of the world, where the government determines educational policy, political ideology sets limits on what may be taught and who can and should teach it. Academic freedom is not a tenet in Chinese universities or in other authoritarian nations where the political body in power determines the limits of allowable teaching and thought. Vital to the greatness of America’s colleges and universities is the sanctity of a free learning environment, a marketplace of ideas, where a wide range of theories and views are welcome. This broad scope of content benefits student learning and intellectual development.

I fear that the marketplace of ideas is too frequently honored in the breach, with the payback from people not protected by their trusteeships or their tenured posts still ongoing.  When the professoriate stops behaving responsibly, there's trouble ahead.

Lay boards of citizens trustees that govern our colleges and universities are expected to avoid tests of ideological purity that align with the political wind of the times. Whereas authoritarian countries force such alignment, our model of governance was designed to buffer our colleges and universities from political interference that can defeat the basic goal of democratic educational institutions. We can train students in practice and technical skills, and do. But a functioning democracy depends on an educated citizenry able to consider opposing ideas and recognize the difference between fact and fiction, data and spin, scientific theories and groundless conspiracies.

It's on the faculty to do so, and for the most part they do. On the other hand, there are limits to how far you can deconstruct the world you see.  In the absence of those limits, there might as well be strongmen.

If boards insert themselves and their political views into curricular and tenure decisions that are the purview of faculty, our whole educational philosophy is at risk. A curriculum based on a particular ideology is more about indoctrination than learning, and that is not the American way of education. Diversity of thought, theories and the academic freedom to explore diverse ideas are its hallmarks. They must not be sacrificed on the altar of the partisan politics by board members who are fiduciaries, not a thought police.

Diversity in curriculum and student demographics is part of the richness of the American higher education experience. To reject the teaching of a particular theory of American social history must be soundly rejected by all who care about preserving our democratic institutions and our tradition of an education that nurtures student thinkers, not ideological reprints. The charge that our nation’s colleges and universities have a liberal bias is fair. The dictionary definition of “liberal” as “open to new ideas” suggests it is an epithet that can -- and should be -- embraced.

In short, the governing boards of our colleges and universities must reaffirm their role as guardians of their institutions’ educational missions and academic integrity -- and leave their partisan politics at the boardroom door.

It's on the faculty, as well, to be proper stewards (my word, in preference to "fiduciaries") as well. Have the departmental and divisional personnel and curriculum committees done their work properly?  How many times do I have to note this? "But faculty is not without complicity in the abdication of its stewardship, or in the breaking of the social contract inherent in the pursuit of trendy scholarship and left perspectives, to the exclusion of the controversies, or of the possibility that in the past three thousand years we got a few things right."