RECLAIMING THE GOOD OF THE INTELLECT.

University administrators and faculty have long viewed their calling as demonstrating their virtue by sticking their fingers in the eyes of Normals and calling it sophistication: that is, until when Hamas terrorists decided that killing peaceniks at a folk concert was preferable to cultivating their support.  A faction fight among the Anointed followed.  "Yes, a call for free speech on campus in the wake of alumni withdrawing their support of universities being too obviously captured by progressive intolerance might be of a piece with Saddam Hussein trying to claim a victory in the middle of a rout."

And yet, the calls for a restoration of a state of good repair in academic discourse continue.  First up, note a recent statement from an organization calling itself Academic Freedom Alliance.

Universities are now under extraordinary pressure to police the speech and beliefs of members of the campus community. It is essential that universities resist the pressure to do so.

Separate from the merits of any particular controversy, there are several well-established principles that should guide universities in responding to individual controversies. Universities should reaffirm and recommit themselves to principles that help preserve American institutions of higher education as vibrant homes of free inquiry.

Professors must enjoy the liberty to discuss and even promote controversial ideas and to present controversial materials to students in their classes. Professors have an obligation, however, not to take advantage of their captive audience of students by introducing ideas or materials that are not germane to the subject matter of their class. Likewise, professors have a responsibility not to exploit their privileged position to attempt to indoctrinate students or to subject them to political or ideological litmus tests or pressures in their classroom assignments. Nor do professors have a right to compromise the education of their students by conducting their classes in a manner designed simply to advance their favored political causes. Universities must resist calls to censor what is taught in classrooms, but they must also ensure that classes are used for proper educational purposes.

Look, I don't care who gets the credit for these things, as long as they are done.

That statement concludes,

The university should serve as a neutral and peaceful forum for robust political and social debate. Universities will be distrusted and ultimately weakened if they are perceived to be inconsistent in their adherence to their own stated principles, understood to be willing to sacrifice their own scholarly mission to political causes, or thought unwilling to secure the physical safety of their community members and the integrity of their operations. Today American universities are being tested. It is essential that they pass the test by rededicating themselves to their core scholarly missions and acting consistently and in good faith on the principles that preserve free inquiry and open debate.

In Inside Higher Ed, Steven Mintz, despite titling his essay "Can You Be an Activist and a Serious Scholar?" also endorses those core scholarly missions.

Ours is a time when many university leaders have undercut their moral authority through equivocation and mealy-mouthed pap. Their constantly evolving public statement about the Gaza-Israeli war and antisemitism and Islamophobia call to mind Groucho Marx’s line: “Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.”

Meanwhile, all too many student radicals (in some cases, abetted, alas, by some professors and administrators) have proven themselves to be naïvely idealistic, historically ignorant, and morally blind at best and conscienceless, unprincipled, and sadistic at worst.

A plague on both their houses, say I.

Good. There's agreement between Professor Mintz and retired economist Richard Vedder, who enjoyed his traditional humanities studies, which gave him a frame of reference for bewailing what has come.

My courses in the humanities gave me a lot of deferred gratification. I think that these and similar did a lot to help me comprehend the human condition in its many manifestations.

More generally, I think courses in the humanities tend to make students into better critical thinkers and communicators (especially in writing), shaping them ultimately into more productive persons even in a narrow financial sense.

I'll let others take him to task for that "human condition."  Here's his understanding of "conscienceless, unprincipled, and sadistic."

[W]hy then are humanities enrollments in the doldrums? I think that to a considerable extent, it is because they are dominated by angry, woke persons who have a lot of contempt for the American Dream and American exceptionalism. I suspect college enrollments in general fell over the past decade because a large number of American students, and especially their parents, became increasingly uncomfortable with what was being taught. They do not like when they read about or watch angry university students condemning Israel after the Jews have suffered their worst catastrophe since the Holocaust. Do I want to send my kids or grandkids to study under professors who glorify what I regard as truly verbal excremental filth?

That's polemical, but the better sort of scholar-advocate, according to Professor Mintz, will respect the traditional forms.

There is an important space where academia and activism intersect. "Public scholarship" and "engaged scholarship” can be invaluable in addressing social, political, and environmental issues. These works can provide rigorous research, data analysis, and historical context to inform and support activist movements.

Yet it's essential for scholars who engage in activism to balance their roles effectively. They must maintain academic integrity and objectivity in their research while also avoiding rigidity and being clear about their activist agendas. They must also not allow their political, ideological, or social beliefs to inhibit the expression of competing views or diverse perspectives within their classrooms, which must remain sacrosanct arenas for inquiry, exploration, critical thinking, and debate. They must, in short, reframe what they mean by activism, which doesn’t mean that “the only thing that counts is being physically present for protests and/or nonstop posting on social media.”

I think it’s fair to say that the best scholarship, certainly within the humanities, has generally been driven by various agendas, personal or political – even though the authors’ motivations generally remained unspoken. Many of today’s up-and-coming scholars are much more willing to engage directly in contentious debates and to stress their scholarship’s present-day relevance. Nor are they willing to hide or disguise their commitments behind a veneer of professional neutrality. This represents a sea-change in academic values, and has contributed to a backlash against scholar-activism.

I see nothing wrong with scholar-activism, so long as academics recognize that their scholarly credibility, integrity, and reputation are always on the line.

Although he refers to "a backlash against scholar-activism," his essay is scholar-activism in support of a state of good repair in those academic values.

The academy traditionally valued neutrality and impartiality, even as those watchwords often disguised various forms of bias. As scholars grow more open in expressing their value commitments, it is more important than ever to be open about their sources and evidence, the breadth of their research, the fairness and accuracy of their interpretations, and the reproducibility of their results.

War may be politics by other means, but academics should not be – even though all knowledge production, including academic research, is inherently political since it involves decisions about what to study, how to study it, and how findings are presented and interpreted.

Complete objectivity or value neutrality is impossible because scholarship is inevitably influenced by a researcher’s values, beliefs, and social context. Also, there can be no doubt that funding sources, institutional priorities, societal norms, and publishers’ interests can also influence research agendas.

A decision about what to study and how to follow through might be understood as a political decision, although it might also be understood as a moral decision, or as enlightened self-interest, or as an intellectual response to just criticism.  I submit, though, that to the extent the institutions of higher education respect the well-established rules of evidence and argumentation, the better able they will be to defend themselves against the sorts of soft or hard censorship that might be present in those sources, social norms, or desire to sell books.