For a Dissatisfied Public, Colleges’ Internal Affairs Become Fair Game – The Chronicle of Higher Education
The academy has long set itself apart from the rest of the world, as a place of open inquiry and critical thinking. That autonomy is part of what has given higher education authority and influence. Increasingly, though, the public has little patience for it.
You see it in lawmakers’ threatening college budgets when they object to a course, legal action to force campuses to host unwelcome speakers, and freedom-of-information requests to expose internal college decision-making and potential bias.
Proponents of these steps say they are necessary to protect the public interest. For many in higher education, they are an unwelcome intrusion, an attempt by outsiders at micromanagement.
The skirmishes reflect deeper schisms around higher ed and reveal a generation of lawmakers and professors politically further apart than ever. They have also emboldened detractors, who appear to be shifting toward more-aggressive strategies that take aim at colleges’ autonomy in a range of matters. Those tactics have arisen in a climate in which even traditional supporters of higher ed feel it’s appropriate to intervene in college affairs. “It’s a new assault on the university,” says Nicholas B. Dirks, a former chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, “and you can feel it pretty palpably.”