Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to work with Trustees who value academic freedom as essential to our educational mission. When these Trustees questioned the value of tenure, it was usually on economic grounds. They worried that tenure was a costly financial commitment, obligating the college to retain faculty even when student interest in their subject matter waned. In response to these worries, I provided a largely economic defense. Tenure suppresses salaries, allows us to retain our best faculty members without much effort or expense, and ensures that long-serving faculty members remain on campus to greet generations of alumni thus preserving their connection to our institution. To help Trustees get their heads around the nature of tenure, I sometimes used analogies to employment structures with which the Trustees were more familiar. Tenure functions a bit like partnership in a law firm or employee stock options—formalizing a mutual commitment and giving talented employees a stake in the long-term flourishing of the college.

I also emphasized that tenure is more flexible than some of them thought. It does not mean guaranteed lifetime employment or employment without review. Tenured faculty members can be fired for cause or incompetence. They are not entitled to raises, deference, or special perks if they are not productive. Financial exigency and the closure of academic programs also allow for the reassignment or even firing of tenured faculty. The processes are sometimes cumbersome, but they do not stand in the way of institutional progress.

These are good arguments, and I commend them to you as you address those with financial or practical concerns about tenure. But in today’s environment, this defense is not enough. Increasingly, academic freedom itself is under attack—even when its critics adopt the language of financial realism.

Explicit support for the free exchange of ideas is needed. As is a vigorous commitment to allowing research to follow its own logic, independent of received wisdom or current prejudices. Leaders can foster trust in this freedom through explicit policies and visible support. Faculty can help by being better gatekeepers against misuses of the concept of academic freedom, such as when someone wants to hide abuse, hostility, or bad scholarship under the cover of a faux academic freedom claim. When our freedom to speak and teach is under attack, our response must be loud and well-coordinated. And it has to begin on campus and with those in our own communities.

I encourage leaders to spend some time thinking about the relationship between academic freedom and their specific institutional mission. Make these connections explicit. Provide Trustees and others with local examples of the ways that tenure has protected free inquiry and ensured student access to ideas.

There are some institutions thriving without tenure. And there may be good institutional ways to protect academic freedom without it. But it’s imperative to brush up on why academic freedom matters and how protecting it serves your mission and ultimately your students.

Questions for reflection: What is the history of tenure at your institution? Who are its critics and defenders? What kinds of academic freedom issues have arisen in your institution’s history? Have there been abuses of the concept of academic freedom? How has tenure impacted the outcomes in these instances? Are your administrative colleagues, your faculty, your students, and your trustees prepared to respond to challenges to tenure? To academic freedom?

The early months of the calendar year are a whirlwind of higher ed national meetings. Along with some of my colleagues, I’ve had the recent pleasure of attending gatherings of presidents at the meetings of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), and American Council on Education (ACE). The mood at these gatherings is determined. Leaders of independent colleges are laser-focused on adapting to political and technological change without compromising their missions or the best interests of their students. It’s been an inspiring month.

At CIC, we are launching our new network for leaders of graduate programs and hosting a design workshop to develop a national center for careers and the liberal arts as part of the Alliance for Strategic Innovation (ASI). The Graduate Program Network will be a place for senior administrators who develop and manage graduate programs to gather and share expertise with their peers. It will be a place to dig deeply into common challenges and identify practical solutions. The design workshop will engage campus leaders, career professionals, and employment experts as we create a model for a National Center for Careers and the Liberal Arts. Once launched, the Center will augment the work already being done at independent colleges and universities by supporting campus initiatives and providing research, employer partnerships, and thought leadership. The Center will also serve as a national voice supporting the career readiness of CIC graduates.

A Spark of Inspiration

The liberal arts have never been a static curriculum. In my view, what ties its various instances together is the commitment to a liberating education. Its essence is learning in ways that expand a student’s mental models and open them to an appreciation of a wider range of possible futures, experiences, and thought patterns.

As we contemplate what the liberal arts might mean today, a good place to start is with a list of today’s threats to our mental flexibility. Here are some things that strike me as modern constraints on thought:


• The tyranny of hidden algorithms.
• The weight of old nineteenth and twentieth century “isms” at a moment when new theoretical paradigms are needed.
• The relentless demand to focus on the “more” instead of on the “good.”
• The politics of critique and destruction at a time when we need to build and create.


What else belongs on this list? What would a liberating curriculum look like if these were the constraints we wanted to weaken?  How does your current curriculum measure up?

Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right

by Laura K. Field



Field lays out the landscape of the ideas animating the MAGA elites. She knows this terrain well, having interacted with many of the players in academic circles. It’s fascinating as both history and prologue to post-Trump MAGA ideological battles.

Radical Universalism: Beyond Identity

by Omri Boehm

To my mind, Boehm joins Todd McGowan as the most compelling contemporary defenders of universalism from a progressive perspective. The critique of identity politics here draws from a radical reading of Torah, Maimonides, Spinoza, and Kant.

Hopeful Pessimism

by Mara Van Der Lugt 

Philosophical pessimism aims to motivate action and hope even in the face of existential threats to the planet and to much else that we value. Van Der Lugt is a knowledgeable and even wise guide to forms of tenuous hope and to the ways we make meaning and avoid despair.

Bonus Watch: Wonder Man (Disney)

A master class on the philosophy of acting and a penetrating meditation on the power of male friendship disguised as a Marvel superhero limited series. Just go watch it. It is so very good.

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