Dear Governing Board Members,
Your institution—and the nation—needs your leadership as never before. Shared governance means shared. Institutions properly should challenge government when it exceeds its statutory authority. Institutions properly should remind the public of their contributions to medicine, science, industry, and defense that have made this nation strong and prosperous.
However, higher education has many self-inflicted wounds, and the federal government has demanded proper corrective action. There were far too many instances of discriminatory practices that have corrupted admissions and faculty hiring in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The year 2024 was witness to too many instances of hapless administrators unable to enforce time, manner, and place restrictions for demonstrations and protests. Less than one in five colleges and universities requires a foundational course on American history and the principles of our government. Higher education will be in a much better place, ethically, reputationally, and financially, when trustees direct policy and work with strong administrative teams to refine and implement it.
Trustees themselves must engage in revisions of the student code of conduct to ensure that the campus can never again turn into a place rife with antisemitic harassment or any other violation of the civil rights of students and faculty. Trustees must take a leading role in ensuring that universities maintain the institutional neutrality and commitment to the free exchange of ideas that make the campus a place where individual expression replaces groupthink. Trustees must review hiring, tenure, and promotion procedures to ensure that they are not discriminatory and that the intellectual diversity that energizes academic discourse can find a home.
This work of reform is, for reasons painfully apparent, not a job Leviathan ought to be doing, but rather the engaged, informed fiduciaries on whom responsibility for everything that happens on campus ultimately rests. This is the time.
Sincerely,
Michael B. Poliakoff
President
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