Another chaotic school year has ended at universities, and the graduates have danced across the stage waving diplomas that are shrinking in significance. Here’s hoping college administrators find time during their leisurely summer breaks to recognize their roles in diminishing the academy, largely because they have lost a commitment to rigorous truth-seeking that can only happen when ideas are freely debated.
Americans should all be concerned about the sad condition of higher education. Confidence in these previously esteemed institutions has cratered. Perhaps the saddest aspect of this decline is that the supposed intellectuals in charge of these colleges and universities have created this crisis themselves. “Enlightened” administrators and boards of trustees have mismanaged what should be among the most productive and joyful places on earth. The root cause of this growing catastrophe is the utter abandonment of higher education’s commitment to free expression and free inquiry.
Oh, sure, college administrators still pay lip service to the principle of free expression, but they really don’t seem to mean it. They hope their bold paper pronouncements about free speech will be sufficient sleight of hand to distract sensible students, their parents, alumni and employers. These constituencies, however, have figured out that academic cultures determined to push indoctrination are incapable of preparing graduates who can think critically and function effectively in today’s complex world.
The focus of any college or university should be to advance knowledge through intellectual inquiry. That can only happen when free, wide-ranging debate and expression are allowed to examine all perspectives and evidence. Too many institutions today, however, push pre-approved dogmas taught by activist professors who were hired by search committees seeking people with views identical to their own.
College administrators blame higher education’s problems on the declining number of high school graduates, financial challenges and now political pressures coming from state legislatures and, increasingly, the Trump administration. While colleges can’t control how many students graduate from high school, they can control how they spend money and what happens in their classrooms. And though it is fair to question the inappropriateness of politicians pressuring institutions of higher education, instead of acting all morally superior, college administrators might pause for a second to read the broader citizenry and find out what has prompted this broad-based government concern in what’s happening in college curricula.
Disrupting the search for truth and robust free expression is a patch of weeds that presumes to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. That sounded noble enough initially, but in reality, the DEI initiative morphed into the advancement of sociopolitical ideologies designed to discredit and bludgeon Western values and civilization.
This push is more than just a relativistic replacement of truth and freedom as fundamental principles. Instead, as author and Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo has written, DEI is “a complex of policies, priorities, departments, administrators, budget numbers, hiring guidelines, and admissions practices.” Indeed, the practices and systems of DEI manipulation permeate curricula, graduation requirements, orientation sessions and financial aid.
The irony is that the supposed push for “diversity” has reduced diversity of ideas, thus suppressing free expression in classrooms. Students report in multiple surveys their hesitance to engage in honest debate, fearing repercussions for not wearing the campus ideological straightjacket. A college can’t be fully committed to free expression when it is simultaneously parading around contradictory bombast about preferred perspectives and limiting others based on how one feels.
The lack of intellectual diversity is also reflected in the speakers invited (or not invited) to campus, including commencement speakers, who are generally chosen from a narrow range of accepted viewpoints. The graduation speakers for 2025 included activists, entertainers, athletes and even Kermit the Frog — a generally non-serious array that featured little academic heft.
And colleges aren’t that much into equity, either, as it turns out. Everybody on campus doesn’t get a turn to be starting quarterback or the lead in the opera production. Administrators pull down bloated salaries while instructors on term contracts are working part-time fast-food jobs to make ends meet. Professors in protected departments are paid more than their counterparts in lesser academic programs. And many students whose parents can afford to pay full tuition still get generous financial aid packages while students with demonstrated need are taking out loans. So much for equity.
The American marketplace of parents and taxpayers is figuring out the ideological racket that higher education has become. College administrators for years kept the market distracted with enough “beer and circus” (football games and alumni parties) to narcotize constituents and hide the academy’s deterioration. Trustee boards need to look at the results of this academic drift and acknowledge that indoctrination doesn’t ultimately work in education.
It is time for colleges to straighten themselves out — not because of government pressure, but because it is the right thing to do in terms of promoting rigorous education and winning back public confidence. The ball can only get rolling with a full return to the principles of free expression and the search for truth.
Jeffrey M. McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and as a political media consultant.