Justin P. McBrayer wrote an excellent column that’s a response to my recent column about the Yale report, “Trust Is Not an Academic Value.” I disagree with McBrayer’s views about trust, but he makes some good points, and I think we’re often talking about different things using the same term, so I don’t want to debate vocabulary. What concerns me far more is his implicit suggestion that universities need to regain public trust by opposing activism: “One of the primary drivers of distrust is the recent trend of universities shifting their mission from knowledge production to activism.”
I think the premise, logic and conclusions of this claim are wrong. There has been no shift in university missions toward activism. There is no conflict between “activism” and “knowledge production.” Activists produce knowledge, too. And universities have always been activists in seeking to change the world, whether their mission statements (which are distinct from their missions) have stated this fact or not. More importantly, there is no evidence that anyone cares about university missions, nor any evidence that it is driving distrust toward universities.
I also disagree with McBrayer’s attack on activists: “Many faculty no longer consider themselves primarily scholars. They see themselves as activists or perhaps activist-scholars who are on campus primarily to advocate for social justice issues and to partner with students who want to do the same. Needless to say, this is not what many people thought the university was supposed to do.” Those people are wrong, and their anti-activist views undermine the truth-seeking function of any university. If the public hates colleges for protecting the free speech of activists, then we need to persuade people that they’re wrong rather than bowing down to their prejudices.
