Many posts have discussed the politics of colleges and universities in the United States.
Short-term: Involve PhDs and other professionals currently working outside academia in research and teaching. Many right-of-center PhDs find more congenial professional homes in think-tanks than on campus, as Johns Hopkins president Ronald J. Daniels points out. There are also plenty of highly-educated conservative professionals working in law, business, and politics. Universities should draw on these experts, as Rick Hess argues, to round out their course offerings.
Example: The newly launched Johns Hopkins-AEI Fellowship Exchange program, which offers grants to groups of Hopkins faculty and AEI scholars who are interested in teaching or researching together. Scholars have discussed collaborative work on subjects ranging from public health to the future of liberal education.
Medium-term: Give academics who chafe against the ideological skew of the current university a home in which to grow. Such professors are often isolated, and have little influence on the direction of their departments or disciplines. Some are interested in changes to academic structures that would allow them to do more consequential teaching, scholarship, and program-building. To enhance the influence of these professors, trustees and administrators should work with them to form new academic units with authority to hire faculty and create curricula.
Example: The new schools of Civic Thought, initially launched in red-and-purple state public universities. These schools have the opportunity to pioneer an approach to university-level civic education that could give rise to a new field of study. Giving definition and life to that field will require working with national networks of civics professors, hosting conferences and ultimately establishing an association.
Long-term: Expand the academic pipeline to support talented young people who do not perceive the current academy as a vocational home. Many disciplines today suffer from “field compression:” a narrowed range of questions considered valid to ask, and hypotheses considered reasonable to entertain. Universities that seek to remedy this problem by hiring right-of-center professors often find that there are few available to employ. Treating this problem means making a concerted effort to welcome young people who are inhabit a wider range of political and intellectual perspectives into the academic profession.
Example: The “Graduate Student Intellectual Diversity Initiative,” designed with Johns Hopkins professor Steven Teles. This mentorship program connects talented young people enrolled in study opportunities such as the AEI Summer Honors Program, the Hertog Political Studies Program, and the Hudson Political Studies Fellowship with faculty from top graduate schools who want to help broaden the academic pipeline for the sake of the future health of their discipline.
