How university presidents have failed us during this turbulent year on campus
Outside Columbia University’s gates last month. Photo by Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images
By Jodi Rudoren May 24, 2024
As my niece graduated from Syracuse University this month, her dad — my brother-in-law — shared a story from his time at Haverford College.
It was 1986, and one of the people slated to receive an honorary degree, Drew Lewis, had sparked controversy on campus because of his role in the Reagan administration breaking the air traffic controllers’ strike. Twenty-eight professors signed a letter of protest, and a few dozen students wore white armbands at commencement.
Lewis, after a speech defending his actions during the strike, startled the crowd by ripping off the ceremonial hood. He explained that he believed in the Quaker values that guided Haverford — he was Class of 1953 — including the goal of consensus. Since there was no consensus on him getting the degree, he declined it. The crowd roared in standing ovation.
At first I heard this as a story of courage, humility and a less-toxic political moment. But as it sank in, I began to see a cautionary tale for all that has gone so very wrong on American campuses this spring.
Colleges and universities should not yearn for consensus. They must be places of vigorous debate, dissent and diversity of thought. Where people can wear armbands and sign letters and give and get honorary degrees and none of it stops the essential functions of teaching and learning, which most of all requires open minds.
Lee C. Bollinger, the First Amendment scholar who was president of Columbia University from 2002 to 2023, often talked about this in his convocation speeches welcoming first-years to campus, many of which are collected in his new book, In Search of an Open Mind.
“I would always say, you have to understand: You’re in a place now where lots of things are going to upset you,” Bollinger told me, in his first interview since the campus protests exploded at Columbia and across the country.
“You have these young people who are having their first true academic experience of being open to all kinds of things they’d never thought about before, some of which are going to be upsetting and even offensive, and they’re trying to find their way through this to become a person who has certain values, certain beliefs,” he explained. “That’s often a tension.”
I reached out to Bollinger this week, as a third round of embattled university presidents was grilled on Capitol Hill about their handling of the protests and hate speech, for a couple of reasons.
He not only led Columbia through all manner of turmoil over 21 years, but before that spent six at the helm of the University of Michigan, where he successfully defended affirmative action at the Supreme Court. The son and grandson of newspapermen who grew up developing film and melting lead for linotypes, Bollinger does not just study free speech principles, he breathes them.
“Whenever you have people who strongly disagree, where people are saying outrageous things and very hurtful things and dangerous things, you really need to have a campaign to try to come to terms with that without using censorship,” he told me.
“It’s hard when people are angry and so passionate — and maybe wrong and misguided as well — to try to bring this to a better place,” Bollinger added. “But that is the true challenge of the First Amendment, or a democracy, or certainly a university.”
We met in Ann Arbor in 2001, when I was covering higher education for The New York Times and he was battling back challenges to Michigan’s push to diversify its student body. I described him then as an unpretentious Renaissance man who “easily mixes intellectual pronouncements with deadpan humor,” a runner of marathons, fan of Paul Simon, owner of a Labrador, driver of a Jeep.
Now 78, Bollinger is finishing up a sabbatical year at his summer home in Maine, and will be back at Columbia Law School teaching about the First Amendment this fall. He has not spoken out about the campus protests because he made a vow to himself long before Oct. 7 not to say anything that could be construed as critical of his successor for at least this first sabbatical year.
So I agreed not to ask about Columbia’s new president Minouche Shafik, who is under fire from all sides for her handling of the protests, in order to get his broader insights — especially about the role of the university president, over time and at this critical time.
For it seems to me that never have so many smart people bungled things as badly as university presidents have on Israel-Palestine this year. Watching their mealy-mouthed statements in the fall and overly aggressive crackdowns this spring, I’ve been disappointed by the lack of thought leadership and what seems like a tragic narrowing of the space for the truly difficult conversations that should be a hallmark of higher education.
And now, a staggering number of top schools — Yale, Harvard, U.Penn, Cornell, UCLA, Notre Dame, among others — are all on the hunt for new presidents, in some cases to replace folks forced to resign for mishandling this year’s madness.
I asked Bollinger what it takes to succeed in what he called “the greatest job in the world even though it’s among the most difficult.”
You have to come from within academia, he said, and understand its “very special culture and very distinct organizational characteristics.” You have to stay connected, by continuing to teach and do research. You cannot lose the faculty.
“A university is a bizarre organization,” Bollinger noted. “You would never in your wildest dreams design a university in the way a university is, and yet they are among if not the prime example of successful American institutions.
I gleaned another critical characteristic as he spoke — to retain some humility despite being the smartest person in most rooms. And: Take the long view.
“Right now universities are under the gun and they’re criticized,” he continued, “but the fact of the matter is, by any standard — student demand, contribution to the well-being of society, the creation of modern life — universities are among the most successful institutions in the United States. They are the envy of the world.”
Bollinger is an outlier, having spent more than two decades running Columbia. The average tenure these days is less than six years, according to a study by the American Council on Education, down from 8.5 in 2006. A century ago it was more like 10 or 14, and again Columbia was an outlier, with Nicholas Murray Butler running the place for an astonishing 43. (“The last two years he was blind and everybody assumes not really capable and yet he continued,” Bollinger said.)
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of a university (also Columbia) before being elected president of the country. Bart Giamatti led one (Yale) before becoming commissioner of Major League Baseball. There have been a lot of labor lawyers, skilled at negotiations. Fundraising prowess is a huge qualification.
The job is at once like being a CEO of a complex corporation and a mayor of a small town. With the twist that most of the employees cannot be fired. (See above: You cannot lose the faculty.)
“If you want to change something in the university, you have to do more talking, more persuading, than I think any other job that I can imagine,” Bollinger said. “That sounds easy, but it’s not. And even when you do that, there’s going to be tension and criticism and debate.”
What about thought leadership? “There was always a question, and it’s now being debated, to what extent should university presidents be a voice in the world on public issues,” Bollinger said. “I felt very strongly that while not a voice on every single issue, certainly on a range of issues that are in my area of expertise — free speech, democracy, affirmative action.”
That’s what has been lacking this year. University presidencies should be a bully pulpit, one free of the base politics of, well, electoral politics. I don’t want these people to tell us what to think on the Israel-Hamas war, but I would love their take on how to think about it and other contentious topics of the day without tearing people apart.
And their students really need to hear more from them on all manner of things. How their endowments are invested. Why they chose who they chose to receive honorary degrees. Where they see the boundary between one person’s protest and another’s education. Perhaps a primer on the profound difference between being unsafe and feeling uncomfortable.
But it only works if the president cares more about the core values of the university — academic freedom, diversity of thought, tolerance of vigorous dissent and offensive speech — than about consensus.
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