Elite higher education is a hot mess. But at least someone in the belly of the beast is trying to change that.
As campuses explode with bigotry and illiberalism, Yale professors are banding together to form a coalition defending academic freedom and free speech.
They’re the latest to join a growing movement across the country. Faculty at Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and the University of Chicago have all formed similar groups over the past year.
The latest initiative out of New Haven, called Faculty for Yale, has garnered the signatures of more than 100 professors who agree that “Yale must rededicate itself to its fundamental mission: to preserve, produce, and transmit knowledge.”
The group is calling for a reaffirmation of free speech principles, greater transparency from the administration and institutional neutrality.
“Faculty for Yale insist on the primacy of teaching, learning and research as distinct from advocacy and activism,” their website declares.
Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science Nicholas Christakis is one of the groups’ organizers. He told The Post that what started with a dozen professors in December has blossomed into a university-wide coalition.
“Increasingly, universities have lost their way, and our objective is to get our university to refocus on its fundamental mission,” he told The Post.
Faculty for Yale is calling on the school to cease making institutional statements about contentious social and political issues: “Some people want the university to take stands. But of course these people always imagine that the university will take political stands that they support. They never consider the alternative.”
Advocates for institutional neutrality say schools shouldn’t be taking stances — and that, had administrators not set a precedent by commenting on everything from Trump’s election to Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal, their silence in the wake of October 7’s Hamas attacks on Israel wouldn’t have been so deafening.
The group formed after several illiberal skirmishes at Yale. In 2022, students shouted down a bipartisan panel on free speech and were so disruptive that a police escort was required. The year before, a law student was also threatened by administrators for using the term “trap house” in a party invitation.
“The alienation from the fundamental mission is leading to all these other problems — the suppression of speech, the constraints on academic freedom, the loss of public confidence, the growth of the bureaucracy,” Christakis explained. “All of those are symptoms of the underlying disease.”
Julia Adams, a sociology professor and the head of Grace Hopper College at Yale, joined the faculty group for the sake of her students, who she says seem afraid to express themselves.
“I’ve been concerned about students’ comfort with speaking out generally, including in classes,” she told The Post. “I’m someone who is relatively comfortable speaking out, but I’m doing this very much on behalf of my students.”
According to polling data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the state of free speech at Yale is grim. Some 73% of students say that they feel pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics, meanwhile a third say that using violence to stop speech is at least sometimes acceptable.
Adams has noticed a general degradation of free speech principles over her twenty years at Yale: “It’s been coming on somewhat gradually over the years … Today, free speech is of a delicate nature at universities and colleges.”
Christakis and Adams agree academia has reached an inflection point in the wake of October 7, when the chaos and extremism that erupted on college campuses — and particularly elite ones — exploded in a fashion that was impossible to ignore.
It became glaringly obvious to donors alumni, and the general public that these schools have lost sight of their mission, and have been inculcating extremism in students rather than classical values.
“I think a lot was crystallized by the transparent hypocrisy after the Hamas attack, and I do sense a change,” Christakis said.
Both professors hope that more faculty coalitions will emerge across academia — and they should.
As public faith in higher education craters, professors taking a stand in defense of liberal education might be the only way to reverse the trend. Where administrators and university presidents fail, it’s incumbent upon faculty to reorient colleges in the pursuit of truth and free expression.
But, while he’s heartened by the growing movement, Christakis is cautious about being too optimistic about the uphill battle for free speech.
“I think there’s something up in academia, but whether it’s enough to turn the tide, I don’t know.”
