Hundreds of college presidents and administrators have spoken out against the Trump administration’s attack on higher education. And while the response hasn’t always been on the same page, Assumption University president Greg Weiner says he is “eager” for unified response.
But Weiner also says he wants to see colleges confront what he argued in a recent New York Times opinion essay is a lack of viewpoint diversity on college campuses.
“I have seen a lot of joint letters and I’ve been asked to sign a lot of them. I’ve not seen one yet that tried to strike that balance,” the Worcester college president told Boston Public Radio on Tuesday.
Weiner said he’s been concerned about academic freedom since before President Donald Trump took office in January. “There is government interference that is inappropriate with the sector of a civil society,” he said.
But it’s also true, he said, that higher education needs “to take a hard look” at itself.
“The reality is that college campuses are considerably left of center of the American mainstream,” Weiner said.
That’s a perception captured in a 2018 poll by GBH News: Nearly 60% of respondents believed colleges lean toward a particular political viewpoint — and, among them, an overwhelming majority said that campuses lean more liberal than conservative.
Weiner said higher education, especially liberal arts colleges, should be focused on teaching students ideas and trust them “to make choices as citizens.” Professors should not bring up current events that are “irrelevant to the classroom,” he wrote in his essay.
“In my view, liberal education, at its very finest, involves a retreat from the immediate to focus on the enduring,” Weiner said. “It’s not clear to me at all that colleges are the natural home of political activity or political protest or political analysis. I think we would do much better, again, in a spirit of self-regulation, to say let’s focus on the kind of education that we’re providing.”
