What Are Universities Supposed to Do?

I’ve heard from a number of you in response to my posts about the fate of universities in the Trump era. I’ve published a couple of these responses below and I’ll post more. They are fascinating and illuminating replies. Most are generally supportive. A few are in the category of “Dude, you have no idea what you’re talking about.” But there are a number which I would put in the category of, “I agree. The universities have to fight. But I’m not sure you get how big a bloodbath we’re talking about.”

I wanted to expand on those earlier posts. And much of this will be meant to address that last category of responses.

I haven’t been directly involved in university life for a couple decades. So there are lots of details I don’t know, and plenty of things I didn’t learn during my time as a grad student and TA. But I think I do get the broad outlines. I know that what we’re talking about is full of risks, probable damage and levels of damage that are existential. So let me expand on what I’ve said by distilling points I’ve made in most of these email exchanges with readers over the last several days. To be clear, this isn’t meant as any sort of manifesto: just a distillation of what I think and some additional detail that expands on those earlier posts.

Most of what I said in these exchanges came down to five points.