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Telling the Story of Why Higher Ed Matters
21 Plays1 year ago
SpeechMatters welcomes Jeremy Young from the American Association of Colleges and Universities for a conversation about ongoing attacks on higher education — and what’s at risk if we don’t defend our colleges and universities. Jeremy discusses why it’s critical for higher education leaders to speak with a united voice, especially in light of growing government interference and censorship efforts under the current administration.
Episode Resources
- A Call for Constructive Engagement | AAC&U
- Emerging From a Collective Silence, Universities Organize to Fight Trump - The New York Times
Recommended
Transcript
Principles of Free Speech and Justice
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I think what we need to do is explain how our principles of free speech, free inquiry, will help serve the cause of justice.
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The First Amendment, the constitutional freedom of speech and freedom of conscience that is the bulwark of our democracy.
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There was a passion in what was being said, affirming this, what people consider a sacred constitutional right, freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Introduction to Speech Matters Podcast
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From the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, this is Speech Matters, a podcast about expression, engagement, and democratic learning in higher education.
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I'm Michelle Deutschman, the Center's Executive Director and your host.
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First, I want to take a moment to thank those who attended the Center's annual Speech Matters conference earlier this month.
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Over 500 people gathered on Zoom for a half-day conversation about truth,
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trust, and transformation.
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For those of you who missed it, I encourage you to take a peek at the recording of the event, which can be found on our website, freespeechcenter.universityofcalifornia.edu.
Jeremy Young's Advocacy and Role
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On today's episode, we are thrilled to welcome a leading voice in higher education, Jeremy Young.
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Jeremy's been a powerful advocate against educational gag orders, including anti-DEI and anti-CRT legislation, raising the alarm about the risks of increased government regulation of what is taught and discussed on campus.
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This month, Jeremy joins us to reflect on the evolving landscape of state and federal policy and to explore how the sector can unite to uphold the mission of delivering a robust, inclusive, and diverse education for all Americans.
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But before we get to our conversation, let's take a listen to class notes, a look at what's making headlines.
Government Influence on Higher Education
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The Trump administration is stepping up its scrutiny of foreign money and influence in higher education.
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launching a new federal investigation into UC Berkeley just weeks after initiating a similar probe into Harvard University.
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The moves follow President Trump's recent executive order, Transparency Regarding Foreign Influence at American Universities, signed on Wednesday, April 23rd, which directs the Department of Education to strengthen enforcement of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.
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The law requires colleges and universities to report foreign gifts and contracts worth more than $250,000.
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Critics argue that the investigations are politically motivated, particularly since they come after Harvard announced plans to sue the administration, while supporters contend that stronger oversight is essential to protect national security and promote transparency in academia.
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In a new preliminary injunction, two federal courts have temporarily blocked the Trump administration's efforts to curtail diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives on college campuses.
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The Education Department's February Dear Colleague Letter
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threatened to withhold federal funds from institutions that continued their DEI programs, citing alleged violations of civil rights laws.
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However, judges in New Hampshire and Maryland found the guidance to be vague and potentially unconstitutional, raising concerns about infringement on academic freedom and First Amendment rights.
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These rulings underscore the judiciary's role in checking executive actions that may overreach into academic freedom and free speech.
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On a related note, the National Institute of Health, which provides research money to universities, announced last week that it will deny funding to institutions that refuse to certify that they do not conduct DEI programming.
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This announcement continues to demonstrate the administration's willingness to use the NIH as a vehicle to eliminate certain topics and discussions from higher education.
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Last Tuesday, April 22nd, the American Association of Colleges and Universities, or AAC&U, released a call for constructive engagement between higher education institutions and the current Trump administration.
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The letter denounces the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.
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As of Monday afternoon, April 28th, it had been signed by 534 higher education leaders from around the country, including all 10 University of California chancellors and system president Michael V. Drake.
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We'll talk more about the significance of this letter during our conversation.
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Now back to today's guest.
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Jeremy Young started this month as the Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives at the American Association of Colleges and Universities, also known as AAC&U.
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Jeremy comes to AAC&U from Pan America, where he served as Director of State and Higher Education Policy, overseeing state-level policy engagement across the US free expression programs.
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He also directed Pan America's Freedom to Learn program, which fights government censorship of colleges and universities.
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His commentary on issues of academic freedom, higher education, and American democracy appears frequently in media outlets, including The Washington Post,
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Time, Newsweek, The Hill, The Daily Beast, and Inside Higher Ed.
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A historian by training, Jeremy holds a BA in History and Music from St.
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Mary's College of Maryland and an MA and PhD in US History from Indiana University.
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He previously served as Communications and Marketing Manager at the American Historical Association,
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and as an assistant professor of history and director of the Institute of Politics and Public Affairs at Utah Tech University.
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Jeremy, welcome and congratulations on your new role.
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AAC and you is lucky to have you.
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Well, thank you.
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It's great to be there and it's great to be here with you, Michelle.
Restrictions on Educational Content
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So Jeremy, as we just sort of said in the intro, you are a man of history and a lot of what's now happening at the federal level has been bubbling up at the state level for a number of years.
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And I'm wondering if you can draw on your expertise from your time at Penn to broadly review for our audience the types of statewide legislation that you helped track and respond to when you were at Penn.
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Absolutely.
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So, I mean, I don't think for any keen observer of higher education, what we're seeing at the federal level should be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention over the last five years at the state level, because we have started to see these kinds of restrictions on higher education institutions at the state level going back to 2021.
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There were initially a batch of state laws aimed at restricting the speech and ideas of college faculty,
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The speech particularly around so-called divisive concepts related to critical race theory and other topics related to race, gender, identity, and U.S. history.
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Those laws began to be struck down by federal courts in late 2022.
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And in 2023, we saw a switch to a more all-encompassing attack on higher education writ large.
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Restrictions on DEI offices, on accreditation, on programs and curricula related to race, gender, and identity, on general education, on college mission statements, and on the autonomy of shared governance in higher education.
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And those threats really ramped up over the last couple of years.
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And now, of course, we're seeing something similar to that appearing at the federal level where every one of those ideas is getting rolled into an executive order and is becoming now something that colleges and universities have to deal with.
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So before we turn to the federal level, which is where we're going to spend most of our time, I do want to ask you if you're continuing to see the same amount of activity at current state legislative sessions and both the same level of activity, and are they being met with the same level of success or has that changed, especially in light of the presidential election?
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So I haven't been tracking it as closely this year, but from what I've seen, there are probably more restrictions being passed at the state level this year than in any previous year.
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And I would say the difference between the state and the federal level is in the levers of power.
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At the federal level, control is largely through pots of money that support various functions at the university, such as research or education.
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various other functions, but not so much as a direct appropriation as it is at the state level.
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At the state level, there's a lot of restrictions specifically aimed at public institutions because they receive those direct appropriations from the state government.
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And we've seen those ramp up.
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And those are the kind of restrictions that only a state government can issue.
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But the restrictions we've seen at the federal level have been aimed both at public and in some cases, especially at private institutions, which is a really new element.
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all of this.
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So yes, they are continuing at the state level.
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They are increasing, but the state and federal approaches have been different.
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And I think we're seeing both continue to advance.
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Well, of course, you're anticipating where I was going to go next, which was to talk about the different levers that are being used.
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And so you've already mentioned one of the mechanisms that we see the Trump administration using, which is about loss of funding or the threat of loss of funding and sort of the coercion of that.
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And then two, the focus on not just public institutions, but also private ones.
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Are there other things that you want to mention about what the current presidential administration is doing that might be different than what we've seen in the past?
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I think there is increasing focus on regulatory measures around things like accreditation bodies, trying to use regulations on military academies and other types of institutions that the federal government has more direct control over.
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But I really think that this has expanded into a broader set of attacks, not just on a particular subset of concepts, but on the very idea of
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of what we at AACNU refer to as a liberal education.
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Now, that's not an education in liberal politics.
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In fact, it's kind of the opposite of that.
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It is an education that prepares students to have broad minds and to understand perspectives that are different from their own, to engage in dialogue and discourse, and really to become citizens in a liberal democracy.
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And that is, you know, it's really becoming more and more clear that the restrictions that we're seeing are part of a broader package intended to really take higher education back to a time when there was an accepted set of ideas or perhaps an imaginary time when there was an accepted set of ideas in something called the Western canon.
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And that was the only thing you could learn or study instead of being a place where all ideas can be heard and
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be debated and be learned from.
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And so really, I think this is becoming a fundamental disagreement over the very purpose and essence of higher education.
Value of Intellectual Freedom
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And that's really troubling as an advocate for higher education, that there are these kind of restrictions being aimed at the very nature of what makes American higher education special and unique.
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I think that's really helpful the way that you've explained sort of the broadening nature of what I'm going to call an assault on higher education.
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And I'm wondering if you can expand a little bit on this idea of the very nature of higher education and why that is important, especially for people who maybe aren't able to access higher education or who choose not to access higher education.
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You know, and I think one of the things that we've seen, especially post the presidential election, is this question of the messaging about higher ed maybe doesn't seem like it was particularly effective.
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And I don't know if you have thoughts generally about what that means for the sector and what that means the sector needs to do to be more connected to the public.
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You know, I think you're absolutely right.
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And I talk fairly regularly with a former president of a system in the Midwest.
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And he told me that when people ask him what the value is of academic freedom, he just immediately points to the corn blight that was cured a few decades ago by scientists working at an agricultural university at a public university in the Midwest.
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You know, the value of having a place in a university where
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ideas can be debated, where minds can be opened, is not just for the people who attend.
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It's for the communities who can participate in programming and activities and community partnerships.
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It's for ordinary people around the country who benefit from the knowledge that is created and transmitted in those institutions that solves real world problems.
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And it's also for the benefit of employers, frankly, who are looking for
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employees who can understand people and the world around them in complex ways, who can talk to people who are different from them, sort of speak a different cultural language.
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There is value for all of society in having higher education institutions exist in a place of intellectual freedom.
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And the value of that institution really depends on it being free from direct government control of what ideas can be present, free from the kind of granular restrictions on university governance.
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that mean that a university can't decide to create an office for certain types of student success or can't decide to go out and have certain speakers on campus or entertain certain ideas in college majors or minors or the general education curriculum.
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When you have the government interfering with the intellectual life of a university, even if it's a public university or a university supported by public funds in some way, you are diminishing what that entity can do, what that institution can do, not just for its own students, but for all of society.
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Yeah, I think at least for me, watching what has been happening with medical and scientific research, I feel like if that doesn't make the case to people in the public, right?
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I mean, just reading about how this huge grant about dementia research is being stopped in its tracks.
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Something yesterday came out about HHS and a longstanding research about women's health, right?
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These kinds of things that are no longer going to be able to be
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done in our American universities and what that will ultimately mean longer term.
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That's exactly right.
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And we have to decide if we want to be a national leader in medical research, if we want to be a national, sorry, an international leader in medical research, an international leader in science and technology, or even in cutting edge humanities and arts work, that is what we have been over the last
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century.
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We have been the global leader in those areas.
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And if the government decides that that is not what we are going to be, we're going to see all sorts of effects from that that I think people aren't imagining.
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We are going to see us no longer being a leader in society on a variety of indicators that are supported by the kind of research that's conducted at universities.
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We're going to see issues with health, with life expectancies, with international competitiveness in technology.
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There really is a great risk to what is being done.
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I think it's hard for some people to see exactly how much of a risk that is because it may not affect them today or tomorrow.
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But it is going to undermine the fabric of this country, both in our global competitiveness and in our ability to benefit our citizens.
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I mean, I think what you've made clear is that the stakes really couldn't be
Motivations and Restrictions in Education
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higher.
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And I kind of want to go back to something that you already touched on, which is sort of what, you know, as someone who thinks a lot about policy and policymaking, what are the ultimate goals of these efforts, legislative and otherwise?
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I mean, I think you sort of touched on it, that it's sort of to undermine the purpose and essence of higher education, but to what end?
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I mean, do you have any other thoughts on really what the goal is?
00:15:53
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I think there are a few goals.
00:15:54
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I mean, I think there is an interest in reforming some things about higher education that frankly do need reform.
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Is it true that there are parts of higher education institutions that can become liberal echo chambers?
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Sure, that happens from time to time.
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May not have happened in the rural institution I taught in a red state, but it does happen in some places.
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I think there is concern with the
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cost of college.
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There's concern with the sort of stratification of elite institutions versus the institutions that most students actually attend, community and technical colleges and regional publics.
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And I think there is concern that institutions, particularly on the elite end, have not always done the best job in interacting with their communities in the ways that they should.
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I think there are legitimate concerns there.
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But what we're seeing instead is just an undermining of the institutions.
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We're seeing an undermining of the value of higher education, the autonomy of higher education.
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And I don't think that solves anything.
00:16:54
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I think that this is being done at some level just for the purpose of gathering raw power and at another level simply because people have convinced themselves that universities are something that they are not, that they are liberal indoctrination factories, that everyone at every university in the country agrees with whatever the most extreme example of a protest or a faculty member is that you see on the news rather than that being an extreme outlier and that being the reason it's newsworthy.
Higher Education's Societal Role
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So I think if people in the leadership of our government would take a look at what is actually happening on college campuses, the actual knowledge and learning that students are getting, the actual conversations that are happening, the actual teaching that is happening and leadership from university leaders, I think they would have a very different picture of what's going on.
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And that's really what I would encourage them to do is just to see higher education as a partner in trying to solve the challenges
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that we have, and also as an entity that can be effective and helpful at reaching out and doing the work that higher education is best at.
00:17:58
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So I think this is a kind of a perfect segue to something else I want to bring up.
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And I just want to remind our listeners that AEC&U is an organization that represents thousands of colleges and universities across the country.
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And I know in the past months that many have been watching as individual universities, right?
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Columbia, Harvard have responded to specific threats to their federal funding.
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But it really wasn't until yesterday, which was April 23rd, that the higher ed sector really spoke collectively through a letter that was authored by AAC&U and then signed
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last time I checked by 250 college and university presidents about the need for constructive engagement regarding education reform.
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So I have a couple of questions.
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So I think my first question is, why do you think, and obviously I know you don't have like the answer, it took the sector so long to speak with one voice, is my first question.
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And then we'll go into the actual content of the letter.
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I think there was a lot of hope that it would be possible for leaders in the sector to reach out to and work constructively with members of the new administration.
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I mean, we really are not as a sector the kind of one-note liberal echo chamber that people think we are.
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There are institutions of all types, many of which have strong relationships in a bipartisan fashion in Congress with lawmakers at the federal and state levels.
00:19:19
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And I think there was some hope that there'd be some ability to engage and work productively with the administration.
00:19:24
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I think there was also some fear at the possibility that students, particularly international students, would be targeted on campus, the possibility that particular institutions would be singled out for funding cuts.
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What has happened over the past few months is that all of those hopes of constructive engagement have been frustrated, and all of the fears about the administration punishing institutions have been realized.
00:19:48
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And so I think for many institutions, there is no downside in calling for a reset.
00:19:54
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And constructive engagement is what the statement calls for.
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And it calls for that because that is manifestly not happening.
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And I think there's no point in pretending that it is or hoping that it will in the future without some kind of a reset.
00:20:09
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Well, that's one of the things that I thought was interesting about this letter was that its call was not just kind of stop doing what you're doing in the way you're doing it.
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It was both that and we know that there are things that need to be fixed in higher education.
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And I really felt like...
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The folks that wrote and signed that letter were sort of taking more of a high road to say, okay, we're willing to come to the table and admit that we have places we can improve.
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And I thought that was a big step.
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I don't know, do you think it's going to be met with something different than, you know, the levers and coercion that have been used previously?
00:20:48
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I think that hope springs eternal, but in reality, I think the most important purpose of this letter and value of this letter is being a rallying cry for the sector to come together around in a way that it may not have come together in the past or may generally find challenging to come together in the future.
00:21:08
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I think that everyone can agree that having the goal of having a better relationship with the administration is a good thing, will benefit students, will benefit institutions, will benefit the sector and the value that that sector brings to our society.
00:21:23
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So really, I think the value here is just in demonstrating that there is somebody on the other side of that table.
00:21:28
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It's not simply individual institutions being singled out for punishment with their peers standing silent.
00:21:34
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But that instead, this is a sector that is going to speak, as the statement says, with one voice in favor of trying to come to the table and calling out, I think, the lack of a negotiating partner that we've had so far.
00:21:49
Speaker
You know, I don't want you to give away, you know, any strategy points, but I am interested, you know, from your perspective, what you think collective action or speaking with one voice might look like moving forward, especially as different universities potentially come to the, you know, the negotiation table.
00:22:07
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And, you know, there's ways to put wedges in between people.
00:22:11
Speaker
So I don't know if you have thoughts about how to kind of continue, people can continue to pull on that thread of collective action.
00:22:17
Speaker
It's an interesting question because this is an incredibly decentralized sector, which is the reason both for its incredible variety and success.
00:22:27
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There is a higher education institution out there for everyone, no matter what your interests are, no matter what your focus is, where you live, what kind of tuition you're able to pay.
00:22:36
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There is something out there for you.
00:22:38
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But it also means that it's very difficult for the sector to avoid those wedges being put in place.
00:22:43
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And really, I think that is the key thing.
00:22:46
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to maintaining the sense of unity that you see in the statement.
00:22:50
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An attack on Harvard is an attack on every community college, and an attack on a community college is an attack on every Ivy League institution.
00:22:56
Speaker
I mean, this is one sector.
00:22:58
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We do one thing, which is we enrich minds, we promote the values of a liberal education, and we benefit students, society, and our communities.
00:23:09
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And that is the business that we are in.
00:23:13
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And we need to understand that every institution in this sector is in that business and they need to be protected and they need to be protected by each other, if not by anyone else.
00:23:22
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So I think maintaining that ethos of solidarity is really what's going to make a difference going forward.
00:23:29
Speaker
And I think it's especially critical that you mentioned not only elite universities, because I do think that sometimes with the coverage, you know, we can get to media and social media and coverage of sort of that story about higher education.
00:23:42
Speaker
It might appear to someone that
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who isn't in the sector that everything that happens is happening at like a very few handful of universities, when in fact, right, there's hundreds, thousands of universities that are serving, you know, students all around the country and that they are threatened as well, right?
00:23:57
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Community colleges, regionals, state publics, privates, etc.
00:24:02
Speaker
I'm sort of thinking about putting together sort of your experience in responding on the state level, what's happening now.
00:24:09
Speaker
And I mean, it's sort of recent history, but are there any sort of lessons or takeaways you think from what happened on the state level, even though that was legislative?
Coordinated Response to Restrictions
00:24:18
Speaker
And I understand this is sort of more executive in the way that it's being applied.
00:24:22
Speaker
that we might learn from sort of that iteration of threats to academic freedom and autonomy?
00:24:29
Speaker
You know, I think the most effective response to what happened at the state level came when everyone was pulling in the same direction.
00:24:36
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The grassroots organizers, community leaders, faculty, students, staff, and the leadership of universities, as well as
00:24:44
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Community organizations that might not even have a connection with higher ed formally, all sort of working together in their separate spheres and coordinating to make sure that messages are being heard and people are speaking in the right places at the right times and the value of higher education is really being promoted.
00:25:02
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And we saw that in some places, and we didn't see it in other places, and it really made a difference in terms of what the outcome was.
00:25:09
Speaker
And I think that we're seeing the same thing now.
00:25:11
Speaker
I think there are people who hope that it's not as bad as it actually is, and there are people who –
00:25:18
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want to see things go further than what this statement was willing to do.
00:25:22
Speaker
And I think the most important thing is that we all recognize that everyone has a lane and everyone's doing different work, but all for the same goal of preserving the flourishing of liberal education in the sector.
00:25:34
Speaker
And so, you know, I think as long as people are working together, as long as they're communicating, they don't all have to have the same message.
00:25:39
Speaker
They don't all have to be doing the same thing, but there is a real need to put up a united, at least a coordinated front, if not a unified front.
00:25:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:25:50
Speaker
I like that.
00:25:50
Speaker
A coordinated front.
00:25:52
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And, you know, and so much has to do with communication.
00:25:54
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And I feel like it's hard to get through conversations about the moment today without
00:26:00
Speaker
sort of mentioning social media and online platforms as a way to communicate.
00:26:04
Speaker
And I just wonder if you have any thoughts about whether or not Higher Edge be using this tool more potentially, you know, as it coordinates and so forth, or whether we're better to maybe use other kinds of tools to bring people together.
00:26:22
Speaker
I think social media can be very productive, but I'm not sure anyone is taking their advocacy or activism cues from the Twitter feed of their alma mater.
00:26:31
Speaker
I think it may be the other way around, actually, that people who are working on the ground, students, for instance, who want to stand up for higher education, can be particularly effective at using social media, including some of the venues like TikTok that big institutions are not good at yet for the most part.
00:26:48
Speaker
I think that whether or not-
00:26:51
Speaker
It makes sense for a university to use those tools.
00:26:54
Speaker
It really depends on the particular context of the university.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:58
Speaker
I mean, I don't know how to use TikTok.
00:27:00
Speaker
Neither do I. It's one of the reasons I like you, right?
00:27:03
Speaker
Exactly.
00:27:05
Speaker
So I do want to talk a little bit about what I think we refer to as the chilling effect, right?
00:27:11
Speaker
That even there's plenty of things that are actually happening, but
00:27:16
Speaker
Just the fear of something happening, I think, is leading many people in many different types of universities to, you know, one might call it preemptive compliance.
00:27:27
Speaker
Just the idea that someone might be coming through and looking at syllabi or firing a lot of people or dismantling departments.
00:27:35
Speaker
has such a huge chilling effect on both what happens inside the classroom and outside the classroom.
Compliance vs. Resistance
00:27:40
Speaker
And I'm wondering how we might encourage folks across the sector not to preemptively comply or, yeah, what thoughts?
00:27:48
Speaker
I think it's a hard question and I'm struggling with it because it's also a time of great risk.
00:27:54
Speaker
And I think people need to be transparent with students and others about what the risks are.
00:27:59
Speaker
And so I guess I'm asking, how do we balance those two things?
00:28:03
Speaker
I think it's a tough balance for sure.
00:28:05
Speaker
But one of the things that really stands out to me in the wake of this statement, this sort of unified action on the part of institutions, is that the more institutions can be –
00:28:16
Speaker
on the same page about compliance within the context of what is possible, given that different institutions are very different and have faced different pressures, both from the federal government and from other entities.
00:28:29
Speaker
Within the context of what is possible, the more that institutions can be on the same page, can be working together and drawing strength from one another in pushing back against unreasonable restrictions on their autonomy, the more effective it's going to be.
00:28:44
Speaker
And I think that that is true at the very granular level of an individual institution.
00:28:49
Speaker
It's a lot easier for a president to convince their board that it makes sense to take a certain action if they can see and point to other institutions taking the same action either collectively or in their individual capacity.
00:29:00
Speaker
So I think being able to work together or adopt similar approaches to responding to these restrictions is important.
00:29:10
Speaker
I also think that institutions need to understand, and many of them do understand, that many of the restrictions that are put into place are immediately walked back or stayed by a court within a matter of days.
00:29:21
Speaker
There is no certainty that those restrictions will be re-implemented or re-imposed during the current administration.
00:29:29
Speaker
A full court examination of some of these restrictions could take longer than the next four years or the next two years.
00:29:35
Speaker
And that complying with something that is – it's not clear is going to be enforced is not necessarily a productive avenue.
00:29:43
Speaker
That's such an important point.
00:29:45
Speaker
I have a mentor who taught me this phrase that the law is a very blunt instrument.
00:29:51
Speaker
And I think this is one of the moments where we see that, that that lag time, even when it's going quickly, you can't stop the damage that's done during that lag time.
00:30:00
Speaker
And sometimes that lag time, like you said, can be months or years.
00:30:02
Speaker
And that is something that is endemic to the system.
00:30:05
Speaker
And I don't know that it will change.
00:30:06
Speaker
And so you're right.
00:30:07
Speaker
We've got to work in the gap that's left there.
00:30:10
Speaker
Before I get to our last kind of question about what people can be doing, I want to ask you, I'm sure there's many things that are keeping you up at night, as with many of us.
00:30:20
Speaker
But is there anything that you've been thinking about, whether it's at night or during the day, that you feel like people maybe are not paying enough attention to that you would like to kind of share with the
Impact on Smaller Institutions
00:30:31
Speaker
listeners?
00:30:31
Speaker
And it can be more than one thing.
00:30:33
Speaker
I mean, I think that people are not paying enough attention to the effect that these restrictions are having on schools that aren't the 30 most elite and most famous institutions in the country.
00:30:45
Speaker
I think you really hit the nail on the head there.
00:30:48
Speaker
You know, the vast majority of schools in this country are public institutions.
00:30:53
Speaker
You know, two-year colleges enroll more than half of all students in the country.
00:30:58
Speaker
Technical colleges enroll a number of students.
00:31:01
Speaker
Um,
00:31:01
Speaker
Regional publics enroll more students than flagships.
00:31:05
Speaker
There are a ton of tiny religious colleges, tiny secular colleges.
00:31:09
Speaker
I mean all these institutions are affected in different ways by these restrictions.
00:31:13
Speaker
And sometimes you see restrictions that are aimed specifically at something that somebody read about an Ivy League school.
00:31:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:22
Speaker
They aren't falling on that school.
00:31:23
Speaker
They are falling on the regional publics within the state that is able to pass them.
00:31:28
Speaker
And so that's where the real impact is happening.
00:31:31
Speaker
There's a problem in higher education where people like their hometown institution and don't like the sector or whatever their nebulous understanding of higher education means.
00:31:41
Speaker
And they need to think about when they consider the impact that a restriction on an institution has.
00:31:48
Speaker
They need to think about what would happen if that happened to my alma mater?
00:31:51
Speaker
What would happen if that happened to the school that I want my kids to go to?
00:31:55
Speaker
Or the school that is in my hometown five minutes from my house that employs some of my friends?
00:31:59
Speaker
What would happen to that institution and how would I feel about that?
00:32:03
Speaker
I think if we can personalize this and really help people understand the impact that it could have on their communities, I think that's really going to make a difference.
00:32:11
Speaker
Okay, thank you.
00:32:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:13
Speaker
Now, think of it as your town, your life, your school.
00:32:17
Speaker
I guess I'm not sure that I'm going to end on this, but let's go there, which is something we always ask all of our guests, which is a lot of people are working in higher education.
00:32:27
Speaker
I know they're eager to think about concrete things they can be doing.
00:32:32
Speaker
to really ensure the well-being and longevity of their institutions.
00:32:39
Speaker
And I'm wondering if there are things that you might share with them.
00:32:42
Speaker
Because I think it can feel very overwhelming to feel like you're dropping a stone in a huge sea makes a difference.
00:32:51
Speaker
I think that one of the challenges we face as a sector is that higher education, because it's so decentralized, institutions are optimized to advocate for themselves and to promote themselves in the public consciousness, but not to promote higher education as a whole.
00:33:09
Speaker
And that, I think, is where we have to get to, to understand that higher education is a system and that attacks on part of it attack all of it.
00:33:18
Speaker
And we need to spend some of our time as individual institutions advocating for the entire system and not just for our own institution.
00:33:25
Speaker
And part of the way that we do that is that we tell the story of why higher education matters.
00:33:31
Speaker
We talk about
00:33:33
Speaker
what the mission is of these institutions.
00:33:35
Speaker
There is so much nonsense flying around right now about what higher education is and does.
00:33:41
Speaker
And we have to just shut all of that out and tell the story of what is actually happening in our institutions.
00:33:47
Speaker
Tell the story of how students are benefiting, communities are benefiting, knowledge is benefiting, employers are benefiting.
00:33:54
Speaker
Global interconnectivity is benefiting.
00:33:56
Speaker
All of the things that these institutions do, the reason we get up and go to work in the first place because we value what our institution does and what the sector does, we have to tell that story to people who aren't directly involved in higher education.
00:34:09
Speaker
We have to make that case to them.
00:34:10
Speaker
Why does this industry matter?
00:34:12
Speaker
Why is this a uniquely valuable component of American society?
00:34:16
Speaker
I think if we can do that.
00:34:18
Speaker
Then I think we can start to turn the tide that we see in public polling about higher education and that we see in legislation and executive orders.
00:34:26
Speaker
And we can hopefully return to a time when – and this was a real time when higher education was broadly popular across the partisan divide.
00:34:34
Speaker
When there was a sense that even if higher education institutions didn't always do what we wanted them to do, that they were a net value and that they were a site of contestation where we could fight for the sector to be better without trying to tear it down.
00:34:48
Speaker
I think if we can get back to that point, then I think we're in good shape.
00:34:51
Speaker
Well, that's certainly a goal that I would be happy to subscribe to.
00:34:55
Speaker
And I like that it's something that everybody can do, right?
00:34:59
Speaker
Everybody who had an experience either, you know, in higher ed or working in higher ed has some story to tell.
00:35:05
Speaker
And so even if it's after you listen to this episode, spending five minutes and writing down one thing that was impactful in your life that happened in your higher ed experience, like,
00:35:15
Speaker
to put that nugget down and then be able to use it like you're saying at the dinner table, at your community meeting, talking with friends.
00:35:22
Speaker
And that's the way that we either change hearts and minds or bring them back, you know, into believing in and having confidence in the benefit of higher ed for democracy and for society.
00:35:33
Speaker
It is so kind of you, especially starting a new job to spend some time with us.
00:35:37
Speaker
Is there anything else that you want to add before we wrap up?
00:35:40
Speaker
I don't think so.
00:35:41
Speaker
I'm just really glad for the chance to be here and looking forward to talking with you more in the future.
00:35:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:48
Speaker
We will have you back.
00:35:49
Speaker
Listen, thanks so much, Jeremy.
00:35:51
Speaker
Thank you.
00:35:53
Speaker
That's a wrap.
00:35:54
Speaker
A huge thank you to Jeremy Young for sharing his insights and time with us.
00:35:57
Speaker
It's been a truly valuable conversation.
00:36:00
Speaker
And thank you all for tuning in.
00:36:01
Speaker
Be sure to join us next month for our conversation with Jean-Claude Brissard from Digital Promise.
00:36:06
Speaker
We'll dive into the intersections of technology, speech, and education, and explore a more optimistic perspective on the role of social media.
00:36:15
Speaker
Talk to you next time.