Blueprint to Fix Our Educational System

This blog deals solely with free speech.  See my general Education blog for many more ideas.

The students are not the fundamental problem relative to college protests.  It is healthy for young people to be concerned about issues and want to participate.  As was true for the Viet Nam protests when I was in college, most of the participants don’t really know the history or issues involved.  They join the protests to “make a difference” and feel comradeship, liking simplistic slogans.  Ideally, student protest provides an opportunity to engage the students, learn from them and educate them.  (I am aware that many protestors have no interest in discussion.)

The fundamental problem is that our educational system has been slanted for decades.  Over time, products of slanted education become professors and administrators, exacerbating the situation.

Despite being the child of two holocaust survivors and having (distant) relatives killed and abducted by Hamas on October 7^th, I do not consider anti-Zionism to constitute anti-Semitism (despite a positive correlation).  Clearly, free speech does not include violence and obstruction, but the boundary of free speech is ambiguous; it is best to allow too much free speech than too little.

The problem is that our universities have applied free speech standards in an unbalanced fashion, supporting “progressive”, “woke” speech, while discouraging, and even punishing, conservative thought relative to gender/sexual issues, politics, economics, etc.  “Diversity” programs have actively stifled diversity in political and economic thought.

Band-aid solutions, such as “safe places for Jews”, do not address the fundamental problem and may allow the problem to fester and spread.

Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University (Connecticut), a self-labeled liberal, initiated a program to address the root causes of this problem in 2017.  He has been improving the balance of the Wesleyan faculty and, among other things, has emphasized recruitment of ex-veterans, thinking they would add more balance to student attitudes.

I think the following steps can be taken:

Diversifying faculty:  President Roth’s program should be replicated by other schools.  Alas, it is difficult to increase faculty diversity quickly with overwhelming percentages of leftist/liberal professors tenured.

However, administrations can encourage faculty to teach a more balanced curriculum and be more receptive to disparate thoughts.  Campuses and classrooms must be safe places to speak, hear and respond to relevant unpopular thoughts.

Visiting guest professors can be selected to increase the balance of political and economic thought.

Remote classes and/or guest lectures can include conservative professors from other colleges.

Curriculum review can be done without trampling academic freedom.  Faculty who can’t find appropriate diverse views are questionable faculty selections.

A Harvard student was surprised by criticism of pro-Hamas protests.  He said he had been assigned Franz Fanon readings in four different classes and felt he was channeling Fanon’s teachings.

I do not object to including Franz Fanon in college education.  From what I’ve read about them, his writings about the psychiatry of Whites and Blacks living in colonial and non-colonial environments demonstrate valuable insights.  He fought the Nazis and for Algerian freedom, encouraging rejection of colonialist culture in favor oppressed people’s culture.  Fanon defended violence to achieve independence.  Supporters of the American Revolution can’t object to that theory.  

Fanon was Marxist and anti-colonial.  Apparently, his teaching is being used to support the polemic that everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed.  It is not clear that his ideas are being properly taught as there is discussion of slanted interpretation of his work into English.

The problem is not that the Harvard student read Fanon.  It is that he read Fanon in four classes, apparently without meaningful counter-discussion and possibly with biased interpretation.

Student polls can, among other things, help evaluate whether students feel free to speak their opinion on campus and in specific classes.

Campus panel discussions and debates, possibly with outside speakers, can tackle controversial issues.  This is a simple and obvious idea, but our universities have canceled disfavored speakers for over 50 years.

Conservative-thought clubs can be encouraged on-campus.  While I would be disinclined to give them more support than liberal clubs, if the university supports other diversity financially, …

Professors can schedule remote discussions with similar-topic classes at universities with different student characteristics. Hopefully, each class would have good diversity in thought, but, if not, this might help.

Student Contract: To assure that students understand the existence and limits of free speech and the right to protest, they could sign a contract prior to being allowed on campus, perhaps as part of a broader student code.  Provisions for protests could require that they be peaceful and not obstructive.  Protests by more than [5] people and/or encampments could require an advance permit.  Commitment to clean up afterwards could be included.

Some of the above could apply to high school as well.  Furthermore, civics education could get more attention, including education about how to work for change.

I welcome other ideas that would help, as well as criticism of the above.