This is a very interesting--and idealistic--essay with lots of food for thought. A couple of comments. Relying on private foundations for funding is not a viable option as almost all of them are as or even more "woke" than universities and there is no leverage that can be exerted on them to make them reform. Eisenhower's notion of a lone tinkerer is attractive, but unrealistic for modern science. Even relatively cheap fields like mine are too expensive for the "gentleman scholar" unless that person is financially well off (only after retirement and a lifetime of saving can I now afford to divorce myself from NSF and still do my science). Federal funding of research is going to continue to be a necessity, but I agree the funding agencies have to be reformed and have to go back to reviewing proposals on scholarly merit alone.
You are spot on with the diagnosis and treatment of our sick universites. I would like to add one more cure for K-12 Science Education. The National Association of Scholars have produced a set of K-12 Science Standards know as the Franklin Standards that are content-rich and encourages curiosity and questioning. https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/Reports/Franklin%20Standards/Franklin_Standards.pdf The current standards, know as the Next Gen Standards are based on equity, and they dumb down the content to acheive equity.
Qatari money has corrupted all of the "top universities" and is the source, with its toady-agent-volunteers, of the foundation corruption that has Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolutionaries allied with Muslim Brotherhood orthodox islamists bent on jihad taking over the West. Those toady-agent-volunteers are 5th rate minds or worse, but they are cunning enough to recognize their opportunity for personal gain. (Notably, islam cozened Marxists into supporting them in Iran, where they played an important role in the Ayatollah's revolution. First thing the Ayatollahs did was slaughter them. Islam has no loyalty to infidels regardless of what they do.)
Claudine Gay is a poster-girl for the toady-agent-volunteer. (Based on the evidence, I do not believe that Ms. Gay wrote her appalling thesis at all. She is a daughter of privilege from a society in which real work is done by servants. Shadow Scholarship has been around since the 1980's and the wholesale lifting of material retyped, word for word, on a manual typewriter is a clear sign of shadow scholarship writing. A shadow scholar's motivation is to get paid with "good enough to pass" material.)
Rip Qatar and it's toady-agent-volunteers out of the Universities. That may only be possible by nuking Qatar into glass, but it must be done for the survival of Western civilization. This must also be paired with society ending equal protection of religions for islam, because islam is a horrific war-cult that teaches that its members are the only fit rulers over all, and that everyone else must be slaughtered, terrorized, enslaved, and live under the boot-heel of the cult. Islam is Jim Jones of Guyana fame writ large, having won. Most people do not understand that all the rape, slaughter, and even burning alive is not because of rage by "the people" due to terrible things done to them. That conceit is Western, because we cannot conceive of a religion that has a "Jesus" level prophet who didn't just teach this, he led it! That is what the academy should be screaming to the world.
FUNDING
Aside from that, this idea that NIH and NSF should cut back and hand over funding to private enterprise is wildly in error. This is understandable given that the author is a mathematician, and math grants are not well supported. This proposal would not work at all. The costs of STEM research are not supportable by industry. Not remotely. Most of that cost is in the S, the T, and the E. With S being the majority.
Example #1 Pharma
As an example, for all practical purposes, pharma, which has individual products with revenue rivaling Facebook, does not do research. I speak from the inside. Translational research is not the same, and should not even be called "research"---it needs a different name. What pharma does is take science established by academia, and then use it to make products. Often, the chemicals themselves are presented fully tested as to activity. Yes, pharma uses principles established and knowledge of receptors (the receptorome) to do mass testing of chemicals to find things that match. But that method was created in academic labs supported by government.
Pharma once in a while does things that cost a lot that are research-ish. An example is the decades long effort to engineer pigs to have antigenic characteristics compatible with humans. A few billion has been spent, and still it doesn't work. I call this "research-ish" because it has some elements, but really it is tissue engineering with genetic tools. All the tools were created by academic STEM labs. And this kind of project is rare, even for an industry that has massive profits geysering from its ears. Most of STEM does not have 99% gross margins on production costs.
The reason the research enterprise works is that its massive budgets (worldwide) allow for so many researchers trying so many things that they find things out.
Example #2 Stanford's funding by oil cutouts---cause for pause
The example of Stanford accepting funding from oil company cutout 501c3's such as the one that supported the entire career of Mark Z. Jacobson should give anyone pause. Mr. Jacobson (I will not address that creature as "doctor" or "professor") never got a cent of grant money from NSF or any other source except big oil. He proved his loyalty to his funders, in the pinnacle of his puerile lackey-in-pocket "work" [1], which was soundly refuted [2], after which he toadied again [3], though ultimately he dropped his meritless lawsuit and was later ordered to pay attorneys fees for the defense.
FUNDING OF STUDENTS
You are correct that universities have become dependent on NIH, NSF, etcetera. But consider. In 1970, UC funded per student costs at ~$22,000 per year. If that level had been maintained at inflation, this would be ~ $186,000 per student. That would be more than enough to educate, feed, and house any students who "cut the mustard" grades-wise. If the US had maintained this level, we would be operating more like Germany with its Max Planck institutes and excellence in education. A key virtue of funding students like this is that it provides incentive for universities to hire professors to teach, not just do research. The current system makes professors resent the time they must teach because they get little for it. Their promotions are tied to the grant system.
Instead, we have students who are customers and professors cater to them and pass people these days who would have been failed out in 1970. Yes, there is merit to moving towards better support for students in difficulty. The time when students would hurl themselves to their death on "Sprawl Plaza" is mostly past. However, these days the tail wags the dog.
Student loans are a racket, and saddle kids today who graduate with a lifetime burden of debt. Student debt is not just any debt, it is not discharged in bankruptcy. I consider that an outrage. I note that the private universities have hugely benefited and essentially become private enterprises supported by exactly the same system and to the same extent, as the public universities. The privates have loved this state of affairs in which their higher cost structure became aligned progressively with the cost structure of the public universities, while still allowing them to charge more based on historical inertia.
Society does not benefit by these policies in which undischargable debt is incurred to qualify for most work in today's world. That the boomers, who paid little for their education should be the generation to force such burden on the young is abominable.
1. M.Z. Jacobson, M.A. Delucchi, M.A. Cameron, & B.A. Frew, (2015) Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 112 (49) 15060-15065, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1510028112 .
2. C.T.M. Clack, S.A. Qvist, J. Apt, M. Bazilian, A.R. Brandt, K. Caldeira, S.J. Davis, V. Diakov, M.A. Handschy, P.D.H. Hines, P. Jaramillo, D.M. Kammen, J.C.S. Long, M.G. Morgan, A. Reed, V. Sivaram, J. Sweeney, G.R. Tynan, D.G. Victor, J.P. Weyant, & J.F. Whitacre (2017) Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 114 (26) 6722-6727, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1610381114 .
3. Jacobson v. Clack (2017) Action brought by scientist against journal and another scientist in connection with publication of article critiquing plaintiff-scientist's work. Principal Laws: Contract Law, State Law—Defamation. https://climatecasechart.com/case/jacobson-v-national-academy-sciences/
Thank you for initiating a constructive discussion and suggesting actionable steps. Please, let's continue with the aim of reaching consensus and a plan of action.
You mention the first "ground rule:" "recognition that an objective, transcendent reality exists and is discoverable".... which reminds us of the Tower of Babel: the lesson that consensus (use of scientific methodology?) enables constructive advances into that transcendent reality, whereas diversity (of language, truths, viewpoints) dismantles. Thousands of years have passed. Can we do better today?
The following was posted on Heterodox STEM:
"It is time to establish a professional educational environment where scholarly discourse can thrive."
" Our societal problem is the spread of disinformation that undermines every aspect of our society." On campus "we opened the floodgates to disinformation at the expense of students and the public."
Basic realities to address (given that the university is no longer a community of scholars within a defined space where knowledge is stored): "a) the vast expanse of information and validated knowledge beyond the confines of the university b) the pursuit and advancement of knowledge within professional entities throughout society, independent of the university campus. b) the dissolution of boundaries between classroom, university campus, off campus institutions, and media. d) the dissolution of boundaries between objective truth, unsubstantiated information, and disinformation propagated in the digital realm) e) the empowerment of billions of individuals to freely express and be heard in the digital medium; and above all, the overreaching power of the word detached from its source." So let's face it: we have no viable plan to create a university that harmonizes all of the above and also incorporates all of our ideals.
But we can (effectively address the above realities, and) construct a professional educational environment where scholarly discourse can thrive. And, given that educational institutions in the USA are being reconstructed, independently of us, we (educators, including Heterodox and FIRE) have a once in a lifetime opportunity to contribute constructively towards this project. And... this will require self-inquiry and redefinition of our mission at Heterodox and FIRE.
By claiming to own the 'truth' using "Judeo Christianity" as its premise, this article is explicitly biased and illogical. If your premises are wrong, the arguments that follow are likely flawed. That is the case here.
Which principles of Christianity exclude and divide people? Not the ones I believe in.
The author uses self-referential ideological premises of "truth, Christianity, and wokeism" as strawman arguments to support the quasi-religious-political premises of MAGA and to argue for so-called 'free speech'.
"Free Speech' for those who adhere to a "truth" as defined by the powerful elite.
Hogwash!
The author's lack of critical analysis and ideological speculation is a good example of an argument that warrants specific attention today. It exemplifies the problem it claims to oppose, and its conclusions bring us deeper into ignorance.
" this article is explicitly biased and illogical"
In case you're not aware, Sergiu Klainerman is a world-famous mathematician specializing in hyperbolic partial differential equations (which describe the behavior of compressible fluids, like air, and the formation of supersonic shock waves).
It's a pathetic joke to believe that his writing is illogical while yours is not.
It is interesting to think about why logic is the foundation of mathematics but seems to be of little use in debates like this one. Suppose everybody in this debate would be careful to justify every step in the argument according to the same logical principles that are used in math. What would happen?
German philosophers of the 19th century in their "humanist" approach used logic as the foundation.
It was not a happy enterprise as it formed the basis of all totalitarian concepts of the 20th century.
A better description of the conflict between that approach and the Abrahamic one, based on the humility and submission of man to a code of conduct is in
‘"Free Speech' for those who adhere to a "truth" as defined by the powerful elite.’
You are here to tell everyone what speech is illegitimate based on your mere declaration that it is the speech of “the powerful elite”? Was the speaker here who you are referring to a member of “the powerful elite”? Is he wealthy? How is he powerful? How about actually engaging in a discussion on the substance/merits of what is true or false instead of pulling this catch-all ad-hominem attack from out of nowhere with nothing to support it?
Having looked at Dr. Flores' background, I see that she is among the most woke of the woke. She would appear to be among those that are desperate to destroy Western Civilization, sacrificing it on the alter of wokism. I am not sure there is much point to engaging with someone so confused about reality, with such a pathetic set of qualifications. Wow. If I encountered her in person, I would never even bother to engage with someone like her. How did she even stumble on Heterodox STEM?
These are the type of people that want to deny that truth and evidence and science do not exist, and in fact, SHOULD not exist.
I am always appreciative of the opportunity I had to go through the required Core Curriculum program as an undergraduate at Columbia. Equally, a liberal arts degree often strikes me as a luxury good, at least in the short-term. In many countries, the undergraduate degree is a 3-year professional degree with admission based in large part on a high school exit content exam. It seems we just delay that in the US, retaining the luxury good while expanding access to it via parents and loans. We really are filthy rich, although the bill is starting to come due.
Also, it's ironic that many of our great universities were founded in affiliation with Christian denominations given their Marxist proclivities. I recently asked one professor, "Why are so many academics are Marxists?" Being honest, but a bit naive, she replied, "Because we're trained that way." Per that totalitarian, Plato, first we take the children away from the family...
Klainerman's review provides a sound assessment of the state of American (and Canadian and all Western) universities. It is a sad story. I would add two points: One refers to K's causes of "the current denigration of western culture." I would emphasize a related factor to the ones that K names. I have developed it here: https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2025/03/26/the-war-against-western-civilization/
The second point is about forces of reform. I have little faith in boards of trustees and alumni associations. If they were going to do something, they would have started long ago. I am afraid we will have to give up the "sacred" principle of university independence. The folks who have the power to change things in a big way (which is what is needed), aside from the Federal Government, are the state legislators who fund the public universities. They need to bring the hammer down, hard. No scalpel, no chain saw either; what is needed is bulldozers, maybe bunker-busters. Nothing will happen unless the bulk of the administrators and professors are cleared out. Some Republican states have made a start, but they need to take full responsibility. What kind of job they do will be up to the voters to decide.
I liked this essay. I do not agree with all of it, but I like it overall.
I am somewhat loathe to try to make up for poor grade school preparation with a first year "Great Books Program". In this situation, conditions on grade school or even something like a "Cegep" preparation:
might be helpful. There is not enough time in 3 or 4 years of a bachelor's program to get students up to speed if they have had a poor background.
I am also reminded of Popper's warning about being tolerant of intolerance. Wokeism is essentially intolerance, and we have been far too tolerant of it.
I might add that I am a huge PDE enthusiast. I fervently believe that this is a corner of STEM that has yet to produce many surprising important results. I think the time is growing ripe for this.
As for Simons, I was at the same think tank as Simons. I met Simons. I know several of his current and former employees. I do not agree with Simons' approach to R&D completely, but I think we need more like him. Being completely beholden to government funding is dangerous, I think.
I like the essay very much. It stands out for an academic stating that academia has too much money. It has become fat.
I think if student loans were available only on commercial terms [keep Pell Grants, though], and government funding were drastically reduced most of the stuff you mention would happen by itself. Bust the accreditation cartels. Let the universities compete with each other. I know it takes a thousand years for a university to establish a reputation, so the sooner we got started, the better.
A first-class essay by a first-class mind, replete with much truth.
A few quibbles:
-the Great Books are more or less the Western Canon, supplanted by some other works;
-"If academic freedom is not a fundamental goal in and of itself"
It is a fundamental goal, being a fundamental right (part of freedom of speech) and being necessary for the pursuit of truth (the fundamental telos of the university).
I agree with the recommendations generally, which are quite comprehensive. If universities started with the Chicago Trifecta, that would be a terrific beginning.
The one thing that is absolutely necessary for this essential salvage operation is to gather one's courage and to start the therapy, accepting the diagnosis provided herein.
"objective, transcendent reality exists and is discoverable or can be approached by better and better approximations"
I find this problematic. For example, I study social media. What is the "objective, transcendent reality" of social media? The question becomes even more difficult, if I am not interested in the existing social media, but in the social media that could exist. For an example of a concrete question, can recommendation work in decentralized social media? How does the answer depend on other institutions such as markets, copyright laws etc?
Afaics, all the relevant notions (media, markets, laws, (programming) languages, etc) are not objective and transcendent but human made and based on agreement.
Regarding: “One can argue that the present wokeism in our universities is due, in part, to the almost complete philosophical supremacy of Materialism and its allied ideologies: Marxism and its post-Marxist variants as well as various evolutionary theories that attribute materialist, reductionist, explanations, or chance, to everything that exists, including the mind.”
I disagree. Ontological naturalism (a.k.a. “Materialism”) can be, and in my view is, and in practice always should be, a pragmatically derived, best fit with available evidence, based conclusion. Marxism and post-Marxist variants are circular, doxastically closed, ideologies precisely because they fail to clear that same standard of scrutiny. Many ontological naturalists are as critical of, and opposed to, woke manifestations of DEI in educational and other institutions, which we consider to be undermining the quality and functioning of those institutions, as you are. We dislike ideologies, both religious and secular.
Ultimately everything we say and think is human derived. At the same time, even what is based on human consensus can sometimes be empirically confirmed, and for that subset, such as our empirically derived ontological conclusions, it is logical to infer that our conclusions, being in this context derived from observations, originate from outside ourselves and reflect, albeit in a potentially incomplete and distorted way, a reality that exists independently of us. To claim otherwise and deny this seems to be somewhat extreme.
So empirical results are human derived? Well sort of, I guess, but also they probably existed even if we did not measure them. However, that gets into discussions about the role of the observer, and what can be an observer, and so on.
We perceive things in a useful shortcut way, for example colors instead of wavelength. We see some wavelengths, not all. To get around this we rely on human created machines to gather observational information that our biology does not provide us. And what we observe is interpreted by our brains. We have no direct, instantaneous, absolute access to all the evidence or knowledge regarding exactly how the universe works. It turns out, with time and effort, we do learn a lot about how the universe works in an important practical sense - it successfully enables to do more, it works, it is empirically confirmable. There is information/evidence, and therefore conclusions, that are forever beyond our reach, since there are time and space limits to what we can know. We have tendencies to think we have more answers than we actually do and/or to think we have fewer answers than we actually do. For example, we know that the measles vaccination is effective in reducing the risk of getting measles and that getting measles can be harmful, even deadly, but some people deny that and as a result measles continues to infect people who are unvaccinated in the U.S. despite access to vaccination.
I agree with all you say. Just that in our world today "can sometimes be empirically confirmed" is not sufficient to provide a foundation for the University. That was the point of my example. Dont your find it convincing?
Different people go to colleges and universities for different reasons and, like most institutions, colleges and universities are going to be inclined to accommodate their clientele. So I think the problems within institutions that rely upon attracting customers tend to reflect underlying problems that their customers bring with them and promote.
To be rational is to strive to logically follow a best overall fit with the available evidence paradigm not only when waking up and going to the kitchen, or crossing the street, but across the board, whenever a decision is to be made upon which there is some relevant evidence to draw on. Empirical evidence is powerful, despite all of the limitations it is the only reliable source for optimizing our decision making for realizing our goals. This is a constraint, and constraints, being confining, tend to be disliked, and therefore depend on a disciplined attitude to implement. Also, the conclusions drawn this way can sometimes be counter-intuitive because our human intuitions can be deficient, particularly when considering questions beyond the scope of our day to day experiences. People who are distrustful of others who they do not know, often for good reasons, tend to retreat to relying their intuitions. Yet much of the modern world operates on knowledge obtained and verified by strangers. And the truth is sometimes unpleasant, the universe does not operate according to the principle of protecting human welfare. We need to commit to an unselfish ethic to improve upon this problem, but our ability to change outcomes for the better is limited. Also, accurately identifying good ethics requires starting with a solid, best overall fit with how the universe operates, foundation. Some people cope by retreating into a fictional story regarding how the universe operates that is more agreeable to them emotionally. I think human irrationality is a substantial problem.
If one were to make an attempt, I think it would be doomed to failure. Even our machines, even if they were designed by other machines...stuff intervenes to cause trouble, like cosmic rays or pseudo-particles or tunneling or whatever.
"Different people go to colleges and universities for different reasons and, like most institutions, colleges and universities are going to be inclined to accommodate their clientele. So I think the problems within institutions that rely upon attracting customers tend to reflect underlying problems that their customers bring with them and promote."
Do you really think that universities got the way they are now by responding to their customers? Most of their customers come to university because it is prerequisite for getting a good job and salary. They are far to scared to be critical.
The extreme European philosophies adopted by universities and the woke policies that universities impose have been invented by professors and administrators, not students. (The exception is the Middle Eastern students and ME moneys that have injected ME problems into our universities.) The far fetched ideas and policies are internally sanctioned and imposed.
I agree. Professors who merge, or replace, education with activism, ideology, and indoctrination are a big contributor. The history of how this originated and spread as I understand it is not a simple straight line. The original promoters of these perspectives were not activists and what is being promoted now to students borrows from, and cites, them, yet is significantly different. Also, employee unions and others are contributing to the politicization of academia and other institutions. This problem has deep roots and wide branches.
This is a very interesting--and idealistic--essay with lots of food for thought. A couple of comments. Relying on private foundations for funding is not a viable option as almost all of them are as or even more "woke" than universities and there is no leverage that can be exerted on them to make them reform. Eisenhower's notion of a lone tinkerer is attractive, but unrealistic for modern science. Even relatively cheap fields like mine are too expensive for the "gentleman scholar" unless that person is financially well off (only after retirement and a lifetime of saving can I now afford to divorce myself from NSF and still do my science). Federal funding of research is going to continue to be a necessity, but I agree the funding agencies have to be reformed and have to go back to reviewing proposals on scholarly merit alone.
Dear Sergiu,
You are spot on with the diagnosis and treatment of our sick universites. I would like to add one more cure for K-12 Science Education. The National Association of Scholars have produced a set of K-12 Science Standards know as the Franklin Standards that are content-rich and encourages curiosity and questioning. https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/Reports/Franklin%20Standards/Franklin_Standards.pdf The current standards, know as the Next Gen Standards are based on equity, and they dumb down the content to acheive equity.
Thanks,
randy
A worthy discussion that misses the glass elephant in the room. Qatar.
https://isgap.org/follow-the-money/
QATAR
Qatari money has corrupted all of the "top universities" and is the source, with its toady-agent-volunteers, of the foundation corruption that has Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolutionaries allied with Muslim Brotherhood orthodox islamists bent on jihad taking over the West. Those toady-agent-volunteers are 5th rate minds or worse, but they are cunning enough to recognize their opportunity for personal gain. (Notably, islam cozened Marxists into supporting them in Iran, where they played an important role in the Ayatollah's revolution. First thing the Ayatollahs did was slaughter them. Islam has no loyalty to infidels regardless of what they do.)
Claudine Gay is a poster-girl for the toady-agent-volunteer. (Based on the evidence, I do not believe that Ms. Gay wrote her appalling thesis at all. She is a daughter of privilege from a society in which real work is done by servants. Shadow Scholarship has been around since the 1980's and the wholesale lifting of material retyped, word for word, on a manual typewriter is a clear sign of shadow scholarship writing. A shadow scholar's motivation is to get paid with "good enough to pass" material.)
Rip Qatar and it's toady-agent-volunteers out of the Universities. That may only be possible by nuking Qatar into glass, but it must be done for the survival of Western civilization. This must also be paired with society ending equal protection of religions for islam, because islam is a horrific war-cult that teaches that its members are the only fit rulers over all, and that everyone else must be slaughtered, terrorized, enslaved, and live under the boot-heel of the cult. Islam is Jim Jones of Guyana fame writ large, having won. Most people do not understand that all the rape, slaughter, and even burning alive is not because of rage by "the people" due to terrible things done to them. That conceit is Western, because we cannot conceive of a religion that has a "Jesus" level prophet who didn't just teach this, he led it! That is what the academy should be screaming to the world.
FUNDING
Aside from that, this idea that NIH and NSF should cut back and hand over funding to private enterprise is wildly in error. This is understandable given that the author is a mathematician, and math grants are not well supported. This proposal would not work at all. The costs of STEM research are not supportable by industry. Not remotely. Most of that cost is in the S, the T, and the E. With S being the majority.
Example #1 Pharma
As an example, for all practical purposes, pharma, which has individual products with revenue rivaling Facebook, does not do research. I speak from the inside. Translational research is not the same, and should not even be called "research"---it needs a different name. What pharma does is take science established by academia, and then use it to make products. Often, the chemicals themselves are presented fully tested as to activity. Yes, pharma uses principles established and knowledge of receptors (the receptorome) to do mass testing of chemicals to find things that match. But that method was created in academic labs supported by government.
Pharma once in a while does things that cost a lot that are research-ish. An example is the decades long effort to engineer pigs to have antigenic characteristics compatible with humans. A few billion has been spent, and still it doesn't work. I call this "research-ish" because it has some elements, but really it is tissue engineering with genetic tools. All the tools were created by academic STEM labs. And this kind of project is rare, even for an industry that has massive profits geysering from its ears. Most of STEM does not have 99% gross margins on production costs.
The reason the research enterprise works is that its massive budgets (worldwide) allow for so many researchers trying so many things that they find things out.
Example #2 Stanford's funding by oil cutouts---cause for pause
The example of Stanford accepting funding from oil company cutout 501c3's such as the one that supported the entire career of Mark Z. Jacobson should give anyone pause. Mr. Jacobson (I will not address that creature as "doctor" or "professor") never got a cent of grant money from NSF or any other source except big oil. He proved his loyalty to his funders, in the pinnacle of his puerile lackey-in-pocket "work" [1], which was soundly refuted [2], after which he toadied again [3], though ultimately he dropped his meritless lawsuit and was later ordered to pay attorneys fees for the defense.
FUNDING OF STUDENTS
You are correct that universities have become dependent on NIH, NSF, etcetera. But consider. In 1970, UC funded per student costs at ~$22,000 per year. If that level had been maintained at inflation, this would be ~ $186,000 per student. That would be more than enough to educate, feed, and house any students who "cut the mustard" grades-wise. If the US had maintained this level, we would be operating more like Germany with its Max Planck institutes and excellence in education. A key virtue of funding students like this is that it provides incentive for universities to hire professors to teach, not just do research. The current system makes professors resent the time they must teach because they get little for it. Their promotions are tied to the grant system.
Instead, we have students who are customers and professors cater to them and pass people these days who would have been failed out in 1970. Yes, there is merit to moving towards better support for students in difficulty. The time when students would hurl themselves to their death on "Sprawl Plaza" is mostly past. However, these days the tail wags the dog.
Student loans are a racket, and saddle kids today who graduate with a lifetime burden of debt. Student debt is not just any debt, it is not discharged in bankruptcy. I consider that an outrage. I note that the private universities have hugely benefited and essentially become private enterprises supported by exactly the same system and to the same extent, as the public universities. The privates have loved this state of affairs in which their higher cost structure became aligned progressively with the cost structure of the public universities, while still allowing them to charge more based on historical inertia.
Society does not benefit by these policies in which undischargable debt is incurred to qualify for most work in today's world. That the boomers, who paid little for their education should be the generation to force such burden on the young is abominable.
1. M.Z. Jacobson, M.A. Delucchi, M.A. Cameron, & B.A. Frew, (2015) Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 112 (49) 15060-15065, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1510028112 .
2. C.T.M. Clack, S.A. Qvist, J. Apt, M. Bazilian, A.R. Brandt, K. Caldeira, S.J. Davis, V. Diakov, M.A. Handschy, P.D.H. Hines, P. Jaramillo, D.M. Kammen, J.C.S. Long, M.G. Morgan, A. Reed, V. Sivaram, J. Sweeney, G.R. Tynan, D.G. Victor, J.P. Weyant, & J.F. Whitacre (2017) Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 114 (26) 6722-6727, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1610381114 .
3. Jacobson v. Clack (2017) Action brought by scientist against journal and another scientist in connection with publication of article critiquing plaintiff-scientist's work. Principal Laws: Contract Law, State Law—Defamation. https://climatecasechart.com/case/jacobson-v-national-academy-sciences/
Thank you for initiating a constructive discussion and suggesting actionable steps. Please, let's continue with the aim of reaching consensus and a plan of action.
You mention the first "ground rule:" "recognition that an objective, transcendent reality exists and is discoverable".... which reminds us of the Tower of Babel: the lesson that consensus (use of scientific methodology?) enables constructive advances into that transcendent reality, whereas diversity (of language, truths, viewpoints) dismantles. Thousands of years have passed. Can we do better today?
The following was posted on Heterodox STEM:
"It is time to establish a professional educational environment where scholarly discourse can thrive."
" Our societal problem is the spread of disinformation that undermines every aspect of our society." On campus "we opened the floodgates to disinformation at the expense of students and the public."
Basic realities to address (given that the university is no longer a community of scholars within a defined space where knowledge is stored): "a) the vast expanse of information and validated knowledge beyond the confines of the university b) the pursuit and advancement of knowledge within professional entities throughout society, independent of the university campus. b) the dissolution of boundaries between classroom, university campus, off campus institutions, and media. d) the dissolution of boundaries between objective truth, unsubstantiated information, and disinformation propagated in the digital realm) e) the empowerment of billions of individuals to freely express and be heard in the digital medium; and above all, the overreaching power of the word detached from its source." So let's face it: we have no viable plan to create a university that harmonizes all of the above and also incorporates all of our ideals.
But we can (effectively address the above realities, and) construct a professional educational environment where scholarly discourse can thrive. And, given that educational institutions in the USA are being reconstructed, independently of us, we (educators, including Heterodox and FIRE) have a once in a lifetime opportunity to contribute constructively towards this project. And... this will require self-inquiry and redefinition of our mission at Heterodox and FIRE.
1) https://hxstem.substack.com/p/appeal-to-redefine-academic-freedom
2) https://weareall.com/pedagogical-malpractice/
3) https://weareall.com/education/
Amen
Excellent piece. Spot on throughout.
By claiming to own the 'truth' using "Judeo Christianity" as its premise, this article is explicitly biased and illogical. If your premises are wrong, the arguments that follow are likely flawed. That is the case here.
Which principles of Christianity exclude and divide people? Not the ones I believe in.
The author uses self-referential ideological premises of "truth, Christianity, and wokeism" as strawman arguments to support the quasi-religious-political premises of MAGA and to argue for so-called 'free speech'.
"Free Speech' for those who adhere to a "truth" as defined by the powerful elite.
Hogwash!
The author's lack of critical analysis and ideological speculation is a good example of an argument that warrants specific attention today. It exemplifies the problem it claims to oppose, and its conclusions bring us deeper into ignorance.
" this article is explicitly biased and illogical"
In case you're not aware, Sergiu Klainerman is a world-famous mathematician specializing in hyperbolic partial differential equations (which describe the behavior of compressible fluids, like air, and the formation of supersonic shock waves).
It's a pathetic joke to believe that his writing is illogical while yours is not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergiu_Klainerman
It is interesting to think about why logic is the foundation of mathematics but seems to be of little use in debates like this one. Suppose everybody in this debate would be careful to justify every step in the argument according to the same logical principles that are used in math. What would happen?
Maybe because every field of Mathematics starts from a few postulates that are taken as given and then uses logic to deduce consequences.
Euclidean geometry has the original model, but look at axioms for linear algebra, group theory, set theory...
But debates like these have no accepted postulates to start from.
Locke was convinced that logic could solve all ethical problems. I think what he had in mind is that we could make ethical progress if we made an effort to list all assumptions. But I would agree that this is not possible. Even in physics, there are unwritten auxiliary assumptions. A fun example is Fig 3 in https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/neutrinos/neutrinos-faster-than-light/opera-what-went-wrong/
German philosophers of the 19th century in their "humanist" approach used logic as the foundation.
It was not a happy enterprise as it formed the basis of all totalitarian concepts of the 20th century.
A better description of the conflict between that approach and the Abrahamic one, based on the humility and submission of man to a code of conduct is in
https://critiqueanddigest.substack.com/p/why-abrahamic-why-metacritique
Could this abrahamic approach help us to build better soical media?
It is not a pathetic joke, and I do not care who he is. I am suggesting that his 'argument' is baseless and mirrors that which he 'opposes '.
Jill Latonia Flores PHD:
‘"Free Speech' for those who adhere to a "truth" as defined by the powerful elite.’
You are here to tell everyone what speech is illegitimate based on your mere declaration that it is the speech of “the powerful elite”? Was the speaker here who you are referring to a member of “the powerful elite”? Is he wealthy? How is he powerful? How about actually engaging in a discussion on the substance/merits of what is true or false instead of pulling this catch-all ad-hominem attack from out of nowhere with nothing to support it?
Having looked at Dr. Flores' background, I see that she is among the most woke of the woke. She would appear to be among those that are desperate to destroy Western Civilization, sacrificing it on the alter of wokism. I am not sure there is much point to engaging with someone so confused about reality, with such a pathetic set of qualifications. Wow. If I encountered her in person, I would never even bother to engage with someone like her. How did she even stumble on Heterodox STEM?
These are the type of people that want to deny that truth and evidence and science do not exist, and in fact, SHOULD not exist.
I am always appreciative of the opportunity I had to go through the required Core Curriculum program as an undergraduate at Columbia. Equally, a liberal arts degree often strikes me as a luxury good, at least in the short-term. In many countries, the undergraduate degree is a 3-year professional degree with admission based in large part on a high school exit content exam. It seems we just delay that in the US, retaining the luxury good while expanding access to it via parents and loans. We really are filthy rich, although the bill is starting to come due.
Also, it's ironic that many of our great universities were founded in affiliation with Christian denominations given their Marxist proclivities. I recently asked one professor, "Why are so many academics are Marxists?" Being honest, but a bit naive, she replied, "Because we're trained that way." Per that totalitarian, Plato, first we take the children away from the family...
Klainerman's review provides a sound assessment of the state of American (and Canadian and all Western) universities. It is a sad story. I would add two points: One refers to K's causes of "the current denigration of western culture." I would emphasize a related factor to the ones that K names. I have developed it here: https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2025/03/26/the-war-against-western-civilization/
The second point is about forces of reform. I have little faith in boards of trustees and alumni associations. If they were going to do something, they would have started long ago. I am afraid we will have to give up the "sacred" principle of university independence. The folks who have the power to change things in a big way (which is what is needed), aside from the Federal Government, are the state legislators who fund the public universities. They need to bring the hammer down, hard. No scalpel, no chain saw either; what is needed is bulldozers, maybe bunker-busters. Nothing will happen unless the bulk of the administrators and professors are cleared out. Some Republican states have made a start, but they need to take full responsibility. What kind of job they do will be up to the voters to decide.
I liked this essay. I do not agree with all of it, but I like it overall.
I am somewhat loathe to try to make up for poor grade school preparation with a first year "Great Books Program". In this situation, conditions on grade school or even something like a "Cegep" preparation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEGEP
might be helpful. There is not enough time in 3 or 4 years of a bachelor's program to get students up to speed if they have had a poor background.
I am also reminded of Popper's warning about being tolerant of intolerance. Wokeism is essentially intolerance, and we have been far too tolerant of it.
I might add that I am a huge PDE enthusiast. I fervently believe that this is a corner of STEM that has yet to produce many surprising important results. I think the time is growing ripe for this.
As for Simons, I was at the same think tank as Simons. I met Simons. I know several of his current and former employees. I do not agree with Simons' approach to R&D completely, but I think we need more like him. Being completely beholden to government funding is dangerous, I think.
I like the essay very much. It stands out for an academic stating that academia has too much money. It has become fat.
I think if student loans were available only on commercial terms [keep Pell Grants, though], and government funding were drastically reduced most of the stuff you mention would happen by itself. Bust the accreditation cartels. Let the universities compete with each other. I know it takes a thousand years for a university to establish a reputation, so the sooner we got started, the better.
A first-class essay by a first-class mind, replete with much truth.
A few quibbles:
-the Great Books are more or less the Western Canon, supplanted by some other works;
-"If academic freedom is not a fundamental goal in and of itself"
It is a fundamental goal, being a fundamental right (part of freedom of speech) and being necessary for the pursuit of truth (the fundamental telos of the university).
I agree with the recommendations generally, which are quite comprehensive. If universities started with the Chicago Trifecta, that would be a terrific beginning.
The one thing that is absolutely necessary for this essential salvage operation is to gather one's courage and to start the therapy, accepting the diagnosis provided herein.
"objective, transcendent reality exists and is discoverable or can be approached by better and better approximations"
I find this problematic. For example, I study social media. What is the "objective, transcendent reality" of social media? The question becomes even more difficult, if I am not interested in the existing social media, but in the social media that could exist. For an example of a concrete question, can recommendation work in decentralized social media? How does the answer depend on other institutions such as markets, copyright laws etc?
Afaics, all the relevant notions (media, markets, laws, (programming) languages, etc) are not objective and transcendent but human made and based on agreement.
Could that be the deeper reason of the malaise?
Regarding: “One can argue that the present wokeism in our universities is due, in part, to the almost complete philosophical supremacy of Materialism and its allied ideologies: Marxism and its post-Marxist variants as well as various evolutionary theories that attribute materialist, reductionist, explanations, or chance, to everything that exists, including the mind.”
I disagree. Ontological naturalism (a.k.a. “Materialism”) can be, and in my view is, and in practice always should be, a pragmatically derived, best fit with available evidence, based conclusion. Marxism and post-Marxist variants are circular, doxastically closed, ideologies precisely because they fail to clear that same standard of scrutiny. Many ontological naturalists are as critical of, and opposed to, woke manifestations of DEI in educational and other institutions, which we consider to be undermining the quality and functioning of those institutions, as you are. We dislike ideologies, both religious and secular.
Ultimately everything we say and think is human derived. At the same time, even what is based on human consensus can sometimes be empirically confirmed, and for that subset, such as our empirically derived ontological conclusions, it is logical to infer that our conclusions, being in this context derived from observations, originate from outside ourselves and reflect, albeit in a potentially incomplete and distorted way, a reality that exists independently of us. To claim otherwise and deny this seems to be somewhat extreme.
Some things (e.g. mathematics) are human discovered, not human derived.
While this is somewhat disputed, most/many mathematicians believe this.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is another example. Plenty of them.
So empirical results are human derived? Well sort of, I guess, but also they probably existed even if we did not measure them. However, that gets into discussions about the role of the observer, and what can be an observer, and so on.
We perceive things in a useful shortcut way, for example colors instead of wavelength. We see some wavelengths, not all. To get around this we rely on human created machines to gather observational information that our biology does not provide us. And what we observe is interpreted by our brains. We have no direct, instantaneous, absolute access to all the evidence or knowledge regarding exactly how the universe works. It turns out, with time and effort, we do learn a lot about how the universe works in an important practical sense - it successfully enables to do more, it works, it is empirically confirmable. There is information/evidence, and therefore conclusions, that are forever beyond our reach, since there are time and space limits to what we can know. We have tendencies to think we have more answers than we actually do and/or to think we have fewer answers than we actually do. For example, we know that the measles vaccination is effective in reducing the risk of getting measles and that getting measles can be harmful, even deadly, but some people deny that and as a result measles continues to infect people who are unvaccinated in the U.S. despite access to vaccination.
"We have no direct, instantaneous, absolute access to all the evidence or knowledge regarding exactly how the universe works."
ALL the knowledge? Of course not. You're creating a strawman,. Which no one here asserted.
Yes, I guess I sort of agree with most of that.
I agree with all you say. Just that in our world today "can sometimes be empirically confirmed" is not sufficient to provide a foundation for the University. That was the point of my example. Dont your find it convincing?
Different people go to colleges and universities for different reasons and, like most institutions, colleges and universities are going to be inclined to accommodate their clientele. So I think the problems within institutions that rely upon attracting customers tend to reflect underlying problems that their customers bring with them and promote.
To be rational is to strive to logically follow a best overall fit with the available evidence paradigm not only when waking up and going to the kitchen, or crossing the street, but across the board, whenever a decision is to be made upon which there is some relevant evidence to draw on. Empirical evidence is powerful, despite all of the limitations it is the only reliable source for optimizing our decision making for realizing our goals. This is a constraint, and constraints, being confining, tend to be disliked, and therefore depend on a disciplined attitude to implement. Also, the conclusions drawn this way can sometimes be counter-intuitive because our human intuitions can be deficient, particularly when considering questions beyond the scope of our day to day experiences. People who are distrustful of others who they do not know, often for good reasons, tend to retreat to relying their intuitions. Yet much of the modern world operates on knowledge obtained and verified by strangers. And the truth is sometimes unpleasant, the universe does not operate according to the principle of protecting human welfare. We need to commit to an unselfish ethic to improve upon this problem, but our ability to change outcomes for the better is limited. Also, accurately identifying good ethics requires starting with a solid, best overall fit with how the universe operates, foundation. Some people cope by retreating into a fictional story regarding how the universe operates that is more agreeable to them emotionally. I think human irrationality is a substantial problem.
Your last statement, "human irrationality is a substantial problem" is definitely correct. At least, in my view, anyway.
And that includes my own irrationality, of course. Which I am frequently reminded of.
it is irrational to think we could ever rid ourselves of human irrationality ;)
(sorry)
If one were to make an attempt, I think it would be doomed to failure. Even our machines, even if they were designed by other machines...stuff intervenes to cause trouble, like cosmic rays or pseudo-particles or tunneling or whatever.
"Different people go to colleges and universities for different reasons and, like most institutions, colleges and universities are going to be inclined to accommodate their clientele. So I think the problems within institutions that rely upon attracting customers tend to reflect underlying problems that their customers bring with them and promote."
Do you really think that universities got the way they are now by responding to their customers? Most of their customers come to university because it is prerequisite for getting a good job and salary. They are far to scared to be critical.
The extreme European philosophies adopted by universities and the woke policies that universities impose have been invented by professors and administrators, not students. (The exception is the Middle Eastern students and ME moneys that have injected ME problems into our universities.) The far fetched ideas and policies are internally sanctioned and imposed.
I agree. Professors who merge, or replace, education with activism, ideology, and indoctrination are a big contributor. The history of how this originated and spread as I understand it is not a simple straight line. The original promoters of these perspectives were not activists and what is being promoted now to students borrows from, and cites, them, yet is significantly different. Also, employee unions and others are contributing to the politicization of academia and other institutions. This problem has deep roots and wide branches.