Opinion | Universities Need a New Defense https://share.google/uKToFompF8mG1QfcS
A developed, serious, and complex effort to rethink the case for the independence of universities based on their crucial role in our democracy. Traditional arguments (scientific knowledge, education of the young, places for freedom of thought) are correct but insufficient. Lee Bollinger is a rigorous thinker about the first amendment, the Constitution, and the role and values of the modern university in the US. This is part of a book that Bollinger is publishing this year.
Affirming Democracy, Gathering Resistance 
Thank you for posting this, Dan. It’s an outstanding essay: Lee Bollinger at his best. His characterization of the fundamental rationale for the university is powerful: “If the press is the unofficial fourth branch of the system, the university is the fifth — and even more so now, as the press is in decline. Universities must preserve their integrity. We all have a responsibility to protect their standing in our democracy.” For me, it interestingly resonates with the vision of an earlier U-M president, James B. Angell, who in his 1879 address “The Higher Education” spoke powerfully of the democratizing role of the and the democratic nature of the university. (That address is online here.)
Let me add that I find this all particularly poignant when we have just learned about Texas A&M’s appalling prohibition of a philosophy professor from teaching Plato’s Symposium, of all texts! (NYT, Chronicle). Would that his department chair had been made to go through the exercise that Lee recommends: “Whenever people are considered for these roles [chair, dean, president, etc.], the first question they should be asked is how they would articulate their views on the freedom of the university.” That should also apply to regent or trustee — but it seems that Texas is a lost cause in that regard, a catastrophe for what has been a fine system of higher ed.
You’re so right, Gary — the Texas A&M situation (which goes beyond this particularly idiotic act of censorship) is simply appalling. Who else will our masters prohibit us from discussing in the classroom — Nietzsche? Marx? Dewey? Sandel? JS Mill? All had “subversive” ideas about freedom and identity, all are fundamentally important for helping us figure out what it is to be human, and all could invoke the wrath of no-nothing MAGA legislators in half a dozen states.