Wesleyan University – Page 6

Civic Action Plan: Preparedness and Engagement

January 29, 2018 by Michael S. Roth '78

Today Provost Joyce Jacobsen sent a message to the community about Wesleyan’s plans for engagement with the public sphere. She notes: “The purpose of this framework, which will operate within a culture of assessment and continuous improvement, is to guide us in becoming an increasingly “Engaged University” where we build student, faculty, and staff capacity for civic participation, where we prepare our students to engage in civic participation throughout their lives, and where civic responsibility is a visible institutional commitment.”

I have pasted in the “Civic Action Plan” below, and you may send comments about it to: wesprovost@wesleyan.edu.

Civic Action Plan

Wesleyan University’s mission statement promises “an education in the liberal arts that is characterized by boldness, rigor, and practical idealism.” In keeping with that promise, this Plan makes clear that developing civic readiness in our students is not ancillary to our mission but central to it. This plan, which will operate within a culture of assessment and continuous improvement, will guide us in becoming an increasingly “Engaged University” where we prepare our students to engage in civic participation throughout their lives and where civic responsibility is a visible institutional commitment.

Wesleyan has a long history of providing opportunities for working in the public sphere in ways that contribute to the civic education of its students. In recent years, the Allbritton Center has been the primary hub for these activities. Under the Allbritton umbrella, students can engage with the surrounding community through some twenty student-led volunteer and work study programs coordinated by the Jewett Center for Community Partnerships (JCCP); can work alongside community members to run WESU 88.1FM; can support the education of incarcerated people through the Center for Prison Education; can explore, analyze and strategize on how to tackle social issues through the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship; and can take service-learning courses and other classes exploring issues of public life with faculty associated with the Center for the Study of Public Life. Allbritton ensures that information about these various programs is readily available to students, faculty, staff and community members. The University plans to actively support these endeavors and to strengthen them whenever possible.

Of course not all civic engagement at Wesleyan takes place through Allbritton. During the 2016-2017 academic year, the Civic Action Plan Steering Committee gathered input on a wide variety of forms of engagement: Romance Language professors creating a partnership with the local library to have multilingual story time for young children run by undergraduates; faculty and staff serving on boards of local non-profits; athletic teams volunteering and raising funds for charitable organizations; students responding to acute societal needs by creating the Wesleyan Refugee Project. Much of this activity is driven by individual interest and motivation; and there may be occasions when links between siloed initiatives could be beneficial. Our task now is to hone in on programmatic factors that might support, connect and amplify such initiatives. The University will increase its efforts to raise awareness about these activities so as to promote more collaboration.

Programmatic factors (as reported to the Steering Committee) that serve to encourage engagement include transportation support from the JCCP, clear communication of opportunities where they exist, and departmental environments supportive of volunteer work. Factors inhibiting engagement are lack of time, lack of knowledge regarding opportunities (including uncertainty regarding whether on-campus opportunities are solely for students), lack of support from supervisors, and transportation problems. Meanwhile, surveyed members of the off-campus community expressed appreciation to the Steering Committee regarding how the University reaches out into the community and proactively develops collaborative programs. Some were interested in the role the University could play as an economic driver in the community; others emphasized the positive impact of student involvement in a number of local programs. We will amplify those factors that encourage participation and engagement, and lessen the inhibiting factors, thus continuing to expand and support the current positive level of community involvement.

This is a propitious time to develop a plan that cultivates a culture of assessment and continuous improvement with respect to becoming an Engaged University. Some key ingredients of the University – free speech, intellectual diversity, equity and inclusion, academic freedom – are essential for our civic work. Our activities going forward will be organized around three strategies: building student capacity for civic participation; building faculty and staff capacity for civic participation; enhancing the institution’s role in public life. Of these, the first, in keeping with our mission statement, is our highest priority.

Building student capacity for civic participation

Ideally, all Wesleyan students will find opportunities to develop their preparedness to engage in public life. Some of these opportunities they will develop themselves, and it will be important to support them in that effort. In addition, currently Allbritton is a locus of activities for deepening the preparedness of Wesleyan students to engage in public life. Through its community partnerships and other programs, approximately 400 students annually work with individuals and institutions beyond the borders of the campus to solve problems and create opportunities. A new fund for innovation in the JCCP will support creative proposals by our students for additional community-involvement initiatives.

Beyond Allbritton, many academic departments, sports teams and student clubs are promoting volunteerism in ways that provide students with the opportunity to increase their ability to engage in civic affairs. Examples of this include aiding neighborhood schools and working with religious or political organizations. Building on the efforts of the Steering Committee, Wesleyan will create a regular inventory of these volunteer efforts for the purpose of having an overall picture of our civic engagement. How many students are engaged in such activities? Is there anything the university can do to make those efforts more effective? How do these activities develop the capacity for a lifetime of civic participation? Setting quantitative and qualitative metrics in these respects will be important in tracking these activities over time. A dashboard of key indicators will allow Allbritton, in conjunction with Academic Affairs, to adapt engagement strategies within a framework of continuous improvement. Wesleyan pledges to find ways to build on our current practices so as to increase our students’ civic literacy and build their preparedness to engage in political life.

Building faculty and staff capacity for civic participation.

Currently many faculty and staff utilize the dedicated channels of civic participation provided by Allbritton and the University’s annual United Way fundraising drive; some teach science classes for children as part of a research grant, or run for local office, or work with arts organizations that have a civic dimension or with health care providers aiding our region’s most vulnerable groups. Such work on the part of faculty does not go without formal reward; the faculty have developed a protocol so that nontraditional academic work will receive formal consideration as part of tenure and promotion cases, and their civic efforts can also enter into consideration as part of the yearly review process as colleagueship and service.

One direct way in which the university supports the civic engagement of faculty and students is through its support of service learning and community partnership classes. A recent survey showed that alumni who have taken a service-learning course are extremely likely to list that course as one of the most influential courses that they took at Wesleyan. We will continue to support these courses and attempt to improve transportation access to off-campus worksites; and we will continue to provide technical and financial support for faculty to develop service-learning classes. We will also increase the level and professionalism of training for our student volunteers so that they can work more effectively as tutors, researchers, and other participants in nonprofit activities. Towards this end, we are in the process of hiring a Professor of the Practice in Education Studies, one of whose tasks will be to work with our student volunteers in training them to be more effective tutors.

Staff, too, are engaged in a wide variety of civic projects. The JCCP will create an inventory of these activities, as well, working more closely with other institutional entities such as Human Resources, Usdan, and Athletics. Once the University has an even better sense of the range and depth of staff commitments, it can make informed decisions about where institutional support would be welcomed. Support will include increased communication resources, co-sponsorships, and making some university facilities increasingly available in support of civic projects. The University will regularly evaluate whether such support is helping faculty and staff to become more fully engaged in civic life.

Enhancing our institutional role in public life

By developing an understanding of current levels of engagement of students, faculty and staff, by targeting support for improving the quantity and quality of that participation, and by measuring the impact of that support, Wesleyan will enhance its institutional role in public life. What else can be done at the institutional level? It is clearly important to maintain relationships with civic groups in the region, from the Chamber of Commerce to City Hall, from the School Board to the local United Way chapter. We will evaluate what other broad, institutional activities are currently underway and how effective they are. A new coordinator position in the JCCP will support our recently-hired new JCCP director, specifically by coordinating current and creating additional programs that bring community members to campus. The coordinator will work with many units on campus, such as the library, the university collections, and the Center for the Arts to develop a range of age-appropriate activities for local K through 12 students to engage more fully with the wide range of resources that Wesleyan has available to support their education and to increase their awareness of how a university operates internally and involves itself with the community.

Enhancing recognition of Wesleyan’s role in public life is also helpful in creating an atmosphere pervaded by civic energy. Communications will continue to showcase the civic work of students, faculty and staff, as well as our institutional efforts in this area. These efforts include partnerships with other organizations, as well as public stands taken by the university (often through its president) on national issues bearing on its educational mission. Recent examples include becoming a sanctuary campus and advocating against changes in the tax code harmful to students. Communications will evaluate the contribution of such activities to the profile of Wesleyan as a private university with public concerns. The president will continue to promote pragmatic liberal education around the world, and, as part of this, continue to underscore how developing a capacity for civic agency dovetails with this mode of education.

It is a core part of our educational mission to develop bold and rigorous practical idealists, thoughtful and brave participants in the public sphere. Long ago, our founding president, Willbur Fisk, set us on a course of promoting the good of the individual and the good of the world. Our Civic Action Plan will guide us further in that direction.

Semester Underway

January 28, 2018January 28, 2018 by Michael S. Roth '78

I sent this message to the campus a few days ago. My class, The Modern and the PostModern, begins tomorrow….so for me it seems we are just getting underway. I’ve been teaching versions of this course since the 1980s, and around 2000 I thought I’d retire it. But postmodernism, often a bogeyman for one group or another, is back in the news — mostly in relation to President Trump. I’ll share these articles from the New York Times and this video from the Wall Street Journal (start at 5 minutes), as recent examples, but we start with Rousseau and Kant.

Here’s the message that went out to campus:

After a long winter break, I am looking forward to the new semester. Like many faculty, I’ve spent many hours preparing for my upcoming classes, and I’ve tried to dig into some research, too. The teacher-scholar model is at the heart of our enterprise, and Wesleyan is making new tenure-track faculty hires to further strengthen the distinctive education we offer. We have already signed up additional faculty in departments and programs such as Government, Psychology, Music, Science in Society, and Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies.

Promoting civic engagement is part of our educational mission, and shortly we will be sharing a new civic action plan and asking for your views. Ours is an “Engaged University,” and here the Jewett Center for Community Partnerships plays a key role. On February 5, we welcome to campus the Center’s new director, Clifton Watson. On February 15, students, faculty, and staff have another opportunity to be engaged as we host Dr. Joi Lewis, the CEO and founder of Joi Unlimited Coaching and Consulting and the Orange Method, as the speaker at our annual event honoring the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. More information on the program will be forthcoming.

Wesleyan has set yet another record in admission applications: a total of 12,673! That more talented high school grads than ever want a Wesleyan experience is something about which we can all be proud, because it is our combined efforts that create that experience. Faculty do it through powerful teaching and research, staff do it through effective work on behalf of the university, and students do it through avid appetite for learning coupled with an exuberant, joyful building of community.

Expressing support for the university also contributes – be it by talking to others about Wesleyan or by making a financial contribution. In this last regard, the news is also good. As 2018 begins, we have already raised $27 million towards our annual goal of $35.6 million! We use much of these funds to invest in the long-term future of the institution through endowments that support financial aid, academic programs, and campus learning.

The economic basis on which the Wesleyan experience depends is stronger than ever, though still not strong enough given our ambitions and needs. Of these, improving our facilities is especially important, and how best to do that is something we look forward to discussing with you. We have scheduled forums dedicated to facilities planning on February 6 during common time and on February 13 at 4:30 p.m., both in the Kerr Lecture Hall (Shanklin 107). These forums are open to all faculty, staff, and students, and we want your input.

All of this work, from faculty hires to civic engagement, from admissions and financial aid to facilities enhancement, is in keeping with the planning framework developed in Beyond 2020.

Someone said to me recently that young people have to be brave to pursue a liberal education these days – courageous in the context of environmental and political challenges, in the face of political polarization and economic competition. Yes, I thought, the students I know at Wesleyan are brave, and with the support of faculty, staff, and alumni, defy contemporary pessimism with boldness, rigor, and practical idealism. Let the new semester begin!

A “Glad Position: Gratitude”

November 23, 2017November 23, 2017 by Michael S. Roth '78

The poet John Berryman’s poem “Minnesota Thanksgiving,” which I heard recited this morning on the radio, contains this happy phrase: “we stand again in debt/and find ourselves in the glad position: Gratitude.”

Gratitude is a glad position, and on Thanksgiving many assume it with a mixture of mirth and reverence. At Wesleyan, I know we have much to be thankful for. Our faculty and staff tap reservoirs of ingenuity to ensure that the education we offer remains vital with the energies of practical idealism. Our alumni are bound together through alma mater to generously support a school that inspires innovative aspirations to bravely face challenges and create opportunities. And our Wesleyan students, they discover their capacities for courage and creativity while exuberantly building a foundation for lifelong learning and friendship.

So much for which to be thankful! It is a glad position. Happy Thanksgiving!

From ‘Unruly Hearts’ to Open Minds

July 17, 2017July 17, 2017 by Michael S. Roth '78

Inside Higher Ed asked me for a response to the new Pew survey results regarding colleges, and I wrote the following op-ed, which was published this morning.

Commencement was over, and we had awarded diplomas to the more than 800 graduates in a timely way. I had made remarks, as I always do, connecting the education they had received with events in the world at large, especially the combination of corruption and inertia in Washington. While marching across the stage, a few dozen graduates managed to express their disappointment that the administration in general and the president (me) in particular weren’t as progressive as they would like on issues such as sexual assault, divestment from fossil fuels and support for underrepresented groups.

The commencement address at Wesleyan University this year was given by the MacArthur grant-winning poet Claudia Rankine. As president and master of ceremonies, I admit I was focused on the way she engaged the students — no easy task. The address was political, as antiracism speeches must be, and it was smart, funny and moving by turns. She concluded by expressing, “Love to each of you and love to your bad behavior in the boardroom, on juries, in the office, on the street, at your dinner tables in all and every space that believes it can hold racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Muslim rhetoric and on and on. Love to you and your wild and unruly hearts imagining our world again.”

As families milled about after the ceremonies, taking pictures, sharing hugs and high fives, I was suddenly called out by an angry voice: “You annihilated my existence,” yelled a middle-aged man. Taken aback, I wasn’t sure I heard him right. “You annihilated my existence,” he repeated and went on to say that the ceremony had left him out and was an example of why people hate closed-minded universities today. Evidently, he did not feel included in the poet’s reference to unruly hearts.

I was surprised by this outburst, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. I had recently encountered pushback from some on the other end of the political spectrum when I published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling for an affirmative action program for conservative ideas on campuses. Noting the tilt to the left in many humanities and social-science divisions at selective colleges, I argued that it was not enough to take a free-market approach to intellectual diversity. Being unruly at a Northeastern university these days should include making a special effort to enhance the study of conservative (religious and libertarian) traditions, broadly conceived. We should avoid the hate-filled provocateurs of the alt-right and instead encourage the serious study of ideas outside the progressive consensus.

Many students and colleagues who think of themselves as being on the left, as I do, worked themselves into a position of outrage, even victimization, after hearing about my short essay. A young alumna returning to campus for her reunion told me that I had made it more difficult for people like her to get an education because I was claiming that this education should contain ideas contrary to her own. She didn’t say I had “annihilated her existence” but seemed to feel that way.

What’s going on?

Survey data released this week by the Pew Charitable Trusts have given me a better feel for the intensity of such reactions. It is clear that many national institutions with hitherto broad public support are now viewed very differently depending on one’s ideological position. Perhaps it is unsurprising that Republicans and right-leaning independents have a far more positive view of churches and a more negative view of labor unions than do Democrats and left-leaning independents. Although the media’s popularity among those tilting left has grown over the last year, that doesn’t offset the steep decline among Americans on the right who think the national media is having a positive impact on the country. Interestingly, one can’t find a majority who think favorably about banks and financial institutions, though Republicans are more positive (46 percent) than Democrats (only 33 percent positive).

The sharpest partisan divisions appear when people are asked whether colleges are “having a positive or negative impact on the way things are going in the country.” Fifty-eight percent of Republicans and their ideological friends now say that colleges are having a negative impact, while 72 percent of Democrats and their comrades see colleges as positive. This gap has widened significantly in recent years. In 2015, a majority of GOPers thought positively about higher education; in fact, the decline among those who lean to the right is close to 20 percent! The views of colleges of those who fall toward the left have been pretty stable.

Colleges and universities have long been the screens upon which groups project their own fears and anxieties. Older people wonder what the next generation is coming to, or worry that their children are having their lives distorted by a professoriate not part of their “real world.” In the past two years, the fantasy of political correctness on college campuses has been a catch-all for a range of people angry about the world, especially those concerned about their status in our age of rapidly growing inequality. The PC campus bogeyman has an important function — it pumps up the myth that our biggest problems stem from a lack of tolerance for ideas friendly to the status quo. When fraternity brothers are disturbed by university restrictions on how they organize parties, they find a new rallying cry in bemoaning “political correctness.” When middle-aged veterans of college protests of yesteryear no longer see their own battles and slogans repeated by today’s students, they complain about PC culture undermining free speech. When men, even elected officials, are caught bragging about sexual assault, they punch back at political correctness.

As I noted in the run-up to the presidential election, there just isn’t any downside to attacking this imaginary monster of groupthink, and so people friendly to the status quo will continue to trumpet their own courage in “not being PC” as they attack society’s most vulnerable groups. Racism and xenophobia get a free pass when folded into an attack on PC elitism.

At the same time, those attacked as PC shouldn’t take the bait and content themselves with labeling anyone who attacks them as racist. Those who point out the dangers of big government, emphasize the needs of national security in an age of terrorism, extol the virtues of family and religion, or defend free speech deserve intellectual engagement — not insult and irony. Those who support a progressive campus culture make a big mistake if they think they are protecting that culture by insulating it from ideas that come from conservative, libertarian and religious traditions.

Demonizing people because they have ideas different from your own has always been a temptation, and lately it has become a national contagion. College campuses are not at all immune from it, but this malady is fatal for liberal education. Many people are so accustomed to curated information — be it from social media feeds or just from one’s choice of cable news — that they have lost the ability to respond thoughtfully to points of view different from their own. When they are confronted with disagreement, they may feel their “existence is annihilated” or that the person with whom they disagree wants “to make it harder for people like themselves to get on in the world.”

So those on the left and on the right surveyed by the Pew Foundation may actually share the same picture of colleges but just evaluate it differently. Democratish survey respondents may be imagining campuses as places where they would find people who hold views like their own, and Republicanish respondents may be thinking that people like them would simply be called nasty names were they to speak out there. Both groups may be imagining colleges in blue states and red states as places where like-minded people go to become more alike.

This is a disastrous view of colleges and universities, one that we who work on campuses must do our best to dispel. We must highlight and enhance the ways that students and faculty members consider alternative perspectives on culture and society; we must promote vigorous debate that doesn’t degenerate into personal attack. This kind of consideration and debate is increasingly rare in the public sphere, and that’s why it is more important than ever to cultivate the terrain for it on our campuses. By this I don’t mean inviting provocative entertainers to the campus so as to get free speech points at the cost of providing a platform for idiocy and abuse. I mean enhancing conditions for the serious study of alternative visions of justice, freedom, individual rights and communal responsibilities. I mean not just sharing biases with students in acts of solidarity, but testing one’s biases by engaging with ideas that also challenge the campus consensus.

Even when colleges and universities are seen as places to engage with ideas and inquiry that break a consensus rather than support it, when students and faculty are seen as capable of trying out ideas without fear of reprisal, not everyone will say that colleges are having “a positive effect on the way things are going in the country.” If we are doing our jobs, some should always object to what happens on campus. But when we are getting objections (and support) from people who hold a variety of perspectives, then we can be more confident that we are fostering the intellectual diversity essential for higher education’s role in this country.

On Intellectual Diversity

May 19, 2017May 19, 2017 by Michael S. Roth '78

Some weeks ago, I wrote an op-ed arguing that the free-market approach to freedom of speech (often identified with the University of Chicago) is inadequate for bringing more intellectual diversity to college campuses. The recent string of right wing provocateurs successfully baiting left leaning students on college campuses is, I think, a symptom of a deeper problem. We need to find productive ways of dealing with intellectual/ideological difference. The Wall Street Journal published the piece this past weekend under the title “The Opening of the Liberal Mind.”

I have received plenty of responses from readers—some applauding my call for greater intellectual diversity, some angered by my use of “affirmative action” as a label for the kind of proactive work that universities should be doing in the humanities and social sciences to explore different viewpoints with students. I thought the irony was obvious; legacy preference in admissions, after all, is often described as “affirmative action for the wealthy.” My point is that we can’t rely on the market of ideas to create intellectual diversity; we must be intentional in seeking out serious ideas from traditions under-represented on campus. This is critical for our students’ intellectual development, giving them the opportunity to test their own thinking against different approaches to enduring questions.

Since I took an early stance against what I called “the Trumpian Calamity” and have urged resistance to attempts by the current administration to curtail civil rights, others have asked how I could now call for more scholarly attention to conservative ideas and intellectual traditions. It should be clear that I do not regard the president’s incoherent leadership—which is so often driven by impulse, resentment and prejudice—as belonging to significant streams of conservative thought, even broadly conceived. And we already study the dynamics of authoritarianism.

My example of the Posse Program for Veterans as contributing to intellectual diversity does not, of course, imply that all our Posse Scholars (or all veterans) are conservative. The point is that these older students have different life experiences than most undergraduates, and that this likely leads to a different mix of political views.

I should emphasize that the courses supported by the endowment gift mentioned in the op-ed will be created and taught by faculty—not donors—as is always the case. The goal here is to expose students to a wider range of thought—with especial attention to the classical liberal tradition—and develop their capacities to engage with those who may hold positions different from their own. We are regularly developing our curriculum to fill gaps in instruction and provide students with a broad education. We have engaged in similar fundraising to develop: the Quantitative Analysis Center; The College of Film and the Moving Image; The College of the Environment; and the Creative Writing Program—just to name a few.

Our present political circumstances should not prevent us from engaging with a variety of conservative, religious and libertarian modes of thinking, just as they shouldn’t prevent us from engaging with modes of thinking organized under the banner of progressivism or critical theory. Such engagement might actually lead to greater understanding among those who disagree politically, and it might also allow for more robust critical and creative thinking about our histories, our present and the possibilities for the future.

Naturally, I didn’t expect my op-ed would generate agreement among all readers, least of all among all Wesleyan readers. I am pleased it has generated conversation. That’s the idea!

There is no denying the left-leaning political bias on American college campuses. As data from UCLA’s Higher Education Institute show, the professoriate has moved considerably leftward since the late 1980s, especially in the arts and humanities. In New England, where my own university is located, liberal professors outnumber their conservative colleagues by a ratio of 28:1.

How does this bias affect the education we offer? I’d like to think that we left-leaning professors are able to teach the works of conservative thinkers with the same seriousness and attention that we devote to works on our own side of the political spectrum—but do we?

It is hard to be optimistic about this challenge in the wake of recent episodes of campus intolerance for views on the right. Would-be social-justice warriors at Middlebury College transformed the mild-mannered political scientist Charles Murray into a free-speech hero, and campus appearances by the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald and the right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter have been handled badly, turning both women into media martyrs.

Most colleges, of course, host controversial speakers without incident and without much media coverage. In March, for instance, Franklin & Marshall College gave a platform to the Danish editor who published cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. There were protests and arguments but no attempt to silence the speaker.

Academics worried about attacks on free speech have felt the need to respond, and they have articulated sound principles. Princeton professors Robert P. George and Cornel West recently attracted lots of supporters for a statement underscoring that “all of us should seek respectfully to engage with people who challenge our views” and that “we should oppose efforts to silence those with whom we disagree—especially on college and university campuses.”

The issue, however, isn’t whether the occasional conservative, libertarian or religious speaker gets a chance to speak. That is tolerance, an appeal to civility and fairness, but it doesn’t take us far enough. To create deeper intellectual and political diversity, we need an affirmative-action program for the full range of conservative ideas and traditions, because on too many of our campuses they seldom get the sustained, scholarly attention that they deserve.

Such an effort can take many different forms. In 2013, Wesleyan decided to join Vassar College in working with the Posse Foundation to bring cohorts of military veterans to campus on full scholarships. These students with military backgrounds are older than our other undergraduates and have very different life experiences; more of them also hold conservative political views.

One notable episode illustrates how this program has contributed to broadening discussion on campus. A student named Bryan Stascavage, who had served almost six years as a U.S. Army military intelligence analyst in Iraq and Haiti, came to Wesleyan to study social sciences. In the fall of 2015, he published an op-ed in the student newspaper questioning the Black Lives Matter movement, which enjoys widespread support here. He asked whether the protests were “actually achieving anything positive” because of the damage done by the extremists in their ranks.

The essay caused an uproar, including demands by activists to cut funding to the school newspaper. Most students, faculty and administrators recognized that free speech needed to be defended, especially for unpopular views. They rose to the challenge of responding substantively (if sometimes heatedly) to Bryan’s argument. As for Bryan himself, he felt that he had “field-tested” his ideas. As he told the PBS NewsHour in an interview about his experience at Wesleyan, “I don’t want to be in an environment where everybody thinks the same as me, because you just don’t learn that way.”

At Wesleyan, we now plan to deepen our engagement with the military. We have been working with the U.S. Army to bring senior military officers to campus, and starting next year, the first of them will arrive to teach classes on the relationship between military institutions and civil society.

Another new initiative for intellectual diversity, launched with the support of one our trustees, has created an endowment of more than $3 million for exposing students at Wesleyan to ideas outside the liberal consensus. This fall, our own academic departments and centers will begin offering courses and programs to cover topics such as “the philosophical and economic foundations of private property, free enterprise and market economies” and “the relationship of tolerance to individual rights, freedom and voluntary association.”

We are not interested in bringing in ideologues or shallow provocateurs intent on outraging students and winning the spotlight. We want to welcome scholars with a deep understanding of traditions currently underrepresented on our campus (and on many others) and look forward to the vigorous conversations they will inspire.

Many of our undergraduates already have a strong desire to break out of their ideological bubbles. Recently, the student Republican and Democratic clubs began jointly hosting lunchtime lectures and discussions. Catherine Cervone, a member of the Wesleyan Republicans and an organizer of the series, put it this way: “We recognized the necessity on this campus for dialogue and communication. We decided to reach across the divide to team up with WesDems in hosting this speaker series, a discussion forum with the purpose of really understanding what the other side thinks.”

Trying to understand the logic of someone else’s arguments is a core skill that schools should be paying more attention to, and it doesn’t always require elaborate new programs. The group Heterodox Academy, which includes faculty from many universities and from across the political spectrum, has recently launched the “Viewpoint Diversity Experience,” an online effort to combat “the destructive power of ideological tribalism.” The aim is “to prepare students for democratic citizenship and success in the political diverse workplaces they will soon inhabit.”

Such efforts are sorely needed, but they can succeed only if we do a better job of bringing underrepresented points of view into the mix. Simply relying on the marketplace of ideas isn’t enough. We need an affirmative-action program for conservative, libertarian and religious modes of thinking.

As someone who identifies with the political left, I welcome this intellectual diversity—and as a teacher, I know that education requires it. If you are on the right, you might call this a remedy for political correctness; if you are on the left, you might prefer to call it the “new intersectionality.” Whatever the label, the result will be a fuller, more meaningful educational experience for everyone.

Save the NEH and the NEA!

March 16, 2017 by Michael S. Roth '78

This morning President Trump released his blueprint for the budget for the coming fiscal year. Given the rhetoric of the campaign, and the selective leaks over the last several weeks, no one should be surprised by this intense militarization of federal spending, nor by its attempt to dramatically downsize aspects of government that protect the environment and care for the most vulnerable. These are subjects that one can read about elsewhere.

As the president of an educational institution, I want only to underscore how these plans undermine some of the most important resources for cultural preservation, for research and inquiry, and for the dissemination of ideas. In other words, these plans are counter-educational. The budget blueprint represents a radical abdication of governmental responsibility for our nation’s culture. It calls for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Non-military scientific research will also see significant cuts to funding. The combination of cuts would be a disaster for education.

Like many colleges and universities across the country, Wesleyan has benefitted greatly from federal support for innovative programing in the arts and humanities. But it’s also the broader American public that benefits from advances in arts and humanities work. Recently, the NEA “Art Works” program has helped Wesleyan University Press publish some of the best American poetry in print, and the NEH has helped fund seminars fostering interdisciplinary inquiry and research like Sumarsam‘s on Indonesian performing arts, and Andrew Curran’s and Jennifer Tucker’s separate projects connecting historical inquiry with broad public purpose. The NEH also has helped us make out-of-print publications available in free e-editions through the Humanities Open Book Program. From a government agencies point of view, these are all small grants. But from the recipients’ point of view, this support can be essential for facilitating progress on scholarly research, providing a platform for sharing ideas, or both.

The current administration calls for putting “America first,” but it seems to believe that only our military matters in this regard. We must resist government plans that make support for American culture last. Please let your representatives know that higher education depends on adventurous research and expression, and that eliminating federal support for scholarship and the arts will undermine one of the most important dimensions of our cultural ecology.

Rejecting Bigotry is Core to Our Mission

February 1, 2017February 1, 2017 by Michael S. Roth '78

This morning I published this essay at Inside Higher Education.

I was horrified reading the latest diktat on immigration from an administration blown into power by the winds of intolerance and resentment. President Trump’s executive order barring immigrants and nonimmigrant visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States is an exercise in cynical obfuscation, bigotry and hard-heartedness.

The obfuscation begins early on with the linking of this crackdown to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 when, as has been pointed out by many commentators, those responsible for those attacks had no connections to the countries targeted by this order. The bigotry of the decree closing our borders to refugees from these seven countries is most evident in the exception it makes for religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries.

The hard-heartedness of the executive order is unmistakable. Desperate families who have been thoroughly vetted for months have had their dreams of a safe haven in America shattered. Students, scientists, artists and businesspeople who have played by the immigration rules to ensure that they have secure passage to and from the United States now find themselves in limbo. Colleges and universities that attract and depend on international talent will be weakened. So much for the so-called respect for law of an administration that has made a point of promising to crack down on undocumented children brought over the Mexican border by their parents.

Eighteen months ago I solicited ideas from Wesleyan alumni, faculty members, students and staff members as to what a small liberal arts institution like ours could do in the face of the momentous human tragedy unfolding around the world. We discussed the many ideas we received on our campus and with leaders of other institutions. The steps we took were small ones, appropriate to the scale of our institution. Working with the Scholars at Risk program, we welcomed a refugee scholar from Syria to participate in one of our interdisciplinary centers. We created internships for students who wanted to work at refugee sites in the Middle East or assist local effort at resettlement. We began working with the Institute of International Education to bring a Syrian student to Wesleyan. And, perhaps most important, we redoubled our efforts to educate the campus about the genesis and development of the crisis.

In the last few months, I have traveled to China and India to talk about the benefits of pragmatic liberal education, and in both countries I saw extraordinary enthusiasm for coming to America to pursue a broad, contextual education that will develop the student’s capacity to learn from diverse sets of sources. Since returning, I’ve already received questions from anxious international students and their parents about whether we will continue to welcome people from abroad who seek a first-rate education. Students outside the United States are often fleeing educational systems with constraints on inquiry and communication; they are rejecting censorship and premature specialization, and they are looking to us. Will they continue to do so?

Here at home we must resist orchestrated parochialism of all kinds. A liberal education includes deepening one’s ability to learn from people with whom one doesn’t agree, but the politics of resentment sweeping across our country is substituting demonization for curiosity. Without tolerance and open-mindedness, inquiry is just a path to self-congratulation at best, violent scapegoating at worst.

With this latest executive order, the White House has provided colleges and universities the occasion to teach our students more thoroughly about the vagaries of refugee aid from wealthy, developed countries that are themselves in political turmoil. The new administration has also unwittingly provided lessons in the tactics of scapegoating and distraction traditionally used by strongmen eager to cement their own power. There are plenty of historical examples of how in times of crisis leaders make sweeping edicts without regard to human rights or even their own legal traditions.

Our current security crisis has been manufactured by a leadership team eager to increase a state of fear and discrimination in order to bolster its own legitimacy. The fantasy of the need for “extreme vetting” is a noxious mystification created by a weak administration seeking to distract citizens from attending to important economic, political and social issues. Such issues require close examination with a patient independence of mind and a respect for inquiry that demands rejection of falsification and obfuscation.

As the press is attacked with increasing vehemence for confronting the administration with facts, universities have a vital role to play in helping students understand the importance of actual knowledge about the world — including the operations of politics. To play that role well, universities must be open to concerns and points of view from across the ideological spectrum — not just from those who share conventional professorial political perspectives. At Wesleyan, we have raised funds to bring more conservative faculty to campus so that our students benefit from a greater diversity of perspectives on matters such as international relations, economic development, the public sphere and personal freedom. Refusing bigotry should be the opposite of creating a bubble of ideological homogeneity.

As I write this op-ed, demonstrators across the country are standing up for the rights of immigrants and refugees. They recognize that being horrified is not enough, and they are standing up for the rule of law and for traditions of decency and hospitality that can be perfectly compatible with national security.

America’s new administration is clearly eager to set a new direction. As teachers and students, we must reject intimidation and cynicism and learn from these early proclamations and the frightening direction in which they point. Let us take what we learn and use it to resist becoming another historical example of a republic undermined by the corrosive forces of obfuscation, bigotry and hard-heartedness.

Veterans Day

November 11, 2016 by Michael S. Roth '78

For many years now, veterans have enrolled at Wesleyan or worked here as faculty and staff. Since the fall of 2014, we have cooperated with the Posse Foundation to bring cohorts of 10 undergraduate veterans to Wes each year. Here is the latest group:

You can learn more about the program here and here. Some of our Wesleyan undergraduate veterans are featured in this video:

Tomorrow we will have a “salute to service” just before our final football game of the year. Today is Veterans Day, and I ask that we pause and remember the men and women who have served our nation in uniform. They are family members, neighbors, friends, faculty, staff, alumni, and students. They deserve our acknowledgment and our gratitude.

Civic Engagement

October 4, 2016 by Michael S. Roth '78

I had lunch today with Cathy Lechowicz and a small group of students who are all working at various aspects of civic engagement, often through the Allbritton Center. Whether it’s through WESU (our community radio station), the Interfaith Council, the Jewett Center for Community Partnerships, the Wesleyan Media Project or the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship, all these students are finding ways to connect their education on campus to meaningful work beyond its borders.

There are dozens of student-led organizations that make a difference in the lives of people right here in Middletown or across the globe. It was inspiring to hear about efforts to provide food for homeless people in our city, to improve college access in West Virginia, and to teach computer coding in Zimbabwe. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of meaningful work for social change that inspires a major cross-section of our student body — and also our faculty and staff.

Do you want to find out more about our civic engagement work? The Allbritton website has lots of information.

On a related subject…this may be the most crucial election of at least the last 50 years. Are you registered to vote? If not, you can find more information here. Don’t wait…deadlines are fast approaching!!

Pain and Anger, Solidarity and Engagement

September 23, 2016 by Michael S. Roth '78

Like many citizens around the country, I have been deeply disturbed by the reports of African-American men being shot by police officers. Of course, the words “deeply disturbed” fail to convey the pain and anger generated by the latest violence. At lunch time today students and others stood in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. There is so much eloquence in their shared, communal silence.

This afternoon a group of Cabinet members and I sent the following to the campus:

As we continue to witness acts of violence around our country – especially toward black and brown and other marginalized persons – we are filled with many strong emotions based upon our own identities and experiences. But, we all worry about those of us and those in our communities who are impacted by these events in myriad ways.

As a sign of our solidarity and our commitment to do whatever we can to address bias and inequity in our hearts, on our campus, and in our communities, we ask you to gather in the Huss Courtyard outside of Usdan on Tuesday 9/27 at noon. Immediately after this moment of silence and reflection, members of the CAPS team will be available in Boger 111 and staff from the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life will be available in Usdan 104D for faculty, staff and students who may want to (or need to) talk about recent events.

Beyond this visible sign of solidarity, we commit to continue our personal and institutional work toward peace, justice, equity and inclusion. We hope that you will too.

I will be traveling for Wesleyan on Tuesday, but I will be with the group in spirit in the Huss Courtyard at noon. Solidarity is crucial to building our community and to making a difference.

Solidarity is crucial and so is engagement. This is a season of change, an election season. I urge all our students, as well as faculty and staff, to play active roles as citizens. The stakes are so high.