Academic Administrators Are Strangling Our Universities
Tablet | Londregan, Klainerman, Reynolds, Haykel
A must-read article on the unbridled power of the higher ed administrative class taking over everything from admitting students who hold the “correct” views* to canceling “wrong-think” professors in “star chamber-like proceedings overseen by the administrators themselves.” Case in point of the latter, the authors highlight “Harvard’s” (i.e. the administrators’) canceling of Ronald Sullivan, Roland Fryer and David Kane. Unbeknownst to outsiders, “The speed of this hostile takeover is astounding” and “parasitic on the mission of the university.”
“The process of forming young minds, is being transferred from the faculty, selected for the originality and quality of their thought, to administrators who can be swiftly ‘deselected’ should their expressed views depart from the orthodoxy…”
“A new cohort of administrators zealous to reshape life on campus and off has fastened itself on institutions of higher learning—promoting their own welfare and power as a class through bureaucratic fads and mindsets that are far removed from the values of critical thinking and free inquiry. The speed of this hostile takeover is astounding…”
“Much of what looks to outsiders like student-led protests and campaigns is in fact the product of the determination of the new administrative class to shape campus norms and priorities according to their own beliefs and preferences—which not coincidentally make the case for the importance of their own jobs…”
“And their [administrators’] impact is by no means limited to student life…Today professors must filter virtually all research through an Institutional Review Board—another office dominated by non-academic administrators.”
The authors provide sound recommendations, including adhering to the Chicago Principles, and bringing back the voice and influence of faculty over administrators in nearly every aspect of the university.
See NYT Jan 2022 article: “Harvard would consider your ‘ethnicity’ a ‘plus’ only if you wrote your personal essay about its significance in your life or if it led to extracurricular involvement in ethnic community groups. If you were a minority student who did not belong to an affinity group in high school and you did not share a moment of trauma or triumph with strangers on the admissions committee for the most prestigious university in the world, Harvard would withhold the ‘plus’ on your application.”
