Interview with Purdue’s Mitch Daniels
Keith Whittington, professor of politics at Princeton and member of the AFA’s Academic Committee, interviews outgoing Purdue President and academic freedom advocate Mitch Daniels. Daniels provides a model for other universities, including Harvard, for creating a campus climate supportive of free speech, viewpoint diversity and academic freedom.
How did you shape campus culture around academic freedom? With intentionality: “I asked those who organize our orientation for new students to make certain that…they were introduced to this subject. What are the rights that you have as a student to speak, to express views, whether they’re popular or not? How do we expect you to behave if you encounter speech that you disagree with? …We have faculty of various personal philosophical views who take part in little roleplaying sessions, for instance, with students and faculty so the freshmen can observe, here’s the right way and the wrong way to react to speech with which you disagree.”
Should conservative politicians intervene? “The answer is not to silence those who are saying things you think are wrong or harmful. It’s to balance the argument somehow. A much better answer is to continue to encourage people who might have different outlooks to seek and find positions where they can bring some balance to these debates and to the way in which education happens on our campuses.”
Should the Board of Trustees get involved with hiring? “No, I think a better answer is to try to establish the basic policies and the basic outlook that we’ve been discussing here about the kind of environment and climate that ought to exist on campus, then hire leaders who are committed to that, who in turn should appoint leaders—deans, for instance—who understand that that’s part of the job.”
