In today’s episode, Jeremi and Zachary discuss how U.S. universities are changing, delving into shifts in campus political culture, administrative growth around DEI, viewpoint diversity and ideological siloing. They also discuss the financial and policy pressures such as federal research funding cuts, visa changes for international students, and endowment taxes, and what exactly these changes mean for teaching, civics education, and the role of universities in public life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In today’s episode, Jeremi and Zachary discuss how U.S. universities are changing, delving into shifts in campus political culture, administrative growth around DEI, viewpoint diversity and ideological siloing. They also discuss the financial and policy pressures such as federal research funding cuts, visa changes for international students, and endowment taxes, and what exactly these changes […]","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2026\/05\/2026-05-28_This-Is-Democracy-1.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"00:36:04","filesize":"49.54M","filesize_raw":"51943104","date_recorded":"2026-05-28 16:25:53","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[],"categories":[],"series":[891,2],"class_list":["post-4041","podcast","type-podcast","status-publish","series-default-podcast","series-this-is-democracy","entry"],"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":301,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2019-01-15 11:25:23","post_date_gmt":"2019-01-15 17:25:23","post_content":"I am a child of the global transformations that re-made societies in the last century\u2013war, migration, nation-building, and mobility through higher education. All of my research, writing, and teaching seeks to explain these transformations\u2013their diverse origins, their contradictory contours, and their long-lasting effects. My scholarship is therefore an extended inquiry into the workings of power at local and international levels, and the interactions across these levels. Like other historians, I treat power as contingent, context-dependent, and often quite elusive. Like practitioners of politics, I view power as essential for any meaningful achievement, especially in the realms of social justice and democratization.\n\nMy hope is that my work will reach a broad and diverse audience of citizens. Scholarship cannot substitute for real-lived experience, but I believe it can enhance our contemporary understanding of the choices we confront in the allocation of our resources, the structuring of our communities, and the judgment of merit. In this framework, international, transnational, and global history should contribute to better thinking about current international, transnational, and global problems. I am a proponent of historical and political studies that are broad, compelling, creative, and, ultimately, useful. We should research with Monkish rigor, as we write (and lecture) with novelistic flair.\n\nResearch interests\nThe formation and spread of nation-states; the emergence of modern international relations; the connections between foreign policy and domestic politics; the rise of knowledge institutions as global actors.\n\nCourses taught\nInternational History since 1898; The Past and Future of Global Strategy; American Foreign Relations\n\nAwards, Honors\nRecognized as one of \"America's Top Young Innovators\" by Smithsonian Magazine; Class of 1955 Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Wisconsin","post_title":"Jeremi Suri","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"jeremi-suri","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2022-06-02 13:27:50","post_modified_gmt":"2022-06-02 18:27:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/?post_type=speaker&p=301","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":820,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2019-08-19 13:47:33","post_date_gmt":"2019-08-19 18:47:33","post_content":"\n
Zachary Suri is a host, co-producer, and poet-in-residence for This is Democracy.\u00a0Zachary is an undergraduate at Yale University, where he studies languages, history, and literature. He writes regularly for the Yale Daily News.\u00a0Zachary\u2019s poetry has been published by numerous publications, including\u00a0CNN.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Urbanitus.com<\/a>. He was the 2022-2023 Austin Youth Poet Laureate and a recipient of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Silver Key and AISD Trustees\u2019 Scholar Award. You can hear him discuss his poetry on\u00a0public radio<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","post_title":"Zachary Suri","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"zachary-suri","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-09-09 12:12:36","post_modified_gmt":"2025-09-09 17:12:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/?post_type=speaker&p=820","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":"","transcript":" [00:00:00] Intro: This is Democracy A podcast about the people of the United States A podcast about citizenship About engaging with politics and the world around you A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues And how to have a voice in what happens next <\/p>\n [00:00:20] Zachary Suri: Hello, and welcome to our latest episode of This is Democracy.<\/p>\n I’m Zachary Suri. We’re joined, of course, today by Professor Jeremi Suri. <\/p>\n [00:00:27] Jeremi Suri: Hello. Always good to be with you, Mr. Zachary. <\/p>\n [00:00:29] Zachary Suri: Good, good. And today we’re going to be talking, just the two of us, um, about a topic that has been in the news a lot of late, that the two of us have been living in different capacities and that many of our listeners, um, have as well, I’m sure, um, which is the sort of profound changes or seemingly profound changes at universities in the United States, um, and to a lesser extent around the world, um, thinking in particular of shifts in political pressure on universities, but also the political culture of universities.<\/p>\n And today we wanna talk about these institutions which are not in any way the sum total of our democracy, but clearly play a leading role, um, in shaping our political conversations, um, and, uh, our key institutions being shaped by our political conversations nationally. Um, so I, I think the best place to start would be by trying to get a sense of, um, what the prevailing culture at universities has been- Mm-hmm<\/p>\n um, prior to our current moment. So not just pre second term Trump, but I think, um, pre-COVID maybe is probably the best place to think about this. But what were the sort of prevailing changes as someone who had been at universities for decades- My entire life … and decades and decades. <\/p>\n [00:01:47] Jeremi Suri: My entire life, yes.<\/p>\n [00:01:48] Zachary Suri: Centuries and centuries. Um- Millennia <\/p>\n [00:01:51] Jeremi Suri: upon millennia. <\/p>\n [00:01:51] Zachary Suri: What, what was different about being on a university campus, um, in, in the period prior to where we are now? <\/p>\n [00:01:59] Jeremi Suri: Yeah. So, uh, it’s a great question, Zachary. I think universities have always been, um, infected by politics, and there’s always been a set of controversies outside universities that make their way onto universities.<\/p>\n Think about the, the Vietnam War and civil rights in the 1960s. Think about anti-apartheid activism in the 1980s on university campuses. Um, and so campuses have always been connected to the wider world, but until recently they also felt secluded. And the whole idea of a college campus is to create a space where although you’re training people for future activities in our society, they also have some separation from society, separation to investigate issues, to discover, to explore, to experiment.<\/p>\n And of course, the greatness but also the worry of university life for most parents was always just that, that kids are experimenting, trying new things out socially, culturally, intellectually. Um, but that feeling of at least some kind of separation Uh, has always been important, and that’s not only true to elite universities, that’s also true even for community colleges.<\/p>\n Uh, the whole idea of a campus, again, is that even though you might be within a city, that you’re stepping off from the city, stepping away from the city, and able to have some space. So universities did, I think, have more of a feeling of separation, even though they were still connected and politicized, uh, before COVID.<\/p>\n One other thing I would say also is that universities had developed over the course of at least half a century since World War II, they had developed procedures, rules, and laws for self-governance, and they were jealously guarding those laws of self-governance. So universities would hire, promote, and teach what they wished to hire, who they wished to hire, how they wished to promote them, and what they wished to teach.<\/p>\n And that was largely respected. That’s the world of tenure. That’s the world of academic freedom. Um, these are not assertions of complete freedom. Uh, tenured faculty don’t get to do whatever they want. They still have to follow the rules. And academic freedom does not mean that, uh, you can use your position to say things that are not true or that are intentionally offensive and designed to foment violence.<\/p>\n Uh, that’s not what academic freedom ever meant. But academic freedom has always meant, uh, and tenure has always meant on university campuses, that faculty and the classroom are not susceptible to powerful or wealthy figures outside telling them what they should do. And of course, powerful and wealthy figures have always found ways to exert influence, but there was some barrier there.<\/p>\n I think those barriers have come down in the last few years, and I think the seclusion of the campus has in some ways been invaded in the last few years, and this has happened from multiple points of view and for multiple reasons. But I do think there’s a sense now that the college campus is less secluded, and there’s a sense now that tenure and academic freedom are less, um, less firm, less strong, and universities don’t feel as if they’re running themselves any longer, but other people are running them, often people running them with agendas that are not related to the agenda of the university itself <\/p>\n [00:05:16] Zachary Suri: That makes sense.<\/p>\n W- where do you see, um, what could be described as the, the rise of DEI and diversity institutions, um, sort of expansion of HR administration on university campuses? Um, where does that fit into this story? Is this part of the, the sort of tearing down of that seclusion? Is this– From your perspective, is this, is this the first?<\/p>\n Was this the first, um, instance of political intrusion onto, onto campuses, uh, in, in the way that you’ve described? <\/p>\n [00:05:47] Jeremi Suri: I think a lot of the DEI movement, uh, although inspired by things that were happening in society, uh, particularly, um, efforts at inclusion, uh, for, uh, groups that had traditionally been not included, including transgender students and others, and also pressures related to, of course, what we all witnessed with the, the terrible lynching of George Floyd in Minnesota and evidence of, of police brutality in some cases.<\/p>\n Um, those external motivators, uh, were important. But really what happened, I think, within universities is you had a cohort of university administrators Many of whom were hired initially as universities grew in size and needed more of an a-uh, administrative apparatus for their larger numbers of students, but also for the larger numbers of, uh, federal grants and other things that universities were receiving that require administration, and also because of all the laws that were being passed for student protection, for property protection, and things of that sort.<\/p>\n As you saw administrative staff grow, that administrative staff often brought with it a moral commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion just based on where they were coming from. These were often people who had been trained in those fields, f- trained to care deeply and sincerely about civil rights and diversity.<\/p>\n And so that became more the dominant ideology of people in administration, just as the dominant ideology of people in finance tends to be one of capitalism. Those in human resources, particularly universities, I think this would also be true in business world, they tend to think very much, uh, about diversity, equity, fairness.<\/p>\n And then, um, I think in a moment when, uh, people were hyper concerned about these issues because of what happened with George Floyd and others, um, then these, uh, concerns became very, very aggressively dominant on campuses. And I’d, I’d love your thoughts on this, Zachary. I, I, I remain a proponent of diversity, I remain a proponent of equity, and I remain a proponent of inclusion.<\/p>\n But I do think a lot of what was done through DEI, although often or most often well-intended, I think sometimes did go too far and created, um, a crowding out of other points of view at times. Did, did… Is that something you felt as a student? <\/p>\n [00:08:12] Zachary Suri: Yeah. I mean, I think I certainly have entered college campus m- after the sort of crest or peak of, of this movement.<\/p>\n But I think one of the most bizarre things about our moment on university campuses is that a lot of that infrastructure, a lot of those people, that sort of administrative, um, push for d- diversity, equity, and inclusion and with all of its, you know M- m- maybe w- good intentions and ill effects and good effects, um, is still prevalent.<\/p>\n It’s still a, a, a, a present force on campus, one that a lot of students feel affinity for, um, one that still I think gets a lot of money from university campuses, even if it gets a lot less attention intentionally. Um, and, uh, at the same time, the universities are experiencing pressure from outside, uh, and in some cases from the inside, to diversify points of view in the other direction, to bring in more conservative voices, to- Right.<\/p>\n Viewpoint <\/p>\n [00:09:12] Jeremi Suri: diversity … <\/p>\n [00:09:13] Zachary Suri: right, to avoid, to avoid framing even the very mission of a university in terms of diversity or public service or any kind of, um, any kind of mission statement beyond, um, beyond simply knowledge acquisition. This was a change Yale recently made to, uh, to basically take any reference to leadership or diversity out of its mission statement and focus on knowledge.<\/p>\n So th- th- those two efforts, I think, in a strange way, still coexist on our campuses, even if one is getting more attention than the other in our current moment, and I think in some ways, in my experience, they both have a similar flaw, which is that they It w- rather than, rather than actually trying to build the kind of culture and institutions that enable true voi- viewpoint diversity, true inclusion, which, which doesn’t mean no one gets offended.<\/p>\n It means people are willing to get offended and still talk and discuss and be in community together, that there’s less of a focus actually on doing the real work of, of creating those communities- Yeah … those institutions, those spaces, and much more of a focus on, on, on posturing and, uh, on a sort of like numbers game of how many, how many faculty are conservative, how many faculty are liberal.<\/p>\n [00:10:21] Jeremi Suri: Right. I, I think that’s exactly right. I think, um, in my experience over the last 10 years, it- what’s new is not that there are, um, climates of opinion and, uh, viewpoints that are favored by more people than others. That’s always been true, and there have always been biases. Um, and I often remind people that if a- anthropologists tend to be to the left, don’t forget that, uh, business school faculty tend to be to the right, you know?<\/p>\n And so there, it, it, it depends where you are. But you could certainly feel, as a conservative in an anthropology class, you could feel that you were not well-represented, and you could feel as a, um, uh, as a, as a left-leaning person in a business school class, you could probably feel not well-represented.<\/p>\n That’s not a new problem. I think, uh, what has happened in the last 10 years is that we’ve become hyper-focused, um, not on the ideas, but on the labels, and I think that has to do with outside entities that are looking to count, as you said. Some of that was a problem with DEI. It’s one of the things I oppose in DEI, is this kind of, uh, quota counting, right?<\/p>\n And saying you need to have a certain number of people from one group or another. Uh, there are all kinds of reasons why I think that’s destructive and anti-intellectual, and I’ve long thought that. Um, but on the other side now, we have people who wanna co- sort of count the number of, quote-unquote, “conservatives,” and, uh, that’s also problematic.<\/p>\n Uh, first of all, what is, what counts as a conservative? And second, um, should we be, when we’re hiring and admitting people, should that really be what we think about, or should we think about the person who’s doing the most interesting work, uh, and have arguments over that? Uh, I feel in the last few years in particular, Zachary, we have argued more about the process and argued more about the numbers than argued about the ideas.<\/p>\n And what we should be arguing about more, to me, are classic conservative versus liberal positions. For example, what role should the government play in society? What kind of foreign policy should the United States have? These are liberal versus conservative arguments in some ways, and these are arguments worth, worth having.<\/p>\n What, how should our democracy operate? Should it be more populist? Should it, should the courts play more of a role? These are the kinds of arguments we should have instead of measuring whether we brought X number of conservatives and Y number of liberals to speak to our campuses. <\/p>\n [00:12:40] Zachary Suri: Yeah, and I, I think it’s also an issue of siloing on, on university campuses.<\/p>\n I mean, I think one of the biggest issues I see… I, I, I don’t, I don’t really in general buy the argument that universities have a dominant ideology of one sort or another of any coherence. Um, but I do think that there’s been a problem, um, at elite universities, um, that one can graduate from a place like Yale or UT and come away, particularly if one goes in already with ideological, with, with left-wing ideological points of view, if one comes in, you know, hyper-focused on race or on, uh, you know, the study of migration, et cetera, all worthwhile endeavors, then, but one can be in, one can very easily, intentionally or even unintentionally, graduate without ever having taken a class where there is a single person in that class who doesn’t share that ideology.<\/p>\n And I think that’s, that’s a real problem. Um, and I think part of what Uh, the overcorrection has been in recent years is not actually to try and say maybe we shouldn’t be siloing at all, but to say, “Oh no, we need to build a conservative silo,” or, “We need to build a program where people, people can, can, can go through, you know, University of Texas and get an education in politics or civics and never have to interact with someone who’s a Marxist or a left-wing faculty member.”<\/p>\n [00:14:03] Jeremi Suri: I, I couldn’t agree more. I think the civics movement, which has certainly been an important movement of the last three years at least, uh, the movement to create more civics courses, to emphasize civics education, I’m all for that. Uh, there are, as you said, Zachary, too many well-educated Americans who don’t know basic things about our society.<\/p>\n Just like as I think everyone should understand some basic science, everyone should un- understand the Constitution and what the Constitution means, where it came from, um, and some basic American history. I say that as a historian, of course. Um, and I think we were dropping the ball on that, uh, not just because of siloing, but because of specialization.<\/p>\n So for example, I remember when I was looking at curricular issues years ago here at UT, uh, I had not realized until I did that how many requirements for certification engineers have. And they have almost no time in their schedule, those who are studying engineering, uh, at UT, uh, they have almost no time in their schedule for electives.<\/p>\n And so they’re so heavily in the specialized area that they’re in, um, that they’re losing this general civics knowledge. And so I think it’s a very, uh, good thing that particularly our campuses and many others are moving towards re-emphasizing civics education. I think a core curriculum makes sense for that, right?<\/p>\n It would be part of a core that everyone takes a class on the history of the Constitution, for example, right? Um, and so that all makes, makes sense to me. Uh, but I think we have to do this in a way that, just as you said, integrates people from different points of view. Students come in now, especially because of social media, with labels they’ve identified with themselves, even if they don’t fully understand it.<\/p>\n Most people who call themselves at age 18 a conservative or a liberal don’t really know what those things mean. But they take on those labels, and they tend to surround themselves with the same affinity groups they’ve grown up with. So if you’ve grown up in a conservative suburb, you tend to surround yourself with conservative students.<\/p>\n If you’ve grown up in a left-leaning suburb, you tend to surround yourselves with people like, like that. And I think it’s the job of universities not to create separate silos, which is what I fear we’re doing, particularly at UT, uh, and instead create places where people have to interact intentionally, bringing together people from different backgrounds and points of view.<\/p>\n One, one of the things that was most edifying to me as a student at Stanford as an undergraduate in the 1990s was living in a dormitory where maybe it was happenstance Uh, but we were living very close together, many of us with people who thought about the world, saw the world very differently from us.<\/p>\n And then we were in classes together where these issues came up. And, uh, it certainly helped me to understand different points of view. That’s actually what viewpoint diversity is. I think we really have to hit this point hard, Zachary, that viewpoint diversity is not simply, uh, creating a ledger and saying we have, you know, X number of conservatives and X number of liberals, and X number of conservative faculty and, a- and Y number of liberal faculty, and therefore we have viewpoint diversity.<\/p>\n Viewpoint diversity is saying we have lots of spaces where these points of view are coming together and people are having to listen and learn from one point of view or another. What we try to do on the podcast, in fact. And I don’t think there’s enough of that. In fact, if I had one overriding criticism, I think there’s less of that now on our campuses than there was before.<\/p>\n Some of that is the self-selection of students, but some of that is the way universities are organizing themselves to create silos to serve different interest groups and not creating the integrated spaces. Does that, does that resonate with your experience? <\/p>\n [00:17:29] Zachary Suri: Yeah, it does. I, I think that, that, that reflects, um, a sort of reality of our campuses.<\/p>\n But I, I think it’s not just an internal, it’s not just an internal issue. Um, I, I think it’s important that we, we talk about the sort of external factors here as well. Um, particularly in the last, um, two or three years, there’s been a lot of pressure on universities to, to, to, to push in one direction or another, um, on issues that have traditionally not been the purview of university administration.<\/p>\n Um, obvious- the most obvious example is on the Israel-Palestine conflict, um, pressure from students, um, and activists to make statements or to, uh, change fiscal policy at universities to support one side, and pressure from, uh, you know, donors, uh, other groups of students, faculty to go in the other direction.<\/p>\n Um, and I- I’m curious what you think the effect of that was on our university institutions. Um, I, I don’t think anyone would say that that was a, uh, necessarily a healthy process for our institutions to go through, but I’m curious whether you think universities have emerged with a better, more clearly defined sense of, of, of the role of, of speech and political discourse on campus, or whether the waters have been so muddied that people don’t actually have a clear sense of where, when, if at all, political speech, political pressure is affecting their universities.<\/p>\n [00:19:00] Jeremi Suri: That’s so well said, Zachary. Th- th- this would be my second criticism after the siloing that we’ve seen more of in the last few years. I think there has been a chilling of free speech. Uh, most of that is not because people have been, um, penalized for what they’ve said. Thankfully, that’s only been in a very few cases.<\/p>\n Uh, but it’s the fear that that would happen And so what I have noticed in the last year and a half is people are very, students, faculty, others, uh, certainly university leaders are, are very careful not to say anything that can sound like it has any moral or political position attached to it. And, and first of all, that’s not, that’s not doable because the absence of political speech is a kind of political speech itself, right?<\/p>\n If you are silent when horrible things are happening, um, you are in a certain way, uh, condoning those things. None of us would justify the university leaders and faculty of the Nazi era who refused to speak up, right? So, you know, there is a role, uh, an un- uh, uh, un- uh, unavoidable role, uh, of engagement with the issues around you.<\/p>\n Now, I think there’s a difference between being partisan and being moral, and universities are moral institutions. They stand for education, improvement, what the Germans would call Bildung, right? That we are improving ourselves. So I think universities, particularly in the United States, have to stand for freedom and democracy and free speech and these things, but they shouldn’t take partisan positions.<\/p>\n So under no circumstances should a university be pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli. That would make no sense. That would alienate lots of people. And maybe some universities went too far. Certainly, some faculty were asking some things that seemed unreasonable of universities to do. Uh, I think it’s unacceptable to promote, uh, the boycotting of people from a country.<\/p>\n Ask your university to boycott them. Um, that makes no sense. Academic freedom means that scholars from around the world should always be welcome at our universities. And so, um, universities should not take partisan positions. But universities are institutions about democracy and freedom and learning and knowledge, and we do have to stand up for those things.<\/p>\n And that’s where I think universities should speak absolutely clearly. So when, uh, people are being denied their ability to, uh, express themselves as, for instance, um, people in Ukraine are who are being attacked by Russia, it is not for the US– it’s not for the university to take a position pro-Ukraine or pro-Russia, but it is for the university to take a position on the rights of people in t- in communities that are being overrun to live with dignity and express themselves.<\/p>\n And so I think those are the kinds of positions we need to, we need to take. University leadership should be moral leadership, but it should be moral leadership for principle not for political positioning. And, and we’ve, we’ve gone away from that too much. If we don’t do that, if we’re just trying to be neutral, right, then we’re countenancing and accepting things that run against the very foundations of knowledge and freedom that we’re about.<\/p>\n I mean, universities, for example, have to be against book burning, right? Because we are about books. We have to be for science. We can’t be defenders of those who attack science, right? But that doesn’t mean we have to take a position on the Secretary of Health and Human Services. That’s not for the university to take.<\/p>\n But it is for the university to take a position on scientific knowledge and scientific verification for things. <\/p>\n [00:22:36] Zachary Suri: Yeah, I think that’s well said. I think it’s important. I think one thing that some universities I think have taken out of this moment, and some have not, but i- is not, is not, not even a sense that neutrality is the answer, um, but that there is a difference between the kind of political action and decision-making that one demands of one’s political leaders and the kind of action and political decision-making it is appropriate to demand of one’s university leaders.<\/p>\n And I think that there’s too much, particularly among students, I think there’s too much of… There’s, there has been too much of a sense that their univers- that universities don’t exist to facilitate conversation, but instead, uh, by na- by their very nature take a pos- one position or another, and that the role of the student body is to push it in the direction that the student body agrees or feels is most necessary.<\/p>\n Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is a kind of… It’s not, it’s not as… It’s, it’s, it, it can, it can lead to a kind of mob mentality that doesn’t actually, that, that, that, that has the same kind of chilling effect that we’re talking about, where it just- Absolutely … it makes it, it, it, it, it makes university leaders feel like the only way to avoid, to avoid angering, um, both sides is to take no position whatsoever.<\/p>\n [00:23:46] Jeremi Suri: Right. <\/p>\n [00:23:46] Zachary Suri: I, um- Of course, that angers both sides nonetheless. <\/p>\n [00:23:48] Jeremi Suri: Yeah. So what would I like to see? I, I think, again, that’s, that’s very well framed. What would I like to see that we’re not seeing? I would like to see pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian voices, both on campus. Uh, I’d like to see them articulated well, and there might be more people on one side or on the other, it doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n They should both be given a fair hearing. One side should not be able to shout the other side down. Um, but both sides should not be told to shut up, and that’s, I think, what people have heard in the last year. Yeah. They’ve heard basically, “Don’t say anything,” and that’s wrong, then we’re not learning, right?<\/p>\n My pro-Israeli friends need to hear the pro-Palestinian point of view. My pro-Palestinian friends need to hear the pro-Israeli point of view, and of course, there’s a lot in between. We should be places for discourse. Uh, so what does that mean? It means I don’t think people should be able to shout outside someone’s dorm when they’re trying to sleep.<\/p>\n People have a right to privacy and the right to be able to sleep. Um, but there should be places, designated places on campus, usually center of an academic space, where, without disrupting class, people can put up signs, people can say what they believe, uh, within bounds. Um, I think, uh, extreme anti-Semitism or anti-Islamic attitudes should not be allowed, but I think people should be able to say things that express their point of view without the intention of, uh, insulting others, and that should be encouraged.<\/p>\n Uh, and I, I don’t think we’re doing enough encouraging of that, and I think we’re worse off, uh, in, in our knowledge for that reason. <\/p>\n [00:25:15] Zachary Suri: Yeah. What, what about probably the most pressing challenge for universities leaders right now, which is none of this, um, at least from their perspective, but funding cuts from the federal government, changes to, you know, international student visas, um, and a, a sort of a, a and a, you know, a renewed increased endowment tax for private universities, um- Is it even possible for universities to do all of these things or to, to, uh, aspire to all of these, um, important civic roles when they’re struggling to fund their cancer research labs and their- <\/p>\n [00:25:51] Jeremi Suri: Right.<\/p>\n One of the greatest inventions of the last century was the modern research university that we created in the United States. It, it followed models from various other places. Um, and how do we know these modern research universities were one of the greatest inventions? Well, first of all, they drew talent from around the world that no other set of institutions ever drew.<\/p>\n Uh, people st- come to study at our universities that wouldn’t study anywhere else because of what our universities offer in terms of, uh, quality of talent and resources, and money is a big part of that. Also, these universities have produced almost all of the great inventions that we look at every day in our lives, right?<\/p>\n Some of them we might not like, like, you know, our iPhones, but it’s coming out of our universities, right? Particularly in medicine, as you referred to. So, um, we don’t wanna destroy these universities. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t sometimes spending money they shouldn’t spend and have organizational issues.<\/p>\n Uh, so far, the funding cuts and the other restrictions on universities, I have not seen that much of an effect yet because there’s a lag, right? And I think universities are running on fumes now. But I think what we are doing now is eating our seed corn. By reducing investments, particularly investments in lab science, uh, NIH and other NSF grants, National Institute for Health and National Science Foundation money, which is some of the biggest money that goes into research in those areas, those reductions will hit hard, uh, in the long run.<\/p>\n And I fear that we will see, if this continues 10 years from now, we will see a drop-off in the quality of research that comes out of universities, and we will also see, we’re starting to see this, talent go elsewhere. The model that has worked for us, Zachary, is that talented people from India, China, Australia, Uganda, and around the world have come to our campuses, studied, and then stayed and shared their knowledge with us or gone back to their countries and built relationships with us.<\/p>\n Uh, we’re, we’re in, we’re in jeopardy of losing that, and I think universities need to speak out about that, and I think our public needs to think about that. Now, there might be other ways to do the funding, but certainly one of the best ways to use government resources is to invest in research and invest in financial aid for young talented people to go to university.<\/p>\n There’s a lot of talk now about the Trump administration investing in companies to help them produce weapons more quickly to fill the weapon stocks that we’ve lost. I was just on a seminar about this the other day. Um, that is not the best way to do things, to give money to businesses. Businesses are operating in a market.<\/p>\n They should be hiring talent and taking knowledge from universities to use for their market activities. The money should be going into the bench research at universities where it’s non-proprietary and where the research will not be owned by Lockheed, but will be actually owned by the larger scientific community in one area or another.<\/p>\n And so th- this is something we need to come back to. I don’t think it has begun to pinch yet at universities, but I think that’s only ’cause we’re early in the process and is one of my concerns about where we’re going in the next few years. <\/p>\n [00:29:04] Zachary Suri: Yeah. A- and I, I would, I would urge also those who maybe share what I think are legitimate concerns, um, about, you know, universities straying from their academic mission or universities, um, you know, wasting money, all of these concerns which I think are grounded in legitimate, legitimate problems, um- Uh, I, I would urge those people to, um, support, instead of cutting universities or trying to, uh, at- use these problems to attack universities, um, to invest in going back to basics.<\/p>\n I mean, one of the things I think- Yes. Yes … there’s a lot of frustration among, among some Americans about, you know, the talented international students who come and are educated at American universities. The sort of feeling I think among some, or frustration, that, like, if their kids don’t get into, you know, a place like University of Texas or University of Wisconsin, like why should someone from, you know, Bangladesh come and, and get, and get a good education?<\/p>\n I, I think the, that’s the wrong question to be asking. I think the better question is, you know, what kind of education is that person getting? Right. And if that person is coming to the United States and only getting the, taking classes that are necessary towards an engineering certification and not taking a class on American history or something, that’s a problem.<\/p>\n We should be investing in those kinds of, you know, not just civics courses, but you know, basic knowledge about American history and American life, not just for, not just for international students, but for everyone. Yeah. I mean, there are plenty of American students who don’t understand basic American history.<\/p>\n You know, the Yale History Department does not offer an American history survey course for undergraduates, and, uh, that, that kind of investment, um, in those kinds of courses, that kind of work, um, getting more people into the conversation instead of trying to push people out, is I think where this frustration and this anger, in some cases that comes from a good place or from a, a benevolent place, is better directed than these kinds of punitive measures.<\/p>\n [00:31:00] Jeremi Suri: I totally agree. And, and for the record, by the way, the, the UT History Department offers a survey course. I teach it. I’m one of the faculty who teaches it. So we teach the US History survey course. In fact, it’s my favorite course to teach. Um, I, I think just building on what you said, though, I think none of our conversation today is designed to pretend that there aren’t real issues.<\/p>\n There are legitimate sources of concern. People should be concerned. Our universities receive a lot of money, and they play a very important role in our society and in a democracy. Uh, the public has a right to concerns. Our universities should not, you know, live on, you know, uh, ivory towers unconnected to the world.<\/p>\n No one is arguing for that. At least we’re not arguing for that. Um, but I do think, building on what you said, um, if we want to improve our universities, we have to be serious about not simply making ideological points, but actually trying to understand the good and the not good work that’s being done and how we can improve that, and that involves coming to universities.<\/p>\n I, I am struck, Zachary, repeatedly, this has been true for a long time, and it’s true on both sides of the political aisle. People have all kinds of criticisms of how we teach and all kinds of solutions they wanna offer, and almost none of the people offering those solutions and criticisms spend any time in a classroom.<\/p>\n I would like to see, uh, those who are concerned spending more time actually understanding what’s going on in its good and bad dimensions before they’re trying to offer what end up usually being ideological solutions. Um, most classrooms, uh, are open to anyone who wants to come. My classrooms certainly are.<\/p>\n I always have people who visit, usually not, uh, administrators, uh, usually not, um, people who are making public criticisms, but anyone is welcome to come and see what we do. And I think that’s really important because I think when you see what’s happening, you realize that the ideological arguments made one way or another don’t match up with the reality.<\/p>\n There is still a lot of room for reform, but what is mostly happening on college campuses, uh, anxious eighteen to twenty-one-year-olds are showing up half asleep in class, trying to understand the world around them and trying to move on with their lives. Uh, they’re ambitious, sometimes a little clueless, but ambitious, and, uh, faculty are trying their best to teach them, and I know very few faculty who, who are trying to indoctrinate their students.<\/p>\n Um, again, we can improve Uh, but we should improve off of a real knowledge of what we’re doing, not off of some, um, you know, image that doesn’t match the reality of what’s, what’s really happening on our campuses. And I fear sometimes that the efforts to bring in viewpoint diversity, which I support, because they end up bringing in new silos, a new conservative program, a new DEI program, uh, those things actually further separate students and further undermine the kinds of interaction, the kinds of learning that we really want.<\/p>\n Um, we want many points of view, but we want those points of view to come together in the classroom, in the library, in the laboratory. Um, and so I think we have to spend more time understanding what’s going on before we start throwing out solutions of one kind or another. <\/p>\n [00:34:09] Zachary Suri: I think that’s exactly correct, and, uh, I, I think that engagement with American universities, um, has to be the start of any effort to reform or change them.<\/p>\n And that’s not just something that people who are critical of universities need to do, but universities need to do a better job in g- engaging with the, with the wider world as well. I mean- <\/p>\n [00:34:29] Jeremi Suri: Absolutely … <\/p>\n [00:34:29] Zachary Suri: and, and, and that means, um, universities have always done a good job interacting with other highly educated institutions and people and communities, but the question becomes, you know, what is your university doing for the town it’s in, the neighborhood it’s in, um, the school district it’s in?<\/p>\n Um, and those questions I think, um, should be at the center of what university leaders are thinking about. And I fear that given the current political climate, it’s at the very bottom of the list of what they’re thinking about, not because they don’t care about it, but because it, it is, it– the, the priorities for a current university president or provost or dean, um, are much more on the sort of financial side, the sort of political survival side than on thinking about these broader, more important democratic questions.<\/p>\n [00:35:16] Jeremi Suri: I agree 100%, Zachary. I agree 100%. <\/p>\n [00:35:18] Zachary Suri: Wonderful. Well, thank you to our listeners for engaging with this, uh, university project, um, today, and, uh, thank you, Jeremi, and, uh, thank you everyone for, for joining us for this episode of This is Democracy.<\/p>\n [00:35:36] Intro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio And the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Scott Holmes. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find This is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.<\/p>\n See you next time.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2021\/03\/This-Is-Democracy-Logo-TPN-Update-2021.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/podcast-download\/4041\/this-is-democracy-episode-324-universities-today.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/podcast-player\/4041\/this-is-democracy-episode-324-universities-today.mp3","audio_player":"