Editor’s note: Below is a preview of an opinion piece authored by John Tomasi and Tyler VanderWeele published Monday, August 24, 2026 in The Washington Post. To read the full article, click here.
At many American universities, progressive assumptions seem embedded in the machinery of campus life. Left-wing speakers and views are applauded, while conservative views (on abortion, for example) are often treated as beyond the pale.
Yet mission statements and promotional materials tend to describe the university’s purpose in nonpartisan terms. When studies show the dearth of right-leaning faculty, administrations typically insist this is just the result of neutral search processes. A gap has opened between the impartial, truth-seeking role universities claim for themselves and the policies they pursue.
A Gallup poll from June showed public confidence in higher education dropping yet again. A viral article in the Atlantic by a former professor has set off alarms about the depth, and apparent hypocrisy, of progressive commitments at elite colleges. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s recent call for universities to recommit themselves publicly to “rigorous teaching, pathbreaking research, and national service” could be read as an effort to restore public trust by realigning what universities tell the public they stand for and what they do in practice.
McMahon, readers of the professor’s story and disillusioned poll respondents all presumably hope that colleges will respond by reforming campus practices to better align with the ideal of the impartial university.
We share that hope. But if universities are unwilling to abandon the progressive commitments they hold dear, we propose an alternative: Admit it…
