Policy Implementers Can Shape Campus Culture More Than Legislators Do

I spent years translating laws into practice inside a public university system. Here's what that taught me about the real levers of open inquiry.

For most states, the 2026 legislative session has wrapped up with significant implications for open inquiry in higher education. Officials in several states are taking bold positions on higher education policy to force action through legislative mandates. Legislation obviously matters. It can broaden or restrict what faculty teach, the books students read, and how universities pursue their truth-seeking mission. However, policy implementation also matters, especially because most legislation is a mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses. Yet implementation is noticeably absent from conversations about legislative mandates. If we care about the state of open inquiry on college and university campuses, then we also should be looking at policy implementation as a tool to advance these efforts.

I speak of policy implementation from a place of experience. I was an implementer myself for several years within a public university system, working behind the scenes to translate legislation and system-level strategic initiatives into actionable policies designed to optimize student experiences and streamline administrative workflows. Despite my belief in the transformative power of policy in higher education, I sensed that my role was simply that of a conduit, not an interpreter. There was an implied expectation that system employees were to remain impartial and diplomatic. I adopted that persona to avoid damaging relationships, revealing my personal views, or disrupting the leadership structure in my office, even when I had legitimate concerns about the legislation, the strategic direction of the university, and how policy would be operationalized.

That experience revealed an unsettling paradox that diminishes policy implementation to a bureaucratic exercise and policy implementers into invisible architects. Those who implement policy — the group with the most practical power to advance viewpoint diversity on campus — are also hesitant to use that power. My role as a policy implementer shaped how I understand the gap between what legislation says and what implementation produces, and why filling that gap matters for open inquiry.

As we transition from state-level policy adoption to system- and campus-level policy implementation, filling in this gap in our understanding is critical. Without it, recently passed legislation risks becoming nothing more than a compliance exercise when it could accomplish so much more to advance open inquiry. Understanding the policy implementation role situates university administrators as active agents –– rather than passive participants –– in the quest to advance open inquiry. It also clarifies that legislation at the point of policy adoption has gaps that only thoughtful implementation can address.

This understanding starts with the difference between policy making and policy implementation. Policy making is a dynamic, cyclical process initiated by government officials to shape higher education including setting an agenda, establishing values, and approving mandates. State-level policymakers, then, are members of the state legislature who pass a campus free speech law, for example. Policy implementation is part of the policy-making process that occurs within university system offices and at individual institutions in response to state-level policy making. Policy implementers are the administrators and leaders within institutions and university system offices whose daily decisions determine, in practice, how laws shape campus life.

In comparing the effects of policy makers and policy implementers, often the latter matters more than the former. While legislation establishes values and often arrives with effective dates and specific requirements, the burden of interpretation and operationalization sits with university administrators — the policy implementers. For example, a student affairs administrator becomes a policy implementer when adapting the university’s process for approving speaker invitations and events to comply with viewpoint neutrality mandates. Likewise, academic affairs administrators become policy implementers when revising promotion and tenure criteria.

What does policy implementation look like in practice? Several states, including Arizona, Tennessee, and North Carolina have passed legislation requiring universities to ensure that any time, place, and manner restrictions placed on speech be “viewpoint-neutral.” Despite the common terminology at the level of legislation across several states, policy implementers were left to operationalize what “viewpoint-neutral” means for their system or institution. The Arizona Board of Regents implemented mandatory accountability requirements with system-level oversight. Without clearly defining key terms, Tennessee’s law authorized each institution’s governing body to operationalize the term “viewpoint-neutral” independently, producing inconsistent standards across systems and campuses. The UNC Board of Governors intentionally delegated implementation power to individual campuses, which produced a patchwork of approaches with similarly uneven results.

There is an iterative process behind this example. For policy implementers, reading new legislation is only the beginning. Government relations staff and general counsel at colleges and universities are typically the first to interpret the bill, outlining where compliance is required and flagging areas where institutions retain autonomy. Only after the interpretive work is complete does policy implementation begin in earnest. This phase involves convening groups, hearing competing perspectives, revising policy language, and acting with discretion to outline appropriate procedures.

The personal tension I experienced as a policy implementer is evidence of a structural problem in higher education. Policy implementers are largely invisible –– as I was –– both in public discourse and within their own institutions. Michael Lipsky called this phenomenon “street-level bureaucracy” in his landmark work on how frontline workers shape policy outcomes in practice. Lipsky’s central insight was paradoxical: frontline workers wield real influence over how policy is implemented, yet go largely unseen. Morrison and Milliken’s research on “organizational silence” explains the internal conditions that make policy implementers invisible. Their argument was that there are “powerful forces” — actual or perceived — within organizations that cause employees to self-censor despite the power they have to positively shape outcomes. Self-censorship reinforces implementers’ invisibility.

Policy implementers’ relative insularity within the structure of higher education comes at a cost to viewpoint diversity. First, it situates colleges and universities as passive entities when they, in fact, retain quite a bit of room to shape a policy’s impact. Second, policy implementers are failing to embrace the influence for good they can have, even when the legislation they are implementing is clearly driven by a partisan agenda, and especially when the legislation is vague or overreaching. Third, most discussions around viewpoint diversity apply directly to faculty and students, yet we have too rarely called out the need for policy implementers and other administrative staff to center viewpoint diversity in their work. Policy implementers drive change. Distinctive to their role is defining vague terminology; assessing the actual condition of viewpoint diversity a legislative mandate is meant to address; shaping programming and education; and determining accountability structures that support cultural change.

To be clear, I am not advocating for more legislation, and thereby, more policy implementation. Texas has passed more legislation than almost any other state, yet the culture of open inquiry on its campuses remains contested at best.

Nor am I suggesting that we can fully mitigate legitimately bad legislation with good policy implementation. Other bills like the ones in Alabama, Kentucky, and Oklahoma will place power over faculty tenure appointments and dismissals, curriculum, and governance in the hands of boards and administrators, threatening academic freedom and shared governance. These bills are hostile to open inquiry at the level of policy-making, a problem good implementation cannot fully resolve, though thoughtful implementation can make bad legislation less bad. Indiana’s 2024 legislation, by contrast, arguably supported open inquiry, yet vague requirements and a mandated complaint system can tilt implementation against that goal. Policy designed to enhance open inquiry is dependent on conscientious implementation.

Higher education needs principled policy implementers who care about viewpoint diversity, who own the power they have to shape legislative mandates, and who choose visibility over self-censorship. Owning this power means assessing new legislative mandates through a nonpartisan lens and clearly defining vague terminology in ways that support viewpoint diversity. It also means building a network of diverse partners to assist in using political mandates as a lever for change rather than as a mere compliance exercise. Institutions and those responsible for policy implementation can reject a passive, impartial, or homogeneous approach to policy to ensure these new mandates reflect and support a commitment to open inquiry. This moment demands nothing less.

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