The Weekly: Did Yale “Narrow” Its Mission Statement?

Understanding Yale’s change within the curious history of mission statements.

“Yale’s core mission is to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge through research and teaching.”

That’s the new mission statement President Maurie McInnis recently made official and the first obvious policy change since the faculty-led Yale Report came out last month. Gone are references to “improving the world,” educating “aspiring leaders worldwide who serve all sectors of society,” and carrying out that mission through a “diverse” community.

The change was explicitly recommended by the Yale Committee on Trust, which declared, “At a moment when higher education is being buffeted from all sides, it is imperative to understand what we are here for and what universities do best. That requires clarity, not diffusion, of purpose.”

In light of Yale’s revised mission, some are calling foul, arguing that Yale’s mission has been “narrowed” or “shrunk.” HxA member and Wesleyan President Michael Roth argued in the New York Times that Yale’s new mission is merely a “defense strategy” against the Trump administration, claiming that “the retreat from public purpose will not enhance trust; it will further erode it.”

McInnis says she (and the Yale Committee on Trust) simply “reaffirmed” Yale’s “core” mission, which always has a public purpose: “Our university’s purpose is found in our teaching, scholarship, and research, which contribute knowledge and breakthroughs to society and affirm the tangible connection between our efforts and the everyday lives of people across the nation and the world.”

An underlying question in all of this is what a mission statement even is, and what it should be. Depending on whom you ask, mission statements guide decision-making, define academic function, articulate community values, or amount to little more than corporate window dressing. Adding to the murkiness, it seems that “mission,” “purpose,” “goals,” or “function” are all distinct concepts, except when they’re not.

Responding to Yale’s change in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Brian Soucek argues that it is generic, and should instead be unique to Yale. In focusing on what universities in general should be, the committee “mistake[s] necessary conditions — universities’ defining commitment to teaching and research — for mission statements, which are meant to reflect the unique character and aspirations of a particular university.”

Whether those necessary conditions are in place, at Yale and elsewhere, is the question of the moment. Perhaps this isn’t even a mission, but rather a recognition of the core academic function of the university that needs to be explicitly named as a north star. Everything else, as I’ve written before, is superfluous to what a university actually is. Without the knowledge function, a college or university of any kind is not what it claims to be.

Affirming a “core” mission of a university seems vital for reform because everything seems to stem from the university’s purpose, and university presidents are now being more vocal about this. Dartmouth President Sian Beilock stated in an interview recently, “The only way I know how to make decisions is to be very clear about what our mission is.”

But even if we could agree on the need to name the “core,” how far should a mission extend beyond this core function? This question is the crux of most debates over policies such as institutional neutrality or others that are at least in part conditional on what a university’s mission is. Even Yale’s new mission statement webpage reflects this plurality of mission breadth and purpose. Although the university’s formal statement is focused on the core academic function, new sections for its various colleges and schools now state their respective, specialized missions.

The relative novelty of university mission statements contributes to some of this debate and semantic confusion. Yale did not adopt its first formal mission statement until the 1980s, when many universities were adopting this convention from the corporate business world (and accreditors began to require it). Today, nearly all universities have a mission statement, but until the 1980s, most universities simply relied on their charters to outline their purpose.

Mission statement or not, Yale’s own stated purposes have changed over the centuries, and often with national implications. The 1701 founding charter focused the college on arts and sciences in addition to its religious charge. This approach, including instruction in Greek and Latin, was defended in the highly influential Reports on the Course of Instruction in Yale College of 1828. Over the next century-plus, Yale transformed from a religious college to a secular German-style research university, adding some facets (like PhD programs) while dropping others (like compulsory chapel). Yale’s role as a bellwether for academia was deepened by the critiques of recent graduate William F. Buckley in his 1951 bestseller, God and Man at Yale.

Along with most other universities, Yale established a contemporary mission statement in the 1980s that was then expanded in 2016 by President Peter Salovey at a time in the academy when one particular vision of social justice was creeping into university missions. It referred to “improving the world today” and fostering “an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community.” Supporters saw the wave of mission statements like this as a sign of universities taking social responsibility, but critics saw politicization and mission creep. This sector-wide change is often linked to plummeting public trust in universities. In a provocative interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Harvard “gadfly” Harvey C. Mansfield argues that this was a mistake: “In the university, you are not just a part of society. You rise above it, and you consider questions that partisans don’t.”

Could a higher education mission shift, following Yale’s lead, be the start of a move away from overt political posturing, redirecting more attention to the work of scholarship? Maybe. HxA member Martha McCaughey elegantly argued for “scholar-optimism” in inquisitive, saying that “Of course, politics and scholarship can never be completely separated. But striving to keep them separated — even when studying pressing social and political issues — is central to a scholar’s intellectual autonomy.”

Those of us who welcome Yale’s new mission statement cannot write off the previous version as a break from historical tradition. Debating and re-stating the purpose of higher education is the historical tradition. And as a tool from 1980s corporate culture, the mission statement per se is hardly sacred. But at a time when U.S. higher education is publicly grappling with its social role and reputation, affirming the core academic function — whether it’s called a “mission,” “purpose,” “goal,” or otherwise — seems essential to restoring trust.

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