One of the few things many on the political left and right can agree on these days, even if for different reasons, is that higher education is in crisis. Progressives often decry the “corporatization” of the academy, while conservatives denounce its ideological capture by “woke radicals.”
Many academics, who as a group tend to be politically progressive, continue to insist that higher education’s leftward tilt is nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, other faculty point to the recent attacks by the Trump administration and argue that “now is not the time” for self-reflection, let alone self-criticism. Over the last several years, however, a growing group of scholarly voices have acknowledged that trust in higher education is cratering, due at least in part to an apparent political monoculture that faculty and administrators must take responsibility for enabling.
As two academics who see an urgent need for change on campus, we welcome the rise of this long overdue introspection and believe that it is incumbent upon us and other faculty to move to repair this breach of trust before those outside the academy do it for us. Yet in true academic form, this new introspective wind blowing through higher education is longer on diagnoses than cures, probably because the path forward is so fraught.
Indeed, at a time when the White House is attempting to control and even punish universities in the name of anti-wokeness, conceding that political orthodoxy is a problem in some parts of academia can risk further retribution by the Trump administration. And while advocating for “viewpoint diversity” is an admirable goal, it can be very hard to put it into practice without caricaturing or tokenizing political positions.
Meanwhile, even broaching the question of whether we academics have played a role in alienating ourselves and our institutions from the larger society can exact a professional price from our colleagues, given that many of them still vehemently deny any responsibility for the problems we face. We know this to be true, as we’ve both been accused of being complicit in a right-wing assault on universities just for insisting these issues deserve attention. This is the case even though one of us, who is originally from Hungary, has been a vocal critic of Viktor Orban (until recently, the country’s conservative populist prime minister) while the other has had her research funding clawed back by the Trump administration for being “at odds with the interests of the federal government.”
At the same time, refusing to acknowledge that academics must work to regain public esteem, or hand-wringing about the risks of taking action, only clears the way for those who simply want to barge ahead unchallenged. Whether they are the government, or activists who want to “burn it all down,” or faculty and others who proclaim that everything is fine, the future of the academy cannot be left to the loudest voices. The answer, however, is not some milquetoast compromise or even much-touted efforts at “dialogue across difference.”
For us, the answer is our new Center for the American Experience at The New School, which was born out of our twin commitments to introspection and action. Unlike “civil discourse” or “civics” initiatives on many other campuses that often operate within a narrow band of topic areas, such as philosophy, political science, and history, our center brings together design, the performing arts, the humanities, and the social sciences to explore the past and present of the United States and its role in the world. We host conversations, panels, concerts, theater, film screenings, and other artistic exhibitions. We also organize reading groups that gather students and neighbors together to discuss foundational texts of American history and culture. All our events are free and open to the public. What’s more, we are faculty-led, not established by a state legislature.
All of our events are held in person, a commitment that grows out of our post-Covid experience observing how challenging it has recently become for students and academics alike to engage in civil, face-to-face interactions, not to mention spending a few hours immersed in a lecture or concert with a room full of unfamiliar people. And since curiosity is one of our organizing principles, our events bring together different perspectives and disciplines in open dialogue, not to deepen divisions, but to explore the many possibilities for a shared future.
We focus on the “American experience” because, like many people in the United States, a significant number of our students are unfamiliar with this country’s ideals, politics, institutions, history, and cultures. As a result of this lack of basic historical and civic literacy, students often have little understanding of how this country became so powerful, let alone the complex way its attendant mystique — from “the American Dream” to “the melting pot” to “the self-made man” — operates. We try to fill in some of these gaps because otherwise they can easily be filled by simplified political narratives.
In a recent history class, for example, when reading the 1912 diary of a Russian Jewish immigrant girl, who wrote breathlessly of the opportunity to “shed her impossible Hebrew name” and learn English at school, and of her “despised immigrant clothing,” students were skeptical that such patriotic emotions could be anything but “internalized oppression.” The possibility that an “American dream” of economic mobility continues to inspire immigrants who come to this country, often at enormous risk, was also not an idea that they took seriously until we began to explore it through memoir, oral history, ethnography, and analyses of political campaigns.
Instilling uncritical patriotism is not our aim. Even to effectively critique American exceptionalism, however, one must understand the power of this place and its professed — and often unfulfilled — ideals, including as a source of sincere inspiration rather than only oppression. At the same time, we take on “the American experience” against a frightening national backdrop in which legislation restricting the right to teach honestly about much of our nation’s past — slavery, sexuality, indigenous expropriation, and racism — threatens a full understanding of America from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum.
Troubled by these dynamics, we began to imagine how we might better serve our students and our broader community. For years, we have found that some of the most productive intellectual experiences stem from collectively exploring questions of culture and aesthetics quite apart from the familiar controversial issues that lend themselves to predictable polarization. Closely reading a popular 19th-century children’s literacy primer, analyzing the rise of the department store, unpacking a 1970s Supreme Court case around boys’ hairstyles, or discussing the polarized social media reactions to the televised Lindsay Clancy trial, for example, all allow students to grapple with the complexities of American experience by organizing class discussions around issues in which the “right” or “wrong” (or “right” and “left”) interpretation may not immediately be apparent. Students seem to be more open to considering what “America” might mean through art, design, fashion, and music, rather than only through the conventional political analysis that is so common today. A student hesitant to debate climate change or gentrification — or who is too ready with talking points on these hot-button issues — might engage in unexpected ways with a photography exhibit on the natural environment or oral histories of an evolving neighborhood.
Focusing on culture can go a long way to soften unhelpful binaries — whether they be right/left or oppressor/oppressed — and is integral to opening minds in a way that builds community and lessens polarization. Contrary to caricatures of intolerant students, we find that in the intimate seminar rooms core to the humanities and social sciences where we have spent most of our careers, students do display intellectual humility and generosity with one another. What’s more, this is true even when ideas that would be bombshells online — for example, whether the “missing” posters of Israeli hostages are propaganda, or why many low-income people of color want greater police presence in their neighborhoods — are aired. For this reason, rather than frame our efforts around “civil discourse” or “dialogue across difference,” or pit strong voices on controversial issues against one another, we instead lean into this kind of in-person inquiry across texts, performances, art, speakers, and activities focused on the country in which we are all living and learning.
It is our job as professors to ensure students are exposed to a wide range of perspectives on a given subject, not a list curated to bolster their, or our, preconceived notions. One of the most gratifying comments we’ve received is that students are not sure where we personally stand on controversial issues, because we entertain a range of perspectives in our course materials and encourage their expression — even the noxious ones — as long as they are made in good faith. The richness of these interactions depends on our fundamental commitment to do our best to teach students how to articulate their ideas and think through urgent questions such as “What is America?”, not what to think about them, or whether certain honest questions are out of bounds.
Much of our work at the Center involves taking these lessons beyond the classroom. We convene community reading groups to discuss primary sources, from the Declaration of Independence to a narrative by a Native American girl to Langston Hughes’ poetry, bringing together international students, activists, professors, and other New Yorkers from different walks of life in spirited discussions. We also host public talks with eminent speakers such as Walter Isaacson to reflect on what makes an “American story” and Jill Lepore to contemplate the relationship between artificial intelligence and civic health. To mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, we screened a documentary on the participatory process of rebuilding Lower Manhattan, followed by a conversation — moderated by our university president — with architectural critic Paul Goldberger, community organizer Carolyn Lukensmeyer (who were both integral to this process) and Jeremy Varon, a historian of the post-9/11 peace movement. We have also launched a series on the future of American higher education, with the first panel focusing on intellectual pluralism. The center’s student fellows from across disciplines — from the social sciences to design to the performing arts — help to plan and take part in these events.
Some people, academics and otherwise, are surprised to hear of our “American experience” initiative, as in some quarters, the New School has a reputation as a hotbed of the sort of intense political activism that can easily veer into anti-Americanism. The reaction is understandable, since it is not uncommon at our institution to hear the United States dismissed primarily as a project of “settler colonialism” or capitalism run amok, or North America referred to by the name given to it by some Native American tribes: Turtle Island.
At the same time, the Center is aligned with other campus traditions. For instance, one of our north stars is the work of one of The New School’s earliest faculty members, philosopher Horace Kallen, who conceptualized the theory of “cultural pluralism,” which balances difference and unity in a diverse society. Similarly, Jewish intellectuals persecuted during the Third Reich found refuge at The New School, which took great risk to protect them. Perhaps most fundamentally, and in contrast to more traditional institutions, straddling the line between community and campus in response to social and political issues is baked into The New School’s founding — as it is into the Center’s as well.
These sensibilities are not just relics of the past — on our campus or in the academy at large. Despite the protestations of the loudest voices, our quieter conversations with faculty, students, and other community members consistently reveal that there is a real curiosity and desire to understand this fractured moment in American history and how we arrived here, and to contribute to charting a better future. Our work thus far — conversations, community reading groups, lectures, performances, and student fellowships — is just the beginning of a vision that takes root on college campuses but that we hope will ultimately bloom in the wider world. The stakes are simply too high not to try.
