When Student Protests Are University Byproducts
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(OPINION) The recent college protests have been alarming, but not for the expected reasons. On campuses across the nation, students and stowaways pitched their tents and built fortified encampments the past few weeks as commencements were moved and some even canceled — encampments entrenched with derision. In my 17 years as a college president, I’ve seen protests, but none so archetypal of activism based on contempt rather than conviction.
But why have college campuses become the primary battlefield? The protests themselves issue ultimatums to college administrators that, they believe, would bring justice for Palestinians. It cannot be that the protestors believe targeting, say, college endowments will effect real change. After all, college endowments’ investments in Israel are minuscule compared to the investments made by multinational corporations and conglomerates. Yet, I have heard of no protests by Fortune 500 employees camping out in C-suites or company atriums. Why college students on college campuses? The answer may hinge on the fact that many educational institutions have, perhaps unwittingly, created a context for foment, and that has activated the protestors.
The deepest conflicts of our time pit groups against each other in what has come to be seen as a zero-sum game. Colleges have become forums where agitators refuse to cogently advocate for their beliefs and to seek to persuade those with whom they disagree and, instead, rouse those occupying their echo chambers to drum for the complete eradication of their ideological opponents. I firmly share the belief that college campuses should afford students wide latitude to express and debate their convictions and should provide appropriate venues to voice their concerns on political issues. But I have struggled to understand why colleges, over recent years, have proven to be exceptionally fertile ground for contempt-based activism.
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Today, the answer seems clear — these student protests are the byproducts of an educational dogma that emphasizes disdaining the dissenters over engaging with well-formed ideas.
Over my several decades in higher education administration, I have watched universities across the nation abandoning traditional liberal arts education in favor of whatever fashionable ideology is making the most noise. The result is core curricula selected by Instagram, X and the raging of the day. I have seen in many elite institutions the divestment of what has been scornfully denoted “Western cultural hegemony” and the investment in what Christopher Lasch noted thirty years ago as “pseudo-radical,” deconstructive critical theories.
I have witnessed a morphing of colleges to become more like bootcamps for indoctrinating students rather than greenhouses to form students. I have noted the erosion of faculty that represent center-right politics go from bad to worse, with that group all but disappearing entirely in some disciplines. Even if the politics were reversed, the loss to education would be as concerning. Effective education requires the good-hearted grappling with the full panoply of ideas and thought. It is becoming rapidly clear that critical theory is distinctly antithetical to critical thinking.
I recognize that for some this critique will seem strange — perhaps even hypocritical — coming from the president of a Christian university (one where students are required to take 30 units of Bible, no less). Aren’t we and other Christian educational institutions in the business of catechizing our students into a self-assured confidence in “capital-T” Truth? Yes, of course we are. But to point that out as some sort of deficit is no critique at all and misses the point entirely.
A Christian framework of education — grounded as it must be in love and self-reflective wisdom — teaches students to develop their moral convictions and engage in considered discussions with those who hold vastly different views. In other words, we provide the antidote that many in the American academy desperately need.
The rich history of higher education in America through the mid-19th century was about moral formation and ordering priorities, tapping into the greatest thinking throughout history to cultivate keen minds and good character in order to graduate fine humans with honest souls. Today, many colleges encourage professors to graft their ideology onto their students and then compel them to believe that anyone who holds a contrary viewpoint is not merely wrong but worthy of condemnation and complete dismissal.
Not a small number of the students camping on quads are simply reflecting their institution’s homogenized curriculum. Too many students mimic the bland ideological conformity of their educators, who have failed to cultivate the virtues of rigorous argument and self-examination. Again, these student protests are byproducts of what they experience in lecture halls.
But this is not the case everywhere.
Over the past few weeks, there were plenty of colleges where the halls were hallowed, not seized; lawns soaked up the sun free from trampling and tents; sculptures stood in timeless repose not besmirched by graffiti; and students on their way to their last classes scurried instead of scuffled.
I must have missed them if there were any media reports or news clips of colleges and universities across America that are championing the timeless virtues, educating students in the enduring unmoved by the zeitgeist, and advocating the moral life over the self-authenticated life, the transcendent over the immanent. Encampments did not happen on those campuses.
At those colleges, students are taught to develop strong moral convictions based on their worldview and personal experience, and then advocate for those convictions based on the merit of their ideas. They are taught that if a theory of any kind can stand up to other theories, then so be it. These students refuse to bow to the current arc that bends toward eradication of any opposing understandings. Ideological uniformity all but erases students’ capacity for deep contemplation. It is not that students at these colleges do not care about the issues of the day, but they are being trained to practice restraint through reasoned and engaged discussions.
The way toward a civil society is more through speaking across a table than screaming across a barricade. With a modest analysis, one sees that the protests are constituted more by impassioned ignorance than the humane exchange of ideas, which should be at the heart of a flourishing university and society. While studying at Biola, students develop the discipline of critical thinking, sound reason, winsome dialogue, and listening in order to honor the speaker.
I do not argue that all higher education should be Christian, but I would urge that the virtues of humility, patience, kindness and goodness foundational to Christian thought are necessary to genuine education everywhere. And, given that those attributes are foundational to a just and effective civilization, the continued flourishing of the American experiment depends on inculcating them.
We need professors who help students resist the temptation of what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery,” viewing our forebears as some sort of “unsophisticated parents” while we are the “enlightened cool kids” doing “real education” for the contemporary world. We need our students to hear that hostile agitation is not the fruitful way to advocate for moral convictions. We need the academy to approach the present moment with humility recognizing that history itself will determine who is on its “right side.”
Integral to a flourishing society is the practice of engaging — with all the charity and accuracy we can muster — with all viewpoints, even those that we vehemently oppose. Real education requires that in the pursuit of truth we cultivate the capacity for understanding others’ voices and even disagreeing with them deeply without treating them with contempt, the disposition so evident in these recent protests.
Such events on America’s college campuses have reminded us that if our republic is to thrive, it is time for a revival of virtuous and refined arguments in the rising generation. Education should be grounded in a love of the given, a deep understanding and appreciation of our cultural and political inheritance — not dominated by deconstructive critical theories. Only then can productive reform proceed on the basis of critical self-reflection, which itself is the foundation of good faith argument.
When we see more of this, I anticipate the byproduct will be fewer destructive and fatuous student protests and more truly civil discourse, the ideal of the healthy university.
Dr. Barry H. Corey is the eighth president of Biola University, a private Christian university in Southern California recently recognized as the highest-ranked Christian university in North America for operationalizing its mission, and author of the books “Love Kindness: Discover the Power of a Forgotten Christian Virtue” and “Make the Most of It: A Guide to Loving Your College Years.”