ATTACKING THE ELITES

A former Harvard president examines the moral and political criticisms leveled against elite universities.

Economic inequality in American society permeates its systems of higher education. In his latest book, following The Struggle To Reform Our Colleges, Bok examines the challenges facing these elite institutions through critiques made by the left and right. Liberals have decried practices such as legacy admissions (which favor applicants from wealthy families) and investing in companies that perpetuate “evils and injustices.” The author suggests that while legacy admissions might offer “modest financial gains” for the institutions, the practice is also at odds with “the more important public purposes that our leading colleges and universities ought to serve.” On other issues, such as investing in problematic companies, the ethics become murky. Divestment affects everything from faculty salaries to student aid. A moral compromise, like the one Bok tried to achieve by offering scholarships to Black South African students, tries to balance all factors, though with admitted difficulty. Where liberals tend to focus on social issues, conservatives focus on what they see as attacks on personal freedoms—for example, what they perceive as liberal indoctrination of students by leftist professors and a concomitant loss of free speech. While empirical evidence suggests the professoriate tends to attract more liberals, Bok suggests that elite colleges and universities can bring faculties into greater political balance by hiring professors based on real-world credentials, such as conservative representatives and staffers. At the same time, while diversity is the key to a thriving university, it can also give rise to incidents of bigoted speech, which Bok believes should be addressed through reassurances offered to offended students and reasoned conversations with perpetrators. In this evenhanded and pragmatic text, Bok presents an all-too-rare moderate perspective on a system as ravaged by extremes as the society it serves.

A skillfully argued study of higher education.