Name: Will American colleges survive Trump? | The Gray Area
Uploaded: 2025-07-21T17:19:47.000Z
Duration: 52 min 27 s
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Hey, I'm Sean host of the gray area for the show this week.

I talked to Michael Roth He's the president of Wesleyan University and the author of a bunch of great books about College we talked about the state of the American University why it's under attack And what he thinks college is actually for in this age.

I hope you enjoy it Michael Roth welcome to the show glad to be here I have heard you say that being a university president is the best job in the world.

I Got to say man From where I sit it sure doesn't look like the best job in the world right now.

Is this still your official Position it is my position both officially and unofficially People presidents do a lot of whining about how hard it is but we're very well paid as most people know because it's public and I get to be around lots of interesting young people Scholars researchers teachers So, of course there are Challenges, especially now the federal government has stepped into the breach to provide Extraordinary challenges, but despite all the protests of how hard it is a woe is me that you hear from from presidents I I think it's a it's a very cool job I mean, I'm working now talking to you as part of my job, you know, I go to a football game.

I'm working Lucky you you get to talk to me.

Yeah higher ed as you know is In a pretty tough place at the moment for a variety of reasons that we will get into You have been out there as much as any university president maybe more than any other defending universities you were Just at a conference in fact and you said very bluntly That the federal government and I'm quoting the federal government is trying to destroy civil society By undermining the legitimacy of colleges and universities.

What do you mean that help people understand?

Well, I guess I should start with what what did I mean by civil society and I I see and I'm not alone in this the march of authoritarianism Often characterized by the effort to erase what philosophers or political theorists have called intermediary institutions Be they churches or corporations?

Schools universities entertainment we would say these days Parts of the society that have Legitimacy independent of the government's ideology or power and When you have an authoritarian or would-be authoritarian one of the things they often do maybe always do is Try to either erase those independent sources of legitimacy or as the Nazis say coordinate them, you know, glag shaltum Somehow coordinate all of them in the direction that the leader wants to go in and so I think it's it's extraordinarily clear that the Trump administration is hell-bent on destroying civil society Understood as that arena of our culture and our polity that has sources of legitimacy independent of the ideology of the person in the White House and You see that in the the attack on law firms You see it in the attack on the press I mean, it's it what enormous success of this has been that we got used to that kind of stuff and The war on universities is similar to that, you know, they're not really going after universities that have egregious issues of civil rights violations They're going after the high profile high legitimacy Institutions like Harvard like UVA like the other Ivy League schools with the exception of Dartmouth and and they're doing that because these schools have They have a claim on our allegiance or respect that is not founded in the ideology of Those currently in the White House when you say destroying what do you actually mean?

I mean, what is the administration actually doing to?

stifle or Censor or otherwise disrupt the mission and the independence of Universities across the country.

Well, they they start with easy thing, right like Trans women athletes.

I think there are 12 in the country in bars NCA varsity sports And that that's that's it.

That's a winning issue for a variety of reasons And so they the White House the White House is going to determine who plays Volleyball Okay, and then they're going to determine how to teach Mideast or Near Eastern Studies Okay They're going to say if you don't teach Near Eastern Studies the way we want you to with appropriate respect for Israel.

Let's say Then you're not going to get money for Alzheimer's research Now again, okay, it's not Harvard But what happens is that everybody in Higher education Starts hedging their bets that is they start moving away from anything that might offend Those in the White House and those beholden to people in the White House And so you have this slide from the university as fostering an oppositional culture Which it has in the United States for a long time at least since the Second World War Towards the universities as Institutions in which people with money power Diplomas and legitimacy that they start trying to anticipate what they should say to not annoy or even to please the President and his friends and that to me is destroying higher education just like it would be destroying journalism If the administration was able to punish Broadcast journalists for editing interviews Make it just impossible to edit an interview without pissing off the president That then you're going to destroy journalism not Ted not in one fell swoop But the news this morning at Paramount has decided to what's in 16 million dollars to settle What everyone knows is a bug everyone knows is a bogus case.

It'll mean the journalists just move closer to those in power and that to me will Destroy the independence of this sector and I think that's the point I don't think President Trump really cares what kind of Alzheimer's research is being done at Harvard But he wants to make sure that People at Harvard and then everyone who doesn't have the resources that Harvard has to fight Everyone else lines up and I think that's why you don't see a lot of opposition from colleges universities right now Because everyone has already started lining up Well, you mentioned UVA and I wanted to ask about that because it's it's in the news and for people who don't know the president of UVA Recently resigned or shouldn't say resigned he was Forced out by the Justice Department as a condition to I guess settle the civil rights investigation into the school's diversity or DEI program However, however, you want to put it.

I assume you you are in a you're the leader of a university president signal group chat What are your colleagues saying about this How would you characterize what went down there and do you see it as Pretending what might be coming else I do.

I mean it wasn't it Christine Ohm Who said something like?

Colleges should be where pay attention Do you know we can do this to you, too?

And so what happened it at UVA for what I know is only what's in the press Actually, I know Jim Ryan a little bit he was he was dedicated to diversity equity inclusion, by the way the mission statement of the University of Virginia Calls says it's the university is defined by a diverse community.

That's actually in their own mission statement and and President Ryan had gotten the governing board to approve Significant expenditures to try to create a more a more diverse community at UVA and that of course is currently running a would run afoul of The president's interpretation of civil rights statutes Keyword there is interpretation Yeah And I my view is that actually the the guys who win the election and have the right to do that You know when Obama and Biden were in power they interpreted the civil rights statutes to say that if you're accused of Sexual assault you don't get to cross-examine the person accusing you And that was an extraordinary step And and they and they threatened schools with severe punishments if they didn't implement those policies in that time But they actually never Punished any school as far as I know.

I mean they just they negotiated with them to change the way they handle sexual assault on Campuses, but I do think the Trump administration Has the right to say that anything that smacks of reverse discrimination is a violation of the civil rights statutes and I don't think this is a wise policy myself, but They won the election and we have Wesleyan changed the way we approach this We had a policy where we said we had target of opportunity hires We had an all-white department and you knew of a really great scholar Who was going to add racial or ethnic diversity to your department?

Or military veteran who was going to be could join the physics department where you and you didn't have many veterans Let's say in that section of the sciences Or any veterans, let's then we would say let's try to hire that person even if it wasn't Their turn so to speak we can't do that anymore and I accept that I mean, I don't again I don't like it, but I don't you don't always get what you want in democracy So that seems to me fine.

But what they did at UVA is To say that the university wasn't moving quickly enough To change its policies to be in accord with this new interpretation of civil rights statutes and They had done many changes as far as I could tell But I it seemed to me and I this is my interpretation I have no inside knowledge of this that they wanted a trophy.

They wanted Jim Ryan's Resignation as a trophy because that's a warning to other people You put what Ryan's head on a stick and you put it out there and then other presidents say I Don't want to run afoul of this administration and when you say the government has a You think the government has a right to encroach in this way?

well, I think that their understanding of it is Is it's a reason it's a an interpretation that I find mistaken But it's not incoherent, I mean, I don't I in other words The I think the decision about affirmative action and missions was was wrong I I don't like it, but it's it's there's an argument for it that states very clearly that Discrimination in the current environment Is wrong, even if it is meant to correct historic or historic discrimination or patterns of sociological discrimination systemic We like to say discrimination They say no what matters is individual fairness.

I think that's wrong, but I think that's coherent position that individual fairness trumps everything and That you can't substitute history and sociology for Individual judgment Again, I can't have an argument about why that's wrong in my view and when they would say why it's right in their view I my view is that they brought they won the election.

They get to enforce the rules that in a coherent way that and stay within the law what we're seeing instead is the use of civil rights legislation to ensure the obedience of Institutions Here, you know because the the new VA was about DEI at Harvard now, it's about protecting Jews Which is I think just a sham a lie But they're using that as a cover to ensure that the institutions conform To the wishes of those in power and that is different Can I ask my car are you feeling any of this at Wesleyan right now?

What are you dealing with there on the ground?

What are you hearing from students parents?

Professors has this touched your university.

I think if you have a hospital or Massive PhD programs in the sciences it it hits you very differently then Let's say a liberal arts university like ours where we do have PhD programs in the sciences and we do have federal funding But it's a it's a smaller scale.

We're not Immune to this these threats, but they're not They're not existential either So we feel it to some extent for sure I mean we have Pell Grant students and we have grants from the National Endowments and from the NIH and we've had some grants canceled, but I I I we haven't felt it the same way as Some of the schools one reads about in the newspaper As you know a lot of people shrug their shoulders at all of this.

They think What's the big deal these campuses are full of privileged people with predictably extreme views views that aren't representative of most of the country So who cares to that sort of reaction and it is a common reaction Well, it's been an orchestrated reaction.

I think that You know them at UVA the fastest-growing majors.

I think our computer science and the fast-growing Minor is data science Hardly the stuff of woke lunatics and At Harvard, you know, the the most popular majors are the ones that lead to Wall Street again This is this notion that that Harvard or UVA is filled with people with extreme views who are Unrepresentative of America, they're unrepresentative of America because they're there's they're really smart It's smarter than I am You know, I couldn't get in there.

I couldn't get have gotten it when I was a Young person that I certainly couldn't get in today.

I mean, they're just really smart gifted people and So, of course, there's a lot of resentment to them, which is a reaction that is cultivated by the right these days And it's unfortunate because in a democracy you can also be really proud of people who excel And we are right where we are proud of people who excel even though they do things.

We can't do like when I watch I don't know Patrick Mahoney's play quarterback and escape a crazy rush You know, I'm filled with admiration I don't feel like oh he should he should I don't know we should shoot him in the leg or something because he's so good or You know or you know the elite Fighters in the Navy SEALs to say or the Army Rangers We don't look we don't think of them as elitist.

We just think of them as exceptional but at some of these schools we resent them for having Created an environment where people like those guys can thrive and the rest of us don't have access to it and You know, I think that there's understandable resentment about that.

So I think that the That in a healthy democracy you allow people to experiment with ideas With art with science with Politics there's it's never totally open-ended.

Of course, there are always some guardrails or on these things and what we're seeing now is a concerted effort to bring those guardrails in so that people have to resemble the those in power right now and that is Unusually in history United States.

It has happened in other countries but that reduction of a space of experimentation is Not just about Harvard or University of Michigan or your local community college.

It'll also be about the Newspapers you read it'll be about broadcast television.

It'll be about Hollywood It's already about law firms, right which ones get to have access to federal buildings I mean that notion those executive orders that said if you have defended certain people that the president doesn't like your Company will no longer have access to the federal buildings.

I mean It's wildly ambitious in its authoritarianism if they get to push around Harvard there certainly will push around push push around Wesleyan and Middlesex Community College and And Rutgers and you know, and etc You use the word orchestrated do you think this is completely manufactured Do you think this is just partisan opportunism or is there something deeper going on here?

I mean even if some of this Backlash some of this resentment is cynical and and engineered and no doubt a lot of it is How much have universities contributed to it through leadership failures or bad policies?

Yeah, it's a it's a it's a fair question.

I don't like it as you can imagine because I when when people ask me this question, I say It would be like saying to the Ukrainians hey, come on Hunter Biden Corruption You have them you have problems in the mining industry All of which I mean, there's there's some there's some stuff there.

It's not great But when the Russians are attacking, I mean, it's not that's not why they're attacking The Russians are attacking Ukraine because they want to take it over the Trump administration is attacking you colleges universities because they want to take them over not because they they I don't know.

They shouldn't have had encampments or because not enough conservatives are going into physics So, yes universities Have real problems But I don't think that those problems are what has led to the assault on free speech on freedom of association and on The ability of schools to educate students the way they see fit the problems universities Are our political problems and We haven't done a good job in solving them, let me just mention two quick things I'm sorry to go on so long and an answer to your your brief question but let me just mention two things one is the ideological Conformity or the ideological narrowness of the faculty in most colleges and universities Especially at those like mine and then highly selective schools in the Northeast but all over the country University faculty Faculties are Mostly people left of center and that has gotten much worse over time And I think it's about prejudice on the part of the faculty not only prejudice, but that faculty members hire folks who with whom they're comfortable and So they hire people whose political views they're more comfortable with and I think that's a problem I think it should be fixed.

I think that it could and I think it should be fixed by the faculty itself That is they should being aware of their prejudices They should counteract them as best they can so I think that's a Significant problem and then there's the broader cultural problem.

Has for a good chunk of time now Define its quality on the basis of the number of people that are excluded from it So we prize being highly selective.

I use that phrase myself a few moments ago.

We're a highly selective University What does that mean?

we don't we reject most people who want to go there and That has that's a very American thing it's not only American, but it's it's you know that you want the thing you can't get access to that's a traditional capitalist bourgeois Fact that lots of people want the thing that they have trouble getting access to and Colleges universities I have said over time have cultivated condescension rather than democratic practices, so That and So in a culture that of grievance and resentment, which is ours in the last at least decade to 15 years Colleges universities are especially vulnerable because we have Prided ourselves on how hard it is to get into our schools rather than These schools that are so extraordinarily wealthy Deciding to educate not another hundred or two hundred people but to educate five times as many students because they can afford to do so but they don't take that step and Then the last thing I'll mention quickly, which is such an obvious thing that colleges and universities do that's dramatically unfair Is that they give preferences to their own?

Legacy preferences, which are the Trump administration has not targeted They probably could do it without political cost but legacy preferences that you know You take somebody because their parents went to your school.

I mean, it's so obviously unfair and a highly selective school that it's California's trying to do away with it but in the Northeast It's very much entrenched and it's it's it's a great symbol for people of how the system is rigged against newcomers Support For the show comes from Shopify Starting a business is all about turning your ideas into reality and to see it through you need the right tools tools like Shopify Shopify is a commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and they say 10% of all e-commerce in the US from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started like dr Sean Ellings drillings and fillings and the gray area sole patch die for hip cats who want to look as young as they feel Shopify's design studio lets you build a big beautiful online store that matches your brand style You can also use their AI tools to step up your content creation Plus you can easily create email and social media campaigns to meet your customers wherever they are If you're ready to sell you can be ready for Shopify You can turn your big business idea into reality with Shopify on your side You can sign up for your $1 per month trial period and start selling today at Shopify comm slash Fox Go to Shopify comm slash Fox Shopify comm slash Fox Support for today's show comes from give well You might have read news on some of the massive cuts happening to foreign aid and with everything going on It might be hard to know what's actually happening or even how to help give well doesn't claim to have all the answers but for the past 18 years the nonprofit research organization says they have helped guide more than a 130,000 donors and two and a half billion dollars to highly cost-effective aid They really do terrific work the researchers are analyzing the impact of the cuts to USA ID in real time and Sharing what they're learning through research updates grant write-ups and candid podcast conversations This information is free and for everyone Give well says they have already committed tens of millions of dollars in response to this year's cuts and their researchers are working to forecast find and fund other new cost-effective needs for trusted evidence-backed insights into this evolving situation and Information about how you can help follow along and give well org slash USA ID.

I Think the basic problem that Elite colleges in particular have right now.

It's it's not just The sort of prejudice you're talking about in terms of hiring, right?

It's about the content It's about the teaching the material itself, right?

I think people outside of these institutions Increasingly think they are places where ideology has been confused with inquiry where Education has been confused with activism Columbia, for instance has embraced its identity as a protest campus.

Or is this just what free speech is and what it ought?

to look like Well, I I think it is both of those things I think it is a problem when schools define Let's say activism or civic engagement in a very ideologically restricted way.

I think it's a moral problem for schools.

I'll give you an example I'm giving a talk at some conference or and a guidance counselor from high school says I'll just tell you if one of my students was applying to Wesleyan and she said her civic engagement was to protecting the rights of the unborn It would be professional malpractice for me to allow her to put that in the application Now, I guess I was naive.

I've been a faculty member And I said come on Everybody knows that is civic engagement and he said and everybody in my world He said and guidance counselors know that your admissions people won't like it That was to me a slap in the head that I needed because I have no reason to doubt that he was right because all these guidance counselors like shaking their heads and I Think that's that's a that's a way in which the the soft despotism of prejudice in the College University constricts this free speech the realm of contestation and I've been fighting against it now for the last decade or so both as a as a Person who has access to the media and writes articles about such things Give speeches about such things, but but also as a teacher adding more conservative voices into my own classes I teach courses in the history of moral philosophy or Course on the modern and the postmodern and So I I've always privileged the kind of mavericks and and philosophy or political theory, but now I'm also adding to my classes Criticisms of those Voices of those progressive thinkers and Some of times the students are quite surprised by it and They're totally capable of dealing with the issues in other words They may not on their own Gravitate towards conservative critiques of progressivism, but when exposed to them, they're perfectly happy willing able to To deal with a variety of perspectives.

So all that is to say that a school can define a Civic purpose I think that's not intention with its Educational purposes and most schools in the in the United States ever since the 1700s Have had a civic purpose as part of what they do This this I think it's nonsense what some of the presidents these days are saying.

Oh, we're just for the pursuit of truth Colleges in America have always been about character and and about civics And so we can embrace that but we can't do it in a parochial way or if because if we do it in a parochial way We're limiting the educational potential of our students to explore ideas that may not be currently fashionable in their generation or Among the faculty and I found at Wesleyan Many faculty members who themselves might be leftists, you know But are perfectly happy to teach a range of material not Satirically or critically but actually because they know it's important even if it's not the where they've come down themselves and if schools do that, I Think they also make better citizens.

That is they make people who are more capable of Dealing with disagreement and conflict in the public sphere Do you see some other cultural or institutional or moral harm in too much?

Ideological conformity I do I do especially the humanities and interpretive social sciences.

I think people don't ask certain questions That conservatives have long asked they will neglect questions around let's say the family as a incubator of social practices that They they won't ask Questions around Inequality that conservatives might ask that that progressives don't don't ask I so I think a lot of things just don't get asked because There there's no one to ask those questions like, you know when I was a graduate student Women were starting to go to graduate school and they were asking questions about women's history and the men are like Women's history was just history, you know, and they said no well actually it's men's history you know, you haven't asked these questions about let's say childbirth or About women's work eventually people said oh my gosh.

Those are really interesting questions, too You don't have to be a woman to ask them but you just so happens that men didn't ask them And so I think in some areas Having religious people having people libertarian perspectives having conservatives It really does open up questions that have that are productive and some will say what do you want Nazis?

You don't want flat-earth people in the geography department, but there's a there's a little there's a long way between You know a department that defines itself in let's say Marxist terms or in anti-colonial terms and Nazism there's a lot of other things there that can be asked that don't get asked in some colleges and universities because of ideological conformity Universities would be stronger if they were more intellectually diverse Because we learn more from people with we just with whom we disagree Than from people with whom we agree.

Is that to say that you think the university should be a place where people?

Sometimes feel uncomfortable and if it is and I think we both believe that it is how do you distinguish productive discomfort?

from actual harm It's a good question Theoretically, it's I don't find it.

No, I mean, I don't find it that hard actually did it, you know, like But a lot of people seem to I know but I don't believe them I frankly like yesterday my grandson was sitting there He's six years old and he says he finds out that there's a button in the car That somebody pushed by mistake in his seat got very warm, you know a seat warmer.

So he's looking at that button He's thinking what if I push it by mistake?

and he's get starts getting upset because what if my to what if my foot hits it and and the proper answer is like Just calm down basically because he's not really being harmed by that button I've had to say to students and I know not every one of my colleagues don't always agree Well, they'll say I don't feel safe.

I'll say you are safe and They said I don't feel safe as I said, that's really not my problem.

My problem is if you're not safe, that's my problem I had a student years ago wanted a band someone from graduation This guy had done some stupid stuff and And he was punished for it.

She said but I don't want him at graduation and if to me that was like He wanted a scalp.

He wanted the trophy of saying I had him banned.

I said no, I Guarantee your safety if you don't want to come that's about it's up to you.

We had a speaker this year who had Controversial Inquiry about trans issues, especially about gender affirming care for young people she hadn't taken a stand on it, but she had explored these issues and the real controversies around them a Group of students came and said we think you should cancel this Because I think you're doing actual harm and I have said Our duty is to protect the vulnerable like trans students and immigrants undocumented people I've said that publicly many times.

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