Former Board of Regents President Ernest Calderón spoke to The Show about the role of Arizona’s public universities, and how that’s evolved over the past few decades.
Now, we hear from a university president who’s been outspoken about the changing relationship between colleges and universities and the federal government.
Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, has written about the role of free speech on campus, and his concern about the federal government’s funding cuts and generally getting involved in areas of higher education in which it had not been previously engaged.
Roth joined The Show to discuss the role of universities and university administrators and presidents in the current climate and why he’s decided to speak up as he has.
The interview took place before the latest controversy between the Trump administration and Harvard.
Full conversation
MICHAEL ROTH: Well, I think we're seeing an extraordinary moment in American history when the federal government is trying to dictate to universities who should attend, how they should behave, and what they should teach.
And so this is a very different approach to what has been the relative autonomy of colleges and universities in relation to the federal government. And so I think it's very important to speak out against what, what I see as the undermining of a core freedom that colleges and universities have enjoyed through much of American history.
MARK BRODIE: So for you, what does speaking out look like? Like, how do you go about doing that?
ROTH: Well, I'm a kind of an old nerdy guy, so I wind up, you know, writing op-eds and talking to public radio. And, and going on news and TV, you know, and, I, I, I wish I were more adept at TikTok and, and Instagram to kind of spread the word to students more about the threats to their freedoms. But for me, it's really trying to call attention to this attack on American civil society.
Right now it's an attack on elite universities and there, you know, it's, it's, it's easy to dislike institutions that you can't get into. I mean, I got rejected from these schools myself when I was applying as a kid, so it's easy to have some resentment and see them get their comeuppance.
But more importantly than that is that this sector of American society I called civil society. They're related to the government. They get government support, or subsidies in some ways, but they've always operated with a fair degree of freedom, you know, freedom of religion, freedom to teach what you want, business freedoms that, you know, companies of course are regulated by the government in some respects, but you don't want the government telling you how to run your bodega or your barbershop.
So I think it's important to, to speak out against intrusions in higher education, which would erode the freedoms of Americans.
BRODIE: Is there a role for the federal government or, you know, for public universities, not like Wesleyan, but other, other public universities, the, the state government, where there can be some discussion about, OK, what should be taught, what is appropriate, what should funding go for that kind of thing? Or do you think that these entities should be funding the universities and otherwise just kind of stay out of it?
ROTH: Well, I think what served this country well is that we have programs at the state level and at the federal level that give people access to colleges and universities. Now it's not to everybody. I mean, all these universities have to be accredited and approved by the federal government, at least it won't removed like through the accrediting agencies.
And so like when Trump University existed briefly, it failed those tests and, and it was not providing a worthwhile product. And so the government intervened.
But that's different from telling people how to teach American history or, or how to teach accounting or Lord knows, how to, how to do, let's say molecular biology. They, they may give hundreds of millions of dollars to labs around the country because they expect that the people, the scientists running those labs know what they're doing, and that has served the country very well.
So I think there are some ways, of course, just like the barbershop example, you know, if you, if you need a, I don't know, if you need a license to open a barbershop, you want you want some basic cleanliness rules observed. You want to make sure people aren't cutting off somebody's ear, but after that, you don't want the government going in and saying, well, we'd like you to style this way or that way, you know, some, some basic safety things have to be in place, some basic rights, and I think it's, it's important for the civil rights of students and employees to be respected, and the government has a role there.
But I think for the government to intervene in a heavy-handed way, as we've seen recently, will undermine the capacity of that sector to produce the kinds of innovation, from which we've all benefited.
BRODIE: I wonder though, because there has been criticism from the right, but not exclusively from the right, especially of higher education broadly for, for several years now, maybe even more than several.
Is there something different happening now than what has happened before? Is it, is it about losing funding? It is, is it about maybe the feds trying to take a more active role in what universities can and can't do that separates it maybe just from the rhetoric of the past in terms of criticism?
ROTH: Absolutely, that, you know, before you had a kind of what I call moral criticism, you know, say shame on you for having only liberals teaching, you know, that was the right, and I, I, I, I've joined in that course myself. I, I've written about the need for more conservative voices on elite college and university campuses, and, and I, and I think that that's a perfectly reasonable thing for politicians to do.
But for example, this recent cancellation of contracts and scientific grants at the University of Pennsylvania because two years ago they had a trans swimmer on the women's swim team, that's just using scientific grant money as a, as a vehicle for punishing a school for doing something that this government doesn't like. So that's the kind of thing that will undermine the strength of the university.
BRODIE: What have you been hearing from students and faculty on your campus about sort of how they're feeling and what they've seen over the last number of months?
ROTH: Well, you know, it's, it's, it's one of the great things about working with students is that when you're 20 years old, you have a lot of, you know, you have a lot of different things on your mind, right? And so most of it seems to me most of what happens on campus around those traditional questions that undergraduates ask themselves.
But there are some students, of course, who are worried about family members getting deported. There are other, there are other students who they know they have friends who may be at risk. And there are still others who worry that the government's overreach today may not affect them directly, but we all know when you let a, government officials do things that go beyond the scope of their traditional powers, they will continue to do more and more that intrude in our lives.
And I do think a lot of my colleagues on the faculty and many of my students worry that we're down a slippery slope where the government keeps pushing into the spheres where it has traditionally not played a big role. I want to make sure that I'm clear that I know that colleges and universities can improve. I mean, we're not perfect organizations.
But we're pretty damn good and I'm sure don't want the government undermining the quality of work that goes on, whether it's at, at the University of Arizona or whether it's at the University of Texas or Alabama or Illinois.
I mean, these are great research organizations that also give undergraduates an education that allow them to have lives that, where they earn a better living, and they have, at least from all the statistics, a better chance at great outcomes. So I, I hope we can protect this sector that really contributed so much to this country.
