A pair of former Furman University professors recently explained three ways to increase intellectual diversity on campus.
“The academy urgently needs to broaden its tent,” Jenna and Benjamin Storey wrote in a recent essay for the American Enterprise Institute, where they are now senior fellows.
Doing so, they argue, will help universities defend themselves against political attacks and increase their support among the public.
The Storeys (pictured) provide three ways universities can increase intellectual diversity. They suggest partnerships between think tanks and universities, noting that AEI experts collaborate with Johns Hopkins University professors.
Universities should also establish specific centers for “academics who chafe against the ideological skew of the current university.”
“To enhance the influence of these professors, trustees and administrators should work with them to form new academic units with authority to hire faculty and create curricula,” they wrote, praising efforts such as “civic thought” institutes on some campuses.
Finally, the “academic pipeline” needs fixing so there must be “a concerted effort to welcome young people who…inhabit a wider range of political and intellectual perspectives into the academic profession.”
“The Trump administration, perhaps frustrated by years of reform efforts that seemed to range from painfully incremental to blatantly ineffectual, is now taking a ‘sledgehammer’ approach to the problem,” they concluded.
“It has succeeded in focusing attention on the issue,” the professors wrote. “But the most enduring reforms will work with the grain of the academy’s essential mission and modes of operation.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Benjamin and Jennifer Storey; American Enterprise Institute
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