Liberty and Leadership
TFAS has reached 53,000 students and professionals through their academic programs, fellowships and seminars. Representing more than 140 countries, TFAS alumni are courageous leaders throughout the world – forging careers in politics, government, public policy, business, philanthropy, law and the media. Join TFAS President, Roger Ream, as he reconnects with these outstanding alumni to share experiences, swap career stories, and find out what makes their leadership journey unique. The Liberty and Leadership podcast is produced at Podville Media in Washington, D.C. If you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org.
Liberty and Leadership
Reclaiming the Mission of Higher Education with Dr. Jenna Robinson
Roger welcomes Dr. Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, for a timely discussion on the state of American higher education and how to restore its core mission.
They examine the rise of administrative bloat in higher education, the spread of DEI bureaucracies and the decline of intellectual diversity on college campuses. They also explore how the Martin Center serves as a model to promote academic freedom, viewpoint diversity, institutional neutrality and transparency in public universities. Plus, reform efforts taking place in North Carolina, how legislative and trustee oversight can serve as tools for accountability and why students and faculty alike benefit from a renewed focus on academic excellence over ideology.
In addition to her work with the Martin Center, Dr. Jenna Robinson serves on the board of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, the UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance and board member of the Board of Visitors at UNC Chapel Hill.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty and friends who are making an impact. Today I'm your host, roger Ream. Today I'm joined by Dr Jenna Robinson, the president of the James G Martin Center for Academic Renewal, an educational nonprofit focused on public policy. Jenna serves on the board of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, the UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance, and is a board member of the Board of Visitors at UNC Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the Martin Center, Jenna was the EA Morris Fellowship Assistant at the John Locke Foundation. She has also taught courses in American politics at UNC, chapel Hill, southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Wake Technical Community College. Jenna's work has appeared in several publications, including Investors, business Daily, forbes, human Events and the Raleigh News and Observer. Jenna, I'm grateful you could join the Liberty and Leadership podcast today. Thank you.
Speaker 2:It's great to be here, Roger.
Speaker 1:Jenna, why don't we start with you describing the mission and the work of the James Martin Center?
Speaker 2:Sure. So the mission of the Martin Center is to renew and fulfill the promise of higher education in North Carolina and around the country, and we do that by offering policy reforms that can be enacted by state legislatures, trustees and university administrators. We look specifically at a couple of issues. We are interested in viewpoint diversity and kind of all that entails. We're interested in good governance, a watchdog for the taxpayers, innovative free market reforms and cost-effective education solutions. So really anything to do with higher education that is part of our wheelhouse.
Speaker 1:Now, how does your work at the center aim to influence higher education policy?
Speaker 2:So we do two things we create policy solutions in terms of model legislation, research on the problems, but we also do education and sunlight on the problems that exist. So we publish articles four times a week highlighting the critical issues in higher education, the problems that exist at public and private universities, and then pushing out that information to stakeholders so they know what the problems are, and then following it up with the solutions that we offer in terms of our model policy, our blueprints for reform or other maps, so that leaders can go ahead and implement policies that will affect higher education.
Speaker 1:I know you've had a lot of impact with that approach. Do you get much major pushback from the other side, however? That's defined from faculty or administrators that don't like these reforms?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. There's been a lot of pushback, either from people who say that the problems we identify aren't really problems, or disagreeing about the solutions. We've had a lot of disagreements about where faculty governance and where the lines really are, whether a university should be listening to the legislature or entirely faculty run, and so, yes, there is contention, but I think that by engaging with those stakeholders and engaging with people who we disagree with, we've been able to move the ball forward.
Speaker 1:I was thinking in my mind about the many issues you have to deal with. There is the free speech issue, which maybe we'll talk some more about. There's the issue of institutional neutrality, which a lot of people, I don't think, understand, and it's been an issue at my alma mater Vanderbilt has dealt with. There are issues of DEI, of course, of faculties that seem to tilt far to the left, not just in the humanities and social sciences but overall. There are issues of, of course, student loans and funding and anti-Semitism that have sprung up over the years. But let's talk about some. Free speech is one that has been paramount over the past decade or more, and it seems to deal both with the cancellation of speakers on campus as well as the censoring of students or faculty who want to speak out on issues. What are some of the problems you've seen in the area of free speech that you had to deal with?
Speaker 2:You've mentioned two of them, that faculty and students are censored in what they can say in the classroom or out of the classroom, and also speakers who are invited speakers by student groups or sometimes by the administration itself. There's pushback on campus and then they get disinvited. But the problems go further than that. You know. There are the speakers who never get invited because the campus anticipates that those speakers would be too controversial. So we're missing out on all of that speech because just the anticipatory cancellation of those people.
Speaker 2:And then, in the same vein, students are self-censoring and I think that's one of the biggest problems and the hardest ones to tackle, because it's not a policy issue. It's that students are perceiving that their speech will be unpopular with their peers or maybe get them a bad grade. They don't feel confident enough in their convictions to say something that might be unpopular. And it's especially bad with peers. They feel like the pressure is strongest that they're going to be canceled from peers. And we know from survey data that a lot of students say you know, I wouldn't date someone who is conservative or I wouldn't want to be friends with someone who is pro-Trump, and so that fear that students feel and the self-censoring that they're doing is coming from a good read on the campus climates in a lot of places coming from a good read on the campus climates in a lot of places.
Speaker 1:Where does a school draw the line, if you're an administrator, between allowing a healthy environment for speech, which is really a key part of an environment where you want people to be looking for truth and seeking the truth, you're going to have things that are false, but then also you have what we saw after October 7th of 2023, this outburst of anti-Semitism on campus. How do you deal with that or balance that? Or, of course, a lot of that was outside of the normal protocols at the university are.
Speaker 2:You know, vandalism is not speech. Surrounding someone's car and entrapping them in it is not speech. Tearing down flags isn't speech, and so universities need to be very clear about what is and what is not considered speech. I think the other thing they need to do is be really clear about their time, place and manner restrictions. So having a bullhorn and walking through a building where students are taking courses or through a library, again that is a reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, and then they have to enforce those restrictions. I think something that we saw after October 7th is that universities were not enforcing what they had on the books in terms of time, place and manner restrictions, in the hopes that the protests would die down, and that didn't happen. Everything just continued and continued to escalate. So I think that universities articulating their rules early and often and enforcing those rules as soon as they see problems is really essential to making sure that things don't get out of hand.
Speaker 1:Now, what is this issue of institutional neutrality? I know your center has dealt with that issue as well.
Speaker 2:So institutional neutrality is just saying that the institution itself won't take a position on political issues, controversial issues, unless those issues are central to the mission of the institution. So the institution can speak up if Congress is going to cut its funding or the president is going to cut its funding. That's central to its mission. But the institution, if it is being institutionally neutral, won't speak up on the situation in Israel, kind of writ large. And the way I like to analogize it is to say that ideas should have a level playing field and the university is that playing field. Nobody gets home team advantage, no idea gets home team advantage, and so all of those ideas have to compete freely in a marketplace where the university isn't acting like the cheering squad or the fans for a particular idea.
Speaker 1:Now, how do you have the success you've had on the free speech issue in North Carolina? Did you work through university administrations or faculties or the boards of regents that you have in the state?
Speaker 2:So in North Carolina a lot of different stakeholders worked on the free speech issue. The legislature passed a bill, but also each individual institution and the system itself adopted their version of the Chicago principles and their versions of institutional neutrality. Faculties have adopted such things, and I think the biggest and most important role the Martin Center played in all of this was to emphasize the problems that existed and tell the stories of students who were denied free speech, to articulate to legislators that look these policies are on the books, that are contravening the Constitution, letting them know that, as a public institution, students and faculty should expect constitutional free speech, that universities should be traditional public fora, and so doing all of that work, informing people about the breadth and depth of the problem and what the solutions were, went a long way to ensuring that we now have good policies in North Carolina on free speech and, in many cases, good practices to follow those through.
Speaker 1:You made a reference to the Chicago Principles so I have to, as an aside maybe, mention that that was a free speech policy put in place at University of Chicago is obvious. But a previous guest of mine, who was a trustee emeritus at the Fund for American Studies, Mitch Daniels, took those principles at Chicago and put them in place at Purdue where he was president, and he actually coined the phrase Chicago principles because University of Chicago just had a policy and he said let's use the Chicago principles here at Purdue, and then that caught fire and a lot of universities now have adopted them. I take it.
Speaker 2:They have. It's been very widely adopted the Chicago principles of free expression or slightly different versions thereof, but they all have that expectation of a university campus as a place where free expression is paramount.
Speaker 1:We've heard a lot recently about universities being especially publics, I guess, but probably many privates too are bloated with administrators, many of them probably enforcing. You hear about the DEI offices that might number in the one or 200 employees. We had a student working for one of our independent papers at Brown University recently sent out an email to all the administrators there, that kind of mimicked the Doge email, asking administrators to justify what they were doing in terms of furthering the mission of Brown. But is there a real problem with many universities becoming bloated with administrators, and is that what's raised the cost of education to some extent?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It is a problem at almost all universities In North Carolina, where the tuition is actually quite low, we still have that problem. Administrators outnumber faculty by almost two to one, or more than two to one at all of our 16 campuses. It is a big problem because that's a great expense for the university and also the administrators are not always acting in ways that are helpful for students or the university campus itself. As you said, there are DEI offices that are often creating division rather than ending division between students, and you have bias response teams so that students can report on each other anonymously for speech, and so there are many reasons for which we do need to look at administrative bloat and take a scalpel and get rid of the parts of the administration that are not helpful, that are not adding to the university's mission, that are not helping students and that are increasing the bottom line for both taxpayers and students.
Speaker 1:Now we've seen survey data that show that faculties at many universities are skewed heavily toward the left. I've seen, you know, in as much as 90, 95 percent of professors in particular fields vote Democrat or are liberal. It doesn't mean they aren't good professors of course there are plenty of good professors across the spectrum but there is this ideological bias, this echo chamber that seems to be created among faculties at many, especially elite universities. Is there a way to deal with that? I mean, tenure probably reinforces it. But maybe the answer is what we've seen in North Carolina and some other states, where they're setting up whole new lines of schools or civic thought programs. Talk about that a little bit and what's been done in North Carolina.
Speaker 2:In schools across the country.
Speaker 2:We've got these new, as you said, schools of civic life and many of them are reinvigorating fields that have kind of been neglected and they're fields that are of interest to conservatives civics, history of institutions, history of American development, and so that's one way to approach it and I think that reinvigorating a lot of fields that have been neglected would be a good way to get more conservatives on campus without having to do, you know, affirmative action for conservatives the terrible idea and so reinvigorating, say, military history is one way to get more interest by conservatives to be professors, to become professors, to get in that pipeline.
Speaker 2:But I also think that the first step should be to, you know, get rid of these loyalty oaths masquerading as DEI statements that are screening out faculty based on their beliefs and, you know, in anything else that a university is doing in the hiring process that is acting as a de facto screening tool to screen out conservatives. That is, I think the first and most essential step is to stop pushing them out and then, you know, see what happens, because for a very long time it has been true that many departments just actively are discriminating against conservatives, and we've got to stop that before really thinking about active measures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've read about that as an issue at Harvard. Steven Pinker has talked about the DEI statements that professors have to write before they can be considered for hiring, and I'm sure that's true at a lot of other institutions.
Speaker 2:And I think the worst part of them is that if a professor says, well, I treat all my students equally because I believe in equality of opportunity, then that will be seen as the faculty committee, as a bad DEI statement that disqualifies you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you go about getting you know the leadership of universities to listen to you when you issue papers or promote reforms? Is it usually a combination of the legislature and the administration and the boards of regents of these universities that you have to kind of triangulate? But I mean, you've promoted a lot of really sensible reforms and some have been adopted. Some, I'm sure, haven't yet. What's kind of your strategic approach?
Speaker 2:Sometimes it just depends on which is the appropriate entity to do something.
Speaker 2:So an issue that we're very passionate about is accreditation, and we have a model bill on accreditation, and it does three things.
Speaker 2:It allows public universities in the state that adopts this bill to choose their own institutional accreditor. It says that all accreditors, both programmatic and institutional, can't force institutions universities to violate state law, and also says that universities can't accept or not accept transfer credits based on the accreditor of the institution that a student is coming from. And for something like that, the legislature is absolutely the entity that must act, and so in that case, we would do a lot of promotion around our bill, do a lot of education on accreditation. So we write a lot about what's going on currently with accreditation, how Betsy DeVos changed the accreditation environment to allow more choices, what can be done, and just continue to educate legislators and all actors really about changes that need to be made. And, of course, we're promoting our model legislation at the same time, and so, similarly, it's issue dependent, but in public institutions and public universities, it is these pointed actors who are the ones who can make the change.
Speaker 1:Did Secretary DeVos' reforms in that area of accreditation survive the four years of the Biden administration?
Speaker 2:They did, and two states, including North Carolina, have announced their intentions to have all their public universities leave their current accreditor and go to new accreditors, that's, north Carolina and Florida.
Speaker 1:Are there accreditors that you think are much better than others? I mean, you don't have to name names, but I just thought maybe they all follow each other.
Speaker 2:There are signs that they are going to try to differentiate themselves, and there are also new accreditors on the horizon. We have at least three that I know of that are attempting to go through the federal process to become accredited as new institutional accreditors, and I think that's very promising so that universities have more options and, I hope, a lot of differentiation, because different universities are trying to educate different types of students, are trying to do different amounts of research serving different regions, and so we shouldn't expect our creditors to look exactly the same.
Speaker 1:Another issue you've written about is the student loan issue. The Supreme Court and the Biden administration had different opinions of what the president was allowed to do or not. They issued a ruling that prohibited him from wiping out student loan debt, but he went ahead and did much of that anyway. Where are we now and what can we expect going forward, and how big is the problem?
Speaker 2:We are now in a place where we have a new proposed model of how student loans will work, where it's much simplified.
Speaker 2:So we have one income-based repayment plan and then the normal plan being proposed, and I think that that would go a long way to simplifying what student loans look like and what students can expect, and I think that the expectation should be that if you borrow money, you're going to pay it back.
Speaker 2:But I think what got us into this situation is that many universities encourage students to attend who they know are very unlikely to complete, and if a student attends a university, gets one year, two years under their belt and then doesn't complete their education, doesn't graduate, that student is left with debt and nothing to show for it, and so I absolutely understand the anger that a lot of students feel about these student loans that are hanging over their heads.
Speaker 2:But I think that what we need, and what has been proposed, is to have universities have skin in the game so that if students leave the university and cannot pay their student debt, the university is responsible for some portion of that debt, and that changes the university's incentives right. It means that they no longer will try to attract students who they think have no hope of graduating, and it will mean also they will do more to ensure that students stay at the university. They will do more to ensure that students know what their options are for careers after leaving the university, and so it really just encourages the university to be more invested in the students that they recruit in the first place, and so I'm hopeful that in the future the student loan problem and the federal loan programs will be in a lot better place than they are right now.
Speaker 1:Before recording this conversation here, the Trump administration made an announcement through Homeland Security that they were going to prohibit Harvard from admitting international students and I was astounded that I think it was 27% of Harvard students admitting international students and I was astounded that I think it was 27% of Harvard students are international students. Yale had 28%. One estimate was Columbia had almost 50% international students and one of the arguments about this was that Harvard accepts so many international students, in part because they generally are revenue-paying, tuition-paying students and it's a big source of revenue for the university. I imagine some get financial aid of some kind from Harvard, given their $50 billion endowment. Do you see that as a major issue at universities around the country that they're accepting a lot of foreign students, or is that limited to just kind of the prestigious Ivy League and maybe some California universities? I don't know what you see in North Carolina.
Speaker 2:I think it is a problem that is just at our elite institutions. Most institutions across the country are either regional public institutions or even flagship public institutions, and they're not admitting nearly that many international students, and so I think that this is something that has, in instances, posed a problem at Harvard, where we see some of the students who are coming in are bad actors, but it's not a problem at most of our public and private institutions across the country.
Speaker 1:What do you think about the Trump administration's effort to deny Harvard the ability to bring in these international students? I know it's a new issue you've made out of study.
Speaker 2:If that ends up being the case that they can't admit any international students I think that'll be a loss for Harvard, a loss for those students and a loss for the country, and I think that there should be a way to thread the needle on that instead of just cutting off international students entirely. I agree with the sentiment that we shouldn't be allowing bad actors to come into our country under the guise of being students, but I don't think the solution is to end all international students to Harvard entirely.
Speaker 1:In the future of higher education? Do you think there'll be a disruptive model that might change things dramatically? You know it wasn't that long ago where it seemed like online universities were going to be the thing, and obviously there are a lot of people taking online courses and a lot of universities offering online education. But will the traditional campus where students go for four years still be the primary model for higher ed in the US in the future?
Speaker 2:It's an interesting time right now because, in addition to all these other issues we've talked about, there is an enrollment cliff that we're facing because people are just not having as many children as they used to, and 18 years ago, right about now, is when they stopped having as many children as they used to.
Speaker 2:So we're at this precipice right now where enrollment is going to decline steeply, and what that means is that universities have to already, and will start have to even more compete for students, and I think that that competition, if also accompanied by competition between accreditors, might mean and maybe this is wishful thinking might mean that we get more models than we've got now, and so, instead of having, you know, one dominant model, we have a plurality of models where, for some, higher education looks like this we already know that some schools are experimenting with three-year models, for example. We know that Western Governors University has a competency-based model, and so we are seeing little hints of innovation around what higher education could look like. But I think, with this new, very intense competition that I'm anticipating coming up soon, we might see even more innovations, and I don't know what all of those will look like, but that's an exciting thing.
Speaker 1:I actually have heard about a program that enables high school students to take online courses and then an exam to demonstrate proficiency so that they can get college credit, and they can end up with a whole year of college credit before they enter college.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Or get through in three years and save a lot of money. Absolutely yeah, dual enrollment is a big thing too, where you're taking a class as a senior and it's counting for both your first year of college and your senior year of high school, and so there has been a lot of experimentation and I think that's exciting.
Speaker 1:Now, a lot of us were astounded when the Trump administration announced they wanted to cut off federal funds to some of these elite universities like Harvard and Columbia and elsewhere, and astounded by the level of money that goes there. A lot of it's probably research dollars. I didn't look at the details, but is that common for a research university to be getting billions of dollars from the federal government? Is that true even at like big state universities?
Speaker 2:It's very common for the federal government to be the largest source of research dollars at an institution, regardless of the type of institution if it's a research institution, and so that wasn't surprising.
Speaker 2:I mean, the magnitude of it, I think, when you look at it all together, is very it's a shocking number, but the federal government is the biggest funder of research, especially basic research, in this country, and so I think that universities is a path forward so that we can figure out a way to have the federal government fund research in a way that makes sense, in a way that is unbiased and in a way where we can restore the agreement between the universities and the people about what that money is supposed to be used for, because I think that's really what happened is the public trust was broken. Money is supposed to be used for, because I think that's really what happened is the public trust was broken. The public gives a lot of money to universities and they saw that universities were not spending it the way they expected it to be spent in ways that promote the public good, and I hope that we can rebuild that trust and that agreement so that the public and universities are both kind of moving together on a research program that makes sense for everybody.
Speaker 1:Now, one thing I didn't ask you is you're at the James G Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Who is James G Martin?
Speaker 2:So James G Martin is a former governor of North Carolina, also a former congressman, but he got his start as a professor of chemistry. He taught at Davidson University and he went to Princeton and he was a notoriously hard grader. He didn't give very many A's at all and during his time at Davidson and as governor of North Carolina he was an education reformer. He was very interested in curricula and he now serves on our board and is still a higher education reformer and is still involved with his alma mater, davidson, and is just a role model for all of us in his diplomacy and in his reform-minded attitude.
Speaker 1:My oldest daughter attended Davidson and graduated from there, and I should have known that was where he was. It is notorious there, I think, for being a school that's tough to get an A at. They decided not to give in to grade inflation and they tell the parents at orientation. You know your kids are used to getting A's in high school, but probably only 10% will get an A in a particular class, so we were prepared for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they might be one of the only holdouts. Grade inflation is pretty rampant.
Speaker 1:We have a few professors who teach for us, who also are holdouts in that, and sometimes it's a surprise to students coming to our programs and taking our academic courses when they don't get the automatic A in a class. And that is an issue you know in higher education is not only the fact that you know there's this tremendous grade inflation but there also seems to be a much of a weakening of the curriculum at so many universities where you look through the course catalogs and see the names of courses and it's kind of sad to see that students can get through a four-year education quote-unquote education taking courses that we would have never thought would be taught at a university. Is there anything you can do about kind of strengthening the liberal arts education? Is that something you work on at the Martin Center?
Speaker 2:It is, and we are huge proponents of improving general education.
Speaker 2:One of our pieces of model legislation, written with Stanley Kurtz and David Randall partners at other organizations, is the General Education Act, which would restore a traditional general education at one public university in each state that adopts it just to give students an option of having a traditional general education, because at most places, as you said, the offerings are weak.
Speaker 2:In each state that adopts it just to give students an option of having a traditional general education, because at most places, as you said, the offerings are weak and general education is really just a grab bag of whatever a student wants, kind of within very broad categories. And so at most institutions you have, you know, 2000 different courses and of course, students just want to pick. In most cases, the easiest courses are the ones where they have read online that the professor is a you know fun to listen to and a pretty easy grader. So we think that general education really is the key to restoring the liberal arts, getting more students to go through courses that matter, getting more students to go through foundational courses so they can build their knowledge, so they're ready to take on their major. But we also think that these schools of civic life also have a role to play here, because, in addition to teaching the civics component, they're often teaching great books components, and I think that's a very encouraging thing.
Speaker 1:Is the School for Civic Life at UNC open to students who are studying at the university, or is it limited to those that major in or attend that school?
Speaker 2:It's open to anyone at UNC, chapel Hill and it is offering a minor right now. So students, regardless of what other school they're in if they're in the business school, the journalism school, it doesn't matter they can come to the School of Civic Life and Leadership and get a minor.
Speaker 1:Down the road another five or 10 years ahead. What gives you the most cause for hope and optimism about higher education and academia in our country?
Speaker 2:What gives me the greatest hope actually is coming from K-12 right now, and that is the resurgence of classical education and the appetite for classical education.
Speaker 2:We are seeing so many students and families, now that they have the options, now that we've got really strong school choice in a lot of our states, that they are choosing classical schools, and that's something that gives me a lot of hope because it means that there are students out there who want to think deeply and take hard classes and learn dead languages and are interested in the liberal arts all of the things that if you look at a typical college campus today, you would think were hopeless. But if we're seeing this resurgence in K-12, it means that our future students in higher education do have this appetite and there is this untapped potential. So that's an opportunity for all of our colleges and universities to attract those students, to offer those courses, to offer those courses, to create those programs so that students can continue to enjoy, you know, the great feast of classical education, of liberal arts education that is out there as they continue their journey into higher education.
Speaker 1:That's great. I mean, it's a great organization and anyone listening to this conversation can go to our website to find your address if they want to support the Martin Center. I think you do great work. You had me down there some years ago to speak and you're still around today, so you survived that. But no, I think what you're doing is a model for the rest of the country, and the reforms you're making in North Carolina are having impact there, but hopefully will be spreading to other states, including my home state of Virginia, where we need more of the reform that you've done there. So congratulations on your 20th anniversary and all the work you're doing, and I hope you great success in the next 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership podcast. If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfasorg, and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five-star review. Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media. I'm your host, roger Ream, and until next time, show courage in things, large and small.
