Open inquiry, on campus and online
Universities have long stood as spaces for intellectual debate and open inquiry. What happens when they’re not the only ones?
🎧 Listen | 8:44 mins
It’s commencement season, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about college. My own 20-year reunion is this year, a milestone that can make you look backward and forward at the same time.
I went to Carleton College, a liberal arts school in Minnesota. Having grown up in Alabama, where we had snow days if near-freezing temperatures were forecast, I was sold on Carleton the moment I saw its footage of a student cross-country skiing to class.
Besides the snow, going to Carleton was my first small rebellion. My childhood was sandwiched between two types of conservatism: the political conservatism of my social circles and the traditionalism of my Taiwanese family. Needless to say, I was surrounded by many strong opinions about the right way to live, the right thing to study, and the right kind of work.
So when I tell you that my college experience gave me the most idealized version of higher education, it’s not an exaggeration. Going to college opened my mind and my world — figuratively and literally. It gave me space to experiment with who I might become.
I admit it: when I was at Carleton, most of my classmates leaned left. But of course, conservative students were on campus too. While I can’t speak for them, I personally never felt that our political disagreements would preclude friendship. Despite spirited debates in class, we could still hang out afterwards. We all wanted to help people, even if we disagreed on the details. We all loved Stir-frydays and baking cookies. We all loved Professor Mary Easter.
That said, I had the pleasure of going to college pre-social media, which arrived on our campus in my junior year. Facebook is very different now than it was then.
And so is college.
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Today, viewpoint diversity – particularly at elite universities – has become one of the central discussion points about higher education. On one side, critics argue that universities have traded open inquiry for ideological conformity. On another, they say that academic freedom is being conflated with freedom of expression.
At the same time, public trust in colleges and universities – like trust in nearly all institutions – has steadily declined. And in recent years, these debates have advanced from philosophical to political, with concrete consequences. Federal funding for universities has been cut or made conditional. Tenure protections are changing, as are curricula. And with its high cost mixed with an uncertain future of work, more young people are questioning the value of higher education itself.
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And college students are more digitally connected than any previous generation. Whereas I relished the classroom as a gateway to new perspectives and worldviews, today it is just one access point of many. Students – or anyone – can discover new subjects and hold intellectual debates continuously and on repeat, as digital and physical life collapse into each other.
Despite these tensions, there is one thing that university administrators, professors, and students can agree on. A university’s central role is to serve as a place for open inquiry – defined as the ability to ask questions, share ideas, and challenge popular views and assumptions.
So why are universities generally absent from the spaces where open inquiry now happens for most people?
Yes, I’m talking about digital platforms.
You only need to see the footage of the recent altercation between Cornell’s President and students to understand why the omnipresence of phone cameras may feel personal to faculty and staff. Not to mention the relationship between phones and focus in the classroom; AI’s impact on teaching, learning, and intellectual property rights; and the way social media has reshaped who gets seen and treated as experts.
In short: it’s complicated.
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Of course, universities are working hard to adapt. Last month, Yale released the findings of a year-long faculty committee on trust in higher education. The report is comprehensive, with recommendations spanning affordability, admissions, and community engagement.
It repeatedly calls for strengthening Yale’s relationships with both internal and external stakeholders – to open the gates and communicate effectively. But when you dig deeper, you see that it mostly refers to traditional tactics like hosting town halls and advisory councils, doing more Yale-centered comms about its mission and decisions, and offering more online learning opportunities.
The report contains almost no meaningful discussion of actual digital participation. It’s a surprising omission, considering the high demand for academic content online, as we saw with the #Hillmantok movement last year. People want content with depth, but in a way that connects with how they live. There needs to be a step between hearing a university’s mission statement and signing up for their course on a learning platform.
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It’s hard to reconcile universities’ commitment to debate and open inquiry with their disengagement from the spaces where these now take place. Doing so not only distances institutions from the public; it also disregards the world that students are stepping into, one that is increasingly shaped online.
Of course, personal agency matters here; not every professor wants a public profile. But universities have every reason – for trust-building as much as for risk management – to support those who want to engage online, and to recognize that work as legitimate.
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How can university leaders balance the importance of participating in the digital world with the responsibility to protect the institution as well as faculty, staff, and students?
Every institution will carry different priorities, guardrails, and resourcing. That’s fine; there is no blanket right way to do this.
Here are five ways to start:
1. Develop clear policies on individuals’ digital engagement.
If you’ve been reading Feed for Thought for a while, you know how much I love an internal policy to address issues like online conduct, branding, messaging alignment, and post-employment considerations. I’ve designed plenty of principles-first guidelines for organizations, and while it forces hard conversations, a good policy makes every other decision easier because it gives you a north star and defensible position.
2. Integrate digital literacy into faculty development and student curriculum.
Learning how information flows, how creators build trust, and how to be a responsible consumer online is an essential skill for everyone, whether they make content or not. For those who do, it makes all the difference to have support with deciding which platforms to use, getting started, protecting their safety and privacy, and engaging with others.
3. Make room for both device-free and creator spaces.
You don’t have to have one or the other – they’re complements. I think phone-free classrooms and study areas are a great idea. And recording studios and editing tools belong on campus too.
4. Have a crisis response plan.
Any kind of public engagement comes with risks. The good news is: it’s mostly predictable. When I did crisis response at Uber, having a playbook and knowing everyone’s role in it helped to make intense moments more manageable. And it made sure that we were consistent in protecting our organization, employees, and customers, even in a worst case situation.
5. Offer a carrot.
Beyond making space and time, universities can reduce the stigma around academics’ engaging online. Could public engagement count toward service requirements? Could online writing become part of the academic publishing process? Even small institutional signals can go a long way in framing digital participation as legitimate scholarly work.
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Universities once stood at the center of intellectual life because campuses were where open inquiry happened. Today, much of public debate has moved elsewhere.
Will universities join in? ◾