October 21, 2024
I am deeply honored to have the opportunity to share this evening with you. I want to acknowledge Lee Levison, who is here this evening, who has been with me on this project at each step of the way, and John Gulla, the Executive Director of the Edward E. Ford Foundation. John has a gift for taking other educators’ ideas and helping transform them into tangible and actionable projects. The Framework would not have happened without Lee and John, so I am grateful.
Here’s the plan. I’m going to very briefly describe the Framework, and, drawing on my own experiences at Deerfield, offer a few reflections on how its ideas intersect with the practices of what has come to be known as DEI. So here we go.
“The Framework,” as it’s come to be known, makes the case for what we call academic pluralism, and it advances three principles in support of that ideal: educating for expressive freedom, which it defines across the axis of courageous, tolerant, and conscientious expression; disciplined nonpartisanship as both an institutional posture and instructional aspiration; and intellectual diversity as a design principle for programming and curriculum.
The idea of academic pluralism rests on two assumptions: First, that teaching and learning are distinct from political advocacy and activism. That’s the academic part—the idea that schools are first and foremost places of study, inquiry, curiosity, and exploration.
The second assumption is that schools serve diverse populations across a broad spectrum of backgrounds, political orientations, religious beliefs, and personal values. That’s the pluralism part. This is the recognition, as Eboo Patel, the founder of Interfaith America puts it, “that people of different ethnic groups, races, adherents of various religious, political, and personal beliefs have a right to co-exist as equals . . . and [also] have an obligation to forge the freedoms they enjoy into a coherent . . . whole.” In other words, community forged through pluralistic difference.
Given the rising levels of negative polarization—what we more simply think of as political prejudice—increased community conflict, particularly within schools, and deepening levels of student distress, isolation, and unhappiness, that project strikes me as necessary and essential.
The purpose of the Framework was—and is—to provoke conversation and provide a vehicle for discussion. Since its publication this past May, it appears to have done just that, becoming a useful resource for faculty, school leaders, and Boards. Traffic to the Ford website, where the Framework is posted in whole, has increased a hundredfold.
These ideas seem to be finding traction at our colleges and universities. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), since December of last year, 22 universities have adopted versions of the 1967 University of Chicago’s Kalven Report’s ideal of “institutional neutrality,” including Johns Hopkins University, Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard (despite some anxious handwringing on their part). Harvard’s new policy is typical: the University, it asserts, should refrain from taking stands beyond “matters concerning the core function of the University.” “Our policy,” wrote Noah Feldman, co-chair of the faculty working group responsible for its formulation, “commits the University to an important set of values that drive the intellectual pursuit of truth: open inquiry, reasoned debate, divergent viewpoints, and expertise.”
Here, just a few weeks ago, is Jonathan Levin, President of Stanford University, in his inaugural address: “We expect,” he said, “[for Stanford students] to wrestle with social and political issues.” “Yet,” he continued, “the University’s purpose is not political action or social justice. It is to create an environment in which learning thrives.”
And here is President Christina Paxson and Chancellor Brian Moynihan on Brown University’s October 9 decision to reject a proposal from student groups demanding that the University divest from companies alleged to be involved in Israeli security and military activities. Regardless of what you think about that issue or their decision, they grounded it firmly in Brown’s educational mission, which they said “is to discover, communicate, and preserve knowledge . . . to adjudicate or resolve global conflicts.”
Each of these decisions share a common, pluralistic foundation: that institutional statements on questions of political controversy cannot possibly represent the divergent views of a contending community; that doing so risks chilling inquiry and narrowing the aperture of discussion on campus; and that there is a fundamental difference between the study of politics—in all its multi-dimensional global, national, philosophical, and disciplinary complexity—and its actual practice in the public sphere. Put simply, institutions of learning are one thing, organizations devoted to one form or another of social change are something else entirely. Together, these statements represent a fundamental re-affirmation of the university’s core mission of teaching and learning on a foundation of pluralism.
We have also seen grassroots efforts among college faculty to defend expressive freedom and inquiry on campus, such as Harvard’s Council on Academic Freedom and Princeton’s James Madison Program; the establishment of new courses, programs, centers, and institutes devoted to civic literacy, inquiry, and discourse; and from within universities themselves a thoughtful re-assessment of existing programs in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
A new set of questions is now unmistakably out in the open:
- Are the practices we have come to associate with diversity, equity, and inclusion compatible with educational pluralism or do they erode the core mission of schools and colleges as places of learning?
- Do such programs narrow the range of discussion on campus, inhibit inquiry, and effectively enforce ideological conformity? (As critics external to the Academy have long argued.)
- And, taken as a whole, do they promote a climate of inclusion on campus? Or, contrary to stated aims and goals, erode it?
Let’s be clear: There is little question that over the past several decades our schools and colleges have become dramatically more accessible, more representative of the American public, and more welcoming to students of all backgrounds. They have become more attuned to patterns of social exclusion, more sensitive to differences in achievement, and more welcoming to non-traditional students. And they have steadily expanded access and with it demographic and socio-economic diversity. In the 2023 – 24 school year alone, independent schools provided $3.24 billion in financial support to students and their families. At Deerfield—to put in a quick plug—we have launched an accessibility and Financial Aid initiative that waives tuition for domestic families making less than $150,000 a year and asks all other families to pay no more than 10 percent of their documented income.
Yet there is mounting skepticism—and emerging evidence—questioning the effectiveness of many diversity and inclusion programs. James Ryan, President of the University of Virginia, has called for a reassessment of such programs to ensure they are consistent with the core values of the University. The title of a recent op-ed from two Stanford University professors puts this more bluntly: “DEI is not working on college campuses. We need a new approach.” They argue that many programs are “excessively ideological,” and, in some cases, “exclusionary and counterproductive.” They single out for special attention mandatory “off the shelf” anti-bias trainings, which they liken “to airline safety briefings,” and “ideological workshops that inculcate theories of social justice as if there were no plausible alternatives.”
According to a long and deeply researched piece published yesterday in the New York Times Magazine, the University of Michigan has invested a quarter of a billion dollars on diversity, equity, and inclusion related initiatives since 2016: mandatory trainings and orientations, comprehensive action plans and sub-plans, and hundreds of new positions in the form of equity coaches, bias response personal, outside consultants, and deans across almost every division of the University. It is perhaps the most expensive, far-reaching and comprehensive diversity, equity, and inclusion program in the history of higher education, and constituting, what the author calls an “‘alternative curriculum,’ taught not in the classroom but in dorms, disciplinary hearings, and orientation programs.”
Yet internal data from the University itself suggests that the Michigan campus is less inclusive now than it was when those initiatives were launched and that students are less likely to interact with other students from a different race, religion, or politics. Rather than bringing students together in the shared pursuit and making sense of the world, these programs have institutionalized what the author calls “a powerful conceptual framework for student and faculty grievance,” creating a climate of suspicion, resentment, and mistrust.
I have been reluctant to describe Deerfield’s mission in terms of anti-racism, social justice or DEI, and I have grown increasingly skeptical of the wide range of practices associated with them. In many ways, the school year 2020 – 21 was a turning point—and a moment of clarification. Two stories.
As we were bringing students back to campus for that pandemic fall of 2020 – 21, a member of the faculty urged me to have students “take a knee” during our first School Meeting on Zoom in solidarity with the protests that were happening across the country. I received a similar request later that year, when, during Black History Month, I was asked to fly the Black Lives Matter flag on campus. What to do?
The case for both went along these lines: “John, this is important. This is important for our students. They need to hear from you. They need to know where you stand. We need to know where you stand.”
The clear implication—and rhetorical brilliance of this plea—was that I would be letting students and the adults in our community down if I didn’t do as asked.
At that point in time, I had no clear operating procedure for these questions, no body of principle on which to rely. Our mission and values were silent on such questions.
I said no to both.
Which put me in difficult place. Who, after all, wants to be seen as an anti-anti-racist? And who wants to disappoint their students? Particularly at a moment when, according to colleagues, they were in dire need of solidarity, affirmation, and “allyship.”
I teach a senior elective called the Art of Political Argument. (This morning, I taught Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.) The course has two parts. It begins with the foundations of modern political thought as it emerged during the European Enlightenment in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, James Madison, Mary Wollstonecraft, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx, among others. The second half of the course studies more recent political thought across a range perspectives and writers: Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, Francis Fukuyama, Irving Kristol, Michael Anton, Bernie Sanders, Cornel West, Coleman Hughes, Martha Nussbaum, and Tobi Haslett, who has written with great power in defense of the political platform of BLM. That, in my view, is where those ideas belong: in the classroom. Not as intuitionally sanctioned dogma, but as one theory among many, and subject to discussion, exploration, contestation, and comparison.
The second story.
In the spring of 2021, post-vaccine, we loosened our masking requirement. To be able to simply see the faces of our students again was a watershed moment. At the same, I suggested we prohibit students from using their earbuds and headphones as they walked around campus during the academic day. This had become—understandably—a bad habit for many students during Covid. I was told that would be a mistake, that this was, in fact, an essential coping mechanism for students from non-traditional backgrounds. I was told much the same about our tradition of family-style meals, where seven times a week faculty and students sit together in randomly assigned groups that rotate over the course of the year. These meals, it was said, place undue social and psychological burdens on young people of color, first generation boarding students, and the introverted. I was also told that because they require additional, uncompensated “emotional” work from some members of the faculty and not others, these meals should be discontinued.
I said no. Again. Not because I don’t understand that different students experience our community differently and some with greater discomfort and difficulty. And not because sit-down meals aren’t work. They are—like learning to write, play the piano, or teach. And that’s the point. And that’s why I say that our dining hall—please note, I did not say cafeteria—our dining hall is our greatest classroom. It’s where we learn the art of conversation across difference.
I could go on. About speech regimes of right speak, wrong speak, and required speak that have emerged over the last decade; content and trigger warnings, coerced apologies and ritualized acknowledgements of historic injustice; the required use of so called DEI statements in hiring and tenure at colleges and universities; the almost Talmudic sensitivity to the “impact” of “harmful” language in the form of what George Packer calls “equity” standards and style guides seeking, in Packer’s words, “to cleanse language of any trace of privilege, bias, and hierarchy;” the expurgation of classic texts and historical documents; the movement to “decolonize” libraries and curriculum. Social practices on campuses, premised on overly-expansive and unrealistic expectations of emotional safety that effectively de-pluralize the student experience, as if students didn’t already possess a notable genius for separating themselves into “in” groups and “out” groups. And the role that schools of education, professional associations, and third-party consultants play in advancing these ideas and homogenizing our vision for what schools can be.
But I will leave you with this: There is more than one way to do school. There is more than one way to think about inclusion. And there is more than one way to think about diversity. At Deerfield, we have come to think about diversity along pluralistic, rather than rigidly identitarian lines, so that students have space for exploration, discovery, self-exploration, definition, and formation. We have sought to turn down the identity dial. Not off, mind you, but down. And at the same time, we have sought to turn up the pro-social dial among students and faculty, adopting, after the political scientist Robert Putnam, a social capital or relational model of inclusion—one that focuses on building authentic and meaningful bonds of friendship and connection across difference, and with it that most precious school resource: deep, tensile, communal trust.
Much of what we have done since Covid follows from that aspiration, such as our policy banning the use of cell phones during the school day; a new academic schedule that has slowed the pace of school and provided increased opportunity for connection, reflection, and deep learning; a renewed commitment to sit-down meals, embodied in the expansion and modernization of our historic dining hall; deep investments in a model of teaching and learning that requires deep, broad, and sustained engagement from faculty across every dimension of school life. And, ultimately, the principles embodied in the Framework; the idea that intellectual discord, when practiced with integrity, skill, empathy, and tolerance, and built thoughtfully into program and curriculum, is compatible with social harmony. That we can disagree and still be a part of one community. That disagreement can, in fact, be a powerful source of community and learning.
Those first couple of years were a bit of a crucible. Yet they were also a kind of blessing—as difficult and disorientating and as tragic as they were for so many—in our school and beyond. They forced upon us new questions and opened space for new thinking. They tested—and clarified—our values. And ultimately, they made us stronger and more intentional. We have, I like to think, a renewed sense of mission. Our community is stronger, more vibrant, and more coherent. Our students are happy and thriving.
Not everyone, I know, will embrace the Framework, however passionate I might be about it, and as valuable as I think it is. That’s ok. That’s how it should be. That, in the end, is the defining strength of American independent schools. In John McPhee’s great book about Frank Boyden—Deerfield’s headmaster for 66 years—he writes:
“The headmaster’s respect and admiration for Exeter and Andover are considerable, and he likes to quote a conversation he once had with an Andover headmaster who said, ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe we’re right. There is a need for both schools.’”
In case you haven’t noticed, I happen to be a fierce Deerfield exceptionalist—I grant no quarter to Exeter, Andover, or to the school whose name shall not be spoken—but that, it seems to me, is exactly right. There is a need for many kinds of schools. That’s what pluralism means. And that, finally, is what the Framework is about. It offers a new story, albeit in an old language, about how we might imagine school, while affirming, absolutely and without apology, the independence of independent schools. Each of you, I know, has your own deep institutional loyalties. And you represent an extraordinary range of schools as graduates, school leaders, and trustees. But that—stewarding, protecting, and defending the essential value of our schools’ unique missions—is a call around which each of us—and all of us together—can, I hope, rally.