Confidence in American universities is at a record low, with just 36% of the public reporting a “great deal or quite a lot of confidence” in higher education. That’s down sharply from a decade ago, especially among Republicans, of whom only 22% today have high confidence in the “honesty and ethical standards” of college professors. Groupthink, diversity, equity, and inclusion, antisemitism, and gender radicalism have compounded long-standing concerns about costs and questionable value.
The Trump administration has moved aggressively to address the problems with campus culture. To receive federal funds, universities pledge to honor federal civil rights protections. Because high-profile institutions have manifestly failed at this task in recent years, especially regarding antisemitism, federal officials are threatening massive financial penalties unless immediate steps are taken.
Princeton President Chris Eisgruber, former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, and many of their peers have objected to this course. They’ve denounced the Trump administration’s actions as excessive and would prefer, as Summers put it, that “universities will both reform themselves and stand up to external pressure.”
Well, if universities wish to convince federal officials that they can reform themselves and embrace free inquiry, here’s one manageable place to start: Stop allowing university funds to subsidize academic associations that engage in political activism. We recently examined 99 scholarly organizations, such as the American Sociological Association, the Middle East Studies Association, and the American Physical Society, and found that 81% had embraced positions on contentious political and social issues.
These academic associations, created to promote scholarly inquiry by convening scholars and disseminating research, have been hijacked by small, well-organized groups of political activists. The American Sociological Association has an entire website devoted to cataloguing its political agenda, including more than 100 letters, statements, and other public pronouncements since 2020. The ASA has adopted positions on a host of matters, ranging from military conflicts in Gaza to protests in Turkey to, inevitably, racial and gender identity.
You might expect such activities to be confined to the social sciences and humanities. Nope. It’s also prevalent in the hard sciences. The American Physical Society, representing physicists, has adopted more than 50 positions on a wide range of issues unrelated to physics, including diversity, creationism, the use of nuclear weapons, and climate change.
The American Mathematical Society issued an apology for its “failure to effectively combat the compounded effects of racism.” The nation’s mathematicians also issued a statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “calling for an immediate halt to these hostilities and violations of international law.”
These positions inevitably point one way, in the direction dictated by leftist politics. The Middle East Studies Association, for instance, has issued six public statements on Israel and Gaza since Hamas’s assault on Oct. 7, 2023, with each expressing hostility toward Israel.
Campus leaders who wish to show that their institutions are havens for free inquiry rather than progressive proselytizing should no longer allow faculty to use university resources to fund memberships, conference registration fees, and subscriptions at associations that have traded their scholarly pretensions for political ones. Hundreds of millions of dollars in such funds go to these organizations each year.
This prohibition would be a powerful blow against politicized scholarship, since these associations receive the bulk of their annual revenue from membership dues and conference fees paid by professors (who are then typically reimbursed with university-managed funds). Because these associations highlight research, promote individual scholars, and influence the job market, their political agendas can do much to stifle discourse and stymie dissent.
Faculty have a First Amendment right to associate freely with politicized academic organizations, just as they do with the American Civil Liberties Union or the National Rifle Association. But they have no special right to do so with someone else’s funds. Even when associations are paid with grant funds, universities are required to approve the use of those funds, and they should insist that all such university-managed funds are used for scholarly, rather than political, purposes.
A PERFECT STORM COMES FOR ELITE UNIVERSITIES
Such a shift would strengthen the hand of the serious academics in these associations, giving them an opportunity to restore these associations to their historic purpose. At the same time, if associations choose not to change their ways, it would free up resources for faculty seeking to start or join new, less politicized alternatives.
A large swath of the nation has lost its faith in the sobriety of the nation’s scholars. Here’s an easy chance for campus leaders to act, strike a blow against politicized research, and demonstrate that they can do so without federal intervention. After all, until college presidents can make the case that they’re leading and not just reacting, Eisgruber’s and Summers’s pleas for self-determination promise to be a tough sell.
Jay P. Greene is a senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.