Why the board of Trustees matters

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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This article clearly has a conservative spin on things but nonetheless, it highlights an important difference between how Yale elects it’s Trustees and how UChicago does and this may be one of the reasons UChicago has a more moderate take on freedom of speech, academic freedom etc.

As long as UChicago controls who gets on it’s board of Trustees, the administration will be slightly more conservative than it’s peers and more moderate in it’s stance.

National Review: Pruning PC Poison from the Ivies.

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Differences between UChicago’s board and the Yale Corporation:

  1. size: UChicago’s is 2.5x larger (approximately 50 vs. 19).
  2. selection: UChicago board is self-perpetuating; Yale Corporation allows 1/3 to be elected by the alumnae association.
  3. concentration of leadership: UChicago’s board has its own chair - university president serves at the pleasure of the board; Yale’s president is head of both the university and the Yale Corporation.
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Yale’s Board is all or almost all alumni. Not true of Chicago where the city’s civic leaders and wealthy families have significant Board representation even though no U of C degree

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Although now there is significant overlap between wealth/civic leader and alum. They just don’t exclude significant donors like Ken Griffin who might have another affiliation with and interest in the university. Yale’s been wielding its influence for centuries, so it’s pretty easy to find top brass who are also alums. For instance, their three ex-officio spots are for the university president, the Gov. of CT and the LT Gov. All are alums as well.

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OTOH at Stanford founded at the same time as the U of C, with the exception of the President who is an exofficio trustee and Bill Hewlett’s widow all the trustees since the 1950’s have been alumni.

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I may be wrong here, but the other big difference is that at UChicago, other trustees can boot you out if they don’t like what you are trying to do to the institution. Not sure that can happen at Stanford or Yale.

Trustees also get to vote in new Trustees at UChicago. All these subtle rules keep youngling change makers unlikely to get a majority at Chicago. Most of the trustees at Chicago are high profile alums from the professional schools. They are less likely to be sympathetic to radical agendas that seek to alter the DNA of the institution

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I found this video very interesting, informative and relevant to this discussion

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At most institutions the Board is self perpetuating and need not re-elect trustees whose terms have expired with the exception of many institutions that allocate and appoint trustees pursuant to alumni election and those many older institutions like Princeton and Dartmouth where the state governor is an ex-officio trustee. Both Harvard and Dartmouth have had considerable controversies in recent years. At Dartmouth where the majority of trustees are alumni elected went to an “inner” board to keep control. Harvard beat back an effort of conservative alumni seeking election to the Board of Overseers a separate governing board from the Harvard Corporation which is totally alumni elected

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There is something to this. But part of the problem with those youngling change-makers is that they grow up to be oldster sympathizers and they might easily earn a seat on the board with a view to changing the DNA of the institution. The NR article points out that Yale president Peter Salovey is channeling his inner-hippy; that - plus the fact that he directs the board of trustees rather than serve at their pleasure - might cause some pretty wacky things to be going on unchecked - or even encouraged. It’s not clear to me that the alumnae fellows component of the Yale Corporation is the only problem there.

Fortunately, UChicago has several safe-guards: a large board with a good representation from the professional schools, a few other high-profile members who specifically support UChicago for what it is not, and a strong and well-documented institutional identity that has weathered many a challenge in the past - and even some pretty unflattering press. Some trustees might be advocating all sorts of change right now for all we know, but the style of the place is to debate and discuss rather than to hop on the uncritical zeitgeist bus. One can only judge based on the messaging and decisions coming from the administration, but fortunately those seem to contrast UChicago notably against other elites, rather than demonstrate that the university is eager to be like the rest.

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https://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/faculty-senate/archives-and-actions/ongoing-senate-business/wg-f-final-report-feedback/

Wow! I think the UChicago faculty would revolt of something like this was proposed at the school

Another reason, the board is so important

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Indeed. And as I doubt Cornell’s president is working independently of the university’s governing body, it is a specific example of how that body might be responsible for the evolution of critical inquiry and freedom of expression on campus.

No expert in CRT but at its core it appears to be a proposed framework for how we view the world. As such, it should compete for legitimacy in the realm of the scholar community along with other social science and humanistic frameworks: rational choice, religious doctrine, marxian theory all included. Imagine the outrage if a university imposed “education” in any of those frameworks if you as faculty wished to hire or advise your students! Such an imposition privileges one viewpoint over others to the point of orthodoxy. That’s a huge violation of free inquiry and expression.

On the other hand, I think that a faculty committee can explore some aspect of the current zeitgeist and recommend some basic principles. That’s kind of how the UChicago Kalven Report came to be, generated as it was during the heat of the Viet Nam War and pressure on the university to make some kind of statement about it. In true University of Chicago fashion, the president instead appointed a committee to explore whether statements of this kind were even appropriate for a university to make. Given what’s happening on other campuses, with presidents seemingly attempting to outdo one another with institutional statements and the forming of “anti-racism committees,” I’d be very surprised if the new president didn’t take up the issue in some way. I doubt he’d be acting independently of the board, and the board will still include Zimmer and have a robust understanding of the initiatives he has spearheaded, not the least of which are the 2014 Chicago Principles: https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/FOECommitteeReport.pdf

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Reading that material is an education. The “Final Report”, which seems on the way to becoming policy and from which no one appears to dissent, not only requires all students to take anti-racism training on the Kendi model (which is explicitly referenced) but sets up a similar program for faculty. The latter is not an outright requirement; non-compliers are, however, to be barred from any role in hiring, mentoring, or participating in student life. Apparently they get to keep their jobs, at least for the time being and provided they keep quiet.

There are many reasons such a program would never fly at the U of C. Is it even imaginable that such an idea could be floated without debate and dissent? Not only with respect to the informing ideology but the implications for academic freedom of institutionally imposing it?

In its conclusion the Final Report cursorily addresses the latter question and concludes breezily, citing the school’s recent statement of principle, that “Academic freedom does not imply immunity from prosecution for illegal acts of wrongdoing, nor does it provide license for faculty members to do whatever they choose”.

We have come to this: Dissent from a questionable thesis is placed by these profs in the same category as “illegal acts of wrongdoing.” This would be unthinkable at the University of Chicago with its history, its culture, its faculty, alumni and students, its President, and its Trustees.

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@surelyhuman, are students at Chicago required to take any form of anti-racism or related instruction?

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Marlowe, while undoubtedly these current events are coming up in the classroom, there is no required instruction on “anti-racism” imposed by the university (unlike our state flagship where such instruction has, indeed, recently been imposed as part of the liberal ed requirements).

See the following for a more typical example of the university’s efforts to provide support and a positive focus during some of the upsetting events of the past year.

To: Members of the University Community
From: Ka Yee C. Lee, Provost
Subject: Campus Update Following Release of Adam Toledo Video
Date: April 15, 2021

Today brought the public release of a video showing the tragic shooting death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by a Chicago Police Department officer. This comes as our nation is confronting too many painful incidents of bias and violence. We share the distress of people in the University community and across our city and nation concerning these issues.

The University extends its support as our community faces the aftermath of this tragedy, as well as other national developments such as the recent killing of Daunte Wright of Minnesota and the upcoming verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd. We encourage members of the University community to engage with resources as needed to help navigate these disturbing events.

As a reminder, UChicago Student Wellness is available to support students, and the Staff and Faculty Assistance Program (SFAP) offers support for University personnel. Deans-on-Call are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide support and guidance to students during emergency situations. Deans-on-Call can be reached by calling the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) at 773.702.8181 or by texting them directly through the UChicago Safe App.

The University will monitor developments in the coming days and will provide information and resources as needed to help keep our campus and South Side community safe. Amid all of the other pandemic-related challenges that we are facing, this is an important time for us to support each other and come together as a community.

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That is what I would have expected at the U of C. The Provost’s statement is very modest compared to that of Cornell’s President, and no barrage of programs flows from it.

We can see from the Final Report and its attachments what Cornell has in mind for its students. Stanford also has a required course in this area, as came to light in a recent thread on the Stanford ethos. One wonders whether the Stanford course cycles Critical Race Theory quite as explicitly as Cornell’s does. Chicago has no such mandated instruction, though the subject of race in America must surely be touched on in the Core social science sequence. In that context CRT would be more likely to be considered as a theory up for discussion within a broader framework of social analysis, not an indubitable truth.

It would be interesting to know whether any other peer schools have courses mandated for all students solely devoted to the subject of race.

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Marlowe the first years last fall were assigned summer reading for the first time. My understanding was that it was done in the context of providing additional humanities support to help students get off to the right start with their Hum. @surelyhuman should have more information. My concern is that this is always going to be an opportunity for further ‘instruction’ on doctrinal matters, including ‘anti-racism.’ Hopefully it isn’t. But it certainly is elsewhere! I just pray that at UChicago they actually assign substantive works. Of course, I would prefer no summer reading at all, which was always their position in the past.

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I don’t think we have anything that even comes close to what is being proposed for students at Cornell. It would be very unfortunate if this came to UChicago

https://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/faculty-senate/archives-and-actions/ongoing-senate-business/wg-s-final-report-feedback/

“Diversity-type course requirements often make use of menus. The CALS Diversity Requirement and the Arts
and Sciences Social Difference Requirement are examples at Cornell. Review of comparable requirements at peer schools also reveals a propensity for the menu approach. Their appeal is obvious; they spread the instruction workload, they can accommodate one-time-only offerings, and they give the student choice. On the other hand, they require criteria for getting on the menu, a filtering mechanism that enforces the criteria, and a governance mechanism to maintain both aspects. This is not easy and explains why menus tend to grow in ways that undermine the requirement they serve. To guard against this, we suggest that any use of menus in the requirement be reviewed by a university-wide panel of knowledgeable faculty under the auspices of the proposed Center forget Antiracist, Just, and Equitable Futures.”

By the way one of “schools” referenced is Chicago here

https://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/news/the-anti-racism-initiative/education-for-students/requirements-at-peer-schools/

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Sure, but UChicago’s civ studies offerings were “diverse” long before it became a multi-culti “requirement” among undergraduate programs in general. As Boyer mentions in his history of the university, back when they cleaned up the Core in the '80’s they made a decision to privilege no particular civilization. The requirement remained but the menu expanded to allow student choice - something that Cornell seems to be preventing. Furthermore, there is no “university-wide” panel to determine which Civ courses to offer. That is the purview of the appropriate academic departments because Civ is a real academic subject - it’s not just some diversity paen.

Cornell is losing its way. Edit to add: this is worse - they are turning over curricular decisions to a “center for anti-racism?” Wow.

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You are ever resourceful, @surelyhuman . This is a useful taxonomy of the mandatory requirements of Chicago and several of its peer schools.

Can we assume that several other ones (including Harvard, Yale, Brown and the tech schools) have no mandatory requirments in these subjects?

Michigan’s “Race and Ethnicity Requirement” is the one most explicitly focussed on those subjects. Cornell’s program will likely follow that model.

Several other schools have less explicit but similarly focussed requirements: USC’s “Diversity Requirement”, Penn’s “Diversity in the U.S” (required only in the College of Arts), and Stanford’s “Engaging Diversity” component of its “Ways of Thinking and Doing.” Berkeley’s “American Cultures Requirement” probably belongs in this category as well inasmuch as it is described as being focussed on “the diversity of America’s constituent cultural traditions.”

The required courses of Dartmouth, Columbia, and Chicago have a less American-centric perspective:

Dartmouth has a “World Culture Requirement,” which must include a course in each of a Western culture, a Non-Western culture, and “Culture and Identity”. The latter probably has elements of the racially focussed programs at the foregoing schools.

Columbia’s “Global Core Requirement” is more scholarly than any of the foregoing: It requires either a course in the direct study of a particular culture, using primary materials; or the study of a common theme addressed analytically and comparatively as between cultures.

Chicago’s analogous Core requirement is “Civilization Studies”, with a choice of one of the world’s great civilizations, understood not through textbook accounts but through “significant and exemplary documents and monuments… as a way of getting at ideas, cultural patterns, and social pressures that frame the underlying events.”

That is very much the way I remember the classic Chicago course in the History of Western Civilization. The difference is that now other civilizations may be selected for the same form of study.

All these courses at all institutions can no doubt be taught either well or badly, and there are probably insights to be gained in taking any of them. However, the perennial goal of education and what is most satisfying about a good one is that it liberates you from your narrow contemporary obsessions and personal dilemmas. The deep study of a civilization and time before our present one is not only illuminating and interesting in its own right but has the power to stir our deepest thoughts about human life and free us from modern cant. I know which of the programs described above I would choose for myself.

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Boyer provides the details:

The tradition of scholarly engagement with non-European civilizations in the 1950s and 1960s enabled the College in the 1980s and 1990s to avoid asymmetrical power struggles or turf claims in favor of intercultural pluralism. This decision did not deny the intrinsic importance of the European tradition, which continued to dominate the intellectual framework of most of the Core sequences in the humanities and social sciences and which, as Hanna H. Gray has recently argued, is a tradition that itself is “intensely self-critical and intensely self-conscious, characteristically interested in coming to know other cultures in part as a way to define its own, to question its own assumptions and enlarge its own experience,” thus in turn shaping “the basic life and vigor of the university itself, at every level.”212 But it did illustrate the wisdom of pedagogical change based on new scholarly paradigms in cultural studies developed in scientific ways rather than in response to outside pressure. David Hollinger has observed of the hotly politicized situation of cultural studies at many universities that “in the ‘multiculturalist’ ethos of the 1980s and 1990s, cultural programs led by canon-changing academic humanists were sometimes assigned extravagant power to make society more egalitarian and democratic.”213 Chicago largely escaped the temptation of using the curriculum in these ways both because the massive scholarly grounding of the civilization courses made them inappropriate for overt or even covert political ends and because the very structure of the Core presumed that all cultural knowledge was ultimately comparative and that the greater the cognitive distance that students were forced to move to engage other cultures, the more profound their understanding of their own culture would become.

- Boyer, John W. The University of Chicago. University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

Civ has a pretty large number of choices for a Core subject. All seem to be well-received - from newer trends to the tried and true. Because “Common Core” has evolved to mean having a common set of analytical tools rather than just a common canon, it does allow for more choices. However, as marlowe points out, that doesn’t mean that the subject needs be taught badly, and an institution that takes liberal ed seriously will be more likely than not to teach any of these topics well. In contrast, a required course imposed by fiat for doctrinal reasons won’t be taken very seriously by the students and will degenerate into a mere “throw-away.”

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