José Cabranes: The Present Danger at our Leading Universities: What is to be Don [0:00-4:37]

Thank you, dear friends. I'm honored by your presence and grateful to Dr. Pauliakoff and his colleagues for the great work that they do to make American liberal education truly liberal and truly an expression of the best of the Western tradition. It is especially gratifying to be in the presence tonight of several of my heroes in the academic and public life of our country, Judge Mucasey, Judge Winter, Professor Kagan, and President Schmidt. I have observed each of them at close hand, and I know that each is an exemplar of rectitude in the face of dishonest challenges. To each of these personal heroes, my thanks for the honor of your friendship and for providing an example of courage in difficult places and difficult times. Now, I am a mere lawyer. I cannot offer you theory of philosophical insights, but as Holmes famously observed, the life of the law has not been logic. It has been an experience. So I offer some comments tonight based on decades of observation of major private universities to which we have entrusted the future of our civilization. I had long believed and often argued that true power in a university lies and should lie with its tenured faculty. My job as general counsel and under the benevolent leadership of Beno Schmid as a trustee of Yale and of other places for my sins was to protect the faculty as the continuing embodiment of the university. Over the last decade, however, a shift has occurred in university governance, which I think is largely well understood by all of you. Increasingly, policy is dictated by two new groups. One is a burgeoning non-faculty bureaucracy, including professionals allegedly endowed with the expertise to adjudicate interpersonal conduct. The other group consists of a growing number of full-time students who favor activism or education. Today, these groups, rather than the faculty, are driving some of the most dangerous developments in university life. These developments of which we are all aware include the following. The ascension of narrow ideological fields of study usually at the expense of the study of the great events and ideas of world history. An erosion of the due process rights of faculty and students, the rise of a pedagogy of grievance and denigration of America in place of appreciation for America, warts and all. Trigger warnings and ever more dangerous efforts to regulate the permissible limits of classroom discussion unwelcome ideas can then this hate speech. The confluence of these challenges and the rise of the groups that have promoted them is no accident. They are, I think, symptomatic of a single malady, a deep confusion about the university's purpose. Once we recognize that confusion, we can try to counteract its effects. Tonight, I'd like to offer a diagnosis and also suggest some pragmatic remedies within the reach of concerned alumni and trustees. The dual trends I have identified, a burgeoning non-faculty bureaucracy coupled with the recent surge of a new student activism, these reflect the powerful symbiosis. Ever-needy student activists assert demands that require expansion of the bureaucracy. In turn, this new bureaucracy encourages and facilitates the student agitation. Rinse and repeat.