Colleges Spend Like There’s No Tomorrow. ‘These Places Are Just Devouring Money.’

By Jenna A. Robinson

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

March 16, 2023


Last week, faculty at Davidson College affirmed their commitment to free expression on campus by approving their own version of the Chicago Principles. It’s a step that the pro-free-speech organization Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse (DFTD) has been promoting for five years and a major free-speech milestone for the college.

In an email to the Martin Center, DFTD founder John Craig described the statement as “a landmark document for Davidson.”

The statement affirms:


True free speech, free expression, and academic freedom are not generational or preferential. In pledging to honor these ideals, we must recognize that this task can be arduous and precarious. Davidson has a professed commitment to free inquiry and to the inclusion of diverse persons and communities. We admit that these obligations have historically been more aspirational than actual. Acknowledging the intentional and unintentional exclusion of ideas and identities is both honest and constructive. Individuals and groups have been marginalized and their voices muted based on race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disability, class, ideology, citizenship, and religious or political affiliation.


Craig said, “DFTD is very pleased with the Commitment to Freedom of Expression statement just affirmed by Davidson’s faculty. [We] look forward to helping ensure activation of the stated principles throughout the Davidson College community. We greatly appreciate the work that the drafters and faculty put into developing and gaining affirmation of this statement.”


Davidson’s progress demonstrates the importance of engaged alumni.


The campaign began when DFTD sent a letter to then-president Carol Quillen urging policy changes including the “adoption and vigorous implementation at Davidson of the Chicago Principles of Free Expression—the ‘gold standard’ of free speech in academia.”Then, in October 2021, President Quillen appointed a working group to draft and submit a statement on freedom of expression that would be distinctive to Davidson in relating free speech to the school’s ideal of inclusiveness.


The new commitment was drafted by a working group consisting of two faculty members (Issac Bailey and Susan Roberts), two students, one current Davidson trustee, and Martin Center namesake former governor Jim Martin. Martin praised Davidson’s efforts in a college press release, saying,


Our nation needs more of what Davidson can provide—a place where debate runs civilly and freely, in a residence hall or a lecture hall. The college has produced doers and thinkers who made our society and our world better because their ideas and arguments were challenged every day on campus. This commitment was crafted by a group who came from different backgrounds, experiences and ideologies, and those differences brought a lasting result.


There is still work to be done at Davidson. DFTD’s wishlist for reforms includes policy changes that would raise the college’s FIRE rating to a “Green Light” score and new guidelines for on-campus political activism by the college’s leadership.


DFTD also wants the college to make “a concerted effort to diversify ideologically invited external speakers,” an issue on which there has been some progress, and to administer “biennial independently conducted confidential surveys of students and faculty to assess the state of free expression, open discourse, and ideological balance on campus.” DFTD provided a baseline for such a survey when it commissioned its own surveys of Davidson students and major donors in the fall of 2021.


With these steps, Davidson is moving in the right direction. This progress demonstrates the importance of engaged alumni and groups like Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse.


Davidson College Affirms Free Speech — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (jamesgmartin.center)

Where Liberty and Learning Endure

June 29, 2026
As America commemorates 250 years of independence, we reflect on the enduring principles of liberty and learning that have defined Davidson College for nearly two centuries.

Bankruptcy and Higher Education

June 21, 2026
By Todd Zywicki The Wall Street Journal June 21, 2026 Auburn University is known for its agricultural and STEM programs, its flight school and athletic programs. But the land-grant university recently became notable for another reason: The board of trustees is taking control of the school back from its faculty. The board began seizing the university’s academic programs—including curriculum, course offerings, degree requirements and academic credentials—at its June 5 meeting. The board also dissolved the faculty senate and replaced it with an advisory council to the president, which includes two faculty members from each of the university’s colleges and additional members appointed by the president. The board’s assertion of authority mirrors incoming mandates by the Alabama Legislature restricting the role of faculty senates in the state’s public university system. Predictably, Auburn’s faculty has responded with howls of outrage, decrying these intrusions on the faculty’s authority over academic operations. How could outsiders appointed through a political process have the expertise to make such delicate decisions? I’ve been a professor at a state university for almost 30 years, and I am sympathetic up to a point. But before becoming a professor I was a bankruptcy lawyer. And bankruptcy law teaches an important lesson for how academia can respond to this moment. Bankruptcy gives businesses an opportunity to admit mistakes, reform and emerge stronger. Successful enterprises don’t need bankruptcy lawyers. But when an enterprise loses its way, it goes into receivership. Most universities aren’t financially bankrupt but have lost their mission and direction. Society has long recognized certain institutions’ authority to manage their own affairs. Two notable examples are licensed professionals—such as doctors and lawyers—and universities. Universities, even state universities, have run their enterprises with minimal external oversight. Faculties enjoyed substantial rights of self-governance because they committed to higher standards than those required by ordinary jobs. Professors would establish and maintain standards of scholarly integrity, freedom of speech and inquiry, and rigorous dedication to merit-based assessment of research in specialized areas. They policed their own house, enforcing norms of truth-seeking, maintaining scholarly integrity and rigor, and ensuring that students emerged with basic knowledge, employable skills and civic competency. But over the past several decades, commitment to those values collapsed. Surveys by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression consistently reveal fear among students and faculty around expressing unfashionable ideas. Universities have seen shout-downs, cancellations and even violence against speakers. Merit and quality yielded to “diversity” and “equity.” Truth-seeking has been displaced by faddish theories and ideologically charged teaching and research. Professors design esoteric departments and teach niche classes to cliques of activist students while the needs of other students and taxpayers for real education go unaddressed. Like companies I represented, universities have lost their way. And many have proved either unable or unwilling to self-correct. When that happens, it is appropriate to put institutions into receivership until they reform and rededicate themselves to their mission. At Auburn incoming students must now take certain required civics and history courses to master basic competency in U.S. history and government. To ensure the classes actually meet that objective, professors will have to make their syllabi publicly available. In the classroom, instructors will be expected to stick to the matter at hand and avoid free-ranging political punditry. Just as other companies can learn from the ones that go bankrupt, other institutions of higher education can learn something from Auburn: Fix what’s broken, or someone else might fix it for you. Mr. Zywicki is a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He was a Dartmouth College trustee, 2005-09. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bankruptcy-and-higher-education-4c2b178e

Race Preferences Are Falling Nationwide

June 19, 2026
By the Editorial Board The Wall Street Journal June 19, 2026 The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against racial preferences is turning out to be a landmark with profound consequences as its influence spreads. On Thursday the famously progressive Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a state program that issued scholarships based on race violates the U.S. Constitution. Justice Annette Ziegler wrote for the court that the Constitution requires “that every person ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,’” and that the state cannot “use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.” That must have been painful for the activist liberal majority on the court. In a concurrence, Wisconsin Chief Justice Jill Karofsky took some shots at Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College (2023) before acknowledging that “I am bound by the precedent set forth in SFFA” and other Supreme Court rulings “when interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment.” The case was brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty against a 1985 Badger State law that reserved need-based scholarships through a grant program for “Black American,” “American Indian,” “Hispanic” and some Southeast Asian undergraduate students enrolled in Wisconsin’s private and technical colleges. Last week the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a scholarship program earmarked for black University of Iowa students studying physical sciences was “impracticable” under SFFA. State governments would be wise to repeal these discriminatory grant programs, or the courts will do it for them.
Show More