Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue at Harvard

Published October 1, 2024


Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

For the past six months, the Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group has sought to understand how we communicate with one another and how we might do better. It has explored how we experience our classrooms and the broader campus environment. It has researched how we teach and learn. And it has assessed how various tools and techniques support robust debate and rigorous discourse. We write now to share the Group’s report and recommendations.
 
Drawn from Faculties from across the University, the Working Group hosted 23 listening sessions, conducted online surveys, and gathered direct input from students, faculty, staff, and alumni representing every Harvard School. More than 600 affiliates participated in the listening sessions, while thousands more lent their perspectives through surveys and correspondence. Thank you to all who took the time to share their views—we need to hear from all parts of our community if the work ahead is to be fully successful. As the report states, “excellence through the free and respectful exchange of ideas demands much of every member of the community.”


The insights gleaned from these many points of engagement are detailed in the report, which notes that some community members are reluctant to share their views or to discuss controversial issues because they fear being judged by peers, criticized on social media, or subjected to reputational or professional damage. To address and help overcome this reluctance, the Working Group highlights good work already under way across our campus to cultivate habits, norms, and practices supporting open inquiry and constructive dialogue. These efforts informed the Working Group’s own wide-ranging recommendations, including the establishment of norms, propagation of best teaching practices, creation of new teaching modules, and development of responsible social media policies.


We accept the recommendations of the Working Group and look forward to working with the deans, faculty, staff, and students to put them into practice. Our work will undoubtedly take time and will take many forms across the University. As our community rededicates itself to this vital pursuit, we encourage you to read the report and use it as a resource in efforts—large and small—to further open inquiry and constructive dialogue. More about the report is available in this Gazette Q&A.
 
As we noted when we announced the Working Group in April, excellence in discovery and learning requires the ability to try ideas on for size, to explore them fully, to challenge accepted wisdom, to disagree productively, and to take risks. We are immensely grateful to the members of the Working Group, especially co-chairs Tomiko Brown-Nagin and Eric Beerbohm, for their tremendous contribution to this important effort. As the report notes, we are at an “inflection point in the history of our institution, our nation, and the world,” and “we must practice—even enshrine—habits, norms, and practices that facilitate the excellence for which we all strive.” This report points the way.


Sincerely,


Alan M. Garber

President


 John F. Manning

Provost

Read the Report and Recommendations Here

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.
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