Universities today organize teaching and curricula as though every student is an aspiring graduate student looking to specialize, while tossing in a bunch of onerous general degree requirements for the sake of breadth. Something similar is happening in public and private schools where a scattershot approach to learning is combined with career expectations and teaching-to-the-test. Students at all levels, for instance, are expected to pass a number of history and social studies classes, thus taking a scattershot approach toward social and political literacy without hands-on civics and participation. While cultivating basic literacy is essential, most students will never care to learn history, philosophy, English literature, or even most of the STEM fields in any greater depth than is necessary for a career. Statistics and polling consistently demonstrate this fact. Education can be redesigned to get students at all levels directly engaged in self-government, as well as to connect civic engagement to students’ projected career paths in higher education via the internship model. The literary humanities in particular have already lost the funding battle attendant to the corporatization of universities. They should not see this as a problem. Universities are experiencing multiple crises simultaneously involving funding, collapsing public trust, demographic change, administrative bloat, and the mission-drift battles between corporatization on one hand, and ideological capture by the social-justice left on the other. All these problems stem from the fact that universities lack clear civic and economic missions. Restructuring is in order.
For example, Brendan Cantwell called attention to the above problems with his January 2024 article “The Left’s Contradictory Goals for Higher Ed” in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The battle over what role higher education should play in America is intensifying and the political right is winning. Race-conscious admissions have been banned by the Supreme Court, red-state financial support for public universities is crumbling, and attacks on academe as elitist, identity-obsessed, and radically leftist are galvanizing voters in states like Florida, Texas, and Indiana. Part of the reason a progressive vision of higher education has failed to gain traction is because it has no single, unified vision.” It’s not surprising that public trust in universities is collapsing when even progressives have no vision for reforming the system beyond calls to return to the status quo, such as Martha Nussbaum’s Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities.
Polling data consistently show that much of the public would welcome a novel type of conversation about the role of education in society. The explosion of interest in Heterodox Academy is another such indicator. Furthermore, if the AAUP really wants a “New Deal” for higher education, and if The Chronicle of Higher Education really wants to convince the public that college is a “public good,” they must demonstrate that universities are capable of radical change. Universities must induce the public to fall in love with them all over again by proving their civic and economic worth in a new political age.
Consider how well my ideas further the main points from an excellent book by Ronald J. Daniels, What Universities Owe Democracy:
1. Daniels begins by noting that universities and liberal democracy are in crisis (from the Introduction). I agree.
2. Universities rise or fall with liberal democracy, since their missions are aligned, and their economies are interdependent (Introduction).
3. Universities are, to some extent, part of the common good (page 16); however, the problems of defining the common good, public goods, and the national interest are more urgent than Daniels implies, or political liberals in general realize.
4. The term “liberal democracy” expresses a “collision of opposites” (12), of “two very different political and philosophical traditions” (10) that need “balance’ (13). Only dual constitutionalism can provide that balance. As I say on the Homepage, the liberal principle (Burke) and the democracy principle (Rousseau-Paine) each need a constitution of their own.
5. The idea of a “national university” (page 18) promoted by the Founding generation was meant to address 2-4 above. So was the Wisconsin Idea (146). However, neither the Founders, nor Daniels, recognized the need for dual, real-ideal constitutionalism, and not even the Wisconsin Idea went far enough in creating a civic university with ideal constitutionalism as its mission.
6. Daniels supports the open science movement (pages 176-186), and “radical transparency” for news organizations (179). I argue on the Government page that secrecy is an outdated paradigm. The open science and news media agendas overlap profoundly with the open democracy, open university, open security, and open foreign policy of ideal constitutionalism.
7. Ideal constitutionalism also furthers Daniels’s liberal-democratic requirement of “pluralism” through radical openness and standpoint diversity.
Now, consider 1-7 in more detail:
1. Daniels mentions in his Introduction (page 26) that it is difficult to discern whether an institution is at a “critical juncture” without the benefit of hindsight. In spite of the difficulty, Daniels thinks universities are at a critical juncture for all the reasons listed above, and he suspects that liberal democracy (27) is at one, as well. So, Daniels has run up against the problem I discuss on the Government page of how to measure democracy in order to determine whether a nation’s democracy is in “crisis,” or whether liberal democracy itself is in crisis. This website also discusses the economic critical juncture presently occurring in our shift away from neoliberal economics and, in particular, debates about how to measure wealth inequality, and to what extent inequality is a problem that must be solved. As I say on the Government page, it is easy to miss the forest for the trees in these debates: it is a mistake, in other words, to take the Tetlockian “hedgehog” approach of focusing too narrowly on questions of measurement. Rather, I take a “fox’s” approach—a panoramic view—on my Homepage to discerning the overlapping crises of constitutionalism, democracy, economics, and education. The list of diverse evidence and sources I provide for each category there speaks for itself.
Regarding the measurement of the crisis of US democracy, for instance, there is a debate heading into the 2024 presidential election over whether or not Donald Trump could become an actual dictator in his second term, since nobody knows exactly how well our system of divided powers could meaningfully check Trump’s power once in office. While this debate is interesting for academic reasons, the fact that there is a debate occurring on the subject at all highlights the problem: the crisis is obvious beyond reasonable dispute. We find out what the breaking point of our separation of powers actually is by breaking it, at which point it is too late to go back. If it had a healthy democracy, the US would not be anywhere near to confronting this problem; and then there is the additional factor that we are talking about people, as well as institutions. Where exactly we draw the line on an economic, constitutional, or educational “crisis” is relative to what the people within the system happen to be thinking and doing at the time. Since the crisis in question is a social phenomenon, no two instances will be exactly the same.
In sum, while debates over the exact definition and measurement of “crisis” carry on indefinitely, I do not want to live to recognize in hindsight that V-Dem was correct that the world in 2023 had regressed to 1986 levels of democracy (even though editors of the Journal of Democracy denied it). Let’s use a fox’s common sense on this one.
2. So, Daniels believes universities and liberal democracy are together in crisis. Of universities he says the “political structures aligned with their mission” are “degrading” (9). While the mission of universities is to support liberal democracy through the “four connections” of “social mobility, civic education, stewardship of facts, and pluralism” (26), Daniels does not go so far as to say that the civic mission of universities is to define the national mission with which they are aligned, namely, the national interest and the common good. (Recall that an ideal constitution is the national interest defined, a list of ideal policies generated through a deliberative process of radical standpoint diversity. Ideal policies are, in turn, part of what should be considered the common good.) That Daniels should take this additional step of defining the national mission, however, is self-evident, because the civic role of higher education is clearly to enable citizens’ self-government.
3. At this point, the interrelated problems of the national interest, the mission of universities, and the common good are evident. As mentioned above, The Chronicle of Higher Education wants to market higher education as a “public good”—while predictably neglecting to define that term or to notice that economic “public goods” are not the same thing as the “common good.” Daniels also believes universities serve the “common good” (16) and the “public good” (8), but he begs the question of how we define these terms, and where, for that matter, the general will, or majority stands on them. Whereas political liberals have dismissed these concepts as anachronisms, right-wing theocrats like Adrian Vermeule are onto something with notions like “common-good constitutionalism.” It is time for liberals to take the common good and the general will seriously. For instance, this is what Josh Hammer wrote for the conservative think tank, American Compass: “Constitutional jurisprudence should reject both libertarian originalism and positivist originalism in favor of a ‘common good originalism’ that is intrinsically oriented not toward individual liberty and individual autonomy as innate goals, but toward the common good that is attainable only through a flourishing nation-state, communities, and families working in harmony with one another.”
One paragraph of Daniels’s book makes these links particularly clear and points toward the need for an ideal constitution, so it is worth quoting in full:
“Liberal democracies are invariably remitted to a world of debate and compromise in the public sphere. But debate and compromise are not enough on their own to advance the common good. What links public policy to the public interest are facts. Ideally, legislators and judges rely upon facts to shape their decisions, just as citizens draw upon facts to form reasoned opinions that can be translated into voting behavior, dialogue, and political action. And when policies fail to deliver promised results, it is facts that allow us to establish discrepancies, to trace actions to actors, and, not least, to check elected officials and hold them to account. The political theorist and many-time White House aide William Galston describes the link between facts and this checking function in these terms: ‘Democracies cannot function without public trust, which depends on the public belief that officials are competent to ascertain relevant truth and committed to presenting it candidly.’” (Kindle version, 134, bold is mine.)
The logic and implications of this paragraph with regard to “facts” are explained on the Government page of my website under the heading “The Socratic Pursuit of Truth in Politics, Science, and Higher Education.” The pursuit of truth is the pursuit of facts. Where Daniels says, “Ideally, legislators and judges rely upon facts to shape their decisions,” I would add that all citizens need to help in the production and dissemination of those facts in the form of an ideal constitution, since that is the “ideal” way to handle facts in the civic realm. Ideal constitutionalism is also the way to build public trust and to better hold political actors accountable; it is the democratic way to truth, trust, transparency, and accountability through open-sourcing the definitions of the national interest and the common good.
So, liberal democracies need to define the common good and to produce a method of common-good constitutionalism that accords better with the majority will of the people. Although, Daniels writes that liberal democracy “is the system of government best equipped to mediate among the different, competing, and often irreconcilable conceptions of the good” (8), he does not connect this insight to his mention of the generally conservative criticism that universities long ago “failed democracy” by giving up “the search for the good life” (22). It is time for liberals to take conservatives at their word by turning the entire higher education system into a civic-economic, deliberative machine aimed at truth and the good life. In other words, political liberals should commit themselves wholeheartedly to defining the national interest and the common good on a rolling basis through a system of dual constitutionalism. Furthermore, where critics of left-wing excesses like Jonathan Haidt and Heterodox Academy say universities lack standpoint diversity, political liberals should respond by turning the entire university experience into an unparalleled, trans-ideological system of standpoint diversity.
It’s true that such a system would be minimally ideological in the senses of making liberal democracy and capitalism its foundation—thus, in broad agreement with Francis Fukuyama’s end of history thesis. However, with that necessary foundation in place, academic debates can range anywhere, and there is a further sense in which the system would need to aspire toward the trans-ideological. Nobody knows beforehand what the common good requires and the national interest means in every case; these things need to be discovered, and many things will evolve over time prompting continual reassessment. A deliberative system aimed at truth is a system that cannot be captured by any single ideology, doctrine, or party, as it requires all perspectives and possibilities to be considered continuously.
Consider the following quotation from Time about the Niskanen Center, a think tank that has undergone an ideological makeover along the lines above, from classical libertarian to radically centrist:
“Niskanen was heavily involved in serious bipartisan talks to reform immigration policy late last year by protecting “Dreamers,” fortifying the asylum system and increasing border security, multiple sources involved in the discussions told me. “This is a policy area where the status quo is so terrible that even the tiniest incremental gain that might only help 100 people is still 100 more people than the status quo,” says Niskanen’s immigration policy director Kristie De Peña, who recently teamed up with a well-known Iowa Republican and Democrat to argue that red states could ease their labor shortages by resettling refugees.
Niskanen describes such initiatives as “transpartisan” rather than “bipartisan.” Its staffers see this as an important distinction: “bipartisan” implies a half-a-loaf compromise in which both sides give up much of what they want, whereas a “transpartisan” solution is a win-win that offers something to everyone—like a child allowance that Republicans see as pro-family and Democrats see as curbing poverty.”
There is a sliding scale from the way Niskanen uses the term “transpartisan” to my use of the term “trans-ideological” above: where transpartisan expresses the centrist virtue of pragmatic compromise, trans-ideological refers to the epistemological, philosophical sense in which rational centrism aims at truth. In a system of dual constitutionalism, were political realism emphasizes compromise, idealism emphasizes truth; both are essential to liberal-democratic centrism.
4. The term “liberal democracy” expresses a “collision of opposites” (12), of “two very different political and philosophical traditions” (10) that need the balancing only dual constitutionalism can provide. As I say on the Homepage, the liberal principle (Burke) and the democracy principle (Rousseau-Paine) each need a constitution of their own. The Government page then goes on to explain my reasoning in more detail.
Regarding Daniels's “collision of opposites” idea, George Thomas’s Madisonian Constitution describes countervailing power as the core of the US Constitution. I take countervailing power to be the core of all liberal-democratic constitutions, as well as the core of parliamentary systems. This is why democracy needs a constitution of its own, an ideal constitution produced through a deliberative process of radical standpoint diversity. Whereas realist constitutions force political factions to compromise, and the separation-of-powers system exists both for that reason and to provide a bulwark against autocratic capture of the system, ideal constitutions need to focus democratic opinion into an ideal baseline of centrism and accountability. This ideal discourse is an updated version of John Quincy Adams’s aristocratic, “ideal oratory that calls political community into being” (see 5 below). In liberal democracies there is too much “collision” and not enough genuine deliberation and balancing of perspectives.
“The diffusion of sovereign authority—what Aristotle called the distribution of offices—speaks to the fundamental nature of the polity: it is neither ‘democratic’ nor ‘undemocratic,’ as recent scholarship would have it. Rather, the Constitution is a ‘complex and skillfully contrived’ blend of liberalism and democracy that is characterized by tension. This tension is evident insofar as natural rights and popular sovereignty both provide the foundation of our Constitution. These two elements do not sit easily together, yet preserving the tension within this compound may be central to preserving our constitutionalism.” (Page 3, emphasis mine)
— George Thomas in The Madisonian Constitution. Johns Hopkins UP: Baltimore, 2008.
5. The idea of a “national university” (Daniels, page 18) promoted by the Founding generation was meant to address 2-4 above. So was the Wisconsin Idea (146). However, neither the Founders, nor Daniels, recognized the need for dual, real-ideal constitutionalism, and not even the Wisconsin Idea went far enough in creating a civic university with ideal constitutionalism as its mission.
Consider the following quotations from George Thomas’s The Founders and the Idea of a National University: Constituting the American Mind. Cambridge UP: Cambridge, 2017.
“[T]he creation of a national university was supported by every president from Washington to John Quincy Adams—and would be put forward by later presidents such as Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James A. Garfield—and was frequently advocated by the nascent republic’s educational thinkers. The national university project would unite leading Jeffersonians and Federalists even while they disagreed on particulars. (Thomas, 5)
“Proponents of the national university thought it would both create and solidify a national vision that was not provided by the educational institutions in the states. […] the sectarian nature of the colleges—and the fact that theology was at the center of most of these colleges’ missions—meant that these institutions could not be depended on to provide for either national unity or the cultivation of liberal principles. The national university, in contrast, would be free of sectarian affiliation, as theology would be removed from the center of education. As such, the national university could provide an education in political principles and national sentiments that was part of forging the collective identity of ‘We the People’ and articulating what ‘We’ believe and spire to.” (Thomas, 6)
Stay tuned. I'll add more to this section 1/9/2024.
Here I’ll simply repeat what I wrote above for numbers 6 and 7, since the points are obvious enough:
6. Daniels supports the open science movement (pages 176-186), and “radical transparency” for news organizations (179). I argue that secrecy is an outdated paradigm. The open science and news media agendas overlap profoundly with the open democracy, open university, and open security and foreign policy of ideal constitutionalism.
7. Ideal constitutionalism also furthers Daniels’s liberal-democratic requirement of “pluralism” through radical openness and standpoint diversity.