As certain core commitments of higher education have come under attack in recent years, I have been paying attention to the potential differences between the public and private spheres. Public institutions in states like Florida and Texas may have little choice but to surrender to the will of the state legislature, which sets budgets and has the power to dictate many of the details as to how its state institutions are run. Legislative control of private institutions is less obvious, but it can still happen—whether directly (as in states like Iowa, which control scholarship programs that can be used at the state’s private institutions) or indirectly (wherein private institutions can be shut out of certain corridors of power if they are seen as unfriendly to a state’s government).
We now see the same pattern developing at the federal level, both in terms of institutions that the government directly controls (the military academies) and those that it helps to fund. Given the size of federal grant programs, this latter group includes just about every public and private institution in the country. Here, the slight advantage that private institutions enjoy at the state level is less obvious; in fact, it may be more hazardous to be a private institution. For these institutions, federal grants are the most obvious form of legal leverage to which the government has access. No surprise, then, that large private institutions are particularly in the administration’s crosshairs at the moment.
With one possible exception: namely, institutions with an official mission that is grounded in a particular religious tradition. If we consider the forces that are currently campaigning against particular campus efforts to highlight privilege and to work toward greater justice, we will quickly realize that they are often the same forces that have campaigned in recent years in favor of religious freedom—including for colleges and universities. Thus far, this campaign has been seen as beneficial to one particular side of the political spectrum; the most eye-catching headlines have been around the ability of an institution of higher education to discriminate against persons of a particular sexual orientation or gender identity, or to limit the freedom of faculty members to express contrarian views on certain moral issues (such as abortion or international conflicts). These allowances have been grounded in the religious commitments of the institution.
But what if an institution’s religious mission demands that it call out unmerited privilege or demand justice for historically marginalized people? What if current efforts to ban certain words from websites, administrative structures, and even classrooms at our colleges and universities are in direct contradiction to an institution’s religious commitments? Wouldn’t the recent emphasis on religious freedom—often underscored in court cases, including some that have come before the Supreme Court—require the federal government to cease and desist from penalizing an institution that understands its positions and programs related to privilege and justice to be demanded by its religious mission? Wouldn’t a bona fide religious commitment to serve the underprivileged, and to attend to the needs of the marginalized, insulate an institution against discrimination by the federal government?
We are likely to find out soon. Recently, the dean of the law school at Georgetown University responded quite publicly to a letter from the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. That letter treats a certain three-letter acronym as a substantive entity—one that either is or is not “taught” in classes, one that can be “removed,” and one that could mark a student as ineligible for certain federally-funded programs. The response from the dean was clear: “As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding.” Moreover, “for us at Georgetown, this principle is a moral and educational imperative. It is a principle that defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution.”
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I imagine that a number of private institutions with missions that are tied to particular religious traditions will be giving a great deal of thought to the juxtaposition of these issues in the present body politic. A recent article in Inside Higher Ed, reporting on the Georgetown incident, observed that the dean’s approach does not yet seem to be widespread; however, the article only considered a few other Jesuit institutions, which are a small minority of the Roman Catholic institutions in this country—not to mention the much larger number of institutions with other Christian affiliations, or Jewish ones. I believe (and hope) that religiously affiliated institutions will take this opportunity to emphasize their mission-driven priorities, which often include attending to those who are most in need. If these institutions take that course, we should all watch closely to see whether governmental representatives will honor their own strongly asserted commitments to religious freedom.
To learn more about Henry Ossawa Tanner and his painting “The Annunciation,” readers might find interesting Mike Jordan Laskey’s short piece on “What the Feast of the Annunciation Offers Us in a Pandemic.”
David S. Cunningham is the executive director of NetVUE. For most posts by David, click here.
