美国的精英大学臃肿、自满、不自由 --- America’s elite universities are bloated, complacent and illiberal

经济学人：

To keep its competitive edge the Ivy League will have to change

为了保持竞争优势，常春藤盟校必须做出改变

Mar 4th 2024|CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

2024 年 3 月 4 日马萨诸塞州剑桥

THE STRUGGLE over America’s elite universities—who controls them and how they are run—continues to rage, with lasting consequences for them and the country. Harvard faces a congressional investigation into antisemitism; Columbia has just been hit with a new lawsuit alleging “endemic” hostility towards Jews. Top colleges are under mounting pressure to reintroduce rigorous test-based admissions policies, after years of backsliding on meritocracy. And it is likely that the cosy tax breaks these gilded institutions enjoy will soon attract greater scrutiny. Behind these struggles lies a big question. Can American universities, flabby with cash and blighted by groupthink, keep their competitive edge?

关于美国精英大学的斗争——谁控制着它们以及它们如何运营——继续激烈进行，给它们和国家带来了持久的影响。哈佛大学面临国会针对反犹太主义的调查；哥伦比亚刚刚遭遇一项新诉讼，指控对犹太人存在 “普遍” 敌意。经过多年的精英教育倒退，顶尖大学面临着越来越大的压力，需要重新引入严格的应试招生政策。这些镀金机构享受的舒适税收减免很可能很快就会引起更严格的审查。这些斗争的背后隐藏着一个大问题。资金匮乏且受群体思维困扰的美国大学能否保持竞争优势？

The origins of the turmoil lie in extreme campus reactions to Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th. They led to a blockbuster congressional hearing in December. In it politicians accused three presidents of stellar colleges of failing to stamp out anti-Jewish speech. The University of Pennsylvania’s then president, Elizabeth Magill, stepped down just days later. Claudine Gay, formerly Harvard’s president, resigned from her job in January amid twin furores over antisemitism on campus and plagiarism in her scholarship (which she contested).

这场骚乱的根源在于校园对哈马斯 10 月 7 日袭击以色列的极端反应。他们在 12 月召开了一场轰动一时的国会听证会。政客们在其中指责三位一流大学的校长未能消除反犹太言论。几天后，宾夕法尼亚大学时任校长伊丽莎白 · 马吉尔辞职。哈佛前校长克劳丁 · 盖伊 (Claudine Gay) 在校园反犹太主义和奖学金抄袭（她对此提出异议）的双重愤怒中于一月份辞职。

Plenty of faculty—both at Harvard and at other elite universities that have recently seen their reputations trashed—insist that hard-right Republicans and other rabble-rousers are fabricating controversies. Stirring up animosity towards pointy-headed elites can win them political advantage. But thoughtful insiders acknowledge that, for some years, elite universities, particularly those within the Ivy League, have grown dangerously detached from ordinary Americans, not to mention unmoored from their own academic and meritocratic values.

哈佛和其他最近声誉受损的精英大学的许多教职人员坚称，极右翼共和党人和其他煽动者正在制造争议。煽动对尖锐精英的敌意可以为他们赢得政治优势。但深思熟虑的内部人士承认，多年来，精英大学，尤其是常春藤联盟内的大学，已经与普通美国人严重脱节，更不用说脱离自己的学术和精英价值观了。

In theory, these difficulties could promote efforts to correct flaws that are holding back elite education in America. But they could also entrench them. “America’s great universities are losing the public’s trust,” warns Robert George, a legal scholar and philosopher at Princeton. “And it is not the public’s fault.”

从理论上讲，这些困难可能会促进纠正阻碍美国精英教育的缺陷的努力。但他们也可以巩固它们。 “美国伟大的大学正在失去公众的信任，” 普林斯顿大学法律学者兼哲学家罗伯特 · 乔治警告说。 “这不是公众的错。”

History lessons 历史课

To understand the mess that the Ivies and other elite colleges find themselves in, first consider how they broke away from the rest in recent decades. Although America’s elite universities have centuries of prestigious history, much of their modern wealth flows from a bull run that began in the more recent past. Back in the 1960s, only a modest gap divided the resources that America’s most and least selective colleges could throw around, according to research by Caroline Hoxby, an economist at Stanford. By the late 2000s, that had widened to an abyss.

要了解常春藤盟校和其他精英大学陷入的困境，首先要考虑一下近几十年来它们是如何脱离其他大学的。尽管美国的精英大学拥有数百年的悠久历史，但它们的现代财富大部分来自最近开始的牛市。斯坦福大学经济学家卡罗琳 · 霍克斯比 (Caroline Hoxby) 的研究表明，早在 20 世纪 60 年代，美国最挑剔和最不挑剔的大学所能分配的资源之间只有很小的差距。到了 2000 年代末，这个数字已经扩大到了一个深渊。

This happened in part because of changes that enabled elite universities to enrol ever cleverer students. The collapsing cost of air fares and phone calls made sharp school-leavers gradually more eager to apply to ritzy colleges far from their homes. Smart youngsters from around the world joined them. At about the same time, the expansion of standardised testing made it easier for colleges to identify the very brightest sparks from far and wide. These smarter, more ambitious entrants were more likely to value top-notch faculty and facilities, and were more willing to pay for them, according to Professor Hoxby’s analysis. And they went on to greater success, which meant the size of donations elite universities could squeeze from alumni began to increase.

发生这种情况的部分原因是精英大学能够招收更聪明的学生。机票和电话费用的暴跌使得那些精明的毕业生逐渐更加渴望申请远离家乡的豪华大学。来自世界各地的聪明年轻人加入了他们的行列。大约在同一时间，标准化测试的扩展使大学更容易识别来自世界各地最耀眼的火花。根据霍克斯比教授的分析，这些更聪明、更雄心勃勃的进入者更有可能看重一流的师资和设施，也更愿意为此付费。他们继续取得更大的成功，这意味着精英大学可以从校友那里榨取的捐款规模开始增加。

New-fangled ways of managing endowments also boosted America’s super-elite colleges. For years top universities managed their nest eggs cautiously, says Brendan Cantwell of Michigan State University. But in the 1980s the wealthiest ones began ploughing into more hazardous assets, including commodities and property, with considerable success. The richest universities were both more willing and more able to take risks; they could also reinvest a larger share of their returns.

新奇的捐赠管理方式也促进了美国超级精英大学的发展。密歇根州立大学的布伦丹 · 坎特韦尔表示，多年来，顶尖大学一直谨慎地管理自己的资金。但在 20 世纪 80 年代，最富有的人开始涉足更危险的资产，包括大宗商品和房地产，并取得了相当大的成功。最富有的大学更愿意也更有能力承担风险；他们还可以将更大份额的回报进行再投资。

All this has opened a chasm between America’s top-ranked colleges and the rest. A mere 20 universities own half of the $800bn in endowments that American institutions have accrued. The most selective ones can afford to splash a lot more money on students than the youngsters themselves are asked to cough up in tuition, which only makes admission to them more sought after. Acceptance rates at the top dozen universities are one-third of what they were two decades ago (at most other institutions, rates are unchanged). Lately early-career salaries for people with in-demand degrees, such as computer science, have risen faster for graduates from the most prestigious universities than for everyone else. Higher education in America “is becoming a ladder in which the steps are farther apart”, says Craig Calhoun of Arizona State University.

所有这些都在美国顶尖大学和其他大学之间拉开了鸿沟。美国机构积累的 8000 亿美元捐赠基金中，只有 20 所大学拥有一半。最挑剔的学校在学生身上投入的钱比年轻人自己支付的学费还要多，这只会让他们的入学更受欢迎。排名前十的大学的录取率是二十年前的三分之一（在大多数其他机构，录取率没有变化）。最近，对于那些拥有计算机科学等热门学位的人来说，来自最负盛名的大学的毕业生的职业生涯早期薪资增长速度比其他人更快。亚利桑那州立大学的克雷格 · 卡尔霍恩表示，美国的高等教育 “正在成为一个阶梯，阶梯之间的距离越来越远”。

image: The Economist 图片来源：《经济学家》

For all their success, America’s best institutions are now flying into squalls. One clutch of challenges comes from abroad. American universities still dominate the top rungs of most international league tables—but their lead is becoming somewhat less secure. Every year Times Higher Education, a British magazine, asks more than 30,000 academics to name the universities they believe produce the best work in their fields. They are growing gradually less likely to name American ones, and a bit more likely to point to Chinese ones (see chart 1).

尽管美国最好的机构取得了巨大的成功，但现在却陷入了困境。其中一系列挑战来自国外。美国大学仍然在大多数国际排行榜上占据主导地位，但他们的领先地位正在变得不那么稳固。英国杂志《泰晤士报高等教育》每年都会邀请 30,000 多名学者评选出他们认为在各自领域取得最佳成果的大学。他们越来越不太可能提及美国的产品，而更有可能提及中国的产品（见图 1）。

image: The Economist 图片来源：《经济学家》

Research in disciplines such as maths, computing, engineering and physics is becoming especially competitive. Rankings produced by Leiden University in the Netherlands, which scores universities solely on the impact of the papers they produce, now place Chinese universities in pole position for all those subjects (see chart 2). “The difference from five or ten years ago is quite astonishing,” says Simon Marginson at Oxford University. The challenge is not that American output is growing weaker, he reckons, but that the quality produced by rivals is shooting up.

数学、计算、工程和物理等学科的研究变得尤其具有竞争力。荷兰莱顿大学的排名仅根据大学发表的论文的影响力对大学进行评分，目前中国大学在所有这些科目上均处于领先地位（见图 2）。牛津大学的西蒙 · 马金森 (Simon Marginson) 表示：“与五年前或十年前相比，差异相当惊人。” 他认为，挑战不在于美国的产出日益疲软，而在于竞争对手生产的质量正在提高。

Competition among countries to snag the world’s smartest students and faculty is growing more severe, too. Twenty years ago America attracted 60% of the foreigners studying in English-speaking countries; now it gets about 40%. Starting around the time of Donald Trump’s election, high-achieving Chinese—who once had eyes only for America’s finest universities—began sending additional, “back-up” applications to institutions in places such as Singapore and Britain, says Tomer Rothschild, who runs an agency that helps them.

各国之间争夺世界上最聪明的学生和教师的竞争也变得越来越激烈。 20 年前，美国吸引了 60% 的外国人到英语国家留学；现在大约是 40%。托默 · 罗斯柴尔德 (Tomer Rothschild) 表示，从唐纳德 · 特朗普 (Donald Trump) 当选前后开始，曾经只关注美国最好的大学的成就斐然的中国人开始向新加坡和英国等地的院校发送额外的 “备用” 申请。帮助他们的机构。

As challenges from abroad multiply, America’s elite universities are squandering their support at home. Two trends in particular are widening rifts between town and gown. One is a decades-long expansion in the managers and other non-academic staff that universities employ. America’s best 50 colleges now have three times as many administrative and professional staff as faculty, according to a report by Paul Weinstein of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank. Some of the increase responds to genuine need, such as extra work created by growing government regulation. A lot of it looks like bloat. These extra hands may be tying researchers in red tape and have doubtless inflated fees. The total published cost of attending Harvard (now nearly $80,000 annually for an undergraduate) has more than doubled in 20 years.

随着来自国外的挑战成倍增加，美国的精英大学正在浪费他们在国内的支持。尤其是两个趋势是城镇和礼服之间的裂痕不断扩大。一是大学聘用的管理人员和其他非学术人员持续数十年的扩张。智库进步政策研究所的保罗 · 韦恩斯坦 (Paul Weinstein) 的一份报告显示，美国最好的 50 所大学现在的行政和专业人员数量是教师的三倍。其中一些增长是为了满足真正的需求，例如政府监管的加强所带来的额外工作。很多看起来都像浮肿。这些额外的人手可能会让研究人员陷入繁文缛节，并且无疑会增加费用。公布的哈佛就读总费用（现在本科生每年近 80,000 美元）在 20 年内增加了一倍多。

image: The Economist 图片来源：《经济学家》

A second trend is the gradual evaporation of conservatives from the academy. Surveys carried out by researchers at UCLA suggest that the share of faculty who place themselves on the political left rose from 40% in 1990 to about 60% in 2017—a period during which party affiliation among the general public barely changed (see chart 3). The ratios are vastly more skewed at many of America’s most elite colleges. A survey carried out last May by the Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper, found that less than 3% of faculty there would describe themselves as conservative. Three-quarters called themselves liberal.

第二个趋势是保守派逐渐从学院中消失。加州大学洛杉矶分校研究人员进行的调查显示，将自己置于政治左派的教师比例从 1990 年的 40% 上升到 2017 年的 60% 左右——在此期间，公众的党派归属几乎没有变化（见图 3） 。美国许多最精英大学的这一比例要严重得多。哈佛大学学生报纸《Crimson》去年 5 月进行的一项调查发现，该校只有不到 3% 的教师认为自己是保守派。四分之三的人称自己是自由主义者。

Why has this happened? One argument is that academics’ views have not in fact changed that much; instead, Republicans have abandoned them by moving to the right. But conservatives insist that bright sparks with right-leaning views have been choosing to leave or stay out of the profession, in part because lefty colleagues have been declining to hire and promote them. This mix of bloat and groupthink helps explain why prestigious universities have so often found themselves at odds with the American public in battles over access and speech.

为什么会发生这种情况？一种论点是，学术界的观点实际上并没有发生太大变化。相反，共和党人已经放弃了他们，转而向右转。但保守派坚称，右翼观点的亮点一直选择离开或退出该行业，部分原因是左撇子同事一直拒绝雇用和提拔他们。这种臃肿和群体思维的结合有助于解释为什么著名大学经常发现自己在访问和言论的斗争中与美国公众发生争执。

Getting in and getting on

进入并继续

Start with access: elite colleges clung to affirmative action long after the majority of Americans had decided that it was unfair to give black, Hispanic and Native American students with slightly lower grades an advantage when deciding whom to admit. Academics who spoke against the practice—arguing, for example, that some youngsters were being catapulted onto courses they were poorly prepared for—have often been slammed as bigots by their students and peers.

从入学机会开始：在大多数美国人认为在决定录取学生时给予成绩稍低的黑人、西班牙裔和美国原住民学生优势是不公平的之后，精英大学仍坚持采取平权行动。反对这种做法的学者——例如，他们认为一些年轻人被推上他们准备不足的课程——经常被学生和同龄人猛烈抨击为偏执狂。

In theory the Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw racial preferences last year should encourage posh universities to junk admissions practices that are even more irksome—such as favouring children of alumni. Instead many have made their admissions criteria even more opaque, potentially damaging universities’ meritocratic pretensions further. At the start of the pandemic, most stopped requiring applicants to supply scores from standardised tests. Now hard-to-evaluate measures such as the quality of personal statements are having to carry more weight. For some institutions that has proved unsatisfactory: in recent weeks Dartmouth and Yale announced that they will require standardised test scores from applicants once again. They are the first Ivies to do so.

从理论上讲，最高法院去年宣布种族偏好为非法的决定应该会鼓励豪华大学放弃更令人讨厌的垃圾招生做法，例如偏袒校友子女。相反，许多大学的录取标准变得更加不透明，这可能会进一步损害大学的精英管理主张。在大流行开始时，大多数学校不再要求申请人提供标准化考试的分数。现在，诸如个人陈述质量之类的难以评估的指标不得不承担更多的重任。对于一些表现不尽如人意的院校：最近几周，达特茅斯学院和耶鲁大学宣布，他们将再次要求申请者提供标准化考试成绩。他们是第一批这样做的常春藤盟校。

As for speech, elite colleges have done a particularly poor job of handling a generation of youngsters who are alarmingly intolerant of views they don’t like. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), an NGO, rates freedom of expression across America’s best-known campuses. Last year it placed two Ivy League outfits, Harvard and Pennsylvania, among the five worst performers; Harvard came dead last. More than half of students in these bottom five colleges believe it is sometimes acceptable to stop peers attending a speech by a controversial figure. Only about 70% agree that it is “never acceptable” to use violence to stop someone talking.

至于言论，精英大学在处理这一代年轻人方面做得尤其糟糕，他们对自己不喜欢的观点极其不宽容。非政府组织个人权利与表达基金会（fi​​re）对美国最著名校园的言论自由进行了评级。去年，哈佛大学和宾夕法尼亚州这两家常春藤盟校跻身表现最差的五所大学之列。哈佛垫底。在排名垫底的五所大学中，超过一半的学生认为，有时阻止同学参加有争议人物的演讲是可以接受的。只有大约 70% 的人同意使用暴力阻止别人说话 “永远不可接受”。

Universities stand accused not just of tolerating small-mindedness among their students, but of perpetuating it. One theory holds that, if elite universities worked their students harder, they would have less time and energy to fight battles over campus speech. Between the 1960s and the early 2000s the number of hours a week that an average American student spent studying declined by around one third, notes Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. Yet grades do not seem to have suffered. At Yale, the share of all grades marked “A” has risen from 67% in 2010 to around 80% in 2022; at Harvard it rose from 60% to 79%.

大学不仅被指责容忍学生的狭隘思想，而且还让这种现象长期存在。一种理论认为，如果精英大学更加努力地训练学生，他们就会有更少的时间和精力来争夺校园言论之争。保守派智库美国企业研究所的里克 · 赫斯指出，从 20 世纪 60 年代到 2000 年代初，美国学生平均每周学习的时间减少了约三分之一。然而成绩似乎并没有受到影响。在耶鲁大学，所有成绩为 “A” 的比例已从 2010 年的 67% 上升到 2022 年的 80% 左右；在哈佛大学，这个比例从 60% 上升到 79%。

More often blamed are administrative teams dedicated to fostering “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI). They have grown in size as the number of administrators of all kinds has increased. They have an interest in ensuring that everyone on campus is polite and friendly, but little to gain from defending vigorous debate. In theory they report to academic deans, says Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard and a member of a faculty group committed to defending academic freedom; in practice they move laterally from university to university, bringing with them a culture that is entirely their own. Critics of DEI departments insist these offices have helped soak campuses with unsophisticated “woke” ideologies that depict complex problems as simplistic battles.

更常受到指责的是致力于促进 “多元化、公平和包容性”（dei）的管理团队。随着各类管理员数量的增加，它们的规模也在不断扩大。他们有兴趣确保校园里的每个人都有礼貌和友好，但从捍卫激烈的辩论中获益匪浅。哈佛大学心理学家、致力于捍卫学术自由的教员团体成员史蒂文 · 平克(Steven Pinker) 表示，从理论上讲，他们向学术院长汇报；实际上，他们从一所大学横向流动到另一所大学，带来了完全属于他们自己的文化。 dei 部门的批评者坚称，这些办公室让校园充斥着简单的 “觉醒” 意识形态，这些意识形态将复杂的问题描述为简单化的战斗。

All these problems would be better handled if universities had more effective governance. University presidents, and the deans beneath them, have too often looked intimidated by activist students and administrators, and unwilling to stand up for academics bullied for unpopular views. FIRE, the campaigners for academic freedom, reckon that between 2014 and mid-2023 there were at least 1,000 attempts to get academics sacked or otherwise punished for things they said (one fifth of those resulted in people losing their jobs).

如果大学有更有效的治理，所有这些问题都会得到更好的解决。大学校长及其下属的院长们常常显得被激进的学生和管理人员吓倒，不愿意为因不受欢迎的观点而受到欺凌的学者挺身而出。学术自由运动人士 Fire 估计，从 2014 年到 2023 年中期，至少有 1,000 起学者试图因他们的言论而被解雇或受到其他惩罚（其中五分之一的结果是人们失业）。

Years of wishy-washiness about what speech campuses will and will not tolerate have made it more difficult for university leaders to referee the clashes that have erupted between students supportive of Palestinians and those speaking up for Israel. Presidents who have not always held firm on free expression now find themselves besieged by censors of all political stripes. College leaders who, since the start of the Gaza war, have rediscovered their commitment to vigorous debate have inevitably ended up looking partisan.

多年来，对于校园能容忍什么言论、不能容忍什么言论，大学领导者们更难以对支持巴勒斯坦的学生和为以色列发声的学生之间爆发的冲突进行调解。并不总是坚持言论自由的总统现在发现自己受到各种政治派别的审查员的围攻。自加沙战争爆发以来，大学领导们重新发现了自己对激烈辩论的承诺，但最终却不可避免地显得带有党派色彩。

University boards appear especially weak. They have not grown much more professional or effective, even as the wealth and fame of their institutions has soared. Many are oversized. Prestigious private colleges commonly have at least 30 trustees; a few have 50 or more. It is not easy to coax a board of that size into focused strategic discussions. It also limits how far each trustee feels personally responsible for an institution’s success.

大学董事会显得尤其薄弱。尽管它们所在机构的财富和名誉飙升，但它们并没有变得更加专业或有效。许多都是超大的。著名的私立大学通常至少有 30 名董事；有的有 50 个或更多。说服如此规模的董事会进行有针对性的战略讨论并不容易。它还限制了每个受托人对机构成功的个人责任感的程度。

Furthermore, trusteeships are often distributed as a reward for donations, rather than to people with the time and commitment required to provide proper oversight. Universities generally manage to snag people with useful experience outside academia. But many trustees prefer not to rock the boat; some are hoping that their service will grant children or grandchildren a trump card when it comes to seeking admission. Too many see their job as merely “cheerleading, cheque-writing and attendance at football games”, says Michael Poliakoff of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, an organisation that lobbies for governance reform. And at many private universities the way in which trustees are appointed involves cosying up to current ones or to university authorities. Outsiders can struggle to be picked.

此外，托管权通常是作为对捐赠的奖励而分配的，而不是分配给有时间和承诺来提供适当监督的人。大学通常会设法吸引具有学术界以外有用经验的人才。但许多受托人不愿意破坏现状。有些人希望他们的服务能为孩子或孙子在寻求入学时提供一张王牌。美国受托人和校友委员会（一个游说治理改革的组织）的迈克尔 · 波利亚科夫表示，太多人认为自己的工作仅仅是 “啦啦队、写支票和观看足球比赛”。在许多私立大学，任命受托人的方式涉及讨好现任受托人或大学当局。局外人很难被选中。

Testing times 测试次数

Where is all this going? Reports of campus antisemitism have roused lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. In December a bipartisan group in Congress added new language to a draft bill that aims to boost funding for short, non-degree courses. They proposed finding the cash for this by preventing students at very rich universities from taking federal student loans. That idea was dropped in February, amid worries that it would create new obstacles for poor students, but it has since been replaced with a new proposal: that wealthy universities be required to “share risk” with the government by covering the government’s losses in the event that federal loans are not repaid. Universities of all shapes and sizes have long resisted talk of such schemes.

这一切要去哪里？有关校园反犹太主义的报道激怒了两党议员。去年 12 月，国会的一个两党团体在一项旨在增加短期非学位课程资金的法案草案中添加了新的措辞。他们提议通过阻止非常富有的大学的学生申请联邦学生贷款来为此找到现金。由于担心这会给贫困学生带来新的障碍，这一想法在二月份被放弃，但后来被一项新提案所取代：要求富裕的大学通过承担政府在贫困学生中的损失来与政府 “分担风险”。联邦贷款未偿还的情况。长期以来，各种类型和规模的大学一直拒绝谈论此类计划。

Elite universities’ tax advantages are another possible target. For years politicians have accused them of “hoarding” huge endowments while raising prices for students and snaffling government money for research. Ten top colleges got about $33bn in federal research grants and contracts between 2018 and 2022, reckons Open the Book, an NGO. Over the same period, the endowments swelled by about $65bn. Until 2017 universities paid no tax on income from these nest-eggs; that year Mr Trump hit the very richest with a 1.4% charge. He has implied that, if re-elected, he will take another bite.

精英大学的税收优惠是另一个可能的目标。多年来，政客们一直指责他们 “囤积” 巨额捐赠，同时提高学生学费并侵吞政府研究资金。非政府组织 Open the Book 估计，2018 年至 2022 年间，十所顶尖大学获得了约 330 亿美元的联邦研究拨款和合同。同期，捐赠基金增加了约 650 亿美元。 2017 年之前，大学不对这些积蓄的收入缴税；那一年，特朗普向最富有的人征收 1.4% 的税。他暗示，如果再次当选，他将再咬一口。

At a minimum a Republican administration would make much sharper use of regulators, such as the civil-rights monitors employed in the federal education department. They might be encouraged to launch more investigations, for example into admissions rules or the work of DEI teams. They have already meddled energetically in the running of public universities, over which they have far greater control. The University of Florida announced on March 1st that it had got rid of all its DEI positions in order to comply with a newish state rule. Signed into law a year ago by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, it prevents state money from being spent on such things.

共和党政府至少会更有效地利用监管机构，例如联邦教育部门雇用的民权监察员。他们可能会被鼓励开展更多调查，例如对招生规则或 dei 团队的工作进行调查。他们已经大力干预公立大学的运营，并对其拥有更大的控制权。佛罗里达大学于 3 月 1 日宣布，为了遵守新的州规定，它已经取消了所有的 dei 职位。一年前，共和党州长罗恩 · 德桑蒂斯签署成为法律，禁止州政府将资金花在此类事情上。

Better for universities to heal themselves. Smaller, more democratically selected boards would provide better oversight. More meritocratic admissions would improve universities’ standing. Greg Lukianoff of FIRE wants to see campuses stripped of bureaucrats “whose main job is to police speech”. Instead universities should invest in programmes teaching the importance of free and open debate, says Tom Ginsburg at the University of Chicago, who runs a forum designed to do just that: “If your ideas aren’t subjected to rigorous scrutiny, they’re not going to be as good.”

大学更好地自我治愈。更小、更民主选举的董事会将提供更好的监督。更多的精英招生将提高大学的地位。火警格雷格 · 卢基安诺夫希望校园里不再有 “主要工作是监督言论” 的官僚。相反，大学应该投资于一些项目，教授自由和公开辩论的重要性，芝加哥大学的汤姆 · 金斯伯格（Tom Ginsburg）说，他经营着一个旨在做到这一点的论坛：“如果你的想法没有受到严格的审查，那么它们就不会被接受。”也会一样好。”

Reformers would also like more people in the political centre, and on the right, to make careers in academia. No one thinks this will happen quickly. But college bosses could start by making it clear that they will defend the unorthodox thinkers they already have on their payrolls, reckons Jim Applegate, who runs a faculty group at Columbia University that aims to promote academic freedom. They could discourage departments from forcing job applicants to submit statements outlining their DEI approach (one study a few years ago suggested this was a condition for a fifth of all university jobs, and more than 30% at elite colleges). Lately these have looked less like honest ways of spotting capable candidates and more like tests of ideology.

改革者还希望政治中心和右翼有更多人在学术界发展。没有人认为这会很快发生。但哥伦比亚大学负责促进学术自由的教师小组负责人吉姆 · 阿普尔盖特认为，大学老板可以首先明确表示，他们将捍卫他们已经雇用的非正统思想家。他们可以阻止院系强迫求职者提交概述其 dei 方法的声明（几年前的一项研究表明，这是五分之一的大学工作的条件，而精英大学的这一比例超过 30%）。最近，这些看起来不再像诚实的方式来发现有能力的候选人，而更像是意识形态的测试。

The furore over antisemitism could bring the impetus universities need to reform. But a less optimistic scenario exists, too. Seeking to escape heat over hate speech, college leaders could choose to become all the more watchful of what their students and faculty say. Tighter rules about speech on campus might deflect brickbats in the short term; in the long term, they would only degrade the quality of teaching and research at American universities. “We are at an inflection point,” reckons Professor George of Princeton: “It could go either way.” ■

对反犹太主义的愤怒可能会带来大学改革所需的动力。但也存在不太乐观的情况。为了摆脱仇恨言论的热度，大学领导者可以选择更加关注学生和教师的言论。对校园言论的更严格规定可能会在短期内转移砖头。从长远来看，它们只会降低美国大学的教学和研究质量。普林斯顿大学的乔治教授认为：“我们正处于一个拐点，无论哪种情况都可能发生。”