More than 400 educators gathered in Chicago last weekend for the annual Heterodox Academy Conference to discuss how we can translate our principles of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement into action on campuses.

Headlining the programming was a plenary panel discussion with university leaders that included Paul Alivisatos, President of the University of Chicago, Ed Seidel, President of the University of Wyoming, Daniel Diermeier, Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, and Hiram Chodosh, President of Claremont McKenna College, moderated by Tony Banout, Director of the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression and Heterodox Academy board member.

The university leaders were tasked with discussing pressing issues on today’s college campuses, and the ways in which foundational principles can serve as guidance for university operations.

Underlying much of today’s discourse about higher education is the notable decline in public trust, as noted by Heterodox Academy President John Tomasi during his welcome address on the first evening of the conference. According to the 2023 Gallup poll, only 36% of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in our institutions of higher education – down from 57% in 2015.

“It takes decades to build trust and very little time to lose it,” President Paul Alivisatos stated in his opening remarks. “We're in a moment when universities are losing the trust that they have had, and it's a critical moment, because without that trust, it's hard to be a place of truth-seeking. It's hard to be a place that does what universities promise.”

The panel opened discussion with sharing examples of what they have done this past year to lead their institutions in a year marked by student protest of the Israel-Gaza war and the wave of universities newly asserting free expression and institutional neutrality as foundational principles. “It's not been an easy year to be a university or college president,” Tony Banout opened with.

The presidents shared that what has made them different from many universities in the past academic year is that they were not newly asserting foundational principles. Rather, such principles of free expression and institutional neutrality were already underling their leadership.

“You can't create the conditions for dialogue in a reactive moment,” asserted President Hiram Chodosh, in reference to the wave of universities recently adopting neutrality. “These are long term investments, and our open principles are a pervasive, immersive set of commitments through every pore of what we do.”

During the discussion, presidents came to a consensus about a core issue facing universities as they try to regain public trust by governing on core principles of openness and neutrality, especially in times of crisis: the principles are often unclear to the university community and the greater public.

“It's not just about whether, as president, I can respond to a crisis according to principle and policy, and enforce it. [It’s also about having] my community understand what I'm doing and why, and how these fit within a certain set of university and national value tradition,” said Chodosh.

“I think the lack of clarity of some of these principles is worrisome,” explained Chancellor Daniel Diermeier in reference to putting principles into action during the spring student protests.

In working to build back public trust, the presidents agreed that universities need to be better at not only explaining why foundational principles are so vital to the truth-seeking function of our universities, but also to truly put them into action consistently on campus.

“The amount of work that we have to do to really have more than a set of principles that sit on a shelf, but actually live by them, is extraordinary. And I've just been struck by it,” said President Ed Seidel. “The principles have got to really be taken in, and then have to be understood in the context of what we actually do on campus.”

The end result of a university governed by principles of openness and neutrality is one in which students truly understand the value of a higher education. “How will students have a peer culture in which they don't just accept free expression, but they actually come to see it as being the fulcrum of their education?” said Alivisatos. “The vital point at which, because of it, they may actually have a moment in which it really changes them.”