While we definitely saw the kind of constructive disagreement you’d expect at any conference cosponsored by Heterodox Academy, participants at Thursday’s special May Day Conference on Free Inquiry at the University of California, Berkeley, seemed to all agree on one thing: American universities need to rebuild trust with the public.

Speaking by Zoom at the event, University of Chicago law professor and HxA member Tom Ginsburg identified three ongoing threats to open inquiry on American university and college campuses: the government trying to control universities; donors who try to impose their will; and the threat “from within.” The latter includes groupthink caused by lack of ideological diversity, cancellation campaigns, deplatforming attempts, and hecklers’ vetos – all shutting down lines of inquiry “that don’t fit the orthodoxy.”

In his opening remarks, UC Berkeley Provost Benjamin Hermain said these internal problems are “getting worse, not better.” As for the external threats, Jonathan Friedman of PEN America called them “incredibly unprecedented.” Many of the actions aimed at controlling what is taught or researched or even just expressed at universities are unconstitutional, Friedman said, calling the latest government moves on the academy “obviously an effort to control what we speak, read, think, and share.”

So, given the seriousness of the threats – threats many are calling “existential” – what can academic faculty and staff do about restoring trust? At the conference, organized by Berkeley HxA Campus Community Co-Chair Smriti Mehta (who also leads the Berkley Liberty Initiative), those in attendance identified numerous possible paths to pursue.

Hermain was among those calling for universities and individual academics to display greater intellectual humility – to help the public see the uncertainties we encounter in the quest for new and better knowledge. Instead of looking like mere political pundits, we can instead represent ourselves as serious scholars who follow evidence, not partisan politics.

In his keynote, UC Riverside sociologist Steven Brint (Co-Chair of his HxA Campus Community) pointed to continuing disparities between students’ backgrounds and viewpoints and those of faculty, with faculty continuing to be largely white and left of center. Referring to the history of DEI in the academy, Brint pointed to a problematic “administrative-activist alliance” that supported the "politics of suspicion towards whites and men.” He and others recommended a paring back of “student service” administrative staff who become purveyors and enforcers of a narrow ideology, stifling viewpoint diversity on campuses and leading to self-censorship.

Brint’s main point was that universities need to band together to create a campaign to “change the narrative,” one “that reacquaints the American public with what universities do that are beneficial and [that shows] how important they are for economic competitiveness and societal well being.” Such a campaign could include messaging about research contributions, the benefits of college to social mobility, the demonstrable improvements in students’ analytic and communication capacities following formal university education, the return on students’ financial investments, the reforms undertaken by universities to do better, “and the centrality of free inquiry.”

On a panel addressing the question of what should be salvaged from the DEI era, Berkeley economist and HxA member Ethan Ligon said the way DEI had been handled at Berkeley led to “everyone lying all the time.” He told the story of how, using the required DEI rubric, a hiring committee in his department was forced to low-score a black African scholar because he didn’t express the “right” politics. (They hired him anyway.) Ligon said DEI in its present form “can’t be salvaged,” even while he said it is obvious to see the importance in attending to real inclusion of diverse perspectives.

On a panel specifically on the question of restoring trust, former president of Macalester College (now a visiting scholar at Harvard) Brian Rosenberg and I argued for the need to take teaching seriously – to consciously and consistently train educators at colleges and universities in the science of good teaching. It’s inconceivable, I noted, that we would send medical school graduates to residencies with zero training in clinical care, yet we typically send Ph.D. students to teach with zero training in teaching.

Rosenberg also argued that growing income disparities are contributing to the working class’s disdain for elite universities and suggested this ought to be addressed with programs designed to admit more students from lower-income households. He noted that affirmative action effectively exists for wealthier students because of legacy and sports admissions at elite institutions.

Following up on Brint’s suggestion of a PR campaign for universities and drawing on my decade of experience in journalism, I noted that, in practice, trust is won locally and lost nationally – which means that, to rebuild trust, we have to work locally, within our universities’ own communities, to connect. That can include engaging communities in articulating research questions.

A fundamental challenge to this trust-building work, I argued, is that while our message should be “we search for the truth,” we are presently living in a culture of nihilism and deep cynicism, one in which many people don’t believe in truth. That means we have to start with some basic epistemological public education: talking about how we know that scholarship can get at the truth about the world; conveying our research methods and articulating why they are reliable; and, again, being honest about our shortcomings, our uncertainty, and the biases we can only overcome through collaboration

All in all, it was an exciting day, with members of HxA Campus Communities at Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Riverside coming together to work on positive change – change that will benefit not only the UC schools but our nation. You can watch the recording of the conference here.

And just a reminder: the deadline to start a new HxA Campus Community on your own campus is July 18. Learn more here. Change is easier when you have colleagues committed to open inquiry working with you!