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Should universities be apolitical in maintaining the free flow of ideas?

In this episode, John Tomasi speaks with Tyler Austin Harper, assistant professor at Bates College and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, about the rising challenges posed by recent campus protests and divestment movements at universities.

They delve into specific instances where these movements have influenced policy changes, discussing the tensions between activism and open inquiry. The conversation highlights recent cases where protests have either stifled or spurred debates about institutional investment ethics and the balance between social justice and academic discourse.

Finally, they discuss the politicization of the humanities, examining how political biases can shape curricula and impact scholarly discourse.

Tyler Austin Harper is a literary scholar working at the intersection of the history of science, philosophy, and environmental studies. His book, “The Paranoid Animal: Human Extinction Before the Bomb,” is under contract with Princeton University Press. It examines how British literary figures, scientists, and social theorists engaged with the concept of human extinction prior to the nuclear age. His scholarly work has been published in Modern Language Quarterly, Science Fiction Studies, Syndicate, and Paradoxa.

Harper is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. His public writing on politics, culture, race, and technology has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Jacobin, and other outlets.

Episode Transcript

John Tomasi: Tyler Austin Harper, welcome to Heterodox Out Loud.

Tyler Austin Harper: Thank you so much.

John Tomasi: It's really a pleasure to have you here. Did you drive down from Maine last night?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, I flew down last night.

John Tomasi: Oh, you flew down?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah.

John Tomasi: Oh, yeah. So it would take you a long time to drive, wouldn't it?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, it's about five hours. It's not too bad, actually. I mean, it depends on traffic, obviously.

John Tomasi: And if you drove, would you do the first hour or two by dog sled?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. For some time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's still really cold.

John Tomasi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There it is. Yeah, I grew up in that part of the world, so I know what it's like. And tell us just a little bit about yourselves. So you went to Haverford as an undergrad?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yep, yep.

John Tomasi: And what was that experience like?

Tyler Austin Harper: Haverford was interesting. You know, I came from a pretty working class background.

John Tomasi: Where did you grow up?

Tyler Austin Harper: So central Pennsylvania, I'm outside of Harrisburg in a town called Mechanicsburg. And so Haverford was eye-opening in a bunch of ways. But, you know, it was a Quaker institution, or formerly Quaker, that was animated by kind of Quaker values, which, you know, I don't think I appreciated at the time. But it was easy to make fun of. You know, we had a graveyard with very small tombstones for modesty. But, you know, I think retroactively, I came to appreciate some of that particular sensibility. I mean, there was a certain kind of both commitment to free expression, but also thoughtfulness and kind of, you know, an anti-war sentiment and sort of, you know, various things that I think kind of shaped my political trajectory more than at the time I gave it credit for, you know.

John Tomasi: I went, you said it was eye-opening to you.

Tyler Austin Harper: It was eye-opening.

John Tomasi: My first visit to Haverford when I was a young person in high school, maybe, was eye-opening to me in part because I remember sleeping with my friend in the storm and then going into the bathroom for the morning, finding that there were women in the bathroom, too, as a shared space.

Tyler Austin Harper: Oh, yeah, co-ed.

John Tomasi: Yeah. Is that a still thing?

Tyler Austin Harper: Oh, yeah, that's a still thing. Yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: Actually, at the time, I was like completely shocked. I was like, what is this about?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, we had co-ed dorms. Actually, my wife lived across from me my freshman year. Yeah, so everything was co-ed. Bathrooms were co-ed.

John Tomasi: Oh, so you met her there?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: Wow. And you were telling me, as we were talking before, that you recently had a child.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes.

John Tomasi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so how old did he get?

Tyler Austin Harper: Six months.

John Tomasi: Six months. Wow. Tiny little Bambino.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, exactly.

John Tomasi: Fabulous. Fabulous. So let's start by talking about this wonderful piece of yours from The Atlantic about American colleges are reaping what they sowed. In what sense are American colleges, when we're talking about the protests, in what sense are they reaping what they've sowed?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, I think a lot of these colleges have marketed themselves as spaces for activism, right? I like to joke that the Ivy League, you know, thinks it bends the universe toward, you know, bends the arc of the universe toward justice. And I think we've seen a lot of shift in how universities talk about themselves over the last decade, really acutely since 2020 and George Floyd, but even going back, you know, 10 or 15 years where universities often like to brand themselves as spaces for student activism, as, you know, places where students can be engaged in the community and in political work, and they select for those kinds of students, you know. But what I focused on in the piece in particular was that...

John Tomasi: Right, they select for those kinds of students.

Tyler Austin Harper: Oh yeah, absolutely. They market themselves this way. A lot of students I talked to for this piece mentioned they wrote their college application essays about their involvement in prior, you know, activism and even protests, you know. And so kind of what I focused on was many of these schools, Cornell, NYU, Emory, and Columbia in particular, not simply market themselves through appeals to activism, but also specifically, they sort of appeal to their history of prior protests, right, particularly Vietnam-era protests. So Columbia on tours and study guides, there's a course on Columbia 1968 and the student protests that rocked that campus. And that course was called 1968. Columbia 1968 is the name of the course, yeah. And in fact, even in the wake of Columbia calling the NYPD on students, they were still sending out emails to admitted students saying, you know, if you're coming to campus for an admitted students' day and you see disruptions, these are just part of our proud legacy and tradition of protest at Columbia. So even in the wake of them calling the NYPD on students, they're still boasting about, you know, their radical tradition.

John Tomasi: Can I just ask that course, Columbia 1968, did you happen to look at the syllabus? Do you know anything more about that course?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, I talked to the professor who teaches it and, you know, he was fantastic and they focus a lot. Columbia has really actually rich archives from May 1968. So his students did a lot of work to, you know, actually dig through some of those archives and do projects around, you know, historical projects around the protests and trying to understand them.

John Tomasi: What I'm wondering is, you may not know just from looking at the syllabus, we have to do probably a deeper dive, but it'd be interesting to learn the way they teach that course and whether, is there a critical eye? Is there some sort of concerns about what's going on? Are there, is there an analysis of the implications of the decisions that were made and how they worked out over time?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah.

John Tomasi: For example, I think one of the things that came out of that protest was a banning of ROTC from campus.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yep.

John Tomasi: I'm pretty sure that's true at Columbia.

Tyler Austin Harper: It's true at a lot of universities. Yep.

John Tomasi: I think at Columbia as well. And, you know, some people say that that particular, that particular victory, which during the anti-war period was a victory, was widely seen as such. It's had some unintended consequences of removing from the applicant pool or the student body, a number of people from lowering, come back.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes, absolutely.

John Tomasi: And also perhaps thickening a bubble at certain universities that didn't have that. But it's interesting to see whether they, whether they interrogate active, how, does activism do what it wants to do through time? To what degree does moral clarity at the moment hash out to moral clarity and progress all the way through time? Or is it a story more complicated? But I'm sorry, but go on. So you were saying that in this fabulous piece of yours, that these universities market themselves as hotbeds for activism.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah.

John Tomasi: And say more.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah. So particularly, they appealed to their Vietnam-era protests. Cornell is especially egregious in this regard, where there was an armed takeover at Cornell of Willard Straight Hall in 1969 by a group of black students. And Cornell now celebrates that. There's a plaque on the university, like Columbia. It also has a robust study guide. It does commemorations of the event on, you know, every 10 years or so. The most recent one was in 2019. They did a year-long celebration. They brought back a number of the armed occupiers for a conversation on campus, you know. And now they're turning around and suspending students for being engaged in political protest, you know. And so my kind of take is that however you feel about the substance of the protest, and, you know, I have mixed feelings about some of the sloganeering and other things we're seeing at these protests, but however you feel about Israel-Palestine, I think we can all agree that it's really hypocritical for these institutions to brag about their legacy of student protest, to say this is, you know, as Emory puts it, student protest in Emory tradition, right? It's really hypocritical to frame themselves in this way and then turn around and, you know, penalize the same students for engaging in the kinds of protests that they like to celebrate when they're historical examples. And so, for example, bringing in the police.

John Tomasi: And say more about the contradiction. So they market themselves this way to the undergraduates. They celebrate it to the current student.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yep.

John Tomasi: And I wonder whether those celebrations include any of the controversies in the day, the historical controversies. Like at Cornell, there was some professors there who were adamantly opposed to the protests. And there were a lot of people who thought that was a terrible set of affairs. I just wonder whether that would be, one of the things about protest is it often doesn't have much nuance. Almost definitionally. There's sort of a logic of activism, which seems to require a coming together, a solidarity, simplicity of mission, a conformity, a coherence, a focus, as opposed to the logic, say, of scholarship or inquiry, which often is about nuance. So it's sort of interesting. When you celebrate protest, do you celebrate something that's anti-scholarly? Or can you do it in a scholarly way? What do you think about that?

Tyler Austin Harper: I mean, I think it's a good question. I think the Columbia 1968 course I mentioned, like I said, I talked to that faculty member for a while. I was really thoughtful on all of these issues. And I think faculty are often really thoughtful about the nuances of protest. And I think administrations through their branding have flattened out a lot of that nuance, you know, which I think is part of the problem we're seeing here. But I think what's, you know, one of the things that's important to understand, particularly if you look at a university like Columbia, it's not just rhetorical lip service. The 1968 protests really remade that university. And they led to the adoption of new university statutes that were supposed to more closely integrate students and faculty into governance, and that were supposed to put some safeguards on the executive branch of the university, that were supposed to regulate pretty carefully the ways in which the administration was able to bring police force onto campus. Because in the original 68 protests, Columbia arrested, I think, 700 students. 100 were injured. And so that event really, you know, reshaped the structure and infrastructure of the college. And I think a lot of those safeguards that were put in place have really been bulldozed by the current administration, which is something I heard over and over from students, faculty and staff at those places that I talked to. But even at the level of the sort of simplicity of the branding, I mean, without getting too specific about folks I talked to, one story that emerged was that in the 90s and early 2000s, Columbia was still not celebrating their tradition of protest. That changed in the late Bush years. As anti-war sentiment in the U.S. grew, the anti-war 1968 protests at Columbia came to be seen as a net positive by kind of the people in the marketing and press universe at Columbia. And so that's when they began running pieces in Columbia Magazine on the anniversary in 2008. And that's when this became part of the tours. And that's when this became part of the discourse. And Columbia leaned into their reputation as, quote unquote, the protest ivy, rather than being kind of repulsed by it.

John Tomasi: That's fascinating.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah.

John Tomasi: And so there are changes in governance. I wasn't aware of that.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes.

John Tomasi: And in the direction, I'm going to guess, of more participatory governance.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes, and more safeguards on the executive branch, on the president, so that they have to go through the faculty, the executive senate of the faculty, before they can call police on campus. And in this most recent case, Shafik went to the executive committee asking for approval to send in the NYPD, and that committee unanimously voted no. And she just, she ignored it, basically.

John Tomasi: And do you know what the composition of that committee was?

Tyler Austin Harper: Faculty, students, and I'm not sure, I know there are faculty and students, I'm not sure if there's admin additionally, but I do know the vote was unanimous.

John Tomasi: It's really interesting, and I wonder, you might not know this level of detail, but it'd be interesting to find out what the selection criteria is, what's the process that they put on that committee, because often presidents set up committees to get outcomes that they want.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes.

John Tomasi: And there's something that we've been talking around here at HxA about standing committees versus ad hoc committees.

Tyler Austin Harper: Sure.

John Tomasi: Ad hoc committees, we think, are more likely to be cherry-picked, the members are cherry-picked to produce the outcome that the president wants, or standing committees tend not to be. This sounds like it might be the case of a standing committee.

Tyler Austin Harper: I believe so, yeah.

John Tomasi: Because they didn't do what the president had in mind. Those changes in governance and participatory, let me ask you something else about that. Have you been following events at Brown over the past week?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes, a little bit, but not as closely as some of the other universities.

John Tomasi: So I was on the campus a couple days ago, and campaign was still in place, and there had been a clear-out order at 5 o'clock the previous day, but the university was still in negotiations with leaders of the protest. And they gave them an extra 24 hours. So I arrived in the morning after that extension had been granted. And the offer on the table from the president the night before was roughly that if the students would leave the encampment, they would decamp. And they would also promise not to disrupt graduation ceremonies and some other things, that roughly five students from the protest group would be allowed to speak to a subgroup of the corporation. Which is a step towards a governance change. And the student protesters didn't want that. Because they were holding out for the whole banana, as one student described it to me. And what they're holding out for was to allow some group of the representatives to speak in front of the entire corporation. Or at least to allow the corporation to require the corporation to have a discussion and a vote about the question about divesting Israel. And later on that day, the university made that agreement. So Brown, I think, was the first university to, you know, the way Brown's been presenting it, it's kind of interesting. They're saying that they believe in dialogue. And they believe that deeply. And so this is in keeping with Brown traditions and their view to allow the students to bring this topic onto the agenda of the corporation. Other people see it differently. They see that they're being under the pressure of a gun. They ended up doing this thing as a way out. But I wonder what you think about that. It sounds to me a bit like, is that a governance change? Because now we have students putting an agenda item on the corporation. The corporation will vote the way it does, whatever it decides, next October. And I think the vote's going to take place in late October, probably a couple weeks after the anniversary of the attack.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes.

John Tomasi: It'd be interesting.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, indeed.

John Tomasi: Do you have any thoughts about that? I don't know if you've followed that one very closely.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, I did see that they petitioned hard to get that in front of the whole board. You know, I mean, I think more broadly what I'm interested in from universities is just consistency. I think, you know, protest, particularly civil disobedience, and I think the encampments fall into the category of civil disobedience, comes with consequences. I, you know, I think one response I got to my article is like, is it your opinion that, you know, the NYPD should never be involved, right? Or that, you know, the universities have to negotiate with these students? And the answer is no. I mean, I think, you know, there's no sacred right to camp on university grounds. I think it is an act of civil disobedience that can come with consequences. But the problem is that these universities are acting in ways that fly in the face of how they position themselves to students and also to the broader community and to the American public, you know? And so I just think we need a rational and consistent application of ideas, right? And if these places are places of protest, then let the protests happen. And if they are not, then that's fine. But don't tell us otherwise, you know? And so I think some universities like Brown and then also Berkeley is another example that have handled largely their encampments differently and seem to be more open to negotiation also do have these traditions of protest and support for free speech. And it seems to me, you know, my read on the situation is that at least those universities are sort of preaching what they practice, you know, in a certain way. And I think that's admirable. Like, I think there are, I understand the immense pressure university presidents are under. But my point of view, like I said, is, you know, you just got to walk the line you've laid down. And if you're going to, you know, market to students, student activism, then don't get upset when they do activism.

John Tomasi: Let me try to square the circle and see what you think about this, about this attempt to square the circle about celebrating activism and cultural protests, but then clamping down and calling the police and doing all the things that we've seen. Most shockingly, perhaps, at Emory.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes.

John Tomasi: Shockingly, at NYU, I'm sorry, at Columbia also. New T, Austin as well. So here's one way to think about squaring that circle. We can think about protests, student protests, as sort of having two different characteristics they might have. One is that they're, one set of characteristics is protected by free speech. That's things like calling attention to neglected issues of the day. And that might involve things like carrying signs, handing out leaflets, posting manifestos, petitions, holding events, you know, all kinds of things. And then the other hand of protests are going to be things that sort of move into the realm of civil disobedience. So violating time, the pre-place manner, content neutral, pre-established, hopefully, time, place, manner restrictions. Things that are used now not to call attention to neglected issues only, but now doing that by the method of exerting pressure for change by violating the rules. And it's, in a sense, holding the university, holding ordinary university operations, such as graduation, hostage to these events. Would you say that we could get rid of the hypocrisy if universities made really clear that when they celebrate protests and aim to have a protest culture and that they encourage applicants to show the protest bona fides, that they encourage them to make that distinction and to keep their protests on the non-civil disobedient side? Or is that just watering it down too much? Does the celebration of protests necessarily need to include civil disobedience? Can you say anything about that?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, I mean, I would want to take a step back even further still and ask why are universities taking positions regarding politics to begin with? Like, I don't think, I mean, I've said this before, but I think administration should be apolitical. And that includes, I don't think they need to celebrate one way or another part, you know, protests of the past. They're part of the history. I'm not saying they need to sweep them under the rug. And if the Columbia Library Archives wants to have an exhibit on the 1968 protests, that feels like one thing, you know. But then to brand yourself through these appeals feels like a very different thing. So, you know, I actually don't think they need to have any message about protests at the level of sort of how they're courting prospective students at all. I mean, they obviously need to have campus policies about protests. But, you know, regarding your point about, you know, picketing and sort of that kind of protest, more discourse-based protestors is the kind of civil disobedience we're seeing. I mean, I think it's undeniable that there's a kind of feedback loop and symbiotic relationship between those two different kinds of protests. I mean, if you look at the Cornell campus takeover in 1969, one of the reasons why the university celebrates that today is that it did improve conditions for black students on campus. It did lead to changes in the Cornell community that were positive and that were not being achieved through simple discourse. And so, again, protest comes with consequences. Civil disobedience comes with consequences. But I think a lot of what we're seeing is a response to feeling like that discourse isn't happening. One thing I would add, too, as regards to the encampments is that, you know, I won't speak for every university, but most of the universities I've seen have not done a very good job encouraging discourse on Israel-Palestine to begin with. Like, I think there's been a real reticence to bring in speakers, bring in experts from both sides and try to have, you know, structured conversation and debate on campus so that people are well-informed on the issue, you know. And in the absence of that, I think what we're seeing is, you know, these other kinds of modes of tackling the issue are coming to the fore. But like I said, I'm not in the camp that universities can't punish their students for breaking the rules. I mean, they plainly can. I think the threshold for police involvement should be higher than outside campus communities for the simple reason that we regularly treat college campuses as quasi-legal spaces, right? All kinds of illegal activity happens on college campuses all the time with the awareness and knowledge of the administration. Those rules are often very selectively enforced, right? And so I think culturally we've become used to the idea that colleges are slightly different kinds of spaces where the rules outside don't apply inside in the same exact way. So I think for consistency, the threshold for police involvement should be higher. But yeah, I just, I don't think universities need to be taking these political stances at all. I don't think they need to be celebrating one way or the other. They're a history of protest. I think they need to be in the business of educating. And I don't think they need to be in the business of, you know, activism. Because, you know, as a faculty member who's pretty far to the left, I think that protects me and I think it protects students, right? I mean, one of the reasons we're seeing, in my view, this intense crackdown is that administrators have to prove that they're not too political, right? I mean, they've been branding themselves through these appeals to social justice. They released all of these political statements in the wake of George Floyd and other issues. They've politicized themselves. And now they have to create some distance from their faculty and students who are also politicized. And the only way to do that is to crack down. Whereas previously, more institutions like UChicago, they can say, look, our students are doing things we don't like. Our faculty are saying things we don't like. But, I mean, they have free speech. Like, this isn't on us. You know, we provide the structure. They can say what they want. But they don't have that plausible deniability right now because most universities have so politicized themselves. That claim that, well, we're not on their side. We're just, you know, they have free speech. It's just not viable, you know.

John Tomasi: Let me be sure I understand what you're saying. A few minutes ago, I think I heard you say, I think you said it twice now, or at least you've indicated sympathy for the idea of neutrality.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: So, as the Kalven Report from Chicago, HxA has a report about statement neutrality, a model of how we think universities could instantiate that in more context-dependent ways. But let me just sort of look at that now for a minute. You mean the university should not, I think you mean, universities should not take positions on political issues of the day out there in the world.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yep.

John Tomasi: Ever?

Tyler Austin Harper: I think unless, I mean, the Kalven Report outlines, as I remember, it's been a while since I read it pretty clearly, that unless they are issues that are directly pertinent to the functioning of the university or free speech, that they're not going to get involved. And that's the central position of, that's the central idea of Kalven. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, I think unless universities are going to weigh in on an issue that is crucial to their functioning or mission as a university, then, yeah, I don't think they should be making political statements or involved in sort of, you know, positioning themselves along political lines one way or the other.

John Tomasi: That's helpful for you to say it that way. What I was wondering was, we've been talking about how some of the protests created change internal to the university. They changed their governance structures in some ways that perhaps have positive benefits. They may have changed or maybe may hasten the arrival of policies that may have installed or may not have ever happened at all. Who knows? So those are examples where a protest changes things. That sounds a little bit like the Kalven idea that things that directly affect the mission of the university can, well, those are the external agents. These are all, it's kind of a puzzling. These are all internal agents. It's like neutrality regarding things out there in the world. That's how Kalven's posited. But now students at these universities who are wanting the university to take, for example, investment decision. You think now neutrality covers that too? And the Kalven approach, it seems to.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, I think that's a really good.

John Tomasi: That investment decision should not be politicized.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yep.

John Tomasi: Whatever that might mean. They should be neutral, whatever that might mean. What do you think about that?

Tyler Austin Harper: I mean, I would say that they're probably not very neutral to begin with. I mean, neutrality is kind of a polite fiction, right? I mean, obviously, you know, the university, most university administrators skew Democrat, and most faculty and students are also relatively left-leaning. And so, obviously, when we talk about neutrality, there's a degree to which it's a polite fiction. But I think the politeness is important because I think it allows some kind of space for reflow of ideas. And in terms of, you know, the investment piece, obviously, you know, investments aren't really made neutrally. And the board of trustees are also not neutral. They have interests and incentives, et cetera. But I do think, you know, there is a sense that, at least officially, the university shouldn't be in the business of side-taking on these matters of geopolitics or domestic politics that don't seem to have any direct bearing on the university as such. They don't have direct bearing on the university's functioning as such.

John Tomasi: So, just think about now the case at Brown and other universities where they're, it's happening across the country, of course, pushing universities to divest from Israel.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yep.

John Tomasi: That would be not neutral.

Tyler Austin Harper: Sure.

John Tomasi: It's politically not neutral. So, that was the case also presumably with not investing in South Africa.

Tyler Austin Harper: Mm-

John Tomasi: And do you think that was a mistake for universities not to divest from South Africa?

Tyler Austin Harper: No, but I would also point out that the decision to invest in those ways in the first place were political, right? Like, I mean, you know, that also presumes, you know, a frame in which those are morally acceptable and coherent investments, you know? And so, I think that's already politicized. And so, you know, what I'm really trying to get at is, you know, I really do think as official policy, administration should not be in the business of side-taking, which they've seen to be. And one of the reasons we're seeing so much of a kerfuffle is that they're kind of both sides-ing right now in a certain way. You know, after George Floyd, they came out and they were very much on the side of, you know, Black Lives Matter, et cetera. And now, universities are sort of like, well, you know, October 7th was a horrible terrorist attack, which it is. And the situation in the Middle East and in Gaza is also horrifying, which it is. And that's leaving people deeply kind of dissatisfied because both camps want, you know, a strong stance in their favor, right? The pro-Israel students want the university to be more forceful about issues related to anti-Semitism, but also more supportive of the Israeli state. People on the other side want the exact opposite. But, you know, I really think a lot of this morass stems from the side-taking. And, I mean, the proof is kind of in the pudding. If you look at the universities over the last year that are not in the middle of a conflagration, UChicago is doing very well. We haven't seen—UChicago has not been in the news very much over the last year in the way that these other institutions are. There are issues that they're working through. I'm aware they have their own encampments, et cetera. But they've stayed above the fray in a certain way. I believe Wellesley is another—I always get Wesleyan and Wellesley confused. I think it is Wellesley. Their president, I believe, after October 7th, released a statement. But they also said, this is the last statement we're releasing, right? We're not doing—we're not going to be doing statements on geopolitical events anymore. And they've also weathered things pretty well, you know.

John Tomasi: I think it's Wesleyan.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: And Michael Roth, their president, is an active HxA member as well. So that's interesting. Can I just return just for a minute more on the neutrality? On the investment.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah.

John Tomasi: Which is such a central part of the protest demands. And now it seems to be moving into the fall, at least to some places, for example, at Brown, as the corporations now start considering this issue. What would you say to this line? That there is a neutral way to do investing.

Tyler Austin Harper: Sure, yeah.

John Tomasi: And it's, it's this, maximize, maximize investment returns. And I'll just add to that to make it a little more, a little more robust that when, on that standard, that university should be neutral, politically neutral, and simply seek to maximize investment returns. There's already a lot of moral concerns larded into that.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes, yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: Because the investment returns can't be because you're buying, you're importing cocaine from some of your country.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: It can't be that you're engaged in whatever horrible child prostitution. It's got to be, you know, legally acceptable companies that are working, let's say, in a system where, where people are free to buy or not buy your products. And so there's all this kind of thick, moralized conditions that allow companies, let's say.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah. That's a very idealized conception of how markets work, but let's go with that.

John Tomasi: So would you think that, is that, would that be neutral with a position that says we should maximize investment return in legal companies, would that be moral, is that neutral in a way that you'd find acceptable? I mean, is it attractive? Would that be, would that be, if someone said to you, university investment policy should not be politically weighted, shouldn't become a political football on the campus. Instead, we're going to just adopt the neutral policy, the politically neutral policy of maximizing investment return. What would you say about that?

Tyler Austin Harper: So, I mean, I think that is probably an improvement in a certain sense. I would also say, though, it depends on how you define. So I think I would agree with that, provided that the investments are in keeping with how the university understands its mission. And from my point of view, and, you know, I went to Haverford, which is, like I said, a relatively Quaker place, right? I think there is an argument to be made that arms manufacturers or, you know, these kinds of institutions that directly profits come from war does contravene the mission of the university in some way, which is about discourse and deliberation rather than force. So, I mean, from my point of view, I think there's a case to be made that is not about who is profiting from what side, you know, we're talking about here, whether it's Israel or another country. I think if you're focusing explicitly on Israel, I think that is one thing. I mean, obviously, there's a political dimension to that, but I do think it's compatible with neutrality and the mission of the university to say, you know, we are not investing in these kinds of companies that profit in this kind of way. Another issue is, you know, climate change. I think it's reasonable for universities to say that, you know, we are an institution that is grounded in science. The science overwhelmingly points to, you know, the role of carbon emissions and big oil in driving our climate crisis. We're not investing in those kinds of companies, right? I think there's a way to couch investing within the moral or mission framework of a university that isn't making granular left-right distinctions in this kind of way. And that's how I would think about it. I think, you know, I am not opposed to, you know, my politics in the Middle East are what they are, but I'm not, I don't think universities should be investing in companies that profit more in general. And this is not, to me, a particular issue about Israel-Palestine. I would feel this way, no matter what the particular geopolitical situation was.

John Tomasi: Let me dig into that.

Tyler Austin Harper: Shoot, yeah.

John Tomasi: This is fine. I'm trying to figure this out as we go. So when you said that, so I adjusted the thesis and I said, well, maybe you would say that mission-specific financial, mission-specific return maximization would be a good standard for university. And what I was thinking about, so for example, a Quaker school, which is, since it's committed to non-violent, would not want to have military armament. So they would, in a very specific, very mission-specific way, weed something, a Catholic school might not invest in for-profit abortion systems, things like that. So that's one way to think, very narrowly tailored, mission-specific, maximize investment returns. That's one possible policy, right? But then you went to a broader set of policies. And you said that things like, what's the, universities are committed to science. And science shows that there's climate change happening. So they should not, they should read, they should follow the science from where it goes. And another example, you gave, did you give another example?

Tyler Austin Harper: I think it was, yeah, I think it was the climate.

John Tomasi: And then you also said that armaments in general.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah.

John Tomasi: But let's just, with armaments one, well, you know, there's arguments to be made that in a world where there are dangerous countries, people need to defend them, countries need to defend themselves. There are aggressors that do cross borders and kill people. And they need to be fought back against. What do you think about that?

Tyler Austin Harper: Sure. I mean, I would say that's the job of the state, not the job of the university, you know. And so I think.

John Tomasi: But the university's investments then should, would a university, wouldn't a university be, this is what I think.

Tyler Austin Harper: No, shoot, yeah.

John Tomasi: Instead of messing around.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, please.

John Tomasi: Wouldn't a university be deviating from position of neutrality if it, for example, decided we're not going to invest in military companies unless there's something specific about, say, Quakerism and an admission statement. Does that seem right to you? Or do you think they should not invest? I mean, I'm not sure myself at all. I'm just curious.

Tyler Austin Harper: No, I mean, I think what the students are pointing out is that most of these universities have mission statements and have branding that would seem to directly conflict with. They understand themselves in ways that would seem to conflict with the way in which they're invested. And I think it's reasonable for students to point that out as a contradiction in the same way that, you know, I think to your point about, you know, if a Catholic university was heavily invested in for-profit abortion clinics, it would seem to me pretty reasonable for students to petition to have, you know, those disinvestments happen. And I wouldn't understand that as political, even if that has a political, abortion is a political issue, right? But saying, hey, we're a Catholic university. We shouldn't be invested in this way would not seem to me to be a political position as much as it is about, you know, aligning the financial model of the university with its purported values. And that's what I'm trying to get at. And I think what a lot of students are saying, look, a lot of students are, have, you know, the messaging around this issue is not, it's varied. Let's put it politely, right? And I think there are people are coming at, you know, Israel-Palestine from a variety of lenses. I mean, even within the pro-Palestine side, I think people have a host of different ideological commitments, some more fringe than others. But nonetheless, I think there is a coherent demand being made that, you know, our university should, I mean, one of the things that's at the heart of this, as many protesters will articulate it, is the Israeli government has systematically bombed all of the universities in Gaza. There are no functioning universities in Gaza at the moment, right? And surely it is not in keeping with the mission of universities to support, particularly as these universities like NYU, for example, brand themselves as we're a global university, we're the university without walls, we're invested in the global educational community. And there's a war going on in which they are partially invested, that is leveling universities in another country. To me, that's not mission aligned, right? And so I think even as divestment is a political issue, I think there is a non-political case to be made that a university should not be profiting from a war that has, you know, destroyed the education system of another country rather systematically, you know?

John Tomasi: One thing I've been hearing about, and I find that really interesting, maybe plausible as well. One thing I'm hearing from people is that some people are running analogies with the calls to divestment today regarding Israel, with calls to divestment, for example, South Africa. And what I'm understanding is that at the time, the investment portfolios were structured in a very different way, generally. But there was more direct management of individual funds that could be identified as perhaps directly in that country, for example, or doing direct business. Whereas now, a lot of the investments are made offshore, they've been put outside the universities, direct control, often involved in index funds of various sorts. Have you looked into that at all? Is that a topic you studied?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, no, no, it's not something I've studied intensely, but I do recognize that the investment structure is very different than it was. And much more complicated for those reasons than it was in the 80s when there was a push to divest in South Africa. I mean, you know, I think it's really complicated. And I think it's also important to note that many universities are not heavily profiting from, you know, in many cases, the amount of money we're talking about that are plausibly related to this conflict anyways, a small amount of money. Whether or not divestment is divestment is not the most important issue in the politics of the Middle East. It's not even the most important issue in terms of America's role in the politics of the Middle East. But I think students have seized upon it because it is one small thing that they can focus on and one way in which they are directly complicit beyond their tax dollars. I think the other important piece here, too, is that these students are paying for an education that is ludicrously overinflated in terms of price. And I think, you know, there's a kind of demand here that you're charging me. I mean, my college is $80,000 a year. You're going to charge me $80,000 a year. And then... This is at Bates. Yeah. Yeah. And then Bates, I'm not actually sure whether, how Bates is invested. And this has not been a live issue on our campus in the same way. But just as an example, I think a lot of elite universities are in that 70 to 80K range. And I think it's really reasonable for students to say, you know, I, you know, investment might, divestment might not move the needle in this conflict in any way. But if I'm paying $80,000 a year, I don't want my university profiting from a conflict that is, you know, leveling universities throughout their country. And I think that's a piece of this, too.

John Tomasi: Yeah. What about those who would say that those investments make financial aid available to the ones who are really in the field? I mean, if you'll indulge me with that, with the story.

Tyler Austin Harper: Please.

John Tomasi: So my first ever faculty meeting as a young assistant professor at Brown, I walked in. I had no idea what was going on. I was just thrilled to be there. Here I am. I'm one of these people. I didn't know what they were. They're all really old, I thought, you know, because they were compared to me. Of course. And I witnessed this thing that I didn't know what it was afterwards. But I worked from Gregorian, the president of Brown, was up on the stage with all these faculty. And he was just going off on a faculty member who was in the room, an English professor. But apparently led some campaign of students and others against sweatshops that had been owned by a prominent Brown alum.

Tyler Austin Harper: Okay.

John Tomasi: Who had actually given the building, I believe, was named after.

Tyler Austin Harper: Who we were sitting in was named after.

John Tomasi: Yeah. And Martin Gregorian called the person out, saying you led that protest, and this really dismayed this alum who bleeds brown.

Tyler Austin Harper: That's a real true, that's brown, it bleeds brown.

John Tomasi: Yeah, yeah. Just, you know, just nuked him. At the end of the nukage, Gregorian said, and there's something you'd all didn't know that you should hear now, is that he was about to make a gift of some large amount of money, specifically for financial aid. Now he's walked away from it. So the consequence of your protest about what you call sweatshops was that brown financial aid is not, a lot of brown students are not going to get the financial aid they're going to get. What do you think about that? Is that just theatrics and politics? Or is there anything of interest there? I mean, it was state special. I was like, wow, that's how university president is in this role?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, this is interesting. Well, I mean, I would say that if, you know, universities are that worried about financial aid, and if they're that worried about being able to work with class students to be able to afford tuition, there's a lot of things they could do that I would support, that I think also probably many conservatives would support, ironically, that would help bring tuition down. One is deflating the massive bureaucracy that has, you know, been sedimented in these universities over the last couple decades. I mean, Yale now has, I think the statistic is still correct, over one administrator per student, right? That's patently insane, you know? And so I think if universities were, you know, and many of them are massively over leveraged in real estate, and so I think, and they're increasingly tuition dependent. I mean, that's a side point, but one of the reasons I think this conflict is the way it is, and one of the reasons why I think universities have been branding themselves to students in the way they are, is that young people are more progressive than ever. Universities are also more tuition dependent, many of them, than they ever have been. And so they need two groups. They need donors, like you're mentioning in the Brown example, but they also are increasingly reliant on tuition dollars from students. Those students are more progressive, so they market progressivism to them. And then, you know, at the back of the house, they market, you know, a very different model of the university to donors, right? I mean, now those two groups are coming into conflict.

John Tomasi: That's right.

Tyler Austin Harper: You know, I do think if universities were that worried about, you know, having funds available for working class students to attend, I welcome that. But I think there are a lot of other ways they could do that short of, you know, being invested in, you know, companies that profit from war. Or, you know, I think that's like, I think there are a lot of other ways you can free up funds more quickly by dismantling this massive bureaucracy that has almost nothing to do with education.

John Tomasi: Just one side point on that, I recently did a podcast, we did a podcast out loud with Andrew Andrzejewski, a long Polish name that I always mispronounce, but Andrew Andrzejewski, who is the CEO of an organization called Open the Books. And they look at public records of entities, including universities that receive public funding. And one of the really striking findings of their studies of the Ivy League schools is that the Ivy League schools now get more money from federal tax breaks than they do from tuition.

Tyler Austin Harper: Oh, wow.

John Tomasi: Which is kind of striking.

Tyler Austin Harper: That is striking, yeah.

John Tomasi: And to follow the logic you were just talking about, if the universities owe some special voice to the people who are funding them, then that looks like it might be eroding the idea of faculty or university self-governance.

Tyler Austin Harper: Oh, absolutely.

John Tomasi: Tyler, I'm going to pause here to do a little bit of housekeeping. Thank you for tuning into today's episode. Heterodox Out Loud is a nonprofit production. We rely solely on the support of listeners like you. You may ask, how can I support you? It's very easy. Please follow our podcast, leave a rating or review, and share it with your friends and network. Your support helps us reach more individuals who value these kinds of conversations and diverse perspectives in higher education. If you are in higher education, visit heterodoxacademy.org and join the thousands of professors and students from all around the world who are working to support open inquiry. Thank you. Let's shift gears. I hadn't planned to talk about investments with you.

Tyler Austin Harper: No, no, no. That was fun.

John Tomasi: Yeah, I enjoyed it.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: Let me shift gears back to some of the other themes in your work that have just been really interesting. I said this to you before, and I'll say it now on air. It's not just that you do quite interesting things. You write them beautifully.

Tyler Austin Harper: Oh, thank you.

John Tomasi: That's very good. I really, really, really enjoy reading your work. But one of the themes that I've been struck by in your work is the way you think about the humanities and how humanities have become politicized for a variety of reasons. I think we all know they have become politicized. I mentioned that story about Brown and a professor who was being slowly roasted by the president was an English professor. Not coincidentally, I came to realize that often where a lot of political activism is in some humanities departments, especially perhaps English. Why have humanities departments become politicized? Is there some story to be told about that?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, you know, so I think the story that a certain kind of person likes to tell is that, you know, the humanities are in crisis and the humanities are politicized. And the question is, what is the relationship between these two things, right? And the story that, you know, people of a certain political persuasion want us to tell is that the humanities got very political and now they're being defunded as a result of that politicalization. I mean, I think that actually reverses the causal arrow. I think the problem...

John Tomasi: Say that again. So run that again, please.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, so a lot of folks are, you know, are saying, well, these universities got really political in the 80s or these humanities departments got political in the 80s and 90s. And they teach all of these things that are very political and, quote unquote, Marxist, etc. Even though there's almost no Marxism in the humanities anymore. And, you know, because of that now, students don't want to take these courses and state legislators don't want to fund them. So we're seeing humanities cuts at places like West Virginia University and UNC Chapel Hill, etc. And it's because they got political now where there's this backlash.

John Tomasi: I've often heard that.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah. And I think that, like I said, I think that reverses the actual causal arrow. I understand the politicalization of the humanities departments, which I don't dispute at all, as a consequence of the defunding and also the increasing pressure as universities have essentially become credentialing services and pre-professional job market preparation. The increasing pressure to prove their utility, right? And so the social sciences, many of them, not all of them.

John Tomasi: Sorry, prove their utility in terms of the ability to get a job afterwards?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes, to be useful in some way, right? If we're going to pay all of this money, what, why should somebody major in English, right? And so the social sciences have, you know, if the question is, why should someone major in the social sciences? They have a pretty plausible explanation where they can say, well, we can pipeline you to X, Y, Z kinds of jobs. That's even more clear in the case of sciences, obviously, where, you know, they can say, well, we're preparing you to do X, Y, or Z. And the humanities really can't make a credible case. Like the English department can't make a credible case that they do job market preparation, right? Like it's obviously the case that folks with humanities salaries are going to make less money. So how have they responded to the pressure to prove their use, right? And how they've responded is saying, no, you're not going to make, walk out of these doors and make six figures with your, you know, English degree. But we will prepare you to understand the world politically, right? We'll prepare you to change the world. And so a lot of the politicalization that we're seeing in these departments, I think, is a response to these material pressures. A, defunding that is already in place, but B, you know, a desperate attempt to prove that, to make the case for English, right? Or to make the case for history. And that case is being made by appeals to activism as a kind of usefulness, right? I mean, if you read almost any article in a, you know, humanities journal now, and almost any is an over-exaggeration. But you'll, you know, I work in the environmental humanities. And I work a lot in the 19th century sort of British literature. So you'll read an article about romantic poetry and how the romantic poets thought about nature. And then at the last paragraph of the article, and this is how reading the romantic poets will help us solve climate change, right? Which is obviously wildly implausible, but this is the kind of gesture you see all the time, right? This constant appeal to what are the stakes? What is the ability? And the sort of degradation of the idea that we should support research for research's sake in the humanities, right? So I do think this politicalization, like I'm saying, is a response to some of these other pressures. Now, there is some truth to it that, you know, it's like a feedback loop, right? I think the politicalization is a response to the pressures of a market-driven university that sees the function of the university as pre-professional training. So they politicize, and then that politicalization becomes an excuse for further defunding. So it creates this kind of doom loop that I think we're seeing at a lot of public universities in red states, but not just in red states.

John Tomasi: So what about the other, I'm old enough to remember when humanities were being extolled as a way to think about living a life well.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, yeah. And that's not the same as what you're describing.

John Tomasi: I mean, what's interesting about the way, so you can think of humanities as about learning about encountering beauty.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, for sure.

John Tomasi: Gaining a sense for wonder. Lifelong learning because you'll go on reading books and going to films and enjoying culture in deeper ways because you've had that experience. But that's all now I'm realizing from listening to you, it's all a bit of a self-turned, an inward-looking justification, whereas the one about go out there and contribute to climate change, change the world, be a social activist, that's something broader. But there's a third way to think about the humanities, and that's the older one that I remember, which is something about humanities is about learning about beauty, but also learning about oneself, but not just for the purpose of enjoying books and literature more, rather for the purpose of being a leader in the world. So now you've become a more principled person, you're more thoughtful, you have a moral compass because you've considered a bunch of questions about who you are, what the world should be like, and that's sort of a, this is the old defense of humanities, that it's going to train people to be leaders of businesses and things who are going to be morally, you know, have some moral balance about them. I remember, you went to, you're teaching at Bates, I mentioned to you before I went to Colby College as an undergrad, and I remember having a conversation my freshman year with a philosophy professor, I was thinking about majoring in philosophy, I came from a family without much money, and so making money was important to my mother to some degree, but she also wanted me to do what I love, and I love philosophy, so she said, well, do that, I'm not sure how you're going to make any money. But I talked to this philosophy professor who said to me, well, you know, there are people who make money when they're coming out of college, they go to Babson, and they go to, and they're working in the business, they have a business credential. But the people who go to places like Colby or Bates, they're going to be owning the companies and running the companies. I'm not sure how he thought we would come to own the company, if you weren't inheriting it.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, yeah.

John Tomasi: Maybe he was assuming that. But what do you think about the idea that instead of saying here's a role change in the world through social activism, which has a political valence, because people see the world need to change in different ways, it's a lineup on one political ideology at the other, but that approach you do, it seems like, tilts the university in one ideological direction. That defense tilts it in one ideological direction, I think. But the other one doesn't. The other one is more neutral. It says, go be a leader, and you decide yourself whether you're going to start a business to do with renewable energies or, you know, whatever, making fast food, whatever it might be. What do you think about that defense that humanities are for leadership?

Tyler Austin Harper: Oh, I think that's a great defense, humanities. You know, and I don't think it's the only one. I think, you know, I think that's true at the level of undergraduate education. I mean, in my mind, the humanities need to do, and the reason I'm making that distinction is that's not what a PhD in literature is for, right? Like, that is for something different, which is to explore fundamental research questions about, you know, this field that is millennia old, right?

John Tomasi: At the graduate level.

Tyler Austin Harper: At the graduate level, right? And I think that's an important distinction. I think it's important to tease out that universities, faculty at universities have two kind of functions. One is producing research, and the other is teaching undergrad and graduate students. And I think, you know, the case to be made for the humanities is, you know, twofold at the level of undergrads. I think you're absolutely right that, you know, I think a lot of what we're seeing right now in our public officials betrays a total lack of the humanistic education, right? And also a lot of the people that lead, you know, lead our world. I mean, if you look at Silicon Valley in particular, a lot of Silicon Valley ideology is driven by bad readings of science fiction. That's not an exaggeration, you know. And so I think there is a case to be made for the importance of serious undergraduate educations in the humanities as being crucial to having both an informed citizenry and also sort of leaders with moral ballast, as you put it quite eloquently. Now, I don't think that's the only purpose of a, you know, a humanities department, right? They're also designed to produce actual research, right, and try to move fields forward, right? I work, for example, in the history of the idea of human extinction. I work between literature and political thought and history of science, looking at how our ideas about the potential demise of humanity have changed in response to new scientific development, right? And, you know, research like that is not, has very little to do with, you know, expanding the hearts and minds of our undergraduates or our nation's youth or providing that kind of moral ballast. But it's important, and it matters, and universities should make space for it, right? And they should make space for medieval history, that, you know, these other topics that don't necessarily have an immediate, that same immediate kind of function. But, you know, so I think there are these two separate functions that humanities departments have. They're both important, but I think, as I agree with you about, you know, the importance of humanistic education for, you know, well-informed citizenry, I also think there's a separate point, which is that humanities research matters in the same way that, you know, social science and science research matters, and that, you know, that's also what universities are supposed to be supporting. And I think that's another thing that's been eroded by politicalization, right? I mean, you know, one thing that I find really frustrating as a person of color is if you are a person of color, there is a huge push to do research in areas related to race, right? I do 19th century British literature, like I said, and history of science stuff. I was under immense pressure in the job market process to make myself more legible in terms of, like, racial issues. Someone actually told me, you know, an English department is not going to know what to do with a black guy who studies the dead white men of the British 19th century, you know? And so I think these, like, political concerns, right, that, you know, we need to be thinking about race and identity and politics, et cetera, also deform research in a way, too, right? Because a lot of, you know, there are a lot of graduate students of color, including non-graduate students of color, that are reading the tea leaves. They're seeing who's getting jobs and what. Those jobs are in largely politicized fields that relate to activism. And that's shaping what research they do, right? And, you know, I mean, even as a graduate student, I saw that. I came in wanting to do James Joyce. I realized there were few jobs for people who, you know, do that. And that I had always been interested in environmentalism. It was, you know, a field that was a little more politically legible. And so I moved into doing, you know, environmentally inflected stuff that I do as a kind of job market pivot, which isn't to say I don't enjoy my work or my motivations were cynical. But it is to say that, you know, when we think of, you know, universities and departments as spaces for politics rather than spaces for dispassion and inquiry, then, you know, we deform fields, right? And we deform disciplines. And I think that's what we're seeing now. And it's bad for undergrads. It's bad for faculty. I think it's bad for everyone.

John Tomasi: Let me ask you about the deforming of disciplines. I know you've written about this as well. Not in that term. I'm not using the term deform. But one of the phenomenons we've been seeing with the rise of DEI is this idea of cluster hire.

Tyler Austin Harper: Yes.

John Tomasi: And, you know, I know many I've experienced myself and I know all of our research fellows here in the Center for Academic Pluralism have been talking about their experience, too, where their departments follow the traditional pattern of having these battles throughout the year to decide which hire requests, which areas they're going to request to hire in for the next year. And as I was mentioning to you before, people sometimes describe departments as being bathtubs full of sharks. I guess they're angry and they're small and they're all pushed together in a zero-sum game and there it is. But they go through these elaborate negotiations in departments every year. It's part of the ritual, the annual ritual in the academy. And they submit their recommendations to hire in three different areas that they've carefully negotiated. And the university comes back and says, none of those, but we'll give you extra four positions if you make a cluster hire in race and ethnic studies, for example. Can you say something about that? Is that part of the same phenomenon?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, absolutely. And this gets back to what I was trying to get at, where I think a lot of folks assume that universities or humanities departments are getting political and then they're getting defunded or then they're under threat in these particular institutional ways and the causal error is reversed. I think this is also true about this particular issue. So, for example, there was a job ad this year for anti-racist Shakespeare. That was the title of the job ad. So someone working in...

John Tomasi: So not just Shakespeare.

Tyler Austin Harper: Anti-racist Shakespeare.

John Tomasi: Yep.

Tyler Austin Harper: In the English department. And I think a certain kind of person would look at that job ad and say, we have these kooky left-wing professors who want to hire an anti-racist Shakespeare. That's how outsiders who might not be in the university think about it. But the reality is that professors are often trying to defend their field and are more conservative in the sort of definitional sense of conservative than the administration. Not in the sort of...

John Tomasi: They're disciplinarily conservative.

Tyler Austin Harper: Disciplinarily conservative. Exactly.

John Tomasi: Right.

Tyler Austin Harper: So, but often administrators dangle carrots through cluster hires that, no, we're not going to approve you for a regular Shakespeare scholar, but we will approve you for a line related to anti-racism and equity. And so then the department says, well, how about anti-racist Shakespeare? And the dean says, perfect. Right? And the thing to keep in mind is that the dean does not care about anti-racist Shakespeare. The dean does not care about justice and equity, probably. But they do care about diversity because they're immense, under immense public pressure to diversify the faculty. And often, depending on the university, sometimes under pressure from the president and also the board. And the quickest way to getting faculty diversity is to engineer pools that will be diverse. And one way to do that is to hire in fields that are more likely to be filled with folks of color. Right? So if you do, if you're hiring in sort of anti-racist Shakespeare, you are much more likely to get a very diverse candidate pool than if you were just to hire a Shakespeare scholar. Right? And so, you know, it's this end around through cluster hiring. And as you said, a cluster hire is, so traditionally or often, you know, departments would decide what they need. Right? The historians would say, we need a 19th century historian of science. We don't have anyone who does history of science. They go to the dean. They have a job description written. They give it to the dean and say, hey, can we have a tenure line so we can hire a historian of science? And the dean says yes or no. But what's happening with cluster hires is that deans, administrators, provosts are putting out, you know, these calls and they're saying, you know, there are six tenure lines available for work in racial justice. And then departments apply to those tenure lines with a job description for a position like anti-racist Shakespeare or, you know, the history of racial science in the 19th century. And then magically now they get one of those tenure lines that they're previously being denied. So it's a cudgel administrations are using to diversify the faculty rapidly, but with a lot of disregard for what departments actually need, right? And it's a huge erosion of faculty governance, but it's also, I think, driving problems in academia. And, you know, diversity is good. I'm a benefit of diversity initiatives in academia, so I'm not going to, you know, pull up the ladder behind me and say diversity is bad. But I think there are good, there are better and worse ways to think about diversifying the faculty and, you know, prioritizing the quickest possible and the quickest and messiest possible route, but also rests a lot of power from the faculty. And that also undermines the intellectual trajectory of departments by telling them what they, you know, not allowing them to, you know, hire based on their needs, but hire based on these justice-driven administration, administrational, you know, machinations. I think it's bad for everyone.

John Tomasi: We're coming to the end of our conversation. I want to just come back around and invite you to say a few words, like, connecting what we just talked about, the politicization of the humanities with the protests on campus. So we're seeing the protests, well, the protests are, we might describe them as pro-Palestinian, let's say, and anti-Israeli. So there's a strong unidirectional, large unidirectional valence, ideological valence in the way they're being conducted. Is the politicization of the humanities connected to the way the protests are taking place? Do you see anything you want to say about that?

Tyler Austin Harper: Yeah, so I think, you know, I am very worried about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. I'm also critical of what Israel's government is doing. If I were conducting the protests, I would be saying very different things, right? My focus would be on the 13,000 dead children rather than slogans like, globalize the Intifada, right? And I think there is a kind of thinking that is not related immediately to the politicalization of humanities department. But that is, I think, part of academic more culture, cultural shifts more broadly that are not entirely unrelated to that dynamic, where we have, you know, shifted to very simple Manichean frameworks to, you know, understanding really sophisticated problems, right? And so, you know, when I hear a phrase like, globalize the Intifada, do I think those students are anti-Semitic? No. I think most, some of them maybe. I think most of them are ill-informed. I think most of them think this is, you know, an exciting slogan that we're going to use and we hear people chanting. And, you know, they don't think about how other folks are going to hear it. And if you talk to a student who uses a slogan like that, right, they will tell you, well, Intifada doesn't mean kill the Jews. It has this etymological history and it has this meaning in the Middle East or whatever. And my point of view on that is if you're explaining yourself, you're losing, right? And so you should be focusing on sloganeering that is immediately obvious, right? Like, stop dropping bombs on universities and 13,000 dead children. These are things to focus on that can get broad popular support. But in terms of how the humanities departments play into this, I mean, I do think simple and reductive ideas from the humanities that have been extremely watered down, like settler colonialism, for example, have been extremely unhelpful because they've turned how students think about this conflict into a question of land in a way that I find not especially productive or not, and also illuminating very little and also distracting from the core moral question, which is the humanitarian crisis. I also do think in terms of the anti-Semitism issues, and one thing I would add, I talked to over 30 people for the recent piece I wrote about the protests, talked to a ton of people on the pro-Palestinian side, including organizers. Not a single one of them said there was no anti-Semitism. Not a single one of them wasn't worried about it. They all said it was fringe, which has also been my experience. But they did not deny that it was an element of the protests. Now, the question is, why is that the case? And it seems to me that part of it is that over the last 10 years or so, as we've had these, you know, kind of frameworks of anti-racism that have broken the world down into binary of oppressors and oppressed, right, with white people occupying invariably the category of oppressor, even regardless of their class status, right? And that's a paradigm that's been emanating primarily from humanities departments.

John Tomasi: Yeah, yeah.

Tyler Austin Harper: And so, you know, I also think there's been a decision that, well, Jewish people are white, which is a very complicated and fraught question, but that's how it's been simplified. There go, they're on the side of oppressors. And they're not fitting into the sort of diversity, equity, inclusion apparatuses of the universities. And however you might feel about those bureaucracies, and I think it's clear how I feel about them, it's very obvious to me that Jewish folks don't have a place within them. And the reason you know they don't is because universities have created entire parallel infrastructures for anti-Semitism. They haven't incorporated any of the problems related to the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S. into those DEI infrastructures. They've created new task forces, right? And Columbia and NYU are our center on anti-Semitism, are our task force on anti-Semitism. And that gives the game up, right? Because shouldn't diversity, equity, inclusion, shouldn't Jewish people fall under that? I mean, they're not, you know? And so I think I would not say that humanities departments are responsible for these simplifications. I would say that a lot of the bad simplified ideas that we're seeing, like whether it's settler colonialism or, you know, whatever else, are simplified versions of arguments that you find more complicated versions of in the humanities, you know? And so there is a deeply kind of watered down, problematically so.

John Tomasi: Did I hear you say that you think that Jewish students should fit within the DEI framework?

Tyler Austin Harper: Oh, by the letter of the law, for lack of a better word, right? I mean, if you just take the phrase at its, you know, literally, right? Diversity, equity, inclusion. Jewish people have a history of oppression. They are a minority group in the U.S. They should absolutely fit within the framework of DEI. I teach in Maine. We have a lot of poor white students from northern Maine. They should also fit within the framework of DEI, right? They're definitionally a marginalized group. They don't have a lot of money. They come from these remote parts of the country. They should fall into that framework. But they don't, right?

John Tomasi: It's obvious that they don't. But does a group that has proportionally outside success in American society, as the Jewish people do, should they fit within DEI or are they DEI busters? Are they the group that says, listen, we've been marginalized in a bunch of ways, but we reject a lot of the premises of DEI?

Tyler Austin Harper: Well, I think the question...

John Tomasi: That's a sweeping generalization of what Jews are. What do you think about that?

Tyler Austin Harper: I mean, the question I would ask is, do Jewish people have particular challenges that are related to their identity and its history? And the answer to that question is yes. And is it true that many Jewish people have sound success in America? Absolutely. But is it true that they have challenges that stem from their identity? That, you know, I mean, there were Jewish quotas in universities, you know, in the 20th century. I mean, in some people's living memory, you know, and so there is a history of anti-Semitism in universities. And I do think there are challenges that Jewish folks face because they are Jewish. That doesn't negate the fact that there are many successful Jewish people. And it's just as it's true that there are challenges that poor white folks face because they are poor and white, you know. And so, you know, from my way of thinking, you know, we use this phrase marginalized group all the time. And there are, you know, you know, marginalization isn't simple, right? There are ways in which many Jewish folks are marginalized and there's ways in which they're not. But again, the salient question to me is, is, does somebody have, are there specific challenges that they face in society as a result of their identity? And if the answer to that is yes, it would seem to me that they, they should be, you know, included in this DEI framework. Now, do I think DEI should be an entire bureaucracy? And do I think we should have one DEI administrator for every 20 students like we do at some universities? No, I don't. But I do think, you know, you see the hypocrisy and the shallowness of DEI when you realize there are other kinds of marginalized groups that are being excluded. And what we're seeing right now on college campuses is that that hypocrisy is being called out, right? I mean, even as I am sympathetic to the side of the protesters, I've said from the beginning, many Jewish students are simply asking for a rational and consistent application of previous ideas that have applied to other groups like microaggressions and cultural insensitivity, right? Like, I, there's, it's obvious that, globalizing the intifada, there's a more than plausible claim to be made that that is culturally insensitive, right? And that it's, you can understand why a Jewish student wouldn't find that offensive. and yet when they appeal to these frameworks of microaggressions or cultural insensitivity that have worked for other groups, they're, they're not getting the same consideration. now I think those frameworks are bad. I don't think we should have the safetyist model. but I do think, you know, part of the problem we're seeing is that, you know, Jewish folks on campus are just asking for the DEI bureaucracy to the work the way it has for other students are asking for safetyist frameworks to be implied the way they had to other students. and whether or not we think those are good or it's kind of beside the point. I mean, it's like my protest point. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with the protests. The point is that there's like a lot of double standards at play here and we should just be on the side of consistency.

John Tomasi: Tyler, thank you so much for taking time to join us today. And thanks for appearing on Heterodox Out Loud.

Tyler Austin Harper: It was super fun. Thank you, John.