Can a Public University Stay Politically Neutral?

Episode Transcript

John Tomasi: Ed Seidel, welcome to Heterodox Out Loud.

Ed Seidel: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

John Tomasi: It's really a pleasure to have you as a president of the University of Wyoming on the show. We're going to dig in and talk about some of the things you've been doing at Wyoming, which we think is maybe a model for many other universities. But I want to just start by we're all operating. You presidents are operating in a period of markedly declining public trust in universities generally. There's a period of, there's been a backlash, there was DEI, and then a backlash, a strong backlash against DEI. Other things too, obviously the Trump presidency is a major change in the disposition of higher education. I guess I just want to start by, that's a lot to begin with. I think we had a conversation with our question, but I just want to invite you to share with our listeners any thoughts you might have about this. Looking across the country, how do you see this moment? What do you think is going on? Tell us. What is it?

Ed Seidel: It's a very intense moment, but it's not just a moment. It's sort of a growth of an era, I would say. It's been going on for a long time. So maybe take a few of the things you mentioned, the lack of trust in higher education. That's been going on for at least a decade. And I can remember a few years ago having a sort of state of the university address where there were some clear signs that from around 2015 or so, public opinion had shifted really dramatically away from supporting universities. And it wasn't just Republicans. It was Democrats and Republicans. And I'd say there probably was more support on the liberal side, but even on the liberal side, the support was declining. So that it got to the point where I think that I don't remember the statistics exactly, but it was something like more than 10 years ago, over 90 percent of parents expected their kids to go to college. And then those numbers had dropped precipitously to the point where, like, I don't know, you know, 40 to 70 percent, depending on surveys and political kind of sort of predilection of different groups, would think about that maybe in some cases they didn't want their kids to go to college. And so there were examples about things like student debt that were really climbing and that really caused people to wonder if it was really worth it. What's the value proposition? All those conversations were happening. And then students sometimes wouldn't finish their degrees and they're still in debt. So then what what next? What was that all about? Was there enough focus on the experience of being at a university that allowed you to sort of really launch your career? And so a lot of people are thinking about this in terms of almost like KPIs and ROI and so on. So all this is going on. And then there's the political side to it, the amazing shift from affirmative action towards merit-based hiring and promotion and so on. And so all this is happening. So when when I came into the role as president, I thought a lot about this. And I also had a background.

John Tomasi: And I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that was that was in you came into you became president in 2020, is that right?

Ed Seidel: 2020, that's right.

John Tomasi: So to the year of the George Floyd murder and then the rise of DEI a year or two later. But go on, please.

Ed Seidel: Oh, exactly. And so I was somewhat a swept in in all of that as well. And I even wrote some statements before becoming the president, after I've been was sort of president elect on on to from to the university campus that I think they were well intentioned. But I think as I've kind of grown into the role with the sort of sense of neutrality and so on, I've I've I've kind of I've had my own journey through all of this myself.

John Tomasi: I want to go to that point about what your early days as president. But if I may, I just want to just for our audience's sake, but also for my own as your background in astrophysics. Remind me, just tell us briefly what you what's your what was your pathway? What was your path to the presidency?

Ed Seidel: Yeah, my my specialty is general relativity, actually. And astrophysics have more more on the GR side than on the the astro side. But, yeah, theoretical physics.

John Tomasi: I didn't know the backstory. That's fascinating. That's really fascinating. So let's go back to where you were going when I when I when I when I when I interrupted. So you said that we were saying you became president of University of Wyoming in 2020. Go on. Tell us the story from there.

Ed Seidel: Well, so I I thought I think a bit naively initially that one of the responsibilities of a president or just as a leader of a of an institution is to be able to help guide the institution. And through through difficult times and including political times. But but I hadn't fully embraced the concept of institutional neutrality, I would say. And so I was maybe more willing early on to speak out on things that happened across the country because I knew that they would that there would be people on our campus that would be upset by things that happened at a national level. And over time, I began to worry that that was making our institution seem to have a particular viewpoint. And it was my viewpoint. It wasn't necessarily the university's viewpoint. And so I rather quickly move towards this idea of institutional neutrality. We'll come to that, I'm sure. But I did have a journey on this on this.

John Tomasi: Interesting. I appreciate that. And I've seen a number of presidents when they adopted neutrality in the past few years, typically in the wake of the Hamas attacks in Israel, talk about their their journey being one of evolution, which I prefer that to straight change, because evolution suggests that there's some anchoring that goes along the path of change. It's not just changing because the wind blew, evolution suggests that one reconsiders. And that gives me some hope that this change. We've seen something like 150 universities with HxAs, many of them with HxAs support, shift to neutrality, to adopt neutrality. And we hope that for principled reasons, not just for political expediency, but we'll find out through time, I suppose, about most things in life. I want to talk to you, just again, thinking on the national level, you know, one of the things that HxA does is we did a big report this fall of the convocation addresses of many university leaders. We're interested to see what themes they focus on as they start the school year and welcome the incoming bachelor freshmen. And this year, we were delighted to find that some extremely high percentage of university presidents whose convocation addresses we studied emphasize open inquiry. The idea of a free campus where discussions freely happen. The university has a special place where people come together to search for knowledge. And with all humility, they search for knowledge together, we hope. That's the ideal, at least. And, you know, one of the things we noticed was that one term that we think is really an important component of open inquiry is viewpoint diversity. If you have people who are free to speak, you know, policies on campus supporting free speech, and you have people who are trained and encouraged to listen to one another, that is, they have the skills to constructively disagree, but they all think the same thing, roughly. That we don't really get that magic alchemy that universities we think are meant to, that scientific process of contestation and mutual advancement, we hope. I wonder if you have any thoughts about that. So we worry to some degree that viewpoint diversity is kind of being quietly written out of the definition of open inquiry.

Ed Seidel: So I think somehow diversity, just as a word, because it's caught up in DEI, I think, has gotten an inappropriately bad rap, honestly. It's not, it's all about how you approach it. So we think viewpoint diversity is really important, but I don't like the idea that just because we had a speaker with a particular view, we have to have a kind of a tit-for-tat, you know, speaker that comes to counteract that view. It's not like trying to methodically create that balance so much as really making sure that there are principles that people have that allows them to express their views and to be respected for that. And then there's, you mentioned the idea about advocacy, where you said inquiry, but I think, but then that sometimes does get confused with advocacy. So we have worked very hard to differentiate inquiry versus advocacy, and then to give examples of what the differences are and how, particularly as a professor, you need to be guided by that principle. Inquiry, yes. Advocacy for particular political positions, no. And then, but, but then there are all these gray areas. And so it's, it's, it's, it is an ongoing process, but I do think some people are afraid to still embrace the word diversity. I'm not, but, but I don't want to, to change our hiring practices. Now we have become decidedly merit-based and that was part of the, look at yourself in the mirror and what are the practices you really have? And are you rigorous about them? And then to try to make sure that you follow that up with not just a, you know, a nice statement, but with, with training and, and exercises and practice and so on. So we worked hard on that. So, so anyway, I, I still, I like the word diversity, but I'm not going to hire or promote just on the basis of diversity here.

John Tomasi: Yeah, let's, let's, let's, let's pause on that for a minute more because I think that's a really interesting set of issues there. But, you know, one thing that, that I, that I, that I, I'm trying to try an idea with you and see what you, what you think about this. My observation is that many university presidents, when they're asked about viewpoint diversity, they kind of leap right to the question about hiring new personnel. But it seems to me that there's a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of, if we think it in terms of not just who's on the faculty or, you know, how many Republicans or whatever, how we're going to count these counties around people of faith or people, however we're going to count these things. If we think of it instead about what's the experience of students, what's their experience in their classrooms? If we think of viewpoint diversity that way, there are things that existing faculty, existing personnel might do, might be encouraged to do by presidents to increase, to improve the experience that students have in their classrooms of viewpoint diversity. So you may, you may have heard about this big study that came out last summer, looking at syllabi all across the country, showing that on certain hot button topics, there's a very narrow range of readings taught on those topics. As though there are sort of one party line on these three topics, race and criminal justice, Israel, Palestine, and abortion. And, and, and just by encouraging professors on your own campus to open up their syllabi, to be a little more self-aware about when they're used to use the word advocacy versus open inquiry. I think that's a great way to say it. We might be able to, you might be able to find that presidents can take on viewpoint diversity, not by leaping to the personnel changing, personnel issue, but kind of moving more slowly, but more immediately to encourage good actors on their own campus. Do you have any, is that too easy of a solution? It sounds to me, every time I have an easy solution, I'm skeptical of it, but that just seems to me a good one. And do you have any thoughts about that? Are there ways to, a president might encourage that, those kinds of changes?

Ed Seidel: Oh, it's multifaceted, of course. So it's, it's not easy, but it's like a systematic approach. So here, I think we have really looked hard at the whole exercise of looking at ourselves in the mirror and what it is that we really need to be doing. And so, for example, we have created videos. I actually narrate a video on freedom of expression on campus. And it talks about, we want to support people to have their own views, not to tell them how to think. And that's particularly important for students. And we, we show that video now every summer when we have an incoming class, we have a thing called saddle up, a good Western metaphor for getting ready for college. And it's not like high school. And it's a pretty intensive boot camp. And it does include constructive dialogue and freedom of expression and like the do's and don'ts of, of these kinds of things. We, at the other side of this, with our faculty, we have training, we have a really great center here, the Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning. We call it ECTL. That provides a lot of training materials for faculty. Most faculty, as we know, get their PhD, their focus on their research, and then they're, they're thrust into a classroom. They don't know how to handle some of the things that come up. So we provide guidance. And I think, you know, bit by bit, it's having impact. And all new faculty are, are shown this and the existing faculty as well. So, so I, but it's hard for people who've been teaching for a long time to suddenly change their views. But, but this is also, it's not just political things. It's also scientific. So we, we brought in a number of, of speakers, actually, some on the political side. We've had, you know, Charlie Kirk. We had Angela Davis, you know, not that this isn't like a tit for tat thing, but just to expose people to many different views. But on the science side, one thing I'm really proud of is we had a professor named Paul Steinhardt from Princeton University. He's a, quite a famous theoretical physicist. And this comes back to my own area of, you know, general relativity and cosmology and so on. But he pioneered like what's now the, the orthodox view of how the universe was created. And now over, over time, he began to get uncomfortable with his own work even. And now he's, he's challenging it. He's challenging the orthodoxy that he himself created. And he's a bit of an outcast. And he told his story here in a, in the, in the context of freedom of expression, his own journey in science. And so it's all about poking holes in everybody's work, being as rigorous as you can, including your own, and then seek, is seeking truth. And if you really come down to that fundamental value, maybe there's not a raw truth and political views, but there, you can boil them down to simple principles sometimes, you know, and then you got to debate them out, you know, and that's what we try to do here.

John Tomasi: That's a great anecdote. And so that event happened on the Wyoming campus.

Ed Seidel: Yeah, that's fantastic.

John Tomasi: This is fabulous. And I'll, I'll share, I'll share with you that, I sometimes, I sometimes have dinners with some dear friends of mine at Brown. I've taught at Brown for a long time and they're Brown professors in the computer science. And when we, and I talk to them about viewpoint diversity, there, there was like a right to computer science and they would talk about, you know, how important it is to have a variety of, not political views at all, but just like you were saying, there's different ways of like keeping open-mindedness. And, you know, when I, when I, I, I have a book coming out on viewpoint diversity, and, and, and March of 20 of this year, of this year. And one of the things that we write about in that, my coauthors and I write about in that book is the idea that we want to have universities are truth-seeking or knowledge-seeking, let's say. And so it would be surprising if there weren't no, if there's never a convergence on some of the questions we study. We, I think we would actually hope for convergence is of some sort, but we want to, what we want then is not that there'd be an equal balance or a political proportional political representation. We don't know in advance what the right number of professors would be. We don't know in advance what the number of right number of, what the right ratio of Republicans and Democrats would be in the field of professional baseball or engineering, whatever it might be. You don't know with professors either, but what we want, we think is something like a situation where the, the, the, the, the, the, the available options are kept open in a lively way. So it's not, so if you're in climate science and most people are converging on a, say a hotter model, hotter, faster model of climate change, as opposed to a slower, cooler model. That's fine if there's convergence there, what's worrying, if no one can even speak the possibility of one of the cooler models, or if there's a healthcare emergency and there's a pandemic and there's a convergence in the medical community on something, some set of policies like masking, vaccines and lockdowns. Well, okay, that's, that's, that's the medical convergence on a, on a policy. But if no one can even say Great Barrington Declaration or Sweden or something like that, that's what seems to be, to be really worrying. So I think there's something, that's what we're after. And it's hard to quantify it really. I don't know if you have any thoughts about that, what it means to keep options in an open and a lively way. Does that, does that resonate with you? Is that, does that help at all?

Ed Seidel: It does. I think, and you have to always be open, even when there's orthodoxy. I mean, for example, in every textbook, back to this cosmology example, the so-called inflationary universe is, has become, it's in every textbook as if it's the way it is. And it's almost dogmatic. And, you know, Paul's a great example of somebody who not only he helped write that, that textbook in a sense, you know, in terms of the work, but, but then always poke holes. And so that's, that's how science runs. And even to some degree, our, our politics, it's kind of self-correcting. That is there, there are trends, people go in certain directions and there's orthodoxy, but, but eventually, you know, iteratively, you kind of get better and better at it. And so, and occasionally things are completely overturned. I mean, back to my physics metaphor, Einstein came along in 1905 when many scientists thought that they'd worked out all the physics that there was. And so what more was there to do? And so, and Einstein had these ideas that were like so revolutionary that that's an incredible story. He wrote these five papers. He was such a smart aleck in, in his classrooms that his professors didn't really recommend him to get a teaching position. So he went to a patent office and he wrote these revolutionary papers and they wondered who on earth is this guy? And then, so finally, when he went back, so he revolutionized physics in 1905, the miracle year of physics. He went on to do his PhD though, after that. And then he wrote it on a very pedestrian topic because he didn't think he could get through his faculty. So it took a long time for those ideas to take root. And so we always have to be open to that, even no matter what it is. And that I think applies in the political sphere as well.

John Tomasi: Let me ask you, that's a great, a great example. Let me, let me ask you about that. It's so interesting talking with you from your, you're obviously have, you're approaching these issues from a background in science where the scientific method, I think, valorizes these, these norms of evidence giving and the give and take and the uncertainty and the constant searching for disconfirmation, let's say. I just wonder what your perspective is on why the cancellations happened. Why, why, why, I think you went through a period that we see that we think it peaked around 2021. There's different kinds of censorship coming now, we think from a different ideological direction. But in 2021, there was kind of a peaking of censorship of, of, I don't know, people call it a woke, woke, woke censorship. But that's the period in which a lot of methodologically available options within departments and centers and schools were not allowed to be even mentioned. So I mentioned, I mentioned now the idea of a cooler model, a cooler, slower model of climate change or, you know, there's a, there's a Harvard professor, Carole Hooven has been on Heterodox podcast who was effectively forced out of Harvard because she said that biologically, there's two sexes. Gender is plural, but, but multiple, but maybe cultural, maybe multiple, but sex biologically is, is binary. And she was forced out of the university or making that claim. I just wonder if you have any, any thoughts about what, why does it, why do these things happen? These moments happen where these periods happen when, some views just simply cannot be spoken, you know, from science, this has happened before to, in the scientific realm. Do you have any thoughts about the mechanism that makes us not keep opens in a lot, did not keep options open at a lively way, but rather close them down?

Ed Seidel: I think it's largely part of human nature. You have a cohort of people, you, you sort of, you can get into group, think about things and, and then you, you don't, you don't actually go back to the fundamentals and look, is that really, really true? What we believe is that the so-called conventional wisdom. And I think it's, it's true in every area. I mean, I think about, and I'm, I'm not a political scientist, but thinking about, you know, communism and, and, and people who, you know, Marxism and so on. But people had sort of ideals that hadn't really tested on in an actual sort of society, how these play out. So it turns out people have to be motivated. And so then there's, there, the idea of capitalism comes in and then you're motivated because you can do better or you can sell more things or you can do better financially. But then, then, and people think, okay, well, that's obviously a way to go, but then it turns out it also has flaws and so on. So you, you sometimes just have to go through these periods, but you have to be open and you got to be able to listen to people who were breaking the orthodoxy. and so maybe they're wrong, but maybe they're right. And so let just have, that's where the whole idea of constructive dialogue comes. How do you really get to the bottom of something? And maybe you'll never get to the bottom of it. I mean, there are many different views and they're, you know, something, they, they can coexist. but try to get to the best you can, to the truth of something. So always be open to being criticized.

John Tomasi: So what you're describing, I think these examples, this explanation for why some people don't want to hear other views. It sounds like you're, you're working with a, within a framework that assumes that everyone's seeking for knowledge. And sometimes they don't want to hear the other people speak because they're committed to a certain view for epistemic reasons, reasons of truth seeking. And I'm sure that's true sometimes. But a different view, a more worrying view on one that we, we talk about here at HxA quite a bit is that people in the universities today may have fundamentally different views of what the purpose of the university is. And not everyone thinks that the university is really about knowledge seeking first and foremost. Some people think that the university should be about pushing a particular political agenda, whatever that agenda might be from any direction. And people who, those people, we think, as we think, think of that, their mindset, they reject the ideas of evidence-based reasoning. And they reject the idea of free and open discourse and conversation. And they reject the idea of viewpoint diversity, especially, because they think that what's most important for a political movement is something like solidarity. And so you can develop action together, make things happen. If you're always questioning your premises, you're not going to go out there and, you know, push, push, push, push the world through to a particular view. Do you worry about that? And sometimes I think the most important divide on faculties is not between left and right. But the deeper divide, maybe it's more worrying divide, perhaps, is between people who see the university's mission as fundamentally knowledge seeking and so adopt the norms that you were describing. And those who think that maybe it's really not that at all. It's actually something more like being a political partisan in an era where certain claims need to be supported with solidarity. Do you have any thoughts about that, that general issue? I'm asking you as an astrophysicist to do political philosophy. But, you know, as a president, you know, I'm sure you see some of these things. I just wonder how you see it.

Ed Seidel: Well, I would say there are institutions, particularly private institutions, that can take a sort of have an agenda. And that's fine. And, in fact, in some cases, I'm sure it's quite valuable. And so I wouldn't question that. But I think for a public university in particular, we really have to be grounded in the First Amendment because we're, in effect, a government agency. And we have to be grounded in that. And that principle has been the bedrock of both society and, I think, of the stronger universities in the country and in the world for centuries. And so for us, I think that's really important. And I think that what you say is not only what's the purpose of a university, whether it has an agenda or it's a focus on open inquiry and developing knowledge, because that leads to innovation, that leads to economic development. So it's always a step away from me. And, you know, back to, like, fundamental physics again, a lot of fundamental physics led directly to innovations that changed the world. I mean, we wouldn't have GPS without the Einstein's theory of relativity. It simply wouldn't work. We wouldn't have an iPhone without quantum mechanics and all of that. And some cases, we wouldn't have Google without some basic mathematics that was developed by some professors and so on out at Stanford. And so I always take, in spite of my fundamental science background, think about the purpose of the basic research as having not only fundamental knowledge, but what are the applications? How does it advance society? And then I play that out, say, here at the University of Wyoming by thinking about the research we do can really help advance the well-being of our citizens in the state. So there are a lot of purposes for a university. It's not just knowledge, but it's also, and then it's, do we, are we just teaching people critical thinking? That's what often people say at universities, but, or are we thinking about, are we launching their careers? And increasingly, I think we do have to think about the value because the state pays for the university in some large degree. And then students, of course, pay for tuition and they should get something out of it that helps them address their career. So we sort of have to do all of that. And that's one of the challenges of a university. How do you actually do all of that on a limited budget? But it's, there are many dimensions, I think, about the purpose of a university. Back to your original question there.

John Tomasi: That's, I really, that was so much interesting. You said so many interesting things. And for example, just reminding us in many ways that public universities have a special obligation because of their connection to the First Amendment, perhaps to be models of some of these values that HxA cares about. And historically, I'm sure you know that often the elite East Coast private universities were slower to adopt inclusive policies, admitting women, for example, and adopting policies of free speech. A lot of the most extreme examples of shut down culture happened at the private schools on the East Coast universities. So it's interesting, as you point out, that Western, that public schools may be different in that regard. And I'm also really struck by your point about, you know, the many functions of the university. We think there's a highest function, which is something like the discovery and dissemination of knowledge. But I like to hear, I think it's good for us to all hear, I'm calling from the East Coast, it's good for us to hear and be reminded that, you know, dissemination of knowledge is not only what we say to our students and how you prepare them for the world that they'll be living in. It's also how universities interact with industries and people out in their communities. I spent a day this summer in Idaho fishing with a guy who would spend his life teaching extension courses at the university, through the University of Idaho, one of the satellite campuses, teaching people about water management. And that's what he did. He disseminated, he wasn't doing groundbreaking research, but he was doing steady teaching about that, disseminating this information about solving practical problems that could help, you know, figure research out too.

Ed Seidel: So I think, yeah, if I just pick up on that, I think what you're getting at is kind of in the DNA of the land grant, the Morrill Act from the 1800s. In fact, there are multiple versions of it, but they sort of created the land grant university and then through further legislation, just, you know, increasingly more focus on, for example, having an extension system in a land grant university. So we actually have offices in every county in Wyoming and we do all kinds of things there from training on agriculture to thinking about training on entrepreneurship. But it's all things that help advance the society. And that's really what the Morrill Act was all about, helping to grow the economy through education, I would say, whether it's through agriculture or now entrepreneurship and technology and so on. That's all like the modern version to me of the Morrill Act.

John Tomasi: Yeah, I think that's right. And your emphasis on the idea about land grant universities having a special role to play in that area seems extremely well said and it's important. Just on Morrill Act, I think of it as being primarily economic and direction. And that's how you described it a moment ago.

Ed Seidel: Yeah, that's right.

John Tomasi: But universities also have this special role, I think, in terms of their obligations as a society about preparing citizens, preparing future citizens, but also modeling a certain kind of behavior, a certain kind of way of being together in the world of searching for knowledge with humility and intensity. I want to move to the University of Wyoming. I had planned to move to your campus much sooner than we did in this conversation. This is so much fun talking with you about these general issues. But the Wyoming case in particular, moving to your campus now and the things that have been going on there, they're just extremely interesting. And, you know, you've described UW as a as a kind of haven for free inquiry. The recent award that you just the national award that your university just won confirms other people who observe it and measure these things see that, too. Can you just say what that looks like day to day on campus? What's the what's the what's the what's the sauce? Well, there are multiple sauces.

Ed Seidel: Let's just say it's it's not like just one dish. I'd actually spent time in Louisiana. So I think of a gumbo sometimes where you have to, you know, you mix a lot of things in there. And that's part of what it is. There are many ingredients, let's say it that way. So there are a lot of things here that I'm very proud of at the university. We started some, I don't know, four years ago or so against the backdrop that we talked about with sort of the public opinion of universities not being very favorable. And so I was very strong. OK, let's really look ourselves in the mirror and see what our practices are. And so and one day I'll tell this story. I was at a meeting up in Yellowstone National Park of our school for environmental science and natural resources. And we had an advisory committee there and I was saying some things about the university and I was kind of challenged by one of our advisory members, Karen Kemmerer, who was on the advisory committee. She says, President Seidel, do you believe in freedom of speech on campus? And I'm like, well, of course I do. And I just by good fortune, I just happened to when I was at the University of Illinois, I studied the Chicago principles and I had worked on the University of Illinois principles. So I was quite able to articulate that. And she was she was making a point that not really believing that we were of respecting all viewpoints, maybe only liberal ones. And so we became good friends after that. And because of her challenge, I created this committee that looked at all of our practices. What are the principles we're really ought to have? And I and I talked about many things that the committee should advise us on. And so that has led to a number of things we've done to operationalize some principles that we developed. And we were very hard to to very comprehensively to make sure that we are practicing what it is that we preach.

John Tomasi: And this is the committee that you that you that you founded, I believe, in December 2022 is the committee called the Working Group on Freedom of Expression, Intellectual Freedom and Constructive Dialogue.

Ed Seidel: That's right.

John Tomasi: And I have the charge to the committee in front of me as part of my prep for my conversation.

Ed Seidel: OK, good. I wonder if I have it. I've got some notes here, but I don't know.

John Tomasi: You probably wrote it. You probably wrote it. So you said to articulate and refine our principles or freedom of expression and to find practical ways to open or rationalize respectful discourse on campus. And, you know, what I'm just curious, what's what's what you talk about that conversation with that particular person asking you, do you believe in free expression? Suggesting to you, perhaps you needed to make it more clear that you that you do. But I just wonder if you could say a little bit more about do you think there was a gap on the campus that you that you perceived on the way on the Wyoming campus in particular? I mean, I've been extolling you from winning these awards now. But back then, just a few years ago, a lot of the country was in the high watermark or near the high watermark of a certain kind of censorious behaviors that set up behaviors on campus. There may be a new high watermark arriving in a very different direction, but this is a certain high watermark then. Did you see problems on the University of Wyoming campus that stimulated this or what were you what were you thinking?

Ed Seidel: I remember asking a number of faculty, do you think there do you think we have any liberal bias in our classes? And everybody's like, no, no, no, we don't. And so the more I hear that, the more I want to probe and say, do we or do we not? And so I took this challenge really seriously. And so I asked the committee basically to help identify are there gaps and what are they and in what areas. And and so I'd say overall, we're we were pretty good. We were not like of some of these some institutions. I won't mention any by name, but some that seem to actually have liberal bias. But I mean, in a kind of a serious or maybe a systematic way, but we had things we needed to work on. So we did have units with diversity statements. And sometimes there were even in graduate school admissions, there would be questions that seem to be like, are you looking for particular answers or are you looking for the talent and the capability of a student? You know, and so there were.

John Tomasi: I'm sorry. This would be in the admissions questions for graduate school.

Ed Seidel: Yeah, in some programs, I mean, it wasn't widespread, but but we found examples of it and we found examples maybe where people had been hired or promoted on on basis of just not not strictly on merit. Let me just put it that way.

John Tomasi: And so I'm sorry, can I just ask you, I'm going to like, how did you operationalize that? Was there a systematic was the committee charged with gathering graduate student application questions across the entire university where they charge with evaluating promotion decisions across or is this more anecdotal? Is there data here or how are you saying?

Ed Seidel: Well, so, I mean, it was a little bit sometimes it would be anecdotal, but also just looking at policies and making sure that they were really, really clear about what it is, what what it is. We had to do and what we looked whilst did website kind of examinations like and sort of there's a lot of freedom in in people's websites. And then sometimes things were really kind of out there. And so then there's well, is that a First Amendment right or is that something we have to think about? What's our responsibilities of public institution? So we really, really worked hard on this. And our general counsel, by the way, who's actually just absolutely amazing, Tara Evans, was deeply engaged in this as well. We had people from the law school as well, analyzing things from legal points of view. And and then, of course, we had people from the outside, like like like Karen and some others. We polled legislators and and then we just did a hard look at this. And then they look they made some 30 recommendations that we then have spent now several years figuring out how do we do all of this. And I think that's what's led to some things. By the way, I think it has led to not just like a better environment here. And I'm very proud of the fact that, for example, we have a BridgeUSA organization here. That's one of I think it's in the top three in terms of the number of students. It was only started a couple of years ago. And it's also a fantastic group.

John Tomasi: Do you want to say a word about do you want to say a word about what they do?

Ed Seidel: Yeah, I do. Oh, so. Well, go ahead. Maybe. Well, so there's a fascinating group. They began at UC Berkeley just a few years ago. Students who believe in these principles are free exchange of ideas. And their idea was that they should be working at the grassroots level.

John Tomasi: HxA does this at the faculty level and BridgeUSA has been doing it at the at the undergraduate level. And I think I think you're aware that HxA has a grant through the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation to connect some of our faculty campus communities with some of bridges. Student groups and perhaps it's happening in Wyoming in particular. So but but it's so you're you're saying BridgeUSA was a important group for you.

Ed Seidel: That's right. And so and then so we have actively cultivated and help support them. And at least I've I've I've been told that the the bridge why university why bridge Wyoming group is actually among the most politically diverse as well across the country. And so quite proud of that. And so then so then we have events. We work with the faculty center. We work with the student Senate and and so on on this to help promote these ideas. And so I think it does lead to a different culture and it's kind of like steering a big, you know, battleship. It doesn't turn very nimbly, but, you know, you just keep applying some pressure and eventually you're you're kind of on a better pathway. And I think that's what we've had. But I want to say about what the actual impact is. And so, you know, I think that's what I think that's what I think that's one of the things that I think that's one of the reasons they felt they had so many Nobel laureates there is that there was really relentless questioning of people's scholarship, even by their own faculty. And so then, of course, that leads to a more important scholarship and better, you know, H indexes for the faculty because their work is shredded more or more more grants getting brought in because the ideas are sharpened and so on. And we have more than doubled our our grant amount. So we had about 90 million dollars in external funding when I got here. Well, 2019 and last year, we just hit two hundred twenty one million. We became a Carnegie R1 institution. I'm really proud of that. And so it helps us in many ways, not just because it's an environment that's more healthy for constructive dialogue and different views, but because it makes your scholarship stronger and it brings in more revenue. And that's important for university president as well.

John Tomasi: We're saying we're saying this now, looking looking nationally as we do at HxA, and we're seeing there are a number of universities that are that are committing strongly to these principles and our teams and seem to be flourishing. And again, you're you're doing it from the epistemic perspective that is thinking science, better science, more openness leads to better research, which leads to R1 rankings and so on. So I was just so struck by what you were saying a few minutes ago about doing these. What seemed to me to me to be pretty open audits of your current practices, looking at DEI statements where they were being being being imposed still, where they're being used still looking about departmental language on websites and so on. You know, I wonder what you think about this. If you were if you were if you were in a deep blue state, especially with a with a President Trump's administration currently behaving and doing some of the actions they're doing, would you have been able to do that or was it did you have political cover because of the state legislature that you that you work within? I just because I'm going to what I'm thinking it just has come clean is that I've had a sort of running conversation with Michael Roth, who's a friend and the president of Wesleyan, we see things very differently. Michael Roth thinks seems to think that, well, I'm sure it's I'm going to put the right way to be fair to him, but he seems he worries that being too universities being too critical about their own commitment to open inquiry and viewpoint diversity at this moment risks them becoming collaborators with what he sees as a very unjust. Unjust political situation that we're in a very worrying political situation that we're in. Do you have any thoughts about that? Is the fact that you're you're how is your how do you interact with your legislature? Does that does that affect your ability to do to do these things, to ask these frank questions, to conduct these reviews? Or do you think Wyoming would be doing it even if it were, I don't know, in Massachusetts, for example?

Ed Seidel: Well, let's see a couple of things in there. So, first of all, on Michael Roth, I've read some of his his pieces and I do admire. The position he takes. So I've got to just say that, you know, from the outset. But I think it's not it's not right for for my university. Let's put it that way. My my Wyoming university. And I think it does matter where we are. And it does matter what the culture is of the people who support our university. We have to think about how do we how do we build on the for example, our own statement of principles isn't just like copying the Chicago principles. It builds on the the cowboy code of the West. And so we have to understand our local culture as well. And so different institutions are going to think about how they operate in a different way. And I think there was a political side to this. I'll just be honest about it. When I was thinking if our university is seen as being too liberal in a very conservative state, we better think about that. And so so declaring institutional neutrality was very important for me to say we are not a liberal woke hotbed of of liberalism or things that are kind of contrary to at least what some people think of as being Wyoming. At the same time, I'll say I've been asked, why don't you why don't you say you're not neutral, but you are a conservative university? And I'm like, I can understand why you might say that. But that is not right for for this university. If we want to be a leading university that is really trying to be a thought leader and educating our students to succeed in the entire country, including in Wyoming and being open to all ideas, then that's going to benefit Wyoming, too. So I wouldn't go that far. Some people have been disappointed in that. So that's one thing as a university president, you used to have many people being disappointed that you didn't follow their point of view. That's part of the job.

John Tomasi: I really appreciate what you just said, because I keep pulling you back into political questions consistently. But I'm noticing now a pattern where you, I think you quite consistently, and I think with authenticity, I believe with authenticity, are saying that University of Wyoming really wants to aim at knowledge seeking and dissemination in all the ways we described before. And that's really your North Star. It's not a politically expedient motive. I want to say, I want to talk, we're getting toward the end of our conversation. I want to say, I want to invite you to say a few things to us about something you said a moment ago about an institution of neutrality. At HxA, we have a model called Extraordinary U of Institutional Neutrality, which updates the Kalven Report in various ways. And one of the things we emphasize is that, you know, the Kalven Report, if you read it closely, the charge to the committee is not to develop a system of neutrality for all universities everywhere. The charge to the committee very specifically says, what should be an appropriate way of thinking about university voice for this university with its particular traditions? And so our HxA model, Extraordinary U, talks about that each university needs to think about the underlying ideals, but embed it in their own culture, history, way of doing things. You have institutional neutrality, I believe. Did you, did you, when did you adopt that? Can you share anything about the pathway? And does that, what's Wyoming about it? What's Cowboy about it, as you put it a minute ago?

Ed Seidel: Well, okay, we were one of the first, at least in the new wave of this, to actually commit institutional neutrality.

John Tomasi: We watched, we watched, we were cheering you.

Ed Seidel: Thank you. And it came out of our group, our working group. That was a top recommendation. But it also does fit Wyoming, because Wyoming has been, over years, it's proud to call itself the equality state. So there was neutrality, you know, back, you know, Yale only started admitting women in, when it was 1968, thereabouts. By the time, I was a grad student there, and so, yeah, women were there by then, but it was a kind of a newcomer. Wyoming, from its very founding, was this way. And it's called the equality state, because women were the first to have the vote here. So that's a kind of a libertarian view, I would say, not imposing on others. And I think the neutrality, that does fit that. At the same time, it has created struggles that I hadn't fully anticipated. So you can naively say, oh, we're neutral as an institution. And then something happens, and you're in a position, are you going to make a statement about it or not? And what are the actual facts? And does it violate institutional neutrality? So I have a little wiggle room in this, at least the way we've implemented it. If somehow a statement is important because it's important to the mission of the university, which includes, are we building supportive community? Are there times when I might say things that you might say could violate in some very pure way institutional neutrality? So I did make a statement on the October 7th attacks in Israel, and it was a bit controversial, I think, honestly, even for me. And I wanted to, I felt, obviously, the attacks were horrendous, but are we taking sides somehow? And I debated this with some of my team, and we decided that it was really impacting the cohesion of our university. We had people, we had faculty who were in Israel at that time. We had, like, students from Muslim groups and Jewish groups and so on that were very, very much unsettled by the whole thing. So I made a statement. And some people said, well, that wasn't neutral, but I tried to be neutral. And guess what? It didn't really, the statement I made didn't appease the, neither the sort of the Jewish students nor the Muslim students. And so, so, but I took the opportunity and I invited them both in different evenings over to my house to have an in-depth discussion. And I think it helped us then prevent some of the really rambunctious and destructive things that happen on many campuses because they were, they were, they took it in. We have to have not only viewpoint diversity, but constructive dialogue. And so when sometimes, like, there was an event that was about to happen on campus, I had a call from the head of Muslim Student Association saying, we're going to actively try to make sure that this doesn't go awry. And so that's an example. Another one I had, we had an incident last October where some pumpkins were found with some swastikas on them for Halloween. And it was a, it was a really, really tough thing and by bad kind of communication channels, I didn't find out about it until a few days later, but I did take two days to make sure I understood the facts and then understood exactly what was happening on campus. And of course, I made a statement that seemed to many people to be a no brainer, but it did take some time to think through. That's what our community needed. It was about community support. And so I think there are certain areas where you have to interpret what neutrality really means.

John Tomasi: Let me, let me just push you for a minute more on that, on that, that really difficult set of issues regarding the Hamas attack. And then the Israel's movement into Gaza, you just got, you made a statement that you should have an official statement. And then you also described inviting students to, to dinners to talk about these things and, and overall the effects were, were generally positive. You, you, you believe on the campus culture, but do you think the statement helped or was it to bring them to dinner that made the most difference? And I asked because I think we have a, a, a, a president, we talked with Brian Casey at, at, at Colgate and Brian emphasizes that during that, during that period, when those campuses were under such, so much internal pressure and external actors getting involved and all that stuff that was going on, he, what he did, what he and his team did was they, they, they, they, they doubled down on the dinner approach. And they hosted dinners all over, I can't remember what number, but Brian went to something like 25 dinners, like, you know, so crazy period of time. But yeah, one of the things Brian says that I've repeated before the show, but I'm just going to say it again, because I, I find it really insightful. He says that policies matter and he cares a lot about the policies for free expression. You have to have those as a backbone of, of the, of the, of the institutional structure. But what he really cares about at the end of the day is what kind of conversations happen in the dorms on a Tuesday night. Totally. Like, like, what do you, what's really, what's the experience really like, you know, and do they, do they talk, you know, or are they just, do they de-balkanize? And I'd sort of wonder if you think, was there a statement, do you, looking back on that whole, whole episode now, would you, would you, would you not, would you retract the statement and keep the, keep the dinners? Or would you think they're both necessary and needed? What would you say?

Ed Seidel: I've debated that with myself. Should I made that statement? Would I do it again? Well, I'll tell you, it definitely catalyzed activity that it wouldn't have other, that the, without the statement, we wouldn't have had. And so I had immediate reaction from people across campus and, but I didn't just ignore it. I took it up. So when Muslim Student Association wanted to meet with me, I was there the next morning. When Hillel wanted to meet with me, the same thing. And that, that created the opportunity for more dialogue, which I think was helpful. So overall, I think it did work. You could debate whether I was right to make that statement. I still debate it, but okay, here we are.

John Tomasi: A very open-minded scientific approach. But my last, my last, my last question, I'm just interested in, in some recent events in Wyoming. So the Wyoming legislator recently defunded University of Washington, University of Wyoming's DEI office, and they imposed some new constraints, as I understand it, on, on university operations. Can you say a little bit about, about what those political moves have been and how you, how you see them?

Ed Seidel: Sure. And, and so, I, I think maybe the legislature is not fully taking this in right now. So legislature, if you're listening to this, we were on this, this topic before, the legislature decided to, pass a law saying, we couldn't have a DEI office. And, and, and then docked our budget by the amount of our DEI office, we were already on it. And we, I think because we had done about a year or two of work on this in advance, we had already largely dealt with some of the issues. So it wasn't that hard for us to comply with some of the legislature, legislation that came in. And, and honestly, you know, if, if you're on the campus and you're listening to this, you may say, well, some people said, well, you caved into, to legislatures. the truth is we just had a lot of hallway conversations with legislators to explain to them what was really going on. And, and frankly, largely, I think our discussions made it into what it is that, that we are doing now that we're required to do. But the point is, it was kind of a dialogue with the state in a way that got us to a better place. And, and I really do think that that's the case.

John Tomasi: That's great. Thank you. I'll just close by, thanking you for, for, for being on the show, of course, but also just wanted to want to tell you personally that how much we appreciate that, University of Wyoming is going to be hosting the HxA's regional conference, this, this June, this summer, on June 22nd and 24th. You know, what do you, what kind of, what, what conversations do you most hope higher ed leaders at that conference might be willing to have together? I'm thinking now of your, mainly your Mountain West, colleagues, some, some from public, but some mostly I think from public, well, some from private, but most from public universities. Are there conversations that you would like us to, to, to platform and to, encourage when we had those two days together in Wyoming this June?

Ed Seidel: Well, first of all, yeah, thank you. And thanks for choosing us for this. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm, I'm happy to be, in the spotlight a bit on this. And so hopefully we can, show off some of what we've done, but we can be a good venue for having people ask themselves hard questions and each other. I, I hope that that will come out. I hope that there will be, a good look in the mirror. Like I've always said, at, at, not only yourself, but at, at the others and how are they, operating and what we can learn from each other. I think that there are changes that need to happen on campuses. So I challenge people to talk about what those are, and, and I, by the way, I would put in a plug for our own, website on this. We do have a principles website. You can search for it, uwyo.edu/principles. And it says a lot about what we do, but you know what we do in, although I'm proud of it, it should play out differently on different campuses, depending on what your makeup is and where you are. So anyway, I hope that there will be just seriously hard questions and hard discussion, and then hopefully better outcomes as a result.

John Tomasi: And I can't, I can't resist closing by giving a shout out to our former HxA colleague, Martha McCoy, who you recruited away from HxA to join your office and to work on your campus. We've been, we've been following your, your work and the things you've been doing with such intensity, not just because we're so impressed though, obviously that's the main reason why, but also because Martha keeps telling us, you got to see what's going on in Wyoming. This is really exciting, really exciting to be part of, Ed, Ed Seidel, president of the University of Wyoming. Thank you so much for all, all the work you've been doing, to lead open inquiry at your university and on a national level. And thank you for taking the time to join us on Heterodox Out Loud.

Ed Seidel: Thanks for having me. And another shout out to Martha. Thank you, Martha, for making all this happen.

S2 Episode 43: Can a Public University Stay Politically Neutral? with Ed Seidel | Ed Seidel

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