Derek Bok has served as president of Harvard twice, from 1971 to 1991 and again from 2006-07. He has written much about higher education and is by no means a reflexive defender of the status quo—see, for example, his The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, which I reviewed here.
Bok’s latest book is Attacking the Elites: What Critics Get Wrong—and Right—About America’s Leading Universities. He explains that his motivation for it was the absence of response from our “elite” higher-education institutions to the surge in criticism from both sides of our political divide. As his subtitle suggests, he thinks that much of the criticism is weak, but not all of it. Since many will read the book (or at least its title) and say, “Bravo to Bok for answering those pesky critics,” let’s see how well he’s done.
Bok ruminates about what it means to be an “elite” college or university and whether the nation benefits from having them.First, Bok ruminates about what it means to be an “elite” college or university and whether the nation benefits from having them. The elite schools, he says, are distinctive by virtue of admitting only a small percentage of their applicants (they’re selective), because they employ professors with stellar reputations (on the basis of having published lots of books), and because they have high rankings in the places that purport to tell us which schools are best.
Fine, but does this “eliteness” necessarily lead to excellent education? Later in the book, Bok admits that there are reasons to doubt that.
More significantly, is it good for the U.S. to have such colleges and universities? Bok says yes, declaring, “The justification for a system of higher education marked by such inequality ultimately rests on the proposition that a few individuals, both students and adults, have exceptional ability to produce lasting and important additions to knowledge or to make other significant contributions to society in later life.” Of course, some “elite school” professors and graduates do great things, but so do many who attended colleges that aren’t regarded as elite, as do many who never went to college at all.
The United States was a dynamo of discovery and innovation from its founding through the first half of the 20th century, a time when only a very small percentage of the population ever set foot on a college campus. Moreover, there was hardly any conception of “eliteness” among colleges and universities until roughly the 1970s, when a few schools, led by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, figured out how to market themselves as being superior and worth paying a premium price for—the Chivas Regal effect.
So, I don’t agree that we owe a big debt of gratitude to our “elite” colleges. Also, Bok overlooks the fact that they have been the source of many really bad ideas that plague the country, such as “Critical Legal Studies” and its nasty progeny. Where did that take root? Harvard Law School.
Bok’s fulsome praise for the elites extends to their supposedly marvelous impact on the character of their students. According to him, they “help all their students learn to live and work harmoniously with people from other races.” Other schools don’t? And I wonder if Bok feels chagrined at the appalling protests and blatant antisemitism we have seen on our “elite” campuses following the brutal Hamas attacks against unarmed Israelis. Clearly, some of their students have been imbued with intolerance and hatred.
Clearly, some “elite” students have been imbued with intolerance and hatred.Enough about Bok’s notions about the greatness of our elite schools. What about those attacks against them?
Bok first responds to attacks from the left. Foremost among them is the charge that the elites are not doing enough to advance “social justice.”
One such complaint indicts them for admitting children of the wealthy when they ought to be admitting far more minority students and those from low-income families. Bok is not unsympathetic. He wants to see the elite schools stop giving legacy preferences and favoring white athletes, thus creating more places for “diverse” students.
The trouble with Bok’s view is that he believes the notion that graduating from an elite school leads to a far more successful life for students than if they’d gone to another, non-elite college. Elite colleges, however, do not necessarily provide superior education or better career paths.
Liberal writer Frank Bruni made that point in his book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be (see my review here). Bok, like so many educational elitists, thinks that going to a school such as Harvard is life-changing, propelling each student to a wonderful, prosperous life, thereby helping to equalize America’s maldistribution of wealth. But as Bruni and many others have pointed out, attending an elite school is neither necessary nor sufficient for success.
Furthermore, admitting students in pursuit of the ideal of income equality is likely to mean admitting some who can’t keep up academically. Bok at least acknowledges that this can happen, but he never engages with the “mismatch” argument as set forth so well by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr. in their book Mismatch. (Sander elaborates on his argument in this Martin Center article.) Even if some minority students benefit from admissions preferences, others are harmed. Bok never considers that downside.
Another leftist attack is that the elites aren’t doing enough to combat evils around the world. Their leaders should do more to express their disapproval of bad companies and countries through public statements and stock divestments. Again, Bok sympathizes, but he explains that such actions are ill-advised and ineffective. He argues that when elite universities get involved in political issues, they make themselves targets for political reprisals. Besides that, divesting stocks from the endowment portfolio does nothing to change the “bad actors.” It’s a useless gesture.
Bok observes that the quality of intellectual discussion suffers when only one side is represented.Turning to the right-wing critics, Bok first jousts with the argument that the elites are indoctrinating students with their leftist beliefs. He replies that various polls indicate that relatively few students have their political opinions changed by their years in college. I don’t find those polls dispositive. Students hear so much criticism of America’s foundational values (and so little defense of them) that it’s hard to imagine that it has no impact.
Anyway, Bok concedes that there is a huge predominance of leftists on college faculties and that many of them do inappropriately load their classes with their opinions. And that appears to have a big effect on left-leaning students, many of whom are turned into rabid partisans who are eager to silence and even assault those who disagree with them. Bok recognizes that as a serious problem.
He also is troubled by the lopsidedly leftist slant of the faculties, observing that the quality of intellectual discussion suffers when only one side is represented. As a remedy, he suggests that school officials consider hiring more conservatives. That’s a nice idea, but Bok must realize that most faculty members prefer people who share their views and adamantly oppose allowing any hated “right-wingers” even to speak on campus, much less teach. That’s why they have taken to demanding “diversity statements,” which Bok finds inappropriate.
Another right-wing attack to which Bok responds is the argument that schools undermine their educational mission by obsessing over “diversity.” On this, Bok doesn’t give an inch. He points to his 1998 book (with William Bowen) The Shape of the River, which, he thinks, conclusively proves the value of racial preferences in admissions. But has he read any of the sharp criticism of that work? Two Harvard professors, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, found the book unpersuasive in this UCLA Law Review article. There have been numerous scholarly arguments that racial preferences do more harm than good, but Bok refers to none of them.
Bok admits that there is substance to the Right’s argument that elite schools are doing a bad job of protecting free speech. Unfortunately, he frames the solution as needing to “balance” support for minority students (who supposedly might feel so distressed and excluded if they hear things they find upsetting that they’ll leave) with protections for free speech. He thinks that speech codes and other restrictions on what can be said on campus go too far. Correct—they do. But there’s no need for them at all. College students are not like fragile glass ornaments that will shatter at the least bit of unpleasant talk. Learning to disagree with opponents on an intellectual level is a crucial aspect of education. Bok seems not to grasp that all “protection” for “vulnerable” students accomplishes is to give them a weapon with which to attack other students and faculty members they see as ideological enemies.
There’s much more worth discussing in Attacking the Elites. I’ll conclude by saying that it is good to have a major player like Derek Bok writing to acknowledge that our top colleges and universities have real problems, but his mild analysis isn’t likely to provoke elite college leaders to change anything.
George Leef is director of external relations at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.