The Marketplace of Ideas in the Higher Education Compact

Colleges and universities constitute a crucial thread in America’s civic fabric. Higher education institutions train young minds and produce the research and knowledge that sustain and enrich our society. That is why the federal government disburses more than $150 billion each year in research grants, student loans, work-study funding, and education tax benefits for higher education. The size and nature of Washington’s investment give it a clear stake in ensuring that publicly subsidized colleges and universities adhere to the tenets of responsible science. Part of the bargain has been a commitment to free inquiry—characterized by a community of scholars operating with competing priors, bodies of knowledge, and methodologies.

That foundational commitment to free inquiry has been allowed to atrophy. In high-profile incidents, university leaders have punished students, scholars, and guest speakers with heterodox views. In too many cases, academic departments have devolved into self-reinforcing enclaves of groupthink. These trends have created an intellectual environment in which scholars can be hesitant to pursue disfavored lines of inquiry.

This is why, in its Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, the Trump administration proposed that universities commit to establishing and protecting a “marketplace of ideas.” It urged institutions to adopt a policy protecting academic freedom and to measure and publicly report the viewpoint diversity of students and faculty. More controversially, this section asked universities to “transform[ ] or abolish[ ] institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

While we applaud the administration’s recognition of the problem, we have misgivings about the solution.

In too many cases, academic departments have devolved into self-reinforcing enclaves of groupthink. The Case for the Marketplace of Ideas

In 1945, at the direction of then-President Harry Truman, Raytheon cofounder and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineer Vannevar Bush sketched a blueprint that would frame the postwar relationship between Washington and higher education. Bush’s proposal was grounded in the crucial role of academic freedom: “As long as [universities] are vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems.” Such a culture, he argued, “must be preserved under any plan for Government support of science.”

Scholars and campus leaders too often abandon their commitment to the foundational principle of free inquiry. Bush was concerned, sensibly enough, about federal authorities impeding academic inquiry. He assumed universities would respect “the free play of free intellects” and defend the freedom to “pursue the truth wherever it may lead.” Inherent in Bush’s thought was the expectation that Washington would subsidize institutions because (and only as long as) they were repositories of such freedom. The point was not to facilitate progressive or conservative thought (much less Democratic or Republican thought!) but to ensure that a community of scholars would pursue various lines of inquiry, ask hard questions, and test competing hypotheses, thereby creating an environment of discovery.

What we’ve seen in recent years, however, is something Bush never anticipated: scholars and campus leaders too often abandoning their commitment to the foundational principle of free inquiry. In doing so, they have invalidated the understanding that lies at the heart of the relationship between the federal government and higher education.

Rather than remaining open to competing perspectives, universities have morphed into bastions of leftism. A study of top liberal arts colleges reported that the lion’s share of academic departments at these schools contained no Republicans “or so few as to make no difference.” A 2021 survey of social scientists found that more than four in five identified as Democrats, while fewer than one in 20 identified as Republicans. As for college administrators, a national sample found that liberals outnumbered conservatives “by the astonishing ratio of 12-to-one,” with just 6 percent of administrators identifying as right of center.

Higher education isn’t supposed to be a political enterprise, so does the ideological composition of campus really matter? Yes, because political differences reflect more fundamental (if more difficult-to-measure) differences about values, worldviews, and questions of interest at the very heart of the search for truth.

First, ideological imbalance drives groupthink, and groupthink shrinks the aperture of acceptable discourse. This in turn creates a culture of intimidation and fear—after all, if fewer ideas are acceptable, then more ideas are punishable, whether by violence or social sanction. This fear is borne out in student survey data: Only 35 percent of college students say they rarely or never self-censor during class. When it comes to controversial political topics, half of students say they’re uncomfortable disagreeing with a professor in a written assignment. Meanwhile, a third of college students say they think it’s OK to use violence to silence speech they don’t like. None of this bodes well for free inquiry, which depends on freely expressed disagreement.

Second, ideological priors color what questions get asked, what lines of inquiry get pursued, and what ideas students encounter in their academic studies. This is especially true with controversial political or social topics. A 2025 study found that professors almost never assign readings critiquing the most prominent interpretations of the criminal justice system, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the ethics of abortion. These prominent interpretations, all of them aggressively left leaning, are far more likely to be accompanied by like-minded works. As the authors of the study explained, “It seems that professors generally insulate their students from the wider intellectual disagreement that shape [sic] these important controversies. That is the academic norm.” (Emphasis in original.)

Intellectual homogeneity severely restricts what gets debated on college campuses. Third, intellectual homogeneity severely restricts what gets debated on college campuses, further signaling that dissent is not welcome. There are countless instances over the past decade of college leaders actively shutting down debate by canceling conservative speakers and launching selective investigations. For example, MIT disinvited esteemed University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot from delivering a prestigious annual lecture on climate science after protesters learned that he had criticized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. At Harvard, biologist Carole Hooven’s assertion that there are two sexes was deemed “transphobic,” leading to dubious investigations and her eventual resignation under duress. Northwestern University Professor Laura Kipnis was repeatedly subjected to Kafkaesque Title IX investigations . . . for the sin of criticizing runaway Title IX investigations.

The degree to which wrongthink has routinely made scholars a target for harassment and cancellation is astonishing. The degree to which wrongthink has routinely made scholars a target for harassment and cancellation is astonishing. Meanwhile, after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, campus leaders nervously deferred to leftist, frequently violent anti-Israel protesters under the convenient guise of protecting “free expression.”

In short, the Trump administration was right to identify ideological imbalance as indicating a larger problem in higher education.

A Better Solution

While the Trump administration’s compact was directionally correct in identifying and articulating the problem, its recommendations have significant flaws. Most importantly, the compact mistakenly suggested that the solution to campus groupthink is a formal commitment to “a broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints” and to “transforming or abolishing institutional units” that are hostile to “conservative ideas.” This implies a federally overseen ideological balancing act that’s at odds with a commitment to free inquiry and robust discourse, as well as the disconcerting specter of someone in the government deciding what constitutes a “conservative idea” (something that conservatives themselves fiercely debate).

Expecting institutions of higher education to accommodate particular ideologies is an inappropriate use of executive power. It was inappropriate when President Biden conditioned research grants on commitments to DEI policies, and that holds equally true here. Such actions open a troubling door for federal influence, one that seemingly invites federal officials to gauge whether treatments of various ideological camps and political factions are appropriate. The compact also contains a variety of other demands, such as that institutions “adopt policies prohibiting incitement to violence, including calls for murder or genocide or support for entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations,” that raise grave questions about definitions and enforcement and are clearly in tension with a commitment to free inquiry and robust discourse.

These issues, among many others, caused higher education leaders to roundly reject the compact—even as several of them acknowledged the legitimacy of the concerns it raised. These leaders have been slow to respond and fond of explaining how difficult it is for them to make institutional changes quickly. But, especially off the record, they’ve also noted that the Trump administration’s pressure campaign has opened the door for them to consider long-overdue changes.

So, what can be done?

Universities Should Introduce Students to Foundational Principles on Day One

Over the past decade, many universities have asked first-year students to show up to campus having read polemics penned by celebrated progressives like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi. Institutions should reject ideologically colored materials in favor of those more likely to promote a culture of learning and inquiry, such as a selection of foundational American documents. Have students read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, some Federalist Papers, Lincoln’s second inaugural address, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and Ronald Reagan’s “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc” speech—and make that the meat of orientation. Introduce students to college by asking them to wrestle, as a community, with these shared ideals.

Left-leaning perspectives on controversial issues are assigned far more often than their conservative counterparts. Trustees Should Ensure That Students Engage with a Range of Scholarly Views on Sociocultural Questions

As noted above, left-leaning perspectives on controversial issues are assigned far more often than their conservative counterparts on college syllabi. It’s tough to think of a formula more likely to promote groupthink and stifle discourse than this one.

State lawmakers should insist that institutions and their boards of trustees take intellectual diversity seriously. College trustees should insist that campus officials devise and implement a strategy that requires humanities and social science departments to systematically review syllabi, solicit critical feedback, and push faculty to broaden their apertures. These data should be reported annually, and, at public institutions, the results should be published. If public university leaders are hesitant to move, state lawmakers should mandate these steps.

States Should Require Public Institutions to Take Intellectual Diversity Seriously

State lawmakers should insist that institutions and their boards of trustees take intellectual diversity seriously. Part of the problem is that faculty hiring committees frequently prefer scholars whose thinking and interests reflect their own. This is how universities have wound up with whole schools of inquiry and interests absent on campus, from military history to Austrian economics and Straussian political thought.

One way to rectify this imbalance is to establish a school of civic thought, an increasingly popular approach. Another is to overhaul the hiring process so that the legislatures or publicly appointed boards of trustees can appoint individuals who represent the public’s interests in the matter.

Congress Should Set Clear Conditions for Institutions That Collect Federal Funds

If institutions want to be part of Bush’s partnership, they need to honor their half of the deal. Higher education institutions already commit to a raft of assurances to qualify for federal funds. Congress should attach a few additional, simple criteria to ensure a commitment to free inquiry. For example, campuses should establish and then (much more importantly) abide by their content-neutral “time, place, and manner” restrictions on campus protest and disruption. These restrictions would help solve the “heckler’s veto” problem, in which protesters attempt to prevent a speaker from delivering remarks by causing disruptions.

Additionally, Congress should crack down on institutions that are not sufficiently committed to free inquiry. If campus policies or practices restrict, chill, or punish constitutionally protected speech, university leaders should investigate such incidents and adopt appropriate remedies. Universities that fail to meet this standard should be penalized and put on a watch list, with repeated violators losing their eligibility for federal grants and research funding.

Conclusion

Free inquiry remains as important today as it was when Bush first outlined the relationship between the federal government and universities. Unfortunately, too many universities have reneged on their duty to foster free inquiry by shutting down controversial speakers and building a campus climate in which students, faculty, and staff are unwilling to speak their minds for fear of reprisals. Now is the time for colleges, boards of trustees, state legislatures, and Congress to restore universities to their rightful purpose.

Frederick M. Hess is the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he also serves as the chair of the Conservative Education Reform Network. Greg Fournier is the program manager of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.