Principles That Should Stand at The Foundation of Universities

SERGIU KLAINERMAN MAR 30, 2025

(Credit: Getty Images/Boy Aupang)

Sergiu Klainerman is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. A Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and former MacArthur Award winner, he is one of the most distinguished mathematicians in the country. He has also been an outspoken critic of the attacks on free speech and open inquiry at US universities, and is a contributor to the new book I have edited, to appear in July of this year, The War on Science.

Recently Sergiu penned a brilliant piece for the Heterodox STEM substack site on the Principles that Universities should be based on. He kindly gave me permission to reproduce his piece here. I believe it deserves a wide readership —LMK

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To¹ assert that American universities, and in fact most western universities, are in a crisis simply restates the obvious. The crisis, long in the making, is not just one of financial solvency, costly and rapidly expanding bureaucracies, worthless academic programs or declining enrollments. It is primarily a crisis of meaning resulting from the pursuit of divergent, often wildly contradictory goals: the traditional pursuit of Truth, wherever it leads, social engineering in the name of repairing the world, or simply vocational training to help students to advance their careers. Finding possible solutions to this malaise is the main focus of the essay but, before engaging in this task we: 1) recall what are the putative, i.e., commonly accepted, principles of our institutions of higher learning, 2) provide a diagnosis of the degree to which those principles are being adhered to and 3) formulate what principles should lay at the foundation of future universities - or perhaps educational and scientific institutions more broadly. Once done, a series of proposals are presented that could be used to bring universities more closely in line with both the current putative principles of the university as well as those proposed for the future university.

Putative Principles of the Current University

The current principles governing universities can be deduced from the privileges granted to the main actors of universities, the professors. Professors are well paid with very strong job security in the form of tenure. Unlike any other profession, professors are also granted enormous protections in the form of academic freedom. That is, they cannot be censored by their universities for what they research, conclusions they draw from their research or positions they take on various subjects, whether intramural or public - even those that conflict with university positions.

The only explanation for why professors are granted such privileges is so they can develop positions independent of the institutions that employ them. They are granted this leeway so they can search for and attempt to understand the nature of the universe and the world in the most disinterested, objective and neutral manner possible.

If this were not the case, so that for example, the role of professors was to engage in activism, indoctrination or policy development and implementation, how would the universities they work for differ from non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), lobbying groups, political parties or government bureaucracies? The functional role of “the University” is not to replicate the world of politics, business, economics, etc., but to create a privileged space where talented people can reflect and converse freely, unencumbered by dogmas or fashions, on the big questions concerning the physical universe, human nature or the principles governing modern societies.

At least three ground rules undergird the rationale for independence for the sake of objectively understanding the universe and the world. The first² is simply a recognition that an objective, transcendent reality exists and is discoverable or can be approached by better and better approximations. The second is that the best way to discover or approach this objective reality is through the robust debate about the nature of reality. This debate requires the ability to present hypotheses without any artificial limitations and, moreover, that any defense or criticism of such hypotheses be done analytically through rational argument and evidence. The third is that those participating in debates (and granted professorial privileges) are those most qualified based on demonstrated, merit-based aptitude and not on irrelevant accidents of birth or psychology.

With these principles enunciated, we can examine the state of the current university and the degree to which it is characterized, or exemplified, by them.

To What Extent are These Principles Being Adhered to?

Sadly, the current state of our universities, research institutions, academies and professional societies is corruption and decay. Without going into detail, the broad causes of the of decay are:

1. Wokeism as zeitgeist. In short this is: unexpected success of a mish-mash of neo-Marxist, post-modern, feminist, multiculturalist ideologies, defined mostly by what they are against: anti-western, anti-capitalist, anti-merit, anti-men, anti-normalcy, both anti-rationalist and anti-religious and often anti-science, anti-realist, anti-Zionist but also more and more overtly anti-semitic, all acting in tandem under an inter-sectionalist umbrella, deeply inimical to the spirit of the US founding documents and antithetical to the putative principles of the university. For the sake of brevity we will call this implausible and self-contradictory cocktail by the familiar name of “wokeism.” Its bureaucratic manifestation, called DEI (i.e., diversity, equity and inclusion) appears to be under a momentary retreat (especially now that President Trump has sought to ban it, by executive action, in the entire federal administration), but wokeism has so deeply penetrated our institutions of learning, and indeed broader elite society, that it is foolhardy to think that we will get rid of it any time soon. Wokeism has an uncanny ability to both defend itself and attack its detractors by manipulating words and ideas with little regard for Truth, which it deems illusory whenever it contradicts its precepts, and by taking full advantage of the tolerant civil liberties guaranteed by that very same society it rails against.

   It is fair to say that wokeism is now the dominant ideology on the vast majority of US campuses and, given the enormous influence universities have in shaping the national discourse, there is no more important task than devising strategies that force its retreat.

2. The growing dependence of our educational and research institutions on the federal government, and to a lesser extent state governments, through mandates, such as Titles 6, 7 and 9, federal financial aid given to students, Pell grants, federal student loans, military benefits, NSF, NIH and DOE research grants, etc. As expected, this has led to a massive bureaucratization³ of our universities, both private and public, which act now more and more like big business, worrying much more about the size of their endowments than the quality of the education they provide. Unlike businesses, however, they do not face the disciplining effects of markets and, unless there are major changes in the way federal and state governments interact with them, there is very little chance that any serious reform will take place.

   Much of the misdirection and bloat of our universities is a function of a general and enormous over-investment in them. This over-investment has been justified on at least two fallacious arguments: 1) that university-educated people earn more money than non-university educated, so that if everyone were university educated, everyone would earn more, and 2) that governments are best-placed to direct the most effective use of research funds. Like many other woke utopian ideas, these are sadly misguided, resulting in enormous redirection of resources towards universities that would be better used elsewhere - either as private savings and investments or as investments in other forms of practical or vocational training or research.

3. Lack of diversity in how our universities operate. Despite their emphatic commitment to DEI, our institutions of higher learning are surprisingly non-diverse. Our major universities, whether private or public, are indistinguishable in the choice of curriculum, admission standards, student life, ideological orientation of faculty, overwhelming preferences (of students, faculty and administration) for progressive or woke causes and the disposition to curtail speech inimical to these causes. Our best endowed institutions are particularly alike on all these, demonstrating that large endowments do not provide any advantage, as it has often been argued, towards experimentation and differentiation, nor even to simply maintaining historic distinctiveness. An important goal of education reform is to devise steps to restore competition.

Most ideas about reforming our universities gravitate around the three famous University of Chicago documents (Chicago trifecta): Chicago Principles, Kalven and Shills reports. The first addresses academic freedom (AF) and extramural freedom of speech (FS) for individual members of the university community. The second concerns the issue of institutional neutrality of the academic institution itself, while the third affirms the principle that hiring and promotion be based only on academic merit, meaning, in particular, abrogation of DEI.

While all three documents are essential, we do not believe that they can⁴, by themselves, redress the current conditions of widespread decay of standards⁵ of our academic institutions. Such statements⁶ would in fact be unnecessary, redundant really, in an institution that functions according to the traditional guiding principles of a university, principles which we review below.

What Principles Should Guide the University: Its Telos

Freedom of Speech is guaranteed by the first amendment and as such it should be treated as an absolute within our universities, both public and private. The classic formulation of academic freedom, however, only makes sense within the broader context of the raison d’ˆetre of a university, its telos. This, in our view, includes: I) search for truth, beauty, and the meaning of a good and just life, II) preservation and transmission of the best that humanity has to offer in the arts and sciences, III) character formation for students to prepare them to live a purposeful life.

Goal I) is synonymous with what the first putative principle presupposes, and consistent with Judeo- Christian rationalism, that the world is comprehensible (truth can be found by human action) through outward experience and inward reflection. Yet humans, including the most accomplished ones, are fallible, which implies that no theory of physical reality should be treated as being beyond criticism; they should all be constantly tested for their weak points according to Popper’s falsifiable criterion and the scientific method. The same, of course, holds true for social and human sciences, most notably when studying our most basic philosophical and religious assumptions, where consensus is so much harder to achieve.

It is thus of fundamental importance that universities be heterodox; they must make sure that the best points of view which challenge consensus are being represented and debated within their campuses. A university that errs by underrepresenting the consensus view on a subject likely does little harm; many other institutions exist to defend and promote the dominant view within society; a university that errs by failing to support the best challenges to this consensus view utterly fails in its core mission.

One can argue that the present wokeism in our universities is due, in part, to the almost complete philosophical supremacy of Materialism and its allied ideologies: Marxism and its post-Marxist variants as well as various evolutionary theories that attribute materialist, reductionist, explanations, or chance, to everything that exists, including the mind.

Materialism provides a useful foundation to the physical sciences, where, by choice, it must deal only with the natural world outside the mind. Yet it fails to account for the reality (objectivity) of mathematical objects or the mind’s obvious appeal to abstractions such as Truth, Beauty, Justice and Meaning. Religious faith, which embodies so much of the Western moral and cultural traditions, has no place in a materialist, reductionist, world devoid of meaning, ruled by the accidental product of physical and chemical processes. Yet humans need faith at least as much as reason and thus the void created by the absence of meaning — the “death of God” — has been filled by various secular pseudo-religions such as the Marxism-Leninism of communist societies or today’s “wokeism,” the secular religion of DEI. And, not surprisingly, both have ultimately rejected reason in favor of blind faith in their ideologies. The rejection of reason and common sense on issues concerning race, gender, obesity, or climate change is a particular hallmark of woke religion as is the inability to openly debate any of these issues, contrary to the second putative principle mentioned above.

Based on this, it is not an exaggeration to say righting the course in our universities requires a counterrevolution. To succeed, this cultural counter revolution must create conditions for a principled debate between Materialism and alternative points of view. That debate must take place on the common ground of reason, informed by the best objective understanding of science, mathematics, philosophy, social sciences, as well as religion.

The universalist aspiration of preservation and transmission of the best of the western tradition (element II) has been greatly undermined by multiculturalism and post-modern negation of any possible value judgment among different cultures. This, in the end, has led to a fragmentation of knowledge — the very opposite of universalism — and, moreover, has resulted in the current denigration of western culture, the culture which, given its extraordinary influence throughout the world, is closest to a globalist aspiration. Paradoxically this denigration, which arose from Marxist and neo-Marxist critical theories, is itself a perverse manifestation of the prevalence of western culture.

We believe a better way to implement element II of the university’s telos is to re-center Western culture in American universities and study the “best of what the world has to offer” by reference to it. Indeed, we argue, other cultures are better understood by engaging them in a meaningful conversation and comparison with our own than by the phony, indiscriminate, appreciation of all cultures, according to the multiculturalist dogma.

​​Element III (character formation) of the university’s telos has been entirely abandoned in favor of a soft tolerance for every type of behavior that is consistent with the woke agenda and intolerance for everything that is not. The collapse of religion and the denial of traditional historical role models has made it awkward for educators to address the issue of character at all. It is mostly an incomprehensible topic to the young generation. It could however, be partially restored by devising an appropriate curriculum. Mandating the old-style Great Books courses that have fallen out of favor would be a big step forward in that regard.

Without understanding the main goals of universities, academic freedom can easily be made to look silly, or self-defeating. Do we really need to defend ideas and people who are bent on destroying the very essence of freedom of speech? Or to defend, in the name of academic freedom, absurd scientific positions, such that “the Earth is flat” or that there are more than two biological sexes? Or defend and protect student organizations that abuse Jewish students and defend the actions of Hamas on the basis of absurd post colonialist theories? Do we really have to defend the deculturalization of Western societies in the name of postmodern notions of multiculturalism? While these are rhetorical questions, they bring to the fore how the putative principles of the university should be conceived of as ground rules for what types of activities and endeavors are consistent with the telos of the university.

If academic freedom is not a fundamental goal in and of itself, it follows that tenure is itself not sacrosanct. If the premise of tenure is to incentivize professors to pursue uncharted or unpopular directions, it has mostly failed in this regard. Just as large endowments have not prevented universities from becoming less and less intellectually diverse, tenure has not had much effect on making the professoriate, arguably the most privileged class of individuals in our society, less risk averse.

Though there are a few cases when courageous individuals have publicly supported unpopular causes, the vast majority of professors, freed from worrying about their employment, are still too mindful about their careers or reputation to take controversial positions. Moreover, even though tenure provides protection for professors who betray the mission of the university through shoddy scholarship, faulty data, plagiarism, or inappropriate political activism and indoctrination in the classroom, it has not helped, at least in some notable cases, individuals whose heterodox opinions displeased their employers. Ironically, tenure appears far more protective of those who wish to destroy free inquiry than it is of those who wish to advance it.

What Can be Done to Bring Universities in Line with Their Telos

Given how deeply wokeism has penetrated our universities there is little hope that successful reform can come from within the universities themselves. Meaningful reform can only happen if enough pressure is applied from outside to the point that boards of trustees, presidents, university administrations and the professoriate have no choice but to re-evaluate their policies.

Here are some ideas about the steps which need to be taken:

1. First steps

   1. Ban DEI, based on Trump’s recent executive actions and reduce university administrations significantly, perhaps to about 30% of their current size.

   2. Eliminate all grievance-based academic programs, based on their low intellectual content and discriminatory axioms, approaches and practices.

   3. In new institutions, replace tenure with a 5-10 year renewable contract to allow departments and universities to get rid of dead wood and reward people willing to take risks with faster promotions and higher salaries. Contrary to common opinion, we believe that tenure incentivizes people to play it safe and pursue low risk directions which they believe will get them tenure. Once they have tenure, most continue, by inertia or in expectations of promotions, to play safe. There is of course the danger that by getting rid of tenure universities will be emboldened to get rid of the few remaining non-conformist voices. But, of course, we are not talking here of a blanket decision to get rid of tenure but rather to encourage new academic institutions to experiment with various alternatives to it.

   4. Bring back the Great Books programs and make them obligatory for all first-year students. Introduce serious, broad based, courses on the history of mathematics and the natural sciences, including Philosophy, and history of Western civilization, and make these courses mandatory for first and second year students.

   5. A special effort must be made to reform the Humanities, which are terminally infected by various versions of neo-Marxist, deconstructionist, anti-colonialist critical theories. While it may appear that the relatively healthy state of STEM disciplines is enough to assuage the worst fears about the state of our universities, we hold that, in fact, the opposite is true. A healthy liberal arts education is ultimately more important to the health of the entire society, and thus indirectly to the STEM disciplines themselves. A society may still prosper without being dominant in the sciences and technology but cannot survive if its cultural institutions are compromised by an ideology which attacks its core foundations. Indeed, STEM majors rarely become journalists, cultural figures, politicians, heads of unions, business leaders or leaders of any other important opinion shaping or decision making institutions.

   6. Reduce the reliance on NSF, NIH and other major US governments for funding research and rely more on private organizations, like the Simons Foundation, who will, hopefully, choose to fund new and risky directions of research.

   7. Reform NSF and NIH by cutting all programs which are not directly connected to fundamental research and which can be funded by industry. Make sure that projects are evaluated on scientific merit alone. We applaud the recent efforts to reduce the percentage of allowed indirect funds to universities. There is little rationale for indirect funds except to allow these universities to divert government funds to other projects unrelated to the grants. The usual excuse that indirect funds are needed so that universities can pay for infrastructure costs is mostly bogus; rich universities should be expected to provide for them from its own funds- many of them were in fact raised through donations for these exact purposes. In any case, such additional expenses can be made explicit in the grants. A simple rule could be that any university with an endowment above a certain very large number per student may not include overhead charges for federal grants.

   8. Reform the National Academy of the Sciences (NAS), which has become largely a DEI promoting institution. The NAS is a much too important national institution to be left to wither on the vine. Though NAS has a private charter, and thus not directly affected by Trump’s DEI ban, it is intimately connected with the US government and as such it can be pressured to change.

   9. Pressure existing professional organizations, heavily compromised by wokeism, by creating alternatives ones.

2. Universities collect large amounts of funding (research funds and student loans) from the federal government despite consistently violating federal law with respect to racial and sexual discrimination and freedom of speech. This absolutely has to stop; the new administration has to make sure that no funding is available to institutions that violate these laws.

   1. Remove tax exempt status from universities engaged in political advocacy, not adhering to institutional neutrality and/or violating federal law with respect to racial and sexual discrimination and freedom of speech.

3. Create new, small, high level academic institutions to compete with the existing ones. Follow the trickle down approach, betting on the fact that new top level, highly performing, institutions, will become success models for all the other ones.

4. Find ways to make universities, especially the richest ones, become partly responsible for the loans taken by their students.

5. No serious, sustainable, reform of higher learning is possible without a major over-haul of the K-12 educational system. Indeed tomorrow’s college students are ill-educated today by recent, poorly educated, graduates of our universities. The main culprits of the current dismal state are: schools of education, teaching unions, accreditation mafia, all seriously affected by wokeism and incompetence. Here are some possible solutions:

   1. Support home schooling as the most promising educational trend. Help parents to organize in small supporting groups.

   2. Expand vouchers and charter schools.

   3. Reduce the curriculum to the basics: Mathematics, Literature, History of great civilizations, History of sciences, History of religions. Drastically reform mathematics education by stopping the ridiculous tendency to teach a little bit of everything, superficially, and concentrate instead on a few fundamental things which should be taught well. This is a good principle which applies to any other subject. Habits of learning derived by the effort to master one important subject are ultimately far more beneficial, then being exposed to many, easily forgettable things.

   4. Reform the accreditation process for new math and science high school teachers. Any typical graduate of a serious mathematics, physics, chemistry or engineering university program is far more qualified to teach math, physics or computer science in high school than a typical graduate of a school of education.

   5. Ban the use of iPhones and other electronic devices, not connected to educational content, in schools.

1

Klainerman is grateful to Zachary Patterson and Richard Lowery for their help in writing this text.

2

Postmodern theories, which put into question our ability to acquire objective knowledge, including their own such ability, exclude themselves automatically from these ground rules.

3

Here is Eisenhower’s prophetic warning in this regard: “Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”

“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

4

They are but means by which to implement the telos of the university, insurance against its corruption, but mostly powerless to reverse widespread disease.

5

Merit itself is meaningless in academic programs that are woke in their essence, such as gender or ethnic studies. Even in the traditional scientific disciplines merit can be re-interpreted in DEI terms to mean the very opposite of what we used to think it meant.

6

The simple fact that these trifecta documents have to be enunciated as separate principles speaks volume about the decay of modern universities.