The world is not flat; dinosaurs didn’t walk with humans; and White supremacy is built on a foundation of lies to preserve power and racial hierarchies.
If we are going to find cures for cancer, global warming and racism, we have to maintain the integrity of our institutions of learning.
Tenure—giving a teacher or professor an appointment until retirement—provides a firewall of protection so our professors and teachers can pursue what makes civilization progress.
Oxford Dictionaries picked “post-truth” as its word of the year for 2016 because so many are choosing narrative over fact. Denying reality can get you elected President of the United States. From refusing climate change to exaggerating voter fraud to promoting birtherism, President-elect Donald Trump didn’t just put American electoral politics in peril by denying truth; he puts truth itself at greater risk as his power grows.
Because power is truth’s biggest enemy, the professors and teachers whose jobs are to defend, pursue and teach truth are vulnerable to attack. When our truth tellers lose jobs and/or security, community and education suffer. Just as high school textbooks offered one-sided, nationalistic views on Reconstruction, McCarthyism and the Vietnam war, the fallout of a Trump victory will be felt in college and K-12 classrooms.
In particular, colleges and universities provide our nation with the intellectual byproducts for which we use for our cultural and economic growth.
Because of the uniqueness of the educational enterprise, the academy must be free to direct, without outside interference, those functions that may challenge but ultimately enrich the culture they sustain. Because so many external agencies are wedded to the university system, universities must develop corporate structures that can respond to the demands of the public and protect against influences that seek to manipulate truth for personal and political gain.
