Why have universities become the least free places when they should be the most free?
My lecture at Cornell Law School event: “The problem is that universities like Cornell have become monocultures out of step with the rest of the country and very vindictive monocultures.”
On March 24, 2026, I spoke at an event sponsored by the Cornell Law School chapter of The Federalist Society. The topic was “Reforming Academia & Higher Education” featuring U. Penn Law Professor Amy Wax. We have covered Wax’s legal difficulties at Penn in great detail over many years, as you can see in our Amy Wax tag.
The event was supposed to be videotaped, but the video didn’t record so we only have audio. You can listen to the full audio at the bottom of this post. Wax spoke for about 25 minutes, then I spoke for about nine minutes, and Q&A started at 37:30 of the audio. Some of the questions were quite testy, including one student who accused Wax of using “rhetoric that denigrates and dehumanizes people who do not look like you.” I can also tell you that there is a post-event effort to malign Wax and distort (and outright lie) about what she said. Perhaps more on that at another time. But there’s audio, so what she did or did not say is objectively provable.
Here is my main segment, which came after Wax has spoken for about 25 minutes.
Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)
William A. Jacobson
Thank you for that. And those points.
At my website we have followed professor Wax’s legal travails, and respect that she has stood up for her rights as best she can under the circumstances.
Because it’s very difficult to be a dissenter in a university. The one place where that should be the easiest thing in the world is in fact the hardest place in the world.
I’ve lectured a lot over the years. Some of you may know outside of the law school, I’ve got a foundation, a website, do a lot of media, etcetera.
And I always ask the question, why is it that the one place that should be the most open in society, the universities, is in fact the most closed?
Why is it that the universities almost alone have speech codes? They’ve scaled them back a little bit, but have speech codes, have bias response teams where you can report somebody anonymously and your life can be ruined based on an anonymous tip.
Why is it that universities have become the least free place in the United States when they should be the most free place?
And that’s what I think we have to examine. And it is absolutely true that higher education, certainly at the so-called elite level, has been captured by one political viewpoint.
The Cornell Sun, I think it was two or three years ago, maybe it was four, I’ve lost track of time at this point, did a couple of surveys and I credit them for this, It was actually a good piece of journalism, where they looked up the political donations of faculty. Now, political donations are not a perfect alignment with Viewpoint, but it’s a rough alignment. And they found, over varying years, and it varied from department to department, but something between 95 and 100 percent, approaching a hundred percent, of the donations from faculty went to Democrats. And there was another survey they did as to. I think, political registration based on voter records. And it was approaching 100 percent Democrat.
Is that a healthy status for a university?
I don’t care if you like Republicans or you don’t like Republicans, they represent about half the country. But on universities, they’re one, two, three percent of the faculty. That’s not a healthy situation.
And it’s least healthy for universities because universities depend, including Cornell as we all know, on public funding tremendously, even private universities. And you are creating a bubble that distances yourself from half the taxpayers who pay your bills, who pay for your classrooms, who pay for everything else through federal aid. It’s not healthy.
And I think the universities need to figure out how they got to a position that they do not look like America. We always hear certain things need to look like America. Universities more than any place. politically and viewpoint wise, do not look like America.
I saw a recent survey of Harvard faculty, I think it was the Harvard Crimson, it’s eased a little bit, but the survey from about two years ago found that 3% of the Harvard faculty identify as conservative or very conservative versus if you look at polling from Gallup and others, something approximating 38% of the US population. So 3% versus 38%. If you look at faculty who identify as liberal or very liberal, it was 70 to 80% of the Harvard faculty versus, and this is probably going come to a shock to you that fewer people in this country self-identify as liberal than conservative, versus 28 or so percent of the population who identify that way.
So Harvard doesn’t look like America yet Harvard sure wants those federal dollars from America. And you know what? Under Trump they’re having trouble now because there’s a backlash.
I think the universities have done themselves a disservice. How have they done themselves a disservice?
And this is absolute heresy on a campus like Cornell, it’s faculty self-governance.
As professor Wax pointed out, faculty self-governance has created a monoculture and I think universities need — the topic tonight is reforming academia — I think universities need to seriously consider changing that model because where has that model gotten you?
It’s gotten you into conflict with half the population of the country. It’s gotten you into conflict where someone gets elected who you never thought in a million years could get elected, and now wants to cut your funding. And you know what?
Half the people out there are cheering, defund it all. I don’t know where you go on the internet, but at least where I go, that’s what they’re saying.
And you know, I think you need to consider that this model has failed. It’s failed not just the faculty, it’s failed the students and it’s failed the institutions. They have to change. Can they change?
I’m asked this all the time, can we reform the universities? And the short answer is no. The short answer is universities cannot, or let me put it different way, can the universities reform themselves is the question. And the answer is no, they cannot because there is no internal opposition left on this campus.
For the most part, you’re looking at the internal opposition [pointing to self]. One person, Penn is probably similar. That’s not healthy for the university. And nobody wants to hear that. And everybody wants to say, oh, you’re against academic freedom.
Well, if academic freedom means you completely shut out half the country, then I think you’ve got a problem with your definition of academic freedom.
So I don’t believe the universities can reform themselves. I think that is a prevailing wisdom in the half of the country that are not at Cornell.
And therefore you have Trump coming in with executive orders trying to force change at the universities. And obviously you know about that clash. So I think it’s a problem. I think universities have done themselves a disservice.
I think they still do not recognize the problem. They want to think Trump is the problem. Trump may be the symptom of the problem.
The problem is that universities like Cornell have become monocultures out of step with the rest of the country and very vindictive monocultures.
Just try criticizing Black Lives Matter on this campus in 2020, which is what I did, because I did not believe the movement was in the best interest of United States. I did not believe the movement and the founders of the movement were honest about their goals.
And I think I’ve been vindicated by that. But the campus erupted and I think that that is a problem.
The last point I want make is what is the ideology that’s the problem? It’s not liberalism or conservatism. To me it’s group identity. And that’s why I’m so against DEI.
DEI forces you to identify by group. DEI forces you to judge people based on their group identity as opposed to who they are as an individual. And I believe that we need to get back to, and I’ve said this, I’ve been quoted in the Cornell Sun, exactly what I’m saying now.
We need to get back to a culture on this campus where every individual is viewed as an individual without regard to to race, color, national origin, or sex. And only then can we really reform education and move forward.
But as long as we have an ideology that puts people into group categories, I don’t think we can make any progress. That’s my view.
FULL AUDIO
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Comments
Universities are infested with communists. They hate competing ideas and religions.
Absolutely right, Professor Jacobson. For the record, I taught business majors at a public university for over 20 years, part time. A staffer of one of my friends, who was in the state legislature at that time, told the legislator that I was the only Republican in the department. Well, that meant I was one of 50? 100? because I don’t know the size of the department.
Honestly, we are cheating students, parents, taxpayers, foundations and yes, professors because they function with Group Think and frankly, don’t have to work as hard as others.
Excellent questions. I think professors are often some of the most small minded , petty, and dysfunctional people I’ve ever met. I’ve worked at 3 universities including one internationally and the faculty with the exception of a handful of them were extremely vindictive people obsessed with petty squabbling, backstabbing and gossip. It’s a completely corrupt system tenure that needs to end.
I blame the administrations especially the Presidents. They used to have some backbone. They used to push back. Now they are too afraid to lose their very cushy too highly paid jobs so they cater to what used to be considered and dismissed as noise.
The addition of nonsense Studies departments has contaminated the faculty and spread to the meaningful departments who are too busy doing real stuff to push back.
The students have become lazier, more ignorant, less talented, less prepared, and just plain stupider. They are entitled and expect to benefit from grade inflation and usually do. They have never failed and seldom been told no.
Finally, feminism and the resulting increasing in women at all layers of the colleges and as students have poisoned the institutions with toxic femineity. The group, feelings, and consensus are now paramount and this has been destructive not only in the university setting but business as well. Merit, individualism, out of the box thinking, and hierarchy have no place where women rule,.
I agree with everything you have said.
Universities need stress. Bringing on conservative and Republican speakers, force professors to respectfully engage and punish misbehavior of faculty with fines and punish students with academic penalties or expulsion.
The problem can be corrected, but would need to be done in a none nice way by forcing expectations on employees and holding people to a code of conduct down to their behavior.
Tyrannical leftist women and their beta male co-conspirators and collaborators?
Extending the right to vote to women was done because of fairness and it was thought society would be improved by it. Well. Apparently not. Expanding the Franchise does nothing to improve society; not by allowing 18 year olds to vote either though it was obviously the right thing to do since they could be drafted or volunteer. No improvement in the overall culture. Each extension did however change one thing–it allowed socialism easier access to the mainstream.
OK Professor, you are obviously correct. Universities are now far past the “tipping point” and can no longer reform/restore the balance themselves. Indeed, the entire country is very close to that tipping point, with the same prospect in store. And, being honest, the Democrat Party will do everything possible to prevent any reform/restoration of balance. We all can see that once the Democrat Party again controls the Congress and the White House, which will likely be in just 3 years, the filibuster rule will be jettisoned, the Supreme Court will be packed and Puerto Rico and DC will become States. And that is just for starters. After that the borders will reopen, and all will get amnesty and citizenship.
How do we prevent this? Is it even possible? You offer no suggestion as to that. Please do. I know you are doing all you can be expected to do. So is Professor Wax. But I see that as pissing against the wind.
Too many universities are lost and a waste of time to reclaim. Their individual endowments allow them room to outlast any opposition from any quarter. The culture at large controls everything and universities are are in lock step.
Commenters here (and some contributors) have been whistling past this graveyard ever since Trump was elected. They act as though there is plenty of time to prevent the next leftist takeover of the government, and the effective end of two-party rule. Trump certainly (at least in public) doesn’t appear to grasp the likelihood that he’ll be facing a hostile congress in less than a year. Don’t believe it? The evidence is clear in the number of off-year/special elections that have had leftists win previously conservative/Republican districts over the past year. It’s also clear in the number of Republican incumbents who’ve chosen to retire rather than face defeat. FWIW, it looks like the push to redistrict, especially in Texas, is going to be a historical blunder. I understand that those who call themselves “MAGA” disagree, but you/they are victims of their own illusions (or delusions) about Trump.
I agree with your projected future. There has been no serious effort to deport the vast majority of the illegal population and there clearly isn’t going to be anything more than a token effort at all. Getting rid of the criminals? Great. They’re ALL criminals. The chances of a Democrat successor to Trump along with leftist control of Congress is getting greater all the time, as his actions, no matter how justified, damage the economy and one of the first things they will do is pass universal amnesty. After that, we are at the point of devolving into just another failed socialist state. I consider myself fortunate that I’m unlikely to be here to suffer it.
“How do we prevent this?”
Secession of like-minded Red states.
“State” is fungible with “country.” Our country could and should have been called the United Countries of America.
welfare
as soon as the government was connecting the dots on “helping” with student loans it became just another lefty/rino
welfare program which allowed the newest blkpanthers and their wht guilt ridden chrisjudeo ilk to take over and become more “important” than the actually academia to further power america into greatness
which we now have to import
the latest and not by any margin,,the least excellent examples are the
omar led leering centers
Communism and feminism are incompatible with facts. No one can speak the truth.
That slow March through the institutions is the answer
Just look at Stalin’s ‘governing body’ as they undertook to force collectivism onto the agricultural peasants who’d been farming their own patches for a millennium or so. The parallels in their reasoning of the early 1930s, and that of University faculties and administrators today, is striking. All that’s lacking is the life-and-death control of today’s dissenters, who face only the loss of their jobs, but are graciously allowed to remain alive.
We need a federal law mandating diversity of opinion for colleges and universities to qualify them for any federal money. The problems are: 1) getting such legislation to define diversity of opinion and 2) how to enforce it. Without such legislation, politically correct colleges dominated by the politically correct will not hire those who do not agree with them.
A good start would be to limit the current faculty to an advisory role in the hiring. Traditionally a candidate for highly competitve professorship had to go through many interviews and be approved by the tenured professors. As the article says they are 97%+ liberal and get more extreme with each generation.
No, what the Founding Fathers feared most was a People no longer deserving of a Republic. Because no law could remedy that.
If legislation is needed to save the Universities then they are not worth saving.
The Rule of Law itself is corrupted. The fall of the University is a symptom not the disease
Prof. Jacobson is a good communicator. To communicate, one must oversimplify the argument a bit, I see the issue as much more complex involving the role of Trustees, the role of accrediting agencies, and even the role of the “ranking” media such as US News, etc. Although Prof. Jacobson takes on swipe on faculty self-governance, he does not mention the tenure system.
I also should note that both Amy Wax and Prof. Jacobson are law professors, and by definition, are a bit removed from the rough and tumble of faculty politics in the humanities, social sciences or “public policy.”
Law schools face an annual challenge to produce a graduating class that is a marketable product — can most of the graduates pass the bar and get good paying jobs in law firms or judicial clerkships? The Cornell Department of “Literatures in English” (formerly the “English Department”) faces no similar built-in accountability mechanism.
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