Requiem

Ian Ayres

After a strenuous bike ride in Patagonia last week, I summoned the energy to crank out the first draft of an opinion piece that was published just a couple of days later in the Yale Daily News.  The piece raises several questions about the Committee on Trust in Higher Education’s recommendation to amend Yale’s mission statement.  Turns out, it is a good thing I didn’t wait to speak on this issue, because as I was waiting to board my return flight to JFK, I learned that the University had already adopted the Committee-recommended mission statement.

As a procedural matter, the speed of adoption might be questioned.  The President could have allowed a bit more time for community response.  After my YDN piece appeared, I received a surprisingly large number of emails and texts from colleagues, students, and alumni thanking me for writing it.  This outreach suggests to me that the President’s swift action foreclosed spirited and productive discussion that could otherwise have taken place.  It is now a fait accompli – especially with students and faculty dispersing for the summer.

Nonetheless, I write here to amplify two of the questions I raised initially.

What Knowledge?

With one large exception (which I will discuss below), I predict very little will change at Yale under the new mission statement.  Still, it would have been helpful if the Committee report had gone a bit further in defining what types of knowledge are worthy to create, disseminate, and preserve.  Notwithstanding the deemphasis on improving the world, Yale resources should continue to support scholarship that makes prescriptive arguments.  Novel normative claims is knowledge worthy of University support.

[I am personally reluctant to teach “oughts” in my law classes.  I focus more on what the law “is.”  I try to present and challenge normative arguments of myself and others and let students decide what is best – sometimes papering over normative claims with expedient frames (“Efficiency-minded lawmakers would prefer …”).  In contrast, my scholarship, like most legal scholarship, is awash with prescriptions and suggestions for legal reform, and is worthy of University support.]

And given that the central purpose of the Committee’s work was to restore public trust, it would have been useful for their report to clearly affirm that Yale supports the creation and dissemination of knowledge -- even if it reduces the public’s trust in us.  The math department will not be teaching the President’s new approach to calculating percentage reductions (also adopted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services) even if going along with the White House might have increased  public trust.

What Change?

As I said in my original piece, mission statements can inspire, but they can also meaningfully constrain how an institution deploys its resources.  One might reasonably ask the President how, if the old mission statement was misguided, University resources have been misdeployed in the past, and how the new mission statement is likely to change projects and initiatives going forward.

I predict very little will change.  We will not shutter or diminish the schools’ programs in ethics or leadership – notwithstanding those subjects’ deemphasis in the amended statement.  Likewise, I hope we will not shackle the good work of various clinical programs that teach students by applying their talents toward improving the world.

The one substantial change that has been taking place – both at Yale and at peer institutions– is the dismantling or rebranding of all University programs related to diversity, equity, or inclusion.  The Office of Diversity & Inclusion is now the office for “Employee Engagement & Workplace Culture.”  The Buckley Institute reports that, across the University, Yale has “changed the names of 9 DEI-related offices.”  The current administration has overseen what one might characterize as a 1000% reduction in the number of employees with the word inclusion in their title.

It would be unfair to call Maurie McInnis the Neville Chamberlain of university presidents.  But a central purpose of the new mission statement seems to be a further scrubbing the term inclusion from the University’s website.  Indeed, putting this word to bed may be the only concrete consequence spurred by the changed mission.  A reasonable person might accordingly view the new mission statement not as an effort to enhance public trust, but as a further form of pro-active appeasement.