Today's universities value "Diversitas over Veritas," according to the Veritas Fund for Higher Education, an initiative of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank. The fund gives seed money to campus groups and professors in the spirit of "a commitment to freedom of inquiry and the broadest possible range of viewpoints," as its Web site says.
The fund and others like it are part of a growing trend of private institutions looking to stanch what they consider a strong focus on cultural diversity in the humanities and social sciences. Brown's Political Theory Project and its initiative, the Janus Forum, is one of a variety of American academic institutions funded by Veritas.
Balance in the System
The Veritas Fund seeks to restore "the original conception of the university" as a place "based on neither conservative nor liberal doctrines, but rather on the search for knowledge and truth," according to the organization's Web site. The organization funds programs at the University of Virginia, the University of Colorado, Boston College, Cornell, Georgetown, Dartmouth, Emory and New York universities, as well as Brown.
By funding professors and research institutes, organizations like the Veritas Fund, the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America's Founding Principles and History and the National Association of Scholars say they are working to create balance in a system they consider dominated by postcolonial scholarship and an emphasis on the historically marginalized.
A number of recent studies "provide actual statistical evidence ... that students are not getting the opportunity to study America's founding history," Michael Deshaies, the Jack Miller Center's vice president, told The Herald.
"We respond to requests from college professors who teach in the social sciences or the humanities," Deshaies said. "They reach out to us and ask for our support."
At Emory University, Mark Bauerlein directs the Program in American Citizenship, which is funded by Veritas.
"In terms of content, we support any course that immerses students in a significant cultural or civic tradition in American history," Bauerlein said.
"The courses we've supported are pretty broad on the ideological spectrum," he said. "For example, we supported a course on the history of conservatism in the United States. We also supported a course on the literature of progressivism."
Bauerlein said that the program ran 17 courses last year and enrolled 270 students. "Right off the bat we can say we have a lot of students reading the Federalist Papers, reading the Bill of Rights, reading Friedrich Hayek, so if we have more freshman students reading serious work, then right there we're happy."
The program, Bauerlein said, is not a means of advancing a conservative agenda.
"Our enemy is not any political position," he said. "Our enemy is forgetfulness, the obliviousness to the past."
Roots of the trend
Stephen Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, said the organization was founded in 1987, during a "period when political practice was first becoming an issue."
"There was a sense that the academy was moving away from its ideals," he said, adding that the association is committed to liberal education and eradicating the "philosophic one-sidedness" of contemporary American higher education.
But Brown History Professor Evelyn Hu-Dehart, who serves as director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, said it is important to contextualize this interest in returning to traditional academic subject matter within the context of a changing America.
According to Hu-Dehart, waves of European immigrants in the mid- to late-19th century caused American higher education to "become more popularized," fundamentally changing the philosophies and practices of the university. She added that the ideology of the 1960s simply "accelerated the movement."
Prior to this profound change in American demographics, universities like Brown and most of its other Ivy League peers focused on the instruction of classics and catered to the male elite. But "today we're not just training seminarians; we're not just teaching sons," Hu-Dehart said.
According to Hu-Dehart, organizations like the NAS were founded to work with trustees and alumni as "pressure points" against universities that were increasingly focused on multiculturalism.
At some schools, such as UCLA and UC-Berkeley, she said, "there is no majority group ... it's an expression of the rapidly changing demographics."
In other words, she said, the inclusion of departments and academic programs that focus on ethnic and gender studies reflect changes in the make-up of American society.
Formerly a professor of women's studies, Gail Cohee, director of the Sarah Doyle Women's Center, said that the center is based on an understanding that the concerns of one particular group are collective concerns and rejected the idea that a focus on ethnic or gender studies detracts from focusing on other intellectual issues.
"Identities are so intersecting at this point," she said, adding that the Center is interested in "looking at everything more holistically."
Balance at Brown
The Political Theory Project, founded and directed by Associate Professor of Political Science John Tomasi, receives funding from Veritas. According to its Web site, the Project aims "to invigorate the study of institutions and ideas that make societies free, prosperous, and fair" as well as to provide a forum for "diverse viewpoints."
The fund also provides money to the University's Political Theory Project and the Janus Forum, and the Manhattan Institute counts Chancellor Thomas Tisch '76 among its trustees.
Among the courses offered by the Political Theory Project this semester are a freshman seminar on the political theory of capitalism and senior seminars on welfare rights and environmental ethics. In addition to sponsoring courses, the Project hosts academic conferences, supports research, helps secure funding for graduate research and hosts a lecture series through the Janus Forum.
Dan MacCombie '08.5, who serves as co-director of the Janus Forum's steering committee, said that the project receives funding and support from "across the political spectrum."
The 17 student representatives on the Janus Forum's steering committee hail from a variety of campus organizations including the Brown Democrats, the College Republicans and the Brown Spectator as well as groups of a variety of other political persuasions.
The Janus Forum itself is apolitical, but, according to Sean Quigley '10, a Herald columnist who is active in both the College Republicans and the Spectator, it can often benefit the conservative population at Brown.
"It provides an actual institutional means by which right-leaning campus groups can have a voice in campus politics," he said.
In this way, Quigley added, these organizations "seem to structurally just help conservatives" simply in that "it demonstrates the fact that this is a university and not a factory for turning out liberals."
Sumeet Goil '09, the other co-director of the steering committee, said the group's goal is to give voice to different ideas. "In terms of bringing a conservative voice to campus, that's not our goal," he said.
"We really believe in it as a forum not to promote or highlight one ideology but to get them to all interact," MacCombie said.
Anish Mitra '10, a Herald columnist who is a current College Republican representative to the Janus Forum, said he hopes issues like "Christianity, atheism, abortion," and economic issues like government spending will be among the topics for this year's lectures.
"There are a lot of different opinions represented on campus," Goil said. "Before Janus, there was not really a place on campus where people could just discuss issues."
