How Can Universities Address the Crisis in Democracy?

On Wednesday, November 8, 2023, Dame Louise Richardson delivered the Samuel L. and Elizabeth Jodidi Lecture at Harvard University. She spoke about declining democracy around the world, sharing sobering statistics from the UK and US in particular. Richardson made the case that universities can alter outcomes and secure positive change to address this multifaceted crisis, but it will require courage, determination, and a united response. 

Lightly edited and excerpted below is a portion of Richardson’s talk where she focuses on the specific elements universities can foster. The full lecture, including a lively Q&A at the end, is available on the Weatherhead Center's YouTube channel.

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Universities, then, are already key nurturers and preservers of democracy. They are, as I’ve suggested, complex ecosystems, in which a diverse group of people can find habitats that support their intellectual and imaginative growth. They are, from an ideas point of view, species rich. Just as rainforests are essential sites of biodiversity that help us to conserve and generate a host of life forms, some of them new to human eyes, so universities are essential sites that help us to conserve and generate living knowledge to the greater benefit of humankind.

We need to preserve them. And more than that, to preserve their health, to resist attempts to destroy their long-term benefits for short-term gain. Just as rainforests sequester carbon helping to support our atmosphere, removing toxins, and making air breathable, universities too are crucial to supporting a healthier atmosphere in civil discourse based on facts, reasoned debate, and broadmindedness. But to achieve this, universities need—consciously—to foster tolerance and encourage participation.

In their teaching, particularly their insistence on teaching respect for global histories, the legacies of peaceful protest, and the evolution of democratic thought, universities can educate students to a wide arc of cultural traditions and a less Western-centric idea of development than was once the norm. They can train students to see issues from multiple perspectives, to practice shifting viewpoints, to argue from one side and then the other. They can help students to develop their mental flexibility as well as strength. They can foster understanding of different political practices and consider how to improve democratic systems. They can teach students how to dispute civilly and well.

We need to be nimbler at creating more welcoming, less gladiatorial spaces, and better constructive models for debate where there is room for more shades of opinion, more diverse faces and voices to be seen and heard. If we are to be convincing in this endeavor, we need to have more ideological diversity amongst our faculty, and a greater willingness to engage publicly and respectfully across different perspectives.

Universities can also consciously help students gain experience of thinking together collaboratively as well as individually. Students benefit from learning how to negotiate, how to make concessions, how to change their minds and enjoy doing so, how to find a workable solution to a problem where many different actors have different priorities. Not merely scoring points, but building consensus.

Students who have this experience in university will surely translate it into political participation post university, and arrest the escalating rise in youth disillusionment with politics. Universities can model democracy, the good society, the fair workplace, the well-run debating chamber where everyone feels welcome speaking. They can also model equal rights and fairness, particularly in being inclusive and committed to policies that allow access to higher education on the basis of merit and potential, rather than the advantage of social class, prior educational privilege, family connections, or sporting prowess.

Universities also need to make it easier for disadvantaged students to get there and to get on once they are there. We need to see this as an investment in democracy in its widest sense. It is part of how we keep our institutions and public spaces open, fair, and inclusive. If we want a more representative parliamentary democracy or any kind of democracy, universities are a really good place to affirm equality of opportunity and help to create a more diverse cohort of leaders, managers, and voters.

It goes without saying that universities as wealthy as this one are in a position to be extremely generous, but the numbers Harvard touches are relatively small. But the question is whether institutions like Harvard have a responsibility to those beyond our gates. In addition to being accessible, universities also need to be safe. They have a long and proud tradition of acting as sanctuaries for scholars suffering from repressive governments and political threats to their safety, and for those who’ve been forcibly displaced by war, famine, or other forms of social collapse.

Many universities during the Second World War took in eminent scholars fleeing from the Nazis. Some of the most generous American colleges in accepting Jewish refugee scholars were historically Black universities. Teachers who are themselves known to discrimination stretched out a hand of friendship to those of a different skin color who had also faced repression.

So resisting tyranny is another important way in which universities address the crisis in democracy. They enable voices to be heard and research to progress that would otherwise be silenced. One of my most uplifting experiences at Oxford was watching the Central University and the colleges come together, which doesn't happen very often, but coming together to support Ukrainian students and scholars.

We decided to offer up to twenty full scholarships to Ukrainian students, and we did this with the confident assumption that we’d get a handful of applications. And we got over 800 applications. Over 200 of them were qualified and we took twenty students. And at Carnegie, we are supporting some programs, including one based at Oxford, to help both Ukrainian and Russian scholars who are displaced by the war. Here, our efforts are focused on supporting scholars to remain in the region in order to facilitate their return post conflict to rebuild their universities.

And then freedom of speech. I believe that universities should be places where freedom of speech is practiced daily, for students and staff have the right to challenge one another intellectually in open forum and to offend one another. There are naturally well established legal limits to all freedom of speech and I'm not suggesting for a moment that we violate them. But I do believe that we should facilitate the expression of all legal speech.

Surely, it is better to hear an extreme view expressed openly and robustly challenged than for unpopular speakers to be canceled before they can say a word, or for zealots of any hue to speak only behind closed doors to a loyal following. The British government, as you may know, has recently appointed a free speech czar to regulate universities. Personally, I find this difficult to see as anything other than a populist move in the culture wars and an effort to undermine the autonomy of universities.

It comes from the very same government that gave us the Prevent legislation which prohibits the expression of views antithetical to British values at British universities. I fear the UK government’s commitment to freedom of speech, and they are very far from alone in this, is limited to speech with which they agree. Recently in Britain, free speech has become a weapon in the arsenal of the right against the left. But we must never allow freedom of speech to be owned by the left or right. All universities, I believe, should see it as their mission to uphold it.

It’s also the privilege of universities to keep open channels of academic communication where international conflict or dispute mean that other forms of diplomacy are narrowed or closed. Never underestimate the power of universities to continue intellectual and social dialogue that benefits democracy and diplomatic relationships. Brexit, as you know, has threatened relationships between Britain and Europe in the worlds of commerce and politics. But British and American universities continue to exchange ideas with colleagues, students, fewer students, but still students, providing wildlife corridors that allow free movement and collaborative projects to thrive. It’s imperative that they continue to do so.

Major threats to future human peace and security transcend national borders. From climate change and biodiversity loss to invasive species, new diseases, microbial resistance to antibiotics, hostile developments, and AI warfare, we need the open knowledge sharing and the trusted partnerships that universities provide to respond quickly and effectively. As threats to peace and security are typically also threats to democratic function, universities could probably be regarded as circuit breakers for sudden global shocks. In strengthening their international partnerships and soft diplomacy, they protect our global commons.

I tend to think that a good example of this is the COVID vaccine developed by Oxford University during the pandemic in collaboration with global partners in business and research, including the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, research centers in Kenya and Thailand, testing centers in South Africa and Brazil, and manufacturing centers in India. Universities are also reliable knowledge banks that stay open even during an international crash. They provide remarkable services, often at cost again, the Oxford COVID vaccine, which was distributed at cost, in this regard is both a literal example and a metaphor. I think universities can help us to vaccinate people against disease but also against the viruses of misinformation and hate speech.

Universities are—or should be—havens of research, reasoned debate, knowledge-based evidence, and planning for the future. This research serves many ends that actively supports democracy. It can show us how to understand our world, how best to alleviate poverty, and enhance public health, explain voting patterns, democratize digital access to information. It can help the world to predict the energy needs plus the likelihood of pandemics and other catastrophes, and protect them from their worst effects.

In addition, of course, the curiosity-driven research that belongs in, and is nurtured by, universities often has unintended but significant benefit through technological and scientific discoveries from batteries to radio waves, not to mention gene editing. Universities also investigate and disseminate the truth—of history, of identity, of culture—making it less easy to spin false narratives. This has never been more important.

Conspiracy theories are rife and the digital attempts to confuse and manipulate the public with misinformation and conspiracy theories has been far too successful. We’ve all read reports of the percentage of the American and British population who believe things we know to be fanciful such as that COVID was a hoax. The pernicious and widespread effect of this toxic rumor mongering via social media includes fanning climate change denial, and equally worrying, spreading the message, apparently believed by one in seven British people and one in five Americans, that violence is a fair response to these government conspiracies.

These days, investigative journalism is underfunded and media control is in too few hands. In many countries, journalists fear for their lives when they report on politically contentious issues. Even in the heart of Europe it is possible for journalists to be murdered in cold blood. Journalism is further undermined when important stories, such as those about the climate crisis, simply don’t run because they are blocked by editors—it’s too risky, too downbeat, or too offensive to powerful patrons.

At Carnegie we have a program called Bridging the Gap through which we fund the policy-relevant work of academics in an effort to ensure that public policy will be informed by the best academic work available. We’re also supporting efforts to encourage American universities to follow their British counterparts by incorporating public impact into criteria for academic promotion, and to move away from the view still widely held in the social sciences that applied work is somehow less worthy.

I would love to see universities step up and help supply the gap in the digital newsstands with reliable, fact-based long- and short-form takes on subjects of public importance. We need to get better at communicating our research on climate, on science and new technologies to a wider public readership, not just in journal articles, but in accessible digests and thought pieces. It goes without saying that to be credible, this has to be objective and evidence-based. You can imagine funded research fellowships and partnerships with trusted journalists where evidence is properly peer reviewed, for example.

Universities have been in the habit of using their communications teams largely to disseminate information about their own achievements: prizes won, goals met, gifts received, buildings opened. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But what if we regarded our media potential differently and became, instead of self advertisers, trusted advisors whose readers turned to them for weekly information without a party political agenda or audience numbers to keep up.

We can become staunch bastions of truth holding the eroding line of balance and accountability, preventing the flood of misinformation from overwhelming the digital commons. 

Credits

• Illustration via Shutterstock 
• Photos of Dame Louise Richardson and Melani Cammett taken by Bethany Versoy

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