February 24, 2026 · Episode 300
University Presidential Leadership in 2026: Navigating Political Pressure with Moral Resilience
44 Min · By Dr. Drumm McNaughton
AAC&U's Lynn Pasquerella on moral distress, belonging uncertainty, and how university presidents can lead with integrity when institutions are under pressure.
The crisis facing higher education is not a perception problem. It is not a branding gap that better marketing will close. It is a serious and sustained pressure on institutional independence, and higher education sits at its center whether institutions choose to acknowledge that or not.
That reframing comes from Dr. Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). In a conversation with Dr. Drumm McNaughton on the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Pasquerella brings a philosopher’s precision and a practitioner’s urgency to questions that many institutional leaders are struggling to name clearly. She has served as president of Mount Holyoke College, provost at the University of Hartford, and is now the leading national voice for liberal education’s democratic purposes. She is not given to alarmism, which is precisely why what she is saying now deserves careful attention from presidents and boards.
The central argument is this: the pressures currently targeting higher education’s independence follow a recognizable historical pattern, and institutions that treat this moment as a political cycle to wait out, rather than a structural challenge to respond to, will be unprepared for what comes next.
Why Threats to Academic Freedom Follow a Recognizable Pattern
Pasquerella traces the founding of AAC&U itself to a moment that rhymes with the present. In 1915, a coalition of presidents came together in direct response to attempts to silence faculty, control curricula, and push institutions toward narrow pre-professional and military preparation. They founded AAC&U to defend the value of liberal education in times of political pressure. The current environment, she argues, fits that pattern.
She points to two Supreme Court precedents that remain directly relevant. In Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) and Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), the Court held that academic freedom is of paramount value not only to higher education but to society itself, and that institutions must retain the right to determine who gets admitted, what is taught, how it is taught, and by whom. Each of those rights, Pasquerella contends, is now under active challenge through the elimination of academic disciplines, mandated curricula, proscribed speech, and politically motivated interference with tenure and DEI programs.
The pattern she identifies is incremental rather than sudden. Institutional autonomy, shared governance, and the freedom to teach without political interference erode gradually, which is precisely what makes them difficult to defend until significant ground has already been lost. Leadership structure and institutional clarity determine whether institutions recognize the pattern early enough to respond to it effectively.
Why Liberal Education Is Inseparable from Democratic Life
A persistent misunderstanding conflates liberal education with liberal politics. Pasquerella draws a sharp distinction. Liberal education, rooted in the Stoic tradition of freeing the mind from fixed dispositions, is not ideological. Its purpose is to teach people to think critically, evaluate arguments rigorously, recognize the dangers of filtering reality through a single lens, and practice what she calls humanistic identification: the discipline of imagining what it is like to be in the shoes of someone fundamentally different from oneself.
She cites Tony Carnevale’s work at Georgetown’s Center for Education and the Workforce, specifically his research on taming authoritarian attitudes, which demonstrates that those who receive a liberal education are measurably less likely to accept information without critical evaluation. This is not an abstract outcome. It is, as Pasquerella frames it, the functional justification for why free societies invest in universities in the first place.
When that justification is reduced to credential delivery, or when institutions become political targets rather than civic assets, something essential is lost beyond higher education itself. The mission of liberal education and the health of democratic life are, in her view, the same concern pursued through different means.
How Higher Education Lost the Public Narrative
Pasquerella is candid about institutional complicity in the current crisis of public trust. For decades, a damaging story about higher education has circulated: that universities are too expensive, too inaccessible, disconnected from everyday life, and captured by a single ideological perspective. She argues that institutions have reinforced this story in two ways: by allowing elite institutions to stand as proxies for the entire sector, and by retreating into an ivory tower posture that confirms the very disconnection critics allege.
The reality, she notes, is dramatically different. Nearly 40% of American students are educated in community colleges. The genuine strength of American higher education lies in its institutional diversity, a diversity that receives almost no sustained attention in national media coverage. When institutions fail to make that case visibly and consistently, others fill the gap.
She references philosopher Michael Sandel’s argument that the stigmatization of the poorly educated is the last acceptable prejudice in the United States. That stigma, she observes, cuts both directions. People who have not attended college often feel looked down upon by those who have, and that feeling carries real social and political weight regardless of whether it reflects actual condescension. Closing that gap requires something more than improved messaging. It requires genuine presence in communities and genuine humility about what those communities need from institutions.
What Moral Distress Looks Like for University Presidents Today
Pasquerella introduces a distinction that reframes how institutional leaders should understand their own experience. Moral distress occurs when leaders feel coerced into decisions they believe are wrong but see no available alternative. When that pressure becomes sustained rather than episodic, the cumulative erosion of one’s moral compass produces what she calls moral injury. She is seeing this pattern across the sector, particularly in states where legislative mandates now dictate curriculum content, restrict tenure, and interfere with institutional governance.
Presidents facing these conditions are confronting a question Pasquerella puts plainly: “How much individual injustice should I countenance for the sake of long-term reform?'” Some conclude the threshold has been crossed and resign. Others conclude that staying is the only way to continue advocating for the students, faculty, and staff who depend on institutional leadership that actually knows them.
For those who remain, Pasquerella’s prescription is moral resilience: deliberate cultivation of truth-tellers in the inner circle, transparency with campus communities about who is bearing the real costs of decisions, and the kind of grounded conviction that can withstand sustained external pressure without drifting into accommodation. She points to Mary Dana Hinton, president of Hollins University, whose recently published work on leading with love articulates this not as sentimentality but as a principled commitment to the genuine interests of the people in the institution, regardless of what external forces demand.
She also draws on Jessica Riddell’s work on hope circuits, which argues that rather than trying to fix broken systems through a scarcity mindset, leaders can take a mindset of abundance and build collaborative pathways toward shared objectives. Transparency about costs and a refusal to spiral into despair, she argues, are both essential to navigating this moment.
Belonging Uncertainty as an Enrollment and Academic Performance Issue
Pasquerella draws on research by scholar Seiver Sheldon on cognitive bandwidth to make an argument that belongs on every president’s strategic agenda. Sheldon’s work demonstrates that racism, sexism, food insecurity, housing insecurity, and other forms of chronic stress measurably reduce students’ cognitive capacity and their ability to engage academically. These are not soft or peripheral concerns. They are direct impediments to the core educational mission.
Sheldon’s finding that belonging uncertainty is the single largest cognitive bandwidth thief of all carries immediate operational implications. When students receive signals that they are not fully welcome, whether from institutional decisions or broader policy changes, their capacity for academic engagement declines in measurable ways. Pasquerella points specifically to the shuttering of DEI offices, the elimination of programs in gender studies, African American studies, and Asian studies, and policies affecting DACA students as sending exactly those signals. The downstream effects on retention and completion will appear in enrollment data that institutions will find difficult to explain without acknowledging the cause.
She adds a data point that sharpens the urgency: for the first time since tracking began, mental health concerns, including anxiety, depression, and despair, are surpassing financial considerations as the primary reason students either drop out or do not enroll in the first place. Institutions that continue to treat student wellbeing as a student services concern rather than an academic design variable are building attrition into their enrollment model.
Rebuilding Public Trust Through Community Presence and Kinship
Pasquerella is clear that institutions cannot market their way back to public trust. The path forward runs through genuine community presence, not improved communications. She cites Nancy Cantor, formerly of Rutgers Newark and Syracuse, whose approach asks institutions to stop telling communities what they are good at and instead ask what communities need from them. That reorientation from broadcast to dialogue is, she argues, a prerequisite for restored credibility. As Pasquerella puts it, “the problems that people face as individuals in our classrooms and in our communities cannot be left at the gates of the academy.”
She describes her own practice of this through a daily 90-second segment on NPR called the Academic Minute, which introduces listeners to research taking place at universities across the country. The response she receives is instructive: people are frequently surprised to learn what universities actually study and produce. The deficit is not public indifference. It is institutional invisibility. When institutions are not out in communities explaining what they do and why it matters, others define them.
The closure of Sterling College in Vermont illustrates the stakes. As one of the last eight work colleges in the country, it served as a genuine community anchor, shaping the surrounding town and helping people there imagine life beyond their immediate circumstances. Pasquerella argues that something irreplaceable is lost whenever an institution like that closes, not only for its students and faculty but for the broader community it sustained. Institutional viability and community anchoring are the same strategic question.
Curriculum-to-Career Integration and the AI Readiness Gap
Pasquerella pushes back on the framing that positions career preparation and liberal learning as competing priorities. University of California research she cites shows that 87.9% of students, the highest percentage ever recorded, say the primary reason they attend college is to secure better employment. At the same time, more than 95% of college graduates report wanting more than a job: they want meaning and purpose in their lives. She argues these findings describe the same person with the same legitimate needs, not a contradiction to be managed.
The response she advocates is not a curriculum overhaul but intentional integration: building pathways within disciplinary learning that develop the adaptability, critical thinking, and applied competencies that both employers and graduates identify as essential. Institutions still framing this as an either/or choice are not protecting academic values. They are protecting departmental habits at the cost of student outcomes.
The AI readiness gap makes this integration more urgent. Pasquerella cites AAC&U data showing that approximately 99% of employers expect graduates to be proficient in AI tools within five years, while 95% of faculty currently view AI as a negative force in the academy. She acknowledges a recent shift toward greater faculty optimism, but the gap remains significant. Academic realignment that prepares students for an AI-integrated workplace, without abandoning the habits of mind that make graduates genuinely adaptable, is work that cannot wait for the next accreditation cycle.
Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards
- Be transparent about who is bearing the cost of institutional decisions. Pasquerella’s first takeaway is direct: presidents must be clear with their communities about what decisions are being made, why, and who is most affected. Obscuring tradeoffs erodes the trust institutions need most. Transparent accounting of difficult choices, delivered with moral clarity, is where credibility is built or lost.
- Serve as anchors in your communities, not just leaders of your campuses. Presence in the community is not a public relations strategy. It is the mechanism through which public trust is rebuilt. Presidents who are visible with legislators, engaged with community organizations, and affiliated with advocacy bodies like AAC&U are building political capital their institutions will need, and demonstrating the civic value that higher education has largely failed to communicate.
- Stay focused on the mission of educating for democracy. In Pasquerella’s own words, “We have to stay focused on the fundamental mission and purpose of American higher education, which is to educate for democracy — especially at a time when both higher education and our democracy are facing an existential threat.” That focus is not rhetorical. It is a strategic anchor that keeps institutional decision-making coherent under pressure.
This conversation offers higher education leaders a clear-eyed account of the structural pressures facing the sector and a principled framework for responding to them. Pasquerella’s analysis is grounded in history, legal precedent, and current research, and it carries a consistent thread: the institutions that lead through this period will be those that hold the line on academic freedom and institutional mission, engage genuinely with the communities they serve, and articulate without apology what they exist to do. Institutions that wait for conditions to stabilize before deciding who they are will find, when stability returns, that others made that decision for them.
Quick Overview
- Threats to academic freedom follow a recognizable historical pattern that institutions must actively recognize and respond to
- The Supreme Court has established strong protections for academic freedom that remain legally relevant today
- Liberal education develops the critical thinking capacity that democratic life depends on, as supported by Georgetown research
- Institutions have contributed to the false narrative about higher education by failing to be present and visible in communities
- Moral distress among presidents is widespread and, when sustained, becomes moral injury requiring deliberate moral resilience
- Belonging uncertainty is the largest single cognitive bandwidth thief for students and has direct retention and completion consequences
- Mental health concerns now surpass financial concerns as the primary reason students leave or do not enroll
- Career preparation and liberal learning are not in tension; the 87.9% who want jobs and the 95% who want meaning are the same students
- A significant gap exists between employer AI expectations and faculty attitudes that institutional leadership must address
- Public trust is rebuilt through sustained community presence and genuine kinship, not through improved marketing
About Our Podcast Guest
Lynn Pasquerella was appointed president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities in 2016, after serving as the eighteenth president of Mount Holyoke College. She has held positions as Provost at the University of Hartford and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Rhode Island, where she taught for more than two decades. A philosopher whose work has combined teaching and scholarship with local and global engagement, Pasquerella has written extensively on medical ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. Her most recent book, What We Value: Public Health, Social Justice, and Educating for Democracy, examines the role of higher education in addressing some of the most pressing contemporary issues at the intersection of ethics, law, and public policy. Pasquerella is immediate past president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the host of Northeast Public Radio’s The Academic Minute.
About the Host
Dr. Drumm McNaughton is the founder, CEO, and Principal Consultant at The Change Leader, Inc. A highly sought-after higher education consultant with 20+ years of experience, Dr. McNaughton works with leadership, management, and boards of U.S. and international institutions. His expertise spans key areas, including accreditation, governance, strategic planning, presidential onboarding, mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. Dr. McNaughton’s approach combines a holistic methodology with a deep understanding of the contemporary and evolving challenges facing higher education institutions worldwide to ensure his clients succeed in their mission.
Connect with Drumm McNaughton on LinkedIn→
Read the Podcast Transcript →
Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast – 300 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and Lynn Pasquerella, President of the American Association of Colleges and Universities
Introduction to Changing Higher Ed®
Welcome to Changing Higher Ed®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.
[00:00:31] 300th Episode Celebration
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David.
Today we celebrate our 300th episode in over seven years of Changing Higher Ed. It’s been a wonderful ride and I’m pleased to have a special guest for this episode, Lynn Pasquerella, President of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Lynn is one of the top people in higher ed, one of the good guys, who believes in the power of liberal education, and has led the path in transforming an institution.
[00:00:59] Thanking Past Guests
Drumm McNaughton: But before I get to introducing Lynn, I want to give a shout out to the people who have made these 300 episodes possible.
First, the many guests we’ve had over the seven and a half years of Changing Higher Ed. I truly feel blessed to have made the acquaintance of so many luminaries and experts in our industry, and I want to say a special thank you to all of you for sharing your thoughts, your insights, and most importantly, yourself on the program.
[00:01:25] The Production Team
Drumm McNaughton: Second, I want to say thank you to my team who makes this all possible. Tamara Taylor, Show Up Strong (ShowUpStrong.com), who takes care of my website, the writing, and the SEO. David White of DavidWhiteVoice.com, my sound engineer, who makes my guests and me sound so much smarter. (At least me.) Without you both, we wouldn’t be able to bring Changing Higher Ed to all we touch. Thank you.
[00:01:50] Gratitude to Listeners
Drumm McNaughton: Lastly, mostly important, I want to say thank you to you, my listeners. In the past seven and a half years, we’ve had over 125,000 downloads of the program, including over 44,000 last year. I’m humbled by these numbers, and it’s all because of your loyalty and interest that we’ve kept going. Thank you.
[00:02:13] Introducing Lynn Pasquerella
Drumm McNaughton: On to the podcast. I’m proud to welcome Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities as my guest for episode 300.
[00:02:24] Lynn’s Career Highlights
Drumm McNaughton: Lynn joined AAC&U in 2016, after serving as president of Mount Holyoke College. She’s held multiple positions in higher education, including provost at the University of Hartford, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Rhode Island, where she taught for more than two decades.
Lynn is a philosopher whose work has combined teaching and scholarship with local and global engagement, and has written extensively on medical ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. Lynn is recognized throughout our industry with multiple honorary degrees from places such as Elizabethtown College, Bishops University, University of South Florida, University of Hartford, University of Rhode Island, Mount Holyoke College, among others, and was named by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education as one of America’s top 35 women leaders.
Lynn is the product of a liberal education, and she joins me today to talk about higher ed, where it is, where it needs to go, and how we get there.
Lynn, welcome to the program.
Lynn Pasquerella: Thank you so much.
Drumm McNaughton: I’m glad we’re having a chance to do this finally, after so long. And a shout out, this is my 300th episode and I’m truly honored that you’re willing to come on the show for me.
Lynn Pasquerella: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. Well, we’re going to get started. AAC&U is doing some amazing things. Before we get into the background, give us a little bit about your background, if you would. How did you get to be part of AAC&U? Because you’ve got a fabulous one.
[00:04:15] A Life Shaped by Access
Lynn Pasquerella: Well, I, I grew up in a small town in northeastern Connecticut and my parents didn’t have the opportunity to go to high school. My father joined the war effort at the age of 16 after Pearl Harbor Day, and my mother got married at 16 at a time when you couldn’t be married and be in school. And so she gave up her dream of being an English teacher.
Both my parents spent their lives working in factories, and by the time I was 11, my mother was a single parent.
[00:04:46] Community College to PhD
Lynn Pasquerella: And when I had the opportunity to go to college on a full scholarship at my state’s flagship, I made a decision to stay home and attend a local community college that had just opened up in the small rural town in which I lived so that I could be a caregiver to her. She had become chronically ill and I had the opportunity to study, only because I received funding under the Comprehensive Employment Training Act. And at the time, CETA funds were reserved for those at the lowest socioeconomic rungs who were thought of as being permanently unemployable.
So I worked 35 hours a week while attending community college and then in two years transferred to Mount Holyoke and within another two years was off to Brown for my PhD in philosophy.
[00:05:31] Liberal Education as Civic Mission
Lynn Pasquerella: You know, when I graduated, I graduated with a deep and abiding commitment to access to education regardless of socioeconomic background to the centrality of liberal education, an education that had transformed my life and to political scientist, Benjamin Barber’s notion of colleges and universities as civic missions where we not only educate people to be free, but we free them to be educable by serving as a visible force in the lives of those who are most underserved in our society.
Drumm McNaughton: And that really is my view of what higher education should be.
[00:06:07] Mount Holyoke Connections
Drumm McNaughton: You know, you and I have discussed the Clark Care Model of Public Good as well as leading two jobs. Interesting though you mentioned Mount Holyoke. My grandmother graduated from Mount Holyoke back in the early 1900’s and taught English at a high school in Boston.
Lynn Pasquerella: It is an extraordinary institution. When I went it was because I had an advisor at the community college who said you need to go to Mount Holyoke. It’s a place for serious minded women. And indeed, it is. And it’s mission from its founder, Mary Lyon, to promote purposeful engagement in the world is something we need more than ever.
Drumm McNaughton: It certainly is.
[00:06:47] What AAC&U Does
Drumm McNaughton: Higher Ed’s going through some major challenges right now. But tell me a little bit about AAC&U. I’ve had Ashley Finley on the program a number of times. You’ve done some great research on things. Tell us about what it’s about.
Lynn Pasquerella: AAC&U has a mission of advancing the democratic purposes of higher education by promoting equity, innovation, and excellence in liberal education. So we believe in that inextricable link between liberal education, the kind of education that frees one’s mind from past dispositions and allows one to imagine the possibility that some of one’s most fundamentally held beliefs might actually be mistaken. And our nation’s historic mission of educating for democracy. It is the type of education that prepares you for success in work, citizenship, and life. And at a time when there are questions being raised about the value of higher education in general, and liberal education in particular, it’s a privilege to be a part of an association that is advancing higher education’s public and personal purposes.
[00:07:58] Defining Liberal Education
Drumm McNaughton: And you said something in when talking about AAC&U, the definition of liberal education as I understand what you’re saying in my own interpretation, it’s not just history or political science. Frankly, it’s liberalizing the mind, not red versus blue or whatever, but allowing the mind to go where it needs to go. Is that fair statement?
Lynn Pasquerella: Yes, that’s exactly right.
[00:08:26] Stoic Roots and Empathy
Lynn Pasquerella: And the origins of the term liberal education came from the stoics who really wanted to liberate the mind through an education that would prepare a free citizen for engagement in democracy. And so it is helping students to think critically, to propose constructive evaluate arguments, to be mindful of the dangers of ideological filtering, but perhaps most importantly, to engage in humanistic identification imagining what it’s like to be in the shoes of another different from oneself.
Drumm McNaughton: We say that all the time. You don’t know somebody until you walk a mile in their shoes, and that’s exactly what you’re saying.
Lynn Pasquerella: Yes.
[00:09:07] AAC&U Then and Now
Drumm McNaughton: Well, AAC&U it’s been around a while, but it really came into its being with COVID and the events around COVID. Tell us a little bit about that, if you would.
Lynn Pasquerella: It’s interesting because AAC&U emerged in 1915 and it was at a time that was politically quite similar to what’s happening now. There was, yes, so, there was a lot of concern about what was happening in college and university classrooms and attempts to silence faculty and to control a curriculum. There was a push toward pre-professional technical education, but also a military education given what was happening worldwide. And so this group of presidents got together wanting to, in the wake of the Morrill Act and the second Morrill Act that was focusing on public institutions to double down on the usefulness of a liberal education in times of global dissension and turmoil.
[00:10:13] COVID Polarization and Authoritarianism
Lynn Pasquerella: Today we saw, with COVID-19, with the polarization and partisanship that was catalyzed by that, and the growing mistrust in not only higher education, but scientific expertise, the need to make clear the value of the kind of education that we’ve talked about and our colleague, Tony Carnevale, who was at the Center for Education in the Workforce at Georgetown, issued a report on taming authoritarian attitudes and he talks about the ways in which American higher education is distinctive and the liberal education it offers, but how that really works against authoritarian tendencies.
Those who are liberally educated are less likely to fall into the trap of following authoritarian autocratic leaders and to question the truth of what’s being told. And so we know the value of a liberal education on a number of levels.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes.
[00:11:13] Universities as Social Critics
Drumm McNaughton: And, and that questioning is what’s getting a lot of people in trouble right now. We’ve seen that at many “woke” institutions where faculty are questioning what’s going on. Much of their questioning though is based in research, is it not?
Lynn Pasquerella: Well, yes. Higher education, colleges, and universities have always served as social critics, and it’s one of the reasons that universities are often attacked first when there are efforts to impose an ideological agenda by authoritarian autocratic leaders. And so that role is critically important, and it’s one of the reasons that higher education has served as a cornerstone of the American dream. And I fear that there’s been a decoupling of higher education from the American dream in ways that are likely to exacerbate what I think is the most significant challenge we are facing right now, and that is a growing economic and racial segregation in higher education.
Drumm McNaughton: And we’ve heard talk of this in the news, the “K” recovery, where the folks who are very well off seem to be getting much richer and those who are less well-off seem to be getting much poorer.
Lynn Pasquerella: That’s right.
[00:12:31] Public Good vs Private Commodity
Lynn Pasquerella: And I talked about my experience, so people are having similar experiences but in the absence of those safety nets that were put in place for those who had been denied access in the past to higher education, and you know, I think about what motive, what’s propelling that. And in part it’s because we no longer view higher education as a public good. It’s viewed almost exclusively in terms of a private commodity, tuition in exchange for jobs.
But it was not so long ago in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Higher Education Act into law at the Southwest Texas State College, where he had attended, that he was conveying public sentiment around the value of higher education and he said, here, the seeds were planted in me that grew my firm conviction that for the individual education is a path to achievement and fulfillment. For the nation, it’s a path to a society that’s not only free but civilized. And for the world, it’s a path to peace for its education that places reason over force. And I’m afraid now we have lapsed into a post-truth era in which controlling the narrative is more important than the facts and where force trumps, excuse the pun, everything else.
[00:13:56] Erosion of Academic Freedom
Drumm McNaughton: Well, I remember years ago studying and looking at the three kinds of change where you have incremental, transformational, and then revolutionary. And applying the revolutionary to the political system the way you get revolutionary, or revolution is controlling the money, controlling the press, and controlling the military. And it’s not so much where it becomes one or the other. It’s usually just a general merging over to that area till all of a sudden people look back and go, where’s my freedom of speech? It isn’t here anymore.
Lynn Pasquerella: That’s right. It’s incremental and it is dangerous to not pay attention to the ongoing erosion of academic freedom, institutional autonomy, shared governance that is occurring as a result of the political environment, which is serving as a backdrop to what’s happening today.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes, and it’s not the first time in America’s history. You know, I can remember reading about the McCarthy era and some of the things happening back then that are happening now. But it’s the political landscape is shaping higher education, I think far more than it it ever has.
Lynn Pasquerella: I think that’s right. We certainly have seen this. We saw it with the American Revolution. We saw it in World War I, World War II, the McCarthy era, in the Civil War period, in the reconstruction era. After that there were attempts to control what was being taught.
[00:15:45] Supreme Court Protections
Lynn Pasquerella: This is unprecedented in terms of its nature and scope, and we know we’ve have Supreme Court cases that have talked about the importance of academic freedom and institutional autonomy in 1957, Sweezy v. New Hampshire, (354 U.S. 234), which was about loyalty, oaths, and the ability to teach certain things in the classroom. One of the justices in the court wrote, in an opinion, that academic freedom is of paramount value to not only to higher education, but to society itself.
And he said because of that, colleges and universities must have the right to determine for themselves who gets admitted, what is taught, how it is taught, and by whom. Each one of those rights has been upended as a result of what’s happening today. 10 years later, court ruled again in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, (385 US 589) around similar issues that we have to guard against casting the pull of Orthodoxy across our classrooms.
And yet, here too, we are seeing an effort to impose a particular ideological agenda through the dismantling of DEI, through the elimination of certain programs, proscriptions against certain speech, the casting of a pull of orthodoxy across our classrooms. And so we must be mindful of what happened, what we can learn from the past, in terms of the McCarthy era, and other efforts to chill speech. And make sure that we’re not making the same mistakes that we’re speaking out in defense of the core principles that are fundamental to the strength of American higher education.
Drumm McNaughton: Amen, sister. It is going to be, for me, interesting to be able to look back 50 years from now, maybe even 25, and to see what’s going on.
[00:17:34] The False Narrative About Higher Ed
Drumm McNaughton: There seems to be a changing of the narrative around higher education. But yet we know that higher ed is the single best driver for socioeconomic change and improvement. You, yourself, is a great example of that.
Lynn Pasquerella: Mm-hmm. That’s right. So for a couple of decades now, we’ve heard concern about the unsustainability of the financial model for higher education. And there has been widespread and growing concern that higher education is too expensive, too difficult to access, isn’t teaching students 21st century skills, and that we are bastions of liberal progressivism, intent on brainwashing the next generation of snowflakes to melt at the slightest abrasion of their sensibilities.
Drumm McNaughton: I’m going to quote that one. Thank you.
Lynn Pasquerella: So this, this comes from George Will, who was writing about this when, you know, he was focused on being disinvited from colleges and universities. Now we have reinforced that false narrative in many ways, and the media has helped us in this regard, by positioning places like Harvard, MIT, and Penn, as emblematic of all American higher education. When in fact, you know, nearly 40% of our students are educated in community colleges. The real strength of American higher education is the diversity of institutional types. But there is a sense that we exist in the ivory tower, as a willful disconnect from the practical matters of everyday life.
[00:19:11] Becoming Community Anchors
Lynn Pasquerella: And we have to redress that by serving as anchors in our communities, demonstrating that our success in the academy is inextricably linked to the psychological, social, economic, educational wellbeing of those in the communities in which we’re located and those we seek to serve.
There are leaders like Nancy Cantor from Hunter, who was at Rutgers, Newark in Syracuse, who’ve said, “we have to stop telling people what we are good at and ask them what are we good for and what do you need from us?” And until we do that, we’re not going to be able to restore public trust in the promise of American higher education and liberal education. So we have to be out in our communities serving people through the work that we do.
Drumm McNaughton: I couldn’t agree more. And I am seeing more and more of that. One institution that I bring up frequently is Cal State San Marcos. because I was involved with them for quite a while. Their previous president, Karen Haynes, did an incredible job. She, herself, was a first generation student, came from a a lower socioeconomic background and moved on president of two universities, et cetera. Just an incredible woman.
What they did there was they set up advisory boards with the local community. They had them for each of the colleges there. They had it for the overall university. Yes, you paid to be on that, but you know, didn’t matter. You were having an input into what was going on, and it wasn’t just all faculty driven, it was faculty driven with input from the community as to what they needed for graduates.
[00:21:01] Curriculum Meets Career and AI
Lynn Pasquerella: Yes, and I think that’s more important than ever as we see the distress among families about whether college is worth the investment. The ways in which there’s uncertainty around the proliferation of AI and what that will mean. For future employability, will the jobs that other students are preparing for exist in the future.
And so we have to ensure that we are integrating curriculum and career. We’re not viewing this as a false dichotomy between college preparation and graduation and career preparation. And the way to do that is to build it into the curriculum to ensure that students are given practice in the skills, competencies, and dispositions necessary to help them not only enter the workforce, but to advance in their careers.
We know from recent studies that come out of the University of California. That the highest percentage of students ever, 87.9% of students, say the primary reason they’re going to college is to get a better job. And yet more than 95% of college graduates say that they want more than just a job, they want a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. And I think this is something that we have to have a reckoning with.
How are we preparing students for lives of meaning and purpose in addition to helping them get a job?
Drumm McNaughton: All very valid points. It’s almost as if there are three C’s that have to come out of an education. There has to be the ability to, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? I had it just a minute ago. It’s, I guess, you know, that fourth cup of coffee probably wasn’t good for me, I don’t know. But citizenship, you’ve got to prepare for citizenship.
You’ve got to prepare people for careers. And that career one is incredibly important because just like you said, with the proliferation of AI, there’s jobs out there that haven’t even been imagined yet. And so you’ve got competency and cognitive abilities. I remember the old saying from back years ago, undergraduate you train your mind, for master’s, you’re training for a particular career, and a PhD as you’re bringing new knowledge into being. You know, that’s very broad. But if you don’t know the jobs, you don’t know what jobs are going to be out there in 10 years. You’re training people’s minds, the cognitive aspects of the minds, to be able to adapt, to be able to be curious about what’s going on, and to be able to go back and get other education if necessary, or learn on the job. Does that make sense?
Lynn Pasquerella: It does.
[00:24:05] Belonging and Student Wellbeing
Lynn Pasquerella: I think a world in which there’s global interdependence and we’re rapidly changing technology, means rapid obsolescence. The best education that we can offer our students is one that allows them to be adaptable and flexible in the face of change, to speak across differences, to practice that humanistic identification every single day.
And I worry we are at a point, where for the first time, that we’ve been keeping these statistics, mental health issues, anxiety, depression, and despair are surpassing financial considerations as the primary reason that students are either dropping out of college or not attending in the first place.
And so we have to look at how we are educating. The whole student in the past, we’ve thought, well, you know, that’s not our job. We’re disciplinary experts. We’ll deliver a curriculum, they’re on their own. That can no longer be the case if we want to fulfill the public and personal purposes of higher education.
Drumm McNaughton: And what I’m hearing you say is we need to reimagine higher education, more collaboration, less siloed.
Lynn Pasquerella: That’s right. We certainly have to have more integrative learning. But I, I think about my colleague, Seiver Sheldon who works on cognitive bandwidth, and she talks about the ways in which, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, other forms of discrimination, along with food and shelter insecurity, actually reduce the capacity of students to learn.
It diminishes their cognitive bandwidth. And the way to restore that bandwidth is through radically re-imagining higher education. But she points out that the biggest bandwidth stealer of all, is belonging uncertainty. And so I think about what’s happening with DACA students, with the elimination of DEI, the attack on certain disciplinary fields like gender studies, African American studies, Asian studies.
So there being removed from the curriculum, offices being shuttered, initiatives being shut down, sends a message to certain students that you don’t belong here, that we don’t value you, and that is having, I fear, a profound and lasting impact on American higher education.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes, I, I think you’re absolutely right. And so, there needs to be a changing of higher ed. We’ve talked about that. And until we change, I don’t see a change in the political spectrum. Do you?
Lynn Pasquerella: No, I think we have to change. And I think a lot about Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking work on mindsets and her critical insights that underscores the importance of establishing growth mindsets in developing students’ talents and abilities within the classroom. She says for far too long, we focused on this fixed mindset and we give students standardized tests, asking them to answer questions for which we already know the answers. When instead, we should be asking them to grapple with the complex unscripted problems of the future of which COVID-19 was emblematic. And I think that it truly is more important than ever at a time when by almost all accounts, students are becoming increasingly disengaged and they’re not concerned with this high stakes testing and memorization as much as they are about engaging in deeper, more joyful learning. And that’s something Dweck advocates.
So how do we do this in the classroom. And you know, we, we hear this narrative, you know, we’re not into edutainment, I’m not an entertainer. And yet, we can do both. We can be serious scholars and also engage in pedagogies of kindness. We can create hope circuits. We can practice trauma-informed pedagogies in ways that ensure that all students feel a sense of welcome and belonging. And where we don’t reinscribe this notion of colleges and universities as existing within an ivory tower, but recognize that the problems that people face as individuals in our classrooms and in our communities cannot be left at the gates of the academy.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes, so that’s the first way of how do we get there? What do we need to do? We talked also about restoring the trust, and you mentioned something about that earlier. Institutions of higher education are typically anchors in the community, and you mentioned a Sterling College in Vermont.
Lynn Pasquerella: Mm-hmm. Yes. Sterling College is closing. It was one of the last eight work colleges in the country where students would go and they would practice what they wanted to do as professions, doing animal husbandry and forestry. The richness and vibrancy of institutions like that through the people they’re bringing in, the students, the professors, the staff, but the ongoing engagement with the community really shapes those towns. And it’s a loss. I mean, there are ways I think that existing colleges and universities at a larger scale, for instance, Bennington in the same state, is trying to bring those practices through centers on their campus.
But I think there’s something lost anytime a college closes, For those in the campus community, but also those in the extramural community. Including helping people in the town imagine life in college. Imagine life beyond their front door. So I hope that we can continue to focus on the sustainability and strength of even the smallest colleges who are serving a distinctive student population. Because it really does matter to communities, and to the strength of the nation.
[00:30:16] Restoring Trust Through Kinship
Drumm McNaughton: How do we, how do we restore the trust with the public? To me, it starts with being able to give students what they need to be successful, not only in a career, but in life as well.
Lynn Pasquerella: It does. I mentioned earlier being in community, being visible. So co-creating knowledge, making clear that we’re not here to disseminate, deliver, or impose knowledge upon you, but we’re here to work through the most fundamental questions of human existence, meaning, and purpose together. And so I, I think that it starts with creating kinships.
When I was graduating from Brown, my mother was too ill to come to my commencement. I invited my father. I hadn’t lived with him since I was 11, but I was in touch with him. And his response to me was, first of all, you know, I’m not going to spend a dollar a gallon to go up that hill in Providence. I don’t have the gas money.
And, and second of all, don’t you think this makes you better than us? Because it doesn’t, and you’re not. So, I will say, a simple congratulations would’ve been fine.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes, exactly.
Lynn Pasquerella: But it made clear to me that he felt threatened by my education. I’m sure on some level, he was proud of me. I knew he loved me, and yet, I think what was happening is what Michael Sandel philosopher at Harvard talks about, and that is that the stigmatization of the poorly educated is the last acceptable prejudice in the United States.
And I think many people do feel stigmatized by those of us at colleges and universities who’ve had the privilege of access to higher education, and they feel like we’re looking down on them. So I was able to sit down at the table with my father and have a conversation about why my values were not going to change. That it didn’t mean that I thought I was better. But that it was profoundly impactful for me to have access to education. And the question is how do we have those table conversations around the country with people who are radically different from ourselves, who don’t have that immediate connection?
We can’t do that unless we are in communities and create a kinship with people who are very different, who are already suspicious of what we do. So I think, you know, one of the things that I do is I, I do a daily radio program on NPR, out of AMC in Albany called the Academic Minute. And it’s just 90 seconds.
It’s because it’s an academic minute. So it’s—
Drumm McNaughton: Of course.
Lynn Pasquerella: —it’s, it’s introducing listeners to cutting edge research scholarship that’s taking place in our classrooms and in our research labs across the country and around the world. And I will often have people write to me and say, oh, I had no idea that at universities you did research on childhood asthma or cancer, or that you studied things like knitting and its role in the French Revolution itself.
And, and how would they know? And so unless we’re out there telling people this is what we’re doing, we’re not just talking about how many angels can dance on the heads of pins, but we’re also talking about issues that matter to you. Cell phone addiction, how can I get access to healthcare for a dying parent?
All of the issues that are impacting individuals day to day, then we’re not going to change those attitudes. So it is serving in our communities, being more transparent, but also welcoming people onto our campuses. And, and making sure that they view us as good neighbors. because no matter how many times we welcome people onto our campus, into our homes, they’re not going to come if they don’t feel like you’re genuine in your offer.
And so how do we create that sense of welcome and belonging for those who are most skeptical about the academy?
Drumm McNaughton: Absolutely. The presidents have a huge role in this too, don’t they?
Lynn Pasquerella: They do. Presidents are skilled at creating ascendant narratives around their institutions regardless of the circumstances. But what we have to do a better job at is explaining what it is that we contribute to the communities. And there’s a lot of discussion around now payment in lieu of taxes or increasing endowment taxes. But colleges and universities contribute every single day to the strength of communities, and we just need to be clearer about that.
Drumm McNaughton: And I think we need to get out and toot our horn a little bit more as well. Maybe that’s part of what you say for being clear about it.
Lynn Pasquerella: We do, we need to work with our legislators who are representing the people to say, here’s how we’re serving the public. And we had a congressperson, Richie Neil from Massachusetts spoke at our latest annual meeting and he said, we love hearing from educators, we love hearing from college and university presidents, particularly those in community colleges because we know that those people are likely to stay in the area and be our voters.
So tell us, tell us what you’re doing to help them. And that was a good point.
Drumm McNaughton: Oh yes, the number one value of a politician is to get reelected again.
Lynn Pasquerella: That’s right.
[00:35:43] Leading Under Political Pressure
Drumm McNaughton: Presidents have got an incredibly difficult role nowadays. It’s probably more difficult now than it’s ever been in the past. They don’t have the luxury to act in the same ways that they did. How can presidents change how they’re presenting the academy, how they’re presenting what’s going on at their institution so that people start to listen and start to see the value?
Lynn Pasquerella: Hmm. That’s such a great question. It’s true that presidents are experiencing an extraordinary level of moral distress as a result of these unprecedented attacks on colleges and universities. And moral distress occurs when you feel coerced into making decisions you believe are unethical, but you feel you have no choice.
And in many instances, that moral distress is morphing into a kind of moral injury that comes from the continual erosion of one’s moral compass. And we’re seeing in many states where, in red states in particular, where there are mandates around the curriculum, what can be taught, who can teach it, tenure and promotion, a whole range of issues related to higher ed, that the leaders are asking themselves how much individual injustice should I countenance for the sake of long-term reform?
And in some instances, the answer is none and those presidents resign. In others, it’s I need to stay here because I think I can be an advocate for our students, faculty and staff in the position. And so this is what’s happening.
What you need to do under those circumstances is to build a kind of moral resilience and to surround yourself with people who are truth tellers and who will encourage you to be authentic. And I think about Mary Dana Hinton, who’s the president of Hollins in Virginia, and she has a new book out on leading with love.
And she says, you know, I’ve tried everything else and all that I have left under the current circumstances is to lead with love. And that doesn’t mean always doing things that everybody’s going to love. But communicating to them that I am interested in you and your best interest, and here’s how I will act under all circumstances.
And I think we have to rely on that. I mentioned Jessica Riddell, her work on Hope Circuits. She’s a scholar at Bishop’s University, and she talks about the ways in which the systems are broken. And they’re working exactly as they were designed. And she says, rather than trying to fix the systems through this mindset of scarcity, let’s take a mindset of abundance and create hope circuits, ways in which we can work together, to achieve our shared objectives through imagining a better future.
We have to be transparent about who’s bearing the real cost of the decision making. But at the same time, we don’t need to spiral down into a sense of despair. We can work together to change our perception of what we can do in higher education. So I, I think those are the approaches that we must take.
Drumm McNaughton: Hmm. I have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this, Lynn, this has been a great conversation. It’s not often I get a chance to talk at the 50,000 foot level and be able to bring it down to the lower level. So thank you so much for that.
Lynn Pasquerella: It’s my pleasure and I’m grateful to you for all that you do. We appreciate it.
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you.
[00:39:33] Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards
Drumm McNaughton: As we always do, our last two questions. Three takeaways for university presidents and boards. What do they need to do at this point in time?
Lynn Pasquerella: I think they do need to be transparent about the decision making that’s taking place. Why they are making the decisions they’re making, and who is most impacted by those decisions. We must be in our communities to serve as anchors and build the trust necessary to move forward. And we have to stay focused on the fundamental mission and purpose of American higher education, which is to educate for democracy. Especially at a time when both higher education and our democracy are facing an existential threat.
Drumm McNaughton: Couldn’t have said it better. Thank you. What’s next for you? What’s next for AAC&U?
Lynn Pasquerella: AAC&U has a number of exciting initiatives. We are working on AI in the academy and what that means. We know that almost all employers and 99% say within the next five years that they will expect all students to be proficient in AI in the workplace. And yet 95% of faculty feel that AI is a negative force in the academy, that it’s eroding academic integrity, that it is, threatening the value of a college degree. There’s been some shift in that lately, more optimism around its use. But, but we’re looking at what AI means and how we can prepare students for success through the use of AI, which is not going to go away.
We’re working on advancing public trust in the academy. We have a new office that is focusing on convenings that will help us to work across the sector with community colleges, HBCUs, research institutions, liberal arts colleges, a whole range of institutions to restore public trust in the promise of higher education in general, and liberal education in particular.
We continue to do our work around curriculum to career in looking at what employers want from graduates of colleges and universities. We have a number of global initiatives and STEM initiatives, looking at how we can train the next generation of leaders in STEM. Understanding that the arts, the humanities, the social sciences and sciences must work together if we have any hope of addressing the grand challenges and wicked problems of the future.
Drumm McNaughton: Well, very good. Lynn, thank you again so much. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. I look forward to the next time our paths cross.
Lynn Pasquerella: I do too. Thank you so very much.
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you.
[00:42:27] Final Thanks and Sign-Off
Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for listening today and a special thank you to my guest, Lynn Pasquerella. President of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Lynn, thank you so much for being on the program. I greatly appreciate all that you’ve done for higher education. You continue to do through AAC&U and I look forward to the next time our paths cross.
To you, my listeners, thanks again for tuning in. See you next week.
