I ran a major public university for a decade and watched the campus culture war shift from a sales pitch about “opportunity,” into an ideological engine that squeezed out merit, curiosity, and the habits of mind needed for self-government. This piece explains how institutions became captured, why the Alabama response mattered, and why reclaiming the Founders’ educational purpose—plain and unapologetic—is urgent as America heads into its next quarter-century. It also points to bold state examples proving that a public university can be both patriotic and rigorous without tolerating orthodoxy. Finally, it argues that presidents who have faced capture and pushed back are the leaders we need to steady higher education for the long haul.
Leading the University of Alabama from 2015 to 2025 taught me that universities are living institutions, not immovable monuments. Presidents and trustees must pivot when mission drift shows up as bureaucracy and ideology. When the guiding idea of a university becomes conformity rather than inquiry, the institution betrays its reason for existence.
In 2024 the Alabama Legislature passed SB 129, banning taxpayer-funded DEI offices, and we complied. That wasn’t a stunt or a political flex; it was a straightforward defense of mission and of taxpayer dollars. At the same time we kept recruiting talented students from rural and underserved places, because finding and developing ability is central to public higher education.
The original arguments for DEI were often framed as expanding “opportunity,” and many of those early efforts aimed at access were legitimate. But what began as outreach too often mutated into an orthodoxy policing thought and hiring, hostile to open inquiry and to standards that reward achievement. Once ideology becomes the priority, merit and excellence become casualties.
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Our Founders saw education as essential to liberty. Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, and Adams believed a republic depends on citizens trained in history, rhetoric, theology, and reason. They expected universities to cultivate judgment and virtue, not train students to trade civic loyalty for grievance niches.
Over recent decades many universities drifted away from that mandate and toward partisan activism masquerading as scholarship. Western civilization ceased to be taught as an achievement to be understood and debated, and instead was too often dismissed or treated as suspect. When institutions stop teaching how to think and start instructing what to think, public trust evaporates.
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Florida took another route, and the results matter. The Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida shows what a public university can do when it recommits to civic confidence and to serious engagement with enduring questions. That model isn’t about shutting out debate; it’s about restoring the idea that some knowledge and some virtues are essential to sustaining a free society.
The stakes are national. In a dangerous world we don’t have the luxury of turning young leaders into fragile critics who lack resilience and a sense of civic purpose. Great universities should mine boldness, creativity, and grit—qualities that underpin leadership and national strength. Running a university during this turbulent period sharpened my conviction that our educational system must prepare citizens first, specialists second.
I’m convinced now more than ever that public universities must reclaim the Founders’ vision without apology. That means prioritizing merit, promoting open inquiry, and resisting bureaucratic fads that substitute identity for achievement. Presidents who have confronted capture and delivered reform offer the practical blueprint for restoring trust and purpose in higher education.
