Scott L. Bok: Donors should not decide campus policies or determine what is taught

In recent months, America’s elite universities have been at the center of a firestorm. None more so than my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, where I served as chair of the board of trustees until I resigned last Saturday evening.

My devotion to Penn is understandable. I first came to campus 43 years ago as a scholarship kid from rural Michigan, the first in my family to go to college. I met my wife in a campus dormitory and earned degrees from three of Penn’s schools.

Before I speak to recent events on our campus (now that I am unconstrained by university affiliation), let me make clear a few preliminary points.

I unequivocally denounce the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. I fully recognize Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself.

I mourn the loss of innocent lives throughout that region and hope for peace.

I deplore increased incidents of antisemitism on campuses across our country and around the world.

I advocate for free expression and the right to demonstrate, but I am deeply troubled by the hurtful rhetoric sometimes used at demonstrations.

I despair at the ability of social media to mislead, distort, and amplify such rhetoric.

But there are limits to what universities can do to address such matters. Physical safety concerns must come first, so at Penn, we dramatically stepped up our police presence — that campus has never been more closely watched. And if you walked across campus as I did numerous times this semester, most often you would have been struck by how normal life seemed.

Students are walking to classrooms and labs, hoping to win a place at a law or medical school or a job at Google or J.P. Morgan or Teach for America. On weekends they are going to fraternity parties and basketball games, just like I did.

There have been a handful of loud but otherwise peaceful protests where hateful things have been said, but it’s been a long way from the unrest of the 1960s, when the civil rights movement and Vietnam War inspired violent protests on a grand scale.

And yes, there have been some well-publicized acts of deplorable antisemitism.

Penn has repeatedly condemned hateful speech and appropriately investigated all acts of antisemitism, pursuing every remedy within its power. In particular, it has acted aggressively in response to any vandalism, theft, violence, or threats of violence on the campus.

The challenge all universities face — and always have faced — is how to balance the desire to allow free speech with the desire to maintain order and allow all students to flourish free from bias or harassment. Chaos and violence are bad, but so are McCarthyism and martial law.

Chaos and violence are bad, but so are McCarthyism and martial law.

To strike the right balance, one needs first to put the problem in perspective. If one were an all-seeing, all-knowing dictator determined to maintain rigid order, one would want to kick some students off campus for what they have said or done in recent weeks.

But I am confident that number would be a small fraction of 1% of the student body at Penn. The rest are busy being college students, although I recognize that many are feeling increased uncertainty and fear even when campus is quiet.

Likewise, faculty are not trying to brainwash students. First of all, the vast majority are teaching subjects like math, chemistry, accounting, or engineering, where politics is irrelevant.

Yes, most of those teaching history or political science are probably more politically liberal than your typical alumnus, but that has been the case since Ronald Reagan ran for president when I was there. And any purported attempts to indoctrinate students with liberal bias are obviously failing, as most — certainly at Penn — grow up to be good capitalists and taxpayers.

A refrain I have heard repeatedly in recent weeks is that Penn and all elite universities are “too woke.” And there’s constant talk of some people being allowed to say the most outrageous things while others are punished for “microaggressions.” But real-life examples of discipline for such offenses are almost as uncommon as Eagles Super Bowl appearances.

Sure, if you look hard enough across the country you can find a case or two of faculty being punished for misgendering someone, and, of course, conservative speakers are sometimes not exactly embraced on campuses — ‘twas ever thus.

But the first-floor freshman dorm in the Quadrangle where I started my Penn journey had not a single African American, Latino, or person of Asian or Indian descent among its 25 residents. What shows how far we have come is that, at the time, none of us seemed to think that was peculiar. We should not turn back toward that world.

The fact is that, for decades, most universities have imposed no meaningful restrictions when it comes to speech. In fact, I don’t know of any cases in my decades of Penn involvement where a student was disciplined for speech alone.

That’s consistent with the official student code of conduct at Penn and most of its peers, which says that students may not be subject to discipline for speech alone. And that, in turn, is what set the three esteemed presidents up for a cringeworthy moment in front of Congress last week. They mishandled a question focused on the issue of student discipline for speech, in part because they had likely never seen a case of such discipline being enforced.

If universities were to impose restrictions on speech much tighter than the Constitution provides, then there will arise innumerable cases to adjudicate — all much more complex than the simple one Rep. Elise Stefanik posited.

Can we trust a university bureaucracy to judge those fairly? And will the ensuing punishments and reactions bring down the temperature on campuses or turn it up?

On all these issues, universities need to be very careful of the influence of money, especially one like Penn, which has a business school with a brand larger than that of the university itself. And I say that as both a Wharton graduate and someone who understands that contributions play a critical role in everything from lifesaving medical research to scholarships for kids like I once was.

But donors should not be able to decide campus policies or determine what is taught, and for sure there should not be a hidden quota system that ensures privileged children a coveted place at elite schools.

For nearly all of the 19 years I served on Penn’s board, I felt like there was a very broad, largely unspoken consensus on the roles of the various university constituencies: the board, donors, alumni, faculty, and administration.

Once I concluded that this longtime consensus had evaporated, I determined that I should step off the board and leave it to others to find a new path forward.

The culture wars can be brutal.

The culture wars can be brutal.

I am not complaining, but in full disclosure, I’ve received violent threats, been confronted on the street, had a mobile billboard of Israeli hostage pictures posted by my workplace, withstood an attempt to thwart an important business deal, been pelted by robot-generated emails, and been the subject of ridiculously false “news” stories sourced by unnamed informants.

The low point was when the university mysteriously got access to a slick, Hollywood-quality video featuring Penn’s president and me along with images of Adolf Hitler, marching Nazi troops, and the World Trade Center in flames on 9/11. Fortunately, that turned out to be so outrageous that it never got broadly distributed.

It’s ironic that someone whose moderate political outlook was formed during a childhood in Gerald Ford’s congressional district now finds himself entangled in the culture wars. But sometimes, while you are standing in place, the spectrum is moving around you. We should all be watchful as to where that spectrum might move now.

Scott L. Bok is the former chair of the board of trustees at the University of Pennsylvania.