John Inazu's Insights on Christian College Cancel Culture
Still reflecting on that Newsweek story!
In Monday’s newsletter, I had shared that John Inazu wrote a response to the Newsweek story about conservative college cancel culture. Most of my comments were prompted by the editor’s introduction to John’s piece. In his own SubStack this morning, John further explored the issues in the Newsweek story. It was excellent!
I want to quote large sections of it and then add some of my own thoughts (beyond what I put in a comment). John’s attention turned to the role of trustees and donors. Especially in conservative institutions like Christian universities, there may be a tendency for these figures to want the administration to deal with whatever “troublemakers” that have come to their attention.
A healthy institution will make clear who has this decision-making authority, and as importantly, who does not. But not all institutions are this clear.
The problem is exacerbated by a general lack of familiarity with how institutional power actually works, and in particular, the function, culture, and best practices of governing boards. In my world of higher education, for instance, most students and faculty are largely unaware of the role of the university’s board of trustees. A related and distinct concern is major donors who are not part of the governing board but who exert informal influence over an organization’s leadership.
Donors and trustees are important institutional partners, but healthy institutions will ensure that these partners have appropriately limited and well-defined roles. Donors can convey their preferences but should not expect to exert direct influence over an institution’s strategic or tactical decisions. Trustees steward the finances and mission of the institution and supervise the CEO but do not control operational decisions. The board speaks as a whole, never through individual members.
In my years of working with university trustees as faculty and cabinet member, I’ve seen confusion over what the appropriate boundaries look like. Trustees see themselves as experts in problem solving and are often not aware of the complexities that limit supposed quick fixes. This is exacerbated by an over-reliance on business and ministry figures when recruiting board members. These are top-down leaders who aren’t necessarily skilled at shared governance.
In my book, I examined the backgrounds of trustees at five different Christian universities. A quarter of the trustees were business leaders and another quarter were ministry leaders. Less than 10 percent had any professional background in education. That has implications for how the institution reacts to a perceived problem. John writes:
Institutional leaders, trustees, and donors can help by remembering the larger ecosystem in which they are a part. With the important exception of the board’s oversight of the CEO, neither donors nor trustees should be making decisions about whether an individual employee or invited speaker transgresses an organization’s boundaries. If the CEO mishandles a particular situation to a degree that warrants board oversight, then the full board (or its authorized subcommittee) should address the matter. But those situations ought to be quite rare—they signal a major malfunction not a common misstep.
The primary focus of the Board of Trustees is the university mission. According to the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, “Each board member must rise to the challenge of aligning their work with the governing board and administration in order to best serve their institution’s mission.” As John observes, this happens for the board as a whole and is not the purview of individual board members.
There is an added temptation here, especially for Christian universities. The focus on mission can be perceived as requiring the protection of an imagined institutional brand. As I wrote Monday, any deviation from that brand — even the threat of one — must be dealt with.
But that’s not what that AGB quote says. Trustees aren’t charged with “protecting hte mission”. Their charge is to “best serve” the mission.
I argue that this requires fidelity to institutional mission as it gets expressed in new ways in the midst of a changing environment. A backward-looking retrenchment of mission as it was understood in the past is not serving the mission. John concludes his piece (before some update on a podcast he was on) as follows:
In other words, one way to mitigate institutional cancel culture is to help relevant stakeholders stay in their lanes. Stewarding an institution’s mission—and the people, resources, and tradition that embody that mission—is not for the faint of heart. But neither is it for the self-interested or self-absorbed. The most egregious actors should be screened out during the process of cultivating, nominating, and selecting institutional partners. But it is equally important for existing leaders, donors, and trustees to work together to ensure that everyone understands and appreciates the larger ecosystem of which they are a part.
Trustees must honor and respect the line between board policy making and administrative decision making. In light of the Newsweek story, it might be appropriate for a Christian university to adopt a policy limiting faculty members’ political speech on social media (although I think that’s pretty problematic). But it’s not their job to demand action once something comes to their attention.
Ideally, if there was sufficient academic background among the the trustees, there would be an appropriate a priori commitment to academic freedom. If faculty members with strong faith commitments are appropriately hired and evaluated and remain in line with the institution’s mission as defined, they should not be victimized by upset donors or trustees. That means that political disagreement is normal and should be part of the institutional culture.
One more thing from the book. While many institutions have gone out of their way to keep trustees from interacting with faculty members (to prevent faculty from lobbying), I think it’s a huge mistake. Trustees need an in-depth relationship with faculty; what they are working on, their teaching passions, and who they are as people. If that were present, a complaint that comes to a trustee about a faculty member (I’ll call him Dave) could have a response that says, “I know Dave. He is deeply committed to the institution’s mission” instead of seeing Dave as someone to be purged.