We in higher education find ourselves in strange, indeed epic times. Public trust in universities has declined sharply in recent decades. The Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza has turned many campuses into ideological battlegrounds. And the Trump administration has launched an attack on the university system the likes of which we’ve never seen. Confusion and upset are everywhere. At such moments, people often look for historical analogies to help them make sense of their world.

At my keynote address at the HxA Conference in NYC, I explored one analogy that has recently been gaining traction. This analogy compares the plight of our current university system to that of the Catholic monasteries of 16th-century England—a comparison drawn sharply in John Carter’s essay, “The Class of 2026.” Back then, monasteries were ancient, wealthy institutions: socially revered centers of learning and piety. Yet within six short years of Henry VIII’s coordinated political attack, launched in 1536, the monasteries were gone. Could a similar fate await our universities?

The resemblance is eerie. Just as the monasteries lost public esteem due in part to internal corruption—falling short of their own vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience—so too our universities are now regularly under fire for compromising their academic ideals, allowing themselves to increasingly drift toward monocultures. In some states, public sentiment has turned against historically venerated protections of academic freedom, including the ideal of faculty self governance and tenure. On campus, the pursuit of knowledge too often has been eclipsed by careerism, on one side, and activism, on the other. 

There are deeper structural parallels too. Then, Gutenberg’s printing press undermined the monasteries’ unique role of preserving and reproducing texts; today the growing use of AI by students to complete homework and exams is challenging the credentialing function of our universities. Then, as now, the defects of these great institutional systems—though real––were often exaggerated for political purposes. And, in our time, when a new executive leader glided down a golden escalator and landed in the White House (for a second term), he too decided to attack.

But, as John Stuart Mill reminds us in his A System of Logic, the strength of every analogy must be weighed against its dissimilarities. And here, the dissimilarities matter greatly.

First, the monasteries faced an actual king, not a metaphorical one (the Act of Supremacy, passed in 1534, gave Henry near absolute power). Second, the monasteries were genuinely rich—controlling over a quarter of England’s arable land and yielding twice the revenue of the Crown. Henry did not pretend to want to reform the monasteries; he wanted to dissolve them and seize all their assets.

Most important for my purposes here: there was no path of reconciliation for the monasteries. There was no internal reform they could undertake—no more consistent practices of Catholic piety—that could align them with the new regime.

Our universities are different. They can reform. And that’s the great lesson here: to avoid the fate of the monasteries, our universities must find a way to reconcile themselves with the society of which they are a part.

What kind of reconciliation is possible? Not a surrender to political partisanship, nor a superficial patriotism. Universities must remain places where students and scholars can critique society, debate its values, and challenge authority. But wholesale critique of the society around them cannot be the official posture, or operating system, of our universities. So what form of reconciliation is possible?

To reconcile themselves to the wider society that supports them, I suggest, our universities must make a contribution that is essentially cultural. Our universities must strive to become exemplars of one of the highest values of Western civilization: pluralism. But not pluralism in name only—pluralism in a certain mode of action.

This cultural contribution of pluralism has deep intellectual roots. The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers—Hume, Smith, and their peers—imagined a radical proposition: that societies could not only survive their internal differences, but thrive because of them. With the right institutions, norms, and mutual respect, pluralism becomes a driver of discovery.

In the university context, this is what we at HxA call open inquiry—a culture rooted in the free exchange of ideas, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.

Universities can once again become cultural exemplars, admired not just for their prestige but for their moral clarity and civic contribution. University leaders should work to foster a culture of open inquiry on their campuses, not because they feel political pressure to do so. Nor should the fact of political pressure be allowed to become a reason not to undertake reforms—an issue that was hotly debated at the Presidents’ Panel at HxA’s recent conference. Instead, university leaders should build cultures of open inquiry in part so that ordinary citizens might feel proud of their universities—not because of name recognition, but because these places reflect values they recognize: curiosity, humility, courage, and mutual respect in the pursuit of knowledge. 

What This Means for HxA

Our role is also evolving. HxA has long aimed to be a winsome disruptor. Today, despite all troubles within our universities, we see new opportunities for those in the academy to become principled allies to HxA’s mission to reform our college and universities . As always, at HxA our aim is to equip members of the campus community who sincerely seek to build cultures of open inquiry on their campuses.

To this end, at the conference in Brooklyn this month, we launched Open Inquiry U, HxA’s four-point agenda for reforming our colleges and universities:

1. Commit to Open Inquiry
2. Unleash the Free Exchange of Ideas
3. Insist on Viewpoint Diversity
4. Invest in Constructive Disagreement

I urge you to read the agenda and consider what role you might play in driving change on your campus. 

In these times, the future is not guaranteed. But there remain great possible futures not yet foreclosed. Universities, like all of us, are in a process of becoming. Their fate will depend on the choices we make—today, together.

Thank you for being part of this community. Let’s equip ourselves and one another to meet this moment with clarity and courage.

John Tomasi
President, Heterodox Academy