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Pippa Norris is the Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Vice President of the World Values Survey, and founding Director of the Electoral Integrity Project.
An Anglo-American political scientist and public speaker, she has taught at Harvard for more than thirty years. Her research compares election and public opinion, democracy, political communications, and gender politics around the world. She is the 2nd most cited political scientist worldwide according to Google Scholar.
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Authoritarian Populism, a growing trend in the US and elsewhere, promotes disdain for, and sometimes fear of, different others, established public institutions, elites, and intellectuals, among others. Each of these tenets places a target on higher education for those who gain power in this movement.
In this discussion, we will look at some of the specific attacks on colleges and universities that grow out of this loud and powerful ideology and that are occurring with greater frequency. Some may even wonder whether the university as we know it can survive. We will also look at some of the measures beleaguered universities may adopt to preserve and protect their traditional mission.
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Contemporary challenges to academic freedom have recently roiled many American universities and colleges. At Harvard, this includes the letter that the Trump administration sent to the President and Corporation on 11 April and the response by President Alan Garber on 14th April rejecting these demands.
In the President’s words: “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” Subsequent developments in Cambridge and elsewhere, however, have only heightened pressures.
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