The repudiation of due process, the determination to recast opposing opinions and those who hold them as evil, the refusal to vigorously defend the free exchange of ideas — these are signs that one of the nation’s great liberal arts colleges, like many of its peers, has lost sight of the aim and operation of liberal education. 

Dear Members of the Board:

I read with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation the unexpected announcement earlier this month that President Rebecca Chopp is departing Swarthmore to become the chancellor of the University of Denver.

Anticipation because as a grateful graduate of Swarthmore, I can’t help but view the hiring of a new president as an opportunity for the school to rededicate itself to the true mission of liberal education, which is to prepare students for the rights and responsibilities of freedom by furnishing and refining their minds. Trepidation because I fear that Swarthmore’s next president will lead the college further down the path of politicized research and curriculum that has become the hallmark of our finest colleges and universities.

It is your responsibility to form a search committee and oversee the process by which the college chooses its next president. You would not be serving on the board if you were not men and woman of substantial accomplishments and if you did not love Swarthmore. But I worry that your fond memories of the liberal education you received will thwart your understanding of what liberal education has become. And I fear that you will give inordinate weight to the assessment of today’s professors and administrators in judging Swarthmore’s current condition.

Today’s educators cannot be counted on to provide an accurate evaluation. In February, I saw a dramatic illustration of their obliviousness while attending a Swarthmore symposium on the future of the liberal arts. It was as if I had entered a time warp.

In several rounds of panels, Swarthmore graduates who had gone on to positions of distinction in university teaching and administration spoke about the kind of liberal education that I cherished as an undergraduate. It encouraged questions, spurred students to see issues from a variety of angles, and fostered the mutually respectful exchange of opinions. It was an education for which I will be forever grateful.

The panelists, however, spoke as if this were the sort of education being delivered to today’s undergraduates. That, in large measure, is wishful thinking.

Much ink has been spilt over the last 25 years examining the crisis of liberal education: the hollowing out of the curriculum, the aggressive transmission of a uniformly progressive ideology, the promulgation of speech codes, and the violation of due process in campus disciplinary procedures. Although Swarthmore is not immune from these pathologies, not one speaker at the symposium mentioned them.

In January, a former Swarthmore student who had been expelled in 2013 for alleged sexual misconduct filed a lawsuit against the college in federal court. The student asserts that in administering its disciplinary procedure Swarthmore “failed to follow its own policies and procedural safeguards” in myriad ways and violated his “basic due process and equal protection rights.” The court will adjudicate the claims, but the student’s allegation that the college effectively treated him as guilty until proven innocent is all too plausible…..

Sincerely,

Peter Berkowitz ’81

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