Ten Ways for Higher Education Leaders to Meet and Define This Moment

Topic Index

Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with university leaders across the country—strategic thinkers and doers who are steering their institutions through today’s blustery headwinds. As these colleagues work to implement bold structural and cultural campus changes, they often ask a similar question:

“What can I, as a higher education leader, do to create meaningful change beyond my campus, especially at a time when the entire sector is at this pivotal crossroads?”

To answer that, I’ve started to assemble high-impact strategies that educational leaders can apply right now—on campus and beyond. Please join me in refining and building upon these and in sharing other actionable ideas.

1. Prioritize Inquiry Over Activism, Innovation Over Resistance

Why It Matters:
In an era of polarized and clashing ideologies, universities must recommit to the pursuit of truth. In the academy, this pursuit must be driven by curiosity, intellectual risk-taking, and continuous learning rather than resistance for its own sake.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Foster environments that counter cancel culture and echo chambers by encouraging dialogue across differences.
  • Support events where students bring in intellectually diverse speakers to address the same topic.
  • Offer courses and workshops on media literacy, highlighting how algorithms shape and limit internet searches by using automated systems to present information that aligns with your past “platform behavior” (e.g., “likes,” saves, searches, etc.).
  • Launch a “Rapid-Response Fellowship” for scholars studying current political or cultural shifts in real-time.
Inquiry Over Activism

2. Combat ‘Truth Decay’ with Evidence-Based Discourse

What It Is:
Coined by RAND Corporation, “Truth Decay” refers to the present-day proclivities of giving opinions and personal experiences the same intellectual weight as facts. Such proclivities result in the rampant dissemination of misinformation and the public distrust of sources once known to be credible.

Why It Works:
Rebuilding intellectual rigor starts with teaching how to differentiate evidence from opinion and combat disinformation.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Be a highly discerning consumer of information and encourage others to be the same: investigate the source, identify the intended audience, look for and call out overly simplified conclusions and false dichotomies.
  • Model what data-informed inquiry and investigation looks like: seek out reliable information from experts, gather multiple perspectives, differentiate peer-reviewed sources from blogs.
  • Familiarize yourself and your students with known disinformation campaigns and look for the characteristics of such campaigns in information dissemination on new or less familiar topics.
Critical Information Consumption Funnel

3. Seek to Understand Not Persuade

Why It Works:
In the highly polarized world in which we now live, people are primed to hold their ground and write off others who think differently. Knowing that inclination, you can disarm those with whom you disagree by showing them you sincerely want to hear about and learn from their perspective in an effort to better understand a divergent point of view.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Listen first—Do more listening than talking as it keeps the doors to constructive conversation (Deep Listening) open.
  • Home in on whatever common ground emerges or can be built. Connecting with rather than correcting our ideological opponents puts us in a better place to see commonalities that are often obscured at first glance.
  • Exchange resources across perspectives: ask someone to share a go-to article and reciprocate.
Prioritize Understanding Over Persuasion

4. Use Experiential Learning to Practice Democracy

Why It Works:
Democracy must be practiced, not merely studied. Some of my writings show how service-learning and community-based research foster such practice.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Incentivize service-learning projects in academic courses.
  • Reward community-based research in tenure or promotion processes.
  • Support university–community partnerships solving local challenges.
Teaching and Learning Initiatives

5. Elevate the Grassroot Efforts of Those Who Do their Homework

Why It Works:
In academe, grassroots organizing is often viewed as empowering, authentic, and impactful. Providing appropriate resources and expertise to students, faculty, and staff who have spent time and energy researching the issues helps to reinforce the values of sharing reliable information and co-creating knowledge. This, in turn, builds internal solidarity.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Host research symposia where students and faculty offer poster presentations related to enduring questions or urgent challenges.
  • Support student- and faculty-led symposia and teach-ins on timely topics such as immigration, tariffs and free market, community health.
  • Sponsor a research fellowship for a new PhD recipient who is studying the impact of federal policies on American higher education.

6. Streamline Decision-Making for Agility and Adaptability

Why It Works:
To remain relevant, universities must act with urgency and flexibility. Neither bureaucracy nor the aim of complete unanimity should block innovation.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Update governance documents to allow for expedited responses.
  • Establish rapid-response teams to assess policy impacts within days.
  • Use Values Impact Assessments (VIAs) to ensure strategic choices align with mission, vision, and values.
Decision-Making for Agility and Adaptability

7. Diversify and Sustain Funding Sources

Why It Works:
Federal support for higher education is increasingly uncertain. Universities must build financial resilience through alternative revenue streams.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Cultivate philanthropic support for programs and services related to academic freedom, diversity, civic engagement, and the like.
  • Grow industry partnerships and contract research for mission‐aligned projects.
  •  Explore grant opportunities with established vendors in the higher education space (e.g., retirement benefits organizations, dining service partners, maintenance and custodial companies). Many of them have long histories of collaborating with schools and colleges to bolster student support.
Strategies for Educational Advancement

8. Build Inter-Institutional Coalitions

Why It Works:
There is strength in numbers. By partnering with peer institutions, accreditors, state systems, and national associations (e.g., AAC&U, APLU, ACE, CIC, NAICU), an individual university can amplify its voice, share its resources, and brainstorm with others facing similar challenges.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Issue joint statements defending academic freedom, free inquiry, diversity initiatives, or Title IX protections. Be prepared to actualize the commitments such statements endorse. This could mean giving the stage (literally) to thought leaders who represent opposing sides of complex and nuanced issues.
  • Coordinate multi-university letter‐writing campaigns to state and federal representatives.
  • Host multi-campus webinars to share best practices and legal guidance.
Build Advocacy via Collaboration

9. Leverage the Legal System to Uphold Academic Freedoms

Why It Works:
The courts can check executive overreach. Compared to small private colleges, university systems and academic consortia typically have well-staffed offices of general counsel. Such offices are equipped to address legally suspect directives coming from the federal administration right now.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Bring together General Counsel attorneys from multiple institutions to review policy proposals, Dear Colleague Letters, etc. for constitutional or statutory infirmities.
  • Ask the General Counsel cadre if it makes sense for them to file amicus briefs in key lawsuits concerning First Amendment, Title IX, or rule‐making processes.
  • Assert, when appropriate, state‐level protections—some states have stronger academic‐freedom statutes than those associated with federal guidelines.
 Using and Uniting University Attorneys

10. Don’t Just “Poke the Bear” and Run— Join Forces in Taking Strategic, Sequential, and Ongoing Steps

Why It Works:
Thoughtful, sequential, and multifaceted public engagement can shift narratives and inform policymakers.

Actionable Tactics:

  • Coordinate a series of op‐eds, podcasts, and data‐driven infographics that highlight the challenges and opportunities that American higher education is facing.
  • Create testimony toolkits for leaders speaking before legislative bodies.
  • Partner with local media to showcase student success and community impact.
Strategic, Sequential, and Ongoing Steps

Final Thoughts: Leading Beyond the Lecture Hall

These ten strategies are not prescriptions; they’re invitations to collectively chart and clear the path that higher education leaders should pave right now. The paving will be accelerated by the hearts, heads, and hands of leaders working together.

Let’s not only meet this moment but help define it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main challenges facing higher education today?

According to insights shared by Lori E. Varlotta, today’s colleges and universities are grappling with several critical issues. Key ones include the following: a decline in public trust, the increasing politicization of both the curricula and co-curricula, and an unsustainable funding model. To successfully address these challenges, Varlotta shares strategies that help academic leaders model the fundamental aim of education: a calling in (not a calling out) in the rigorous pursuit of truth.

What does it mean to “Lead with Inquiry, Not Ideology”?

Institutions that lead with inquiry are incubators for open dialogue and critical thinking. Conversely, institutions driven by a set ideology are prone to curtail (consciously or unconsciously) the exchange of diverse ideas and genuine inquiry. Ideology-based environments make it difficult for members of the community to ask necessary but uncomfortable questions and to challenge ideas without censorship. In academe, curiosity should be valued over conformity.

How can higher education institutions rebuild trust?

A key element in rebuilding trust, as highlighted by the Lori Varlotta, is through evidence-based discourse. In an era of “Truth Decay” (as coined by RAND), universities must actively teach students to discern data from opinion, vet sources, recognize propaganda, and think critically. Such teaching not only strengthens academic rigor but also develops the types of skills that foster informed civic and democratic participation.

Why is understanding important in a polarized environment?

The U.S. has become increasingly polarized over the last decade. If classmates, neighbors, citizens, and co-workers want to have functional relationships with each other, we must seek to understand rather than aim to persuade. According to Varlotta, the basis of such relationships includes empathetic listening and a demonstration of openness. Understanding doesn’t necessitate agreement. It does, however, lay the foundation for the types of constructive engagement that are essential to democratic institutions and societies.

How can universities cultivate civic engagement in their students?

Beyond theoretical learning, Lori suggests that democracy should be practiced, not just taught. This involves embedding into the curriculum experiential learning opportunities such as community-based research and service-learning projects. These hands-on experiences allow students to actively participate in civic life, becoming theoretically- and practically-informed citizens who advocate, organize, and lead, not just vote.

What is the significance of empowering grassroots leaders within an institution?

Authentic change often originates from those directly involved with the issues. Universities that aim to facilitate social change should support students, faculty, and staff who conduct rigorous research in areas that connect personal interest to a campus or community need. Empowering grassroots leaders, who “do the homework,” is one way to bolster individual agency and develop policies, practices, and norms that improve the institution’s and the larger community’s wellbeing.

How can institutions address challenges related to bureaucracy and funding?

Lori Varlotta advocates for streamlining decision-making processes to foster innovation. She suggests that practical solutions like rapid-response teams and Values Impact Assessments (VIAs) can enable universities to make nimble and principled decisions. Regarding funding, sustainable universities must look beyond traditional sources like tuition revenue to support their mission. Today’s universities must diversify funding through philanthropic partnerships, industry collaborations, and long-term grants.

What is the importance of strategic alliances and legal action for higher education?

While competition has historically been the norm, Varlotta explains why collaboration is key to industry reform. Forging strategic alliances with other institutions, through joint statements or shared advocacy, strengthens the collective voice of higher education. Furthermore, in an environment where academic freedom is under threat, Varlotta encourages academic leaders to pull legal levers: file amicus briefs and assert state-level protections in the defense of core academic principles.

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