Bob Jones’s Warning

Now seems to be an especially precarious time for American colleges and universities. In recent months, American institutions of higher learning have been confronted with near-constant disruptions that threaten both their short-term operations and long-term stability. …

Conservatives in Washington now seek to leverage their newfound power over American higher education more decisively than ever before. But not-too-distant history reveals that reform efforts led principally by the executive branch may come with unintended consequences. Indeed, that is the lesson of one major clash involving race, religious liberty, and Bob Jones University that unfolded less than 50 years ago before the US Supreme Court. By recalling the circumstances under which Bob Jones University v. United States reached the Court, both conservatives and progressives will find lessons about the perils that accompany the aggressive use of executive power to reform American colleges and universities. …

But the Court’s decision in Bob Jones becomes somewhat more difficult to defend when inspected closely. As two legal scholars presciently wrote in the Supreme Court Review shortly after the decision was handed down, the reasons that the Court articulated for its holding seemed unlikely to “withstand scrutiny,” and might instead “haunt and discomfit future cases.”

They were right: Bob Jones continues to haunt our national debates over executive power and higher education reform, for as Shep Melnick has written in these pages, attempting to remake American colleges and universities in the executive branch’s image is always perilous business.

Read the whole thing at: Bob Jones’s Warning – Dennis Wieboldt