Governing Public Universities: How States Can Reassert Authority and Restore Trust

Introduction: The Crisis in Higher Education

Upon taking office in January 2025, President Trump embarked on an ambitious higher education reform campaign. The urgency of this task was punctuated by the recent wave of antisemitic protests at elite universities. Yet that obscene spectacle was just one manifestation of a larger sickness—a rot eating away at the heart of U.S. institutions of higher education (IHEs). Far too many of these institutions had abandoned their responsibilities as caretakers of America’s intellectual and cultural inheritance, choosing instead to undermine that inheritance—and going so far as to violate federal law to do so.

This tragic reality was most powerfully demonstrated during the 2024 campus antisemitism crisis. For over two months, menacing mobs vandalized campuses, seized and occupied buildings, and erected illegal “encampments”—all while harassing and intimidating Jewish students with genocidal slogans. This tidal wave of antisemitism derived from two distinct sources. The first was imported from the Middle East: ancient, primitive hatreds carried like pathogens to U.S. campuses, including academic departments (e.g., Middle East Studies).

The second was produced domestically. Radical campus activists—including students, faculty, and administrators—felt justified in their lawlessness, bigotry, and violence because they were (and remain) enmeshed in a divisive “neo-Marxist” worldview that casts American society as “systemically racist” and entire groups as “oppressors” and “oppressed” based on immutable characteristics. Academic disciplines and prominent theories champion the tenets of this worldview while consultants and administrators implement those tenets under the guise of “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).” This worldview distorts student admissions and hiring, promotion, and review policies for faculty and staff. It shapes which academic articles get published and which projects receive funding. It demands the censoring of certain ideas and the elevation of others. It distorts the norms and culture of modern campus life. In many ways, the campus antisemitism crisis of 2024 was the “DEI treatment” visited upon Jewish students by mobs rampaging with impunity.

To its credit, the Trump Administration recognized the connection between campus antisemitism and this larger sickness, and has wielded its authorities to combat both. These efforts have borne fruit; however, much work remains to be done. Today, the rot in higher education continues to manifest in:

• illegal racial discrimination against students and faculty, including in admissions and hiring.
• free speech violations, including those associated with “bias response teams,” pronoun mandates, compelled confessions of fealty to progressive values, quarantined “free speech” zones, and IHEs caving to cancel mobs, both in hiring and in censoring controversial speakers.
• viewpoint discrimination against faculty, staff, and students.
• excessive foreign student enrollment, which calls into question who IHEs principally serve.
• failures to report foreign gifts and contracts, in open defiance of IHEs’ legal obligations and to the detriment of U.S. security interests.
• sponsoring non-scholarly fields such as “the studies” which openly pursue activism over truth.

Recently, the pace of federal reforms has slowed in response to judicial delays and entrenched resistance from within IHEs. The intensity and uniformity of this resistance reflect the general absence of viewpoint diversity among faculty and staff. Along with distorting research and teaching, faculty “monocultures” are especially pernicious in the context of prevailing “shared governance” systems that vest excessive policymaking authorities in the hands of faculty senates. Such systems conflate disciplinary (or sub-disciplinary) expertise with authority.

Public universities are chartered and funded by states to serve broad societal interests. In this context, it makes sense to vest policymaking authority in politically accountable state-appointed representatives (board members) rather than in IHE employees—particularly, employees insulated from accountability by unique job protections, such as tenure and academic freedom. Moreover, even insofar as the public interest is represented in governing boards, these institutions frequently defer to faculty senates on major policy questions. Ongoing faculty-led resistance to needed reforms (including state-level reforms) suggests that continued progress toward resolving the myriad abuses that plague higher education will require tackling imbalanced public university governance systems. Reforming these systems will require state policymakers to assume the kind of leadership most recently demonstrated by the federal government.

The Federal Reform Strategy

To date, the Trump Administration’s reform strategy has been threefold. First, the president took executive action to reorient the federal government’s posture on key policy issues, including DEI and gender ideology. Many of the president’s executive orders (EOs) yielded immediate effects; however, reforms implemented via EO can be revoked just as easily. The next Democratic administration would be extremely likely to reverse these actions.[1]

Second, the Trump Administration has investigated more than 60 schools—almost half of which were public institutions—for failing to abide by their Title VI civil rights obligations and leveraged continued access to various federal benefits—including research grants and student visas—toward this end. This approach has yielded noteworthy successes including case resolution agreements or “settlements” committing IHEs to sweeping policy reforms in exchange for restored access to federal benefits. The Administration has used this same approach, and achieved similar results, with respect to its Title IX investigations.

These successes are heartening, but there is a limit to their capacity to lock in long-term improvements. Many of the negotiated provisions for reporting and monitoring expire after only three years. More generally, the linchpin of this strategy has been the Administration’s willingness to leverage access to federal benefits and programs. Absent that leadership, compliance could decline dramatically. Additionally, several IHEs—most notably, Harvard University—have aggressively resisted federal reforms and delivered legal setbacks to the Administration. There is also a question of scale. The majority of IHEs are not under investigation despite many having engaged in similarly abusive practices. The settlement strategy has been successful in forcing elite universities to comply with federal law; however, it is ultimately a game of “whack-a-mole” played with far more “moles” than “hammers.”

Third, and most recently, the Trump Administration offered a select group of universities the opportunity to join in a new Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education (“Compact”) by exchanging reform commitments for access to new federal benefits, such as priority access to research grants, assurance of compliance with civil rights law, and the possibility of future federal partnerships.[2] None of the solicited IHEs joined the proposed Compact, although a few institutions, including New College and Valley Forge Military College, have expressed interest in it. At the time of this writing, the Department of Education is considering a revised Compact that would be open to all IHEs; however, there are likely limits to what can be achieved through this voluntary policy vehicle.[3]

A State Leadership Opportunity

The bottom line is this: federal executive action alone cannot excise the rot from higher education. Although the noted federal levers above are important, state governments directly control the creation, governance, and funding of public IHEs—institutions that enroll nearly 73% of all college students. By leveraging these authorities, state governments can reshape the public higher education landscape to complement and bolster federal reform efforts.

As discussed below, several states are already leading in this regard. Yet even with purse strings in hand, state education reforms often encounter stiff resistance from activist faculties and staff. This is because many faculty and administrators possess an almost religious zeal for DEI, transgenderism, and other divisive (aka “woke”) values and policies. Not only did the academy play the central role in developing these themes, but it has also inculcated them in a generation of now mid-career professionals. National attitudes may have shifted, but “wokeness” remains firmly entrenched in higher education.

Overcoming institutional resistance must begin with addressing the norms and structures associated with “shared governance.” Such systems divide responsibility for most admissions, staffing, curricular, and promotions decisions between a faculty body (usually a faculty senate) and administrators at the institution level under the distant supervision of a governing board. The authorities of each of these actors are typically divided as follows:

• Governing boards, sometimes called boards of trustees or regents (hereafter, “boards”), direct university budgets, bear fiduciary responsibility for the institution, establish major policies, and hire IHE presidents or chief executives. Board members are appointed by state officials or (less commonly) elected by voters. Sometimes, they also approve the hiring of other senior administrators, approve tenure awards, and approve major academic initiatives.
• University administrators, including chancellors, presidents, provosts, vice presidents, and deans, manage day-to-day IHE operations and set policies that reflect board priorities. Senior leaders, such as presidents and chancellors, are typically appointed by boards.
• Faculty senates typically comprise tenured and tenure-track faculty. Faculty senates typically dominate academic decisions, including course curricula, degree requirements, academic standards, and policies affecting faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure. In public IHEs, faculty senates are often formally unionized, serving as collective bargaining units and negotiating directly with administrators, boards, governors, and legislators. Because of this bargaining power, boards and presidents often defer to these negotiations—and implicitly, to faculty authority—rather than taking a more active leadership role.

The precise balance and relative authorities of each of these actors vary by state, system, and institution. In California Community Colleges, for example, nearly all aspects of campus operations must be conducted in direct consultation and with the approval of the campus faculty senate under their shared governance (as enacted in 1988 by AB 1725). In contrast, Texas passed sweeping governance reform in SB 37 in 2025 that realigned authority and responsibility for most academic functions to the president and regents, and expanded accountability for ensuring the full implementation of SB 17, which banned DEI across the public IHE systems.

Without question, there will be many public university systems in which all three actors will oppose needed reforms; however, faculty bodies are almost invariably bastions of the most entrenched resistance. This is partly due to the filtering effects of discrimination against right-leaning faculty members by their left-leaning peers. This discrimination is well documented: repeated surveys show faculty members, by their own admission, discriminate against conservatives in hiring, promotion, and grant review. Over time, this discrimination has caused a dramatic narrowing of faculty viewpoints such that faculty bodies are now effectively captured by the same ideological force that is responsible for abuses higher education reformers seek to address.

Goal #1: Find the Appropriate Governance Balance Through Statute

Governance reform aims first and foremost to appropriately rebalance the relative power relationships between governing boards, administrators, and faculty over public IHE policy. Boards should ensure public IHE policies are guided by the public interest. The all-too-common board practice of deferring to administrators and faculty is inconsistent with this responsibility—particularly, in the current context. To this end, boards should both empower and hold accountable senior administrators—those tasked with ensuring junior administrators and faculty adhere to policy. It is boards that should be “on the hook” for implementing changes called for by the legislators and governors of their states.

Senior administrators, especially presidents and provosts, are responsible for executing and delivering the vision and policies put forth by boards. As their institution’s chief executive and academic officers, the president and provost also bear specific responsibility for ensuring the board’s—and therefore, the public’s—priorities are reflected in campus life and culture. This leadership over the faculty and administrative staff is the mechanism whereby the board’s intent becomes a reality. Since administrators are indirectly accountable to the legislature and the public, they should have the authority to act on the board’s behalf. In many instances, this authority has been undermined through ambiguous policies, collective bargaining, and poor decision-making.

Faculty play a critical role in stewarding the academic and professional development of their students. Unfortunately, faculty can also impede needed reforms on campus by stifling debate and dialogue in the service of narrow ideological agendas. In instances where faculty senates have become overly influential, explicit action and authorities are needed to reassert the public interest. For most public IHEs, this involves:

• (1) Assigning appropriate responsibility and authority to boards, presidents, and provosts.
• (2) Clarifying that faculty bodies should serve “advisory” roles and in support of these leaders.

For many IHEs, where “academic freedom” has been confounded with notions of “faculty authority” and “shared governance,” this realignment also necessitates a significant cultural reset. For example, authorities granted (either formally or de facto) to faculty bodies should shift to boards in the following domains:

• Faculty hiring and promotion – Boards should approve initial job postings and have final approval on decisions for all tenure-track positions. Boards should also review and bear final responsibility for faculty promotion and tenure decisions.
• Core curricula development – Boards should define a list of “core” or “general education” courses spanning multiple disciplines, ensuring that such courses are “foundational and fundamental to a sound post-secondary education,” contain “necessary preparation for civic and/or professional life,” and reflect “core content and methodologies of historic liberal arts and pre-professional disciplines.” Boards should vote to reauthorize or revise core curriculum requirements on a regular basis (e.g., every 1–2 years).
• Non-core curricular review – Boards should commission external parties to assess all offered courses’ engagement with the relevant scholarship on covered topics. Such assessments should occur regularly (every 1–2 years) to ensure student education is accurate and comprehensive. Upon determination that course engagement with the relevant scholarship is inadequate, external parties should recommend remedial action to boards, including hiring and promotion to fill knowledge and perspective gaps. Boards should address any external auditor recommendations related to overall curricula within six months of receiving recommendations.
• Calibrating student discipline – Boards should oversee student disciplinary policies in case of widespread campus disruptions, like those in 2024. At the board’s discretion, IHE presidents would be required to provide the board with detailed reports addressing student disciplinary infractions and IHE policy responses to those infractions, including disciplinary consequences. Presidents would retain direct authority over disciplinary policy while retaining the confidence of the board.
• Senior staff hiring – As is typically the case, boards should approve hiring, promotion, and appointment decisions for all senior administrators, including chancellors, vice chancellors, presidents, provosts, vice presidents, associate provosts, and deans. Additionally, search committees for the most senior positions should comprise a majority (at least 60%) of board members or their appointed representatives. All other such leadership searches should have formal board representation or oversight to enhance accountability and awareness. Doing so helps to ensure state priorities are reflected in hiring decisions.

Since 2023, important reforms to university governance have been enacted in several states, including Texas, Florida, Ohio, Utah, and Indiana. Among these, Texas’ reforms go the furthest in the needed direction. Texas’ SB 37, enacted in 2025, significantly expands board oversight over administrative hiring and curricula, and improves transparency. The law is already yielding impressive results. Texas public universities have reduced course offerings in ethnic and gender studies through a combination of department consolidations and eliminations. These actions have come in response to direction from the Texas Board of Regents, consistent with SB 37 requirements for courses to distinguish between legitimate academic inquiry and advocacy, and to review minor degree and certificate programs with low enrollment numbers for elimination or consolidation. Studies fields plainly represent the latter; however, these overtly politicized fields are not alone in denying students the opportunity to encounter a broad range of credible scholarship.

In many states, shifting these authorities from faculty senates to boards would enable a range of needed reforms.[4] Clarifying that boards sit at the top of the governance structure would create strong incentives for presidents and senior leaders to respond to public values and concerns, rather than those of ideologically captured faculties. Under such an arrangement, wildly unpopular university policies—for example, accommodating men in women’s sports, anti-speech codes, and racially discriminatory hiring—would be difficult to sustain. Likewise, efforts by faculty and junior administrators to preserve illegal DEI offices—for example, by renaming them or by embedding them elsewhere in the university—would face new scrutiny from senior administrators.

Goal #2: Create Accountability Through Transparency

A second critical priority for governance reform is improving public transparency. Transparency is key to accountability insofar as public pressure presupposes public awareness. This pressure is key to ensuring boards remain tethered to the public's values and priorities, whether communicated through governors, legislative bodies, or directly by voters. For a state’s public IHEs to reliably serve the public interest, the public must know what they are doing.

As a part of a bill reforming university governance, a state could improve transparency by requiring online, public posting of materials related to:

• faculty and senior staff jobs, including job advertisements and CVs and resumes for finalists.
• instructors’ CVs and course syllabi, so the public can see what their tax dollars are paying for.
• curriculum standards and audits, so that every important governance action taken on behalf of the public can be viewed by the public. Transparency and accountability should also go all the way to the top.

Ensuring Effective Governance Reform

Using state authorities to reform public systems can help to narrow the “target list” for federal reform efforts and encourage reform momentum, generally. Several other considerations bear mentioning. First, shifting governing authorities to boards naturally raises the question of whether boards have the capacity to assume these responsibilities. In the case of large university systems featuring a single board overseeing multiple campuses, the process is more complex. In some cases, boards may need to develop processes to focus on the needs of different campus types—for example, Research 1 and 2 universities, liberal arts colleges, specialized campuses, and community colleges—perhaps through the creation of board subcommittees.

Second, and more fundamentally, governance reform lays the foundation for addressing what has been described here as the rot in higher education, including discriminatory policies rooted in anti-American, neo-Marxist ideologies. With this foundation in place, such policies must then be uprooted by boards and university administrators. In many cases, this task will be difficult, even with the appropriate authorities in place, due to pressure from reform opponents, including faculty. Candidates for senior administrator positions and board positions should possess strong, demonstrated commitments to needed reforms. Previous management experience implementing difficult workplace policy changes may be especially valued. To ensure continued progress, states should additionally commit to regularly reviewing board reforms—for example, every two years.

Higher education’s challenges will not be easily solved—yet, as the Trump Administration has demonstrated, they are not intractable. By combining the proper authorities with strong accountability, public university governance reform can help restore a large segment of this sector to its historic mission and purpose and make substantial progress toward removing the broader institutional rot afflicting American universities as a whole.

[1] While the public broadly rejects progressive positions on these issues, Democratic policymakers show little interest in moderating their positions.

[2] The list of proposed university commitments addressed discrimination in student admissions and in faculty and administrative hiring and promotion, free speech and civil discourse, institutional neutrality, grade inflation, male intrusion into women’s sports and intimate facilities, tuition rates, funding for hard sciences, transparency for degree outcomes, foreign enrollment, and foreign influence.

[3] Rather than waiting for IHEs to voluntarily joint the Compact, states could simply enact their own compact legislation as proposed in this model bill.

[4] In some cases, such as those in which faculty senate authorities are established through collective bargaining agreements, the process of transferring authorities to boards will likely take time.