University Presidents Should Study How Democracy Works

Police officers arrest a protester at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia during a student led Palestine solidarity demonstration on April 25, 2024.Some lessons could be simply expedient. Most acutely: don’t get the chair of your philosophy department arrested. That’s especially true when, looking like a model of respectability while being hauled off, might in the space of two days get 22 million views and become a serious public relations headache.

As that arrested philosophy department chair, I’d like to propose a more visionary lesson: If university presidents want to be on the right side of history, they should study how democracy works and the role that universities play in aiding democratic processes. They should see their job as foremost to educate their students to become engaged members of society—with the side benefit of furthering the democratic process itself.

As a professor of political philosophy who has researched and written extensively on political deliberation and public life, the main lesson I’d like to impart is that this past season of protests is part of a larger political and democratic process. Such a season is not aberrant. Protests have a long and venerated history, and they are central to a well-functioning democracy.

This is what students at my university were trying to do on April 25 and in the days after. Whether or not we like or condone their chants, this is how democracy works. Unlike a merely expedient university president, a visionary one would understand and appreciate the democratic role of students in the public sphere. University leaders who think students need a more capacious understanding of the politics of the situation should work with the faculty to help create spaces for such learning.

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