University leaders sit at the helm of institutions that serve important public roles: preparing citizens, workers, and leaders who are able to join and transform existing social and economic structures. They are guided in fulfilling these roles by public officials, including Boards and elected officials, who fund and regulate the operation of their colleges and universities. At the same time, university leaders are charged with educating young people, whom they serve as the top officers of the institutions where they learn (and often live), and who sometimes have competing views about the best ways for their institutions to serve them. How should university leaders prioritize the competing interests and demands of their two bosses?1<\/p>\n
In this short essay, I focus on one key question on which the \u2018two bosses\u2019 clash, namely, whether universities should protect students from emotional and discursive harm. While this is a pressing matter, as I will illustrate, it is important to remember that it is an outlier: the expectations of these two bosses commonly align. The public (trustees, alums, boards, and sometimes the public discourse), and the students (including their families), are broadly interested in attending, supporting, and funding higher education institutions that prepare students for their diverse roles in society through high quality educational experiences.2 <\/span>The details of how to do that, and what qualifies as high quality education, are sometimes differently interpreted both across and within these two groups. But some of the most pressing areas of contention in recent years have focused on questions of regulating the increasing partisan interpretation of the boundary of expression, especially as it relates to practices that are meant to address students\u2019 diverse identities, experiences, and needs.<\/p>\n