When it takes universities and colleges this long to figure out what was already obvious for years, no wonder the public has lost trust in them.

“We Lost Our Mission’: Three University Leaders on the Future of Higher Ed” is the latest “Breaking: Water is Wet!” media headline, this one at the New York Times[gift link]. Sian Beilock, president of Dartmouth College, Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, and Jennifer Mnookin, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, spoke with Times’ opinion editor Ariel Kaminer. Despite the headline, it is not an encouraging discussion.

The gist of the three presidents’ “confession” is the same as that of the Biden Administration’s response to the public’s gradual realization that its policies were a disaster. “We need better messaging!” Translation: “We need to get better at fooling people into thinking we are doing what we are not.”

The three university presidents criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to reform higher education’s conversion from educating to indoctrinating while saying they must work to regain the trust of the American people and emphasize viewpoint diversity. “I don’t believe a compact with a Republican or Democratic-led White House is the right way to effect change in higher ed,” Beilock said. Funny though: the three wouldn’t be making having this discussion if the Trump administration wasn’t throwing a spotlight on their bias and failure. “The Trump administration is cracking down, artificial intelligence is ramping up, varsity athletes are getting paid and a college education is losing its status as the presumptive choice of ambitious high school seniors,” the article begins. Yes, that’s a fair summary of where higher education is right now, with no improvement in sight.

So what is the rehabilitation strategy the three elite institution leaders are pondering? “[We] have work to do in higher ed to gain back the trust of the American people, and to make sure that we’re serving this country and the world in the best way possible.”

Clueless. Completely clueless. There is no reason to trust DEI-supporting , loyal Democrat, woke and progressive college leaders, professors and administrators to decide what the “best way” to serve “this country and the world” is. To them, the best interests of the nation and the world is for the United States to emulate Europe, not the other way around. Indoctrinating the rising generations to accept progressive “truth” is the “best way.”

Beilock appears to be the closest of the three not have been made completely stupid by partisan bias. When Roth, president of Wesleyan University, says that it is impossible to work with a Trump Administration “who’s willing to actually destroy what we do well”—-you know, as in graduating reliable young socialists—the Dartmouth president cries BS.

“I think our responsibility as presidents should be to look at what we’re doing and how we can do it better, certainly in concert with the federal government, and be clear and defend our rights and values, whether that’s free expression, academic freedom, and understand that’s our responsibility to the American people, where trust in higher education is low,” she says. “As leaders, we lost our mission a bit about what higher education was about. We’re educational organizations. We’re not political organizations, like the R.N.C. or D.N.C. We’re not even social advocacy organizations.”

Right. “A bit.” She can say what her school and the others shouldn’t be, but she is disingenuous to say the colleges and universities are not currently serving as political organizations and social advocacy organizations.” That’s exactly what they have become, and why non-totalitarian, single party-promoting Americans don’t trust them, can’t trust them, and never should regardless of the platitudes they mouth. Roth replies, “No, and none of our schools has ever been that.” It isn’t what it is. Denial. Lies. Gaslighting.

Mnookin then figures out where the safe place to be is in this discussion, and weasels, “I think that many universities, not all, but many, were for a period of time deeply focused on identity diversity, and really not so focused on viewpoint diversity or belief diversity.”

Right, “For a period of time.” Like for the last 40 years.

“I think there’s a danger of a pendulum swinging too far in the other direction, and we need to worry about that,” she added. “But I think universities should be spaces where ideas, and different ideas, embodied by people from different backgrounds, come together, and where it won’t always be comfortable, but where we will learn and do better from that engagement.”

Wow, what a concept.