This article was written for Free Expression at the Wall Street Journal and originally published on February 6, 2026.
It was the first—and only—formal complaint I received about my teaching. The year was 2003, and I had just assigned Walker Percy’s novel, “Love in the Ruins,” in an undergraduate Philosophy in Literature course at Franciscan University of Steubenville. One student told her parents, who promptly objected to campus administration. The book, they said, contained sexual content that had no place in the classroom—or anywhere else. The parents requested the assignment’s withdrawal as well as my punishment.
Fortunately, my administration went to bat for me, explaining to the parents that while the book had a small amount of racy content, I was neither glorifying nor promoting it. To the contrary, the book depicts a future America on the brink of collapse, and the objectionable content was meant to be seen as just that—unworthy of imitation. The book, like my course, aimed to deepen students’ understanding of human nature and commitment to virtuous action in pursuit of the common good.
Texas, where I now lead a different Catholic university, is the epicenter of the revolt against collegiate excess, with the governor and lawmakers taking steps to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion ideology on campus. The New York Times recently lamented the “conservative overhaul of the University of Texas,” as new laws cabin what’s taught in the classroom. On Jan. 30, Texas A&M completely eliminated its women’s and gender studies programs.
Professors and activists expressing outrage over the supposed death of academic freedom misunderstand what they claim to support. Academic freedom enables the pursuit of truths others want buried. No university can do its work without it. But like every other freedom, it must also serve a greater good—namely, human flourishing and civic health. That’s what I was attempting to do in 2003, preparing my students for a life well lived, with proper guardrails and direction.
The most powerful forces in higher education now do the opposite, demanding academic freedom without any limitations on where it leads or what it achieves. They have forgotten their duty to serve the truth and the common good. When mixed with the relativism that’s pervasive in American culture, this freedom becomes even more misguided. It leaves students with an empty sense of cynical hedonism or an ideological obsession with activism. Both options tend toward destruction—cultural, economic and individual.
The point of academic freedom is to build up, not tear down. From their foundations in the Middle Ages, universities explicitly aimed at moral and civic formation. For most of its history, the university was a religious institution, so it’s no surprise that religious luminaries shed the best light. Saint John Henry Newman wrote in the 19th century that a college education “aims at raising the intellectual tone of society” and “supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration.” In the 20th century, Saint John Paul II wrote that academic freedom should be guaranteed, “so long as the rights of the individual person and of the community are preserved within the confines of the truth and the common good.”
Few, if any, public universities now care for those things, except in the most abstract and meaningless sense. Only a handful of private universities do. But every institution of higher education ought to direct its teaching toward the betterment of students and the society they will serve. That may require some limitations, born from a university’s own distinctive mission, on inquiry and expression. Yet far from being mere abrogation, such guardrails guide professors and students alike toward deeper things. If that seems confusing to the modern mind, that’s because our society has lost its philosophical moorings.
Texas lawmakers have aimed to restore the connection between higher education and our culture’s foundations. I leave it others to determine whether they’ve hit the mark, but credit goes to them for recognizing that a college education must have a greater purpose than ideology.
No doubt, I’d be irritated to have politicians looking over my shoulder and into my faculty’s syllabi. But if public universities won’t police themselves, then someone must, for the sake of the common good. As for me and my private university, we’ll keep doing our best to show the state schools of Texas a higher education worthy of the name. I welcome the competition—as well as the complaints of those who need a lesson in academic freedom’s true purpose.
President Jonathan J. Sanford, Ph.D.
Jonathan J. Sanford, PhD, is the 10th president of the University of Dallas and a tenured professor in the Philosophy Department. As president, Dr. Sanford has dedicated his efforts to leading the University of Dallas to more fully realizing its calling as a premier Catholic liberal arts university by means of a thoroughgoing commitment to academic excellence, a distinctive and thoroughly nurturing approach to forming the character of our students, and the cultivation of true magnanimity in service to church and society.
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