In his guest essay for the New York Times Boaz Barak advocates the standpoint that
universities or to be exact students within them ought to have an apolitical attitude.
More precisely, in his classroom (Barak is professor of computer science at Harvard Uni-
versity) leniency in academic assignments because of political involvement in activism is
not granted.
Approved! Indeed, performance in university classes should not be suffering due to
lack of time, since, as Dr. Barak rightly mentions, academic education should be seen
as choice of profession. Nevertheless, when his point of view is that ”when we erode the
boundaries between academic and the political, we ultimately harm both”, then he is
simply wrong.
First, the distrust in academia Barak is worried about has multiple causes. One of
them is for sure the lack of solutions universities and other democratic institutions are
proposing for global threats such as the climate crisis, mass migration, social dislocations
due to economic inequalities, etc. To be sure, the reason of this distrust is not the political
involvement of certain academics, but that their involvement is unintelligible for a vast
majority of people. There is a lack of communication between university and public
society.
Second, every single discipline of study is essential for (certain parts of) public dis-
course. Accurately, Baraks goal is to ”make students better citizens through developing
habits of mind”. However, a specialist in whatever field of study distinguishes herself as
a better citizen if and only if she knows how her field of expertise is related to society and
which policies do have an impact thereon. For this, certain political discussions would
need to be part of the education itself.
Third, academics are indeed experts on narrow topics. This is for better or for worse
the way scholars have developed over the last centuries. While this does not grant them
authority over politics, this does also not hinder them from taking an active stance in
times of unmistakable injustice. To bury one’s head in the sand is not a solution but
rather an easy way to avoid the necessity of action when it would be needed the most.
Summing up, Barak is making his life way too easy by asserting that trust in universi-
ties can be regained by keeping one hand’s off political discourse. In fact, one may claim
that quite the opposite is true. Especially core-democratic institutions like universities
are precisely the right place to foster public and political discourse.
[Bar] Boaz Barak. Opinion — I Teach Computer Science, and That Is All — ny-
times.com. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/opinion/work- school-
classroom- politics- harvard.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ek8.5mVR.
tp1hr35gS2ua&smid=url-share. [Accessed 04-05-2025].