Conservative(s) Teaching and Classroom Neutrality
June 2–4, 2025 marked the James Madison Program’s now biennial Robert J. Giuffra ’82 (Reunion) Conference, as well as the Program’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebration. As befits a celebration marking the Silver Anniversary of Princeton’s storied Program on American Ideals and Institutions, the conference theme was “The Renewal of Civic Education.” Speakers came from an array of state and private centers, institutes, and schools, all inspired in one way or another by the JMP, to discuss their missions, goals, and challenges in the shared project of the renewal of higher education.
That project has been spearheaded by scholars who are often described as “conservative.” Since the project includes a significant commitment to the revival of academic freedom and freedom of inquiry, there is some irony in this, as Keith Whittington, recipient of the 2025 James Q. Wilson Award for Distinguished Scholarship on the Nature of a Free Society, noted. For after all, academic freedom was once the rallying cry of the left. Yet it is possible (and undesirable) to overstate the conservative tenor of the renewal, since many classical liberals have, with conservative reformers, recognized the need for reform of higher education and the pervasive threats to free inquiry.
An important question raised by several participants at the conference concerned the nature of good teaching within the new centers and institutes. One way, it is widely acknowledged, that pedagogy has become corrupted in recent years is by the transformation of the classroom into a space for explicit progressive advocacy. The suppression of dissenting opinions and the presentation of disputed theses as facts, with which disagreement is not even imaginable, much less acceptable, has diminished freedom of thought, speech, and inquiry within the classroom and done much to provoke the need for change.
But what does an alternative pedagogy look like? The question is critical, since it can look to some liberal colleagues as if conservatives are doing precisely the same thing in the classroom that progressives have done, but simply from a different standpoint. Phillip Muñoz, for example, who directs the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government at the University of Notre Dame, related the story of a colleague making precisely this objection to what Muñoz is doing in his Center.
A common response to this worry, articulated by more than one participant, is that conservatives in the classroom should teach the arguments on both sides, presenting the best case for each in a neutral fashion. It is desirable, in this approach, that students really not know at the end of the semester where their professor stands when disputed issues are under discussion. This approach would best serve the ultimate goal of teaching students to think critically and judge for themselves the truth of the matter, without their professors—liberal or conservative—putting a finger on the scales in one or another direction.
There are obvious virtues to such an approach. And there are clearly circumstances in which it is called for. Yet I want here to raise the possibility of a third way to approach at least some difficult issues in the classroom, one that departs from the strategy of neutrality.
In some classes that I have taught (at my own state university) I have included in the syllabus work of my own that clearly identifies and argues for a particular position on a controverted issue. For example, I have used my book Lying and Christian Ethics in a course on lying and truth-telling, and Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (co-authored with Robert P. George) in a medical ethics class. These were not the only texts I used, of course; the syllabus always included work by those who, for example, believe that lying is sometimes justified or that the destruction of human embryos and other unborn human beings is likewise sometimes (or always) permissible.
But in each case it would be immediately evident to any student who even opened the book where I stood on the issues. And so I owned those positions up front, publicly, acknowledging that they are controversial, and indeed, that my own views on these topics are not just minority views but in some respects radical and radically unpopular.
What value was there in this? And did I not thereby put those students who disagreed with me on the defensive?
To begin with the second question, my first point to students was that I assumed that all of them did and would disagree with some or all of what I thought was true. That would put them solidly within the mainstream of anyone who has thought about the issues about which I write most often. I am used to such disagreement, and I welcome it from my students. Indeed, I would be suspicious if more than a tiny fraction were to tell me they had come to agree with me! They thus should feel free in discussion to raise any and every objection that might occur to them, confident that I would take no umbrage at their dissenting views.
Of course, any professor who owns a controversial position in the classroom in this way has to make good on the promise to be open to criticism and immune to offense, and to treat all students with respect, whatever their views. I believe that is indeed possible.
This leads to the first of the two above questions: what value is there in such an approach? If a professor can successfully present a controversial position while simultaneously creating space for its vigorous criticism, and do so in an open and genial way, then it seems to me the benefits are these:
First, what is modeled in the classroom is not simply the presentation of arguments and critical thought, but the presentation of arguments and critical thought in defense of what is believed to be true. And this matters. Classroom neutrality can be important and appropriate in various ways, but it risks what neutrality-based approaches to politics risk: that it suggests to students that there is no truth, only arguments, and that their presentation and criticism on all sides is as much an intellectual game as anything else.
But that is not where we want our students to end up: we want them to argue for the sake of getting at, and defending, the truth. And while this can be encouraged by one who takes no side in the argument, it is shown by one who defends a position because, as he says, he believes it to be true.
Second, what is likewise modeled and shown is that the project of defending what is believed to be true can be done in a good spirit, with goodwill, and with respect for all participants. When this approach is successful (I am not saying that I am successful in it!) then intellectual opponents will have become as good intellectual friends as intellectual allies will be.
And in this way, third, the virtues of the neutrality approach are preserved, and the vices of the advocacy approach avoided. Encouraging students to disagree with the professor’s stated views and to make and improve the case against him or her does develop the critical skills that are essential to higher education. But it need not and ought not be a form of intellectual advocacy or bullying: quite the opposite. To subject one’s own views to criticism, and to make the genuine exertion of presenting the best possible responses is, I think, a form of intellectual humility. (Again, however, I do not wish to boast that I possess this virtue!)
Like all good teaching, this approach is not without risk. It could tilt toward advocacy and it could also tilt toward intellectual gamesmanship. But I think it should be considered a genuine alternative to the ideal of classroom neutrality.
I should hasten to add that I do not think one should rush to tell students everything one believes. The approach I here outline is, I think, best adopted as a part of one’s overall teaching approach, and that approach will inevitably include neutrality and presentation of all sides of some issues. I don’t, for example, have a considered or strong view about everything, and neutrality might be a way to take the temperature down on an issue that is, for one reason or another, too hot to handle in the moment.
In closing, I wish to address a different criticism of classroom neutrality that was raised at the Madison conference, to which my view might seem friendly. The conservative movement for reform of higher education is, in its soundest form, predicated on the claim that higher education must be dedicated to the pursuit of truth. I say “in its soundest form” because some great books approaches can appear to be suspicious of the notion of truth. After all, the authors of the books that are greatest clearly disagree with one another! And so a great books approach can sometimes be, or be thought of as, infused with a certain relativism. I think this relativism was not on display at the Madison conference, and rightly so.
But if the point is the seeking of truth, then should we not be disappointed if our students have not gotten to the truth at the end of the semester? Should we not think that we have failed? Should not teaching the truth be our true goal in the classroom?
On the many issues that divide our country and our students and colleagues, I think not. Experience suggests that most students—and professors—enter the classroom with their fundamental beliefs already fixed. Those beliefs are unlikely to shift much in the course of a semester under any form of pedagogy that is not manipulative, bullying, or dishonest. That students should move from, say, false beliefs about abortion, euthanasia, sex ethics, or any other deeply controverted issue to true beliefs is too high an aspiration.
Here my view converges, I believe, with defenders of the neutrality approach. Many students (and professors) enter the classroom not only thinking they already know the truth, but that any opposing views are not just false but obviously wrongheaded and perhaps wicked. It is a noble and reasonable aspiration to get such students (and professors!) to come to the recognition that perhaps their own views need more defense, and to begin to see what such defense would look like; and that perhaps the views of those with whom they disagree have more, intellectually and morally, to be said for them than was previously thought.
I suggest that an approach that incorporates first-person defense of beliefs actually held by the professor of record can accomplish these goals, while also demonstrating that amity and comity are desirable and achievable between those who disagree vigorously. Such an approach should be on the table in considering the reform of higher education.