Last month, HxA Executive Director Michael Regnier and I attended a remarkable conference at John Hopkins University focused on exploring how academic inquiry can help cultivate the human capacity for thinking and acting as a citizen. It was a who’s-who convening of leading defenders of academic freedom within the HxA community, including remarks by Jonathan Zimmerman, Josiah Ober, Jed Atkins, Leila Brammer, Benjamin Storey, Lee Strang, Fabio Rojas, Paul Carrese, Timothy J. Shaffer, and Amy Binder. 

But what made this convening remarkable was how central viewpoint diversity was to discussions of student education. For too long conversations of this sort were sidelined by elite universities. But here was Hopkins president Ron Daniels opening a conference co-hosted with the American Enterprise Institute with a talk about the importance of viewpoint diversity, recognizing the value of research work done by think-tank scholars on these topics to the disciplinary scholarship at Hopkins. 

Events off-stage were equally striking. When I had coffee with the two leaders of the HxA Campus Community at Hopkins, they told me how leaders in the university administration had been meeting with them regularly to explore ways that HxA could help Hopkins improve and build a culture of open inquiry on campus. Similarly, when I had  lunch with a senior member of the administration to discuss this same question, we found we had so much to talk about that we agreed to meet again at dinner that night to continue the work. 

Our visit to Hopkins shows how critical this moment is for defenders of open inquiry in higher education. Despite the many obvious dangers and threats, we see many opportunities too. Ten years ago, our principles and our members were underdogs on campus. But today, HxA’s work is becoming ever-more central to insider reform. At an HxA webinar last week with Alice Dreger in conversation with Steven Pinker, he said, “faculty at Harvard who generally delight in criticizing the administration and each other are united in this moment of crisis.” Looking out nationally, we see the same trend.

Now with nearly 8,000 members and campus communities on 74 campuses (and growing again this fall), long-time HxA members like Steve and so many others are organizing, collaborating, and promoting open inquiry at a scale on their campus — and with a level of influence — that we’ve never before seen. When we launched our Campus Community Network in January 2023, we were hopeful about the momentum such a network might bring to our members and campuses across our network. We are now delighted to be seeing the campus impact of the principles of open inquiry that we at HxAfirst formulated and began defending nearly a decade ago.

As we look toward our annual conference in New York City later this month, I’ve been reflecting on the extraordinary changes (and challenges) that our system of higher education is experiencing — and the kind of organization HxA needs to be to meet them. 

We live in a time when the very foundations of higher education — open inquiry, free exchange of ideas, intellectual humility — are being tested and reexamined from every direction. As part of our ongoing evolution, HxA is narrowing our focus to amplify what we do best: equipping our faculty members and campus leaders to foster campus environments that support knowledge seeking through open inquiry. 

If you’ve felt the climate on your campus shift, if you’ve wrestled with how to teach truthfully or publish honestly in a politicized  environment, if you’ve found yourself longing for a community that gets it — then you already understand why this next chapter of HxA matters so much.

We’re not just reacting to cultural changes on our campuses. We’re shaping them. And as always, you, our members, are at the heart of that work.

I hope to see many of you in person later this month at the HxA conference in NYC to be part of this vital conversation. If you haven’t yet registered, there’s still time. It’s going to be a gathering like no other — filled with courageous ideas, diverse voices, and people who believe that the academy’s best days still lie ahead. I hope you will join us for our conference, at a moment,  like no other.