WashU shouldn’t pretend education and politics are separate anymore

WashU has always presented itself as a place of opportunity. As students, we are encouraged to pursue whatever we desire, so long as it is career-advancing. Professional preparation is built into advising, recruitment, and campus messaging. The University’s emphasis on professional outcomes and achievements is what attracts students here in the first place. These outcomes also shape how we view the purpose of higher education, even as it is under threat.

Across the United States, recent legislation has increasingly targeted LGBTQ+ students and faculty, limited how race and gender can be taught in classrooms, and tried to control universities, asserting political authority over curricula and hiring practices. These issues actively determine whose lives are recognized, whose knowledge is legitimized, and whether education itself is still a space of critical inquiry and advocacy. And yet, the most alarming thing is how institutions, including WashU, treat education as if it exists outside of politics.

WashU, as an institution, has traded public-facing politics for career outcomes, encouraging students to do the same as individuals. When a university defines the primary purpose of education as professional preparation, civic engagement becomes a risk and is disregarded rather than made an educational responsibility.

WashU’s institutional philosophy reinforces this educational structure. The University explicitly states in its statement of principles that a research institution “cannot have a political ideology or pursue a particular vision of social change.” Its role is knowledge production and the preparation of leaders, not advocacy. 

But political neutrality does not depoliticize education; it displaces responsibility. If the university does not take a stance on attacks on human and educational rights, then the political conditions shaping education appear distant from our everyday lives. Curriculum battles, academic freedom disputes, and policies that affect universities across the country don’t feel urgent or important, even though students are among those most affected by them. This is the deeper cost of neutrality in a career-oriented institution; it produces the illusion that education is an apolitical space when it is clearly not. 

By choosing neutrality, we choose to ignore the issues within our educational system. Institutional neutrality does not remain on the institutional level; it influences the student body’s engagement with real issues. Students learn to treat their academic lives as individual investments rather than collective civic spaces. Political engagement becomes optional and deferred until after careers are secure.

This is evident in how we, as members of this institution, all worry about reputational risk and consequences. As students preparing to enter the workforce, we learn that being political can carry reputational consequences that affect employment and graduate program admissions. The University’s political activity guidance underscores this in its own effort to avoid being associated with political issues. It states that “individuals may participate politically, but they must clearly separate their views from institutional affiliation.” WashU students quickly learn that advocacy can carry professional costs, while career advancement brings institutional rewards. The rational response is to prioritize the latter.

The same logic can be applied to the value we place on certain fields of study. Humanities and social inquiry courses are often seen only as electives to meet graduation requirements, not as intellectual subjects worthy of our time. Students navigating dense pre-professional paths try to minimize their coursework outside what is necessary. This is understandable, but it demonstrates an institutional ecosystem that rewards measurable success through grades, internships, and career placement rather than engagement with political, historical, and ethical learning. 

I recognize that not all students have the same freedom to take the risk of public political advocacy and invest in the humanities. For almost all, stable career opportunities are a necessity. The pressure is even greater for students navigating financial pressure, immigration uncertainty, or family responsibilities. Those who cannot afford the consequences often do not engage politically. 

However, this lack of political action is not the fault of these students, but largely that of universities like WashU, which reinforce these ideas. Students understand that if advocacy were to carry professional or reputational consequences, the University would likely not defend them, as doing so would threaten its own reputation and institutional relationships. If politics feels unsafe, and the humanities are professionally costly, advocacy is exclusive when it should be accessible. 

I understand that neutrality can have real value. Universities must protect discourse and dialogue across ideological differences. Career preparation also provides students with mobility and security, helping them improve their quality of life through higher education. These are genuine positives, but they come with consequences. When neutrality and professional focus dominate our education, universities undermine their own civic values. Civic engagement fuels critical inquiry, while neutrality protects institutional power and the status quo.

WashU prides itself on producing leaders. Leadership, however, is not only professional achievement but also recognizing and speaking out when the institution’s academic freedom, which makes achievement possible, is under political attack, now more than ever. 

WashU’s own motto, “Per Veritatem Vis” — strength through truth — asks more of us than neutrality. Education is a collective space for freedom, advocacy, and change. It is time we speak the truth to defend it.