The Splendor of the Modern University

by Erik W. Matson

Tucked away in a forgotten hallway at George Mason University hangs a large, reprinted excerpt of a poem by John Masefield (1878–1967). Britain’s poet laureate from 1930 until his death, Masefield penned this poem in 1946 to mark the inauguration of a chancellor for the University of Sheffield. The excerpt begins with the second stanza:

There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university.
It is a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know,
where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see;
where seekers and learners alike,
banded together in the search for knowledge,
will honor thought in all its finer ways,
will welcome thinkers in distress or in exile,
will uphold ever the dignity of thought and learning,
and will exact standards in these things.
They give to the young in their impressionable years,
the bond of a lofty purpose shared,
of a great corporate life whose links will not be loosed until they die.
They give young people that close companionship for which youth longs,
and that chance of the endless discussion of the themes which are endless,
without which youth would seem a waste of time.

It then closes with the first stanza, excluding the third altogether:

There are few earthly things more splendid than a university.
In these days of broken frontiers and collapsing values,
when the dams are down and the floods are making misery,
when every ancient foothold has become something of a quagmire,
wherever a university stands, it stands and shines;
wherever it exists, the free minds of men, urged on to full and fair enquiry,
may still bring wisdom into human affairs.

Masefield’s sentiments cast a beautiful vision. A university ought to work to convey universal knowledge and instill the values of free inquiry that undergird not just the academic enterprise, but liberal civilization itself.

With Masefield’s words in mind, I walked one day across campus to the library. There, in the lobby, I beheld the community’s very own “seekers and learners,” clustered around tables and desks, spurring one another on in “full and fair enquiry,” preparing themselves to stand in the breach as so much of our civilization seems to decay. Bags of fast food and Starbucks in hand (library rules against food and beverage be damned!), their dedication to the task of learning was apparent. One might have taken their nonstop—even compulsive—engagement with their social media platforms and chatbot companions as procrastination or a sign of unseriousness. But this would be a mistake. These students were clearly using their media platforms to bring their research efforts into contact with present challenges of the day.

As I wandered across the lobby and towards the stacks, I noticed a focal point of the room: a bookshelf of recommended titles curated by the library staff with care to “honor thought in all its finer ways,” to “welcome thinkers in distress or in exile,” and to “uphold ever the dignity of thought and learning.” The great, canonical works of our civilization were on display alongside a carefully chosen selection of pioneering contemporary works, including:

• Alo Johnston, Am I Trans Enough? (Jessica Kingsley Publishers). A book to guide young people on their trans journey.

• A.B. Poranek, Where the Dark Stands Still (Margaret K. McElderry Books). A Polish gothic fairytale romance.

• Joseph White, You Weren’t Meant to Be Human (S&S, Saga Press). Described by Google Gemini as a “visceral, queer body-horror story that blends elements of Alien and Midsommar.”

• Paris Hilton, Paris: The Memoir (Day Street Books). Paris Hilton’s 2023 autobiography.

• Ruby Harrington, Women Without Kids: The Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood (St. Martin’s Essentials). A “liberating”—according to the New York Times—book valorizing female life without children.

One might question the wisdom and virtue of platforming these ideas in 2026, given the ideological currents of higher education. Isn’t it the case that, according to the UCLA-Higher Education Research Institute, the share of college and university faculty that self-identify as left-leaning rose from 44.8% in 1998 to 59.8% in 2016–17? Isn’t it the case that this increase has largely been driven by a rise of those who self-identify as radicals? Haven’t studies conducted over the past 10 years found that the ratio of registered Democrats to Republicans among faculty at major universities is close to 11.5:1 in the social sciences and 12.7:1 overall at liberal arts colleges? Isn’t it highly reasonable, given the events of the 2020s, to think that these ratios have only increased in recent years, and our universities have come to function even more like “woke seminaries”? What about the fact that students are afraid of publicly expressing beliefs on campus that deviate from progressive orthodoxy? Aren’t DEI efforts still alive and well behind a façade of retreat?

If you believe these data points suggest that our institutions of higher education need a healthy dose of conservative thought, I’m afraid you are mistaken. You have failed to account for the deep, conservative backbone of higher education: college and university administrators. Evidence suggests that administrators are overwhelmingly conservative. My anecdotal experience at GMU and elsewhere is that administrators typically do everything in their power to strangle progressive points of view in favor of conservative and classically liberal ones.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, I can only imagine the battle GMU’s librarians had to wage against the administration to avoid featuring The Federalist Papers, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, and the recent works of Charles Murray, Yuval Levin, George Will, and Gordon Wood. The bureaucracy will prevail, and we can surely expect such books in the coming year. (Although we can hope that a sufficient number of faculty and staff members take a stand and expose students to the magnanimous, much-needed corrective efforts of the great 1619 Project.)

But for now, those of us in the George Mason University community have reason to be grateful. In an age when college students are all but brainwashed into traditional perspectives on gender, sexuality, and children; in an age when retrograde sensibilities are so overrepresented amongst campus administrators; in an age when young people spend too much time reading history, social science, and philosophy—we can’t help but admire the library staff’s courageous efforts to stand athwart the conservative intellectual trends of the modern American academy and platform a set of authors “in distress or in exile.”

If Masefield had lived long enough, he would perhaps have been proud to see staff members of at least one great public university library pursuing his vision of a civilization-sustaining center of learning with such zeal.

Erik W. Matson is the Gibbons Fellow in Economics at the Catholic University of America and Co-Director of the Adam Smith Program at George Mason University.