HxA Annual Report FY19 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 31
REFLECTIONS
Dear Friends,
An annual report can be a dull affair in which small accomplishments are spun to seem more important than
they were. Or it can be a celebration of a year so extraordinary that it gives a community renewed hope. This
first annual report from HxA is the latter.
When I co-founded the organization in 2015, we were just a few professors who had begun to see a problem in
our academic disciplines — a decline in viewpoint diversity that coincided with a rising sense that professors
who offered dissenting views could face social and professional costs. The twenty or so professors who
comprised the membership in our first year were diverse by discipline, politics, and gender, but we were united
by our love of the academy, and by our conviction that America needed excellent, unbiased scholarship.
By 2017 the political tensions in the country and on campus had intensified so much that it became clear
writing about the problem was not enough. We had to raise money, scale up, and hire professional staff. The
best thing I ever did to help universities was to recruit HxA member Debra Mashek to run the organization.
Deb took over from me in early 2018, laid out a comprehensive strategic plan, hired a team, created a
community, and relaunched the movement.
HxA’s acceleration in the 2018-2019 academic year was so rapid it seems to have broken the sound barrier, and
the report you just read details the sonic boom heard around the academic world. Our message and our ideas
are now showing up in the New York Times, National Review, and in academic conferences across many
disciplines. Our tools are being downloaded and used by students and professors thousands of times each
month. Our members are now so numerous and so prominent that we can’t be dismissed as a fringe or
partisan group.
In short, Heterodox Academy is changing the academy. That’s a tall order — 4,300 institutions of higher
education, enrolling 20 million students — so it will take many years, but we are off to a great start. Will you
help us? If you are a professor, administrator, staff member, or graduate student who has not yet added your
name to our public declaration of support for viewpoint diversity, please join HxA today and invite your
colleagues to do the same. If you are a philanthropist who cares about education or democracy, please contact
us — we’d love to talk with you about our plans. And if you simply want to read great writing and hear new and
heterodox ideas, please follow our social media channels.
No matter who you are, if you care about higher education, please join our community of renewed hope.
Jonathan Haidt
CHAIR OF THE HxA BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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