The great American university is in decline. With decreasing enrollment, ideological polarization, and an erosion of public trust, the very idea of the university is increasingly under attack. But the formula for its salvation is strikingly simple: a return to the model of classical education upon which it was originally built. This homecoming would not just provide a shared knowledge base to create an intergenerational community of learners, but would also grant universities a robust framework for shaping their responses to the obstacles and opportunities of tomorrow.
We need not look far for inspiration. Jewish tradition provides a strong blueprint for how to engender thoughtful and rooted communities of learners who are cognizant of what came before them, and of their own roles in the transmission and creation of scholarship and ideas. While this may sound like second nature to some, what often goes unspoken in current debates about campus climate is that universities themselves have lost sight of their purpose. Sometime in the final quarter of the 20th century, under the sway of postmodern relativism, curricula were revised and the mission of educating students through seeking truth and promoting virtue became passe. In many universities today, students do not see themselves as heirs to a great tradition and are not bound to each other by the exploration of foundational texts. By and large, these students do not see themselves as having anything of substance in common with their peers, much less with their predecessors. They have become unmoored and unrooted, which explains in part the rapid increase in anxiety, loneliness, and mental-health risks among college students.
By contrast, the millennia-old Jewish educational example continues moving and inspiring generations of students. This stems from a singular model of learning: rather than coming to campus to get accredited and depart, Jewish learners arrive at study houses and yeshivot to connect and to dwell.
Connection and commitment are the covenantal anchors of Jewish study. As the book of Exodus recounts, the Israelites stood at the foot of the Mount Sinai and declared, “Na’aseh V’mishma”—“We will do and we will listen.” The order of this phrase suggests, counterintuitively, that action precedes understanding. But, as the Talmud explains, it makes perfect sense: growth, the Israelites recognized, begins with attaching oneself to a community and committing to its practices. Attaining a high level of understanding takes time, but the door has already been opened with that first statement of identification.
Such a formulation also recognizes that knowledge builds on itself; it expands and evolves. As the great 12th-century exegete Rabbi Samuel ben Meir wrote, “We will do” refers to the laws already given, and “We will listen” to those yet to come. The Israelites expressed not just a dedication to the wisdom in front of them, but a profound confidence in the wisdom their faith would bring them in the future.
Today, when one opens a Jewish holy book—Torah, Mishnah, Talmud—one rarely finds the sacred text standing alone. Rather, it is flanked on every page by centuries of commentary—Rashi and Tosafot, Isaac Abarbanel and Abraham Ibn Ezra—written by scholars from across the Jewish world. Education, in the Jewish tradition, isn’t a one-dimensional encounter between student and text, or between a source of information and the person trying to absorb it, but an ongoing conversation that transcends time and space.
Perhaps the most important way with which the Jewish tradition empowers its next generation of students is by stressing the inherent value of asking questions. Oftentimes, as Rainer Maria Rilke notes in his Letters to a Young Poet, the questions are better than the answers. A true education teaches students to love the questions.
In the Jewish tradition questioning and seeking answers is the ultimate purpose of education. As Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro, the famed 20th-century rabbi of Piaseczno writes, the Hebrew word for education in our tradition is hinukh, which means the realization of potential that rests within. Each child is born in God’s image and carries a distinct way of expressing that godliness. A great university education, like a traditional Jewish education, isn’t meant to shape young people into a particular mold, but to introduce them to the mysteries of the world in a way that allows them to discover and develop the greatness within themselves.
It is within this covenantal model that human potential is unlocked and good character is formed. A life of commitment provides the roots for growth, generosity, creativity, and self-discovery. A true community of learning charges its members to join a timeless conversation, cultivating empathy, curiosity, and vital humility.
This Jewish-inspired model was also the American university’s founding charter. Our nation’s most storied places of learning were built as faith-based institutions, meant to be launching pads for bold study and civic responsibility anchored firmly in the classical tradition. They were the educational crucible of America’s greatest leaders, and the catalysts for their successes. It’s no coincidence that one in five U.S. presidents held leadership positions at colleges and universities. These institutions saw themselves not as degree factories, but as strategic assets for the nation in which the next generations of students are initiated into the intergenerational community of ideas.
It is no secret that contemporary campuses have been suffering acutely from a lack of guiding identity, with sophistic soundbites taking the place of substantive thought. A renewal of the classical study of the liberal arts and sciences would provide much-needed clarity of vision, fuse students together into a community, and connect them to something greater than themselves. Political or ideological disagreements would not tear campuses in two. Asking questions would become an act of coming together, not of falling apart.
The good news is that there is a sector in higher education that promotes such a classical model of education. Yeshiva University does not stand alone but is at the vanguard of a movement of Faith-Based Colleges and Universities (FBCUs) that represents 10 percent of the nation’s undergraduate students and consistently (and considerably) outperforms the national average for increasing enrollments. Studies have shown that university students actually seek values, not just jobs, from their years in college, and values are primary at FBCUs.
What is needed in America today is a second public effort that complements the administration’s current work to hold universities accountable for the blatant anti-Semitism allowed and enabled on their campuses. As I recently mentioned to the secretary of education, in addition to the Task Force against Anti-Semitism, we need a second task force on American educational excellence. This task force will focus on the universities that are doing things right and provide incentives for others to join them. By watering the neglected classical roots of higher education, the university can once again become a place where truth is found and souls are stretched, spurring the next chapter of the great American story to be written.