I wish colleges would commit themselves to neutrality, open inquiry, and intellectual diversity. I have argued for years that this is the best model for higher education and that it puts schools on the path toward finding truth.

Many colleges, however, do not seem interested in this approach. John Tomasi, president of Heterodox Academy, and Tyler VanderWeele of Harvard recently made a powerful argument in the Washington Post: If schools do not actually want to be neutral, perhaps they should stop pretending that they are.

Tomasi and VanderWeele’s point is not that every college must be neutral. Religious colleges and service academies make their institutional commitments and values clear, and nobody is confused about the character of those institutions.

The trouble is with schools that claim open inquiry and do not practice it. The example I know best is Sarah Lawrence College (SLC), where I have taught for nearly two decades and which has been under a federal civil rights investigation over its mishandling of anti-Semitism.

SLC’s own statement on academic freedom describes something close to the institution I would like to see. Faculty and students, it says, should be free to “explore and debate ideas and theories, freed from the constraints of mandated ideologies, beliefs, and practices.” Its president has written that “a diversity of perspectives enriches learning, deepens empathy, and broadens our understanding of the world.”

But the range of views that can comfortably be expressed in classrooms, meetings, and campus life is much narrower than that language suggests. I have written about a speaker being shouted down and students being urged to boycott my classes. More recently, a liberal Zionist student group was denied recognition because of its political views.

SLC is hardly alone in this. Plenty of schools talk about diversity while having remarkably little political or ideological diversity. Students at other schools tell me the same thing. Everyone on campus quickly learns which subjects have a narrow range of acceptable opinion: politics, race, gender, Israel, and social justice.

And students decode that culture quickly. The pressure to conform can emerge within hours. Students learn which opinions can be shared, which ideas need to be qualified, and which are better left unsaid or unquestioned. I have watched curious students decide that an argument simply isn’t worth the trouble. That is not education. It is cancel culture and the antithesis of what a college education should be.

What I want is pretty simple: scholars who disagree with one another and debate, and students who confront ideas that unsettle them. Let the arguments happen in the room. Do not let the college make judgments beforehand and become a biased monoculture.

But if colleges are not going to do this, they should be candid about it. If SLC, for example, believes it is a politically leftist school, it should say so. If a particular idea of social justice is central to its mission, say that too. And if a school truly believes that racial diversity matters more than intellectual diversity, why should it pretend otherwise?

Tell the truth, and prospective students and their families will actually know what they are signing up for. I am certain that some people would be glad to attend the honest version of SLC. Those would be the kind of folks who love leftist political activism.

I want SLC to choose neutrality and open inquiry. But if it wants to choose something else, it should say so plainly. Students, alumni, and donors can then judge the school for themselves, and nobody has to pretend not to see the reality that is right in front of them.