Educational network unites Ivy League alumni, faculty, and donors in timely initiative to hold university administrators accountable to academic excellence, integrity
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Common Sense Society (CSS), a leading international nonprofit educational network, has been working alongside our trustees, senior fellows, and fellowship alumni to promote free speech and open inquiry on college campuses across the United States.
We have noticed and noted the significant damage inflicted on Ivy+ academic standards by the DEI framework (and the corollary rejection of free speech to debate ideas). That’s why we have launched the Ivy Excellence Initiative (IEI), a critical university reform movement that brings together alumni groups, dissident faculty, and frustrated donors to hold their universities accountable to pursuing true academic excellence and open inquiry. We refuse to allow hundreds of years of American academic excellence to perish in a single generation.
Adopting any standard other than merit-based pursuit of knowledge not only weakens the reputation and value of our great universities: It betrays and denies their original promise of offering a broadminded and rigorous education in order to build an educated public. Public life depends on the integrity of our universities, and those at the helm ought to ensure American academic excellence thrives for generations ahead. The leaders of our free society are formed in our elite institutions—it must be there that they learn how to both critically engage and conserve our most cherished values and, in Matthew Arnold’s timeless adage, study “the best which has been thought and said.”
You can learn more about the Ivy Excellence Initiative by visiting ivyexcellence.org.
Common Sense Society (CSS) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational network with the mission to cultivate citizen competency across the United States and Europe through education and citizen engagement. CSS does not accept funding from governments or political parties.