Don’t stain Tommy Thompson’s legacy with a partisan institute
Let’s consider, for a moment, the Legislature’s current proposal to establish a Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.
The public university has three jobs: learning, discovery and engagement. One important part of this responsibility is to identify and communicate the truth about ideas. Every idea must be subjected to “trial by evidence,” in which it is evaluated for support by established and newly discovered knowledge plus real-world applications. Once you have enough information and experience to apply the “truth test,” you can accept an idea that is true and reject an idea that is false. Often, of course, evidence only provides a probability that an idea is true or false, and then further study is needed before you can decide.
The public university has a different relationship with beliefs. It acknowledges both that you have the right to believe what you want and that not all beliefs are supported equally by evidence. The university’s role is to uncover and communicate evidence. You choose how and whether to use it. As long as the university speaks and acts on the evidence, it isn’t guilty of belief bias, either liberal or conservative.
A consequence of these facts is that any center or unit that does not rely on evidence alone cannot be a legitimate part of a university, and must be rejected. Bias doesn’t belong at a university. If you think bias does exist, then show how trial by evidence was misused, but don’t propose a “solution” whose design embraces bias from the start.
This gets us to the proposal currently under consideration in the Legislature. By all means, support a Tommy Thompson Center. He deserves to have a center in his name, in part because he championed the principles that trial by evidence should inform public service and that the public university is an essential partner in making good decisions. But don’t insult him by embedding obvious bias in the center’s operations and oversight. Evidence, not partisan beliefs, must determine its agenda.