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Some critics believe that there has been an attempt to politicize universities that includes restrictions on speech, objections to appointments, and changes in both admissions criteria and course content. C. Vann Woodward has criticized this trend and argues that it is based on a misunderstanding of the primary goals of a university:
…I believe , there exists among majorities on both sides [i.e., both liberal and conservative] agreement that the essential division over the issues here addressed lies between responsible and intelligent members of the academy on the one hand and intruders and their converts within its walls who are too often swayed by enthusiasms and fashions of the moment….
They should be able at least to agree on things the university is not. I would hope and believe that these things would include agreement, first that the university is not a political institution and must not be misused as such. Secondly it is not philanthropic in its mission, nor is it paternalistic or therapeutic in its responsibilities to its students. Furthermore, it is not a club seeking to promote good fellowship and amicability. As important as those functions are and as needful the values they strive to achieve, they are not primarily the responsibilities of the university but of other institutions in society.
In words I have used elsewhere, and are now endorsed as official policy at my own institution, the university is a place where the unthinkable can be thought, the unmentionable can be discussed, and the unchallengeable can be challenged. Such a place must encourage and protect to the fullest the rights of dissent and complete freedom to express views that some will find offensive, even painful. The university may and should urge civility in such discourse, but given the range of freedom of expression granted under the First Amendment, it cannot guarantee civility - much less enforcement of good fellowship and amicability.
Reference: C. Vann Woodward "The Sidney Hook Memorial Award Address: Where the Unthinkable Can Be Thought," Academic Questions, Fall, 1993. Brackets added.