For months I have been working on the current state of higher education, which seems increasingly defined by anxiety, uncertainty and fear. Our budget is shrinking and our plans are under threat. New federal legislation includes significant changes to student aid. The values that historically involve our work are threatened: we operate under the cloud of political interventions, limiting academic freedom, diversity initiatives, and even topics where we allow teaching. We have witnessed executives, deans and presidents, as they have to choose their own choices for their political survival and the financial status of their institutions. I wonder how many leaders have quietly succumbed to external pressure because they feel they have no choice. I want to know how much more.
Our current moment is not the first time educators are facing profound moral dilemmas. For example, in McCarthy’s time, teachers and educators were forced to choose between signing a vow of loyalty and risking professional destruction. These dilemmas do not simply fade into history. Their echoes resonate in today’s educational environment, where many educators are once again facing impossible choices, perhaps reflecting a wider social trend towards authoritarianism, censorship and anti-intellectualism. A recent wave of bans and legislation has restricted the DEI program, highlighting the extent of entanglement in the national cultural war. These forces are not only targeting policy; they directly disrupt morale, trust, and integrity in our campus community.
The pressure of this constant bending toward our in-depth education and moral beliefs makes me wonder if we suffer collective moral damage in higher education. Moral harm is a deep emotional and psychological wound that occurs when our core values and integrity are betrayed or compromised, often through external pressure or systemic forces that we cannot control, betray or damage our core values and integrity. Unlike general burnout, this occurs due to chronic fatigue, moral harm is caused by far-reaching psychological and survival troubles, especially by betrayal or violation of deep moral beliefs. In higher education, moral harm manifests itself when institutional and political demands conflict with our education and human mission, that is, when leaders, faculty and staff are forced to develop policies or decisions that violate their beliefs about fairness, care, academic freedom and justice. It goes beyond burnout and stress; moral harm cuts depth and affects trust, agency and our sense of purpose.
Why should we care? Because moral harm does not only remain in the individual experienced. It’s not just personal pain; it’s a profound social and relationship hurt. Moral harm has a silent, corrosive effect: As we educators and leaders repeatedly experience conflicts between institutional needs and our moral beliefs, it gradually erodes our trust in ourselves, in others and the institutions we serve. Not to be named, it quietly undermined morale, corroded relations and undermined the foundations of our educational community.
Furthermore, when we fail to keep moral harm underfunded, it is possible to normalize it. That is, we see it as another form of stress or burnout rather than a profound betrayal that requires careful attention, public support, and systemic change. Thus, by publicly naming moral harm, we can not only verify its severity, but also create avenues for collective recognition, brave dialogue, recovery, and ultimately transformative action.
Consider the latest example of Jim Ryan, the ninth president of the University of Virginia, who announced his resignation in late June, a thoughtful, heartfelt letter to the university community. Ryan faces a difficult choice: in principle, fighting the federal government, potentially losing federal funds from the university, causing hundreds of employees to lose jobs, cutting off important research support and damaging the education and visas of countless students, or abandoning them. Ryan explained that despite his deep belief in fighting for his values, he simply couldn’t prove the risk of actual harm to the UVA community. He called the decision “very difficult”, a choice made with a “very heavy heart.” His resignation was not a failure, but a clear recognition of the painful moral dilemma faced by today’s higher education leaders.
Ryan’s decision precisely emphasizes how moral harm looks and feels in our institution. Higher education leaders are in the impossible situation and are forced to choose between bad things. His decision shows that moral harm is not abstract. It is deeply personal and relationship-based, deeply rooted in the values that guide many of our decisions into education first. However, his suffering is only half the story. The ripples of such decisions roll outward into our classrooms, and most importantly our students.
That’s because moral damage can not only affect leadership. I am worried about how these conditions affect the experience of our students. What lessons are taught by students when their institutions and professors seem to be forced into moral compromise? When we as educators seem powerless to protect our values or students’ right to honestly ask, how does our default affect their ability to trust, deeply engage, and imagine a promising future? How does this dynamic undermine the educational outcomes we strive to achieve?
These moral dilemmas and compromises are not surprising. They are often embedded in the institutional structure of higher education itself. Consider how our reliance on state funding affected by politics has left institutions and their leaders morally little room. National research funds, such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health or the National Humanities Foundation, have now also been politicized. These pressures become structural conditions that not only cause moral harm, but are almost inevitably enforced. They make educators and administrators feel trapped between their values and institutional survival.
However, for me, Jim Ryan’s resignation provides us with an example of moral clarity and moral courage. Ryan’s honesty and public recognition of his plight defines the harm and injustice of his situation. By publicly describing his plight, Ryan takes a crucial first step towards the moral wounds we tend toward.
Therefore, Ryan’s choice forces us not only to acknowledge moral harm, but also to deal with our responses, healing and moving forward. When we suffer moral damage, the clarity and courage we usually rely on are distorted; at such moments, it is difficult to rise alone. We need that trusted community to restore our eyesight, re-energize our nerves, and ask the tough questions that will get the recovery started. As educators and leaders, we need to consider the following issues:
- How do we create spaces to name compassionately the wounds we cause from these morally harmful conditions?
- What form of community support may enable us to restore our agency awareness and take courageous, authentic action?
- What new futures can we collectively imagine to be rooted in futures with justice, compassion and integrity?
These problems are precisely because moral harm is not healed on its own. Instead, they need a intentional public response. Importantly, asking tough questions and naming wounds is just a threshold. True recovery requires collective courage to take responsibility for each other, to jointly conceive more beautiful possibilities, and to develop the common clarity and determination they need to pursue. Imagination can help us outline a long future, clear paths to clarify our paths and provide our pace: Everyone feeds the next on a journey, which takes us from hurt to surpass.
On our campuses, educators at all levels (librarians who defend the prohibition books, teachers who resist dilution courses, department chairs block vulnerable programs, and yes, presidents who occasionally choose conscience over position) are modeling what it means to clarity, courage, courage and imagination. Every behavior, whether public or quietly firm, reminds us that collective moral harm can be a springboard for systematic renewal. When we discern what really matters, daring to imagine alternatives and calling for courage to act together, we move from lasting harm to surpassing it. In this way, we begin to rebuild higher education to first call on the moral foundations of our teaching and learning.
