May 12, 2026
President Elizabeth Davis
Furman University
3300 Poinsette Highway
Greenville, SC 29613
Dear Elizabeth,
I prepared this letter before hearing the announcement that you plan to leave Furman after the 2026-27 academic year. FFSA will write again sometime soon on that subject, but for now we simply want to say congratulations on your decision and thank you for your years of service to our alma mater.
Now for my original letter:
Congratulations on a successful commencement honoring the class of 2026 and Furman’s 200th year. I want to note especially your letter, Furman Endures Across Centuries, published at the time of commencement, which captures the key moments in the school’s history and notes that “[a]s we improve our competitive position in the higher education landscape, we do so confidently knowing that Furman University is resilient and strong, not in spite of our challenges but because of them.”
Furman is fortunate to have that history captured recently in Courtney Tollison’s Furman University, 1826-2026: A Bicentennial History, a superb chronical of the school’s resilience you reference in your letter. And in case you missed it, the FFSA just published an interview with Dr. Tollison on our Substack. Check it out.
Your letter, Furman Endures Across Centuries. insists that Furman never shied away from big problems. And you point out that central to Furman’s willingness to act has been self-reflection – “Seeking Abraham” a prime example – and that continues to be vital as the school confronts contemporary criticisms of the modern university.
My last letter to you focused on one of those criticisms -- the lack of intellectual diversity among faculty and how that can undermine the core mission of the university. John Tomasi summarized this threat well: “Academic freedom is not the same as free speech. Everyone has the right as a citizen to express their views freely in the public square. But a classroom is not a public square. It is a place of learning, and that means that professors are obligated to behave professionally, as teachers, and not to use their classrooms as platforms for political causes.”
Many others recognize this problem. A report released last month from the Yale University faculty points to a faculty monoculture as one of the factors leading to a historic lack of public trust in universities.
You are no doubt familiar with this study considering why universities have lost the public’s trust: grade inflation, breathtaking tuition increases, campus free speech suppression, and student self-censorship, are among the issues addressed along with a lack of intellectual pluralism.
The report notes that “conservatives have long offered a more particular critique of higher education: that the nation’s leading universities, including Yale, tend to exclude conservative intellectual traditions.” And that “[t]aken together, these critiques frame universities as intellectual and ideological echo chambers, out of touch with the American nation and out of step with its political currents.” What is more “[e]stimates suggest that registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans among faculty nationwide by a margin of about 10 to 1. At Yale, according to a 2025 estimate by the Buckley Institute, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 36 to 1 across the Faculty of Arts Sciences, the Law School, and the School of Management.”
We lack similar data on Furman, because of South Carolina’s registration rule, although we do know that nearly 98% of Furman faculty campaign donations went to liberal or Democratic causes. The Yale report acknowledges “push back” claiming that “the issue of intellectual diversity [is] a smokescreen for mounting restrictions on academic freedom.” Still, the report holds that “ [e]cho chambers do not produce the best teaching, research, or scholarship.” That’s blindingly obvious.
Despite the grumbling, the report takes the problem seriously. Its recommendations with respect to the issue of intellectual pluralism comes down to self-examination. It urges “each department and school [to] engage in a self-study examining the breadth of its intellectual and methodological commitments; the range of scholarly approaches represented on its faculty; the diversity of perspectives in its curriculum; and the openness of its hiring and admissions practices to dissenting or underrepresented traditions.”
Furman’s faculty should consider a similar self-examination. Do we encourage different methodical approaches, are we open to hiring and admissions of underrepresented traditions, do we avoid using our classroom as vehicles for some political cause, these are the kinds of questions that the faculty needs to ask itself.
In doing so, wouldn’t that be simply following the Furman tradition you spelled out so clearly in your commencement letter?
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Salmon
President
Furman Free Speech Alliance