I want to reflect on where we are, and what we in higher education might expect from the new presidential administration—and then return to a few much larger and increasingly pressing “why?” questions about higher learning, higher education, and the students we serve.

We must ensure the safety and promote the well-being of all in our campus communities. We must not tolerate discrimination, violence, or threats of violence on any basis; we must not countenance hate speech.

The intrusion of courts, Congress, state legislatures, and governors into higher education has become so common, so ordinary, and so unsurprising that any of us can easily slide into numbness. But interference in the research, teaching, service, and operations of colleges and universities will advance only political aims.

The facts that graduate students are older, may have their own families, often work to support themselves, have different stage-of-life health and well-being challenges, and are closely engaged with (and often dependent on) faculty mentors are not reasons to dismiss or ignore their needs as still-developing people.

In many ways, then, COVID-19 introduced public health methods, practices, and results to campuses for the first time... How might a systemic, campus-wide approach, grounded in public health theory, better support a fully inclusive community?

The Supreme Court’s decision will complicate plans on many campuses to develop health-promoting universities with an inclusive and caring spirit. What the Court’s decision and new state laws will not prevent is students coming to health and counseling centers with unwanted pregnancies, or in need of reproductive health services that healthcare professionals may be forbidden to provide.

Too many students have come to believe what they do matters more than who they are. Too many think “busy” equals “worthwhile.” The differential suffering imposed by inequity has cheated too many out of their potential.

The problem is not that we don’t know, or haven’t known, or can’t know what to do; the problem is that opportunities for change have been submerged, stifled, and snuffed out by the intransigency of staid institutional, organizational, and commercial culture. But change is the partner, or implementation plan, of existential moments.

This semester will be remembered, if outlived. Educators are resilient people—if nothing else, intrepid. Even in the midst of our fatigue and frustration with Zoom, the sadness we feel for the students who, despite being our purpose, had such a diminished experience this year, and the wrenching uncertainties that define these times, we long for the return of the familiar.

This pandemic and its consequences has uncovered a lot about ourselves, our students, and our institutions. We must learn from these discoveries.

The current culture of teaching and learning in academia is not powerful enough to support true higher learning for students. We must put students first.