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I have made my professional home within academia, and I am immensely grateful for the opportunities that universities have provided me. I am unabashedly an advocate for universities and their place in American life. I am hardly oblivious to the many flaws that can be found in academia, but it saddens me to see them vilified by outsiders who often do not understand (or at least act as if they do not understand) what universities do and how they operate, and subverted by insiders who sometimes do not appreciate the value and fragility of these institutions.

My fit within academia has not always been a natural one. My entry into the great universities on the East Coast put me in touch with my inner Texas populist. My political inclinations might be charitably called outside the mainstream of university faculty. My orientation toward the discipline of political science is from the margins. But I have been fortunate in finding …