A few years ago, while working at a large public relations firm, I was responsible for ghostwriting for a big client. The client wanted us to draft an op-ed and, as this was a plum assignment, I gave it to a young senior account executive who I thought would prove himself.

He didn’t. His draft was restatement after restatement of his own position. He did not argue the client’s position, provide evidence for his own or address the complexity of the issue. I provided that feedback and told him to try again.

A couple of days later, he delivered a nearly identical draft. He wasn’t being stubborn; he simply wasn’t capable of defending a position or addressing counterarguments. I had to take over. I felt terrible when the firm laid him off a few months later.

I don’t blame him. I blame the college education he’d likely gone into debt for. He was doing exactly what he’d been trained to: speak his truth, even if doing so accomplished nothing. Raise the volume of his argument when he could not marshal a better case. Tell the simplest possible story of good and evil.

Only this time, there were consequences.

There’s a hard fact Bowdoin students are going to face when they graduate: Most of life has consequences. Unfortunately, many Bowdoin professors and administrators teach students as if that weren’t true, imparting lessons that will actively harm students’ prospects. They are excusing or even encouraging behaviors that, if repeated in the professional world, will prevent students from delivering upon their responsibility to the common good.

In the professional world, for instance, calling anyone a “white supremacist,” let alone hurling that accusation at people organizing a vigil, without rock-solid evidence, will get you a stern warning from HR. Skipping work so you can protest could get you fired. Excusing, let alone laughing at, vigilante political violence will leave employers thinking you are callous or even sociopathic. (Charlie Kirk said terrible things, but his words did not merit the death penalty.)

Case in point is Professor Nasser Abourahme’s response to my recent op-ed arguing that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) are an impediment to peace. Rather than address complexity, he restates dogma he has been reciting for years. His response doesn’t even mention SJP, Hamas or October 7.

Similarly, professors Jack O’Brien, Matthew D. Branche and Bianca Williams ignored the anti-Israel movement’s antisemitic and threatening actions. They stated “anti-Zionist Jews” are the victims of antisemitism. As if mobs of demonstrators hadn’t attacked pro-Israel Jewish students or threatened campus Hillels. Or, more appallingly, as if terrorists who murdered Jews at Bondi Beach had not said they were motivated by, in their own words, “the acts of Zionists.” I’m sure there are other professors engaged in similar behavior, but FSJP’s “40+ members” have hidden behind anonymity (which you also cannot get away with in the professional world).

Professors are teaching students that addressing complexity, counterarguments and the likely outcomes of their actions is unnecessary. This is an unhealthy lesson, and the stats bear it out. Americans have never viewed college as less important than they do now. Employers are not looking for the skills recent college graduates have, and their early-career job prospects are grim, even as higher education’s costs are sky-high (as every Bowdoin student knows). Meanwhile, 45 percent of college students show no significant growth in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing in their first two years in school. While there are other factors, like college being objectively less rigorous than it used to be, faculty failure to teach argumentation, complexity and persuasion is a major cause of this sad state of affairs.

I accept Abourahme, and I will never agree on culpability in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; while I acknowledge fault on both sides (and admittedly blame SJP and FSJP for making things worse), Abourahme says Zionism “depend[s] on eliminatory colonialism.” I also accept that he will refuse any compromise that enables peace and a two-state solution, as he demands “the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land.” Given his immense knowledge on the subject, he must know right of return is a nonstarter in peace talks.

What I cannot accept is the disservice he and many of his fellow professors are providing students. In stating that “genocide is at least one logical end of Zionism as a historical project” and thus labeling any pro-Israel student a genocidaire, he fails to foster a classroom where students can learn by expressing opinions. By penning pieces that do not grapple with core issues (his response never mentions his de facto excusing of the October 7 massacres or SJP’s advocating for Hamas’ extrajudicial executions of Palestinians it merely suspected of collaborating with Israel), he teaches that self-bestowed righteousness excuses students from addressing complexity.

He, and all of Bowdoin’s professors and administrators, have a responsibility to Bowdoin’s students. They are responsible for preparing students to “gain a standard for the appreciation of others’ work and the criticism of [their] own . . . [and] cooperate with others for common ends.”

Too many professors are failing to deliver on the Offer of the College. Professors can either be activists, or they can be teachers. Administrators are coddling professors when they let them try to be both. Students pay the price.

Neal Urwitz is a member of the Class of 2006. He is CEO of Enduring Cause Strategies and served as a speechwriter for and advisor to the Secretary of the Navy from 2021-2023. He majored in government and religion.