MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Former West Virginia University President Gordon Gee is bookending a more than four-decade career in higher education by sharing his expertise with two institutions but made it clear he does miss the day-to-day environment of working with students on a college campus.

“I’ve spent some time in executive residence at Ohio State University and I’ll spend some more time doing the same at Arizona State University,” Gee said on MatroNews, “Talkline.” “I’ve got a couple of other projects, so I’m very happy and very engaged.”

Gee made it clear he’s content and not looking for another assignment that would put him in the office of president at another institution. Rather, Gee is using his voice to call out what he believes is a lack of free speech on major college campuses.

“I’d be really less than honest if I didn’t say I miss the daily commerce of being a university president,” Gee said. “After 45 years of doing it, you can imagine it is critical in my DNA.”

In the 1980s a Gallup poll showed 95 percent of the population had confidence in higher education institutions, and most recently that figure has fallen to just 35 percent. In an op-ed for Fox News, Gee pointed to protests that rocked college campuses early this year regarding the war in Gaza. According to Gee, President Trump targeted those institutions because they failed to protect the rights of expression of students with opposing viewpoints.

“If that is the case, we can clearly say universities are not providing the kind of educational experience and the kind of opportunities for students to think out loud about what they want to do and what they want to say. I do believe that is a serious problem.”

Regaining the confidence of the public has to be a priority, and to do that, no speech on college campuses can be squelched. Students and administrators have to be prepared to welcome the opinions of those they completely disagree with in order to establish a level playing field for the future.

“One of the ways to reassert that is to make certain we have full and unfettered and robust discussions across all political spectrums without any concern from people that they cannot speak up and speak out,” Gee said.

As for civil discourse, Gee said elected leaders in Washington, DC, are not providing an example of tolerance. Learning to provide time for all points of view opens the dialogue that will bring us all closer together by understanding our differences.

“Right now as a political matter, we have lost a lot of that,” Gee said. “So, universities, in my view, really have an enormous opportunity but an enormous challenge to reassert their role as the stewards of democracy.”