I think it's very easy to Monday morning quarterback administrative decisions about COVID-19 mitigation now that we're past it, when, at the time, we had very little information which led to a ton of hysteria. I'm not going to relitigate the COVID-19 pandemic response, but I will say I don't think it was inconsistent or ill-advised at all to err on the side of following national health guidance in an emergent situation like that. Even from a purely legal/lawsuit-aversion standpoint, you'd ignore federal guidance/mandates at your financial peril.
You're really missing the point. Many liberal arts college administrations went far beyond any sort of federal government guidance, and imposed lockdown and mandate policies with zero scientific basis. Or look how the Stanford University administration and fellow academics treated Dr. Jay Bhattacharya; that story was repeated at colleges all over the country. The level of hypocrisy and inconsistency makes it clear that they don't deserve any sort of benefit of the doubt.
Classical liberal arts are wonderful, and have been a great benefit to all of humanity. But sadly many academics no longer live up to those ideals in thought, word, and deed. Instead they're more focused on indoctrination and political advocacy then a search for higher truth. If they want to restore public trust in liberal arts education then they need to start by reforming themselves. Otherwise no one will take them seriously, and many taxpayers will oppose public funding.
> at the time, we had very little information which led to a ton of hysteria
If anything, this simply underscores GP's point. Getting hysterical when you lack information is a total failure of critical thinking, so to the extent that liberal arts educators did so, we should be skeptical of their ability to think critically.