It took years, but elite colleges are learning the value of institutional neutrality

Colleges and universities are getting out of the business of making political statements.

Having found a topic they do not want to talk about — the war between Israel and Hamas — the presidents of elite institutions, including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell, have announced they will no longer issue statements on social and political events.

After years of pronouncing on social and political events, from the murder of George Floyd to the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, campus leaders suddenly found themselves tongue-tied in the wake of Hamas’s terror attack on Israel. The reaction was swift and fierce: Alumni revolted, donors cut off funding and politicians opened investigations. Americans were shocked by the lack of moral decency and the hypocrisy. How could university presidents condemn the criminal invasion of Ukraine but not the horrific massacre committed by Hamas of Oct. 7?

The reason these schools are adopting institutional neutrality should never be forgotten, but it is the correct policy. As Johns Hopkins observed in its recent statement, “taking institutional positions can interfere with the university’s central commitment to free inquiry and obligation to foster a diversity of perspectives within our academic community.” By refraining from taking official stances on controversial matters, institutions fulfill their true role as forums for free and open debate and inquiry, in which individuals pursue and share their ideas without fear of violating institutional orthodoxies.

As Tulane observed a few weeks ago, “Freed from the specter of an official imprimatur for any one view, competing opinions can fuel myriad contributions that advance society.”

Harvard, which had one of the worst years in its history in 2023, was one of the first schools to take a stand against issuing political statements. It should be noted, however, that Harvard failed to adopt a full position of institutional neutrality, because it left open the possibility of divestment.

The leaders of the University of Chicago — home to the gold standard statement on institutional neutrality, 1967’s Kalven Report — consider divestment to be at odds with neutrality. Vanderbilt, under the leadership of Chancellor Daniel Diermeier, has taken a similar stance.

Emerson College’s recent announcement stands out for emphasizing that it will not “consider political pressure in allocating resources, including its endowment investments, or when selecting strategic partners.” This is also the right position, and it is especially important now because it rules out one of the chief demands of campus protesters supporting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement against Israel.

Whatever one thinks of the war in Gaza, divestment should be avoided because it violates institutional neutrality and thereby damages the college or university as an institution. The University of Minnesota Board of Regents recently lived up to its fiduciary duty when it declared neutrality and refused to divest from Israel.

Beyond improving themselves by adopting neutrality, elite institutions also have the power to cause a cascade of change throughout higher education. For example, Emerson cited Harvard in its decision. Other institutions were surely influenced even if they did not acknowledge it. Now colleges can also cite Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Stanford, the University of Southern California, the University of Virginia, UCLA and the University of Texas system to support a decision to go politically neutral. Other prominent schools, including the University of Michigan, Northwestern and Yale, have set up committees to consider it.

Institutional neutrality will help to solve the reputational crisis facing higher education. Harvard noted an especially important consideration in its announcement: “The integrity and credibility of the institution are compromised when the university speaks officially on matters outside its institutional area of expertise.” More to the point, scholars and scholarly institutions undermine their own credibility when they present their political opinions as expertise. Gallup has shown two years in a row that only 36 percent of Americans have confidence in higher education, and this year it found that those lacking confidence reported “political agendas” as the top reason.

But universities should adopt neutrality primarily because it serves the purpose of the university as an institution — a purpose that remains unrealized in too many places where monocultures and intolerance reign. Adopting one policy alone will not solve the problem of self-censorship or the lack of viewpoint diversity on American campuses. These colleges and universities must work to become the kind of institutions the authors of the Kalven Report envisioned: “forum[s] for the most searching and candid discussion of public issues” that “embrace…and encourage the widest diversity of views.”

Otherwise, skeptical Americans will be justified in seeing neutrality as a face-saving measure to mask their ongoing ideological activities.

Steven McGuire is the Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.