During my first year as president of Grinnell College, I needed guidance. I was an outsider to the world of elite liberal-arts college presidents in many ways, including that I came from the fields of medicine and science policy, and that my academic experience had been entirely in large, research-intensive organizations. As soon as it was available, I read Lessons Learned: Reflections of a University President, by a former president of Princeton University and the Mellon Foundation, William G. Bowen.
One idea that he put forth was especially relevant to the challenges I was facing — that colleges should exercise “institutional restraint” in speaking out on matters of public debate to preserve those institutions as “the home of the critic, not the critic itself” and to allow them to be places where all ideas may be debated and assessed. He wrote: “The university — and its president — can and should speak out on matters central to its own functioning as an educational institution, such as free speech (loyalty oaths) and admissions policies (affirmative action), but these have a directly relevant educational content that differentiates them from broad political and social issues.” I began to refer to this as the “Bowen Rule.”
Separating my professional and personal opinions from institutional positions has been an ongoing challenge. The Bowen Rule provides a framework to help me consider whether any political, social, or cultural issues sufficiently connect to our mission at Grinnell before I take a stance. I have readily signed petitions that presented no concerns, notably those objecting to Trump administration policies about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and immigration, which directly affect many college students.
Other requests aren’t as straightforward. I was asked to write an editorial in support of one of the Iowa Supreme Court justices whose election was threatened because of his vote in favor of legalizing gay marriage. Despite my personal opinion that the push to remove the justice was wrong, I was hesitant as the president of Grinnell to weigh in on Iowa’s major wedge issue. But further reflection on my own path to Iowa and how marriage equality could be relevant from a mission and policy standpoint, particularly for faculty, staff, and even student recruitment and retention, led me to believe that the Bowen Rule applied here, and I wrote the op-ed.
The easy thing to do in most cases is to sign the petition or publicly take a side in a debate, since it is almost always in support of a position with which the majority of Grinnell students, faculty, and alumni, as well as a large percentage of the staff, agree — and often one that I personally agree with as well. And that makes it even harder to turn down a request.
I thought a great deal about the Bowen Rule in my personal response and the response of the college to the request by a number of students, faculty, staff, and alumni that Grinnell divest its endowment of any funds invested in fossil fuels. Whenever I spoke with the students or others about my personal position on this issue, I confessed that I wrote a letter while in graduate school excoriating the University of Pennsylvania, its president, and its board for not divesting from companies doing business in South Africa.
It was a complex decision, but I ultimately did not support Grinnell’s divestment from fossil-fuel companies. I weighed the potential good and harm — to the institution and to society’s efforts to address climate change — along with my sense of the relationship between this issue and the college’s mission. It was a difficult call for me because I am deeply concerned about the impact of global warming and have tried to act on that concern in my personal life. And, because I am the great-grandson of slaves, the students’ comparisons between divestment in fossil fuels and our institution’s abolitionist roots hit me hard as I considered my responsibilities. I know that several students were deeply disappointed by my decision, and that was especially tough for me.
Deciding what action to take as president of the college requires dealing with any differences between my personal beliefs and my duties as president. When the Trump administration began separating immigrant families, I was outraged. I called several of our political representatives, all of whom I had recently contacted in my role as president during debates about the endowment tax included in recent legislation. In each case, I called from my personal phone, I gave my name only and did not mention my job, and I explicitly stated that I was calling as a concerned U.S. and Iowa citizen rather than in any professional capacity.
Shortly after those calls, I received two emails addressed to “Dr. Kington” at my college email address explaining the politicians’ positions and thanking me for calling. Although I had contacted them as a constituent, the responses reminded me that my efforts to separate the personal from the professional may not always be recognized.
The challenge in balancing my responsibilities as president with my personal beliefs is made even more complicated because I am African American and openly gay. There are still relatively few openly gay presidents and relatively few African-American presidents, especially among highly selective institutions; I feel a real need to represent, in a sense, those communities in the public sphere where I perhaps have a platform that is not readily accessible to many from the LGBT community and communities of color. Does that responsibility, if it exists, supersede my personal or professional responsibilities, and should it shift how I apply the Bowen Rule?
In spite of my struggles with it, I believe that the application of the Bowen Rule requires a real effort to think about each issue and its relationship to my personal obligations and my obligations as a president of this particular institution, with its particular mission and history. I’m often asked for my opinion as a physician, scientist, college president, or an individual. I try to answer honestly, but with my personal opinion and not with a public position that could be portrayed as institutional opinion — that’s an important distinction. The separation is often hard to discern, and others may not readily understand that my opinions are not the college’s official position.
The role of colleges as places whose missions require the open debate and analysis of all ideas has never been more important, and our ability to assure open debate is harmed when our institutions too readily take a position on a controversial issue. The hard part for those of us in leadership roles is deciding how close to our mission an issue must be to warrant our taking a position, and then separating our personal opinions from our public positions. There will always be this tension as we try to get the balance right. And we may not always get it right — but we are always obligated to try.
Raynard S. Kington is president of Grinnell College.