Among American universities these days, institutional neutrality is decidedly on the rise. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an advocate for neutrality, now lists 25 institutions that have adopted this position, most in the last year.
There are different formulations of the position, but the oft-cited locus classicus is the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report, which says that positions on salient social or political issues can be expressed by individual students or faculty members, but that the university itself should take no “collective position,” but adhere to “neutrality ... as an institution” — although it does have an obligation “actively to defend its interests and its values.” Some version of that position is becoming increasingly widespread. Harvard, the nation’s oldest university, adopted last May the recommendations of a faculty working group that “the university has a responsibility to speak out to protect and promote its core function ... [and] defend [its] autonomy and academic freedom when threatened,” but it should not issue statements about other public matters.
The attraction of such a policy to university leaders is apparent in these troubled times. Colleges are regularly pressured to take stands on controversial issues; when they do, their statements are inevitably too strong for some, too weak for others, or just too late. And there are so many issues! A policy of neutrality frees universities from a downward spiral of controversy and conflict over statements made and unmade.
Still, there are good reasons to be troubled by the trend, which is in striking accord with the policies of corporate entities. While avoiding pronouncements on controversial social issues, an automaker, for example, does speak on matters relevant to its core function such as automobile safety, sustainable fuels, employment policies, and government regulations that affect its operations and trade. Similarly, a university may speak on the importance of academic freedom, its admissions policies, and government regulations that either support or constrain research. This parallel may seem unsurprising in that they are both large organizations focused on core operations. It gives us pause, however, when we remember that we don’t send our most talented young people to General Motors or Ford for four years at a particularly formative period in their lives. We send them to college.
A noteworthy feature of both the Chicago and Harvard reports is that each grounds their rationale in an articulation of the central mission of the university. “The mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge,” the Kalven Report states. “The mission of the university,” the Harvard report begins, “is to pursue truth”; through inquiries in various disciplines, “the university serves the crucial role of contributing to knowledge and transmitting it to the next generation.” The university as such convenes and supports the work of experts in various disciplines, and it belongs to these experts, not the university, to express positions on salient social issues, each individual speaking from within their area of expertise. As the Kalven Report puts it, “the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” The emphasis is on the pursuit of truth through research, writing, creative expression, and debate. Education is presumably included, in that the university is committed to the “dissemination” and “transmission” of knowledge, along with teaching the methods of inquiry in the various disciplines.
For many of us, the narrowing of educational mission and the neutrality that so well accords with it eviscerates the university’s key educational aspirations.
But there is no hint here of anything that might resemble moral pedagogy. The university instills only those qualities that directly serve the intellectual pursuit of truth in the various disciplines through inquiry, debate, and discovery. In an admirably clear and forthright address to incoming students at the University of Chicago, the political-science professor John Mearsheimer articulated the educational purposes that accord with this understanding of the university’s mission. Above all else, Mearsheimer said, the university “prizes critical thinking,” which means tackling important questions, formulating answers to them, and crafting arguments for and against various possible answers, thus enabling students to “make and win arguments in the marketplace of ideas.”
Mearsheimer is clear that it is not an aim of the university to provide students with “moral guidance.” Chicago and its peers, he says, are not immoral but amoral institutions and simply do not have a position on, and do not attempt to provide guidance about, moral questions. While Mearsheimer certainly believes moral questions are important for students, finding answers to them “falls squarely on [the individual student’s] shoulders.”
It is hard to escape the conclusion that institutional neutrality commits colleges to the educational mission more fully articulated by Mearsheimer. Universities with such a mission should remain neutral because they are, in fact, neutral. The role of universities as such is simply to bring together the best experts in various fields to undertake research and teach students the knowledge and methods of these fields. Individual faculty may opine on topics of the day, but the university remains, as a matter of policy, neutral about them.
It has not always been so in American higher education. In the 19th century, a capstone course in morality was generally taught to all seniors, usually by the college president. In the latter part of the 19th and into the 20th centuries, with the rise of research, the increasing specialization of faculty, the abandonment of a unified undergraduate curriculum, and intellectual currents challenging the status of moral claims removed such instruction from center stage. Still, its absence was felt, and there were numerous efforts to revive it. Charles W. Eliot, a reforming president at Harvard from 1869 to 1909, defended the then-highly controversial introduction of elective classes in the curriculum by arguing that “the moral purpose of a university’s policy should be to train young men to self-control and self-reliance through liberty.” Robert Maynard Hutchins, who led the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1951, published in 1936 a widely discussed book, The Higher Learning in America, in which he argued for grounding the curriculum and the moral orientation of education in metaphysical first principles. Consensus, however, could not be found, and the moral purpose of the educational mission faded. University education became simply about training the minds of students at the highest level in the respective disciplines.
For many of us, the narrowing of educational mission and the neutrality that so well accords with it eviscerates the university’s key educational aspirations. We certainly want to train students at the highest levels in the various disciplines; we want not only to impart knowledge but teach the skills that will allow them to pursue truth themselves, critically evaluate proposed answers to central questions, and argue persuasively for their own view. But we also want to provide an environment in which they develop empathy toward those who are different, compassion for those who suffer, a thirst for justice, and the virtues needed to live a good life. We hope that during a young person’s time in college they will grow morally as well as intellectually. This broader education is achieved not by issuing moral dictums but by encouraging the study and discussion of ethics across the disciplines, facilitating conversations and reflection around moral questions and life’s purpose and, when needed, challenging and being open to challenge when behavior falls short. In this endeavor, it is essential to articulate institutional values and the implications that flow from them.
If an official university position inhibits debate by silencing those who disagree, so too does a position of neutrality.
Both the Chicago and the Harvard statements argue that the university’s taking a position in any matter would inhibit debate because students and faculty would be hesitant to express disagreement with its “official position.” Having spent 19 years as a university president, I did not find students and faculty members reluctant to disagree with pronouncements from the president’s office. (“If only!” I confess to wishing sometimes.) More seriously, I would argue that the position of institutional neutrality is itself a substantive position with which one may disagree. A faculty member or student at a university that embraces institutional neutrality might oppose institutional neutrality and want to advocate for the university to take a position. Are they somehow inhibited from doing so? If an official university position inhibits debate by silencing those who disagree, so too does a position of neutrality. Colleges must take pains to ensure that all members of the community are free to voice disagreement with the administration without repercussions. A policy of institutional neutrality, however, does not preclude the possibility of such disagreement.
There remains, of course, the danger of university leaders being pressured to undertake the impossible task of issuing statements on every controversial topic across the globe. Here we must make a distinction between a policy of institutional neutrality and a policy concerning when and whether public statements are issued. Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, has wisely rejected institutional neutrality but articulated a policy of “institutional restraint” in issuing public statements. An institution may embrace and articulate key values, but it need not comment on every significant global issue. It may develop guidelines on when and whether it issues a public statement on a topic and thus avoid, in the words of the Kalven Report, “playing the role of a second-rate political force or influence.”
Colleges are lightning rods for controversy not only because they foster open, vigorous discussion and debate, but also because they are centers of learning and education and, as such, their decisions — and their institutional voice — matter in society. As attractive as neutrality may seem to beleaguered college leaders, such a policy impoverishes colleges themselves and the larger society to which colleges contribute. The better path is to embrace the institution’s values to retain its voice — but use it wisely.
