On October 7, 2023, Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, president of Oakland University, in Michigan, issued a statement expressing her horror at the killing and kidnapping of civilians in Israel by Hamas fighters. Leaders of many other colleges released similar comments over the next several days.
Pescovitz doesn’t intend to send another campuswide message on Monday, the anniversary of the attack that started the war in Gaza. She doesn’t see the need.
But she expects that some presidents who put statements out last October will stay mum this year for a different reason: Their colleges or systems have adopted a position of institutional neutrality, whereby administrators won’t speak out on social or political issues that don’t directly affect their campuses.
Last year, critics chided college presidents for releasing statements that didn’t condemn the actions of Hamas or that failed to address the plight of the Palestinians. Some leaders responded by sending more emails. This year, presidents and boards have emphasized academic freedom and free speech in defending their neutrality policies.
Whether or not the new policies will stifle statements, recognizing the anniversary will likely vary from college to college. On the one hand, the war reverberated through American higher education like few global crises have, so some presidents may feel empowered or obligated to say something. On the other, leaders have become more selective about using their pulpit.
The Chronicle reached out to 16 colleges whose leaders had issued statements on the attack, and which had since taken a stance of institutional neutrality, to ask how they planned to mark the anniversary. We also contacted a handful of colleges that haven’t committed to neutrality, that adopted it prior to October 7, or that were led by presidents who disagreed with the practice.
While most colleges either didn’t reply or said their president was unable to talk, a few made their executives available for interviews or explained their plans for the anniversary.
The anniversary of October 7 is the first real test of the institutional-neutrality era, and it could have ramifications for leadership choices down the line — including next month’s presidential election.
“It’s easy to use the phrase ‘institutional neutrality’ or ‘institutional restraint,’” said Peter McDonough, vice president and general counsel at the American Council on Education. “But what those words mean and how they’re going to be applied at the moment, we’re going to see that work out over time. And October 7 is probably going to be a moment where we’ll see how that plays out at institutions that have adopted these types of policies.”
Avoiding Sides or Copping Out?
Institutional neutrality has its roots in the University of Chicago’s 1967 “Kalven Report,” which advocated a circumspect role for the university in political and social discourse. By not weighing in as an institution, the thinking goes, university leaders afford faculty and students maximum latitude to formulate and express their own opinions.
Today, one of neutrality’s foremost proponents is Daniel Diermeier, chancellor of Vanderbilt University. He told The Chronicle that his experience as provost at the University of Chicago “sensitized” him to the merits of neutrality, and he has made the principle a cornerstone of his tenure at Vanderbilt.
Neutrality doesn’t mean that you sit out the important issues of the day. Neutrality means you refract the important issues of the day through your mission and take very clear positions on the ones that do implicate your mission.
Diermeier did send out a community message on October 7 last year, expressing anguish at the attack and offering support to community members. In an interview with The Chronicle, Diermeier said he didn’t view that message as a betrayal of institutional neutrality because it was “pastoral” in nature.
“It’s perfectly fine to connect with people, with your community, as they’re going through their suffering and their trauma,” Diermeier said. “But make sure you do it not in a way that [picks] sides on a policy issue.”
Regarding the October 7 anniversary, he said, “We don’t think that we need to have a statement at this particular point in time.”
Last spring, Vanderbilt expelled three students who occupied a building on campus to demand the university allow students to vote to prohibit student-government funds from being used on boycott targets. Vanderbilt also had one of the first and longest-running pro-Palestinian encampments last year, which started during the sit-in. Students voluntarily removed it after 40 days.
Pescovitz, meanwhile, called institutional neutrality a “cop-out” that allows presidents to avoid speaking about touchy subjects.
“When I wrote that very first statement on October 7, 2023, I received hundreds of vile messages,” she said. “But I also received many messages of support. And that’s the job of a president.”
Pescovitz estimated that about 30 percent of Oakland’s student body is Arab or Muslim, and less than 2 percent is Jewish. Unlike some other college campuses, Oakland’s 2023-24 academic year was not defined by protests calling for the end of financial ties to Israel.
In an opinion essay published in The Detroit News last week, Pescovitz urged college presidents not to use institutional neutrality as a “crutch.” There and in her interview with The Chronicle, Pescovitz laid out the nonacademic topics on which she does speak out: hate and violence, health, climate change and sustainability, and local matters.
“I make relatively few statements because I believe that the president’s voice is precious,” Pescovitz told The Chronicle. “I do think that we should not speak out very often in our institutions on topics that do not relate to our fundamental mission, which involves, of course, education and research.”
On Monday, Pescovitz will attend a showing of a documentary about reports of sexual violence on October 7 that is being sponsored by several Jewish organizations and academic units.
Frederick M. Lawrence, secretary and chief executive of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and a former president of Brandeis University, said he anticipates October 7 statements that reflect on the difficulties of the past year and set expectations for the campus climate going forward. He believes there will be fewer statements on the Middle East conflict itself this year.
“Neutrality doesn’t mean that you sit out the important issues of the day,” Lawrence said. “Neutrality means you refract the important issues of the day through your mission and take very clear positions on the ones that do implicate your mission.”
A spokeswoman for the University of Colorado at Boulder said the chancellor, Justin Schwartz, would not release a statement on the anniversary of October 7, referencing the university’s statement on institutional neutrality. A spokesman for the University of Virginia said Wednesday that no decision had been made on sending a message, but that the new guidelines on institutional statements allowed expressions of empathy for community members affected by world events. A spokeswoman for the University of Wisconsin at Madison said the institution is “evaluating acknowledgment” of October 7 in light of its new policy on institutional statements.
Elsewhere, colleges have gotten ahead of the curve by releasing statements acknowledging the anniversary in advance. In a September 26 message to students and staff, the dean of King’s College London, Ellen Clark-King, reflected on a year of death and destruction — and the limits of her own words.
“I know that there is nothing I can say that will speak to everyone caught up in the ongoing effects of this tragedy at King’s,” Clark-King wrote. “People’s passions and convictions are too deeply held, and too conflictual, for one person to give voice to such a multiplicity of pain, outrage, and loss. I can only offer one very partial perspective and invite you all to take a moment to reflect on, and mourn, all the pain that we human beings inflict on one another.”
Marking the Anniversary Offline
As the anniversary approaches, some college leaders are hoping to nip conflict in the bud by hosting gatherings to encourage reflection, or canceling events.
Wake Forest University canceled an October 7 event featuring Rabab Abdulhadi, founding director of the Arab and Muslim ethnicities and diasporas studies program at San Francisco State University, after criticism from some Jewish students. The event was titled “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood: Reflections on a Year of Genocide and Resistance.”
A September 26 email from the president and the provost said they had decided “not to host events on this day that are inherently contentious and stand to stoke division in our campus community,” and had thus informed the academic departments sponsoring the lecture that it could not take place. The message also announced two university-hosted programs to recognize the anniversary.
The University of Maryland at College Park, meanwhile, announced on September 1 that only university-sponsored expressive events could take place on October 7, canceling a program planned by the campus’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter to honor the victims of violence in Gaza. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and Palestine Legal sued on behalf of the SJP chapter, alleging viewpoint discrimination, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction allowing the students to hold their event. In response, Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, called October 7 an “inappropriate” date for such an event.
Lawrence, the former Brandeis president, said that repressing certain types of speech on October 7 could “exact a price down the road” when students who couldn’t express themselves then try to do so later.
“Presidents are trying more than anything to try to keep their campus safe,” he said. “And that is a prime obligation, but they’re also trying to keep it calm. I’m a great believer in safety. I guess I’m a little less of a believer in calmness.”
