I signed up as a Harvard Alum (you have to prove it with dates and degrees, and they look it up!), just so I could get stuff like this. It’s a letter from the interim President (Claudine Gay has not yet been replaced) as well as the interim Provost and 18 deans, affirming that Harvard, joining a handful of other universities, has officially adopted the institutional neutrality policy confected by a working committee (see here for the earlier committee report).
It’s time for the the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) to start making a list of schools that have adopted institutional neutrality, a policy first started by the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report in 1967)—just as FIRE has a list of 108 universities that have adopted some version of Chicago’s principles of free expression. As I always say, both institutional neutrality and First-Amendment-style free speech are mutually supportive in ensuring an atmosphere that permits and encourages free speech on campus. And the more schools that sign on, the more schools that will be willing to sign on.
Here’s the announcement I got via email:
it was also signed by 18 deans, but I won’t list their names as it’s not that important.
Click to read the pdf:
Here are a few quotes from what now seems to be Harvard’s official policy. This is the raison d’être for the statement:
Accordingly, the university has a responsibility to speak out to protect and promote its core function. Its leaders must communicate the value of the university’s central activities. They must defend the university’s autonomy and academic freedom when threatened – if, for example, outside forces seek to determine what students the university can admit, what subjects it can teach, or which research it supports. And they must speak out on issues directly relevant to the university’s operation.
The university and its leaders should not, however, issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.
. . . First, the integrity and credibility of the institution are compromised when the university speaks officially on matters outside its institutional area of expertise. Faculty members, speaking for themselves, have expertise in their respective domains of knowledge, and they may often speak about what they know. In so doing, however, they do not speak for the university. The university’s leaders are hired for their skill in leading an institution of higher education, not their expertise in public affairs. When speaking in their official roles, therefore, they should restrict themselves to matters within their area of institutional expertise and responsibility: the running of a university.
Second, if the university and its leaders become accustomed to issuing official statements about matters beyond the core function of the university, they will inevitably come under intense pressure to do so from multiple, competing sides on nearly every imaginable issue of the day. This is the reality of contemporary public life in an era of social media and political polarization. Those pressures, coming from inside and outside the university, will distract energy and attention from the university’s essential purpose. The university is not a government, tasked with engaging the full range of foreign and domestic policy issues, and its leaders are not, and must not be, selected for their personal political beliefs.
Third, if the university adopts an official position on an issue beyond its core function, it will be understood to side with one perspective or another on that issue. Given the diversity of viewpoints within the university, choosing a side, or appearing to do so can undermine the inclusivity of the university community. It may make it more difficult for some members of the community to express their views when they differ from the university’s official position. The best way for the university to acknowledge pressing public events is by redoubling intellectual engagement through classes, conferences, scholarship, and teaching that draw on the expert knowledge of its faculty.
Good stuff! They even add something that we had to modify in our own Kalven report: “departments, centers, and programs” should remain institutionally neutral as well as statements from the top administration (presidents, provosts, deans, etc.).
I have only two beefs, and they’re minor. Here’s the first one:
The most compassionate course of action is therefore not to issue official statements of empathy. Instead, the university should continue and expand the efforts of its pastoral arms in the different schools and residential houses to support affected community members. It must dedicate resources to training staff most directly in contact with affected community members. These concrete actions should prove, in the end, more effective and meaningful than public statements.
This is a bit ambiguous in that it raises the issue of “which pastoral arms should be extended”? Who, exactly, are the “affected community members”? In the case of the war in Gaza, for example, should both Jewish and pro-Palestinian students be supported as two different groups? Do they get equal support? What about others disturbed by the conflict? There are multiple sides on every debatable issue.
It would be better simply to say, “You might be affected by this circumstance, and if you are, you can find help here,” listing the various therapy or helping groups. This is what we did when Chicago issued its statement about the war. And that way the pastoral support goes out to everyone, without anybody needing to decide who the affected groups are.
An even smaller beef (not even a filet mignon) is this:
Let us be clear: the university is not a neutral institution. It values open inquiry, expertise, and diverse points of view, for these are the means through which it pursues truth. The policy of speaking officially only on matters directly related to the university’s core function, not beyond, serves those values. It should enable the university to endure and flourish, providing its unique public good even – and especially – in times of intense public controversy
Well, the university is indeed (or should be) a neutral institution on matters of ideology, politics, and morality that don’t bear on the workings of the school. The “pursuit of truth” might, at a stretch, be conceived as a “value,” but it’s really the purpose of a university. I’m not sure why Harvard wrote this, though it appears to have done so to set it apart from Chicago, criticizing us because Chicago doesn’t explicitly admit that we really aren’t institutionally neutral (“we’re Harvard and we are better”). But I don’t really care. What’s important is that this is a good, workable policy of institutional NEUTRALITY, and, given that it’s at Harvard, it should prompt other schools to adopt similar policies.
Here’s the head of Chicago’s Kalven Report committee, law professor Harry Kalven:
Refreshing
Excellent. Committee looks like a good skill mix. So good that I feel inadequate to critique this Harvard result!
I think that the last paragraph is just something that comes out of a committee to make sure that everybody is comfortable with the clarity of the main point of the document.
Yes. Generally good.
Regarding the “the university is not a neutral institution” statement:
Until I learn otherwise, I will interpret this as meaning that at least some of Harvard’s many units do have non-neutral missions. The Harvard Medical School, for instance, is committed to improving health outcomes. I am hoping that non-neutral refers to stuff like this, but only time will tell.
Good for Harvard. I’m glad Jerry found some beefs. They are important. The University of Toronto, to its credit, won’t yield to the demands of its trespasser-occupiers for divestment from Israel and academic excommunication of Israeli institutions because it would violate an ad hoc principal of neutrality on external public issues.
But we have also heard administrators say that the university could never step back from its commitment to DEI and decolonization & indigenization because these have become core institutional missions of the University, up there with academic freedom of inquiry and free speech. No one knows exactly what D&I means or requires operationally — we think, from university actions, that officially preventing an invited speaker from questioning aboriginal knowledge, opinions, and sensibilities probably trumps academic freedom* — but all universities in Canada are committed to it, whatever it is. Presumably on an external indigenous controversy that doesn’t otherwise affect the university directly, it will have to voice public support for whatever the indigenous or anti-colonial side wants. (It did, for example, lower the national flag to half-staff during the Great Mass Graves Hoax on the other side of the country in 2022. And the recruitment of the indigenous sacred fire-keepers at the current encampment was a clever stratagem to raise the political stakes of clearing them off.)
So this could be an example of what Norman refers to as a “non-neutral mission” in a non-neutral institution that wants some wiggle room on issues less anodyne than “health outcomes”. (Which of course can be as political and partisan as you want them to be when equity-seeking groups get into the act.)
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* A Court case in play at another university might resolve this.
Similar words apply for UVic. Strong institutional support for neutrality, academic freedom as far as the response to our encampment goes, but clearly their hands are a bit tied as the Indigineous Studies people have thrown their weight behind the deranged side of this one.
I specifically like the fact that the report even looks like the Kalven report. I don’t think this is a coincidence. It has a very similar layout and a very similar length. Seriously; it’s a homage to Kalven. If it was trying to outdo Kalven it would look a lot slicker! It’s 56y later and publishing has moved on just a little since then, but it seems to deliberately imitate the style.
Congratulations to you and the legion of Kalven. The tide has turned, and victory is at hand. Will there be holdouts? Some, but probably inconsequential. A victory lap when 2/3 of the major schools publish their own commitments to free speech and institutional neutrality.
And now you can concentrate on the next crusade: depoliticize the natural sciences. Perhaps you could encourage colleges of science to invite you and colleagues to give special colloquia.
Efforts to deplatform you are bound to backfire. Avanti!