Our previous provost, Daniel Diermeier, became Chancellor (i.e., President) of Vanderbilt University, and that was a great loss to us. Since he went to Vandy, he’s enforced prohibitions against trespassing and illegal violations of free speech (building occupations), and also adopted both the Free Speech Principles and the Institutional Neutrality that he experienced at the University of Chicago. I wish he were our President now, as he’s doing a bang-up job at Vandy.
Harvard recently tried to go institutionally neutral, too, and it did a pretty good job, as I wrote about here and here. But Diermeier finds one problem with Harvard’s neutrality that eluded me. It’s important, as it involves university investments—the object of much rancor these days. Diermeier identifies Harvard’s blind spot in the following WSJ article (it isn’t archived, so ask if you want a pdf):
Click to read:
Actually, the article makes two points. First, it explains why institutional neutrality is importantin a clear and succinct way (the Kalven Report is much longer):
In explaining institutional neutrality and why it’s important, most proponents point to the 1967 Kalven Report from the University of Chicago. At the report’s heart is the assertion that neutrality is necessary for maintaining conditions conducive to a university’s purpose. The report points out that universities and their leaders risk stifling debate when they stake out official positions. Moreover, when a university or its administrative units take a political stance, it invites lobbying and competitive advocacy by various campus constituencies, which turns the university into a political battlefield and erodes its unique purpose—promoting the pursuit of knowledge and truth.
Taking official positions also erodes the university’s commitment to expertise. Recognizing and rewarding deep knowledge, and making sharp distinctions between experts and nonexperts, is part of a university’s reason for being. When university leaders make declarations on issues they know little about, often in haste, they compromise that reverence for expertise. Even in the rare case where leaders are domain experts, they should avoid making official statements to keep from chilling debate.
He also points out a semantic issue that, comparing Harvard’s neutrality with Chicago’s, is a distinction without a difference:
Oddly, the two co-chairs of the Harvard faculty working group that recommended the new policy wrote in a recent op-ed piece that “the principle behind our policy isn’t neutrality.” Instead, they seek to further “values that drive the intellectual pursuit of truth: open inquiry, reasoned debate, divergent viewpoints and expertise.” There is little to distinguish those values from those of the Kalven Report.
Sorting out these semantics can be left to future historians of academia. The important thing is that Harvard agrees the duty of the university is to be a forceful advocate only when it comes to its core functions—and to be silent on other matters.
The recent op-ed by two Harvard professors who confected their neutrality report, an op-ed that I criticized in the first link above, appeared in the NYT, and can be found archived here. The op-ed was quite a bit different from the proposed policy. But the policy is what’s in force.
BUT. . . . somehow neutrality went out the window at Harvard when it comes to investing, about which Harvard refuses to explicitly affirm institutional neutality. Diermeier says this:
Yet although Harvard’s change of heart is encouraging news for higher education, its new policy makes a crucial omission that is at the core of the current controversy on campuses.
Students at universities nationwide have called on their institutions to join the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. According to the Harvard working group co-chairs, it didn’t “address, much less solve, the hard problem of when the university should or shouldn’t divest its endowment funds from a given portfolio.” Its members classified divestment “as an action rather than a statement” and thus treated the question as “outside our mandate.”
This is a distinction without a difference. Whether you call it an action or a statement, politically or socially motivated divestment plainly violates institutional neutrality because it requires a university to choose a side in a debate unrelated to its core function, thus signaling that there is only one acceptable way to think about the issue.
When a university’s portfolio manager makes the considered and consequential decision to divest from a company because its stock seems overvalued, this is legitimate fiduciary oversight. But divesting because an entity does business with the Israeli government is a clear violation of institutional neutrality. A university’s investment goal should be to maximize the rate of return, which means more funding for faculty research and student aid.
Institutional neutrality firmly supports a university’s purpose. So after an era when universities have been quick to issue position statements on the political controversies of the day, it is good that they are getting out of that game. It is a university’s job to encourage debates, not settle them. But for any university policy prohibiting political statement-making to be comprehensive and effective, it must address and discourage politically driven divestment.
This is why any university aspiring to institutional neutrality must not make an exception of investments, which could lay the university open to all kinds of moral, political, and ideological pressures from both within and without the school. Calls for universities to divest from Israel, which are ubiquitous, should not be heeded—and they often aren’t. The same goes for Palestine or any kind of call for divestment driven by other than pecuniary considerations. Diermeier’s explanation of why investments should also be institutionally neutral is important, and those who want universities to be neutral should read it and absorb it. That includes Harvard.
I wonder how much money it would take to lure Diermeier back to Chicago, where he should, in my view, be promptly installed as President.
Yep. Investments should count, too.
Yes, that is an important lacune in Harvard’s neutrality policy. Thanks for bringing it our attention. And I’m sure your former provost appreciates the well-deserved accolades accruing to him already.
I’ll begin by saying I’ve been under the weather and may not be able to satisfactorily respond to my critics (I’m pretty sure what I’m about to say will draw some), but I don’t feel quite so cut and dry about this matter. I do NOT think students should be dictating such matters, however, are there never any lines to be drawn with respect to what a university is willing to invest in? I’m not so certain. Does that mean the uni turns a blind eye and, so long as its investments are bringing in good returns, it *never* inquires what its investments are supporting? Somehow, that doesn’t sit right with me. It makes me think of the discussion Jerry and his colleagues had in Amsterdam. Is all knowledge good knowledge? They went on to agree (for the most part) that how one arrived at the knowledge was the critical matter. I’m also now thinking of how most pharmaceutical companies won’t supply prisons with drugs used to execute prisoners. Are there no “fuzzy” areas? Finally, I’ll admit that I’ve always (sometimes secretly, other times more vociferously) rather despised our military industrial complex and a lot of the duplicitnous of politicians who keep it in business (Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty of this). I know at least one reader is going to jump all over me for this one… I’m still a bit of a peacenik. Also, what about corporations who behave irresponsibly with their waste products? I’m beginning to sound like I’m in favor of ESGs but, from the little I know about money matters, I think I would be more in favor of ethical investing. I’m in over my head here, though. I’ve admitted before that I’m not a debater. I’m no good at it and many of my decisions are made from more of a feeling base than a knowledge one. Maybe I’m just a coward. Anyway. There’s my bit.