American colleges that adhere to institutional neutrality: I missed a lot of schools

September 16, 2024 • 12:50 pm

When I counted nine schools in North America (Simon Fraser in Canada was included) that adhered to Chicago-like principles of institutional neutrality, I sent an email to FIRE and said they should compile a list, similar to the list of 110 schools that adhere to Chicago’s free speech principles.

Well, is my face red!  FIRE wrote me that they’ve already done that, and you can see that there are a lot more schools than just nine. Click below to see the list, which I’ll reproduce:

Here’s the list for the U.S.: there aren’t just eight schools, but 22. Each school was linked to its statement:

  1. Claremont McKenna College

  2. University of North Carolina System

  3. Vanderbilt University

  4. University of Wyoming

  5. Columbia University

  6. Utah State University

  7. College of the Holy Cross

  8. Harvard University

  9. Syracuse University

  10. Stanford University

  11. Purdue University

  12. Clark University

  13. Johns Hopkins University

  14. Emerson College

  15. University of Southern California

  16. University of Texas System

  17. University of Colorado Boulder

  18. University of Alabama System

  19. Washington State University

  20. University of Pennsylvania

  21. University of Wisconsin System

  22. University of Virginia

You can read FIRE’s own endorsement of institutional neutrality, and the reason this policy is important, by clicking the title below:

9 thoughts on “American colleges that adhere to institutional neutrality: I missed a lot of schools”

  2. The University of Michigan where I am situated is *not* one of these institutes. Today a mass email sent to the university community by President Ono condemned a violent attack on  a Jewish student over the weekend. Five minutes later, another mass email from the university’s College of Literature Science and Arts – Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion  announced a DEI/Sustainability event “guided by the principles” of The Intersectional Environmentalist.

    The Intersectional Environmentalist is an organization that advocates for boycott of Israeli institutions via BDS and uses other forms of normalizing delegitimization  and vilification of Israel, refers to the Hamas-initiated war as a genocide against Palestinians,  supports encampments, and glorifies terrorists such as Leila Khalid, demands a cease fire in Gaza without conditional release or even mention of Israeli hostages while it completely ignores the Oct 7 atrocities as a precipitating event for the current war.  All of this is immediately evident from links on the IE website. 
    Our university would appear to be advancing through its DEI office an organization with vicious and one-sided anti-Israel principles.

    1. The University of Michigan does have a committee set up that is currently deliberating about whether to adopt institutional neutrality.

    2. I’m unsure how institutional neutrality can work when coupled with (subjective) DEI goals and massive funding from the same institution.

      “Within the U-M DEI Strategic Plan framework and its guiding institutional change model, the principles and definitions of diversity, equity, and inclusion have come to be integrally tied to the concepts of accessibility, anti-racism, belonging, and justice.”
      https://deiplan.umich.edu/

      Here are just the employees with Diversity officially part of their title. https://www.umsalary.info/titlesearch.php?Title=DIVERSITY&Year=0&page=1

    3. That’s my alma mater and they have gone woke to the hilt! Glad I’m long gone from there now. The BDS movement was in its infant stages just as I was graduating in ’88 (the Ann Arbor campus, I’m speaking about)

  3. I wonder what the average rating/ranking of these schools is on FIRE’s 202 survey of student perceptions of free speech climate. I know several of these schools were rated near the bottom of the 251 schools included in the FIRE survey.

    1. By the way, Dave, shouldn’t your name be on the cancelled list (the FIRE article of the other post)?

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