Just a few years ago, there were plenty of university statements on social and political issues that day.
When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, then-Harvard president called it “meaningless” and “deplorable” and flew the Harvard Yard's invasion flag. After George Floyd died under the knee of a white police officer, Cornell's president said she was “ill.” On October 7, 2023, the president of the University of Michigan described violence against Israel as “a horrifying attack by Hamas terrorists.”
However, last year, these universities adopted policies that restrict official statements on current issues.
According to a new report released Tuesday by the Heterodox Academy, which is critical of progressive orthodoxy on university campuses, 148 universities had adopted a “institutional neutrality” policy by the end of 2024. All but eight of these policies were adopted after the Hamas attack.
After adopting the policy in October, Michigan regent Mark Bernstein said:
He said the university historically refrained from making statements about important events such as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy and assassinations during the two World Wars.
“Institutional statements are therefore a modern phenomenon and a false venture that betrays our public mission,” he said.
The universities are adopting such policies when the Trump administration has been aggressively moving to punish them for not cracking down on anti-Semitism and not doing enough to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
On Friday, the administration announced it was pulling $400 million from Colombia. This is a movement that sent shockwaves across higher education. The administration has already said it is trying to target other universities.
According to Alex Arnold, research director at the Heterodox Academy, the university issued a publication statement about the issue of hot buttons about 10 years ago.
Some conservatives long lamented such a statement, believing they were heading too left. Speech groups like the Foundation for Personal Rights and Expression were worried that they had blocked objections. For a while, the statements have been the subject of little or no widespread controversy.
Hamas' attacks and subsequent wars changed the equation.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict always divides the left, but the attack on October 7th and subsequent war sharpened those divisions. Statements issued by universities in the attacks and Israel's bombing of Gaza have been under scrutiny and have often been criticized as being too late, too weak, biased, or all three.
University leaders began asking, under pressure from donors, lawmakers and the public. Why are you making a statement?
Of the five universities that adopted a neutrality policy, around four are open to the public and face scrutiny from state legislators. Several states, including Texas, Utah and North Carolina, were forced to adopt such policies for public universities. Like Tennessee, others are considering it.
Most of the new policies apply to senior managers such as university presidents and Provosts. It also includes units such as faculties. And while many people apply to the faculty when speaking in official capacity, according to the Heterodox Academy, it is often clear that faculty can express their personal views freely.
“The whole experience of dealing with campus controversy caused by the Hamas attacks really got me thinking carefully to institutional leaders and reflecting on what our institutions function is,” Arnold said. “I think this will probably be a pretty durable change.”
Critics of the trend of neutrality claim that managers are only eschewing difficult debates about the Middle East conflict and are scared to anger donors and lawmakers.
After Clark University in Massachusetts, the school's newspaper opinion editor said it was called a “fake policy” of conflict, known as a “fake policy” designed to curb conflict debate.
But even universities that adopted such policies are not completely silent on contested political issues.
At a Defense League event held in New York City last week, Michigan President Santa Ono called efforts to boycott, sell and sanction Israeli anti-Semitics, saying his response was to invest more in those partnerships.
In an email, the university said it had adopted a “heavy estimate” in a publication statement that the new neutrality policy “is not directly connected to internal universities' functions.”
“It's about fighting anti-Semitism and ensuring that there is an environment where all students can flourish and succeed, and is part of our moral and legal obligations and is completely related to our internal functioning as an institution of higher education.”
The presidents often stumble over their new policies. In an October interview with the school's newspaper, Harvard President Alan Gerber called statements by pro-Palestinian students “aggressive” and urged the editorial board to “follow your own policies.”
Last month, the American Association, a teacher rights group, issued a statement on neutrality, which is more or less neutral. The idea stated, “even conditions necessary for academic freedom are not clearly compatible with them.”
Donald Trump's reelection is currently testing these policies.
The university is under great pressure to become a voice of resistance as the new administration, which it described as the “enemy” described as the ratchet explains its attack on higher education.
But many university presidents were surprised by the silence, said Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, a small Catholic facility three miles from the White House.
“They're looking at what happened to Claudine Gay and some of the other presidents,” she noted former President Harvard, who resigned last year after a Congressional hearing on anti-Semitism. “And they're like this: “I don't want it to happen to me. So I just stay quiet and still and hope this cloud passes.”
No university is more related to neutrality than the University of Chicago. At the University of Chicago, incoming students are provided with a report by Carbene, a 1967 document claiming neutrality. The report, which stated that violence disrupted university campuses during the Vietnam War, said the university was “a critic and sponsor.” That's not a critic in itself. ”
Tom Ginsberg, director of the Chicago Forum for Free Research and Expression, says it will adopt a neutral signal for lawmakers that the university is committed to welcoming diverse perspectives.
“This is because the statement tends to reflect the views of the majority of campuses that are overwhelmingly lending the left,” he said. We are not instructing people in conflict positions. ”
But even Kalven's report contained warnings that would not be resolved accurately if the university should issue a statement. Neutrality allows universities to speak out when “the very mission of the university and the value of free research” is threatened, according to the report.
McGuire of Trinity Washington University said that moment is now. “The erosion of knowledge and expertise that this administration has embraced is very, very scary,” she said.
