University Administrations Leaving Public Advocacy to Faculty and Students

Stanford, Penn, and Wisconsin Go Viewpoint Neutral

Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin have all embraced a viewpoint neutral stance that refrains from speaking out on the issues of the day. Protect The 1st hopes they will become national trendsetters for higher education.
 
The pitfalls of the old approach were made clear when the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, bedeviled by pro-Palestinian protests, cut a deal to end the protests in May. The administration agreed to consider severing ties with Israeli firms and to put the university’s prestige behind a call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
 
This was only a recent example of how university administrations became opinion factories, spitting out one declaration after another on the issues of the day. For example, the University of Pennsylvania put out a statement denouncing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. Stanford spoke out on Israel and Gaza.
 
The outspokenness of universities to take positions on the crisis of the day was a hard turn from the standards of the 1967 University of Chicago Kalven Report, forged in the crucible of the Vietnam era. The Kalven Report advocated that universities be true to their stance as fora for free speech by refraining from commenting on issues that don’t affect them as institutions.
 
This is partly out of concern for allowing maximum range for free thought and free speech on campus. A professor, after all, might legitimately believe that Israel has the right to prosecute the war against the terrorists of Hamas, or that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was correctly decided.
 
There are costs when universities negate opinions, as they did with their stance on Israel. These costs can be tangible when they offend the sensibilities of donors, as well as lawmakers who approve budgets for public universities. In the case of UW Milwaukee, the administration seemed panicked into trying to appease groups that used force to seize part of the campus. Such appeasement often encourages more pressure, turning the university into a mouthpiece for anyone willing to take over a quad or university building. It is no coincidence that Harry Kalven, who chaired the committee that produced the University of Chicago’s report on university neutrality, also coined the term “heckler’s veto.”
 
Appeasing the most animated and sometimes violent activists on campus with official statements is a guaranteed way to get more of the same. The challenge for universities is to be neutral without seeming heartless.
 
“The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity,” the Kalven Report declared. “It arises out of respect for inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints. And this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest.”
 
Here’s a tip for administrators: When a university is confronted with the next burning moral question, the best answer – after making clear that the university is a neutral forum – is have at the ready a list of professors and student groups willing to speak to the media. Let the university community speak out on the issues of the day. And let them disagree.