Colorado College President Song Richardson, the fiery leader known for speaking candidly about study equity amid the fall of affirmative action, recently announced she was stepping down at the end of the academic year. Just two years into her tenure, she announced she’d return to a position where she could “challenge the status quo” without compromising the institution she was leading.
Richardson’s surprising move signified a growing resurgence in higher education toward institutional neutrality, driven partially by the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas war and the concerns about antisemitism rising on campuses. Nonprofit groups and higher education leaders are inviting trustees and regents to restore an objective stance by recalling the famous words of the Kalven Report, a 1967 proclamation from the University of Chicago.
“The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity,” the report famously reads. It arises out of respect for free inquiry.”
Daniel Diermeier, chancellor of Vanderbilt University, recently contributed to Forbes on the importance of college leaders to keep a steady hand in the mire of today’s contentious geopolitical environment. “[A]mid today’s polarized politics, many universities have given up on neutrality.”
While Diermeier understood that the impulse to voice one’s opinion stems from leaders wanting to support those often marginalized, he recalled the need to look at one’s position as that of a judge. In this judicial position, leaders can accurately facilitate true academic inquiry without bias.
“To encourage a judge to set aside any pretense of fairness and take a side would destroy the rule of law—just as a university leader taking sides undermines the university by undermining its core mission,” he wrote.
Adopting a code of neutrality, like in the Kalven Report, can also ensure university leaders keep their hands clean in morally gray matters of war and armed conflict, writes John Tomasi, the president of Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit advocating for stronger viewpoint diversity in higher education. “Of course, claiming the high ground of free speech and open inquiry would be more effective if one’s institution actually lives those values.”
The Heterodox Academy, along with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the Academic Freedom Alliance, recently released a statement to university regents and trustees to adopt institutional neutrality yet again.
“It is time for those entrusted with ultimate oversight authority for your institutions to restore truth-seeking as the primary mission of higher education by adopting a policy of institutional neutrality on social and political issues that do not concern core academic matters or institutional operations,” it reads.
Furthermore, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has created a 20-point blueprint for creating a healthier, more open and intellectually diverse free speech culture on American campuses. ACTA has contacted 23,000 trustees to share information on institutional neutrality.
