It seems like a strange moment to impose a cloak of silence on a university president and degrade his office at a time when leaders of businesses and other institutions are being asked to participate in public debate. Masu. I started and ran the nation’s first school for university presidents for over 10 years, with about 100 participants per year, and I’m confident that they’ll understand this part of their job, even if it’s not easy. I realized that I value the parts.
Since the Hamas attack on October 7 last year and Israel’s response, in a misguided effort to reduce the temperature of conflict on campus and prevent university presidents from being used as punching bags by far corners of society, , more than 20 schools have adopted institutional neutrality rules. Universities across the country are reconsidering their neutrality policies after the University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin, University of Southern California, Harvard University, Stanford University, and many others adopted such positions. On the one hand, schools must balance whether they risk students’ rights and voices when taking sides on controversial issues, or whether they have a moral obligation to address social wrongs. are.
Vanderbilt University President Daniel Diermeyer supported neutrality, saying: It produces a cooling effect on the body. ” Wesleyan President Michael Ross argued for avoiding neutrality, saying, “Deans and provosts should speak out in a way that allows people to agree, debate, and engage in conversation.”
The 1967 Kalven Report on Institutional Neutrality, published by the University of Chicago, justified the school’s silence by stating that institutional neutrality was essential to ensuring the university’s mission as a forum for diversity of thought. It is increasingly being used as a shield. Paul Alvisatos, current president of the University of Chicago, said: I later found out that the people who had opposing opinions actually had very strong arguments. ”
There are three issues that are overlooked in this discussion. First, universities, including the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University, are currently pretending to be innocent in accordance with the Kalven Report, but police overreach in the brutal murder of George Floyd, etc. , paradoxically taking recent political positions on social issues that they deem acceptable. . In fact, these schools have often spoken out about other examples of racial bias, disability barriers, immigrant hostility, anti-Chinese bias, and gender bias. Their support for Kalven’s doctrine of silence and neutrality therefore seems paradoxical.
Second, the oft-cited but little-read Kalven Report actually encouraged university voices to address a situation that “threatened the very mission of universities and the values of free inquiry.” It is. Do racism, anti-Semitism, faith in democracy, and community-targeted violence speak to such values?
Third, the president’s voice is not the same as the school’s overall doctrine. By silencing leaders, schools are denying the important duties of executive leadership that have long been recognized by scholars and practitioners. In his book Leadership and Management, Berkeley organizational sociologist Philip Selnick pointed out that the voice expressed on social issues moves university leaders from administrative oversight and administrative control to executive leadership. It is precisely this external voice that allows leaders to respond flexibly to the changing needs of society.
Edelman’s Trust Barometer found that the CEO’s voice is now a pillar of public trust, creating a standard that can be subject to further debate. University presidents are CEOs and always critical voices in society, and their constituencies are as diverse as those of corporations, labor unions, and professional associations.
Since the 1960s, university presidents such as Theodore Hesburgh of the University of Notre Dame, Kingman Brewster of Yale University, and Clark Carr of the University of Berkeley have influenced global discourse. They did not poll their board or alumni for consensus before announcing their support for civil rights legislation or their opposition to the Vietnam War.
The CEOs of Merck and Walmart will immediately resign from Donald Trump’s executive advisory boards over comments he made after the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville in 2017. The number of people resigning has increased rapidly. Similarly, the founders of Home Depot publicly endorsed rival presidential candidates while in office, just as the current president and the current chairman of Blackstone Group have endorsed rival presidential candidates. I supported it.
They do not determine their political positions through board votes or shareholder votes. An interpretation spreading virally across college campuses confuses individual voices with institutional pronouncements. They also avoid the “slippery slope” assumption that every social problem must be addressed, and instead practice a form of triage prioritization similar to that found in hospital ERs.
As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in 1844, the voices of civil society leaders help establish the truth and generate valuable “social capital” or community trust. If university presidents are given permission to do so, why shouldn’t all institutional leaders in democratic societies shirk their duties?
