University Presidents Should Not Silence Themselves

It seems like a strange moment to degrade the job of college or university presidents by imposing a cloak of silence on them when leaders of corporations and other institutions are called upon to engage in public discourse. I created and run the nation’s first school for college and university presidents with roughly 100 participants a year for over ten years and find they value this part of their job, even if it is not easy.

In a misguided effort to lower the temperature of conflict on campuses and save university presidents from being a punching bag for every corner of society, more than 20 schools have adopted institutional neutrality rules since last year’s Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the Israeli response. Colleges and universities around the country are reconsidering their neutrality policies in the wake of such positions adopted by the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Southern California, Harvard, Stanford, and many others. Schools are balancing, on the one hand, whether they put student rights or voices at risk when they take sides on controversial issues or whether they have a moral obligation to address societal wrongs.

Speaking in favor of neutrality, Daniel Diermeier, the chancellor of Vanderbilt University, said, “The problem with universities taking official positions is that they lay down a party line; it creates a chilling effect.” Speaking for avoid neutrality, Wesleyan President Michael Roth said, “Deans and presidents should speak, so people agree with them, argue with them, and participate in a conversation.” 

The University of Chicago’s heralded 1967 Kalven Report on Institutional Neutrality is used increasingly as a shield to justify school silence, saying that institutional neutrality is vital to assure the university’s mission as a forum for diverse thought. Current University of Chicago president Paul Alvisatos said that, “Oftentimes, when universities do take positions, it’s because it reflects a consensus, but it doesn’t recognize that there are many examples in history where what was considered to be conventional wisdom; later on, we found those who had dissenting views actually had a very strong point.”

There are three issues missed by this debate. First, each university now virtuously waving around their purity in compliance with the Kalven Report, including Chicago and Vanderbilt, have paradoxically taken recent political stances on societal issues that they found acceptable, such as the excessive force police used in the brutal murder of George Floyd. In fact these schools have often spoken out on other examples of racial bias, disability barriers, immigration hostility, anti-Chinese bias, and gender bias. Thus, their support of the Kalven doctrine of silence and neutrality seems paradoxical. 

Second, the oft-cited, but little read, Kalven Report actually encouraged institutional voice to address situations which “threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.” Wouldn’t racism, antisemitism, trust in democracy, and violence targeting communities speak to such values?

Third, the president’s voice is not the same thing as a school-wide doctrine. By silencing leaders, schools are denying the vital duties of executive leadership long identified by scholars and practitioners alike.  The Berkeley organizational sociologist Phillip Selnick pointed out in his classic Leadership and Administration that a voice expressed on societal issues moves a university leader from operational supervision and administrative management to executive leadership. It is this very external voice that the leader provides the responsive adaption to changing social needs. 

The Edelman Trust Barometer found that chief executive voices are now pillars of trust in society—creating standards that can be the subject of further debate. University presidents are CEOs and have always been critical voices in society and their constituencies are no more diverse than those of corporations, trade unions, and professional associations. 

Since the 1960s, college presidents such as Notre Dame’s Theodore Hesburgh, Yale’s Kingman Brewster and Berkeley’s Clark Kerr have made an impact on the discourse surrounding global. They did not survey their boards or alumni for consensus before speaking out in favor of the Civil Rights Act or against the Vietnam War. 

When the CEOs of Merck and Walmart promptly quit Donald Trump’s business advisory council in 2017 over his remarks after the white nationalism violence in Charlottesville, they sparked a stampede of exits.  Similarly, the founders of The Home Depot supported opposite presidential candidates openly while in office just as the current president and the current chairman of Blackstone Group support rival presidential candidates.  

They do not guide their political positions through board votes or shareholder referendums. The interpretation spreading virally across college campuses confuses individual voice with institutional proclamations. They also avoid the “slippery slope” presumption that this must address every societal issue, instead practicing a form of triage priorities as we would find in a hospital ER.  

As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in 1844, the voice of  leaders in civil society help certify truth, and  creates priceless “social capital” or community trust. If college presidents get a pass, then why shouldn’t all institutional leaders in democratic society shirk their duties?