The Value of Institutional Neutrality for Free Inquiry

My new article in the First Amendment Law Review's symposium on campus free speech

Last fall, the First Amendment Law Review at the University of North Carolina hosted a symposium on campus free speech issues. The issue with articles from the symposium is now out. You can find my contribution here.

The article is called "The Value of Institutional Neutrality for Free Inquiry." There are multiple reasons for universities to adopt a policy of what has become known as "institutional neutrality." This article focuses on the value of such an institutional policy for protecting a climate of free inquiry for individual scholars at the institution.

The article revolves around three core concerns about how a departure from institutional neutrality norms damages free inquiry.

One is mission erosion.

Scholarly institutions that seek to take positions on matters of social and political controversy have altered their core mission and have done so in a way that will do damage to that mission. Rather than being a forum within which scholarly controversies rage, the university will position itself as a judge of those controversies. Rather than playing host to ongoing scholarly disagreements, the university will attempt to authoritatively settle those disagreements. Rather than privileging the process of scholarly disputation, the university will come to privilege a set of particular scholarly findings and conclusions. Rather than elevating expertise to better inform the polity, the university will exalt non-expert opinion in the hopes of influencing the polity. Institutional statements risk subverting the university's commitment to free inquiry into difficult and controversial subjects.

Especially at the level of academic units, empowering departmental faculty to issue institutional political statements breeds a climate of political orthodoxy and transforms scholarly entities into political clubs.

Early in the twentieth century, the German sociologist Max Weber called attention to these dangers when universities were struggling to maintain their autonomy from political forces. The public interest on which the autonomy of the universities rested, he thought, depended on the ability of professors to think freely and speak independently of social and political pressures. "Society as a whole has no interest in guaranteeing the permanent tenure of a professorial corps which has been carefully screened to determine that its political views are unexceptional."

Professors are quick to recognize the truth in Weber's statement when the ideological screening of the professoriate is being done by political officials or trustees. They are slower to admit its truth when the ideological screening is done by the incumbent members of the professoriate itself. But if it would be damaging to the public good for the governor of Florida to screen state university professors for their political conformity, it would be equally bad for the faculty of the law school to impose such a screen themselves—even if the political conformity that such a screen would create would differ depending on who deployed it. Weber contended, "'The freedom of science, scholarship and teaching' in a university certainly does not exist where appointment to a teaching post is made dependent on the possession—or simulation—of a point of view which is 'acceptable in the highest circles' of church and state." Things are not improved if a potential faculty member must simulate the political perspectives of the existing members of the faculty rather than the highest circles of church and state. Faculties should not "function as deputies on behalf of the political police," even if the political police are not the ones currently reigning in the state capitol. It is a disservice to the greater public if scholars must pass through a screen to ensure that their political views are acceptable to those in power.

Finally, leaving the norm of institutional neutrality behind as a vestige of a bygone era can eventually be expected to result in the demand that many traditional practices of universities be altered. If scholarly entities, whether universities, scholarly associations, or scholarly publishers, posture as political actors, then there will be demands that they act like it -- by suppressing dissenting voices and inconvenient truths.

Exclusion of dissenters and suppression of dissent is the most obvious thing to do if an institution is a committed partisan rather than a neutral platform. Universities routinely resist the call to purge the campus of political dissenters on the grounds that the university is the home to many diverse voices. The university does not endorse any of those voices, and none of those voices speaks for the university. A professor who expresses a controversial political opinion speaks for himself alone. Likewise, a controversial speaker who is brought to campus is not endorsed by the university that hosts him. The university has no one message to convey, and thus it tolerates the exhibition of many messages on its campus. It is the marketplace of ideas, not the purveyor of one idea. If the institution instead becomes an advocate rather than a forum, then there is less reason to tolerate counterprogramming to its favored message. It can no longer distinguish its own voice from the voice of those who speak on campus because now it has become the messenger for delivering a particular point of view. A diversity of voices only muddles the message the university has resolved to communicate. If the university as an institution knows the right answer to any particular political or social question, then it can only breed confusion if it allows on campus those who express the wrong answer to those questions. If the university has a dogma, then it need not tolerate heretics.

If universities wish to remain the serious scholarly institutions that they have held themselves out to be since the end of the nineteenth century, then they must refrain from committing themselves, as institutions, to particular right answers on contested and controversial political and social issues.

Read the whole thing here.

Comments

[Stephen Lathrop]

Given the extraordinary range of views suitable for university consideration, why would anyone suppose it wise to insist that MAGA advocacy get institutional backing in preference to any other views? If you have had a taste of a stew and found it corrupt, there is no obligation to eat it all before deciding to avoid it.

Institutional free inquiry will be healthier and stronger without demands that everyone must consume rotten fare to prove neutrality. Indeed, a protected ability to discern what fare is wholesome, and what rotten, is an indispensable prerequisite to make neutrality work. Neutrality without values promotes nihilism.

Note that none of what I say supports licensing governments to make decisions in any way determinative of curriculum.

[David Nieporent]

In what way, exactly, is your comment responsive to anything in the post?

[Krenn]

As usual, there are two different definitions of neutrality at issue here:

Do you mean that institutions themselves cannot TAKE a stance on major social or political issues...

Or that institutions have a duty to prevent their own institution from being USED in such a way as to take a stance on major political or social issues?

There's a very important difference between "University X does not officially have a policy on, say, Palestinian right-of-return" versus "University X recognizes that it must not permit any individual faculty, group of faculty, or group of students to impose their own de-facto policy for or against Palestinian right-of-return in any way which might implicate University access or practices."

[apedad]

Seems like this is a better decision for the people who pay, i.e., taxpayers for public institutions and tuitition payers at private institutions.

[Jett's Pop]

If I understand what you mean by "better decision," I think you've hit the nail on its head. The people who pay will demand that the university speak in a voice that the people who pay approve of, and that their hard-earned dollars not be used to support opposing points of view (by professors, for example). Professor Whittington may have a great theory, but it will be hard to resist those pressures.

[Randal]

Universities routinely resist the call to purge the campus of political dissenters on the grounds that the university is the home to many diverse voices. The university does not endorse any of those voices, and none of those voices speaks for the university.

You seem to have missed the whole point of the last several decades, which is that the right is taking issue with this very statement. They don't want universities to be home to many diverse voices. Surely the university may take a position on that political question... as you have assumed they can and do without even noticing your own internal contradiction.

Check out Harvard. Universities are under political attack from the right. You need to decide whether they can legitimately "take a position" in their own defense, or if they must remain "institutionally neutral" and succumb to the forces arrayed against them.

[Lee Moore]

"You seem to have missed the whole point of the last several decades, which is that the right is taking issue with this very statement."

Exactly. The right, which is very slow to catch on, has at last realized that "this very statement" is untrue. Universities do not routinely resist the call to purge the campus of political dissenters. They enthusiastically accommodate such calls, not least because the university administration is itself eagerly fanning the calls, and they have been purging themselves of right leaning, and even liberal-but-not-woke, faculty, thoughts and ideas.

Whittington's piece is delightfully naive to the point of cluelessness.

Scholarly institutions that seek to take positions on matters of social and political controversy have altered their core mission and have done so in a way that will do damage to that mission.

Yes they have, Keith old chum. They have a new mission. Which you describe :

Rather than being a forum within which scholarly controversies rage, the university will position itself as a judge of those controversies. Rather than playing host to ongoing scholarly disagreements, the university will attempt to authoritatively settle those disagreements. Rather than privileging the process of scholarly disputation, the university will come to privilege a set of particular scholarly findings and conclusions.

"Bug" - meet "feature."

Everything that Whittington complains of is entirely intentional. They have not stumbled into a jihad for ideological conformity - they simply abolished the old liberal mission to which Whittington is attached, and replaced it with a new mission - to forge, support and promote the current iteration of la lutta. Silencing contrary voices is fundamental to that.

The pretence that they are still pursuing the old mission of free enquiry is simply the skin of the dead sheep, donned to fool rubes like poor old Whittington.

[Randal]

Universities do not routinely resist the call to purge the campus of political dissenters.

Lol. Harvard is fighting for its life in order to keep Palestinian voices on campus. Washington wants them gone.

You want them gone too. Brett wants them gone. DeSantis wants them gone.

And not just them. Anyone who isn't "American" enough -- that is, white and MAGA -- they want gone. Just look at New College.

Brett said it best over the weekend. If he were a professor, he would treat everyone as if they were middle-class right-leaning white males. The MAGA mindset is the only one the right is willing to tolerate in this country.

[TwelveInchPianist]

1. Harvard recently forced out an evolutionary biologist for saying that the sex binary is important.

2. Harvard is being sanctioned because it created a hostile environment for Jewish students. The theory that free speech is limited by the first amendment to the extent that it creates a hostile educational environment is a left-wing view, not a right wing one.

[Lee Moore]

Also, Larry Summers is on the phone.

[Lee Moore]

Randal is being a tad hyperbolic here. And why not if that butters his parsnips ?

Harvard is not fighting for its life - it's fighting for taxpayer money, plus the right to ignore the conditions that Congress has placed on getting it.

Harvard can be as anti-Jewish as it likes, so long as it doesn't want to dip its snout into the federal trough.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Any university under government demand to hire a government-approved curriculum supervisor is fighting for its life.

[Lee Moore]

Well no. A government university has to do what the government says, but a private university doesn't. Unless it wants government cash.

Think of Harvard as a hooker and you'll get the gist.

As it happens Harvard is absolutely loaded, so it doesn't have to whore itself out if it doesn't want to.

[Randal]

According to the first amendment, the government isn't supposed to be hiring hookers. That is, it can't condition grant money on forced speech.

[Randal]

Harvard is being sanctioned because it created a hostile environment for Jewish students.

Yeah and Venezuela is invading us. How are you guys so susceptible to having your knobs polished by Trump's propagandists?

[TwelveInchPianist]

Hey, we told the hostile environment doctrine was going to be used to chill speech.

[Lee Moore]

.

[Sarcastr0]

The 'universities are too woke' thing is a right-wing witch hunt. As was noted above, a clue is that the cure by MAGA is explicit ideological minders to keep things conservative.

MAGA creates liberal villains in their heads, envies those villains, and adopts their imaginary tactics.

It's not a good faith objection.
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The OP is better, but also not really well thought out. Should there be institutional neutrality about Holocause denial? At some point there has gotta be boundaries, lest Sartrian antisemits take over.