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National Post
21-05-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Peter MacKinnon: Dissenting UBC professors offer hope for ending university politicization
On April 7, four professors at the University of British Columbia filed a petition in the B.C. Supreme Court seeking a determination that the university has become politicized and is in violation of Section 66(1) of the province's University Act requiring it to be non-political. This petition, co-signed by a former graduate student, brings to mind the University of Chicago's 1967 Kalven Report, which insisted that universities must remain neutral on political issues. This neutrality 'arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a variety 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. It provides its complement, too, in the obligation of the university to provide a forum for the most searching and candid discussion of public issues.' Article content Article content Article content The issues here are clear and important. Broad support for our universities depends on their neutrality in the eyes of governments and citizens. Those who work in them as faculty, students or staff are free, as individuals or in groups, to be active in political causes, but they must do so in their own names without attributing their views to their universities. Senior university officers do not have the same freedom. When they publicly align with political causes, their endorsement is widely attributed to their universities thereby jeopardizing the non-partisan support on which they depend. Article content Article content The UBC professors are petitioning the Supreme Court to find that their university is taking political positions and is thereby violating the requirement of neutrality: first, by repeatedly acknowledging that the university is on unceded land; second, by taking a 'naked, political' position against Israel in its war with Hamas; and third, through requirements that job applicants pledge support for the political agenda of DEI. Article content Article content In making the first and second claims, universities are entering contestable political space. With respect to the first, land acknowledgments have become incantations that have more than one potential meaning. On one level, they are acceptances of a connection between an Indigenous history and presence, and the lands on which a university sits, the nature of which is unspecified. On another level, they are sometimes the basis of claims that the land on which a university sits has been stolen from Indigenous peoples; because they are unceded the legitimacy of the university's presence on them is in doubt. Exploring the issues raises questions of a political nature. Article content Article content At first contact between Indigenous peoples and European newcomers, the Indigenous population of the 10 million square kilometres that are now Canada was estimated (as reported by Britannica) to be about 200,000. The estimate may be on the low side but, if close, the numbers mean that in what is now the second largest country on Earth, only small parts of this land were inhabited by humans. Numbers and locations have changed over the centuries since, but many of the claims routinely made by the 97 universities in Canada, that they are located on Indigenous lands, are potentially contentious. The issue here is not the adjudication of these claims; it is to recognize that some at least are challengeable, which brings us back to the UBC professors' claim that UBC is on political ground in its explicit and public acknowledgment that it is located on unceded Indigenous lands.
Telegraph
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Stop weighing in on politics, universities told
Universities have been urged to stop weighing in on politics after a gender-critical academic was hounded out of her job. In a letter sent to all British universities on Wednesday, seen by The Telegraph, seven free speech organisations called on vice-chancellors to 'adopt a policy of institutional neutrality on social and political issues' that do not directly concern core academic matters. The groups cited the recent case of Prof Kathleen Stock, a gender-critical academic who was driven from her post at the University of Sussex after she raised the alarm over the institution's transgender policy. The letter, signed by groups including the Committee for Academic Freedom and prominent academics such as Prof Jo Phoenix, warned that universities had increasingly taken official stances on contentious issues in recent years. It said: 'This trend has contributed to the politicisation of higher education and created an untenable expectation that universities must weigh in on every major political or social debate. 'To ensure that all members of the academic community feel free to express their ideas without fear of repercussion, universities must remain neutral on matters of polarising public debate.' It comes after Prof Stock quit her job following criticism of Sussex's policy, which stated that academics must 'positively represent trans people and trans lives' in all relevant teaching. She said this prevented her from discussing gender-critical arguments with students. The Office for Students (OfS) ruled last month that Prof Stock 'felt unable to teach certain topics' as a result of the policy and hit the University of Sussex with a £585,000 fine for breaching free speech duties – the watchdog's largest sanction on record. In their letter on Wednesday, which was also sent to the OfS, free speech groups said the University of Sussex would likely have avoided this fine if it had 'remained neutral on what is a contested subject'. They claimed such instances created 'a chilling effect' on university campuses and helped foster 'an environment where attacking people for their viewpoints becomes acceptable'. The group of academics, which also includes Lord Young, the head of the Free Speech Union, and Lord Biggar, a philosophy professor at the University of Oxford, urged UK institutions to instead adopt the principle that 'the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic'. This idea derives from the Kalven Report, a document produced by the University of Chicago in 1967 which called for US campuses to adopt positions of neutrality as they were rocked by violence during the Vietnam War. Just a handful of UK universities currently have 'institutional neutrality' policies in place, including Queen Mary University, the London School of Economics, and Imperial College London. By comparison, around 140 US universities have chosen to adopt impartiality clauses. It comes as American institutions gradually reverse a trend of issuing statements on hot-button issues, which accelerated around a decade ago in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Some have claimed the shift towards neutrality at US universities has also been hastened by the Israel-Hamas war, which saw some institutions, including Harvard, chastised for taking a view. Institutional neutrality refers to when universities formally adopt a statement of impartiality in their governing documents or policies. The term also means universities refrain from adopting 'particular political, social or ideological viewpoints or agendas', flying flags associated with them, or pressuring staff and students to support certain agendas. The free speech groups said exemptions should apply only when the topics in question relate to a university's 'core functions', such as education, research, and the pursuit of its charitable objects, or when legally required to do so. Lord Hague, the new chancellor of the University of Oxford, appeared to voice his support for institutional neutrality earlier this year, saying in his inaugural speech that Oxford did 'not need to agree on everything'. He said: 'Indeed we should not. I am pleased to say we do not need a foreign policy: we are not a country.' Prof Arif Ahmed, the Government's free speech tsar, also spoke in favour of institutional neutrality prior to his appointment as the director of academic freedom at the OfS in 2023. In an article for Unherd in 2022, Prof Ahmed said the OfS 'should recommend both the scrapping of political training and the adoption of institutional neutrality'. He wrote to a select number of universities with similar transgender policies to the University of Sussex earlier this month urging them to review their guidelines. It comes after the University of Sussex condemned its treatment by the OfS and said it is 'being made an example to other universities' as part of efforts to stoke the 'culture wars'. Critics of institutional neutrality more broadly argue that it prevents universities from taking a firm stance against issues such as anti-Semitism. They also say that neutrality clauses allow vice-chancellors to sidestep difficult subjects, often for fear of deterring donors. William Mackesy, the founder of the Alumni For Free Speech group, told The Telegraph: 'One of the best ways for universities to detoxify their campuses is to stop taking sides. But do they really care enough? 'Legal and regulatory catastrophes are coming for our universities, like that recently suffered by Sussex. These are caused by the various ways they are failing to protect people with sometimes controversial views. The risk can, though, be minimised by adopting a mindset of neutrality.'
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Commentary: Is it time for the University of Chicago to abandon cherished neutrality and join the fight?
The University of Chicago is marking the 10th anniversary of the 2015 restatement by a faculty committee of the school's commitment to free speech values known as the 'Chicago Principles.' This celebration is a somber occasion, for intellectual freedom is under siege on multiple fronts, presenting higher education with challenges that are likely to test foundational values as never before. The U. of C. describes its free speech ethos as a tradition extending back to its founding and reaffirmed at various junctures in its history. A key moment in that history is a 1967 report on 'the university's role in political and social action' by a faculty committee chaired by my late father, Harry Kalven Jr., a law professor and First Amendment expert. Known as the Kalven Report, the document sets forth the policy — the 'presumption' — that universities as institutions should not take positions on the issues of the day. 'The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student,' it states. 'The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.' When a university takes a position on a political issue, so the argument goes, it inhibits the intellectual freedom of those within the institution who disagree with that position. The Kalven Report has been much in the news since the campus protests last spring calling for divestment from Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing Israeli onslaught. More than 25 institutions have adopted policies of 'institutional neutrality' modeled on it, in the hope of avoiding the debacles that unfolded on campuses where university leadership was besieged by irate students, faculty, donors and members of Congress. Although I do not recall discussing the report with my father, I have intimate knowledge of his thinking about issues of intellectual freedom at the time he drafted it. After his death, I spent years immersed in his papers, completing a book on the First Amendment he was working on when he died. (Titled 'A Worthy Tradition: Freedom of Speech in America,' it was published in 1988.) Perhaps the best single expression of his orientation at the time of the Kalven Committee is an article he wrote several years earlier on New York Times v. Sullivan, a 1964 Supreme Court decision that found 'the central meaning of the First Amendment' in the proposition that criticism of government cannot be made a crime in the United States. He hailed the decision as 'a happy revolution in free speech doctrine' and in the years that followed often quoted the Supreme Court's felicitous formulation that debate on public issues should be 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.' His papers leave little doubt that those were the values he intended the report to serve. Its history over the decades since, however, has been more complicated. The document begins with a modest statement to the effect that it is intended as 'a point of departure' for discussion by the university community. Perhaps it is simply the nature of bureaucracies, but the report almost immediately hardened into institutional dogma, invoked again and again, in the view of its critics, not to ensure space for vigorous discussion about possible exceptions that would overcome the presumption against collective action but to shut such discussion down. The upshot is that a significant number of students and faculty have come to regard it as a tool of censorship rather than a guarantor of free speech. With the election of President Donald Trump, the state of play has now radically shifted. In view of what has transpired during his first 10 days in office, it's clear his administration will bring to bear maximum pressure on higher education to enforce ideological conformity and to punish dissent. It has formidable tools for doing so — chief among them, the withholding of federal funds essential to research and operations unless various conditions are met, legal challenges and public humiliations such as were meted out last spring to several university presidents by legislative committees. It is critically important to see this for what it is: a multipronged censorship regime that strikes at the 'central meaning of the First Amendment' — the freedom to criticize government — and at the essence of academic freedom. Read in this context, the distribution of emphasis in the Kalven Report now falls on this passage: 'From time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.' These words are unequivocal. They state an obligation, a moral imperative. The university today, however, is a significantly different institution than it was when they were written. It is less a community of scholars who have a measure of meaningful participation in self-governance than a corporation, heavily reliant on government funding and mega-donors, in which power is concentrated in the office of the president/CEO and many faculty, students and staff feel disenfranchised. These changes in the character of the university give the Trump administration and major donors with political agendas leverage to impose their will. The paradox of freedom of speech is that it's like the air we breathe — essential to life but easily taken for granted. Sometimes, repression has the effect of illuminating and making palpable the thing itself. Such moral clarity can provide a basis for resistance and solidarity. The question is: What are universities prepared to risk in defense of their most essential values? That question is particularly pointed in the case of the U. of C. Will its promotion of freedom of expression and inquiry prove in the end to have been a marketing strategy that can be discarded in the face of harsh political realities? Or will the university assume a leadership role by demonstrating what it means, in the words of the Kalven Report, 'to defend its interests and its values' against threats to 'the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry'? I don't presume to know the answers to those questions. I know only that the stakes are high and our fidelity to the principles we claim to live by will be severely tested. ____ Jamie Kalven is founding executive director of the Invisible Institute, which was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes in 2024. His reporting first brought the police murder of Laquan McDonald case to public attention. ___
Axios
04-02-2025
- Politics
- Axios
How free speech on college campuses is being challenged
Last week, UChicago celebrated its famous "Chicago Principles," a policy adopted by more than 100 colleges and universities that codifies free speech for students and scholars while urging institutions to remain neutral on political matters. Why it matters: New developments are testing these principles of campus free speech in Chicago and beyond. The conversation is reheating even as the war in Gaza and accompanying protests appear to be winding down. The big picture: In the past few days, tenets of the Chicago Principles have been challenged by President Trump and local writer and activist Jamie Kalven, whose father, Harry Kalven Jr., created the policy on which they are based. Driving the news: Last week, Trump signed an executive order to deport foreign students deemed "Hamas sympathizers" and "pro-jihadist" protesters. The order asks officials to show universities how to find grounds to "monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds." "We put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you," a White House fact sheet about the order says. The latest: The Trump administration upped the ante late Monday, announcing that the Department of Education will investigate five universities, including Northwestern, for "cases of antisemitism" during the Israel-Gaza war. NU officials say they will "fully comply" with investigators. Meanwhile: Jamie Kalven pushed back on a different aspect of the principles in a Sunday Tribune op-ed, saying that the time for university neutrality is over. He predicts the Trump administration will pressure universities "to enforce ideological conformity and to punish dissent" by, among other things, withholding federal funds for research and operations. Yes, but: Kalven doesn't think this contradicts his father's 1967 Kalven Report, citing one part that warns when "society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry," the university must "oppose such measures and actively defend its interests and its values." Zoom in: Axios reached out to Northwestern, University of Illinois, DePaul and UChicago to ask how they plan to respond to Trump's order. DePaul officials wrote:"DePaul has a robust Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment policy and reporting mechanisms in place, and we investigate every complaint. We denounce antisemitism and will continue to do everything possible to ensure DePaul is a safe and welcoming space for every member of our diverse university community." University of Chicago representatives did not directly respond to the Kalven op-ed but said: "We are still assessing the executive order's potential impact." U of I officials said: " We continue to evaluate all directives and policy changes to understand and assess their impact and our responsibilities as more guidance becomes available." Northwestern representatives wrote:"Free expression and academic freedom are among our core values, but we have made clear that these values provide no excuse for behavior that threatens the well-being of others."
New York Times
29-01-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Corporate Leaders Need to Keep Their Mouths Shut
After more than a year of exhausting controversies over free expression at colleges and universities, America's business leaders would do well to take a simple lesson from embattled leaders in higher education: Keep your mouth shut. The lesson has become even more important with the recent gravitation of some corporate leaders toward President Trump. Such public fawning, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, demonstrates how unprincipled and fickle corporate political positions have always been. Increasingly, universities have adopted neutrality policies to recommit to their core mission. So can corporations. The key is committing to institutional neutrality, which requires leaders to stay silent on social and political issues that do not directly affect their operations. This means reining in corporate political statements — progressive and conservative — as well as the political activity of chief executives like Elon Musk and political flip-flops by companies like Meta. Our own university, the University of Chicago, committed to this ideal in 1899 and restated that commitment in the seminal Kalven Report of 1967. This has freed individuals in our community to express their own opinions and ideas in lively debate. For decades, few other universities have made this commitment. But its value for them — and for business corporations — has become clearer over the past year. The Gaza war created a no-win situation for university leaders accustomed to speaking out on political issues. On the one hand, bland institutional statements on current events have no impact, satisfy no one and relegate the institution to a role as a second-rate political actor. On the other, statements with real substance threaten to alienate and silence those who disagree. As a result, more than two dozen schools, including Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania — whose presidents resigned, in part, after stumbling at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism — have now adopted neutrality policies akin to Chicago's. More are in the works. Corporate leaders in the private sector can benefit from these hard lessons. Along with students and faculty members, some employees, shareholders and customers take the view that 'silence is violence.' They demand that management take positions on issues outside the remit of the company, even if there are other stakeholders — older employees, customers of a different political affiliation — who would disagree. Corporate boards and chief executives have increasingly given in to the demands, creating a virtue cascade. As more companies speak out, it creates competitive pressure on others to join in. They have taken to issuing vanilla statements conveying no real information about their culture or purpose. And predictably, the few times when statements veered away from the mainstream, the corporations were pressured to backtrack. Notoriously, Disney's now former chief executive Bob Chapek drew criticism from employees and a furious response from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida with his reaction to the state's Parental Rights in Education legislation, also known as the 'Don't Say Gay' bill. Waffling from silence to explaining that silence to a firm statement of opposition, Mr. Chapek's approach was a fiasco that alienated almost everyone, including Mr. DeSantis and the Disney employees who opposed the bill. While some other corporate leaders may be enjoying the favor they have found in taking sides, they would be wise to heed the lesson of Ivy League schools that discovered the benefits of institutional neutrality a little too late. These corporations would benefit from adopting a formal policy that guides their leaders on when, if ever, they may speak out. A policy of this sort should have two foundational components. First, there must be a commitment by the corporation and its leaders to refrain from speaking. This is valuable because it allows one to assert that silence is a considered (and consistent) policy. In fact, institutional silence should be the default assumption. With regard to individual chief executives like Elon Musk, this default policy should require silence in any context where their speech, like that of university presidents, might be attributed to the entire company. Mr. Musk may present a unique case because his pervasive policy influence, for now, on the Trump administration, and because its regulatory activity could actually benefit Tesla and Mr. Musk's other companies. But for most chief executives, political advocacy that is unrelated to the corporation's core operations tends to be self-defeating. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Musk's political gambit will be an exception or prove the rule. Of course, there will sometimes be a compelling business case for corporate speech. Ben & Jerry's, for example, has adopted a strong social justice branding that does not seem to hamper its bottom line. Other times, a unified or crucial employee bloc or customer base may have such strong views that the corporation adopts a formal policy of speaking on a specific issue. In 2020, the commissioner of the National Basketball Association issued a statement on racial injustice and police brutality that was consistent with the positions and boycotts taken by a unified bloc led by its marquee players. The recent policy flips that Mark Zuckerberg announced at Meta — ending its fact-checking program and loosening content moderation — may constitute another gray area. On the one hand, these are operational decisions. On the other, their original adoption and more recent recission were undoubtedly related to politics. And a company or university's need to backtrack — just as in the cases of Mr. Chapek at Disney and the presidents at Harvard and Penn — powerfully demonstrates the no-win nature of playing amateur politics. For large corporations, such operational exceptions should be rare. In a world of diverse viewpoints, the decision to favor one constituency over another is fraught and should not be made lightly. With varied employees and customers — young and old, liberal and conservative — meaningful statements are more likely to alienate than to satisfy. At the very least, the decision to speak on political issues should be part of a deliberate corporate governance policy. Second, there must be a clearly stated — and ideally, narrow — exception for statements that are necessary to maintain or defend the company's ability to operate. Boards should think about exactly which types of circumstances warrant an exception and then leave it to the judgment of management about how to apply the policy. One could imagine a company saying, 'It is our policy that Best Widget Inc. will not make institutional statements on political matters that do not directly affect our ability to operate. We influence society through producing the best widgets.' This would allow speech on widget regulation, as well as on policies implicating the business's direct relationships with employees and customers. But it would not include a corporate policy extrinsic to its business interests. Without neutrality policies, we can expect many of the same chief executives who have been currying favor with Mr. Trump to turn back left with the next political wind. In both the business and university contexts, silence often takes courage and a commitment to institutional modesty. For a corporation, a general policy of silence can remind stakeholders that the business of the business is, well, business.
