The College Fix

Scholars disagree about whether that’s a good thing

While 2024 saw a rise in advocacy for and the adoption of institutional neutrality statements, fewer than one in 10 universities have such policies in place.

Academics have mixed feelings about these policies. One perspective is that they protect free speech of faculty and students alike, while others believe they detract from universities’ individual missions.

The exact number of universities that have adopted such policies varies, depending on how the list is counted, but either way, the number represents only a small percent of the 2,600-plus four-year colleges and universities in the U.S.

One list kept by the Heterodox Academy, which supports institutional neutrality, documents 157 universities, many of which adopted the position in 2024.

“By the end of 2024, at least 148 institutions—serving a total of roughly 2.6 million students—had adopted a policy of institutional statement neutrality,” according to the academic organization.

Alex Arnold, director of research at Heterodox Academy, explained why his organization believes more schools should adopt it.

“Institutional neutrality is important for universities and colleges to embrace,” Arnold told The College Fix in a recent interview.

It “expresses their commitment to fostering free and open inquiry from a variety of perspectives on the day’s contested issues, ensuring that students and faculty feel free to form and express their own views without feeling the social pressure to conform to an institutional stance,” Arnold said.

What are institutional neutrality policies?

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a campus legal organization that also supports institutional neutrality, described the policy position as “the idea that colleges and universities should not, as institutions, take positions on social and political issues unless those issues ‘threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.’ Instead, these discussions should be left to students and faculty.”

Connor Murnane, spokesperson at FIRE, told The Fix that the idea began at the University of Chicago with the Kalven Report — “the foundation for institutional neutrality.”

The decades-old report states, “The mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.”

“To perform its mission in society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures,” it continues.

From its adoption in 1967 until “early 2023, only three schools had formally committed to its principles …” Murnane said.

The past two years have seen dozens more institutions adopt institutional neutrality. According to FIRE, which also keeps a list, 30 universities now have official neutrality statements, most of them since 2024.

FIRE’s number is much smaller than the Heterodox Academy count because FIRE’s list counts university systems as one; whereas Heterodox includes each campus of an institution by, for example, listing each of the University of Minnesota’s five campuses.

Murnane told The Fix that “while 30 may seem small, it represents incredible growth in just over a year.”

Some of the acclaimed universities that now have neutrality policies include Harvard, Stanford, and John Hopkins universities. Their actions are placing pressure on other prestigious institutions like Duke.

Duke faculty say their institution should be next

A group called Duke Faculty for Institutional Neutrality and Free Speech is mobilizing, and Professors Bruce Caldwell and Timur Kuran are leading the effort. They believe that when institutions take a position on an issue, it can have a “chilling effect.”

“Do I really want to go against the policy that my University spokesman says is one we all believe in? This evidently reduces free speech,” Caldwell told The Fix in an emailed statement on behalf of himself and Kuran.

This spring, their group led 140 faculty members in signing a petition “urging the University administration to commit the University to institutional neutrality and affirm the centrality of free speech to healthy education and productive research,” the two professors wrote at The Duke Chronicle in May.

Their proposal consists of two requests:

“1.When a contested social issue arises that does not directly concern the academic mission of our university, Duke’s leadership will not issue a position statement on that issue.

“2. On rare occasions when a public issue arises that directly affects the mission of the University, our leaders may issue statements that articulate the significance of that issue to our campus community.”

University leaders published a report in April promising “strong support for academic freedom,” which Caldwell and Kuran praised. However, they said many faculty also want Duke to have an institutional neutrality policy in writing.

“The liberal vision that underlies this argument is that individuals within an institution should be allowed to express their views freely as individuals, but that the institution itself should not take a position on issues that do not directly affect it,” they told The Fix.

“This is particularly important in the field of education, where if the goal is the unfettered pursuit and dissemination of knowledge – truth-seeking if you will – then one wants individuals to be free to pursue and articulate ideas that may not have popular appeal, to argue things out to see if the idea holds up,” the professors said.

Not everyone agrees that institutional neutrality is the way to go

However, some professors and academic institutions do not support the policy change effort.

“I certainly don’t think that more universities should be making neutrality pledges, particularly at a time when universities across the country are facing unprecedented attacks on their research and teaching missions from the Trump administration,” Brian Soucek, professor of law at UC Davis, told The Fix in a recent email.

“If anything, universities need to be speaking out much more forcefully about the damage these attacks are causing,” he said.

Soucek described these policies as “thin,” observing that each has “a carve-out for situations (like now) when the mission of the university is under threat.”

“Furthermore, universities are making statements about political and moral issues every time they decide what their policies are to be on issues like diversity, or student protest, much less when they name their buildings and colleges and professorships or put portraits on their walls,” he told The Fix.

“There really aren’t any neutral possibilities in all of this. I’d prefer that universities just be more straightforward, and more openly expressive, about what they choose to value,” the law professor said.

The American Association of University Professors also raised concerns about the policy push in February, stating that institutional neutrality isn’t “necessary or sufficient for academic freedom to flourish.”

“Academic freedom is best protected when the various choices that get lumped together and often obscured under the heading of institutional neutrality are made openly, through the procedures of shared governance,” the association stated, adding, “Faculty who dissent must be protected.”

Meanwhile, Chance Layton, spokesperson for the National Association of Scholars, said that rather than providing an open space of inquiry, neutrality can lead to the opposite.

While Layton believes institutional neutrality is “necessary in most circumstances,” he told The Fix it also “can be used as an easy fallback, serving as an excuse to avoid addressing the important and pressing issues of our day, and is therefore a form of simple laziness.”

“Institutional neutrality is important for schools that are unable to think critically. Yet, better, would be for schools to speak with conviction, consistently,” Layton said.

MORE: Harvard needs to reform. But Trump’s actions could destroy it, professor says.

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: The words ‘Free Speech’ are written in chalk on a blackboard; Shutterstock

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter