A recent article in The Mac Weekly by Matthew Allaire ’27 titled “The case for Institutional Neutrality” made the argument that colleges and universities should stay out of politics, although not completely. Allaire defined institutional neutrality as “a principle that guides colleges and universities to refrain from taking official stances on controversial political, social or economic issues that do not directly relate to their educational mission.” The key word here is “controversial.”
The author is not suggesting that educational institutions cannot or should not ever take political stands—in fact, he sees institutional neutrality itself as in line with “foundational tenets of the liberal tradition”—but instead that it stifles open dialogue on campuses when institutions weigh in on hot button issues. As a result, this version of neutrality becomes nothing more than blind allegiance to the status quo. When enslavement, women’s suffrage or segregation were controversial topics in this country, a policy of institutional neutrality would have prevented colleges and universities from aligning themselves with movements for justice and equality.
Issues of justice and equality only go from being controversial to incontrovertible through the courage of individuals and institutions that speak out, organize and change public opinion. Rather than a bold defense of dialogue and disagreement, institutional neutrality is an abdication of responsibility to be a part of those movements for change.
Additionally, in order to fulfill their educational mission, colleges and universities have an obligation to protect their students, staff and faculty from persecution. It is much more difficult to learn and teach when you are worried about your safety, civil rights, ability to pay the bills or legal status. These restrictions on freedom and human flourishing, even when they don’t directly impact members of a particular educational institution, do much more to stifle open dialogue than decisions by institutions to oppose such restrictions. Lastly, many colleges and universities have missions beyond education. Many were founded on and continue to be oriented towards principles of social action and civic engagement to make the world a better place. For this non-negligible number of institutions, neutrality actually runs counter to their mission.
In practice, institutional neutrality treats systems of oppression that harm marginalized groups as just another controversial topic, not fundamental evils of our society that must be uprooted. This approach claims to favor democratic principles by allowing room for all perspectives, but fails to grapple with the actual obstacles to full democratic participation for all. Why? Because we do not live in an ideal democracy.
Aside from the self-censoring of speech to comply with social pressure, marginalized students are always concerned about what kind of speech will be safe from them. Whether it is undocumented or international students worried about being too political in public, students without professional connections worried about challenging the professors they will need recommendations from in order to compete for jobs, students on scholarships worried about upsetting university administrators or a combination of these, the material barriers to speech for marginalized students are systemic and carry much greater consequences than social pressure. Only through bold, sustained and, yes, controversial action can we begin to undo these barriers and create the kind of true open dialogue that Allaire wants.
Liberal students will often say that even if this is true, colleges and universities are not the place for this fight to happen. They often point to voting and other off-campus engagement opportunities as the right way to address these issues. Educational institutions are not immune from politics, though. It is deeply unfair and reflective of enormous privilege to insist that Arab and Muslim students, who have seen their concerns brushed under the rug this election cycle, or undocumented and international students, who cannot vote at all, should focus their energy everywhere but the one place where they have the most influence and their voices might be heard the loudest: their schools.
