The surprising new call for college presidents to go mute on social issues is echoing through a spectrum of editorial pages. We have long known that abstinence is no way to learn; silence is not golden. The fear of alienating donors, students or faculty must not be confused with compassion or tolerance. The
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Presidents need no encouragement to be cowards in the public sphere. Chicago’s well-known
Chicago’s 1967 report has resurfaced as of late, as discussions rage about what college presidents should—or by some people’s estimations, shouldn’t—say. In stark contrast to our position, Michael R. Bloomberg, in a recent
Yet, the very schools often praised for their neutrality—Northwestern, the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt, for instance—have previously spoken out on important matters including
But university leaders have an obligation to speak out to ensure safety for students and employees—free of intimidation and harassment. It’s not an infringement on free expression to take a stand as an institutional leader, whether it’s to condemn perpetual military occupation, to denounce scientific falsehoods during a pandemic, to defend the importance of telling the truth about the legacies of Black slavery, or to point out that progressive pieties often make use of ancient anti-Semitic tropes to promote sick silos of solidarity.
It’s one thing to allow ideas to be debated, universities should welcome healthy challenges to core values, but the school leaders should also defend the values that have allowed the right for debate to evolve in the first place.
The fear of accountability should not stop university leaders from speaking their minds, especially since they know that many who belong to the institution will have different points of view. Of course, presidents may discover that they were wrong about an issue, and they will have to modify their stances. This can serve as a good lesson. It shows that presidents, much like students, always have something to learn.
At Wesleyan, in recent weeks an Israeli writer lectured on telling stories in the midst of war and an American historian gave an account of the decades of Palestinian, Israeli misunderstanding. At Yale, academic leaders last week convened an open forum of 500 students from Palestine, Dubai, Kuwait, Israel, China, and Europe, plus 80 faculty and staff, to host the Ambassador of the UAE and Israel. Opening with an interfaith invocation from a revered rabbi and a renowned imam, along with bipartisan expertise from Jared Kushner and Dennis Ross of the prior two Administrations, this event was the first such Arab/Israel exchange of its kind since the invasion seven weeks ago.
Universities with missions dedicated to the “good of the individual and the good of the world,” like Wesleyan, and with mottos saluting light and truth, like Yale, should remind us what