YuLin Zhen, Photography Editor

Earlier this month, University President Maurie McInnis convened a committee of seven professors to consider the extent to which Yale as an institution should comment on current events.

The announcement came on the heels of a flurry of related news at peer universities. The University of Pennsylvania’s interim president announced a move toward institutional neutrality just hours before McInnis’ email, and Columbia, the University of Michigan and the University of Connecticut have begun consideration in the weeks since. Barnard and the University of Virginia, among other schools, have adopted neutrality policies this month.

A far-from-settled debate has unfolded on Yale’s campus since McInnis’ announcement. Between the committee’s listening sessions, a faculty panel discussion and opinion pieces in the News, community members have weighed in on what institutional neutrality would mean for Yale.

The News breaks down lingering questions about the policy and its effects.

What is institutional voice and neutrality?

Institutional neutrality is the prevailing label for the policy of some institutions to refrain from taking stances on current events unrelated to their work. 

Yale’s committee is officially titled “the Committee on Institutional Voice,” and the word “neutrality” is absent from McInnis’s initial email to the Yale community announcing her consideration of the policy. Rather, McInnis wrote that her mandate for the group of professors was to consider “when Yale, as an institution, speaks on issues of the day.”

At listening sessions with the Yale community, committee members have also noted that Yale is not using the word neutrality to frame the issue and that they are instead opting to analyze the institution’s “voice.”

The committee co-chairs have noted that the word “neutrality” can be polarizing because some disagree with the notion that institutions of higher education, which make investments and note humanitarian values in their mission statements, can be neutral.

“It’s not possible for an institution that has this much power and money … to not take political positions,” co-Chair Cristina Rodríguez ’95 LAW ’00 said to students at a listening session.

The concept of institutional neutrality started in a 1967 Kalven Report, drafted by a faculty committee at the University of Chicago, which argues that “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.”

As institutional neutrality policy has spread, universities have adopted varying versions of the idea. Some schools, including Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, use the direct language of institutional neutrality as derived from the Kalven Report. Others, including Harvard University, announced their new policies under the same “institutional voice” phrasing as Yale is using.

Sterling Professor of Philosophy Michael Della Rocca, the other committee co-chair, said at a listening session for students that the committee’s recommendations will be independent and original of other institutions’ decisions.

“We’re not going to be following what other schools do,” Della Rocca said. “The president will do what’s best for Yale.”

Arguments for and against

Across the listening sessions, faculty panel discussion and in interviews with the News, Yale community members have expressed a wide range of reasons why they support or oppose neutrality.

Proponents argue that the policy creates an open-minded atmosphere on campus that promotes the exchange of diverse opinions. Some say that issuing statements gives the University president and senior leadership an outsized megaphone to express their beliefs. 

Another common argument is that the University’s taking stances can isolate community members who disagree with the statements. Others note that it is impossible to release statements on every important issue locally and globally and that without action following the statements, words are empty.

On the other hand, adversaries argue that Yale has a duty to defend humanitarian values, and some say that they would feel more supported in their identities if the University addresses contentious topics. 

Others have noted that some Yale statements have indeed been followed by new policy initiatives, such as the re-examination of the Yale Police Department after the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the new diversity efforts after the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action.

Yet both students and committee members have questioned how to determine what current events relate to Yale. 

Some statements tread a careful line, such as the one that was issued in June 2020 by former University President Peter Salovey after the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Salovey wrote that he was “relieved” on behalf of “Yale students and graduates covered under DACA.” But he also wrote, more broadly, that “we still need legislation that provides a pathway to legal status.”

Other instances are clearer. Under institutional neutrality, Yale would likely still have made statements on Title IX regulations and affirmative action, for example. 

But the policy would complicate the issuing of statements on important news that does not directly concern universities, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war and the killing of George Floyd.

What the committee is considering

The exact bounds of what the committee will address in their recommendations are unclear.

At listening sessions, students asked whether a policy of neutrality would only apply to the president or whether other administrators such as deans, departmental chairs and heads of college would be affected as well. The co-chairs said that this is one aspect of the recommendations that they are considering.

The co-chairs stated at sessions that they are not making any decisions regarding Yale’s investment policies. McInnis’ initial email also emphasized that the committee is not re-examining Yale’s free expression policies for individuals.

“The objective is to try to complete the work by October or November,” Rodríguez said about a timeline for providing the recommendations.

The committee’s listening sessions will continue through Oct. 2.