YuLin Zhen, Photography Editor

University leaders will not face repercussions if they make statements on issues of public significance, despite Yale’s recent adoption of a report recommending that leaders refrain from such comments. 

On Oct. 30, University President Maurie McInnis accepted in full the report by the Committee on Institutional Voice. Yale’s report is notable for its framing as guidance instead of enforceable policy, in contrast to dozens of other American universities that made similar decisions this year. Since the report is a set of recommendations, not a policy, it cannot be violated. 

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression counts 25 universities as having adopted some version of neutrality, 20 of which joined the list this calendar year. Of those universities, Yale is one of just three that suggested guidelines for leaders instead of establishing an official policy or commitment. The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, which both announced their positions one month before Yale’s October decision, also framed their reports in terms of guidance instead of policy.

In an interview with the News, committee co-chairs Sterling Professor of Philosophy Michael Della Rocca and law professor Cristina Rodríguez ’95 LAW ’00 confirmed that leaders who ignore the report will face no official consequences, save criticism from community members.

“It’s important to not think of this as a policy, so it’s not the case that if the dean of a school or that of a department decides to issue a statement that they will be in violation of a policy,” Rodríguez said. “Their decision to do that could generate debate about whether it was the right thing to do, but that should be a welcome kind of debate. It shouldn’t be understood as somehow having transgressed.”

Rather, she explained, the committee decided to offer substantive guidance that they hope will shape norms across the University and help leaders make decisions about issuing public statements.

The report suggests three “default principles” that leaders should use to guide their decision-making. It recommends that University leaders refrain from issuing statements on matters of public importance that do not directly relate to Yale, but encourages leaders to speak out when events endanger Yale’s mission. It also leaves the door open to occasional statements of empathy about events unrelated to Yale that are of “transcendent importance.”

But above all else, the committee implored University leaders to “exercise their best institutional judgment.” The recommendations entrust individual administrators to make decisions from a place of wisdom that the committee explained through the ancient Greek philosophical term “phronesis.”

The concept of institutional voice dates to the 1967 Kalven Report at the University of Chicago. The idea rippled across schools nationwide in 2024, after an academic year that thrust universities into a harsh public spotlight between mass arrests at pro-Palestine campus protests and public resignations of college presidents who testified in Congress about antisemitism.

Decisions on institutional voice vary in the scope of how many administrators they affect. They range from Yale’s, which impacts “leaders at all levels” including the heads of academic departments, to applying solely to the university’s president.

The vast majority of universities adopted more enforceable policies than Yale. Stanford University, for example, issued a blanket policy indicating that administrators should “not express an opinion on political and social controversies.” The board of the University of Alabama at Birmingham codified its institutional neutrality policy.

A faculty report at Harvard recommended that university leadership create an enforceable policy based on the report’s guidance to refrain from statements. “The university should develop a process for implementing this policy” and “refer publicly to its policy” when pressured to take positions, the Harvard committee wrote.

“I think our stance is very nuanced in the report because we don’t have a blanket claim that statements should never be issued,” Della Rocca said. “It’s not saying the institution should never speak.”

McInnis first announced the Committee on Institutional Voice on Sept. 10.