Academic departments also need to be kept in check, scholar argues
Several major universities in recent months have pledged to uphold a policy of institutional neutrality, meaning its leaders will not weigh in on major social and political woes facing the nation with memos to their respective campus communities.
One professor argues the trend is good — but doesn’t go far enough; departmental statements purporting to represent one singular view of all faculty remain a large and ongoing problem.
“It doesn’t matter if the president is neutral if academic departments advertise their political leanings, as many do,” San Diego State University English Professor Peter C. Herman wrote in a recent op-ed for Inside Higher Ed.
“…When a department declares that it holds certain political positions and they brook no opposition, individual professors will import this intolerance into the classroom.”
Herman wrote:
For example, the chairs of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University published a statement on the Gaza war that begins, “We vehemently condemn the Israeli genocide and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. We demand an immediate ceasefire, the provision of humanitarian aid and a permanent end to the genocide.”
Similarly, a collective of more than 100 gender studies departments and programs across the U.S. and Canada issued a statement in 2021 declaring, “We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine.” The statement is absolutely explicit that there is no debate here: “We do not subscribe to a ‘both sides’ rhetoric that erases the military, economic, media and global power that Israel has over Palestine.”
Herman argued that faculty lead by example, and students are unfortunately following suit.
“Unsurprisingly, students are following their professors in disallowing contrary views. A recent Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression survey on free speech found that censorship and self-censorship are rife on college campuses, and often enough, it’s not the professors who are policing speech,” he wrote.
Solutions are in the offing, Herman noted, pointing to a new University of California system policy that forbids “political statements on university webpages.” He also flagged Harvard’s neutrality policy, which “now covers all administrators, deans, department chairs and faculty councils.”
However, “both actions have been met with stiff resistance by faculty, and other universities have not followed their example.”
“Until deans, department heads, faculty and students embrace intellectual and political diversity, institutional neutrality is no different than virtue-signaling, i.e., a hollow gesture that does nothing to address the real problem,” Herman wrote.
MORE: Institutional neutrality approved at several major campuses nationwide
IMAGE: Jay Yuan / Shutterstock
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