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As Universities Become Political Battlegrounds, They Cannot Afford to Remain Neutral

Staying above the fray is an impossible ideal

In the weeks after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, universities worldwide came under close scrutiny. Several issued statements in condemnation and expressing sympathy for the victims of violence in Israel and (less frequently) Gaza. Many of them were soon accused of failing to take a strong enough stand, either in support of Israel or denouncing it.

In the December 2023 United States congressional hearing on antisemitism in colleges, then president of Harvard Claudine Gay was taken to task for the university’s refusal to fly the Israeli flag on campus following October 7 even though it had flown Ukraine’s flag after the invasion by Russia. At the University of Amsterdam, over 1,200 PhD candidates signed an open letter strongly condemning the university’s response to the crisis for having euphemistically characterized genocide as a “situation” and for its silence about the “75 year occupation of Gaza.” At my then institution, the University of Regina, a motion to recommend to the president that the university publicly call for a ceasefire in Gaza was vigorously debated before ultimately being tabled and, weeks later, withdrawn. These are just three of many examples, but they illustrate the range of ways in which university administrations were called on to respond to Gaza.

At the same time, universities were reacting to statements by student organizations, academic departments, and other groups. At York University, the administration condemned three student unions and threatened to remove their official recognition following the groups’ joint statement of solidarity with Palestine, which characterized the October 7 Hamas attack as a “strong act of resistance” and throughout referred to “so-called Israel.” At the University of British Columbia, the department of anthropology was asked to take down a statement on its website that expressed concern with “genocidal violence in Gaza,” and other departments were directed not to post any statements that could be interpreted as political.

Meanwhile, worldwide, universities continue to undergo political and media scrutiny due to allegations that pro-Palestinian protests and activities on campus make some Jewish students and employees feel unsafe. As the pressure mounted for universities to take a stand or to take a different stand than they were taking, many scholars and administrators argued that the right approach was to not take a stand at all but to maintain institutional neutrality.

Indeed, I argued for just that. In January 2024, in response to a request from a faculty member, I circulated an opinion to members of my then faculty that included the following passage:

Universities should be very cautious about adopting a particular disposition on behalf of the institution. Universities are constitutively pluralistic institutions. By design, they bring together scholars and learners with a range of positionalities and perspectives across a range of disciplines and methods. When universities rather than the individuals who constitute them adopt a particular disposition on a matter, particularly on a matter of controversy, they risk creating inhospitable working and learning environments for some of their members and chilling those members’ academic and expressive freedom.

Universities should be very cautious about adopting a particular disposition on behalf of the institution. Universities are constitutively pluralistic institutions. By design, they bring together scholars and learners with a range of positionalities and perspectives across a range of disciplines and methods. When universities rather than the individuals who constitute them adopt a particular disposition on a matter, particularly on a matter of controversy, they risk creating inhospitable working and learning environments for some of their members and chilling those members’ academic and expressive freedom.

I still think that this account is more or less right, but even as I circulated the opinion, I knew that it was oversimplified. To understand better, we need to look deeper into related issues—namely, academic freedom, freedom of expression, institutional neutrality, institutional restraint, and universities’ duty of care.

“To seek truth and advance understanding in the service of society.” For years now, in the context of my scholarship on academic freedom, I have used this phrase to characterize the academic mission of the university. But the tidiness of my usual formulation does not do justice to the complexity of the modern university.

I initially started researching academic freedom because I was deeply concerned about the ways in which the media, the public, and indeed university personnel (who should know better) were conflating academic freedom with freedom of expression—or even wilfully supplanting academic freedom with freedom of expression—in the culture wars........

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