Institutional (and departmental) neutrality

Science magazine cover
Cover of this week's issue of Science magazine. The photo is by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images.

H. Holden Thorpe, the editor of Science magazine, ran an editorial this week on institutional neutrality, the idea, as he put it, “that universities in the United States—and especially their presidents—should be politically neutral….” I would add to that the idea that departments and especially their heads should be politically neutral. The editorial is short and open access, so I think you can read it for yourselves, but he invokes the Kalven Report, a mercifully equally short document from the University of Chicago, which declared a “heavy presumption” against universities expressing opinions on political issues or modifying their investments in order to “foster social or political values, however compelling and appealing they may be.”

Hardly any universities have adopted the Kalven Report as policy, though I gather that a few have adopted the less-stringent Chicago principles. Since the war in Gaza, there has been pressure to adopt the Kalven principles, according to Thorpe. For a crash course in the latest activity regarding Kalven or the Chicago principles, see Jerry Coyne’s blog, Why Evolution Is True, here.

Thorpe is less of an absolutist regarding Kalven than is Coyne, though he agrees that universities need to be neutral regarding matters of opinion. He draws a distinction, however, between matters of opinion and matters of fact:

But what about matters of science, especially when a finding has powerful political implications such as studies on climate or vaccines? Where should universities draw the line?

Or evolution. Several people told Thorpe that universities must keep strictly away from commenting on any research whatsoever, except to support the right of the researcher to publish that research. Another, Eric Topol, told him that such a stance is “spineless” and appears to dissociate the university from its faculty and their published science.

Thorpe himself seems somewhat conflicted, and I can understand why, but he expresses concern that

Stanford University just shut down its disinformation research program after it was hit by lawsuits from conservative groups.… [T]here is a danger that universities will shirk their responsibility to stand up not for any particular finding but for a more overriding principle—the importance of independent scholarship.

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