Do calls to adopt a policy of “institutional neutrality” nudge university leaders towards positions favoured by the political Right?
Do they discourage institutional interventions on “progressive” causes, and effectively censor teaching and research on subjects where neutrality is least likely to be experienced as such—especially by academics who, to paraphrase Marx and Engels, feel that the point is not simply to interpret the world, but to change it?
Or is that diagnosis aimed at the wrong target altogether, confusing a self-binding restraint on the university’s corporate voice with a campus-wide coercive compliance regime, created by funding leverage and executive direction, and that now all too often travels under the same “neutrality” label?
These questions are prompted by a recent spate of interventions that lean towards the first insinuation, including a report from PEN America, and more recently a Times Higher Education piece written in the shadow of what its author—University of Warwick academic freedom chair Gavin Schwartz-Leeper—calls the Trump administration’s “authoritarian” use of state power against US universities. In Schwartz-Leeper’s account, attacks on DEI have been backed by well-funded conservative networks and advanced—“cynically”, as he puts it—under the banner of combating antisemitism, with the Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther” serving as the emblematic case. The worry, as Schwartz-Leeper frames it, is not simply pressure to address anti-Jewish discrimination, but the mobilization of “antisemitism” on campus as a category capacious enough to render anti-Zionist activism—and even sharp criticism of Israel —presumptively suspect, and in turn to supply a ready-made rationale for further challenges to DEI and other progressive initiatives.
In Gavin Schwarz-Leeper’s account, attacks on DEI have been backed by well-funded conservative networks and advanced—“cynically”, as he puts it—under the banner of combating antisemitism.
The essay then turns to the UK, where Reform UK “appears poised to replace the Conservative Party as the most popular right-leaning party”, and where Schwartz-Leeper argues comparable tactics are emerging. His central example is precisely the call for universities to adopt policies of “institutional neutrality”, which he claims can stifle rather than protect academic freedom, while “imped[ing] the wider social role that universities play”.
In the article, the phrase “institutional neutrality” hyperlinks to a joint open letter making the case for such policies, addressed to all UK vice-chancellors and co-signed by a number of campaign groups, including the Committee for Academic Freedom (for whom I work). From there, Schwart-Leeper advances the claim that gives the essay its edge: that this ostensibly non-partisan stance can function as a political ratchet, such that “senior politicians and university leaders can be pushed into adopting positions favoured by the right without necessarily making open acknowledgement of that”.
Schwartz-Leeper never names his referent, but what he appears to have in mind is President Trump’s Compact for Academic Excellence, which ties access to federal grants and partnerships to compliance with his administration’s priorities, freezing research funds and threatening to exclude universities from federal programs over EDI policies. Initially sent to nine universities, including Brown, MIT and the University of Virginia, the Compact was later opened up to all US colleges and universities. Universities are told they are not obliged to sign, but the text makes clear that those declining may have to forego unspecified “federal benefits”, and that signatories found in breach could be required to repay money received during the year of any violation.
There is, therefore, every reason to be concerned about what is unfolding in parts of the US, particularly in public higher education, where funding leverage, compliance signalling, and curricular oversight are generating a chilling effect long before any formal sanction is imposed. Schwartz-Leeper is also right to fear Reform’s predilection for these ideas: in its manifesto-style “contract” at the last election, for instance, the party pledged to “cut funding to universities that undermine free speech”. But we need to be clear about what is, and is not, an institutional neutrality statement.
On the Kalven view—the classic formulation, and the one cited approvingly in the letter co-signed by CAF—when a university takes sides on a controversial issue, it necessarily sets itself, as an institution, against those who hold the opposing position. That creates a chilling effect on dissenters and can foster an environment in which attacking people for their views becomes acceptable.
When a university takes sides on a controversial issue, it necessarily sets itself, as an institution, against those who hold the opposing position. That creates a chilling effect on dissenters and can foster an environment in which attacking people for their views becomes acceptable.
Understood in this way, “institutional neutrality” becomes a discipline imposed on the university as a corporate body, in order to protect the freedom of individual members of the academic community to dissent, argue, and criticize, while their institution refrains from adopting particular political, social or ideological positions except where this is legally required or directly implicated by its core functions. Hence the Kalven Report’s summary: “The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic”. In other words, the neutrality principle is meant to restrain the institution’s corporate voice precisely so that academic freedom can expand.
Admittedly Section 4 of Trump’s Compact borrows Kalven’s vocabulary, requiring signatories to “maintain institutional neutrality at all levels of their administration”. It even contains the following reassurance: “All university members, including students, faculty, and staff, are encouraged to comment on current events in their individual capacities”. Elsewhere, however, the Compact blurs Kalven’s crucial distinction between corporate voice and individual academic freedom, by introducing the category of “university representatives”, stating: “all university employees, in their capacity as university representatives, will abstain from actions or speech relating to societal and political events”. Even in the casualized university, academics are usually employees rather than, say, “contractors” or “public-spirited volunteers” (for now, at least). So when, exactly, is an academic speaking in their capacity as a “university representative”, as opposed to in their “individual capacities”? And, perhaps most importantly when it comes to self-censorship, with senior administrators on the prowl, who would really want to be the test case?
The neutrality principle is meant to restrain the institution’s corporate voice precisely so that academic freedom can expand.
These are pressing questions, since the Compact also pushes the neutrality obligation down into the granular units where academic life actually happens. It requires of universities “institutional neutrality at all levels of their administration”, which is to apply “with equal force” across “all of the university’s academic units, including all colleges, faculties, schools, departments, programs, centres and institutes”.
The problem is that once neutrality is imposed at this level—and coupled to a definition of “university representatives” that can easily catch ordinary professional activity—the practical effect is to treat a great deal of outward-facing academic work as presumptively “institutional speech”. Departments and centers inevitably operate in public, hosting events, running seminar series, publishing announcements and descriptions online, and using departmental accounts. Much of that activity necessarily engages “societal and political events”, especially in disciplines where research has policy implications, involves public engagement, or takes the form of critical or action research. In such a climate, an “if in doubt, cut it out” reflex is liable to take hold in university management: don’t tweet it; don’t host it under the department banner; don’t put it on the webpage; in fact, just don’t say it.
That might sound far-fetched, but Section 4 shouldn’t be read in isolation. Unlike Kalven-style neutrality, which is content-neutral and concerned only with restraining the institution’s corporate pronouncements, the Compact situates “neutrality” within a wider program explicitly concerned with what universities should affirm and enforce. It requires signatories to foster a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” by revising governance structures where necessary, including by “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas”. The document also warns against “anti-American values” and ties international recruitment to the screening out of students said to demonstrate “hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values”.
The Trump Compact situates “neutrality” within a wider programme explicitly concerned with what universities should affirm and enforce.
Nor should we forget that Kalven’s neutrality depends on the absence of enforcement machinery, because there is “no mechanism by which [a university] can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives”. The Compact, by contrast, inserts neutrality into an assemblage of surveillance mechanisms—certifications, public reporting and polling, Department of Justice reviews—backed by financial penalties and repayment provisions. Faced with this “new normal”, it’s not difficult to see why administrators may set a low threshold for what counts as a breach, and err on the side of broad construction: of who counts as a “university representative” (and when); of what counts as speech “relating to societal and political events”; and of which departmental or center-level thought, speech and activity might be construed as “punish[ing]”, “belittl[ing]” or “spark[ing] violence against” “conservative ideas”. This is neutrality reimagined not as corporate self-restraint, but as managerial discipline, in precisely the way Kalven warns will inhibit dissent.
Schwartz-Leeper is thus right to worry about “Trump-style” pressure. A Reform UK government might well spot an opportunity to squeeze universities financially—framing it, of course, not as punishment for harbouring “TAXPAYER FUNDED LOONEY-LEFT WOKE EGGHEADS WHO HATE THIS ONCE-PROUD COUNTRY!”, but as a stern and principled “defense of free speech” (as defined by Reform UK, naturally), to be enforced through a putatively “neutral” institutional policy. No doubt Schwartz-Leeper is also right to suggest that three years out from the next general election cycle, universities should start to “identify where we might be vulnerable to pressure and where we might build in mechanisms to resist state interference”.But that’s precisely why we need to be clear about the mechanism. Properly understood, Kalven-style neutrality isn’t an invitation to political capture but a bulwark against it: a refusal to turn “the university” into a permanent extra in the hyperventilating pantomime of analytically inert virtue-signalling and moral grandstanding that feeds our 24/7 attention economy, and a commitment to ensuring that governments, activists, and interest groups—of all political persuasions—cannot easily demand affirmations or punish their absence, so that self-censorship starts to look like a prudent career move for dissenting academics.
