UVA Board Endorses Institutional Neutrality
The University of Virginia adopted a resolution on Friday, September 13, backing a statement of institutional neutrality on events taking place outside the University.
“The University of Virginia should express no opinions about social and political questions except as those questions directly affect its mission or operations,” said the key paragraph of the statement, written by an eleven-person group chaired by political science professor John Owen.
Owen described the UVA statement as similar to “but better” than the famous University of Chicago Kalven Report, released during the turmoil of the 1960s and adopted by some universities since.
Board members engaged in considerable dialogue over the resolution. The commentary was overwhelmingly positive.
UVA President Jim Ryan appointed the statement committee after getting sucked into the polarized rhetoric that followed the October 7 terror attacks on Israel. Ryan expressed sympathy for the victims, but he was criticized by some for showing insufficient remorse for the plight of the Palestinians that prompted the attacks.
In previous years, Ryan issued statements responding to the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and again after the George Floyd killing. He did not experience serious pushback from either communique. But the response to the Palestine-Israel conflict was unprecedented.
He appointed the committee to study the issue of institutional neutrality and report back to him. He approves of the result, he said. Borrowing a quote made famous by the Kalven Report, he said, “the university should be the home to the critic, not the critic.” Universities should be places where views can be challenged, and members of the university community should be free to say what they please. Expressing official views on contemporary issues could have a chilling effect on speech within the UVA community, he observed.
Once one starts making pronouncements, it’s hard to stop, Ryan observed. If a university president takes a pass on a matter, silence is regarded as an implicit statement that the incident was less worthy of commentary.
If the matter has an impact on the University or even higher education generally, however, it would at that point be acceptable to make public pronouncements, Ryan said.
Ryan did carve out one loophole: “The university should be able to express empathy or sympathy if a city is flooded, or there’s a hurricane, or there’s a war,” he said. “This is not about being silent if something horrible happens in the world.”
Even expressing sympathy or condolence can be a slippery slope, however. There are floods and famines and earthquakes and wars all around the world. Why would one tragedy merit recognition by UVA and not another? As Ryan himself conceded, “if you don’t speak, it can seem like an intentional choice.”
The Institutional Statements Committee’s full statement can be found here, beginning on page 25.
James A. Bacon is the founder of Bacon’s Rebellion and a contributing editor with The Jefferson Council.
