Are universities that declare themselves neutral backing away from the truth or enabling it?

It's a trend that here to stay, so we'd better figure it out.

I’m out today with a column about the role of political neutrality in science. For folks who have missed this trend, university presidents are practically falling all over themselves to declare their neutrality in wake of the challenges around Oct 7 and Gaza (although it was certainly a trend before that).  The idea stems from something called the Kalven Report that was produced at the University of Chicago in 1967.  The most frequently quoted line in the report is that “the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”  Thus, in matters of political controversy, the university best serves its faculty and students by not making statements on behalf of the institution. As a former university president myself, I see the appeal:  constantly trying to decide whether and how to write a statement about the current matter of the day is exhausting -- and sending it out generally just creates more trouble.

But what about the university’s research, which often produces findings that are politically sensitive?  Research is certainly a core activity; in fact, it is the major determinant by which we assign prestige and influence to institutions.  The Kalven Report gives a carveout to the university to comment on matters that are in its direct interest saying that it is an “obligation of the university as an institution … actively to defend its interests and its values.”  Are the findings of research, and not just the people and the process, part of the university’s interest and values?  The contemporary dogma would say no, that the university does not have a role in declaring something to be the truth, only to defend the rights of the faculty to do so.  As I said in the column, when I asked Jenna Robinson, a staunch proponent of neutrality and president of the conservative James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, she said, “I think it’s better for presidents not to comment on the content of the research (italics hers).”  When Robinson talks about the “president” in these conversations, she also means individual schools and departments, as she applied this same reasoning to the School of Public Health at UNC.

Because these principles are widely attributed to and heralded by the University of Chicago, I asked for a comment from their president Paul Alivisatos, also a superstar nanoscientist.  I specifically asked him about recent findings in our journals and elsewhere showing that abortion restrictions have negative mental health consequences, particularly for individuals with fewer resources.  How would he respond if these findings were published at his university and then challenged by pro-life advocates?  He told me by email that the university should be “consistently showing itself to be a place where both popular and dissenting viewpoints are thoughtfully subject to reason and evidenced debate.  A president seeking to foreclose debates by issuing institutional proclamations will inadvertently erode the credibility of the university in the eyes of the public and policy makers alike.” I also wrote to the president of George Mason University where the abortion research was done but did not get a response.  This evasion makes it sound like the university has no role in evaluating the content of research.  In addition to the consequences of abortion restrictions, there are certainly “dissenting viewpoints” about whether humans are causing climate change, whether life arose by natural selection, and whether vaccines are safe.  Is the university always to promote debate on these matters or can it declare some of them settled?

I put similar questions to Peter Hans, president of the seventeen-campus University of North Carolina system.  Hans has also been an outspoken proponent of what he calls “principled neutrality.”  Hans took a very similar position to Alivisatos. But when the topic got specifically to whether humans were contributing to climate change, he said, “Yes, I think that's fairly self-apparent, I think it's a question of where do we go from here.”  Many university faculty would be heartened to hear him say that, but a majority of North Carolina Republicans see climate change as “no threat at all.”  The fact that climate change is caused by humans is definitely a political issue in North Carolina.

Lurking above these mental gymnastics is the fact that universities are constantly involved in evaluating and endorsing the findings of research.  Every time they hire or promote faculty – decisions that are ultimately approved by presidents and trustees – they are validating research findings; they wouldn’t hire faculty whom they thought were doing incorrect research.  Universities also allocate internal research funding based on the merit of the subject matter.  And they send out endless press releases touting research findings, many of which are based on publications of politically sensitive findings.  Just peruse the news site of your alma mater, and you’ll find plenty of things the university decided were important and interesting.  As Yale law professor Robert Post has written in an essay about the Kalven Report and academic freedom, “such decisions are not ‘neutral’ in any ordinary sense of the word.”  When I reached him, Post said, “universities judge the quality and significance of research all the time. That is in fact our job.”

Many critics on the faculty are disheartened by this hands-off approach.  I quoted biomedical scientist Eric Topol (and fellow Substacker) about this, and he described the neutrality movement as “spineless.” Topol recently co-wrote a piece for the New England Journal of Medicine criticizing Stanford University for failing to denounce more forcefully the ideas that their faculty member Scott Atlas advanced about COVID-19, even though they were at odds with Stanford’s own policies.  Stanford was hardly neutral on where they stood on COVID restrictions, yet they invoked neutrality when it helped them evade controversy. 

I’m sympathetic to the institutions having sat in their shoes:  there are certainly days when they conclude they have more productive things to do than putting their jobs on the line to fight battles they can’t win.  And they have little choice about this at this point. They can either jump on the neutrality wagon or resign and be replaced by someone who will. This is extremely sad to me. I became a university president at a time when the archetypes were Freeman Hrabowski and Clark Kerr, and it was an opportunity for moral and academic leadership. In the neutrality world, it is much more of a straight administrative job. In fact, Hans even told me in the interview that he was not a moral leader and looked at everything from an administrative perspective. The UNC legend of moral leadership, Frank Porter Graham, is rolling in his grave, but that’s where we are.

The upshot of this for science is that the institutions are going to continue to dodge questions about politically sensitive research while they turn right around and brag about their latest potential cancer cure. (Every time a university president sits on a panel or does an interview, their answers maddeningly often start with “Let me tell you about the great work our faculty are doing on this…,” even if it doesn’t fit the question.) A more transparent approach than creating a porous neutrality dogma would be to come right out and say that the university is neutral on research findings when commenting on them could get them in trouble.  That would be a more intellectually honest framework because it’s simply impossible for universities to carry out their daily work and be neutral on all of the findings of research.  As Post told me, “if the president is simply invoking the Kalven Report, and refusing to properly analyze the relevant circumstances, it sounds very much like what he [or she] is really saying is: ‘I don’t want to get involved in this subject.’” I’m not counting on the universities being forthcoming enough to admit this; their trustees and other outside stakeholders are so in love with the neutrality idea that it’s a harbor too safe to resist.

If universities are backing away from supporting unpopular research findings, who will stand up for the truth besides the faculty themselves?  Alivisatos assured me that there were “plenty of non-profit, policy, for-profit and political organizations” that could do that.  I give him credit for courage:  it is a seismic shift for the most influential university in the movement to say to its faculty that if they produce politically sensitive knowledge, the university will back them and the process, but is outsourcing standing up for the content to think tanks and NGOs.  I guess his list of subcontractors would include journals (Science is non-profit as part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science).  We enthusiastically accept that responsibility every time we publish a paper and spend a great deal of time after the fact dealing with questions about research findings.  Sometimes we find problems that we have to correct, but when we fail to see credible challenges, we take responsibility for standing up for the findings. 

Perhaps the biggest worry is not whether universities will support faculty who do research that helps build scientific consensus but about the fact that they can use neutrality to dodge commenting on research that is flawed and has a political thrust.  The history of science is filled with faculty members – often allied with think tanks and other political groups -- who claimed that vaccines caused autism, that smoking was not dangerous, or that there was evidence for intelligent design.  While it is within academic freedom for these faculty to claim these things, it should also be in bounds for universities to comment, particularly when these ideas can cause harm.  Neutrality absolves institutions from having to wade into these debates.

Nonetheless, the neutrality movement is with us for the foreseeable future.  Far more institutions are signing on to it than the other way around.  It has positives and negatives for scientists.  It comes with a strong commitment to back the process and the rights of faculty to carry out their research, but the tradeoff is that if the findings are politically sensitive, the institution is going to stay out of the fray.  Dartmouth President Sian Beilock is another skillfully outspoken advocate for neutrality whose responses were similar to Hans and Alivisatos.  I asked her if she thought scientists should be worried about the neutrality movement.  “I think scientist's job is to do the best work they can and publish the findings that they believe will be most impactful to humanity,” she said.  “And that can be on any side of a political spectrum. I believe in the scientific process in institutions supporting their faculty to bring their expertise to the forefront regardless of whether their conclusions align with one particular idea.”  Perhaps Dartmouth and Chicago will keep their word to stand behind faculty who produce politically charged findings, but whether that will hold at public universities is harder to be optimistic about.

It’s sad and concerning because it takes institutions out of the group of entities backing the truth. Those of us left in the business of standing up for truth in science are going to be busy.