Harvard’s Human Rights Centers Should Speak On Human Rights Issues

Last spring, Harvard adopted an institutional voice policy mandating University leadership refrain from issuing official statements about public matters unrelated to Harvard’s core function. The policy seemed to make an exception for research centers as long as their statements remained within their expertise and did not claim to speak for the University as a whole.

To me as the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, that exception was critical. While I would have preferred a wholly different institutional voice policy, even at the University level, at least Harvard’s three human rights centers and clinics could continue to issue statements discussing current events from a human rights perspective.

However, in a report released in September clarifying the institutional voice policy, the Office of the Provost eliminated this exception for research centers. Under the newest version of this policy, it seems no entity at Harvard can articulate a human rights standpoint — even its centers with “human rights” in their name.

The recent institutional voice clarifications are profoundly troubling and a step in the wrong direction. The University, obviously, should not take stances on questions of day-to-day politics. Nor should it take sides in morally complex international conflicts like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But there should be room for measured statements — especially from institutional subsidiaries — on issues that affect universities’ ability to function as places of free inquiry.

Free inquiry depends on democratic governance and the rule of law, both domestically and, in today’s interconnected world, internationally. Expressing a human rights perspective on the war in the Middle East, one that articulates its moral complexity, should be permissible — and arguably even necessary.

Even if top administrators cannot issue such statements, the University’s human rights centers surely should be allowed to do so. Indeed, for years, we have done exactly that, offering measured, principled analysis of global conflict while carefully staying within our lane of expertise. At minimum, the policy should be reverted to its original language, which seemed to allow research centers to weigh in publicly on matters within their expertise.

The University of Chicago’s Kalven report, oft-cited in discussions of institutional neutrality, presents a view that is immediately eaten up by its own exceptions. The report allows universities to speak on matters of their missions and internal operations. Yet in today’s interconnected world such matters cover a much broader range of issues than in the 1960s (when the report was issued), and this range pretty much includes everything I think a university should speak to.

While the bar for institutional statements should remain high, certain situations demand a response. In deciding whether to issue a statement, the University should always consider the salience of the issue to campus life. This standard applies whether Harvard is condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and raising the Ukrainian flag over University Hall (as former University President Lawrence S. Bacow rightly did) or addressing the moral complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Different universities can and should approach the question of neutrality differently. At the core of any university’s mission is free inquiry. But throughout all its history, Harvard has also played a distinctive role in shaping public discourse in the United States, certainly more so than younger institutions such as the University of Chicago. So while the University of Chicago may want to abide by the strictest reading of the Kalven principles, Harvard should take a different approach. Indeed, many Americans look to Harvard for moral leadership in ways they don’t expect from many other institutions. We should accept this responsibility.

In any event, institutional neutrality is often illusory. Whether through its action or inaction, the University will inevitably take stances. For example, it is a non-neutral political position to refuse to divest from the fossil fuel industry or from companies complicit in human rights violations in Palestine. Alleged institutional neutrality, then, becomes a lack of transparency.

Another argument against statements, even from the University’s centers, is that any sort of institutional position may stifle individual faculty voices. But two things can be true: The University can simultaneously take views on matters that affect its own viability and create space for members of Harvard’s community to express any legally protected speech. Faculty should be encouraged to utter their dissent. Effective leadership can make the combination of institutional voice and encouragement of dissent credible.

To some extent, Harvard’s institutional voice policy seems to be a response to last year’s turmoil. But that unrest likely reflected deeper divisions over Israel’s role in the world and the leadership of former University President Claudine Gay, rather than the content of Harvard’s statements per se. The backlash against Gay is hard to fully explain without making central the fact that she was a Black woman in a leadership role. None of this should push Harvard towards its current institutional voice policy.

A research center whose very mission embodies certain principles — such as a human rights center — should always be free to make statements consistent with those principles. We can and have done this wisely and thoughtfully in the past, and it would be a real shame if we no longer could.

Mathias Risse is the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and the Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.