Institutional Neutrality Is Good for the Left

In early October, Republican megadonor and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale posted an interview to YouTube with Carlos M. Carvalho, the president of the University of Austin, an upstart “anti-woke” college. Lonsdale titled the video “This Idea is Destroying American Universities.”

One factor leading universities astray, according to Carvalho, is their overly broad interpretation of institutional neutrality, the principle that administrators should avoid publicly commenting upon political matters beyond the scope of a university’s core academic mission. Harvard adopted a version of it last year, which proponents claimed would prevent controversies like the one set off by former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s universally-unsatisfying statements on Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack in Israel.

Institutional neutrality has frustrated progressives at Harvard and elsewhere, who view it as a sweeping pretext for universities to avoid engaging with social criticism, like calls for divestment from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But Carvalho’s critique should remind the left that the only thing worse than an institutionally neutral Harvard is one that wears the perspective of its leaders and donors on its sleeve.

After all, some of institutional neutrality’s fiercest critics come from conservative and pro-Israel circles — who find Harvard’s refusal to take their side equally, if not more, exasperating.

This camp bemoans how neutrality prevents universities from coming down harder on pro-Palestine sentiment. And as Harvard faces unprecedented pressure to side with the political right, the principle restrains, at least somewhat, its ability to fully cave to that pressure.

Consider the world the anti-neutrality right envisions. Questioned by Lonsdale about institutional neutrality, Carvalho maintained that administrators shouldn't engage in “partisan” disputes. But he insisted they should reserve the right to take positions on issues that are political in the “classical,” Aristotelian sense — a preposterously broad remit. Lonsdale, in turn, seemed to question the notion that college governing boards shouldn’t “meddle” in academic departments they see as politically off-course.

Not all critics of institutional neutrality go after academic freedom so bluntly, but plenty are just as eager to see administrators lay down the political law. As former University president Lawrence H. Summers told The Crimson in late October — following a tense exchange with College administrators near the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee’s “Wall of Resistance” installation — Harvard has not done enough to “distinguish between good and bad, legitimate and illegitimate ideas.” Institutional neutrality offers a bulwark, however imperfect, against this kind of interference.

Left-wing critics are right to note that Harvard applies its supposed commitment to neutrality rather selectively. Its administration silences pro-Palestinian speech on increasingly absurd technicalities, and its enforcement of signage policies appears selectively targeted at left-wing content.

Even so, it’s hard to see how campus speech conditions would improve — particularly for the left — if Harvard were to abandon the doctrine altogether.

The left critique of institutional neutrality often hinges on the observation that Harvard’s speech policies are unevenly enforced against the campus left, and that the policy is, as such, a sham. But if Harvard already suppresses leftist speech despite its ostensible neutrality, what reason is there to believe it would become more tolerant if freed from that pretense?

An institution that arbitrarily censors left-wing and pro-Palestinian speech under the current regime of “neutrality” wouldn’t suddenly become an ally once empowered to take explicit positions. However frustrating the inconsistencies in Harvard’s application of institutional neutrality are, there’s little reason to expect that we’d be better off without the guardrails it provides.

In its absence, Harvard likely wouldn’t return to the liberal institutional voice of the 2010s. Given the conservative, pro-Israel pressures it faces from both its federal inquisitors and many of its donors, our new ideological overseers would likely be closer to Lonsdale’s politics than the left’s.

Put simply, the strongest case for institutional neutrality isn’t that Harvard can avoid making decisions that, in every case where it invokes the principle, don’t favor or disfavor certain political actors. Instead, the value of neutrality lies in the restraint it imposes, however imperfectly, on the University’s ability to suppress disfavored political speech. That restraint, limited as it is, is better for Harvard’s speech climate than the alternative.

Institutional neutrality is riddled with contradictions, unfairly applied, and frequently breached. Left-wing critics are rightly frustrated by these inconsistencies. But if institutional neutrality disappeared tomorrow, they’d miss it.

Alex Bronzini-Vender ’28, a Crimson Editorial comper, is a double concentrator in History and Government in Cabot House.