Book Review: “The Opinionated University”

Brian Soucek’s new book, The Opinionated University: Academic Freedom, Diversity, and the Myth of Neutrality in American Higher Education, is a valuable correction to many mistaken notions about neutrality. I agree with most of what Soucek writes about the Kalven report, diversity statements and institutional silence, but I’ll focus on my disagreements.

Soucek’s approach to departmental statements is far better than Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman’s argument in Campus Speech and Academic Freedom. I previously criticized (and they responded) Chemerinsky and Gillman for their attacks on faculty advocacy in the classroom. But even worse is their support for banning collective faculty speech in departments, claiming that no departments should be allowed to express collective views.

Soucek has a much better and more nuanced approach to allowing departmental speech without infringing upon individual rights, creating policies that permit collective speech. But even he falls short. According to Soucek, “Deans and chairs do not generally enjoy academic freedom in their capacity as deans or chairs, as opposed to their faculty roles,” and he adds that “no AAUP policies guarantee academic freedom for unit leadership when acting as administrators rather than faculty.”

The AAUP says about chairs, “The tendency of AAUP policy has been to view such persons as faculty rather than as administrators.” And even presidents and top administrators should not face “arbitrary removal” for their views, according to an AAUP statement.

Soucek does praise the idea of a university that’s more democratic, where faculty could speak for the institution. But his arguments for institutional speech are not dependent on that democratic legitimacy.

Soucek writes, “If universities are unavoidably opinionated, as this book argues, how should their opinions be formed?” Soucek’s correct answer is “shared governance.” But shared governance is just as threatened as academic freedom in today’s universities. And so the question of an opinionated university is really about an opinionated central administration—and that’s what we should be wary of supporting.

One flaw in Soucek’s analysis is his reliance on university missions and his advocacy of a “pluralist” approach to different campus missions. But when it comes to academic freedom, all real universities should have the same mission: to protect it. This was the AAUP’s argument in 1915, and it remains true today. A university without a mission to preserve academic freedom is failing at the fundamental task of being a university.

While the early AAUP allowed exceptions to academic freedom for religious colleges based on their mission, this was revoked in the 1970 Interpretive Comments, which declared, “Most church-related institutions no longer need or desire the departure from the principle of academic freedom implied in the 1940 Statement, and we do not now endorse such a departure.” Academic freedom is a supreme value that overrides any other mission, because academic freedom is fully compatible with any mission, correctly understood, of any college.

If institutional speech did endanger academic freedom, then it would be wrong regardless of the campus mission. The real question is whether institutional neutrality actually protects academic freedom. And this is a question that isn’t dependent on a university’s mission.

Soucek is correct when he writes, “Kalvenism—the leading argument for institutional neutrality in higher education—rests on a snowflake account of academic freedom.” But institutional neutrality doesn’t need to be limited to Kalvenism’s obsession with institutional silence or its flawed justification for it.

As I argue in a new essay for Inquisitive magazine, institutional neutrality as originally formulated by the University of Wisconsin in 1894 is a concept that protects academic freedom by prohibiting colleges from punishing or condemning faculty for their political views. The issue of affirmative institutional statements is a much later, and more minor, concern. But when a university condemns certain political stands, it inevitably creates the danger of suppressing those ideas.

The issue of condemning people is raised by Soucek in one of the three key examples he uses. In two of his examples from his home institution, the University of California, Davis—the university criticizing the military for banning transgender soldiers and criticizing the ban on gay men donating blood—I agree that the administration was justified in clarifying that it allowed third-party discrimination for good reasons but did not support the discrimination itself.

However, the third example—the chancellor condemning Charlie Kirk’s anti-trans views before a speech he gave on campus—is very different. According to Soucek, “The university caused harm by putting trans students in a situation where they had to endure discrimination at their own institution.” But allowing extracurricular speakers who might insult the identity of others is not discrimination by the institution, any more than allowing free access to insulting content in the university library or on the internet with the university’s Wi-Fi system is discrimination. Free speech is not discrimination. Hearing harmful ideas is not the same as causing harm.

And when an administration starts denouncing people, it’s hard not to see the threat to free expression. Anyone who agrees with Charlie Kirk—or even supports having him speak—would have to wonder if their career could be in jeopardy. When the administration denounces a particular viewpoint, it can have a powerful chilling effect on campus, signaling that people who agree with such views should not be invited to speak, admitted or hired.

Soucek does argue that “institutional speech needs to be premised on unwavering protection for those who dissent.” And it would be a good policy to include defenses of intellectual freedom whenever a university speaks. But it’s extraordinarily rare to see a university call for “unwavering protection” for the views they publicly denounce—and even more difficult for anyone to believe them.

One problem with the university speaking is figuring out when it should stop. Should a chancellor scrutinize every speaker, every professor and every student on campus to denounce every sentence deemed undesirable?

Institutional speech doesn’t automatically endanger academic freedom. But critics of neutrality such as Soucek fail to adequately acknowledge the real danger to freedom in the hierarchical university, where the president is the boss and faculty are his dutiful staff. And that hierarchy is reinforced by institutional statements in which the president is the voice of the institution.

Universities ought to return to the 1894 University of Wisconsin approach to the opinionated university, where academic freedom is so important that even denouncing a professor violates standards of neutrality. But when the concept of institutional neutrality is abused by politicians and administrators to silence faculty, then it becomes a cure worse than the disease. Soucek’s book recognizes these dangers and provides a thoughtful approach to trying to address the problems inherent in the inevitable opinions of a university.