In an essay published by the New York Times the same day the report was released, Noah Feldman and Alison Simmons, co-chairs of the Institutional Voice Working Group, wrote that they “didn’t address . . . the hard problem of when the university should or shouldn’t divest its endowment funds from a given portfolio.” The University of Chicago, on the other hand, which has led the way on institutional neutrality since the publication of the Kalven Report in 1967, has made clear that divestment is incompatible with the values of a great university. It issued an unequivocal statement in 2016 saying that it will not entertain economic or academic boycotts against any nation, including Israel.

ACTA has also long stood against divestment, including in our 2017 report detailing the coordinated efforts of groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine to advance the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) movement. We explained that BDS referenda passed at 12 colleges in the 2014–15 academic year and urged trustees to stand firmly against this pressure. When external agitators try to bend university governance toward a given agenda, a commitment to institutional neutrality quickly disposes of that.

Other academic leaders have shown a better way forward in recent months. Vanderbilt University’s chancellor, Daniel Diermeier, advocates for (and practices) “principled neutrality,” arguing that a university should be unyielding in the values it upholds and that those values “should be expressed as behavioral norms necessary for fulfilling its mission, not as an imposition of one opinion on the university community.” The same principle enlivens the classroom, too. University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos wrote in November 2023, “It is the imperative of individuals within the University to seek truth without being limited by authority. This institutional neutrality is essential to vesting freedom of speech in our faculty members and students.” He relied on principle this spring when he refused to consider divestment, as demanded by the protesters on his campus.

ACTA will be carefully monitoring actions taken by Harvard leadership in the coming months and whether the Kalven Report’s principles of institutional neutrality are correctly practiced. At present, ACTA cannot recognize Harvard University as a practitioner of principled institutional neutrality. ACTA President Michael B. Poliakoff stated, “It is good that Harvard will no longer issue official political statements, but we should never forget the circumstances that led to the adoption of this policy, and, in light of them, it is deeply troubling that Harvard could not bring itself to rule out divestment and adopt a full policy of institutional neutrality. In other words, Harvard needs a firm policy, not an evasive pretense.”

Steven McGuire, ACTA’s Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom, added, “While Harvard has taken an important first step toward adopting institutional neutrality, its new policy remains disappointingly incomplete, and Harvard has a lot of work to do before it will embody the commitments to free expression and diversity of thought that this policy seeks to support and protect. We continue to encourage Harvard to become an institution that truly embraces the values of academic freedom and viewpoint diversity that it appeals to in this report.”

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“It is good that administrators at Columbia University and Yale University have finally taken some action to restore order on their campuses,” said ACTA President Michael Poliakoff. “But they have not acted decisively enough. At Yale, students who were arrested in the morning were released and allowed to return to campus the same day to disrupt a major intersection. Columbia has failed to bring an end to a protest that has forced classes online because the university cannot guarantee its students’ safety. Barnard College has already told suspended students with no previous record of misconduct that their suspensions will be lifted if they agree to behave. Students are routinely punished severely for plagiarism or sexual harassment: Creating a hostile environment in which their peers cannot pursue their education is far worse. Placating and mollycoddling students for shouting down speakers and disrupting events has gone on for years. It is the fault of college administrations around the country that their students cannot differentiate between genuine civic engagement and the politics of the illiberal mob. Administrative fecklessness has left students ignorant of their appropriate political voice and thirsty for illegitimate powers that have no place in a free society.”

Dr. Poliakoff continued, “ACTA calls on trustees and alumni to make their voices heard. They need to tell college administrators at Yale, Columbia, Barnard College, New York University, the University of Michigan, Emerson College, Tufts University, MIT, the University of California–Berkeley, and other institutions around the country that a minority of radicalized students must not be allowed to flout the official campus rules with utter impunity. Uncivil actors must not be allowed to harass and demean students based on their ethnicity, their religion, or their political commitments. On this day, the beginning of the Passover holidays, campuses must not become havens for antisemitic violence and targeted harassment. We call on administrators at these institutions to restore order to their campuses. Then perhaps they will consider doing their actual jobs for once and teach their students how to engage productively and legally in democratic politics in a free society. In addition, and perhaps most important, governing boards must not retain administrators who can neither maintain order nor protect their students. It will be their duty to replace them with competent leadership.”

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The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) first raised the alarm about the bill in January, and we have been communicating with lawmakers in the General Assembly throughout every step of the legislation’s journey to Governor Youngkin’s desk. Most recently, ACTA Senior Program Officer for Trustee & Government Affairs Nick Down testified against the measure and published an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch arguing against the bill’s passage.  

In response to the governor’s veto, ACTA President Michael Poliakoff, a Virginia resident, stated, “Bravo, Governor Youngkin! The first duty of the boards of visitors of our public universities is to serve the citizens of this state. They do this by prudent oversight of their schools and by creating policies directed at the public good, not at narrow parochial desires that an institutional constituency might demand. When the Commonwealth is the priority of the board of visitors, our universities will fulfill their mission of teaching, learning, and research and enjoy the esteem and support of Virginia’s citizens.”

ACTA is dedicated to holding public college and university leaders accountable to the constituents they serve. We thank Governor Youngkin for his prudent decision to veto Senate Bill 506.

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While some of those involved in shouting down Ms. Coulter were reportedly disciplined, it is critical that the university demonstrate its unwillingness to allow such an egregious offense against its mission to stand. In the words of Provost Kotlikoff, “Cornell must be a place where the presentation of ideas is protected and inviolable. Shielding students or others in our community from viewpoints with which they disagree, or filtering campus speakers based on the content of their presentation, undermines the fundamental role of a university.”

While shouting Ms. Coulter down, one protester yelled, “Your words are violence!” But words are the opposite of violence, and the university is one of the great gifts of human civilization precisely because it is a place where we are free to persuade one another without the threat of force. The protesters did not resort to violence, but they demonstrated their disregard for this valuable gift when they forced Ms. Coulter from the podium. As she said in an exclusive statement to ACTA, “at the better schools . . . students have too much intellectual self-respect to scream and carry on. They want to beat you in Q&A.” But the protesters at Cornell chose to embarrass themselves and their school while violating the rights of Ms. Coulter and their fellow Cornell community members. The university is correct to right this wrong.

But now members of the Cornell community are accusing the administration of hypocrisy because it has cracked down on protesters who have disrupted campus spaces in violation of the university’s policies. These critics apparently fail to see the consistency in refusing to accept the disruption of campus events and spaces where students study and learn. Both are defenses of the fundamental purpose of the university.

Moreover, while Cornell faculty and staff—many of whom never said a word in defense of Ms. Coulter but have been greatly concerned about protecting a colleague who found a terrorist attack “exhilarating”—are protesting for academic freedom and free speech, one of them has begged Provost Kotlikoff in a letter to the editor of the Cornell Daily Sun to disinvite Ms. Coulter. Are the students at Cornell really so fragile? Ms. Coulter is known for making statements that many find offensive, but if a professor who sympathizes with Hamas still has a job, then surely Cornellians can tolerate having a provocative conservative on campus for an hour or two.

Cornell must show both its campus community and the country that it can and will respect diversity of thought and freedom of speech. We agree wholeheartedly with Provost Kotlikoff: “there could be few more powerful demonstrations of Cornell’s commitment to free expression than to have Ms. Coulter return to campus and present her views.”

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SB 506 was reported favorably out of the Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education on January 30, 2024, and awaits further consideration by the full Senate Education and Health Committee, which will take up the legislation on February 1, 2024. These back-to-back committee hearings suggest that the legislature is attempting to force the legislation through the general assembly with little-to-no-time for proper consideration of the unintended consequences of the bill. The American Council of Trustees & Alumni (ACTA) asks, why the rush?

If signed into law, SB 506 would reinforce the widely held belief that college governing boards are ineffective and only exist to rubber stamp presidents and administrators. And it would deprive Virginians of any meaningful voice on issues of consequence to them, including tuition increases. If Boards of Visitors’ primary duty is not to the Commonwealth, these institutions will inevitably fail to carry out the public interest.

The well-being of America’s colleges and universities—public and private—depend on visitors, trustees, and regents who exercise their independent judgment as fiduciaries. They cannot be beholden to the institutions they are tasked to govern.

For more information, or to request an interview, please contact ACTA at (202) 467-6787.

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As is now well known, on October 24, 2023, the New York Post submitted allegations to Harvard of plagiarism committed by Dr. Gay. The Harvard Corporation, the governing body of the institution, stated that it “promptly initiated an independent review by distinguished political scientists and conducted a review of her published work. On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results” which they claimed, “revealed a few instances of inadequate citation” (italics added). After additional plagiarism allegations were made by an anonymous source, Dr. Gay resigned on January 2. 

In light of several credible and well-documented press reports, ACTA believes that the Harvard Corporation conducted an irregular and hasty investigation in violation of the university’s established procedures. Therefore, ACTA is asking NECHE to determine whether Harvard has the capacity, policies, procedures, safeguards, and willingness to investigate and adjudicate allegations of academic dishonesty and research misconduct equitably, ethically, and forthrightly. 

ACTA’s complaint reads, “Additional evidence suggesting that Harvard University may be in violation of several provisions of NECHE’s Standards for Accreditation continues to appear. Harvard’s former president, Dr. Claudine Gay, admitted to multiple instances in which her published work and dissertation required corrections to her citations; instances of this sort would normally be seen as plagiarism according to the Harvard Guide to Using Sources.” 

Dr. Steven McGuire, ACTA’s Research Fellow, said “Academic dishonesty offends against the very nature of the university as an institution devoted to the pursuit of truth. Unfortunately, it appears that Harvard has not followed its own policies or lived up to its motto—veritas, or truth—in reviewing the allegations of plagiarism against Dr. Gay. But it is critical that our elite institutions adhere to rigorous standards in such matters both for the sake of their own integrity and because the rest of higher education will follow their lead. Thus, we are asking NECHE to investigate this issue.”

To read ACTA’s complaint in its entirety, click here.

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The statement affirms that “open inquiry and spirited debate” are “the lifeblood” of the institution, serving to “promote discovery and creativity.” It continues, “As a great public university guided by the letter and spirit of the First Amendment, we enthusiastically embrace our responsibility to stimulate and support diverse ideas and viewpoints in our classrooms and labs, lecture series and symposia, studios and performance halls, and among our entire community of students, teachers, researchers, and staff.” It further outlines that “Every member of our academic community should expect to confront ideas that differ from their own, however uncomfortable those encounters may be.”  

ACTA President Michael Poliakoff remarks, “As an alumnus of the University of Michigan (Ph.D., 1981), I am proud of the university for its commitment to vouchsafe the free exchange of ideas in teaching, research, and campus life. The regents have vigorously confirmed that the future of this university—renowned for its contributions to the arts and sciences and for its eminent schools of law and medicine—depends on the unfettered freedom to question, challenge, and debate. With the University of Michigan Principles, the Wolverines join the ranks of the leaders of higher education in a victory for enlightenment and progress.”   

When it adopts the principles, the University of Michigan will join 104 institutions that have affirmed the Chicago Principles on Freedom of Expression or a similar statement. And while it will be a significant step in the right direction, the next, yet more important step is for university leadership to model the principles for the rest of the campus community.

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Here in America, it is profoundly disturbing that student groups are endorsing the violence, and too many university administrators, normally so eager to make political statements, are releasing indecisive and half-hearted ones or none at all.

While the principle of institutional neutrality articulated in the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report counsels against university leaders making political statements on behalf of their institutions, condemning inhumanity is not a political act, nor are words of comfort and support for anyone affected by these atrocities an act of partisanship. I call out those leaders who are loud in their embrace of other causes and who have never held to principles of free speech and institutional neutrality, yet who keep silence in this crisis. I challenge them to reflect on why it has proven so difficult for them to take a public stand while the civilized world recoils from the crimes against civilians we now witness. It is hypocrisy for the same leaders who have been so reactive to more widely favored social causes to have nothing to say when the oldest and most vicious lies about the Jewish people are promulgated on their campuses.

There is an ugly history of antisemitism in American higher education, and too many college and university leaders have failed to recognize that it still simmers on their campuses. Now it has boiled over. Those who have for so long dismissed and ignored antisemitism now must reach out to Jewish members of their communities, as well as all others affected by the documented, unspeakable acts that Hamas has unleashed.

Colleges and universities must reject violence as inimical to their very purpose, which is to provide oases for rational discussion, free inquiry, and pursuit of truth. Campus leaders must also resist calls to silence or to cancel members of their communities for their words or opinions. Yet they must at the same time condemn in unequivocal terms the murder and torture of civilians. Through the clarity of the moral outrage they express and the commitment to the discovery and analysis of new and better policies and a way forward, the leaders of American higher education take up their proper role. That is the way to support their Jewish communities, the Israeli people in their time of need, our country, and humanity.

—Michael B. Poliakoff

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