Should colleges and universities speak on political issues? 

In the wake of the horrors perpetrated by Hamas on innocent Israeli citizens, leaders from President Biden to heads of cultural, political and advocacy organizations have felt compelled to speak out lest their silence be interpreted as a kind of complicity. College and university presidents have not escaped the compulsion to speak. 

What they have said about the events of Oct. 7, how they have said it, and what they have not said have been carefully scrutinized. In several cases, they have made national headlines. For critics, such statements politicize higher educational institutions, which, in their view, should maintain a posture of neutrality. 

But, if one looks beyond the front-loaded statements about Hamas, what emerges is a vision of the university less as a political community than as a therapeutic one.  

The statements of many university leaders condemning Hamas were generally followed by an acknowledgment of the trauma that the events in Israel cause for students and an offer of help in coping with it. They contained reminders of the extensive resources that are available on American college and university campuses to help students with such psychological difficulties. 

Do colleges and universities need to justify their statements in this way? Should institutions of higher education steer clear of taking political stands? 

The most important articulation of the view that they should remain neutral dates to 1967, when then-University of Chicago President George W. Beadle created a committee to prepare “a statement on the University’s role in political and social action.” In November of that year, the committee, chaired by the famous law professor Harry Kalven, issued its report. 

That report argued that the mission of the university was strictly limited to “the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.” It cautioned university leaders against taking political stances and said that the “instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student.”  

The university, Kalven wrote, “is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. … To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.” 

A university, he claimed, “is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.” 

The Kalven committee concluded that the university “is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness.” As a result, it should avoid “modifying its corporate activities to foster social or political values, however compelling and appealing they may be.” 

For a long time, the Kalven committee’s conclusion was the prevailing orthodoxy in higher education, even though most places did not formally adopt it. That orthodoxy was so pervasive that Father Theodore Hesburgh, former president of Notre Dame University, complained in 2001 that “the vast majority of Americans rarely hear college presidents comment on issues of national importance.” 

How times have changed.  

Today, as Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College, puts it, presidents regularly issue statements about “Racism and xenophobia, climate change and voting rights, the future of democracy and the response to a pandemic: No day goes by without demands on some campus that the institution take a position and competing demands that taking a position is inconsistent with the role of the university.” 

Institutional silence, Rosenberg says, “on all or most of these matters strikes me as unacceptable: as something perilously close to the ‘lack of courage,’ ‘indifference,’ and ‘insensitivity’ that are dismissed in the Kalven Report as possible reasons for the university’s neutrality.” 

Yet the proliferation of statements by college and university presidents about Hamas reveal something else about the modern university. Rather than dwelling on the political and offering an extended commentary on anti-Israeli terrorism, they generally quickly turned away from politics to something else, namely offers of “support and help” for students and others traumatized by the unfolding events. 

Typical was the statement by Christopher L. Eisgruber, president of Princeton. It started by saying that “Even in a world wearied and torn by violence and hatred, Hamas’s murder and kidnapping of hundreds of Israelis over the past weekend is among the most atrocious of terrorist acts. This cruel and inhumane attack has provoked a bloody war that has already claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis and will tragically take many more as it continues.”  

But his statement quickly changed register.   

“The nightmare underway in Israel and in the Palestinian territories,” Eisgruber noted, “is being deeply felt on this campus. That pain will inevitably continue in the months ahead. My heart goes out to everyone personally affected.” The university, he reported “has reached out to students and other community members from Israel and the Palestinian territories. Resources and support services are available from the Davis International Center, Counseling and Psychological Services, and the Office of Religious Life.” 

Another example of the movement from the political to the therapeutic is seen in the Oct. 11 statement issued by Pomona’s Gina Gabrielle Starr. Starr put it this way: “The trauma we are witnessing affects us all deeply, especially those of us with family and friends in the region. As we go about our days, I ask that you walk gently with each other, and that as a Pomona community we show our care and compassion. … The message from our chaplains this week … offered resources to our community, and I urge you to take advantage of them should you be in need.” 

In their statements, college presidents use the political as an avenue to get to the pastoral in ways that the Kalven committee did not anticipate. The post-Oct. 7 statements are a reminder that American universities focus not just on “the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.” They strive to offer education in a community of care.  

What college leaders have said in the wake of Hamas’s terrorism suggests that they recognize that their institutions cannot succeed in their educational mission if they do not provide the care that their students need to cope with the trauma that the world inflicts on them almost daily. They also recognize that what happens thousands of miles away can have an immediate impact on members of a college community.  

As leaders, they have sought to raise awareness of that impact, and to ensure that the community coheres around an ethos of care and connection, in spite of the differences and tensions that events like those in the Middle East cause on their campuses. 

Austin Sarat (@ljstprof) is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Amherst College.