A president’s embrace of neutrality—or restraint, as we call it at Dartmouth—is a good thing. When presidents make statements about something unrelated to the academic mission of the university, they advance politics, not education. Not only do such statements have a chilling effect on discourse and intensify polarization on campus; they jeopardize an institution’s credibility and autonomy. Presidents often aren’t authorities on the situation at hand and have little of substance to offer on issues that trained experts have spent lifetimes studying.
But ending political statements by presidents isn’t enough. Dartmouth’s Principles of Institutional Restraint, developed by a faculty-led committee and rolled out on Dec. 10, spell out clear guidelines on restraint for academic departments and institutes that choose to speak as a unit. This is key to ensuring that our students, faculty and staff feel free to voice opinions contrary to the majority, creating the kind of brave learning environment where the best ideas prevail.
Consider a student interested in majoring in a certain subject. Upon going to the department homepage to discover course offerings, the student is slapped in the face with an official statement excoriating his own political ideology. How comfortable would that student feel taking a class in that department, let alone sharing his perspective in a class discussion or paper? Our Principles of Institutional Restraint permit departments to issue public statements only on limited issues directly related to their academic expertise. Rather than publishing these proclamations on their homepages, departments must create new webpages specifically dedicated to public statements and endorsements. This ensures that departments promote their academic missions, not their social or political beliefs.
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