An Addendum on Institutional Neutrality
I wanted to add a sort of postscript to my March 17 post on institutional neutrality, meant to clarify an inference that is slightly (but only slightly) more complicated than I made it in the original post. The post was already somewhat long, and I didn’t want to burden it with over-complications by addressing every possible objection, or chasing down every twist and turn in the argument. But I also don’t want to burden it with misunderstandings.

About half-way through the post, I consider a hypothetical university committed to institutional neutrality that is either running or invested in death camps along with Mengele-like labs. I point out that nothing about the doctrine of institutional neutrality, at least as laid out in the Kalven Report, requires the University to stop. All that it requires is that the University refrain from taking any publicly-avowed position on any of the controversies involved, including the morality of running death camps or doing Mengele-like experiments, and/or the morality of investing in such enterprises. In this scenario, a bunch of students demand divestment and disclosure, only to be ignored by the university. They then stage a sit-in, and are arrested.

I then say this:

“Invoking Proviso #2, it spins a pious tale about the need to defend itself against a vicious activist attack on academic freedom. But is it obliged to address the substantive issue of its own complicity in death camps and torture chambers? No. Because institutional neutrality demands that it not take an official position on any matter of public controversy outside of the exception clauses, including complicity in death camps and torture chambers. As far as institutional neutrality is concerned, a sit-in is an attack on the University demanding an all-out police and PR response, but a University’s running a death camp is just business as usual to be concealed in some proprietary set of spreadsheets accessible only to people who know better than to talk about what they know.”

I don’t take any of that back, but one step in it needs clarification. As I say, according to institutional neutrality, the University is not obliged to address the substantive issue of its own complicity in death camps and/or torture chambers. But the reason turns out to involve a rather absurd disjunction, not a single reason, as I render it. The disjunction is so silly that I decided not to discuss it in the original post. But its very silliness needs to be made explicit somewhere.

As I say in the sentence after the “no,” institutional neutrality demands that the university not take an official position on any matter of public controversy “outside of the exception clauses.” The problem, however, is that on one plausible construal, the issue at hand concerns a public controversy that falls within one of the exception clauses. At face value, Proviso #1 suggests that the university is permitted but not obligated to discuss controversies related to its daily operations.

Institutional neutrality vs. the imperatives of PR: the struggle is real

Now obviously, if a university is either running or invested in death camps or torture chambers, those activities are part of its daily operations. So controversies about them would fall under Proviso #1. That implies, in turn, that the university is permitted but not obligated to discuss the relevant controversies. But recall that at a fundamental level, Proviso #1 is driven by institutional self-interest. It strikes me as obvious that it is not in the university’s interest to discuss the relevant controversy. That implies that the university is obligated not to discuss the controversies. So Proviso #1 implies both that the university is permitted but not obligated to discuss, and that it is obligated not to discuss.

The absurdity we reach is this. The university has been given license by both Provisos 1 and 2 to act in its own self-interest, and to speak in an official capacity by invoking its moral right to to so–where, but only where, Provisos 1 and 2 apply. Ex hypothesi, the university in my example regards running or being invested in death camps and torture chambers as being in its institutional interest.

Now, a controversy arises. Either this controversy falls within the scope of the exception clause provisos, or outside of it. If it falls outside of their scope, the university is straightforwardly obliged by institutional neutrality not to discuss the controversy. If it falls within their scope, the university has a nominal permission to discuss it. But since the proviso is itself motivated by institutional self-interest, and it’s not in the university’s self-interest to discuss it, the “nominal permission to discuss” drops out as irrelevant. So fundamentally, the university is obligated not to discuss it.

Which is what I originally said. Strictly speaking, according to institutional neutrality, the university is: {(obligated not to discuss), or (permitted but not obligated to discuss and/or obligated not to discuss)}. The first “or” is exclusive, the second, inclusive–not that it really matters. Simplifying, I said it’s obligated not to discuss, which is what all that verbiage really amounts to.

Someone might say that it’s still too strong to say that institutional neutrality demands that the university not take an official public position on its death camps or torture chambers. Perhaps it strongly inclines in that direction, but we can at least imagine a case in which a university runs death camps and torture chambers and faces so much pressure over these things that it finally decides that its self-interest lies in a candid discussion about them. Since that’s logically possible, we have to admit possibility. But if so, we have a conceivable case where institutional neutrality doesn’t literally demand concealment.

I agree that the case is logically possible. I would just say that my original formulation is compatible with that logical possibility. In virtually all realistically-conceived cases, institutional neutral does demand that a university refrain from discussing its deepest, darkest secrets, but conceal them while continuing to engage in the behavior that makes them secrets. Different scenarios are imaginable, but then, so are the demands associated with them. They’re imaginable demands. I was talking about realistic possibilities, not imaginable demands. So my original formulation stands.

Convoluted, no? Don’t blame me. Blame the people who came up with this way of thinking about academic life. Institutional neutrality is the kind of doctrine you get when you outsource a fundamentally moral task–articulating the ideals and norms of academic life–to a bunch of myopic, amoral lawyers and social scientists concerned with crisis management, and anyone else willing to acquiesce in whatever conflict-averse mumbo-jumbo they serve up. You get convoluted, amoral garbage masquerading as an attempt to articulate the ideals and norms of academic life, garbage that will take you straight to genocide and torture chambers if you let it (as plenty will). If you sense contempt on my part, you’re not far off. Contempt is the only appropriate response to half of what one sees in the world we inhabit. If you’re looking for neutrality, you’re in the wrong place.