The doctrine of institutional neutrality asserts that an institution ought not to make public pronouncements on matters of public controversy. It’s promoted most vigorously nowadays by organizations like Heterodox Academy, and by the 150 or so universities that have signed on to Heterodox Academy’s campaign. This gives rise to an oddly neglected question: does institutional neutrality apply to Heterodox Academy itself? Is Heterodox Academy itself bound by the doctrine of institutional neutrality? It’s not clear how to answer this question, or whether it can coherently be answered at all.

On the one hand, the answer seems to be “yes.” Heterodox Academy (HxA), like the universities it advises, claims to promote “viewpoint diversity” within its own activities. The doctrine of institutional neutrality claims that neutrality is a necessary condition of viewpoint diversity within a hierarchical institution like HxA, so that the abandonment of neutrality would entail the subversion of viewpoint neutrality. This suggests, in turn, that HxA is itself obliged to adopt institutional neutrality (about itself). Its failure to do so would, after all, subvert a core institutional value to which it claims allegiance.

On the other hand, the answer seems to be “no.” As five minutes on HxA’s social media confirms, HxA goes out of its way to make public pronouncements on matters of public controversy every day, several times a day. Its social media feed–on Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Substack, YouTube, and its website–consists of nothing but a constant stream of controversial public pronouncements on matters of public controversy. So HxA can’t, in practice, be adhering to institutional neutrality.

Not to overcomplicate things, but HxA’s very advocacy of institutional neutrality is a violation of institutional neutrality. Institutional neutrality is itself a matter of public controversy. Yet HxA publicly avows it. So HxA can’t be institutionally neutral about institutional neutrality. In other words, it’s not institutionally neutral about its advocacy of the core doctrine that defines its mission. If not, it can’t really be adopting institutional neutral at all.

So HxA both does and doesn’t adopt institutional neutrality about itself. Institutionally neutral principles of logic say you can’t do that.

On the face of it, HxA’s defense of institutional neutrality seems to lapse into something like the so-called “problem of self-predication” that afflicts Plato’s Theory of Forms–or at least the version of that problem that crops up in Plato’s “middle dialogues,” e.g., the Phaedo, Republic, and Symposium. Is the Form of Largeness large? The Form of Mud muddy? The Form of Sex sexual? The Form of Color colorful? The theory implies both a “yes” and a “no,” with problems either way. I guess Heterodox Academy is in good company here, but like Plato, it faces a logical problem in need of resolution. I have at least a sense of how Plato solves his problem, but no sense of whether that solution applies to the case at hand, or if doesn’t, what does.

To put the point bluntly, I have my doubts that HxA’s problem can be solved at all. But I’m committed enough to viewpoint diversity to find out.