A bunch of us had a contentious discussion the other day about institutional neutrality, apropos of my then-upcoming talk about it at the Heterodox Academy conference. One topic that came up was how institutional neutrality relates to curricular decisions. Is there an institutionally neutral way of deciding, say, whether a given topic or discipline merits inclusion within the curriculum of a given institution of higher education? Or a neutral way of deciding whether a program, department, division, school, or university itself ought to set aside the resources to make something a formal subject of study? Since not everything can be studied, decisions have to be made about what gets included and what doesn’t. Can those decisions be made “neutrally”? Continue reading →