This article is featured in the 2024 Homecoming Special Issue.
Over the past year, campuses across the United States and the Western world have seen an explosion of student activism regarding the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Caught in the middle have been university presidents and their administrations — faced with the unenviable task of responding to a crisis that has created a bright line between students and hindered deep discussion.
Institutions of higher education, aimed at enlightening students by expanding their worldviews, may seem best poised to interject on issues of humanitarian, geopolitical and cultural significance. But is that really the best approach? Instead, would it not be better for universities to return to, as former Harvard University president Larry Summers put it during his recent campus visit, their “fundamental missions of teaching and research”? In recent months, I have determined that institutional neutrality should be the guiding principle of any Dartmouth response to events of geopolitical significance.
This is not to say that the College should remain above the fray, staying cold and distant, while their students attempt to figure out the facts of an issue on their own. Rather, Dartmouth should prioritize the facilitation of respectful and productive discourse on campus. Baby steps have been taken, especially with last year’s hosting of two public fora in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. However, the administration’s responses to both the conflict in the Middle East and student reactions to it have seemingly caused more division on campus than they have resolved. However, this seems to have been the case at a wide swathe of institutions that haven’t adopted principles of institutional neutrality.
A university plays a foundational role in helping students develop their social and political beliefs. A college’s dominion of inquiry should be nearly all-encompassing, presenting as many views as possible such that students can distill, in their own way, their identities. By taking a particular view on an issue, a college may signal its wish to cut off a particular idea from consideration, whether deliberate or not. This is certainly not the duty of an institution dedicated to the promise of enlightenment.
From where can Dartmouth draw inspiration? Earlier this year, Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada changed its institutional guidelines to prevent future comments by the administration on issues of domestic or global significance. Their primary justification, published in the Queen’s Gazette on Sept. 19, 2024, was that “the pressure to comment or adopt a position can be considerable, but the university is by definition and mission a diverse plurality: a large community which includes many different perspectives whose merits the institution considers and evaluates through dialogue and research. So, while individual members can and should express themselves on issues of concern to them, the institution cannot, except on matters directly relevant to its functioning as a university, speak on behalf of the whole community.”
Maintaining a commitment to plurality and a strong culture of free speech on campus requires Dartmouth to remain neutral. A student who holds a legitimate belief should not feel as if the College — which, at a place like Dartmouth, is like a second home — is working against them. To feel as if an administration is stacked against you only diminishes freedom of speech and limits the opportunity for free-flowing discussions. Institutional neutrality ensures that the College doesn’t place its weight, deliberately or not, behind one perspective, allowing for free and open discussion on many global issues of importance.
I am a conservative, so perhaps my view is, at times, one of envy of my more liberal-minded fellow students who seem more empowered to speak on a vast array of issues that they care deeply about. But, I recognize that my ideological opposites often find themselves in very similar situations. I want to have a discussion with those with whom I disagree and disagree strongly. If the College adopts a policy of institutional neutrality, I expect these sorts of conversations to flourish.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
