Last year, Wesleyan University experienced a surge of student activism, particularly in reaction to the Israel-Hamas War. Debate on campus about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unlikely to cease this semester due to the Board of Trustees’ plan to vote on divestment from corporations profiteering from the war. Concurrent with the board’s planned vote on divestment is the 2024 United States presidential election, which is also almost sure to ignite campus activism. With these tantamount events on the docket, Wesleyan is looking at a very fiery semester from the student activist front. Therefore, Wesleyan should aim to maintain an environment that protects students’ speech rights, which should start with adopting the Kalven principles. 

The Kalven principles derive from the University of Chicago, where a 1967 committee chaired by First Amendment scholar Harry Kalven Jr. formulated the Kalven Report. Kalven articulated a set of principles in the report, with relevant fundamental aims. 

“[The] mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge…[and the] instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student,” the principles read. “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” 

In short, the Kalven principles prevent figures (presidents, provosts, deans, and other administrators) who claim to speak on behalf of the university from issuing official statements unrelated to the university’s core functions. The Kalven principles assert that the role of a university’s administration is to foster an environment that is conducive to debate, discussion, and inquiry among students and faculty—the individuals on campus who have academic freedom. That starts with the university being institutionally neutral on matters unrelated to the school’s core functions. Rather than the administration taking a position on the hot political topic of the day, the administration should uphold a campus that allows students and faculty to share and hear views related to that topic. The bedrock principle of higher education is the discovery of truth—which can only come through by disseminating a multitude of perspectives.

“This community’s commitment to the free exchange of ideas and pursuit of knowledge requires a wide range of protections for speech and expression, even when noxious or offensive,” the Wesleyan student handbook reads. 

The student handbook hits the nail on the head regarding the goal of a university: “pursuit of knowledge.” However, Wesleyan strays from this mission when it issues official statements about matters unrelated to Wesleyan’s core functions as a university.

Take, for example, the June 2022 statement by President Michael Roth ’78 on the Supreme Court’s decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen, which expanded the Second Amendment’s protection on firearms to outside of the home. Roth described the Bruen decision as being based upon “nonsense,” and as a result of the decision,“public safety will be undermined.” In my view, President Roth’s view on Bruen is correct. However, his statement on the decision—or any other matter separate from Wesleyan’s core function—ultimately does more harm than good.

In response to the Bruen decision, the voices that should have been heard on the Second Amendment were those of experts. Wesleyan is home to the Center for the Study of Guns and Society (CSGS), consisting of historians on guns and the Second Amendment. When the CSGS faculty speak, they are not speaking on behalf of Wesleyan, but on their behalf and on a matter of their expertise. In Bruen, the Supreme Court invalidated a New York state gun regulation. Would it not be more prudent for Wesleyan students from New York to state their views on the Bruen decision? Put simply, students and faculty should speak on the pertinent issues. Wesleyan administration should administer the school.

Additionally, Wesleyan’s goal of committing to the pursuit of knowledge is hampered when the administration takes a position on a controversial issue. Wesleyan should encourage students to hold and share various viewpoints, which becomes complicated when the administration decides there is a right or wrong perspective.

Furthermore, when the administration issues a statement on controversial matters such as foreign policy or governmental regulations, they are simply performative. Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Hamas are not going to adjust their behaviors because the administration of a liberal arts college in Connecticut called on them to do so. Rather than simply sending out an email making a political statement, or providing empathy and condolences to those impacted by a tragic situation, Wesleyan should invest more in services to help students impacted by the situation. A statement from the administration is unlikely to truly help make a student feel better, but outreach to impacted students and providing them with resources (like counseling) will.

In fact, many people find the administration’s statements on controversial topics to have the opposite effect. Last semester, when Roth called for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas, neither side on campus was rather pleased by his statement. Many on the pro-Palestinian side saw Roth’s statement as simply empty words while the University’s endowment continued to invest in Israeli companies; and many on the pro-Israel side saw Roth’s statement as an endorsement of allowing Hamas to continue to reign in Gaza. 

For other students, the University taking a position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Ukraine while ignoring other crucial issues facing the world—such as the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China or women in Iran—can upset students impacted by those controversies, who may see Wesleyan as thinking their situations are less important. 

In a 2024 piece in Wesleyan University Magazine, Roth criticized the Kalven principles, saying,“[T]his is no time to seek refuge in doctrines of neutrality.” Roth wrote that university leaders should speak out against “a clear and present danger to American democracy and to American higher education: populist authoritarianism.”

However, the Kalven Report includes a clause that says universities can oppose measures that “threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.” Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, who co-chaired Harvard’s Institutional Voice Working Group and helped draft Harvard’s own principles of institutional neutrality, addressed this scenario on WGBH radio. 

“Academic freedom is crucial to running a university, and so our leadership has to speak out forcefully and officially about that,” Feldman said. “[It’s the] same if Donald Trump decides—as he’s promising to do right now—to tax, as he puts it, ‘billions and billions of dollars’ from big university endowments to create his very own online ‘American Academy.’ That’s a terrible idea. Our leadership needs to be able to speak out clearly and say that would not be a good use of the resources of educational institutions today. There’s lots of things where values are implicated—values that are crucial to running a university, and the university has to speak out and it shouldn’t be neutral.”

If a climate emerges that directly implicates students, faculty or academic freedom, then the university can speak out while complying with the Kalven principles. In fact, in those circumstances, the university should speak out. What the Kalven principles hold is that the university should not speak out on public policy issues unrelated to the core functions of the university. Rather, the university should lean on students and faculty to answer those questions.

“The university seeks to build a diverse, energetic community of students, faculty, and staff who think critically and creatively and who value independence of mind and generosity of spirit,” Wesleyan’s mission statement reads.  

If Wesleyan wants to do their best to uphold these values, then they should join the growing number of institutions—including Vanderbilt University, Syracuse University, and Stanford University—adopting the Kalven principles. It is not a left-wing solution. It is not a right-wing solution. It is a solution to move the University forward and pursue its mission.

Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to Noah Feldman as co-chair of Wesleyan’s Institutional Voice Working Group. He co-chaired Harvard’s Institutional Voice Working Group. A quote by Feldman was previously incorrectly attributed. 

Blake Fox is in the class of 2026 and can be reached at bfox@wesleyan.edu.