Just a few years ago, it felt like every college in America was eagerly releasing statements about political controversies. Schools released statements on everything from police brutality to the 2020 presidential election to anti-Asian hate. But after Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel, universities were in a bind, unable to make a statement on the conflict that wouldn't anger either anti-Israel activists or risk getting university leaders hauled before congressional inquiries into on-campus antisemitism. Soon after, some colleges reacted to this pressure by announcing that they would no longer make official statements on political events that do not directly concern the university itself.
"If the university and its leaders become accustomed to issuing official statements about matters beyond the core function of the university, they will inevitably come under intense pressure to do so from multiple, competing sides on nearly every imaginable issue of the day," reads a Harvard faculty–led report whose recommendations were accepted by administrators last May. "This is the reality of contemporary public life in an era of social media and political polarization."
"We embrace the guiding principle that the remedy for speech that some may find hurtful, offensive, or even hateful is not the disruption, obstruction, or suppression of the free speech of others, but rather more speech," reads another statement from last spring, this one from Syracuse. "Except under the most extraordinary circumstances…the University does not make institutional statements or pronouncements on current controversies."
