The Heterodox Academy found that in 2024, more than 100 colleges and universities across North America adopted institutional neutrality policies. Taking a cue from the 1967 University of Chicago Kalven Report, which argued that the university must remain neutral to be a home to a wide diversity of views, impartiality protects open inquiry and academic freedom in educational settings as the institution hosts ideas but does not promote them. When universities and departments make statements and take positions—as Barnard College’s Women’s Studies program has divisively done—these public ideological positions can have a chilling effect on discourse by encouraging silence from students and faculty who may not agree or want to ask dissenting questions.
While some believe that neutrality is an abdication of leadership, taking a neutral position keeps the exploration of truth and ideas at the center of the educational experience. There is no place for indoctrination in neutral institutions; all ideas are welcomed and challenged by their merits. This is a sound policy that protects schools from changing political trends and promotes heterodox thinking.
Despite this sound position, most college and university presidents reject the wisdom of neutrality.
A new survey from Inside Higher Education (IHE) reveals that just 29 percent of college and university presidents indicate their institution has a neutrality policy; most leaders report that their schools do not have such a policy (66 percent), and amazingly, some (five percent) report they are unsure if they have a policy at all. Amazingly, the data show that among presidents who, in 2025, say their institution has no institutional neutrality policy, just 11 percent report that their institution is considering adopting one. Most college and university presidents say their school is not considering a policy of neutrality (79 percent), and a handful (10 percent) are unsure.
Given the progressive lean of faculty and recent movement of sizable numbers of faculty toward activist-scholar roles, not adopting a neutral role is dangerous leadership and allows the school to succumb to political actors and move away from centers of learning, teaching, and discovery.
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In fact, despite high-profile schools like Harvard University creating a “bridges fund” to support student “projects that build bridges across differences,” the IHE survey data reveal deep inaction by many presidents to effectively manage the political disagreements on their campuses and promote viewpoint diversity on campus and in classrooms.
When asked to indicate what step(s) their institution has taken in the last 18 months to educate students, faculty, and staff about the importance of free speech and to prepare them to engage with those with whom they disagree, the numbers are very low. While 50 percent of presidents reported their schools “Offered faculty training on facilitating difficult dialogues/constructive conversations in the classroom” and another 48 percent “offered staff training on facilitating difficult dialogues/constructive conversations,” half offered no training to help students and collegiate communities work through difference and dialogue—the hallmark of higher education. Moreover, almost no schools required faculty (six percent) or staff (eight percent) training on facilitating difficult dialogues/constructive conversations in the classroom. These are the adults—educators, mentors, and community members—most central in the lives of undergraduates on campus and are those who are likely to be most instrumental in teaching students how to think, disagree, have meaningful dialogue, and manage viewpoint diversity. Almost none of these critical figures on campus are trained or supported for this central educational goal.
More worrisome, the findings show barely a third of presidents (31 percent) reported that their schools are modeling civil disagreement and debate by creating “a voluntary difficult dialogues/constructive conversations initiative on campus” and a fifth (21 percent) admit that their schools have done nothing to teach their students are viewpoint diversity agreeing with the statement that “my institution has not taken steps to educate students, faculty, and staff about the importance of free speech or to prepare them to engage with those with whom they disagree.” Just a fifth (21 percent) report embedding “training on difficult dialogues/constructive conversations into freshman orientation” and a fifth in embedding “training on difficult dialogues/constructive conversations into a first-year seminar/program.” Only 15 percent of presidents state that classroom-based training occurs in the curriculum beyond the first year.
These findings amount to educational malpractice by many college presidents. It is wise for our nation’s colleges and universities to adopt a neutrality position because it provides not only a clear path to promoting viewpoint diversity but also an unambiguous set of guidelines to follow when political actions—such as the recent waves of students overtaking buildings and disrupting classes and academic life and threatening community members—effect the community. College and university presidents struggle to understand this.
Beyond failing to create a healthy environment for open inquiry with neutrality, the painful truth is that presidents have failed to provide the most basic building blocks of a liberal education to their students and campus communities and have not equipped students with the skills to think and engage with a complex world that holds many divergent viewpoints. Many presidents are failing to educate their students and are instead supporting indoctrination and narrow thinking, which is directly feeding into the nation’s ever-increasing distrust in higher education.
Boards, alumni, donors, and students must demand better, or these institutions may very well cease to exist, as the Trump administration rightly has no interest in supporting centers of indoctrination but centers on innovation.
Image: “2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Brown” by Kenneth C. Zirkel on Wikimedia Commons
