Universities have moral obligations – but not to take moral positions

The furore over the recent congressional testimony of three leading US university presidents about their handling of pro-Palestinian protests drew public scrutiny to an intensifying debate about how universities should respond to issues of social concern.

Asked whether their university policies would prohibit calls for the genocide of Jews, the leaders of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania apparently felt prevented by their institutional roles from addressing the moral (as opposed to the legal) responsibility of the university in that context.

The fallout saw two of them forced to resign. But the issues raised go far beyond individual officials: they are fundamental questions of institutional responsibility and the role of the university in liberal democratic society.

“Academic freedom” does not mean “anything goes”. Academic “disciplines” are rightly named: they establish and evolve standards to govern collegial exchange within and among them. It is the university’s responsibility to establish a broad institutional template for these exchanges, consistent with its fundamental mission to preserve, advance, create and disseminate knowledge as widely and openly as possible.

Hence, certain terms must be met by academic discourse – discourse occurring on campus, on institutional websites (including those of faculty, student and staff associations) or otherwise invoking the imprimatur of the university (such as by the use of professional affiliations). It should be grounded in evidence and/or persuasively constructed argument. It should respect the right to participate of all who accept the terms of debate, including the obligation to be open to contrary evidence and arguments from a diverse range of perspectives.

The last of these is particularly challenging. It requires an “epistemic humility”, as the president of University College London (UCL) recently put it, “an openness to the possibility that I might be wrong, even about my passionate convictions, and even when I believe those convictions to flow from my own experience…that I regard as identity forming.”

But as well as an intellectual mission, universities have moral responsibilities. And while the former requires the pursuit of inquiry regardless of where it leads, the moral question is more complicated.

Modern understandings of institutions, including universities, continue to recognise their role in the moral formation of their members. For instance, Yuval Levin sees institutions as inculcating an ethic of behaviour that poses to its members “the duty-laden institutional question – ‘Given my position here, how should I behave?’”.

It would be inconsistent with its mission for a university to take an institutional position on moral issues, much less to enforce allegiance to a particular moral stance upon its members. But it is the university’s responsibility to provide a forum for such issues to be debated and to establish the terms of debate to ensure as careful and inclusive a set of moral considerations as possible. Participants in academic debates are accordingly obliged to recognise and be prepared to defend the moral implications of their positions. 

This requires not only intellectual clarity but also reflection on the moral principles that could justify certain positions (such as, in the case of Israel-Gaza, respect for the equal dignity of human life, or the requirements of a “just war”). This does not mean moral claims can be wielded as trump cards, however. That would be a recipe for nothing but unproductive combat. Acknowledging the moral dimensions of one’s arguments is necessary to expose aspects that might be subliminal, but moral reasoning itself requires giving reasons and evidence for the application of particular moral principles in particular contexts – those principles are not justifications in themselves.

Universities should foster the understanding and skills necessary for moral reasoning, and official university statements and policies such as codes of conduct should reinforce the expectation that these skills will be exercised. Rather than banning protests, universities should provide forums for them, including those featuring controversial speakers – provided those speakers and their audiences accept the terms of academic debate.

It is true that mass rallies do not lend themselves to moral discourse, but their leaders can be held to account in other forums that do. If these terms are not respected, the next step for university leaders is not disciplinary action but more speech – namely, the issuance of official statements explaining why the event or missive in question does not meet the university’s standards of discourse and behaviour.

Notably, these terms apply to the development and implementation of the university’s own institutional policies. This requires moral deliberation at each stage, underscoring the importance of having a leadership team that is inclusive of diverse life experiences and viewpoints – especially when the need for a swift response precludes broader consultation.

All who exercise institutional authority – presidents, vice-presidents, deans, chairs – are bound to enforce the university’s moral responsibilities. Insofar as they speak and act in the name of the university, they should therefore refrain from expressing particular moral stances, focusing instead on facilitating debate as described above. In their own scholarship and personal lives, of course, they remain free to express their own convictions.

As valued members of the university community, donors, too, must accept the institutional ethic in their relations with the university. That acceptance has not been evident in some donors’ loud calls for universities such as Harvard, Penn and MIT to take a particular moral stand on the Israel-Gaza war.

In short, the central moral value of the university is that morality matters as much as reason and evidence do to the development of human knowledge. But we should not expect the university itself to be what it is not – another advocacy group.

Carolyn Hughes Tuohy is a distinguished fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, where, from 1992 to 2005, she held a number of senior leadership roles, including deputy provost and vice-president, government and institutional relations. A longer version of this article can be read here.