Free Speech, Univerisities, DEI

Report on the University's Role in Political and Social Action | Office of the Provost

t’s no surprise that universities have rediscovered the virtues of the Kalven principles, conceived in 1967 by the University of Chicago in response to the issues of that era. Harry Kalven, an expert in the First Amendment, chaired the faculty committee that argued that a university’s mission was to seek and share knowledge. “There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives,” the committee wrote, and so argued for institutional neutrality. Let 1,000 arguments bloom; the university is the garden, not the gardener.