Harvard leaders adopt policy to avoid speaking officially on social, political topics

Harvard leadership will no longer issue official statements on social or political matters unless they directly affect the “core function of the university,” the school announced Tuesday.

Going forward, administrators said they will only issue statements on behalf of the university on issues that pertain to the school's core values, such as academic freedom and having an open environment for research.

“The university’s leaders are hired for their skill in leading an institution of higher education, not their expertise in public affairs,” the report released by an eight-member working group stated. “When speaking in their official roles, therefore, they should restrict themselves to matters within their area of institutional expertise and responsibility: the running of a university.”

Harvard’s new stance comes amid a tumultuous year on campus shortly after the beginning of the war in Gaza last October that gave rise to campus protests and divisions between students, faculty, staff and alumni.

The report was issued by a faculty-led group that formed in April and calls itself the Institutional Voice Working Group. It was created as part of a Harvard initiative aimed at cultivating constructive dialogue, academic freedom and open inquiry on campus.

"We have accepted the faculty Working Group’s report and recommendations, which also have been endorsed by the Harvard Corporation," interim President Alan Garber wrote to members of the school community in an email Tuesday.

The directive applies to any individual who can speak on behalf of the university, including the president, provost, deans and other administrative leaders, the report said.

Members of the working group said their recommendations and the new policy do not call for absolute institutional neutrality, where a university declines to take a public position on any social or political matter, such as the stance adopted by the University of Chicago in 1967 amid Vietnam War protests.

Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor and the working group's co-chair, said Harvard leaders can still speak officially on the school's core values, as well as anything that has to do with running a university.

"That's their zone of expertise and they shouldn't be neutral about that," he said in an interview. "The university as a whole is not expert in foreign policy. The university as a whole is not expert in domestic policy."

Feldman added the working group was not a direct response to Harvard's struggles around responding to the war in Gaza and the resulting protests and encampments. But, he said the tensions did highlight the fact that official guidance was sorely needed.

"If the university had a clear policy in place that people understood, then it would become much harder for anyone, either outside or inside the university to criticize the university, either for failing to take a stance or for taking too strong a stance or for taking the stance is not the stance that they wanted the university to take," he added.

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay came under strong rebuke for her remarks shortly after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel — first, for the delayed timing of her statement and then for not more forcefully condemning the attacks.

In a Q&A with the Harvard Gazette, the official news channel of Harvard, working group co-chair and philosophy professor Alison Simmons expanded on the timing of the new policy. She cited the rapid dissemination of messaging through social media and the "extreme political polarization" of these times as barriers to controlling university communications or peoples' responses to them.

"These two changes were certainly on display in the wake of Oct. 7. But they have been in place for quite some time," Simmons told the outlet. "And the combination of these two new realities has made it important to form a policy."

The recommendations from the working group were created and written by eight Harvard faculty members from a variety of backgrounds and personal politics with representatives from departments like theology, education, public health and law. Members also conducted surveys and interviews with more than 1,000 faculty members and students.

"One of the main takeaways that came through in the listening sessions is that almost no one is particularly happy with the statements that the university has issued in the past," said working group member Martin West who is also the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

West acknowledges that the new policy will likely take some getting used to, in part because the public has grown accustomed to hearing from institutional leaders when a major world event happens. He hopes university leaders will take the time to remind the community that, with the new policy in place, the lack of a statement does not reflect a lack of concern. In fact, he hopes the move will cultivate a more inclusive environment on campus.

"I think it will take our community some time to adjust to the new reality," said West.