Harvard leaders no longer comment on issues unrelated to ‘core function’

Harvard will no longer comment on matters unrelated to its institution’s “core function,” the university announced Tuesday, a decision made after months of turmoil over the Israel-Hamas war.

The recommendation that the school not comment on controversial public issues came from a report led by the “Institutional Voice Working Group” that the school created in April.

The report “argues that when the University ‘speaks on the record about matters outside its institutional area of ​​expertise,’ such statements risk compromising the ‘integrity and credibility’ of our academic mission and can undermine open inquiry and academic freedom, making it ‘more difficult for some members of the community to express their views when they differ from the university’s official position,’” the school said in its statement announcing the report and new policy.

“We accept the report and recommendations of the Faculty Working Group, which have also been endorsed by the Harvard Corporation,” the statement reads.

The new policy will affect university administrators, school deans and department heads.

This comes after the university experienced multiple controversies this year related to the Israel-Hamas war, from the resignation of its former president to the pro-Palestine camp.

“There will be close cases in which reasonable people will disagree about whether or not a given issue is directly related to the core function of the university,” the report stated. “The university’s policy in these situations should be to err and avoid official statements.”

This tactic aligns with decades-long debates about “institutional neutrality” in academia. Institutional neutrality states that universities should not take public positions on controversial current issues, so as not to influence open debate on their campuses.

But Harvard does not want to be labeled neutral with this stance.

“The purpose of the university is to seek the truth. In this pursuit, the university as an institution can never be neutral, because we believe in the value of seeking the truth through open inquiry, debate, and evaluation of evidence, as opposed to mere assertion or unwarranted belief “, says the beginning of the report.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story