Neutrality: The Problems and Challenges of the Public University
The Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley convenes a Sawyer Seminar on “Neutrality: The Problems and Challenges of the Public University” during the academic year 2026-27. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the research seminar explores the implications of institutional neutrality in the American university system. The seminar is co-led by Stephen Best, professor of English and director of the Townsend Center for the Humanities; Colleen Lye, associate professor of English and chair of the Asian American Research Center; and Poulomi Saha, associate professor of English and co-director of the Program in Critical Theory.
Universities have often grappled with the doctrine of neutrality — on questions of whether and how to respond to the Vietnam War, the call to end apartheid in South Africa, the murder of George Floyd, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war in Gaza, and many other global and domestic crises. In turning to an official position of neutrality, universities across the country invoke an a priori principle assumed to undergird the exercise of all other principles: fairness, impartiality, equality.
The doctrine of neutrality that many campuses have turned to for a model was formulated and first adopted by the University of Chicago, in response to the Kalven Committee’s “Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action” (1967), also known as the "Kalven Report,” which was commissioned at the height of campus protests against the Vietnam War. The Kalven Report’s statement of principle has recently become a model for other universities: “[The neutrality of the university arises] out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints. And this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest. It finds its complement, too, in the obligation of the university to provide a forum for the most searching and candid discussion of public issues.”
This embrace of neutrality raises questions that are central to the long philosophical critique of secularism, disinterested observation, and the concept of neutrality understood as a claim to refrain from judgment, to lack agenda, and to abstain from normative commitments and assertions. The seminar approaches neutrality not as a self-evident principle, but as an abstraction with a complex historical, legal, and philosophical genealogy — one that presents particularly challenging hurdles to the determination of the values that are at the core of the academic mission: academic freedom, free speech, and education understood as a practice of freedom (that is, learning to think for oneself in the company of others).
Among the questions the Sawyer Seminar asks: How are institutions to respond when values come into conflict? How can universities fulfill their educational mission while addressing the pressures to respond to urgent social issues? While a public university such as Berkeley prides itself on “questioning the status quo,” are there ways in which adherence to the doctrine of neutrality risks shoring up the status quo? How might “institutional neutrality” and “institution building” go hand in hand for some ideological projects, and yet not for others? Can the university balance respect for free speech with institutional neutrality, without silencing some forms of discourse?
During the academic year, seminar members also work together to plan the curriculum for a weeklong Faculty Leadership Institute held in summer 2027. The Institute addresses the issue of institutional neutrality and its relationship to questions of leadership and policymaking from the perspective of the methods of the humanities. Participation in the Institute is open to faculty in humanistic disciplines who hold leadership positions in the University of California, California State University, and California Community College systems.