Dropping DEI statements is a great start, but ideological litmus tests are the real issue

While the movement on campus is gaining momentum, let’s not lose sight of the prize

It’s been a very interesting couple of weeks for free speech and academic freedom on campus. On May 28, Harvard University officially announced that it “won’t issue statements on hot-button social and political issues” — in other words, adopting the principles of institutional neutrality as described in the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report.

Less than 24 hours later, Syracuse University followed suit. The day after that, May 30, the faculty senate at Stanford University — Greg’s alma mater — “approved an amended statement on freedom of expression and an amended policy on institutional statements.”

And that’s not all. There has also been a recent wave of colleges and universities, including MIT and most recently Harvard, moving to eliminate DEI statements from faculty hiring.

As FIRE’s Nico Perrino wrote on X, “the dominoes, they continue to fall.”

These are very promising developments, particularly from Harvard — who, as you all know, has had an abysmal free speech record for a very long time. For those of us at FIRE who have been clamoring for precisely this sort of reform for ages, we are very happy to see it. As we’ve argued over and over and over, DEI statement policies restrict faculty members’ freedom of expression and academic freedom, and act as a barrier to entry for anyone unwilling to toe the ideological line (part of what Greg and his “Canceling of the American Mind” co-author Rikki Schlott call “The Conformity Gauntlet”). FIRE even sued the California Community Colleges system on behalf of six professors to stop regulations that would force them to adopt and espouse highly contested DEI concepts.

However, we want to be very clear that although DEI statements (and the larger DEI bureaucracy on campus) are absolutely threats to free speech, our primary objection is to the larger issue of political litmus tests — and those can come in a variety of flavors and forms. Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” for example, was anti-DEI but still a plainly ideological attempt to restrict what students or faculty can say, which is why we sued (and won).

What we need are policies that go after the root of the problem: ideological conformity and pressure that threatens free speech and academic freedom on campus. FIRE drafted model legislation called the Intellectual Freedom Protection Act, which the state of Kansas has already adopted, that singles out political or ideological litmus tests regardless of whether they’re from the right or the left. We’re hopeful that more and more states will come to adopt it, as universities continue to recognize how hamstrung the existing policies have made them in pursuit of their primary mission: fostering an environment where ideas can be voiced, explored, and challenged in search of truth.

And speaking of that, there’s a lot more universities can do to ensure colleges stay on mission — beginning with students.

DEI statements haven’t just been a tool for faculty hiring in recent years. They also play a large role in student admissions for universities. If these schools want to get serious about being oases of free thought, they will have to make some changes to the way they cultivate their student bodies. 

As Greg noted in his first book, “Unlearning Liberty,” we are encouraging activist mindsets rather than scholarly mindsets on campus. In fact, many schools actively emphasize activism — to the point where it’s part of their recruitment strategy, as Tyler Austin Harper has recently outlined — which makes the recent turmoil at these institutions less of a surprise and more of an inevitability. 

Instead, colleges should emphasize and inculcate curiosity, intellectual humility, and dialogue across difference, as well as generally exalting the virtues of open-mindedness in both policy and practice. This pivot would not only very likely improve students’ mental health on campus, but also work wonders for free expression. FIRE would be happy to help make this happen. Greg has made numerous suggestions to that effect, and FIRE’s 10 common-sense reforms for colleges and universities is another great place to start.

And when it comes to institutional neutrality, it should apply not just to academic institutions but also to individual schools or departments within those institutions. Numerous professors have told Greg in confidence that their names have been added to department statements on hot-button issues without their knowledge or permission — publicly implicating them in political or ideological positions they did not even hold. Without a commitment to institutional neutrality that extends to departments within a university, incidents like these, along with all the trouble they can cause, are likely to keep occurring.

The recent developments on campus — and especially in our most elite institutions like Harvard and MIT — are quite promising. We hope the trend continues and other universities hop on the free speech and academic freedom bandwagon. In the meantime, we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing: calling balls and strikes, and encouraging our institutions of higher learning to live up to their promise. Despite all the issues that still remain, we’re cautiously optimistic that things might just be turning a corner.

If you want to support the work we do, please consider making a donation to FIRE and joining the free speech movement.

SHOT FOR THE ROAD

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the protests in Tiananmen Square, and you may not know this, but the story of what happened there is being more censored over time — with governmental authorities doing everything they can to suppress it and silence those who want to bring it up.

FIRE’s team spoke to Fengsuo Zhou — who was present at Tiananmen Square that day and was later ranked #5 on the CCP's "Most Wanted List" — about his efforts to ensure what happened on June 4, 1989 is never forgotten. 

Check it out in the video below, and make sure to share it on social media!