A TCAT bus driving by Cornell's campus (credit: flyithaca.com).
In our deeply polarized society, Cornell is drowning in demands that it take stands on the issues of the day. Consequently, it is also drowning in a flood of “official statements” from the President, senior administrators and trustees.
In the past two academic years, native American activists have pushed for “land acknowledgments” before Cornell meetings. The Student Assembly has asked for Cornell to denounce Jacob Gould Schurman, Cornell’s longest-serving President for his service on a US Commision on the Philiphines in 1899, and students have asked Cornell to take a stand on abortion rights while the Supreme Court deliberated on the issue. The President has issued statements on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, violence against Asian-Americans in Atlanta, the verdict on the Derek Chauvin trial, the War in Ukraine, and a mass shooting in Buffalo. The problem is that instead of fostering broad-based, nuanced discussion of such social issues, these steps are designed to shut off further campus debate on the underlying questions.
The university must have criteria for when to take an “official position” on an issue and when to leave faculty and students free to research, discuss, debate and publish their own positions on an issue. Cornell hires faculty to publicly articulate their ideas and to train students to think critically and independently – to make up their own minds. Given all of this expensive talent, why should Day Hall be issuing statements to tell Cornellians what they must think and believe is right?
The University of Chicago faced the same problem in 1967 when America was divided over the wisdom of the Vietnam War. Some faculty and students wanted the university, and the nation, to support the war, while others wanted the university to issue an official statement against the war. Chicago President George W. Beadle appointed a faculty committee to prepare “a statement on the University’s role in political and social action.” The result was the Kalven Report which concludes that the University of Chicago or its units should not take official stands on social issues. While it may be less known than the later Chicago Statement (that was since adopted by 87 colleges), the Kalven Report is equally important to Chicago’s climate of academic freedom.
Germans defined professors as “otherwise thinking” scholars – they constantly question everything and are expected to disagree. Because it is the job of the university to host a community of otherwise-thinking scholars, the Kalven Report argues that universities should not take side on social issues. Instead, the members of the community are left free to use evidence and reason to sort out the correct answers for themselves. The Kalven Report understands that this might be upsetting or disappointing:
A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions. By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.
However, the Report concludes:
The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.
Whenever there is a social question, advocates at Cornell now mobilize to demand a statement of support from the President, rather than trying to build broad public understanding and support for the merits of their position. Once the President issues an official statement, students and faculty feel threatened if they continue to debate an issue. This elevates the President to be the arbiter of any and all social and political issues of the day. But her duty is to foster a climate of open inquiry and debate rather than to select on her own the best solution to the world’s problems.
The problem with Cornell’s current approach is where to draw the line between what warrants an official statement and what does not. If the President is expected to comment beyond Ithaca, why should she denounce a mass shooting in Buffalo, but not Highland Park? Instead of debating where President Pollack should have drawn the line on issuing statements, Cornell should just stop cold-turkey. If Cornell were to adopt the Kalven Report, the public would have a clear explanation for why the statements stop.
The University of North Carolina Board of Trustees just adopted the Kalven Report, and Cornell would be wise to do so as well.
