Robbie Short

As universities across the country consider their roles in overseeing and regulating campus speech, University President Peter Salovey — who is stepping down this summer — told the News that he will leave it up to Yale’s next president to spearhead any policy changes. 

At Yale, the debate over a college’s role in monitoring free expression has remained an issue among faculty. Over 200 faculty members from across the University signed a letter addressed to Salovey’s successor detailing their hopes for the next president, urging simultaneous protection of free expression and students’ right to civil disobedience. Another letter, signed by over 140 faculty, comes from the group “Faculty for Yale” and calls on the University to “insist on the primacy of teaching, learning, and research as distinct from advocacy and activism.”

Students, too, have voiced concerns over Yale’s free expression policies. According to the Presidential Search Committee’s Student Advisory Council report, “overwhelming majorities” of students agreed with the need to protect free speech and academic freedom on campus. 

Yale’s policy on freedom of expression has been guided by the 1974 Woodward Report — commissioned by then-President Kingman Brewster ’41 — since its adoption by Yale in 1975. 

In the midst of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Yale has not been the only college campus at the center of free speech debates. At Harvard University, Interim Harvard University President Alan Garber is expected to announce a working group that will consider a policy of institutional neutrality, according to the Harvard Crimson. Salovey said he believes Yale should do something similar and that he admires Harvard for doing so — but that the University’s next president should pick up that task.

“Neutrality or the ability to speak out is going to affect the next president, so you would want the next president to be involved in that discussion … because it’s going to be binding, but not on me,” Salovey told the News. “I think we should have some kind of conversation about it on campus, probably through a committee, but it would be something I encourage my successor to do.”

Salovey described the tension between the two faculty letters as a “welcome” conversation. He said that the letter from Faculty for Yale is essentially calling for institutional neutrality, a position whereby the university president would not be able to speak out on issues of the day. The other, he said, posits that it is a university’s role “to be an agent for societal improvement” and urges a president to speak out on issues. 

In November, Salovey told the News that the position of institutional neutrality is “best exemplified” by the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report. The report was written when campuses across the country were embroiled with student protests against the Vietnam War and UChicago’s investment policies came under scrutiny. The report suggested that the university remain neutral on social and political issues “out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.” 

Today, free speech at the University of Chicago is governed under both the Kalven Report and a 2015 Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression, now widely known as the Chicago Principles. 

As for Yale’s two faculty letters, Salovey said that he “welcomes” the conversation on free expression, adding that he does not believe it is one the University has had in the last decade. 

He also said that he leans “a bit in the direction of [the University] being able to speak, perfectly recognizing the advantages of neutrality.”

“Most important is these two letters are causing a conversation on campus, primarily among our faculty,” Salovey said. “It is a really good conversation to have. It’s fundamental to issues of academic freedom, to issues of free expression and to the broader issue of, ‘What is a university?’ and ‘What are its values?’”

Jacqueline Merrill, director of the Campus Free Expression Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told the News that she does not believe that whether or not a president speaks out on issues should be equated with the topic of free expression on campus. 

She said that a president’s voice falls along two lines: when they are speaking on behalf of the institution and when they are expressing their own views as president. How universities implement policies to address the extent of either, she said, is a “challenging topic.”

Merrill added that the president of a university can serve as a model for students in pursuit of balanced conversations, setting the tone and example, both for the college community and the greater public.

“This is a moment in our society where the values of open inquiry and freedom of expression are being challenged across our political community and across our civil society, and it is especially important that colleges and universities set a high bar because they are preparing the next generation of civic leaders and citizens,” said Merrill. 

Former University President Richard Levin emphasized to the News that a university’s “primary mission” is the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. 

To facilitate this goal, Levin said, a university president must be able to articulate the protection of free expression with a commitment to teaching and learning.

“There’s a list of things that I think are important attributes of the next president of Yale, of which commitment to free expression is certainly high on the list,” Levin said. “It’s a corollary to the principal commitment, which is that we are centers of learning and teaching.”

Salovey told the News in November that the Woodward Report at Yale protects most forms of expression — so long as that expression is not “designed” to harass, directly threaten an individual’s safety or incite violence. He added, however, that making that distinction is not always “easy.”

Levin said that he hopes the University does not revisit the report, which he said is a “lifeline” keeping Yale consistent with its principles. He added, too, that Yale’s report is “essentially indistinguishable” from the Chicago Principles, which have been adopted by 108 other institutions, including Princeton University, Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  

“Again, that’s a decision for the next president,” Salovey said when asked whether Yale should revisit the report. “But I have to say, I think the Woodward Report provides an important bedrock for any discussion of free expression on campus, and I think it has withstood the test of time.”

The Woodward report is named after C. Van Woodward, former history professor and chairman of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale, which produced the report.