Last spring, a wave of pro-Palestine encampments emerged on college campuses to protest Israel’s massive bombardment and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, which have killed anywhere from 40,000 to 186,000 people with overwhelming material support from the United States.
In response, universities across the country are scrambling to enact policies that heavily restrict student protest.
The University of Connecticut is among these schools implementing changes that ban encampments, severely restrict the use of megaphones and speakers, and effectively ban peaceful counter-protest. Recently, UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz announced that the university is considering adopting a policy of “institutional neutrality,” which would prevent the university from issuing public statements on social or political events unrelated to the operation of the university.
Institutional neutrality policies have already begun to be implemented at several schools across the U.S., including Harvard, the Universities of Wisconsin, Stanford, and the University of North Carolina, with Yale considering adopting one as well. Reitz explained that at UConn, it would apply to issues and events that do not “have a direct impact on our core academic mission or institutional operations, and that UConn has no direct role in” because, adding that doing so is “not part of our mission or purpose.”
Reitz’s statements beg the question: What world events don’t directly impact UConn? Is it not directly impactful that Palestinian students at UConn have lost family members to Israeli bombardments in the past year? Does Pratt & Whitney’s supply of fighter jet engines to the Israeli military not impact UConn’s future research enterprise, of which Pratt & Whitney is a significant supporter? Does the enrichment of RTX and Lockheed Martin, two major corporate donors to the UConn Foundation, by arming Israel’s killing spree not impact UConn’s endowment?
Reitz seems not to understand that UConn activists would not issue protest demands in the first place if their institution did not have direct ties to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
UConn’s mission statement emphasizes helping students become “contributing member[s] of the state, national, and world communities” and cultivating “engaged citizenship in our students, faculty, staff, and alumni.” Despite this mission supposedly being central to the university’s ideals, their day-to-day practices contradict these goals. If remaining silent in the face of injustice makes a contributing member of society, then UConn’s mission is completely surface-level.
If institutional neutrality was already in effect at UConn, many previously released statements on cataclysmic world events would not have been approved.
In June 2020, several departments and offices released statements condemning police brutality and the murder of George Floyd.
In 2022, University Communications released a statement standing in solidarity with Iranian students during the widespread protests in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, stating that “the Iranian government has responded to these peaceful demonstrations with brutality and repressive measures, with hundreds of students and professors being assaulted, and thousands being arrested.” (Less than two years later, UConn arrested 25 students for their participation in the April 2024 encampment).
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Human Rights Institute (HRI) released a statement condemning the aggression and violations of international law.
None of these world events had a “direct impact” on UConn, subjecting these statements to the institutional neutrality policy being considered.
However, how is UConn supposed to support its Black students if it cannot speak against police brutality? How can the HRI advocate for international human rights when it cannot speak against rights violations? The university would rather give up its ability to publicly condemn atrocities than risk its faculty and staff releasing statements that could humanize Palestinians, which goes directly against the financial and political interests of the university administration.
The university is not concerned that issuing public statements on social issues will stray from its mission or purpose. Rather, UConn is sacrificing its ability to pursue justice and positive change so it can shut its ears to dissent and continue to comfortably contribute to genocide and human rights abuses.
Matthew Kylin is a student at the University of Connecticut.