This piece is a response to a recent article titled “Opinion: ‘Institutional Neutrality’ makes UConn a Husky with no bite.”
I commend Matthew Kylin for taking the time to write a piece reflecting his opinion, a piece that is well researched and well written. However, I cannot agree with his conclusion. Institutional neutrality is a good policy to have, and one that UConn should pursue.
Two policies must be clarified beforehand, however. The first is that this piece is not a statement on the Israeli-Palestinian war. It advocates no position on the issue, neither pro-Israeli, nor pro-Palestinian. This article concerns broader principles of what universities should or should not say, speaking generally rather than specifically.
The second is that Kylin and I both agree on a very significant principle. A student’s right to protest can never be infringed upon. As long as a protest is peaceful, causing no harm to any people or any property, then it must be allowed. Bans on speakers or microphones are nothing less than shadow-bans on protests, and that is deplorable. Kylin and I, as would most people who value the First Amendment, would agree on these terms. However, concerning the rest of the article, both of us agree on little.
Kylin argues that institutional neutrality would prevent the University of Connecticut from pursuing, as he states in his conclusion, “justice and positive change.” However, what justice and positive change equates to is a political position. His article, either by intent or by implication, fundamentally argues that institutional neutrality is bad because it prevents UConn from condemning what Kylin disagrees with, or because it prevents UConn from supporting what he agrees with. This is an extremely dangerous and partisan argument.
The job of a public university is not, and should never be, to take political stances. That endangers the educational independence and credibility that UConn has. The students, student organizations, faculty, staff, etc. can make their own political positions and stances clear. But the university itself must not.
Kylin explicitly condemned UConn as being corrupted by the “…financial and political interests of the university administration.” Yet, this misses the obvious effect of allowing the university to take political stances, which is that the university will become even further swayed by those very political influences.
UConn is a tax-funded university overseen by the Connecticut state government. If UConn is (as he accuses) already corrupted by financial and political interests, how much worse will that become if the university allows itself to become a political mouthpiece, especially considering it is overseen and funded by explicitly political bodies?
Institutional neutrality, by explicitly limiting a university’s political speech, serves as a check against political and financial interests. A lobbyist or political influence can’t affect UConn’s stances if UConn takes no stances. Allowing the university to take political stances, meanwhile, makes it infinitely more vulnerable to those same influences.
The article seems to assume that UConn would be betraying its own student body by not taking a stance. As it says; “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?” However, this is solely based on the author’s own political biases. I doubt the author would share the same view if questions were instead posed as, “How is UConn supposed to support its Christian students if it cannot speak out against abortion? How can the HRI advocate for international human rights when it cannot speak out against Hamas’ terrorism?” Every stance the author listed is fundamentally political in nature, and brings about the same problem, in that the job of a public university is not to take political sides.
The only job of a public university is to act in the best interests of its students. Even if we assume that taking the stance of Palestine is in the best interests of students, what happens when the next political stance isn’t? Kylin only wants UConn to take a stance because it is his stance. If UConn was instead, say, trying to be explicitly pro-Israeli with every public statement and press release, I suspect institutional neutrality would suddenly be an appealing option. We cannot make an institution political just so it can support our own politics; that isn’t what they’re designed to do.
Some may ask why I, a student at a different school, would even care. Well, as Kylin describes at the opening of his piece, what happens in other schools can spread to your own. Public universities taking political stances, even based on the majority views of its population, is frightening. Imagine what that logic could lead to. A public university could advocate for racism, for homophobia, for limiting abortion; all because the majority of their student population believes it. Is that what we want? Because that is exactly what allowing institutions to be political will lead to.
Kylin accuses institutional neutrality of making UConn a “‘“Husky with no bite.” When I discussed this issue with a UConn student, she brought up an interesting counterpoint, stating instead that UConn “has been trained not to bite.” Why do we want the Husky to have a bite at all? It is not an attack dog, it is not meant to be a politically partisan university.
Like all public universities, UConn is meant to be a stage for unbiased discourse, free speech and open discussion. Let staff, students and faculty use that stage to discuss, debate, advocate, and protest for whatever they want. But keep UConn, and all other universities, neutral.
Mathew Biadun, of Bristol, studies history and political-science at Eastern Connecticut State University.