Yale University announced on Wednesday that the move” will develop Yale’s ability to uphold and defend the intellectual freedom and the academic organization,” becoming the latest premier institution to do so.
The Committee on Institutional Voice, which spent the past two weeks listening to comments and developing guidance, announced in a statement that President Maurie McInnis will accept the recommendations made by the Ivy League organization in July.
The commission found college leaders” should refrain from issuing statements concerning matters of public, cultural, or social impact, except in unusual cases”. Just matters that immediately coincide with the university’s” core mission, values, functions, or interests” may enable a possible statement.
The committee discovered that Yale occasionally wanted to weigh in on physical matters, but that “leaders should issue such statements sparingly and only on matters that, in their opinion, are of transcendent significance to the community.”
McInnis, in her understanding of the tips, clarified this applies to the president and superintendents and department chair — no individual students and faculty members.
” At our school, I am committed to upholding a society of teaching and learning. I want our kids to appear to Yale as a place where they can learn to speak for themselves, to question beliefs and ask issues, and to talk with accessibility when in disagreement,” McInnis wrote.
Co-chairs of the committee, in an op-ed in the Yale Daily News, said the development does n’t mean Yale will never make institutional statements.
” By specifying that such claims should be unique and focused on the University’s vision and ideals, we hope the statement did change expectations. We should appreciate the fact that the University itself offers the myriad fora for learning, debate, and articulation of points of view on issues of the day, fora that leaders can support and even create when the times call for them, wrote Professors Michael Della Rocca and Cristina Rodriguez.
Yale joins a number of other prestigious universities that have instituted institutional neutrality this year. As The College Fix previously reported, it ‘s , a trend that shows administrators are likely becoming weary of taking sides on hot button topics, thereby upsetting donors, alumni, lawmakers and students.
Stanford, Syracuse, Harvard, USC, Purdue, Johns Hopkins, the University of Texas system and others have implemented the policy.
MORE:  , Syracuse breaks ‘ institutional neutrality ‘ pledge after 3 days
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