Northwestern announced it will begin to limit official statements on political matters except those that directly affect the University’s operations on Friday, joining a growing number of universities nationwide that have adopted similar policies.
The move came almost two months after the President’s Advisory Committee on Free Expression and Institutional Speech, convened by University President Michael Schill in February, submitted a statement summarizing its examination of NU’s free speech policies.
The original statement — a product of over six months of discussions — appears to resemble a curated version of institutional neutrality with a separate emphasis on the independence of academic discourse on paper.
One of the policy’s stipulations is that members of the NU community should not make official statements on behalf of the University or its constituent parts, which the committee cautioned could constitute “coercion.” In avoiding that possibility, the committee aims to allow students and faculty members to have more individualistic academic voices on paper.
“It’s an internally directed idea, rather than an external one,” said Communication Prof. Mary Zimmerman, who was one of the 11 members on the committee. “It’s about if a department chair or head of a program or a president of the University says, ‘I am speaking for us or for our department,’ there is always the possibility that coercion is involved.”
In the last year, a number of elite universities, including Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, have similarly enacted their own institutional neutrality policies.
Efforts to implement these policies only picked up after student protests swept through university campuses following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023.
“The very reason for this limitation is our firm commitment to values about which we are not neutral: fostering open and equitable dialogue and advancing the University’s core mission — the pursuit of knowledge in the service of truth,” the committee’s statement reads.
Earlier this year, Schill, joined by other university leaders, testified before Congress’ “Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos” hearing regarding concerns over what elected officials deemed an “inadequate” response to antisemitic rhetoric across NU’s campus.
Most of the institutional neutrality policies that have since emerged are largely based on the Kalven Report, a 1967 statement from the University of Chicago regulating its own institutional speech, experts say.
“For Northwestern, it was a difficult move to make because of how dividing the issue between Israel and Palestine was, and many university presidents didn’t want to speak out then,” said Tom Ginsburg, the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law at UChicago. “But like many schools, Northwestern is moving in our direction.”
While the committee said its statement isn’t “a simplistic vision of university neutrality,” it crucially mirrors Schill’s previous messages to the NU community that the University should not speak on behalf of students, staff or faculty on controversial issues that impact its “core mission.”
Nonetheless, the committee’s decision to only reduce the scope for the University to weigh on matters that solely affect its institution sets a lofty criteria. That move appears to be even more narrow than the Kalven Report, which largely avoided statements that concern controversial issues, according to Robert Post, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale University.
“If I say the exception should be statements that refer to the mission of the university, it’s much broader than what they’ve written (in the statement),” Post said. “This is very narrow, and it would all depend on how you gloss the phrase.”
Some members of the NU community have already applauded the statement and consider the move important to create a precedent laid out for the University years to come.
Pritzker Prof. Andrew Koppelman said universities shouldn’t have to resort to a public statement to defend their interests.
“It’s antithetical to the mission of the university to the extent that it lays down an official line, pre-packaged for the students, instead of forcing the students to do the difficult work figuring out what they think about matters that reasonable people disagree about,” Koppelman said.
In the past, Schill has issued statements on certain political matters on his own behalf — a move seen by other University leaders. For example, in a message to the NU community on Oct. 12, 2023, he condemned acts of violence related to the Israel-Hamas war.
“That is the view of Mike Schill, citizen, Jew and human being,” Schill wrote in the message. “I didn’t give up those parts of me when I assumed the presidency of Northwestern.”
Schill is also an ardent proponent of the Chicago Principles — a set of guidelines for free speech on college campuses issued by UChicago in 2014 when he was the dean of its law school, and the committee’s statement also reflects those principles. There, he worked closely with former UChicago Provost and Law Dean Geoffrey R. Stone, a mentor of Schill’s and a prominent scholar on First Amendment law.
More than 100 universities have since adopted or endorsed the Chicago Principles or similar statements as a way to outline their commitment of free expression on campus.
Schill also found himself at the center of several debates pertaining to free speech as the former president of the University of Oregon. Since then, he has repeatedly chimed in on the balance between free speech and creating a safe academic environment.
Zimmerman emphasized that the committee’s directive was not intended to censor members of the NU community but rather to prevent coercion from University officials.
“We are not limiting how anyone can speak for themselves,” she said. “This is just about presuming to speak for others.
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