Aaron J. Saiger (Fordham), How Institutional Speech Erodes Academic Freedom, in The Free Inquiry Papers (American Enterprise Institute Press, 2024):

University pronouncements on contentious issues are proclamations of official orthodoxy. Such declarations label adherents as right-thinkers, and place actual and potential dissenters on notice that their opinions are false and wrongheaded. Issuing such statements is inimical to a thriving culture of free inquiry. Academic freedom requires universities not simply to tolerate but affirmatively to welcome dissent.

Universities (and subunits of universities, like campuses, schools, and faculties and departments in their corporate capacities) should therefore eschew institutional speech when they can. The ideal of the university as a neutral forum, however, flies in the face of the multifarious scope of the modern university, whose tendrils infiltrate countless, diverse spheres of activity. When universities are engaged in their daily business—admitting students, hiring faculty, granting degrees, funding programs, or setting curricula, for example—they have every right and, indeed, obligation, to justify their actions.

Institutional neutrality, while it should be a presumption, is therefore insufficient to guarantee academic freedom. When taking a position is a necessary part of universities’ discharge of their own functions, institutional speakers should supplement their statements with declarations of affirmative support for inquiry and for free and robust objection to official opinion.