The Review: Harvard rethinks its addiction to statements. And our most-read stories of the year so far.

What'd you miss? ADVERTISEMENT [The Review Logo]( You can also [read this newsletter on the web](. Or, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, [unsubscribe](. Your semester’s probably over. Catch up on the Review’s 10 most-read essays of the year so far. Steven Brint, “[If Trump Wins....]( Rita Koganzon, “[The Coddling of the American Undergraduate]( Kevin R. McClure, “[Your Pay Is Terrible? You’re Not Alone.]( David C.K. Curry, “[The Gutting of the Liberal Arts]( Evan Goldstein, “[Glenn Loury Comes Clean]( Derek Bok, “[Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard]( Brendan Cantwell, “[The Left’s Contradictory Goals for Higher Ed]( Sarah D. Phillips, “[I’m a Professor. I Never Expected to Be Arrested on Campus.]( Len Gutkin, “[‘Get Rid of the Zionists Here’]( Len Gutkin, “[The Hyperbolic Style in American Academe]( SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. SPONSOR CONTENT | NACUBO [Evolution of Endowments]( Kalven’s Institutes? At the end of last year, I [spoke]( with a number of administrators and former administrators who predicted that more and more colleges would adopt some version of the University of Chicago’s Kalven principles on institutional neutrality. Maud Mandel, president of Williams College, led the way, [adopting]( neutrality on October 12. Now Harvard has followed suit, in the form of a “[Report on Institutional Voice in the University]( released last week. “The university and its leaders should not,” the report says, "… issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.” From Williamstown to Cambridge, is the once-Calvinist colony of Massachusetts now, uh, Kalvenist? Maybe, but if so the transmission of the principles from their birthplace in Chicago to far-flung New England has entailed some doctrinal innovation. As Noah Feldman and Alison Simmons, Harvard professors of law and of philosophy, respectively, and co-chairs of the committee that produced the report, [wrote]( in The New York Times, “while our policy has some important things in common with the Kalven Report … the principle behind our policy isn’t neutrality. Rather, our policy commits the university to an important set of values that drive the intellectual pursuit of truth: open inquiry, reasoned debate, divergent viewpoints, and expertise.” Therefore, Feldman and Simmons said, leaders can speak publicly when doing so is necessary to defend the university’s own functioning and core values — because “that is their area of expertise as presidents, provosts and deans.” The Kalven Report likewise allows for the university to speak publicly in order “to actively ... defend its interests and its values.” The difference, Feldman told me, is that Harvard’s report “rests on a fundamentally different rationale than the Kalven Report; it rests on institutional expertise rather than academic freedom. Our report also actively eschews the idea of neutrality, which today does not sound like a defensible or desirable objective to most scholars.” On this view, colleges should remain silent about, say, the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, not because it is their duty to maintain a neutral campus environment in which individual scholars can argue uninhibited by institutional dogma, but because college administrations are not experts in foreign affairs — they are experts in running colleges. That’s not to say that the Kalven Report wasn’t an influence. “I have the greatest respect for Kalven himself,” Feldman said, “and I hold the University of Chicago in a kind of awe. Our report surely rests on the shoulders of the Kalven Report, but we believe it sees further.” Some Kalvenists of the old religion see a distinction without a difference. Tom Ginsburg, a University of Chicago law professor, told The New York Times that the authors of the Harvard report are in fact calling for neutrality, but “they don’t want to admit that” — perhaps because the term “neutrality” has itself become polarizing. And the University of Chicago philosopher Brian Leiter, quarreling with Feldman and Simmons, [wrote]( that the Kalven Report always “stood for a lot more than ‘neutrality.’ It was predicated precisely on a statement of the university’s values and missions.” The Kalven Report itself is arguably just as committed to the value of “truth” and the mechanisms of its attainment as the Harvard one. “The mission of the university,” the Kalven Report reads, “is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.” In any event, however different the theoretical groundings of the Harvard statement from the Kalven Report, the practical upshot — silence, mostly, from administration on the politics of the day — remains very similar. There’s one area in which that’s not necessarily true. The Kalven principles, from their first articulation to the present, have been interpreted to mean that university investment decisions should be shielded from social or political pressure. “The Kalven Report,” Feldman and Simmons wrote, “claimed that a decision to divest is a statement in itself and so the university shouldn’t do it. In contrast, we saw divestment as an action rather than a statement the university makes. We therefore treated it as outside our mandate.” By separating investments from the question of expression, the Harvard report avoids getting bogged down in a problem that is conceptually murkier than the Kalven principles’ most ardent defenders sometimes admit. As the Chicago philosopher and Kalven-skeptic Anton Ford [wrote]( recently in our pages, “A university is not merely a speaker, facing a choice between making a statement or remaining silent: It is also, inevitably, an agent in the world.” In acknowledging that investments are actions in a way that speech isn’t, the Harvard report implies that colleges will need to establish a framework to guide investments drawing on different sources, and grounded in different values, than those guiding speech. ADVERTISEMENT UPCOMING PROGRAM [The Chronicle's Strategic-Leadership Program for Department Chairs | June 2024] [Join us in June]( for a professional development program tailored to the needs of department chairs. Experienced academic leaders will provide insights on the current trends in higher ed, effective ways to manage a department, strategic planning, and more. [Register today!]( The Latest THE REVIEW | OPINION [Dozens of Colleges Say They’ll No Longer Take Sides. That’s Easier Said Than Done.]( By Anton Ford [STORY IMAGE]( Campus leaders have already taken a position in the Gaza conflict. ADVERTISEMENT [Dozens of Colleges Say They’ll No Longer Take Sides. That’s Easier Said Than Done.]( THE REVIEW | ESSAY [Algorithms and the Problem of Intellectual Passivity]( By Eileen G'Sell [STORY IMAGE]( Our students are used to everything being tailored to them. That’s a problem. THE REVIEW | OPINION [Against the Politicization of Sociology]( By Steven Lubet [STORY IMAGE]( A recent resolution on the war in Gaza reads like advocacy. That’s inappropriate. THE REVIEW | ESSAY [The War Over Creative Nonfiction]( By Eric Bennett [STORY IMAGE]( The field won its battle with literature. Now what? Recommended - “What was the ghetto, in the fullness of Jewish history? Its historians argue that it was both an open-air prison and a bright spot in the darkness of early modern European antisemitism.” In the London Review of Books, Erin Maglaque [writes about]( the Venetian ghetto by way of Harry Freedman’s Shylock’s Venice. - “Céline took a human vérité — that we censor our own experience relentlessly in order to abide it, and, if we confronted reality as it actually is, it would make us shudder—and made it into a powerful style.” In The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik [heralds]( Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s newly discovered novel, Guerre. - “Synthesizing Bourdieu and Reich, I came up with an alternative way to conceptualize the ‘winners’ in the knowledge economy.” In his Substack newsletter, Musa al-Gharbi [lays out]( some of the conceptual background behind his new book, We Have Never Been Woke, out recently from Princeton University Press. - “In many respects, [cognitive mapping] is another, more spatialized figure for narrative itself and thus for the subject of Jameson’s lifelong work.” That’s Robert T. Tally Jr., [celebrating]( Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism at Verso’s blog. Write to me at len.gutkin@chronicle.com. Yours, Len Gutkin FROM THE CHRONICLE STORE [The Athletics Advantage - The Chronicle Store]( [The Athletics Advantage]( For tuition-driven institutions, sports are often a key recruiting tool. [Order this report]( for insights on how small colleges are using athletics to drive student enrollment, engagement, and retention. JOB OPPORTUNITIES [Search jobs on The Chronicle job board]( [Find Your Next Role Today]( Whether you are actively or passively searching for your next career opportunity, The Chronicle is here to support you throughout your job search. Get started now by [exploring 30,000+ openings]( or [signing up for job alerts](. NEWSLETTER FEEDBACK [Please let us know what you thought of today's newsletter in this three-question survey](. This newsletter was sent to {EMAIL}. [Read this newsletter on the web](. 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