That the arc of history bends toward justice is questionable at best. Just ask the East Europeans trapped behind the Iron Curtain in 1945, who had to live in communist tyranny for decades. But something good is happening in the protracted culture war with universities. Harvard, for one, just flew a white flag.
By announcing that it would cease issuing statements that are not “relevant to the core function of the university,” the oldest and iviest in the hallowed Ivy League was admitting that previous pretentious declarations on non-university issues chilled the free pursuit of truth.
Snootiness is nothing new to Harvard, but this particular type of it was compromising the institution’s core mission. The general reason is the hot water Harvard and other selective schools have gotten in due to statements and counter-statements issued after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The direct reason was that a faculty committee created to probe the question recommended on Tuesday that Harvard avoid making these statements.
The university’s Institutional Voice Working Group, made up of eight members of Harvard’s faculty, was first announced on April 4, meaning that it took less than two months to reach its conclusion. The report began well. “The purpose of the university is to pursue truth,” its very first line read. The writers, alas, then skated too close to affirming that truth is relative by stating that “what counts as truth varies across domains from physics to poetry.”
This is problematic for an institution whose slogan is “Veritas,” or “Truth” in Latin. Truth is simply that which corresponds to reality. That’s why the now departed Harvard President Claudine Gay drew howls of laughter when she said earlier this year that her only mistake at the congressional committee hearing that eventually forced her resignation was “I didn’t speak my truth!”
But the point that truth seeking is an ongoing process was good (which is why such statements as “The science is settled!” by climate extremists make no sense). So was the claim that “ideas in the university are always under review. They are subject to challenge, reconsideration, and revision in the light of fresh evidence and new questions.”
This is a university’s “core function,” as the writers sagely added, and the university chills this function when it makes pompous statements on anything from George Floyd to Israel’s war in Gaza. First, the institution is speaking outside its area of expertise, and second, the more often it speaks, the more it will come under pressure to do so again and again.
For this reason, added the members of the Working Group, “When pressure builds on the university to make an official statement, as will sometimes happen, the university should refer publicly to its policy. It should clarify that the reason for its silence is the belief that the purpose of the university is best served by speaking only on matters directly relevant to its function.”
This move should be celebrated, and not only for the obvious reason that previous official statements chilled debate, but also for reaffirming that “the pursuit of truth” is a university’s purpose, not the myriad social engineering objectives added through the past few decades.
“This is the closest we are likely ever to get to an acknowledgment that they messed up,” wrote Roger Severino, a Heritage vice president who is a Harvard alum, in an email to some staff members. “For them to say their statements undermine open inquiry and academic freedom by chilling dissent is huge.”
Tuesday’s announcement that Harvard was accepting the Working Group’s recommendation, which came in an email to the “Harvard community” by interim President Alan M. Garber and the university’s deans, follows other moves by universities that give reason for hope.
Many top universities, including Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Brown, Cornell, Caltech, and the University of Texas at Austin, have announced in the past few weeks that they are reinstating the practice of requiring standardized test scores from applicants. The requirement was dropped in the wake of 2020’s Black Lives Matter riots when college administrators thought (thoughtlessly) that lowering standards was the way to achieve social justice.
Also, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology just announced three weeks ago that it would cease requiring diversity, equity, and inclusion statements, which are nothing more than political loyalty oaths, from faculty members. And, of course, Gay is gone.
But, no, we aren’t nearing nirvana.
My Heritage colleague and friend Adam Kissel reminded us all in a post on X that Harvard now has to take extra steps. “Don’t get too excited about Harvard’s new no-statements policy, unless Harvard really intends to wind down its existing public statements and social commitments,” he wrote, starting a thread.
So we still have much work to do to bend the arc of history our way.
Mike Gonzalez serves as a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is listed for identification purposes only; no endorsement of a candidate by the organization is implied.