It's no Time for Institutional Neutrality, Professor Soucek Argues in Chronicle of Higher Ed

Colleges across the United States have been enacting “neutrality” policies – whether voluntarily or under orders from state legislators – and “their timing couldn’t be worse,” writes Professor Brian Soucek in a Feb. 18 opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“These newly neutral institutions claim that when colleges take positions, their faculty and students inevitably feel censored,” Soucek continues. “Institutional neutrality, they say, is necessary to protect the academic freedom that gives colleges their distinctive value.”

But as Soucek points out in the piece, the American Association of University Professors, which has “led the way in defining and defending academic freedom in the United States since 1915,” disagrees.

As a member of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, Soucek helped draft a new statement in which the AAUP argues that while colleges might sometimes protect academic freedom by staying quiet, they could just as easily endanger it by failing to stand up for their values. 

On Tuesday, March 4, Soucek and Professor Tom Ginsburg, faculty director of the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression at the University of Chicago, will offer “dueling perspectives” on institutional neutrality in a webinar presented by the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.

Professor Soucek’s primary teaching and research interests are antidiscrimination law, civil procedure, constitutional law, and refugee/asylum law. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Mark R. Kravitz in Connecticut, and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Professor Soucek is a UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow.