The 1909 from The State News

The 1909 from The State News Trailer Bonus Episode 97 Season 1

Institutional neutrality and MSU's communications plan

00:00
Host Alex and guest Owen delve into MSU's absent formal policies, that while unofficial, are leaning toward the national trend of "institutional neutrality" that other colleges are adopting. 

What is The 1909 from The State News?

Welcome to The 1909, the podcast that takes an in-depth look at The State News’ biggest stories of the week, while bringing in new perspectives from the reporters who wrote them.

Alex:

It's Wednesday, November 6th, and this is the 19 09, the state news weekly podcast featuring our reporters talking about the news. I'm your host, Alex Walters. This week, we're talking about a hot new trend sweeping the nation, and it seems to have finally arrived here at Michigan State. Is it a fashion fad or hip music? No.

Alex:

It's a set of formal policies colleges across the country have adopted to govern how they handle political issues. Please don't stop listening. I know. That's kinda but this is an important issue. There's a lot of ramifications for you if you're a student or a faculty member at Michigan State.

Alex:

Then I've got a great guest who's gonna talk us through it in a way that I hope is not boring. Owen, thanks for coming on the show.

Owen:

Thanks so much for having me.

Alex:

And I want you to to carry that responsibility as we go through the rest of the show. I want you to do this in a way that's interesting for people. Can you do that?

Owen:

Feels like, a little bit of pressure that you're throwing on me, but but I'm ready to go. I think I can rest

Alex:

this time. Be a great show. I've got an upper respiratory infection. The urgent care tells me. So it might not sound if you're

Owen:

You seem sharp. You seem sharp as ever.

Alex:

That's good.

Owen:

Dried and sharp.

Alex:

I feel mildly sharp. Great watch. Yep. Oh. Great watch.

Alex:

Thank you. Yeah. Alright. Well, let me ask you this. So these policies, they call them institutional neutrality Yeah.

Alex:

Which I think is objectively a cool sounding name, but also kind of a confusing name. Yeah. Can you tell me, we're about to throw that around like a 100 times for the rest of the show. What is institutional neutrality? Walk me through it.

Owen:

Institutional neutrality is relatively simple. Basically, what it means is that universities, and leaders speaking on behalf of universities are not going to take a stance on political issues. That's the idea. And sort of the benefit, you know, people will say that well, not even people say it. It did.

Owen:

Institutional neutrality originated at the University of Chicago in the late sixties. Right? And so they they sort of conceived this at this center they have there called the form of free inquiry and expression. Right? Yeah.

Owen:

And we went it still exists today. We went straight to the source. Right? We we talked to this guy who's who's the director there, Tom Ginsberg, and and he basically laid out for us that the benefit of universities and the leaders not taking span stances on political issues is that, you know, the more they stay out of discourse, they're supporting the free expression of all of the scholars within the institution. Right?

Owen:

If institutions don't take stances, faculty are most free to develop and advocate for their own. Right? That's sort of the argument there.

Alex:

And he put it, I think, in an interesting way where people hear institutional neutrality. They hear, like, colleges can't have a, political opinions, and it sounds a little bit censorship y. And people do believe that, But his argument is that basically, like, if the college itself doesn't have, opinions, then the faculty within it are free to have whatever opinions they want, especially those that, are sort of dissenting that would be in disagreement with the majority. But, of course, institutional neutrality has its critics, and I think what we've seen as it's become, you know, very hip in the last year or so is that it's actually very tricky in practice. Mhmm.

Alex:

Conceptually is great, but colleges have run into a lot of problems with, because it's hard to be neutral. Right? Like, you know, people argue that every action is political.

Owen:

Yes. And

Alex:

so it's a very kind of thorny area, that colleges have moved into it. Our story is about sort of the ways that MSU has gotten there.

Owen:

Yeah.

Alex:

But can you tell me I mean, talk me through in the last couple years. Right? Right. MSU has not had a policy like this. Has MSU been weighing in on political issues?

Owen:

It sure has. You know, take for example when the January 6th riot happened in 2021, there was a statement, which came from Sam Stanley, the president at the time. Yeah. There have been statements on sort of, like, the police killings kind of in this, around 2020 and, sort of, like, the Black Lives Matter movement and Mhmm. Kind of this, just, you know, all the social unrest that was

Alex:

going on. About, I think, Russian invasion of Ukraine was a poor one. MSU just weighed in on many of these issues.

Owen:

It absolutely has on on very decidedly no gray area that they were political issues, and MSU has weighed in there.

Alex:

And that's something that, Tom Gin Ginsburg actually from UChicago was telling us about is that he feels like for a long time, colleges maybe didn't necessarily need a policy of neutrality because they they they weren't weighing in on things. Mhmm. But in the last, like, 10 years, he said it's become MSU is definitely not out of the ordinary. It became very common for when something happens, colleges to put out a statement saying, like, we find this appalling or we support this. We don't support this, especially in the context of social justice.

Alex:

The way that he framed it in our conversation was that, like, social justice advocates have, have said that sort of silence is violence Yeah. Like the phrase that he said. And so colleges have felt the need to weigh in. But in the last year, there's been a shift. Right?

Alex:

Yeah. And institutional neutrality has kinda become all the rage. University of Michigan, for example, just adopted a policy. Yeah. And they're almost late to the party if

Owen:

you think

Alex:

of it that way. So tell me about what about the last year has pushed colleges to reconsider these statements and get into the institutional neutrality game?

Owen:

Right. It's been ever since October 7th Mhmm. Hamas' attack on Israel. Ever since and then the the subsequent war, it's it's become an issue that kind of, I think, what what colleges would say, what universities would say is no matter what we say, there is no way to make everyone happy. It it's too thorny of an issue.

Owen:

And so whereas with the last couple years, MSU and other institutions have sort of, like, almost succumbed in a way to this kind of, like, silence is violence argument. Like, we need to say something. With this issue, with with Israel and Hamas in the war, it's become again, we're we're not gonna say anything because we can't make anybody happy.

Alex:

Well, it's like you I think it's you have very loud, groups on both sides of this issue. And at least this is what Tom Ginsburg said when we talked to him from UChicago was that, like, in 20 summer 2020. Right? A college could put out a statement saying, like, we're against racism. And there were not, like, various factions on different sides of that issue that had, like, some legitimate claims Right.

Alex:

And that would cause some controversy and protests on campus.

Owen:

Right.

Alex:

Now colleges are in a a much more complicated predicament. They have, like, big groups on both sides of an issue that wanna see them say one thing or another.

Owen:

Yep.

Alex:

And so I think institutional neutrality, they've sort of been able to absolve themselves, I guess, of that responsibility.

Owen:

I think absolve that. That's a great word for it. Yeah.

Alex:

But, anyway, so the story that we wrote was about how MSU doesn't have an institutional neutrality policy formally, but they've been acting like they do.

Owen:

And we

Alex:

have a couple great examples in this story of the things. I want you to tell me first about this communications plan. It's the anniversary of October 7th, 1 year since this attack in Israel that started this, you know, very heated debate on campus, and they send out this plan to a bunch of campus leaders. Yep. You know, what does it say?

Owen:

Yeah. So so, exactly, this was a a 1 year anniversary of October 7th communications plan, and it was it was sent specifically. We're We're talking college deans, program directors, department chairs.

Alex:

Mhmm. And

Owen:

it's sort of just offering guidance on as an institution. Here is sort of our line. Here's what how we should be thinking about this, how we we should be talking about it. And it explicitly says there's a there's a heading there that says tone. It says empathy.

Owen:

It says then neutrality. It says MSU pretty explicitly. Neutrality is our tone. MSU does not take a a stance on political issues.

Alex:

Yeah.

Owen:

So that was kind of the the big kind of signal there that this neutrality thing is is something that MSU is legitimately incorporating.

Alex:

And so then the the rest of our story was about a couple of cases we found where academic units have gone sort of against that guidance and made statements that were very much not neutral and what happened after that. Tell me, you you know, first about, you know, what the they call them department statements. Can you explain what that is? And then let's talk about those examples we found of departments skewing from that neutrality guidance.

Owen:

Yeah. And I think the timeline is important. Like, some of the statements we're gonna talk about here were before that before this communications plan had been had been sent out.

Alex:

Mhmm.

Owen:

Right? But sorry, with with the new guidance, though, it became a thing of, like, oh, these department statements, maybe we have to rethink it. Okay. So so basically, what we're talking about is, these are statements that are prominently featured, I don't know about prominently, but featured on the department websites. Mhmm.

Owen:

So if you were to look up MSU English department, there's a tab there at the top, or or has been in in the past at least, a tab there that says, you know, statements. Yeah. Right? And you click on that, and and you can look back, and you'll see stuff on other issues. In the past, you will have seen that there was a statement about a, a ceasefire calling for a ceasefire.

Owen:

Right? And that was on the English department's website. We we found out through our reporting that the the provost basically came to the department and said, hey, guys. That statement that's going against our neutrality thing, can we can we can we take that down, basically? And so that has happened at a couple other departments.

Owen:

Feelings are kind of mixed there among faculty about, sort of what the ramifications of that are. But

Alex:

Well and it's an interesting you know, as, Ginsburg from UChicago is telling us, he said these kinda department statements are like a gray area that colleges enter because, you know, colleges, or at least MSU based on their neutrality policy, I don't think they want to stop, like, the individual speech of faculty in their scholarship as, like, you know, individual scholars. But a department statement is this kinda weird middle ground Yep. Where it is just expressing the opinion of the undersigned members of a majority of the department.

Owen:

Yep.

Alex:

You know, there can be dissenters and whatnot. Yeah. But it's on the department web page It is. And it's it's it's, you know, it

Owen:

The MSU logo is gonna be there when

Alex:

you So it's like the this in between of, like, it's not an official statement on behalf of the university, but it's also not just individual faculty speech. And it's this kind of odd area. And we talked to people on both sides of this. And the administration seems to believe pretty clearly that that constitutes some sort of institutional speech Yeah. And violates the neutrality thing.

Alex:

And so they wanted them they actually did take them down without even consulting the departments. Right. But then you talk to someone who is the chair of one of these departments that had a statement. They had a different view. Tell me about that.

Owen:

Yeah. So this is the the department, called American Indian and Indigenous Studies department. And I talked to the chair there. When we were working on this story, their statement, which was calling for a ceasefire, it was still up, but they were sort of in negotiations. They had been asked to take it down, basically.

Owen:

And sort of what this department chair argued to me is this statement on the one hand in her view was not controversial. It was a statement for peace is how she put it. She's saying, I want a ceasefire. I want the fighting, the dying to stop, or not just I. Our department, that's what we want.

Owen:

And she sees that as inherently tied to what the work of the, department is, because in a department like that, you know, she said to me when we're talking about Indian and indigenous studies, we're necessarily talking about issues of land rights. Right? And so I think sort of the implication there is, like, you know, obviously, in Israel and in Palestine, that that's that's a very integral part to the whole discussion.

Alex:

Yeah.

Owen:

And so she sort of saw it as, like, this is inherently tied to our work. It's not really that controversial. And so she kinda felt like we should be able to have that expression. So So so, yeah, that was sort of where she's coming.

Alex:

It is an interesting, you know, because, again, it's like how we talked about institutional neutrality. I I think it's very different when you describe it than when you put it into practice. You're under these complications. Yeah. You know, if the soil sciences department put up a statement about gun control Yeah.

Alex:

You know, that's an odd thing. Right? But, you know, when you get into this conflict where you have someone like that who's arguing that, yes, it's a department statement, which MSU would say violates institutional neutrality policy, but it relates so closely to the scholarship that then they can argue that it's almost an extension of the scholarship that, thus, like, should be protected.

Owen:

Yeah. You get

Alex:

into these really complicated areas, and that I think is what is so interesting about institution neutrality

Owen:

Yes.

Alex:

And why people should follow it closely because, you know, we don't know how this is all gonna shake out.

Owen:

Yeah. It's it's it's interesting kinda where you draw the lines, and I think that's where we're at right now. And and this department chair said to me, you know, so, like, we should mention there is not an official institutional neutrality policy right now, but there is a page that is anyone could see it. It's it's like, called the civil discourse FAQs. And if you're paying attention to MSU, you know, civil discourse has kind of been like the the tagline that president Kevin

Alex:

thrown around.

Owen:

It's been thrown around.

Alex:

Hip phrase

Owen:

right now. It's definitely hip. And so if you look at these civil discourse FAQs, one of them is, like, you know, what can departments say? And there's this and you open it up, and it says the guidelines say employees may not make personal statements unrelated to university business on behalf of the university using department websites. And so, you know, the dean of of this college, college of arts and letters, and, you know, the provost sort of had to tell this department chair, hey.

Owen:

The statement you guys have with the ceasefire, that's violating that. But then this person says, actually, it's not because our department this is university business. This is directly related to our department, what we're talking about here. It is an extension of the scholarship. So, yeah, it's all about where we're gonna draw the lines, and it's it's tough because there's not an official board policy yet.

Owen:

It's difficult. I I and that was the sense I got is is this department chair said, I want it to be more clearly defined.

Alex:

Right. Well, and I think that's work that our understanding is that that's being done. Right?

Owen:

So the

Alex:

president has said that he is considering, a formal policy. Like, we're saying, you know, the everything we've talked about this far at MSU is this, like, communications guidance, a PDF made by the comms department, or a website put up by the provost office. But it's not like a formal policy enacted by the board of the university that's been debated in public and then going on. And that where is where it feels like we're headed. Right?

Alex:

Because the president said that he's having discussions with the board Mhmm. About one of these policies. A lot of MSU's peers at other universities have had one of those. Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see how precisely they draw that line and how long this policy is, how specific it is Yeah.

Alex:

If one does come together Mhmm. Because it sounds like that's what some of these departments would like is more clarity. Yeah.

Owen:

For sure. And it's it's interesting. Like, part of part of our kind of framing with the story is, like, I think what the the day before we published or 2 days before University of Michigan, school down the road, they they their board, their board of regents, they passed one of those policies. Right? So, and I I think right now, the number, is is somewhere, like, in the twenties in terms of institutions that that have formally, with their board, adopted a policy of institutional neutrality.

Alex:

Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting and, you know, we're recording this on Tuesday. We don't know what's gonna happen with the election. By the time it comes out on Wednesday, anything could be going on. MSU could be in an incredibly precarious political position, I guess.

Alex:

I don't know.

Owen:

A precarious political predicament? Yeah. Yeah.

Alex:

Do you like the the consternation there?

Owen:

The PPP.

Alex:

The PPP. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, you know, we don't know what challenges MSU will face in the months to come and whatnot, even, you know, separate from this issue of Israel and Gaza. And so, you know, we're watching this closely. Will there be some sort of former policy?

Alex:

Yeah. I think we've had an interesting discussion about institutionality.

Owen:

I think Easy for us to be, but

Alex:

Guys like us might be more into it than the average guys who don't have listener, but I hope that they're into it. Yeah. I don't know. We don't know till they see it.

Owen:

We want we want your feedback, community. Well Do we? We do. We okay. Yeah.

Alex:

Yeah. They don't want to write. My email's out there. Your email's out there.

Owen:

Yeah. It sure is.

Alex:

But, yeah, I think we've had an informative discussion. I think people will like it. And yeah. So that's all for this week. I'll be back next week with more great reporting.

Alex:

You could read the story that Owen and I wrote about institutionality at statemews.com. Thank you, Owen, for coming on. Having me. Thank you, Taylor, our wonderful podcast coordinator. And most of all, thank you for listening.

Alex:

For the 19:09, I'm Alex Walters.