USC just enacted an underrated free speech policy

USC just enacted a significant new policy that has flown largely under the radar.

It’s a policy of “institutional neutrality,” buried nine paragraphs down in a recent university email, that says USC and its leaders won’t take a public stance on any political, moral, or social issue unless it pertains directly to the school.

This is notable. Institutional neutrality is a key tenet at schools like the University of Chicago, whose policies are generally regarded as the standard for protecting student free speech.

“The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student,” wrote University of Chicago legal scholar Harry Kalven Jr. in 1967. “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”

The argument for institutional neutrality goes something like this: A university’s most important duty is to protect its students’ and faculty’s ability to exchange ideas freely.

By taking a stance on a controversial issue, the university is bound to stifle debate — so it shouldn’t. But the key is that the school then can’t take a stance on any issue.

For instance, imagine Congress passes bipartisan, wholly uncontroversial climate protections, and USC President Carol Folt makes an Instagram post celebrating the legislation. Innocuous enough.

But then on Oct. 7, Hamas launches a bloody terror attack on Israel, igniting a war that will go on to kill tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Folt could choose not to make a statement. Supporters of institutional neutrality would argue she could inadvertently stifle university discourse — and is at the very least going to take flak for whatever she says.

Except, she already set the precedent that she’s willing to comment on social and political issues. If she could comment on the climate, why can’t she take a stance on Israel and Palestine?

Her silence would say almost as much as an actual statement. So instead, she and her advisors have to wordsmith a flaccid statement that they hope won’t piss everybody off. And then another one, when it does.

The reality is that, no matter what activists on both sides say, the president of a posh Los Angeles university’s stance on Middle East relations is likely not going to stop Israel from dropping behemoth Mark 84 munitions on Gaza, nor is it going to persuade Hamas to renounce its founding goal of killing Jews.

A supporter of institutional neutrality might say there are better things Folt could do with her time, namely ensuring that academic operations continue functioning as usual — and that students are free to civilly debate and exchange ideas.

The policy does have its critics. Detractors have called it “institutional deception” and a “dishrag for cleaning up the occasional spill.” They tend to argue that it’s impossible for a university to be neutral, and that such a policy is only a piece of paper for administrators to hide behind.

And at USC specifically, students on both sides have implored the university to publicly support their views.

It’s not clear how this new policy will play with the rest of the university’s free speech protections or its handling of the Israel-Palestine fallout, where it has consistently displayed an ineptitude for crisis management — and general common sense.

USC evidently did not want a controversial graduation speaker. So why did it choose one? And once the provost’s office did choose the speaker, who thought that cutting the speech would help avoid controversy?

When students first erected an encampment, the school cleared it, then waffled when it came right back. Folt largely hid behind her relatively unknown senior administration officials, and the few public statements she did make only antagonized protestors.

The pinnacle of it all was probably the “designated free speech area” that was very likely inspired by an episode of Arrested Development.

Will institutional neutrality merely let Folt duck for cover when the next big controversy inevitably rises? Or does it signal the start of a maturing USC administration that is committed to protecting free speech? It’s hard to tell right now.

But while Folt is undoubtedly responsible for USC’s bungled response to last semester’s tumult, you can cut her some slack.

USC does not have the muscle memory to address contentious student demonstrations that a school like, say, UC Berkeley does. This is not a campus with a particularly strong history of activism; it’s the University of Spoiled Children.

But over the last few decades, university leadership has slowly and deliberately molded USC into an elite institution that is increasingly approaching the ranks of schools like UC Berkeley and Stanford.

That brings its own set of challenges, and USC had better get used to it. Institutional neutrality could be a step in the right direction.