Everybody's Doing It

Either going neutral or settiing up a committee to tell you to go neutral. Columbia is the latest:

The Appointment of the Co-Chairs of the President’s Advisory Committee on Institutional Voice

September 17, 2024

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

Throughout the events of the past year, our Columbia community has been engaged in an ongoing discussion about how the University can best fulfill its academic mission of teaching, learning, and research while creating and sustaining an environment that enables free expression, rigorous debate, and open dialogue. Similar discussions have taken place at other universities, and some have adopted principles of institutional neutrality or restraint as a way of protecting and enabling free expression by faculty and students on their campuses.

Given our storied history; the extraordinary scope and depth of our scholarship, disciplines, curricula, and programs; and the unique position of our community, Columbia also has a distinctive role to play in advancing this critical discussion. Determining whether and to what degree Columbia should take an institutional position on public matters is a vitally important question, and it is central to our commitment to enabling open discourse and the exchange of ideas in our community.

I am pleased to share with you that Daniel Abebe, Dean of Columbia Law School and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, and Mark Mazower, Ira D. Wallach Professor of History and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Director, Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, have accepted my appointment to serve as Co-Chairs of the President’s Advisory Committee on Institutional Voice. Under their leadership, the Advisory Committee will be tasked with providing me with a set of recommendations on the proper role of institutional voice in advancing Columbia’s academic mission and its commitment to open inquiry and free expression. The additional members of the Advisory Committee will be appointed and announced in the near future.

We are fortunate to have scholars of Dean Abebe’s and Professor Mazower’s stature and expertise leading this critical work for Columbia. Once the Advisory Committee is formed, the Co-Chairs plan to commence a consultative process through which they will engage our faculty, students, and staff, as well as the University Senate and other relevant groups within our community. I am confident that Dean Abebe and Professor Mazower and the Advisory Committee will lead a rigorous and deliberative process and provide me with sound and thoughtful recommendations that are reflective of Columbia’s history, mission, and academic values, and will contribute to its continuing intellectual vitality.

I want to thank Dean Abebe and Professor Mazower for their leadership and their commitment to Columbia’s future. The work of the President’s Advisory Committee on Institutional Voice is important to all Columbians as it will help to guide the ways in which we protect and enable free expression and vigorous debate in our community. I hope that you will take the opportunity to engage in the Advisory Committee’s consultative process and support its service on behalf of Columbia.

All my best,

Katrina Armstrong

Interim President, Columbia University in the City of New York

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Source: https://president.columbia.edu/news/appointment-co-chairs-presidents-advisory-committee-institutional-voice.

It's getting to be an old idea:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVmmNmYPRzU.