Ginsburg on institutional neutrality

Tom Ginsburg (Chicago) urges universities to adopt the Kalven principles of university neutrality towards the events of the day. Ginsburg highlights a couple interesting points. First, "[a]fter many years of speaking out so regularly, schools look defensive when adopting a stance of silence only when a large massacre of Jews occurs." (I made a similar point). Second, departmental statements present larger problems than university statements--junior faculty and grad students feel a greater "need to toe a party line announced by those who control tenure and resources" than by a distant university president, especially in those departments that "seem to treat public-facing statements as being as central to their mission as is research."