For the last several years, protests have rocked campuses across the nation, including our own. These demonstrations have provoked institutions of higher education and their constituents — students, faculty, administrators and alumni — to reckon with what role the university should play in politics. The issue is ripe for debate, especially considering that over 50% of young Americans attend some institution of higher learning and that Arizona State University is one of the world’s largest universities.

Partisans and political actors on every given side of contentious issues vie for the administration’s approval, painting administrators’ refusal to take a firm stance in favor of one camp versus another as an act of moral cowardice. The university as an institution is asked to be on “the right side of history,” issuing statements that alienate a large swath of students at best, and actively discouraging dissenting speech at worst. 

While it may seem noble for the university to take sides on any given political issue, we believe it’s in the best interests of students and the university for administrators to stay out of such political disputes. As a board of professors and administrators at the University of Chicago wrote in the landmark Kalven Report on Institutional Neutrality over six decades ago, “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” Moreover, “(t)he university is . . . a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness.”

One function of the university is to provide a space in which students and faculty can engage in robust research and debate about contentious political issues, including those that are deeply controversial. Giving space for dialogue on important issues is not only deeply beneficial to students — so that we can learn how to reason and make arguments convincingly, with an eye to that which is really true — it also defines the very mission of our institutions of higher learning: to uncover truth, and to prepare students for work, life and citizenship. The moment the university itself decides to lay down the hammer, siding with one faction over another, it ceases to maintain the sort of neutrality that its very mission demands.

Unfortunately, ASU and Arizona’s other public universities — the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University — have not formally committed to institutional neutrality, even though they’ve done a relatively good job over the past couple years sticking to it. ASU should join a growing list of world-class American universities, ranging from Harvard to Columbia, by committing itself in writing to being a sponsor of critics, not the critic itself; teaching her students how to engage in constructive dialogue across difference, not stepping in to settle every inflammatory dispute. Sun Devils pride ourselves in innovation — we shouldn’t be left in the dust while the nation’s leading institutions of higher learning recommit themselves to their core functions.

For these reasons, we’ve joined the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) to spearhead an effort to encourage the administration to adopt institutional neutrality. But this must be a movement led first and foremost by students and alumni who have a stake in the future of ASU. Join us in encouraging the Arizona Board of Regents to formally commit ASU to institutional neutrality by signing this petition today. It’s one small step in a larger journey to recommit the university to its rightful mission.

Joseph Kavetsky is a senior studying civic and economic thought and leadership. 

Sophia Thomason is a junior studying civic and economic thought and leadership. 

Joe Pitts is the cofounder and chairman of ASU Alumni for Free Speech. He graduated in 2023.