IT'S POSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND EMERGENCE. IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO MANAGE IT.

Jeffrey Flier, who served a term as dean of Harvard Med, offers sensible observations on the propensity of college presidents to play at public intellectuals.

Disputes arising from geopolitical crises occur in numerous social settings, but colleges are especially vulnerable. First, campuses by their nature are (or should be) spaces for robust debate on contested topics, strongly protected by free-speech norms. Second, students and faculty represent diverse nationalities, religions, cultures, and belief systems. Third, college leaders are expected by many to express opinions on political and social issues on behalf of the institution.

Catch that Divine Passive, "expected by many?" Name three. I can't resist wondering whether a college president weighing in on the latest "crisis" isn't the same phenomenon as the economist offering a forecast: not because he has a clue, but because (1) he can't resist or (2) that's what people at the gathering expect.

Maybe the better part of valor is to keep still.

The central mission of colleges is to serve as communities for discovery, improvement, and the transmission of knowledge. By fulfilling these roles, they play a critical role in the evolution of the social and political values of the societies in which they exist. Faculty are the key producers of this work, coordinated by administrative leaders who organize and facilitate the many complex activities required to carry out the mission. The extent to which college leaders should, in addition to their administrative roles, express institutional positions on contestable social and political issues is a matter of legitimate dispute.

Note the phrasing of that passage.  It's knowledge that's being discovered and improved, not the body politic.  It's assisting in the evolution of those social and political values, not claiming to be a vanguard with a special vision of the Glorious Future to come.  Too many college leaders, though, act as though they fear the professional protest communities in their midst.

Researchers in literature or philosophy or political economy or sociology have ample opportunity to investigate and collaborate on the sort of "intersectional" questions the "studies" departments have arrogated to themselves; and, retaining affiliations in more traditional disciplines might provide precisely the sort of checks on one's speculations that the "studies" departments and their flying monkeys in Student Affairs have freed themselves from.  That has not turned out so well, has it?

Professor Flier correctly notes that those professional protest communities have tight priors and a surfeit of epistemic closure in their scholarly pursuits.

At the other pole, now more common, college leaders are expected to issue statements on behalf of the institution on a variety of current political issues, for instance those related to sex and gender, racism, abortion, global warming and its remedies, regional conflicts, and so on. Such statements clearly please many people on campus. But — often less visibly — they disturb others, especially those who hold legitimate alternative views and object to assertions of a single institutional position on the issue in question. 

The cynic in me wonders, particularly those who hold legitimate alternative views and write large checks to Harvard Med or the local university foundation?

Whatever the course of the conflict in Israel over the coming months and years, the issue of free speech, academic freedom, and institutional neutrality will continue to be debated in universities in the U.S. and around the world, rising to public attention as new crises and political disputes take center stage. For the many institutions that haven’t yet adopted institutional neutrality, doing so will require thoughtful consideration by leadership and boards similar to that of the Kalven Committee at the University of Chicago in 1967. A recent statement by the newly installed president of Stanford University suggests that this approach may soon be instituted there. I hope the events at Harvard might lead our new president to consider a similar path. This would reduce the focus on what presidents, provosts, and deans say on specific political and social issues, and leave it to the community of scholars and students to deal — hopefully in a respectful way — with the conflicts that will always be with us.

The correction has been a long time in coming. Thirty years ago a writer for The American Spectator cracked wise about university development officials who changed their Indian mascots to birds and then wondered why donors quit sending in the wampum.

Presidents, provosts, deans?  Concentrate on your day jobs.  Refrain from using your status as respected academic leaders to weigh in on events that don't directly involve your area of expertise.  If something comes up that is within your area of expertise, consider "I'm drawing on my background as an economist ..." and "I'm not speaking for my colleagues or the students."