Institutional neutrality has been all the rage these past few years, but it is time to recognize that it is a fallacy.
Let me start with some background. Since the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel, after which many CEOs took heat for their public statements, a range of institutions have embraced neutrality, including many colleges and universities that rushed to adopt “neutrality policies.”
The sudden popularity of institutional neutrality is a sharp contrast to, say, 2020, when countless CEOs of institutions of all kinds took a public stand on racism. It is also a break from a history of higher education leaders, in particular, speaking out on issues from McCarthyism to civil rights to Apartheid to climate change.
The move to embrace neutrality is, at some level, understandable. College and university presidents specifically, have had it tough. They are often under pressure to address a long list of issues. When they do speak out, their statements are criticized by some as “chilling” to those who might not agree.
“The university should remain neutral on contested political and moral issues of the day, precisely in order to make space for scholars and students to weigh in on those issues as individuals,” argued one influential coalition (comprised of the Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) in 2024.
The Seduction of Neutrality
This idea that leaders speaking out impedes the ability of others to do so (rather than, say, inspiring the sharing of differing points of view) is not persuasive to me, however. Perhaps that’s because I attended a college at which agreeing with the administration on almost anything would have been seen as pathetic — and social suicide. But, nonetheless, the neutrality movement took hold, ushering in a very different era, and not just for college presidents.
More than a few corporations, foundations, and operating nonprofits also decided to stay quiet. A number of leaders of nonprofits and foundations who I have spoken with have pointed specifically to what has happened in higher education as an influence on their desire — and that of their boards — to stay out of the public fray.
The timing of this embrace of neutrality could scarcely have been worse, and it’s past time for a reconsideration.
Over the past year and a half, after all, the Trump administration has upended norms, gone after civil society, and openly used its power both for self-enrichment and to seek retribution against perceived enemies. These actions represent a threat that should alarm people across political ideologies (and, increasingly, they seem to be). The neutrality of many institutions has reduced the friction the administration might have otherwise faced.
I get it at some level. No doubt, neutrality is all the more seductive amid an intensified sense that speaking out could make you a target. In boardrooms, it is often the language of risk mitigation and invocations of fiduciary duties that pull organizations toward the alluring perceived safety of neutrality.
Just Following Policy
Corporate leaders have been especially reticent, as we witnessed in Minneapolis earlier this year. While many nonprofits and foundations spoke out forcefully and took bold action in response to the deployment of thousands of federal troops in the streets, corporate leaders were quiet. When they did finally speak, as I discussed in this blog post at the time, their words were woefully insufficient – conveying, well, neutrality.
We can see this desire for neutrality not just in a lack of public pushback on issues of the day, but also in quiet decisions that seek to avoid engagement with difficult questions by pointing to “policy” in an effort to seem to be neutral (as if the organization has no other choice). I wonder to what degree the decisions of the major commercial donor advised fund (DAF) sponsors to deny donors the ability to direct gifts to the Southern Poverty Law Center after it was indicted by the Justice Department was rooted in a desire to stay neutral – or at least to seem neutral.
Fidelity Charitable, for example, pointed to existing policies that allow them to pause donations during an “ongoing investigation” — although, notably, they did not do so for Harvard when it was investigated. Others, like Vanguard and Schwab, have reportedly made similar decisions.
My bet is that these DAF providers worried that explaining their decision in a way that went beyond just “it’s our policy” would require wading into a contentious issue and drawing fire from the Trump administration or its supporters. The invocation of a pre-existing policy they were simply dutifully following, they likely reasoned, was the “neutral” approach – or could be portrayed that way, anyway. (Disclosure: CEP has received support from Fidelity Charitable Catalyst Fund and has a current open grant with the Fund. I reached out to the contact for our grant to express my concerns but am not drawing on that private discussion here.)
The problem is that a policy that may have made sense in an era when the Justice Department hadn’t been politicized simply doesn’t make sense now. Indeed, to cut off funding to an organization that has been indicted — and as Fred Blackwell of the San Francisco Foundation rightly noted, an indictment is an allegation — is to do the administration’s bidding. It’s not “neutral” at all, actually, because neutrality is not possible.
I want to be clear: DAF providers, whether community foundations or large commercial ones, have the authority, even the responsibility, to decide which organizations they will and won’t allow gifts to — but they should make decisions transparently in a way that is consistent with their missions and values. They certainly shouldn’t cede the power to make those choices to an administration that has sought to demonize the nonprofit sector — the sector comprising the very organizations DAF-holders seek to support!
Standing Firm for Values
It’s not really about the Southern Poverty Law Center. If some future administration indicts the Federalist Society for what seem to be flimsy reasons, I’ll make precisely the same argument: that DAF-providers should not act solely on the basis of an allegation, ceding their decision-making on where DAF-holders can direct their giving to government actors. To do so flies in the face of the spirit and great tradition of our independent nonprofit sector, shining in all its “brilliant diversity” like a “thousand points of light,” to invoke President George H.W. Bush’s powerful words.
What’s needed now is discernment, integrity, and courage, not invocations of “policy” or neutrality — which is neither possible nor laudable. We’re seeing many community foundations — in San Francisco, Boston, and many other cities and states — demonstrate just these traits, as they refuse to be swayed in their decisions about what organizations donors can support by a Justice Department that is no longer operating independently of the White House.
All of us working in the nonprofit sector, whose very existence is rooted in our First Amendment, should stand up for what we believe in — whatever that is. This can be done, it should be noted (although it also really shouldn’t have to be, given the long history of nonprofits advocating for varied perspectives), in a way that is totally and completely consistent with non-partisanship. Issue advocacy is a crucial part of what nonprofits do, after all, and there are ample resources discussing the boundaries between that work and partisanship.
Does rejecting the notion of neutrality make things harder for leaders and boards at powerful institutions? Of course it does. Does that mean that these institutions should weigh in on every issue of the day? Of course not. But blanket neutrality is not the right approach now, if it ever was (and I don’t think it ever was even as I understand why some embraced it), especially for mission-driven institutions.
Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, my alma mater, put it well — and hopefully it’s no longer uncool for me to agree with the administration of the college I attended (a few years ago) — when he told a reporter than an “infatuation with neutrality” risks making “cowardice into a policy.”
Institutional neutrality is a fallacy.
Phil Buchanan is president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, author of “Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count,” and host of the Giving Done Right podcast.
