The war between Israel and Hamas has led some university administrations to realize the virtues of institutional neutrality. Accustomed to pontificating on current events, they have suddenly discovered that they couldn’t say anything without making somebody angry. Worse, even silence sent a nasty message. It turns out that it is politic for officials to avoid taking sides on contentious issues. But there is another reason why administrators ought to remain silent on such matters: anything they say is almost certainly bullshit, and the mission of the university is antithetical to the production of bullshit.
The philosopher Harry Frankfurt explains in his classic analysis that a bullshitter is uninterested in the truth or falsity of his speech. Rather, he merely wants to elicit a certain reaction. Official university statements are necessarily bullshit because the administration is aiming to produce a result – inducing the public to admire the school, and signifying a certain flavor of social solidarity. The Kalven Report observes that a university “is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness.” Universities today are plagued by a climate of orthodoxy that chills thought and incapacitates us from thinking about how to address real and pressing problems. Administrations have a responsibility to dispel that climate, not contribute to it.
The job of academia is the discovery of truth. Universities should not be in the business of producing bullshit.