University evasion tactics: The politics of the “apolitical”

The notion of non-partisan neutrality can be particularly slippery on the University’s campus. As past and recent public debates have shown, it’s a familiar trick to disguise political agendas under the guise of neutrality.

The Editorial Board recently characterized divestment as a “political end” which would damage the University’s educational capacities. In doing so, it argued against the prevailing campus consensus in support of private prison divestment, demonstrated by a successful faculty petition and vast majorities of undergraduate and graduate referenda participants. Ironically, the Board makes its own political agenda clear when it claims that “the contracting of certain government services ... can have negative, even disastrous effects,” but still fails to be “inherently immoral.” In other words, the Board believes that contractors should not be held morally accountable for any “disastrous effects” they inflict upon the populations that these companies purportedly serve. This statement succinctly outlines a market-based ideology that excuses companies of responsibility for the human suffering from which they profit.

Inflammatory editorials, however, are far less harmful than the diversions from institutional accountability favored by administrators. Troublingly, administrators have used the cover of supposed institutional neutrality to renege on their commitment to the core University values of “integrity, respect for others, diversity, and freedom from bias and harassment.” Past and present divestment campaigns strikingly illustrate the use of this evasion tactic. In 1985 — after 16 years of student protest — President Bowen continued to oppose full divestiture from South African apartheid, claiming that such an action would be inconsistent with the University’s position as an “apolitical” institution. Over 30 years later, administrators continue to argue against divestment from corporations that perpetrate widespread violations of human rights.

Appeals to the notion of an “apolitical” institution represent a time-tested political strategy for resisting needed change. Over the past 50 years, charges of inappropriate political advocacy have been levelled against a wide variety of campus initiatives — sex education, institutional resources for women, ethnic studies programs and departments, and even divestment from South African apartheid — that have been accepted by all but a vocal minority as important features of the University.

In 1973, a pamphlet on birth control distributed by the University Sex Education and Health Program became the object of anti-Communist hysteria. “According to reliable sources,” noted press coverage at the time, “the trustees engaged in a highly emotional discussion of the booklet, with some saying it ‘followed the Communist line’ and was ‘un-American.’” Former University president William Bowen called the pamphlet’s distribution a mistake and it was promptly halted.

Now accepted as commonplace by all but a few hardline conservatives, basic sex education resources were once considered radical leftwing politics by University administrators. The incident described above may seem archaic even by the standards of the ’70s, but one must take into account the University’s tendency to lag a few decades behind the social currents of the day. Let’s not forget that by the time of that “un-American” birth control pamphlet, the University had yet to see a graduating class with women. In fact, the University began admitting women decades (or centuries) behind institutions like Brown, Cornell, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.

A decade after this incident, the Women*s Center came under fire from Concerned Alumni of Princeton, the notoriously rightwing and influential alumni organization. The Women*s Center was labeled a “narrow, political organization” run by “feminist automatons.” Not much has changed. The Editorial Board is the most recent group to unfairly target the Women*s Center for a perceived lack of political neutrality. The fact that the Board grossly overestimated, without any substantiation, the amount of Women*s Center programming focused on sex underscores the Board’s political opposition to sex-positive dialogue.

By the ’90s, campus reactionaries had become preoccupied with the advent of multiculturalism. At the end of that decade, a ‘Prince’ columnist argued that “ethnic departments” were the product of a “political agenda.” Just this past fall, the Board majority argued that “the decision to mandate the study of differences and structural inequality would replace intellectual training with political ideology as the purpose of a Princeton education.” One can only wonder whether the Board views the large majority of course in the humanities and social sciences as experiments in leftist indoctrination.

To summarize past arguments for “political neutrality”: sex education is Communist propaganda, the Women*s Center is a haven for sex-obsessed “feminist automatons,” and advocates for departments like African American Studies are “hyper-politically-correct” agents of ideological indoctrination.

The charge of inappropriate political advocacy is a highly suspect response to calls for greater institutional commitment to core University values, in the name of equality and respect for women, people of color, incarcerated or undocumented individuals, and other historically marginalized groups on- and off-campus. Any truly significant question which comes to bear on the University’s commitment to its core values will inevitably have political repercussions. Rather than defaulting to dismissive accusations of political intent, students and administrators alike should be transparent about their own motivations, respect the legitimacy of community members’ perspectives, and fulfill the University’s ethical commitment to “the nation’s service and the service of humanity.”

Max Grear is a Spanish and Portuguese major from Wakefield, R.I. He can be reached at mgrear@princeton.edu.