A reflection on the folly of a talkative institution
Photo credit: Eric Sucar / Penn Today
By Sarah Mester
The intermittent, but increasingly common and slightly ominous emails with subject lines such as “A Message to the Penn Community” or “A Statement on…” might be coming to an end for anyone with a penn.edu email.
Earlier this month, Interim President Larry Jameson sent an email to the Penn community announcing two new “institutional positions:” an updated statement of University Values and a statement Upholding Academic Independence. Most significantly, the statement on Upholding Academic Independence announced that going forward, “the University of Pennsylvania will refrain from institutional statements made in response to local and world events except for those which have direct and significant bearing on University functions.” I welcome the end of an era that saw Penn release, to the detriment of the university’s mission of encouraging debate, numerous unnecessary and divisive statements on topics of a political nature.
The statement noted that the University of Pennsylvania had, in recent years, released an increasing number of statements responding to external events. While those statements have allowed University leaders to show sympathy for those affected, “[t]here are also challenges and consequences to these messages.” For example, while “plights to which they [the statements] respond are substantive and deeply meaningful,” such events are nearly limitless and in “many cases, messages take sides, or may appear to, on issues of immense significance or complexity.”
“It is not the role of the institution to render opinions,” the statement asserts, adding that “doing so risks suppressing the creativity and academic freedom of our faculty and students.” The statement concludes with the assertion that Penn is committed to “a culture of excellence, freedom of expression and inquiry, and respect—values that are fundamental to the dynamic and inclusive culture of the University of Pennsylvania.”
Prior to this announcement, I had resigned myself to another year of receiving statement after statement from the University of Pennsylvania full of carefully crafted prose that said everything and nothing at the same time. I have a folder full of them from last year. I got the sense while reading through their statements that former President Magill and then Interim President Jameson were groping around blindly for some magical solution that would solve the public relations nightmare they had created. I have to believe that doing so began to feel futile—they had spoken too hastily on a topic they didn’t fully understand, one that held significance for a lot of people.
I would know. I am one of those people. I never had enough energy to get worked up about whatever convoluted statement had recently been released, but I did start to wonder why the University felt a need to talk so much about something that was happening so far away and had so little impact on its operations. I cared deeply about what was happening, but the University’s clumsy, brief messaging on the topic was not only discomforting, but primarily seemed to indulge the University’s misplaced desire to broadcast the “correct” position that pandered equally to every faction of the debate.
The University’s strategy of trying to simultaneously please everyone backfired because it had not yet attempted to seriously engage with a topic that elicited passionate disagreement from the campus community. University statements on George Floyd, January 6, and a Supreme Court opinion on DACA evoked no serious protest and because of that, the University’s so-called “institutional voice”, became too strong and too confident too quickly.
By the time I started college in 2021—after BLM and mostly post-Covid—many universities had gotten used to regularly releasing statements about world events. Even worse, they increasingly seemed to be obligatory. From 2007-2019 Penn’s Office of President released an average of only 2.6 statements a year, but from 2020-2023 the average skyrocketed to 14. As universities and university presidents caved to the pressure to comment on an increasingly wide number of topics, they forgot that their role is not to render opinions, but to empower discussion.
As students, we should be encouraged by our university to have meaningful, nuanced, and respectful conversations about anything from the best dining hall to the best way to resolve an enduring world conflict. Institutional statements on issues not directly related to university operations do not contribute to meaningful discussion—they simply sow division among students and become political footballs.
For example, if I disagree with someone on a topic that the university released a statement on, I can refer to the statement and claim that the university supports my position. And my opponent could just as easily do the same. Assuming neither one of us can claim absolute support of the university, we might complain that the university was biased and should release a new statement fully supporting one “right” position. Anything other than a factual statement about university business has the potential to be interpreted by at least some within the community as arbitrating a “correct” opinion, which has created an uneven environment for discourse that can hinder—not encourage—discussion.
I am therefore relieved that Penn has decided to pivot away from such statements. Although I do not think quieting Penn’s institutional voice will dampen all political controversy on campus—far from it—I believe the change will prevent unproductive conflict and, more significantly, marks a positive step in Penn’s reaffirmation of what it means to be a university.
Sarah Mester is a senior in the College studying Political Science and Classics from San Francisco, CA. She’s a staff writer for The Pennsylvania Post. Her email is smester@sas.upenn.edu.
