Say Something

For heads of institutions, it’s all too tempting to do what’s easy.

By Michael S. Roth | Slate Magazine | Feb 08, 202511:00 AM

Michael S. Roth, President of Wesleyan University

In 2024, Dictionary.com chose “demure” as the word of the year. On college campuses (or at least in their presidents’ offices and board meeting rooms), the word of the year, in the wake of the war in Gaza and the campus protests that followed, was “neutrality,” which has a similar vibe. One might think that those who embrace neutrality do so either because they have no strong views or because they do and are afraid to express them. Some university leaders, following the University of Chicago, have tied themselves to the more agreeable notion that were they to weigh in on issues, this would chill speech on campus—that others will be encouraged to speak up if they keep their own mouths shut. The august American Council of Trustees and Alumni has urged all trustees to preserve “the high purpose of our academic institutions” by ensuring that their institutions stay out of political disputes—silence is golden, especially when the heat is on. Some creative leaders have demurred even about making a commitment to neutrality, and, like Nicole Kidman’s character in Babygirl, have discovered the pleasures of restraint. Institutional restraint.

In the past months, since Trump’s victory in the general election, leaders in the worlds of business and education have been rushing to show that they no longer have any political beliefs. Facts? Why check them? Privilege? Who’s to say that the mega-rich don’t deserve their advantages? Anticipating how best to be obedient, they aim to please those at the vanguard of what Mark Zuckerberg called a “cultural tipping point.”

It’s one thing to be reminded that “elections have consequences,” but quite another to insist that the best response to the abuse of authority is to be restrained, demure, neutral. For university leaders, the exception is their opposition to endowment taxes. On this topic, they’re inclined to be positively brat.

It may seem that asking corporations, universities, and other organizations to “keep their mouths shut” is a conservative position. Far from it. Since the 18th century, thinkers associated with conservatism and classical liberalism have emphasized the importance of having an independent civil society, the informal networks in a country that are adjacent to the political sphere. Businesses and schools, libraries and neighborhood associations, are crucial elements of that sector. From Baron de Montesquieu and Edmund Burke in the 18th century to Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill in the 19th, political philosophers have underscored that freedom depends on the pillars of civil society not being subsumed by those with governmental authority. Tocqueville wrote that “Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people’s reach. … Without local institutions, a nation may give itself a free government, but it has not got the spirit of liberty.” And Mill underscored the “need for political devolution and the diffusion of power and initiative within the great entrenched institutions of our society.”

Authoritarians, by contrast, have long known that total control will elude them if they don’t eradicate the autonomous support engendered within civil society by cultural, religious, commercial, and educational institutions. That’s why the Nazi party announced the policy of Gleichschaltung, the coordination of all aspects of German society in line with the ideological goals of the party and its leader. Under Mao, the Cultural Revolution was meant to ensure something similar. All aspects of society—from family relations to schools, from farming to music—would be cleansed of independent allegiances and aligned with the party and its leader. Authoritarians love to talk about their devotion to the Truth. But it’s only the truth as they’d like it to be. The official newspaper of the Soviet communists was, after all, entitled Pravda—“Truth.”

Leaders in civil society shouldn’t be “demure” in the face of authoritarian attempts to align all power with a president’s agenda, civil society be damned. Business and civic officials, religious authorities, and college presidents should weigh in when they see the missions of their institutions—not to speak of the health of their country—compromised. This wouldn’t be a novelty. Clergy have often done this, as have other local officials. Although university leaders do have a long history of capitulating to the powerful, there have been times when they have stood up for the values on which the missions of their institutions were built. Frances Wayland at Brown University spoke powerfully against slavery, as did Jonathan Blanchard, the president of Knox and then Wheaton College. Charles Finney at Oberlin College and Horace Mann at Antioch also were prominent in their support of abolitionist activities. A century later, Kingman Brewster at Yale, Theodore Hesburgh at Notre Dame, and Harold Taylor at Sarah Lawrence made sure that critics of the Vietnam War got a hearing. And they were not demure about speaking out themselves.

New administrations in Washington naturally try to bring together forces that will allow them to make progress on their agendas. But in the past, they have done this while recognizing the importance of working with others with different points of view. A healthy democracy depends on a dynamic mixture of competing opinions. University leaders themselves should do more to ensure this dynamic mixture on their own campuses. Too many of us have led colleges that have become politically homogeneous. This leaves us out of touch with many other Americans, and it means we learn less because too often we hear the same views echoing each other.

Corporate and educational leaders must not put on a demure face and stay silent while civil society is undermined by the diktat of executive orders. We must not sacrifice academic freedom and a healthy civil society for the short-term gains of anticipatory compliance. We must instead cultivate in our institutions the ability to bring different kinds of people together in common purpose, the will to protect the vulnerable, and the resilience needed for our institutions to successfully pursue their missions. Their missions, not the agenda of whoever controls the powers of the central government. Let’s hope that the 2025 word of the year isn’t “submissive.”

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Michael Scott Roth is an American academic and university administrator who currently serves as the 16th president of Wesleyan University, a position he assumed in 2007; he is recognized for his advocacy for liberal education and is known as a prominent historian and curator.