Eman Abdelhadi, Robert Vargas, and Gabriel Winant: On University Values II

Last year, 3CT’s Corporate University project initiated a conversation about the University of Chicago’s commitment to institutional neutrality and freedom of expression. Speakers questioned the affordances and costs of such a stance, as well as what other factors shape our experiences of learning and living together. 

Since our most recent event in late April, campus communities here and across the country have been forced to reckon with protests against the war in Gaza, universities’ ties to and investments in Israeli institutions, and silence in the face of scholasticide. In numerous cases—including at UChicago—university leadership deployed police against student-led encampments and demonstrations. With the reelection of Donald Trump, higher education faces increased threats to intellectual freedom and a slate of proposed legislation that could reshape the field as we know it.

The Kalven Report allows a notable exception to its doctrine of neutrality in situations that “threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry,” obliging the institution “to defend its interests and its values.” We ask again, what are the university’s values? How are they defined and enacted, and by whom? In what instances might they compel the university to take a position? And how do extreme power differentials and threats of violence contradict or undermine these values? 

Please join us for a conversation with Eman Abdelhadi, Robert Vargas, and Gabriel Winant as they further consider how we might define the values that shape our work and identify those that we need to incorporate into campus culture more fully. Jonathan Levy will moderate, and we invite you to join us for a reception in Cobb 310 after the event.

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