Harvard announces new restrictions on speech on ‘controversial public policy issues’

Harvard may take a step back from making policy statements based on new policy recommendations from a university task force amid controversy over its response to the war between Israel and Hamas.

On Tuesday, Harvard’s interim president Alan Garber confirmed that the university would follow the report of the faculty’s Institutional Voice task force, which advises against “making official statements on public matters that do not directly impact the core function of the university.”

“There will be cases in which reasonable people will disagree about whether an issue is directly related to a core function of the university,” the report said. “The university’s policy in such situations should be to avoid official statements.”

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These guidelines would likely apply to administrators, deans, board members, and faculty councils.

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However, the group emphasized that students and individuals are free to make public statements on a variety of issues, although the school must emphasize that they do not represent the position of Harvard as a whole.

“Individuals at the university, in the exercise of their academic freedom, sometimes make statements that raise serious disagreements,” the report said. “When this happens, the university should make clear that it does not speak on behalf of the university and that no one is authorized to speak on behalf of the university except university leadership.”

The group also said the school should be free to take a position on issues directly affecting the university.

“The university is under regular attack today, as is truth itself,” Institution Voice co-chair Noah Feldman told the Harvard Crimson. “This report concluded that the university should not be neutral on such an important issue of the future of universities.”

Garber acknowledged that moving to a more neutral position “would take time and experience,” and Feldman added that it was Harvard’s “independent decision” whether that would translate into proactive decisions such as divestment.

“It is entirely appropriate for the university to clarify its position on the investment or divestment,” Feldman said. “But we don’t think our recommendations about institutional voice dictate the answer.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to Harvard University for comment.

The “Institution Voice” group was formed in April following the ongoing controversy the school faced over its response to the Israel-Hamas war. Harvard initially released a statement two days after the deadly Oct. 7 attack expressing condolences for the “death and destruction.”

Harvard was then forced to issue an additional statement after more than two dozen student groups signed a joint statement condemning Israel as “wholly responsible” for the attacks.

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“As the events of recent days continue to reverberate, let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas. Such inhumanity is abhorrent, regardless of one’s individual view of the origins of the region’s long-running conflicts. “I also want to state that: on this matter as well as others, that while our students have the right to speak on their own behalf, no student group – not even 30 student groups – speaks on behalf of Harvard University or its leadership,” she said in October, then-Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Gay infamously resigned following her own controversies, including several allegations of plagiarism and the claim that calls for Jewish genocide violated campus policies depend on “context.”

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