“Love is love. Neutrality perpetuates hate. Let our teachers advocate.” These were the words on signs held by parents, faculty, staff and some students on May 15 during two protests organized and led by University of Chicago faculty and Lab parents against the new policy on viewpoint-neutral teaching.
At noon outside Levi Hall on the university’s Main Quad, the American Association of University Professors organized a rally that included the delivery of a letter signed by more than 300 university faculty and staff against the new policy, the potential impacts it would have on Lab and what it could mean for university faculty. The second protest took place at 3:30 p.m. on the Midway Plaisance just across the street from Blaine Hall, where several dozen Lab parents, teachers and UChicago faculty members gathered and gave speeches denouncing the policy.
More than 60% of Lab families have an affiliation to UChicago. Because of this, many Lab parents play a special role in this controversy as both a university faculty member and a parent. They often have to balance beliefs and professionalism.
“In this particular kind of critical moment, I think it’s really important to make sure that kids understand morality, what’s right, so that they can reflect on this particular moment. I feel like teachers cannot do that,” Marianne Bertrand, an economics professor and Lab parent, said at the AAUP protest.
Orlando Torres, a Lab kindergarten teacher and Lab parent, worries about the implications that taking a fully neutral standpoint would give to his young students.
He said, “If I were to take the viewpoint neutral approach, outlining the standards, my neutrality in the classroom would communicate to these young children that in turn the world is neutral. Now, we all know that is most certainly not the case.”
Parents specifically worry about how this policy will impact their kids’ learning and the environment presented to them in the classroom. When diving deeper into the language and origins of the policy, some Lab parents say they have found what they deem to be concerning contradictions.
“Lab’s mission is under pressure right now from a new policy that is using the language of open inquiry to censor it. The neutrality policy imposes new restrictions on how teachers discuss ‘contested topics,’” Robert Vargas, a sociology professor and the director of the UChicago Justice Project and Lab parent, said at the Blaine Hall protest. “On its face, the policy sounds like it’s protecting open inquiry. But when you look carefully at the language, and when you look at where neutrality policies are coming from, a very different picture emerges.”
Civil liberties organizations across the political spectrum, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the American Civil Liberties Union, have documented that neutrality policies are being used to remove anything pertaining to race, class, gender and history, rather than to open inquiry as they suggest.
University faculty members are worried about what this policy means for UChicago. This includes history professor Gabriel Winant, who is also the president of UChicago’s AAUP chapter.
“If the university is willing to turn its principles on their head, its state of principles on their head, for the sake of convenience, for the sake of courting Trump administration, and for the sake of courting the wealthiest parents, then they’ll do the same to us next year,” Dr. Winant said.
The protesting UChicago professors believe that the Kalven Report, the university’s 1967 guiding policy document that “affirms the University’s commitment to the academic freedom of faculty and students” through institutional neutrality, is being twisted and that Lab’s new policy is pulling Lab further away from the University rather than closer as it intended. They fear that this same logic could be applied to UChicago professors in the future.
“I’m extremely upset by the fact that they are using the Kalven Report as a justification for all of these. The Kalven Report is not about teachers. The Kalven Report is about the institution,” Dr. Bertrand said. “I, as a teacher, have total freedom of expression. I can say whatever I want. That’s why we have institutional neutrality to enable all the educators on this campus to say whatever they want, and they are using the Kalven Report totally in an upside down way, as a way to muzzle the school teachers.”
