Thurs 1/29 @ 6:00PM
Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street

Law professor Brian Soucek discusses his new book with Joan Scott. The Opinionated University demonstrates why institutional neutrality is nothing but an illusion.
 
Can a university ever truly be neutral in today’s social and political climate? Pushing against the tide of universities increasingly pledging to stay neutral about contentious issues, Brian Soucek argues that their promises are doomed to fail—universities can’t help being opinionated.

In The Opinionated University, Soucek shows that neutrality is a myth by taking a deep dive into several prominent campus controversies of the day, including diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts and restrictions on campus speech and protest. Each issue requires universities to choose a side in what they do, if not also in what they say. In everything from curricular and admissions decisions to their response to outside rankings and their evaluation of faculty, universities express the values at the heart of their mission. Soucek argues that those pushing for neutrality are only preventing universities from standing up for their values, whether in today’s current moment of crisis or in periods of political calm.

Both timely and deeply engaging, The Opinionated University calls on universities to dispense with neutrality as a governing principle and focus instead on what their mission should be, and who should determine it.  

Brian Soucek is a Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis. A scholar of free speech and equality law, Soucek has shaped national policy on academic freedom, nondiscrimination, and campus speech through his work with the American Association of University Professors’ “Committee A” on Academic Freedom and Tenure and the University of California’s Academic Senate.

Joan Wallach Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study and adjunct professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her many books include the classic Gender and the Politics of History, The Politics of the Veil, and Knowledge, Power, and Academic Freedom.