The Chicago Principles at Ten Years

Address of Paul Alivisatos, University of Chicago President
The Chicago Principles at Ten Years
Chicago, IL
January 31, 2025

As delivered

 

We are in a crisis regarding free expression and academic freedom in universities. 

 

The headwinds we face are twofold. 

 

First: Deference to conventional wisdom has stifled inquiry in a number of disciplines. Some quarters of higher education prize activism over inquiry. Important questions go unaddressed because of fear of the answers, and errors persist because of fear of disagreeing with popular positions. This itself is an emergency. 

 

The failure of academia writ large to engage with this problem substantively has eroded trust among a large segment of our citizenry, and even the most basic benefits universities provide to society are now in dispute.  

 

And let’s be clear that the benefits to society of truth-seeking universities are enormous. We live in a world where the wellbeing and prospects of humanity depend on deep knowledge being wielded responsibly. One thing Americans can agree on, for example, is the need for new medicines and new approaches to overcoming diseases. These new discoveries emerge from our nation’s great universities with regularity. Our universities and academic medical centers are posed in the years ahead to augment the biotechnology revolution with new AI tools and, in due course, with quantum information approaches, yielding a tremendous spurt of innovations that will benefit our society enormously, provided we continue to foster this critical work of understanding and discovery.

 

The second headwind is the threat to academic freedom from government intervention that can result when frustration with the shortcomings of the academy builds up. Consider the example of the adoption of policies in many states that explicitly ban the teaching of certain controversial ideas and theories in public higher education institutions. The possibility of political intervention in universities is hardly new. My predecessor Ed Levi spoke to this with his characteristic clarity and rigor. He wrote:

 

“It is of the utmost importance that political dictation of American universities be resisted. Each concession for reasons of expediency encourages new encroachments.”

 

I could not agree more. When governmental entities or external forces censor the free expression of faculty and students and seek to compel conformity, the possibility for universities to remain places of genuine truth seeking is put at dire risk. This kind of remedy can kill the patient. 

 

What then is the path forward? To all those who, despite their concerns, can see that universities are places of hope and promise: I can say with confidence that this university–the university that birthed the Chicago Principles–is showing the way.

 

Today, we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Chicago Principles, and in doing so we have a chance to think together about how they can lead us toward resolution to this crisis.

 

A decade ago, when the Principles were written—with many of the participants in that here in this room—we already could see the beginnings of this period of stark contestation and societal division. Bottom-up rather than top-down challenges to free expression emerged. So-called “cancel culture,” shutting down speakers, the call for “safe spaces,” and more heralded a new and terrible moment. 

 

President Zimmer understood the threat this posed, and he worked with a remarkable group of faculty—who are mostly here today—to codify the Chicago Principles, to state them plainly and forthrightly as they had arisen from our history and practices. To reaffirm, as our President Emeritus Hanna Gray so-brilliantly exhorted years prior:

 

“Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think. Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.”

 

In their first ten years, the Chicago Principles have gained a significance that extends well beyond our UChicago community. The facts speak for themselves. They have been adopted by over 100 academic institutions. In the last year, they have been cited in editorials, OpEds, and publications hundreds of times. It is almost impossible to have a serious discussion about free expression in higher education that is not framed by (or in opposition to) the Chicago Principles.

 

What accounts for this high degree of adoption and dominant role in our discourse? After all, pretty much every university considers free expression and academic freedom to be foundational to their functioning, yet it is specifically the Chicago Principles that stand out.

 

The reason is simple. Rather than edicts from above, the principles that were articulated in 2015 arose as a codification of many decades of determined practice and cultivation. While the principles document is succinct and in some ways declaratory, they are a true distillation of the lived experience of generations of university scholars and embody what is essential in a way that bears the full credibility of our institution. The credibility of an institution that is storied for its’ genuine commitment to teach and understand and to struggle to discover truths at the deepest level.

 

Here, there is an entire culture built on this wellspring of free expression. Here, no one, certainly not I as president, tells people what to think or what to say. Here, the pursuit of knowledge and learning is deeply a community affair; by committing to entering into frank dialogue with each other, we understand that we will learn more, that we will be better at extending the edges of human knowledge and understanding deeper and faster and better. Here, we seek the commitment to excellence in our recruiting of faculty at every turn. To seek deep scholars, not ideologues. Here we live today by something else that President Levi wrote:

 

“The proper test for membership in the academic community is intellectual competence and integrity. This requires a willingness to engage in rational discussion, to question principles, and to subject conclusions reached in the field of scholarly endeavor to the searching test of scientific inquiry. This test places the emphasis where it belongs; namely, on the competence and intellectual freedom of the particular scholar.”

 

And for our students: Here, we take great care in shaping a core curriculum for the College that inherently teaches our students to see problems from many points of view. To learn how to think, not what to think. To be rigorous and curious. Here, we recognize that diversity of viewpoint and experience strengthens us in our seeking of truths. 

 

This is our culture, and it is the spirit that animates the Chicago Principles. 

 

Each of the attributes I’ve just described is essential to truth seeking, and yet each is a constant struggle to hold on to and get right. For example, the relative lack of diversity of political orientation on campuses compared to society at large puts a much more severe onus on the need to be even more open to minority viewpoints. To substantively engage with such issues effectively, requires enormous care and ongoing attention. Over a year ago, we created the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression to ensure that we would have a venue to grapple with these challenges. It represents a gift to us all: a place where the very ideas of free expression themselves can be debated, and where the culture that it depends on can be renewed through challenge and contestation.

 

Crucially, the Chicago Forum is a place where those from other higher education institutions are invited to explore issues of free expression, to examine our culture and their own. It is a place where students, faculty, and academic leaders can do the important work of cultivating and improving upon truth-seeking cultures. This kind of grassroots crafting of culture will better serve the multitude and variety of higher education institutions that we as a nation are blessed with much better than if we were to encourage that the Principles be adopted rotely from above. 

 

The Chicago Principles have much to offer in their second decade in service to institutions beyond the strict borders of academia. Trust has diminished in nearly every kind of institution that serves society through expertise. Wherever expertise is called for, credibility of expertise is in decline. 

 

This is a tragedy because one of the greatest gifts we have on offer–one of the essential outcomes of our focus on truth seeking–is, in fact, expertise. It resides with those who have been steadfast in pursuing excellence and who have immersed themselves in a subject so deeply that they stand ready to offer an understanding that is much needed but not commonly achieved. Expertise today is broadly derided but very, very much needed.

 

We rely on a web of institutions that are specially charged with being places of truth seeking so that they may offer considered and trusted expertise. Yet, we also live in a world where our greatest gifts are most at risk because some of those very institutions that are charged with upholding the ethos of truth seeking have too frequently undermined their own standing.  

 

Instead of creating trust, they have spurred distrust. At the heart of this diminishment is the allegation that the deck is stacked, that “experts” have a uniform and biased point of view, that the institutions of truth seeking themselves are not neutral. 

 

I am not thinking of those institutions that are in the give and take every single day or every minute or even practically every second. Rather, I am thinking of those institutions that are meant by design to take time and care to get things right. I am talking about academic journals, including scientific ones. I am talking about learned societies, about the National Academies, and about the panels that are needed to perform drug reviews or to develop science-based recommendations for environmental regulations or to help with curriculum for learning math in schools and so on. In each of these situations, society has privileged “experts” to provide their best informed view of the state of our knowledge free from political bias so that well-informed policy can follow.

 

These institutions face the extraordinary challenge of needing to convey their expertise in an era where much of the print, digital, and social media landscape is hyperpolarized and flooded with unfounded conspiracy theories, which all-too-regularly can outpace the truth. And yet, these very conditions call all the more urgently for expertise, for institutions that are dedicated to truth seeking to cut through this fray:

 

  • And yet: when the editors of scientific journals who represent a large community of scientists with diverse political views choose to endorse one political candidate over another; 

  • When academic associations advance or pass resolutions to take a political stance on a conflict on behalf of their entire membership;

  • When primary schools prioritize a method for how to learn to read that is not supported by rigorous, quantitative studies;

  • When public health officials fail to interrogate a variety of hypotheses in the public square, such as happened around the origins of covid. 

In each of those cases, institutions have in various ways made the choice to speak for a large community of experts with diverse viewpoints. There may be some cases where this is justified to advance the mission of that particular organization, but the leaders of those institutions should step back to weigh such decisions with enormous care.

 

The entire credibility of important institutions could be at risk of being squandered because of just a single failure to honor the bottom-up process of truth seeking, because of a desire to short circuit the debate and declare what is right prematurely rather than allow for the truth to emerge from healthy contestation.

 

This brings us to the value of institutional neutrality, the clear statement in our principles that is not for the institution or leadership to put a thumb on the scale, to declare for one set of ideas over others.

 

To quote the Principles: 


“It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose.”

 

This, of course, follows from the famous UChicago Kalven report which anchors the view that institutional neutrality is an essential part of the truth-seeking ethos in our university. For a leader, to honor institutional neutrality is not to be indifferent to the outcome of important debates; rather it is to be so curious to know the outcome of the debate that one is devoted to ensuring that the process has integrity. 

 

This university is proof enough that the Chicago Principles work. I believe they are now ready to graduate. We are expanding their influence through the work of the Chicago Forum, sharing our experiences and insights with other academic institutions, as well other institutions whose mission derives from their commitment to be truth seeking. This expanded mission is, in my view, a natural evolution. It is a recognition that the fate of credibility does not rest solely on the shoulders of universities—but that we do depend on that credibility. It is a joint endeavor involving a broader set of institutions whose success is defined by their pursuit of truths. 

 

As we look ahead to the next decade of the Chicago Principles and beyond, we should do so with determination, hope, and pride. Determination, because what happens at universities and other institutions that serve society with knowledge truly matters, and our ability to continue delivering upon our mission is not guaranteed. Hope, because we know that we can convince society of the value of our truth-seeking enterprise by being trustworthy. And pride, because we have set forth a compelling vision for what it takes to keep the flame of free expression and inquiry alive. We are reaching out to others to join us.  

 

Thank you.