Mapping the Growing Influence of Institutional Neutrality In Higher Education and Its Implications for Social Justice

Background: Threats to academic freedom have been increasing in recent years, alongside a reinvigoration of a decades-long push for institutional neutrality. Most often traced to the Kalven Report (1967), institutional neutrality has been repeatedly invoked in response to periods of social and political unrest, including most recently following the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. Within the broader neoliberalization of higher education, neutrality is increasingly mobilized to insulate institutions from legal, political, and financial risk. This study examines institutional neutrality not simply as a policy stance, but as an emerging hegemonic framework. The primary objective is to understand how neutrality is produced, disseminated, and operationalized across higher education, and to assess whether it is becoming a dominant organizing logic that shapes how conflict, pedagogy, and institutional responsibility are understood.

Methods: Using a qualitative mapping approach, this study develops a taxonomy of organizations, initiatives, and institutional practices advancing neutrality-based frameworks (e.g., dialogue facilitation, viewpoint diversity programming, depoliticized pedagogy). Data are drawn from document analysis of publicly available organizational materials, training programs, and institutional policy guidance. Analytic strategies focus on identifying patterns of discursive convergence, shared strategies, and evidence of integration into institutional policies, programming, and faculty development. As an exploratory analysis of a rapidly evolving field, this study focuses on visible organizational and institutional activity rather than capturing the full range of institutional variation or resistance.

Results: Findings indicate a strong alignment between neutrality-based frameworks and broader neoliberal logics within higher education. Across organizational materials and institutional guidance, neutrality is framed as a pragmatic and balanced approach to managing conflict, often emphasizing dialogue, viewpoint diversity, and depoliticized engagement. Within these frameworks, explicit analyses of power and structural inequality are notably limited or absent. While commitments to academic freedom are generally upheld at the level of individual rights, they are frequently reframed through the language of viewpoint or intellectual diversity, which can shift the focus away from structural critiques and toward the management of competing perspectives. Additionally, neutrality-based approaches are increasingly formalized through trainings, certifications, and programmatic offerings, suggesting processes of marketization through which neutrality is packaged and disseminated.

Implications: These patterns point to the growing prominence of neutrality as a framework that aligns with institutional priorities of risk management and stability, while influencing how conflict and academic freedom are understood in practice. Institutional neutrality is best understood as an emergent hegemonic formation that derives its influence through its disavowal of ideology and its presentation as balanced and pragmatic. Its growing normalization has significant implications for social work education and other values-based disciplines, where commitments to social and racial justice may be constrained by expectations of neutrality. By making visible this rapidly expanding and underexamined shift, this study contributes to ongoing conversations about how social work research can strengthen democratic practice. Specifically, it raises critical questions about the conditions under which equity-focused research, pedagogy, and policy engagement can be sustained, and calls for greater attention to how emerging institutional logics shape the possibilities for inclusive, participatory, and justice-centered social work.