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A Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee urged the FAS last month to assure professors that what they say outside the classroom will not affect what courses they can teach — a move that would be a strong signal that the school won’t penalize faculty for speaking their minds.

But even as some faculty advocate for protections on controversial speech, Harvard administrators and professors have also become increasingly concerned that opinions instructors share outside the classroom could make students stay silent.

The committee’s January report found that students often “hesitate to speak up in class because someone will disapprove of their opinions” and say they sometimes write papers that align with the perceived ideologies of their instructors.

Harvard has taken those fears seriously. In May 2024, it adopted a policy against taking public stances in most political debates — a norm some faculty had fought for because they feared perceptions of an official University line would make affiliates hesitate to dissent.

The January recommendations seek to have it both ways.

Though the committee suggested that the FAS should protect faculty “extramural speech,” it also warned that “instructors should be aware that their public opinions about issues — whether expressed in a book or a social media post or a sticker on their laptop — may cause students to worry about unequal treatment.”

The FAS should encourage instructors to tell students they are “free to hold and express political opinions that differ from those of their instructors, without fear of negative consequences,” the report’s authors added.

Still, in interviews with The Crimson, several professors said they believe faculty can take public stances on contentious issues while still fostering free inquiry in the classroom.

“There’s ways for professors to teach about a topic while their position is known,” said Salma Abu Ayyash, a School of Engineering and Applied Sciences preceptor.

Economics professor David I. Laibson ’88, who chaired the FAS committee alongside History professor Maya R. Jasanoff ’96, wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson that he thought the guidelines were “not in conflict.”

“Students should listen to competing perspectives and be empowered to come to their own conclusions,” Laibson added.

FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm declined to comment for this article.

Can Faculty Speech Go Too Far?

In 2019, Harvard Law School professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. was forced out of his position as Winthrop House faculty dean. College Dean Rakesh Khurana announced to students that he decided to not renew Sullivan’s contract because the environment in Winthrop had become “untenable” under Sullivan’s leadership.

But Sullivan claimed he was dismissed for a different reason: he joined the legal team representing disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein as Weinstein battled sexual abuse allegations.

“Their problem was that I represented an unpopular person,” Sullivan said at a November 2019 talk.

Sullivan is one of at least three Harvard faculty who have alleged in recent years that they faced repercussions for their public statements.

In January 2023, Carole K. Hooven resigned from her position as a Human Evolutionary Biology lecturer after backlash among graduate students in the department over her July 2021 statements on Fox News arguing that there are only two biological sexes. Hooven claimed that her department and the FAS let her down by not publicly backing her during the controversy.

And graduate students insisted that Harvard fire epidemiology professor Tyler J. VanderWeele or ban him from teaching after he signed a 2015 amicus brief opposing the constitutional right to gay marriage.

Sullivan, Hooven, and VanderWeele’s cases became causes célèbre for free speech advocates, including some Harvard colleagues and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Hooven and VanderWeele did not receive formal sanctions from the University. And Harvard has only publicly barred faculty from teaching courses over allegations of misconduct, including sexual harassment and data fraud. But at other universities, some professors have been restricted from teaching required courses over statements deemed offensive or discriminatory.

If the FAS adopts the January report’s recommendations, it could indicate that Harvard does not see such administrative penalties as acceptable.

But concerns that faculty will face strident public criticism remain. For some, those concerns only intensified after Oct. 7, when a few professors became the center of cascading national criticism for their views on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

When History professor Derek J. Penslar, who studies Jewish history, was appointed to co-chair a presidential task force on antisemitism in January 2024, high-profile critics blasted his selection. Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers on X that Penslar had “publicly minimized” antisemitism on campus.

History professor Kirsten A. Weld wrote in an email that she thinks faculty speech made outside the classroom is not always “policed equally.”

Faculty who speak publicly about highly polarized subjects, “even and indeed especially if those subjects are their area of scholarly expertise, regularly face censure and harassment,” Weld wrote.

Still, many Harvard professors say faculty can’t simply give up expressing public opinions — even controversial ones. After a dean penned an op-ed calling for “sanctionable limits” on faculty criticisms of Harvard, he drew swift backlash from professors, and FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra distanced herself from his proposals.

Psychology professor Steven A. Pinker said faculty’s ability to freely express their beliefs is one of the key “contributions to society” that professors make — and even part of what draws students to Harvard.

“A lot of students are attracted to professors with a high public profile. They want to hear what they have to say,” Pinker said. “It’s part of the appeal of coming to Harvard and taking the courses with brand name professors.”

And Abu Ayyash, who is Palestinian and has vocally criticized Israel for the war in Gaza, said her ability to express public opinions is inseparable from her identity.

“I’m a political human being. Politics is part of my life,” Abu Ayyash said, adding that she could never “just maintain a sanitized academic theoretical life.”

Balancing Acts

When Sullivan, Hooven, and VanderWeele drew condemnation for their statements, some students bolstered their demands by arguing the scholars’ beliefs were incompatible with their teaching or advising responsibilities.

Danukshi A.K. Mudannayake ’20, a former Winthrop House resident, said at a February 2019 protest that Sullivan should resign from his faculty deanship because he was representing Weinstein.

“The issue is that he cannot simultaneously hold that role while still having a charade of saying that he can actually protect the integrity of his students,” Mudannayake said.

In recent years, attention has shifted from students’ safety and sense of belonging to what they feel free to say in class.

The January FAS report found that only 35 percent of graduating College seniors felt comfortable expressing opposing views on controversial topics in their courses. Among seniors who said they were reluctant to speak up, a majority worried about reactions among their peers — but 35 percent said they feared penalties from instructors.

Several Harvard faculty said they feel they have a responsibility to check their public speech to allow students to comfortably speak up in course discussions without fear of retribution.

Computer Science professor Ariel D. Procaccia argued that professors should not discuss polarizing issues unless they have relevant experience or expertise on the issue and have “good reason to do so.”

“I never broadcast my views, other than occasional opinion pieces on topics in which I have some expertise,” Procaccia wrote.

Government professor Daniel P. Carpenter said he makes it a point to think through multiple perspectives when engaging in discussion or debate.

“I try to be careful to consider, and occasionally represent, different sides,” he said.

Molecular and Cellular Biology professor Florian Engert said the University should “have some way of policing” faculty speech in extreme cases when a professor is being “an asshole and a bully,” since professors are “representing the University outside and inside of the classroom.”

“There should be certain things that you’re not allowed to say publicly,” Engert added. He cautioned, though, that extramural speech should not be moderated solely based on “somebody’s opinions.”

Other professors said faculty should speak freely in public about controversial issues, but that they should explicitly encourage students to share dissenting opinions, too.

Pinker said faculty should make sure their public opinions “come in conjunction with a very firm commitment” to not penalize students who disagree.

Classics professor Richard F. Thomas said that while he openly shares his opinions with his students, “I always encourage them to express themselves as they wish and say I’m happy to have people disagree with me.”

Still, SEAS professor Kit Parker wrote in a statement that students should worry less about offending others and more about their “responsibilities” to their “values and beliefs.”

“Only amateurs and peasants talk about power dynamics. Leaders talk about responsibilities,” Parker wrote.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.