The Scoop: After disastrous fall, Harvard changes policy on public statements

Over the last few months, we’ve seen a lot of upheaval at American colleges and universities concerning institutional reactions to the war in Gaza. Following student protests and shifts in leadership at Harvard, the esteemed university is rolling out a new policy of staying silent on issues that don’t directly impact the school’s “core function.”

In a report from CNN, Harvard claimed that it maintains a responsibility to defend the university’s standing and integrity, but that university leaders need to steer clear of commenting on issues that don’t directly affect the school. In an interview with The Harvard Gazette, Noah Feldman, co-chair of Harvard’s Institutional Voice Working Group, which is charged with reviewing and vetting public statements made by the university’s leaders, said that the group’s main mission is to ensure that Harvard maintains its academic freedom and independence.

“In the end, we believe this approach is actually more inclusive to the whole community,” Feldman said. “We heard loud and clear from many stakeholders that if we speak out some of the time on some global or national issues, then many people feel we are ignoring other issues. And on some issues, our community is divided or the world is divided in such a way that we are going to drive controversy no matter what we say.”

Why it matters: In December, we ran a piece that outlined the crisis comms lessons PR pros could learn from Harvard’s mishandling of the messaging around the war in Gaza. It seems that Harvard has put some of those lessons into practice with the new Institutional Voice Working Group.

While many people want to know where an organization stands on certain issues, it doesn’t mean that every institution needs to speak out on everything. That’s one of the primary functions of the Institutional Voice Working Group — keeping Harvard focused on its mission to provide a top-flight academic environment.

In times of crisis, it’s important to reaffirm your organizational mission. Harvard is doing just that by driving home the fact that it’s an academic institution, and that’s where the focus of its statements will be going forward.

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Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.