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<i>Nancy Gibbs is director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and a former editor of Time.</i>

Who, besides suspected criminals, has the right to remain silent? No one, apparently, as leaders of universities, corporations and nonprofits are expected to stake out positions on all sorts of topics. As they enter a noisy year of political combat, campus protests, Facebook feuds and flaccid expressions of corporate social responsibility, it’s more like a <i>fight</i> to remain silent, which no one ever wins.

But those who cherish free speech should likewise defend its muted twin. Protecting the right to free expression requires respecting silence as a legitimate response, not an act of cowardice or collusion, not a sign of indifference or neutrality. Coerced speech degrades both individual dignity and the norms most important for intelligent public debate. When someone demands that you make a statement, and you demur, as sure as night follows day, they will claim the power to impute opinions to you. Silence, Plato said, gives consent. If you refuse to take a stand, someone will foist one on you.

But there are many reasons we might choose not to share an opinion on every topic, or any topic for that matter. For one thing, demands for moral clarity can crowd out complexity. The first sentence is easy, but what’s the second? The 10th? Our 280-character attention spans constrict the space to hold competing thoughts: that climate change is a true threat, and some of the responses are ridiculous; that Israel, savagely attacked, has a right to self-defense, and that right is not unlimited; that the United States owes its success to its embrace of immigrants, and a country needs to be able to secure its borders. Opportunists and propagandists sketch a cartoon world in black and white. How can we make room for the revelations that linger in the watery gray spaces?

And then there’s the banality of certainty. Crafting a statement that rings of moral urgency but offends no one often means reducing the moment to the obvious. Pursue peace. Seek justice. Play fair. Recycle. “Just Do It.” Do what, exactly? (Nike’s ubiquitous slogan was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/04/from-lets-do-it-to-just-do-it-how-nike-adapted-gary-gilmores-last-words-before-execution/" target="_blank">reportedly inspired</a> by the last words of murderer Gary Gilmore before his execution.) To be unobjectionable is to be uninteresting.

History belongs to the bold, but statements drafted by consultants, reviewed by committees and drained of actual passion reek of stolen valor. By definition, expressions of true moral leadership are risky and radical, rather than reactive or machined to within an inch of their lives. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” defies our selfish nature. “All men are created equal” was a literally revolutionary concept. When institutions, whether universities or businesses, craft a statement in response to public pressure, they juggle priorities like chain saws, gauging how different constituencies will react, and if we have learned nothing else these past months, we should at least have figured out that no one will be satisfied, much less inspired.

It’s no surprise that universities have rediscovered the virtues of <a href="https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/KalvenRprt_0.pdf" target=_blank>the Kalven principles</a>, conceived in 1967 by the University of Chicago in response to the issues of that era. Harry Kalven, an expert in the First Amendment, chaired the faculty committee that argued that a university’s mission was to seek and share knowledge. “There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives,” the committee wrote, and so argued for institutional neutrality. Let 1,000 arguments bloom; the university is the garden, not the gardener.

This is not an abdication of responsibility; it’s an embrace of it. When institutions stay silent, individuals are freer to speak their minds, or not, as they choose, without calculating the professional cost. Making maximum space for people to collect evidence, explore ideas, weigh options, test assumptions — all are time-tested means of advancing knowledge and defying demagogues. And for those intent on persuasion, on building movements for one cause or another, the brute muscle of the mob more likely yields conformity than conversion.

Yes, sometimes silence is wrong. By the same token, it’s long past time to defend the right to remain silent, not only to avoid incrimination, but because we will be smarter individually and collectively if we express ideas when we’re ready, share opinions once they are ripe, and allow for our instincts and impressions to deepen into insights before we inflict them on one another.

Or, as the Quakers say, don’t speak unless you can improve on the silence.

Nancy Gibbs

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Universities and corporations should claim the right to remain silent

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