Throughout the 20th century, college and university presidents spoke out on everything, from wars to civil rights struggles, with a sense of attempting to guide the course.
Their language .
“Democracy is the best form of government. It is worth dying for,” Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, address, a year and a half before the U.S. formally entered World War II.
Since 2023 and the start of the Israel-Hamas war, a growing number of university and college presidents on politics. Others have used ambiguous language that makes them seem like “,” as Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth wrote in 2023.
Nearly 150 universities adopted “ from 2023 through the end of 2024. This coincided with university leaders protests on their campuses.
This kind of neutral approach was on display in December 2023, when Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik during a House of Representatives committee hearing if “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate their schools’ rules.
The presidents of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania .
“If the speech turns into conduct it can be harassment, yes,” , then president of University of Pennsylvania. “It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman,” she continued.
Hedging, evading and speaking in platitudes for university leaders, who are facing political and financial pressure under the Trump administration. Their communication style and communications officials, who are tasked with trying to keep universities out of trouble.
on that how people speak – not just what they say – matters. This is especially true for university presidents and others in leadership positions.
Moral leadership in higher education
In 1921, , then president of Amherst College, understood the importance of speaking on moral and political issues. He forcefully during a raging national controversy – namely, how the U.S. should respond to rising .
Calvin Coolidge, an Amherst grad and then vice president of the U.S., was who advocated for an immigration quota system favoring northern Europeans over immigrants from southern Europe or Asia.
Coolidge backed xenophobic immigration policies in 1921, : “There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend.”
Meiklejohn , and he publicly said in 1921 that America could either “be an Anglo-Saxon aristocracy of culture or a Democracy,” but not both.
One year after he became president, Coolidge made his choice when he . This law created strict immigration quotas, dependent on people’s nationality, and barred people from Asia from entering the U.S.
College presidents oppose the Vietnam War
Decades later, university presidents like and publicly opposed the U.S. becoming involved in the Vietnam War – without hesitation or legalistic qualifiers.
“We cannot urge students to have the courage to speak out unless we are willing to do so ourselves,” in 1970.
In 1971, Brewster the U.S. attacks on Southeast Asia, saying the bombings showed that “America had no concern for the sanctity of human life.”
His views and attracted the ire of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who in several speeches.
Twenty-five years later, Howard Shapiro, at the time the president of Princeton University, that Brewster and Hersburgh showed.
He noted: “There was a time when great figures presided over our nation’s campuses – intellectual giants who led their faculty, students, alumni, trustees, and nation with grace, vision, and moral purpose.”
Risk management takes center stage
Current university presidents who are approaches to political issues have reason to watch what they say.
The Trump administration has to university funding, into deals to restore their funding, and launched for civil rights violations.
Others in higher education leadership roles have seen how the and the dramatically resigned in 2023 amid widespread criticism over their response to campus protests and reports of antisemitism.
The presidents of and also resigned in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
When university presidents do speak publicly on the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding and resulting job losses on their campuses, their language is rife with ambiguity and familiar slogans.
Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber, for example, assured Princeton’s community in a that “We will sustain our commitments to excellence in teaching and research … and our other defining values.”
“As always, we will be guided by the values and principles set out in the University’s mission statement and strategic framework,” Eisgruber added.
university and college presidents, meanwhile, write phrases like “” or make a promise to “.”
These words sound good, but, to me at least, ultimately mean nothing.
It matters what college presidents say
It is hard to disentangle the full influence that college and university presidents have, and why what they say matters.
A 2001 survey by the American Council on Education “the vast majority of Americans rarely hear college presidents comment on issues of national importance, and when they do, they believe institutional needs rather than those of the students or the wider community drive such comments.”
Today, the same .
Their choices about when and how to speak are important because, as law professor James Boyd White “helps establish an identity, or what the Greeks called an ethos – for oneself, for one’s audience, and for those one talks about.”
On college campuses and beyond, leaders’ words create “a community of people, talking to and about each other,” according to White.
That is never an easy job.
But, as Wesleyan University President Roth noted, it .
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