Free speech and donor privacy go hand in hand

How much is free speech worth? According to one donor, $100 million.

Last week, the University of Chicago received a $100 million donation in support of free speech efforts on campus. The gift supports the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, including its speaking events, orientation programs, and fellowships, to establish a culture of free expression from students’ first day on campus.

In an unusual twist for a gift of this level, the donor chose to stay anonymous — to mixed reception by the faculty. Eman Abdelhadi, an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development, posted on X shortly after the news: “The University of Chicago just received $100 million from an anonymous donor. Donations of that size fundamentally shift an institution’s programming and priorities, and we know that donors exert influence on campus policy. So this is — as one of my colleagues put it — basically dark money, it should be illegal to stay anonymous when exerting this much influence on an institution that’s publicly supported through tax exemptions, federal grants, non-profit status, etc.”

If the gift reflected a shift in the university’s relationship with free speech, Abdelhadi’s criticism would have more weight. A gift this large can influence policy, but in this case, the donor is simply reflecting the priorities already in place at the university.  

The $100 million supports a center that existed before the gift, and the University of Chicago has a long-standing institutional commitment to free speech both at a faculty level and at the administrative level. Ten years ago, the university’s then-President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Eric Isaacs asked a faculty committee to document “the University’s overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate.”

The committee developed the Chicago Principles of Free Expression, the adoption of which is a critical part of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s analysis of the free speech climates on campuses as well as the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s Gold Standard of Free Expression.

The Chicago Principles themselves follow a deeper tradition within the university as the school developed the Kalven Report in 1967. The report states: “A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community.”

This year has seen a resurgence of colleges, including Yale University, Harvard University, and Stanford University, adopting the Kalven Report or considering a similar version of institutional neutrality, which provides a solid framework for a defense of free speech. 

Last year saw high-level donors walking away from institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. This year’s gift to the University of Chicago is a sign of donors using their resources to support positive developments. Yet, unlike Abdelhadi’s suggestion, they are doing so with the support of the university administration and faculty who may not agree with Abdelhadi’s perspective. The American Association of University Professors reposted Abdelhadi’s comments, which reflect a common skepticism toward anonymous gifts. 

Confidentiality, if requested, is an essential part of the Donor Bill of Rights, developed by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. The defense of donor privacy comes from an ideologically diverse set of organizations, including the right-leaning Philanthropy Roundtable as well as the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Human Rights Campaign.

The $100 million gift reflects another cross-ideological concern: civil dialogue. In the press release announcing the gift, the Chicago Forum’s faculty director, Tom Ginsburg, writes that he and his colleagues “want every student to have the experience of speaking their mind and the possibility of changing it in conversation with others.”

The need to foster civil conversations in an age of, as Ginsburg describes, “misinformation, a polarized media environment, and a rising censoriousness” has inspired the rapid growth of organizations such as BridgeUSA, the Constructive Dialogue Institute, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s College Debates and Discourse Alliance, all geared toward helping students put free speech into healthy practice. Hopefully the gift to the University of Chicago will be the first of many to similar initiatives across our nation’s colleges and universities.

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This article was published by the Washington Examiner on September 30, 2024.