In 1967, University President George Beadle appointed a faculty committee—chaired by First Amendment scholar Harry Kalven Jr.—to prepare “a statement on the University’s role in political and social action.” The resulting report articulates the University’s commitment to institutional neutrality. By abstaining from speech about political and social issues, the report says, the University allows its individual members the fullest freedom of expression.

Journalist Jamie Kalven, Harry Kalven Jr.’s son, sat down with the Maroon to walk through the Kalven Report. In the 14 years he spent editing his father’s manuscript on the First Amendment and the American tradition of freedom of speech, Jamie Kalven reviewed hundreds of Harry Kalven Jr.’s papers to familiarize himself with his father’s thinking.

Providing context on his father’s writing, Jamie Kalven argues that we, now in a moment of attacks on academic freedom and higher education, should return to “the point of departure” the document provides.

Reading from a letter addressed to the members of the drafting committee, which you’ll find publicly available for the first time on the Maroon’s website, Jamie Kalven discusses where his father decided to “spend the emphasis” in the report. Harry Kalven Jr. concluded that, in 1967, stating the general principle against collective action was more important than foregrounding the exceptional cases in which collective action may have been appropriate.

Still, there will be exceptions, moments when the “very mission of the University and its values of free inquiry” are under threat.

Jamie Kalven believes that, today, we find ourselves in one such moment.