During the 2023-24 academic year, several HxA-UCLA members worked to develop a proposed policy statement for UCLA that would embrace free speech, recognize appropriate “time, place, and manner” restrictions, and the importance of administering those restrictions in a consistent, principled manner, and adopt institutional neutrality for UCLA and its administrative components.

Free Expression Principles for UCLA

Prepared by HxA-UCLA, May 2024

Throughout its history, UCLA has demonstrated a commitment to freedom of expression. Such freedom is essential to the key mission of the university—the creation and sharing of knowledge. To accomplish that mission, rules and policies must encourage the widest diversity of views, allowing all community members a broad latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn. A university without academic freedom and freedom of speech is no longer a university. 

In the past few years, the principle of free expression has been challenged on campuses around the country, and, as a result, it requires formal articulation and reconfirmation. As faculty, we strongly endorse UCLA’s commitment to the rule that deliberation and debate on campus may not be suppressed because the ideas articulated are thought by some or even most members of the community to be inaccurate, unwise, immoral, offensive, or even hateful. 

Furthermore, to ensure that community members can express themselves freely and without fear, we believe that the university should itself decline to take positions on political or social issues and events, except insofar as these relate directly to its core educational and research missions.  Similar restraint should apply to all university subunits.¹ Of course, all university members have the right to express their opinions as private individuals or to form voluntary associations to support public causes. Indeed, official reticence is desirable, in part, precisely to protect that freedom. 

Neutrality matters for several reasons. First, statements by the university or its subunits on contentious matters will inevitably chill the speech of members who disagree with those statements but depend on the administration for job security or professional advancement. There cannot be full freedom of expression for individuals if bodies that have power over them also stake out positions. The university should be an arena for debate; it cannot simultaneously be a speaker in the same debate. 

Second, when a university, center, or department expresses a position at odds with the values of some of its members, those members will naturally feel misrepresented. On issues where the university’s fundamental mission requires it to take a single position, the alienation of minority members may be inevitable. But on other matters, there is no need for the university to discriminate in favor of some of its members and against others, amplifying the views of the majority or those in leadership positions over the voices of those in the minority or with less institutional clout. A better course is for the university to respect the diversity of views in its midst, allowing members to express themselves rather than imposing a collective message. 

Institutional neutrality is also desirable on pragmatic grounds. An appearance of partisanship would weaken the university’s reputation for the dispassionate pursuit of knowledge and undercut bipartisan support for it. Moreover, if UCLA picks sides in some divisive battles but not others, it opens itself up to accusations of bias and hypocrisy.² University officials will face pressure to pronounce on all global controversies, whether or not there is a clear “right” position. Besides continually alienating those who disagree, such a course would require allocating considerable resources to the task of monitoring the news, soliciting community input, and crafting informed and sensitive statements on multiple, complicated issues. Such resources might otherwise be devoted to more essential university functions.

Besides the questions of free expression and institutional neutrality, a third contentious issue concerns the boundaries of permissible protest. At times, protests aim not to express a point of view or to challenge those of others, but to prevent others from being allowed to speak—or to be heard—at all. While university members are free to vigorously contest views expressed on campus, we believe that they do not have a right to obstruct or otherwise interfere with the communication of views they dislike. Universities have a responsibility to adopt policies and procedures that define permissible forms of protest and prohibit actions that disrupt or prevent the exercise of free speech. Such rules must be consistently enforced. 

The freedom to discuss the merits of competing ideas does not mean that individuals may say whatever they wish, wherever they wish. The university may restrict expression that falsely defames a specific individual, constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, invades substantial privacy or confidentiality, or disrupts educational or research activities. As a public university, UCLA must respect the freedoms defined by the First Amendment. But it may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the university. Whenever it does restrict speech, the university must be even-handed. Administrators may not limit some—but allow other—expressive acts on the basis of their substantive content. They must allow community members to express unpopular opinions, at all times encouraging frank but civil and constructive exchanges of views.

(1) Whether—and if so how—a contentious issue relates to the university’s essential mission will itself be disputed at times; as with any general rule, this one would require university officials to exercise judgment in good faith, subject to critique by community members. In borderline cases, the presumption should be for neutrality. 
(2) After the university adopts the proposed policy of neutrality, it may nonetheless need to issue statements, for a limited time, explaining this commitment so its silence is not misinterpreted.