It’s the Anniversary of October 7. Will College Presidents Say Anything?

On October 7, 2023, Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, president of Oakland University, in Michigan, issued a statement expressing her horror at the killing and kidnapping of civilians in Israel by Hamas fighters. Leaders of many other colleges released similar comments over the next several days. Pescovitz doesn’t intend to send another campuswide message on Monday, the anniversary of the attack that started the war in Gaza. She doesn’t see the need. But she expects that some presidents who put statements out last October will stay mum this year for a different reason: Their colleges or systems have adopted a position of institutional neutrality, whereby administrators won’t speak out on social or political issues that don’t directly affect their campuses.