A university has a great and unique role to play in fostering the development of social and political values in a society. The role is defined by the distinctive mission of the university ... the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.

The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or ... student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.... To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. 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 ... It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.

...[It] is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives. It cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted. In brief, it is a community which cannot resort to majority vote to reach positions on public issues.

The neutrality of the university as an institution arises ... out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints ...