Faculty Establish Non-Attribution Policy at Harvard College To Address Self-Censorship Concerns

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted overwhelmingly to amend the Harvard College student handbook with new language explicitly prohibiting grading based on political beliefs, instructing students to prioritize academics, and enforcing a non-attribution policy for classroom speech during a Tuesday FAS meeting.

The amendment, which was proposed in a recent FAS committee report on classroom norms, passed with all but one faculty member assenting. The new language and policies will go into effect on July 1 and will be reviewed by the Faculty Council within five years.

“A Harvard College education is defined by the pursuit of knowledge,” the amendment reads. “The classroom forms the center of a Harvard College education, and students are expected to prioritize their coursework.”

History professor Maya R. Jasanoff, who co-led the FAS committee that produced the report alongside Economics professor David I. Laibson ’88, said on Tuesday that the amendment’s recentering of academics addressed “a peculiar gap” in the University’s explicit statements of its values.

“At present, there is nothing in the Handbook for Students establishing the centrality of their academic work,” Jasanoff said.

The FAS report, which was released in early February, found that many students report self-censoring during classroom discussions on controversial issues.

The committee recommended that the FAS adopt the Chatham House Rule, a non-attribution policy that allows classroom participants to share the contents of class discussions but not attribute them to speakers. The recommendation was codified by Tuesday’s vote.

At the last FAS meeting in February, professors praised the report but raised questions about whether class discussions protected under the Chatham House Rule could be exposed by congressional subpoenas — a growing threat under a Republican-led Congress.

“I’m curious about the extent to which we can actually protect students’ names and our own names from subpoenas,” History professor Alison Frank Johnson said in February.

History professor Robin Bernstein raised similar concerns, specifically pointing out that students with accommodations for disabilities can receive permission to record courses — and that these recordings could be exposed by subpoenas.

At the time, Laibson said he could not give a definitive answer but would raise the issue with the University’s Office of General Counsel.

On Tuesday, however, Jasanoff said that the committee recommended that the University adopt standard procedures for periodically deleting class recordings after students with disability accommodations finished courses and no longer required the videos.

The new handbook language also addresses concerns in the committee’s report that students write essays designed to align with their instructors’ political beliefs. The amendment stipulates that while students can be graded for the strength of their argument or factual accuracy, a “student’s status in a course, including their grades, will not be affected by their political or ethical point of view.”

The FAS report also found that students frequently prioritize their extracurricular commitments over their academics and recommended that the FAS strengthen course attendance requirements, discourage phone use in classrooms, and standardize grading across divisions.

The language aimed at recentering academic studies comes amid a wider push for greater curricular rigor and focus on academics at Harvard.

In October, the Harvard College Program in General Education updated its guidelines to standardize grading across courses and mitigate grade inflation.

Just minutes after the FAS approved the new handbook amendment, Psychology professor Fiery Cushman ’03 and Anthropology professor Jason A. Ur — who co-chairs the Gen Ed program — presented a proposal to phase out the option for students to take one of their four required Gen Ed courses on a pass-fail basis.

And later in the meeting, Statistics professor Joseph K. Blitzstein, who chairs the Quantitative Reasoning with Data Committee, presented a proposal that would similarly eliminate the pass-fail option for courses that fulfill the QRD requirement.

At the meeting, Jasanoff said the amendment addressed a widespread desire to define Harvard’s academic mission.

“We sense a hunger for meaningful statements about the value of our academic enterprise,” Jasanoff said.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.