It has been a month since the Bi-Co News reported on the official silence of Bryn Mawr’s President, Wendy Cadge. While other college and university presidents have spoken out regarding the Trump administration’s attack on higher education and international students, President Cadge has maintained her silence. President Cadge’s refusal to publicly stand up for Bryn Mawr’s values in the face of these wider attacks on higher education, coupled with the President’s recent decision to publicly condemn protesting students, paint a troubling portrait.
President Cadge began her presidency by declaring that she wasn’t going to be making public statements. In her August 2024 Town Hall she remarked: “…in conversation with the senior staff and the leadership of the Board of Trustees, we have decided that the College will not be making public statements this year. We are an educational institution whose mission is to educate and help all of us learn about these and other topics, and that is where we will be focusing our time and attention this year—on the learning.” Given these remarks, it isn’t clear what President Cadge takes to justify her stance on public statements. The rationale offered here isn’t the argument for institutional neutrality offered in the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report. According to the Kalven Report, institutional neutrality is ultimately justified as way to support an atmosphere of critical inquiry and dissent which is central to the mission of higher education. Moreover, even the authors of the Kalven Report believe that institutional neutrality is consistent with administrators’ speaking out when universities’ fundamental missions are being attacked; in fact, under these conditions, institutions have a moral obligation to speak out.
During these unprecedented times, when Bryn Mawr’s mission has repeatedly come under attack, President Cadge’s silence has led to a good deal of confusion and time spent trying to discern her commitments through indirect signs and symbols. On the one hand, President Cadge recently joined hundreds of other college and university presidents in signing a letter protesting “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education” published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities on April 22, and she joined other local college and university presidents in outlining the potential implications of proposed endowment tax increases on financial aid in an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer. On the other hand, President Cadge failed to join Swarthmore and Haverford in signing an amicus brief challenging the visa revocations and detentions of international students. How should we interpret the failure to sign this amicus brief? Is the College indifferent to the plight of our international students and faculty? Or is the failure to join the other Tri-Co presidents in signing this brief simply due to President Cadge being away from campus or occupied with other matters when the request came in? Given her overarching public silence on threats to higher education and international students, we don’t know where the College stands.
President Cadge’s only official public statement, to date, on a vexed social matter was her recent condemnation of student protesters in Goodhart Hall. It is remarkable that President Cadge’s first official statement of public condemnation would target Bryn Mawr undergraduates, rather than, say, the detention of a Tufts University student for writing an article in a student newspaper. And this message of condemnation has been given a prime spot on the President’s Office Messages & Writings, on the same page as the February President’s Message: Leading with Love, Together.
What troubled me about President Cadge’s public attack on Bryn Mawr students was, first, that it was so public. I do not understand why the condemnation of Bryn Mawr students needed to be broadcast to the entire world from the President’s webpage. Perhaps the argument could be made that since the protesters themselves uploaded video of the protest to Instagram, this forced the College to publicly take a stand.
But this brings me to my second worry: the President stated that Bryn Mawr students created a “…frightening environment with potential dangers to others’ hearing and safety.” This public characterization of the protest on the very day the incident occurred strikes me as rash and dangerous. President Cadge is clearly taking a strong stand against the protesters’ activities. Did she have all the information she needed to take this position? Were the protesting students actually asked to leave the event (as is required according to the relevant policy)? Did the students get to share their side of the story before the President’s public condemnation? Can the students expect due process protections in future Dean’s Panels, given the President’s specific characterization of the students’ activities and her very public condemnation? Can we reasonably predict how hostile outside forces might react to the President’s public characterization of our students as frightening and potentially dangerous? Even if we grant that the President was forced to quickly issue a public statement, couldn’t she have simply stated that there was an incident at Goodhart that the College is actively investigating and all those found to have violated campus policies will face disciplinary actions, according to the procedures outlined in the student handbook? Why did President Cadge feel the need to publicly prejudge and condemn Bryn Mawr students?
Finally, the President’s statement calls on students, faculty and staff to anonymously report anyone suspected of participating in the protest, using an online reporting form. Not only does this request foster and entrench a hostile and suspicious atmosphere on campus, but this request also puts individuals at risk: President Cadge is encouraging the creation of a digital footprint which includes names of specific community members, with no due process protections or any assurances about how this information might be used or stored.
I’m sure many students, staff, and faculty will object to my remarks. These are frightening times, and we all have much to lose should Bryn Mawr College get directly caught up in the zeitgeist wreaking havoc on colleges and universities all over the country. Bryn Mawr could courageously stand up for our values and become a target. This is a risk. But we could also become a target by hunkering down and publicly lashing out at our students. There is risk here too. In addition to the risk from external hostile forces that we face no matter what we do, we risk putting our protesting students in harm’s way and failing in our responsibilities to them. Moreover, our current stance also risks the possibility that we will start to lose track of our values and forget what our mission implies about the importance of dissent.
Macalester Bell
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Bryn Mawr College
