Marie Newhouse wrote an excellent piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

She analyzes the fundamental fracture in higher education: most universities are committed to both diversity and free speech, yet few can cope with the social consequences when these two values clash. Intellectual history may help.

Three 17th-century models have been used to mediate the inevitable tensions between diversity, open disagreement, and social cohesion:

– Thomas Hobbes: “Civil Silence” Hobbes believed open conflict on sensitive topics inevitably lead to war. His solution was state-prescribed orthodoxy, where dissenting views must be kept private to maintain order.

– John Locke: “Civil Charity” Locke argued that disagreement could be safe if citizens shared a foundation of “sincere goodwill” and civic values. This is aspirational and relies on moral education to ensure social cohesion.

– Roger Williams: “Mere Civility” The most radical approach. Williams combined extreme religious diversity with virtually unfettered speech. He maintained order not through shared love, but through minimal behavioral rules necessary for coexistence (basic courtesies, taking turns, not shouting).

The analysis argues that modern universities tried and failed using the Lockean approach. They attempted to build cohesion on vague shared values like “mutual respect and inclusion.”

Because these values are vague, administrative bureaucracies had to define them, inevitably creating rigid orthodoxies on controversial moral and political questions. When faced with an issue where campus opinion was truly divided, this system collapsed, having no mechanism other than enforced agreement to maintain peace.

“Mere Civility” as an architectural upgrade is highly consistent with our framework at the 451 Institute.

Our Take

A critic might argue that our strategy of Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) is merely a modern rebranding of Thomas Hobbes’s “Civil Silence.” Hobbes argued that because disagreement leads to “brawles and warres,” the sovereign (or administration) should prescribe orthodoxy and individuals should “bite their tongues.”

However, there is a fundamental distinction between Hobbesian Silence and 451 Neutrality:

• Hobbesian Silence: The institution chooses a side (orthodoxy) and suppresses the other to prevent friction.
• 451 Attack Surface Reduction: The institution refrains from taking any side. By maintaining Institutional Neutrality, the institution reduces the “attack surface” for conflict because it ceases to be a prize to be captured by any one faction.

We do not seek to silence the individual; we seek to silence the infrastructure. When a university administration issues a statement on a geopolitical conflict, it expands its attack surface, inviting every stakeholder to fight for control over the institution’s “moral voice”. ASR protects the Core Mission—the pursuit of truth—by ensuring the institution remains a neutral stage, not a combatant.

We Are “Williamsian” Radicals

While we are often mistaken for Hobbesians, The 451 Institute is far closer to the “Mere Civility” of Roger Williams. Williams accepted that “preaching and disputing” would “accidentally” inspire “tumults and uproars,” yet he refused to censor them.

Our framework aligns with Williams in three key ways:

1. Prioritizing the Core Mission: Williams prioritized the “soul-saving” (truth-seeking) mission over social cohesion. Similarly, we argue that an institution’s primary duty is its Core Mission (e.g., education, research), even if fulfilling that mission causes discomfort.
2. Viewpoint Diversity as Infrastructure: We view Viewpoint Diversity as an “epistemic good” that surfaces errors, much like Williams saw “disputing” as necessary for religious truth.
3. Governance via “Mere” Rules: Like Williams’s “hat honor,” our Decision Legitimacy framework focuses on how decisions are made (process, proportionality, and checks) rather than which moral outcome is achieved.