The Key — Open Expression at Penn: Could “Temporary” Become Permanent?
In June 2024, Penn introduced temporary guidelines governing campus events and demonstrations, issued directly from the President's Office. The changes followed campus protests and recommendations from the Faculty Senate, the Task Force on Antisemitism, and the Presidential Commission on Countering Hate and Building Community to revisit and clarify Penn’s existing guidelines.
Almost two years later, these “temporary” guidelines are still in place. Although Penn has a formal process for permanently amending open expression policies that requires community review and revisions by the Community on Open Expression (COE) before the document is finalized, those steps haven’t occurred. Instead, the temporary guidelines have effectively bypassed the university’s own procedures.
This is not a matter of process for its own sake. Rules governing speech and protest draw legitimacy not only from their substance but from how they were created. When temporary restrictions persist without transparency, promised community review, or a clear endpoint, they begin to look less like an interim response and more like a new baseline.
Universities committed to academic excellence regulate conduct, not ideas. Time, place, and manner restrictions can be appropriate — but only when they are tailored to the school’s academic mission, transparent, and balanced with the need for robust freedom of expression in pursuit of truth.
Safeguarding open expression is essential to academic excellence. A university cannot fulfill its mission unless its community feels free to speak openly, disagree respectfully, and learn from one another. When the processes used to govern expression fail to follow Penn’s own rules, trust erodes alongside the conditions that sustain learning and inquiry.
The process promised, then deferred
Penn’s Guidelines on Open Expression, and historical precedent, lay out a clear process for revising speech, protest, and assembly rules. Permanent changes are supposed to be developed by the Committee on Open Expression (COE), a standing body also charged with interpreting the Guidelines and recommending amendments. Then, changes are to be presented to the community at an open hearing before the COE makes necessary revisions, votes on the final version, and presents it to the University Council, a governance forum of faculty, staff, and students. Finally, the proposed changes are to be forwarded to the president.
When Penn announced the Temporary Standards and Procedures for Campus Events and Demonstrations in June 2024, it explicitly reaffirmed this framework. The administration described the standards as temporary and pledged that any permanent changes would follow the same process last used in 1989.
Since then, a lot has happened behind the scenes and very little in public view. A new Task Force was convened. According to the Provost, the Task Force shared preliminary recommendations with the COE and University Council in February 2025. The administration has said it has continued to refine those recommendations since then.
What has not occurred is just as important. No draft revisions to the Guidelines have been publicly released. No open hearings have been held, despite being required by Penn’s own policies. The Task Force’s report has not been shared with the community. And well into the 2025–2026 academic year, the COE has not been publicly constituted.
The result is a growing gap between the process Penn promised and the one it has followed, leaving temporary restrictions in place without the transparent, faculty-led review the university’s rules require.
Rebuilding open expression the right way
Penn’s own policies require the COE to review and approve final recommended changes before they are sent forward, and they require an open hearing before they are adopted. Neither step has occurred, at least not to public knowledge, during the 2025–2026 academic year. Until they do, Penn risks further alienating its community and deepening skepticism about how speech is governed on campus.
Even before the temporary policy was in place, Penn’s struggles with open expression were already visible. In the Spring 2024 Penn Senior Survey, 45% of respondents said they did not feel free to express their political beliefs on campus, and 67% reported fearing unfair judgment for voicing opinions on controversial topics.
A campus shaped by self-censorship and apprehension is not conducive to learning, growth, or the pursuit of truth. Nor is one defined by orthodoxy in thinking and speech. Reversing this culture requires confidence and understanding of not only the substance of Penn’s open expression policies but also the processes used to create them.
For open expression policies to foster an environment of excellence in learning and teaching, they must be transparent, deliberative, and their process of creation trusted by the community they govern. When Penn departs from its own stated procedures, it undermines trust. Regardless of where the final rules land, a process the community views as opaque and illegitimate will chill expression, weakening the conditions that academic excellence requires.
The Almanac
Curated highlights from this week’s Penn news
EEOC vs. Penn dispute escalates as EEOC presses subpoena enforcement
The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) again urged the court to enforce its subpoena requesting contact information for Penn’s Jewish employees. The agency argues Penn mounted “an intensive and relentless public relations campaign against the EEOC” instead of complying.
Penn’s response last week argued the subpoena was overly broad and unduly burdensome and that the school had already put forth a fair alternative: alert all employees of the case and provide a direct way to contact the EEOC. The EEOC rejected that proposal as “unworkable.”
So what? The EEOC says funneling reporting requests through employers “risk[s] creating confusion, fear, and mistrust among recipients.” Yet many Penn employees have expressed fear that enforcement of the subpoena would create a similar situation with mistrust, fear, and confusion in the Penn community, as reflected in employee actions to intervene and support Penn’s position.
Penn schools and centers face 4% budget cuts for FY2027
Yesterday, Penn directed schools and centers to cut budgets by 4% for FY2027, which begins this July. Provost John Jackson Jr. and Executive Vice President Mark Dingfield framed the directive as a response to uncertainty about federal policy and its potential impacts.
Last year, Penn cut non-compensation expenses by 5% and decreased graduate student enrollment to help the university manage federal funding risk. Penn also froze staff hiring and mid-year salary adjustments, measures that will continue through FY2027.
As operational costs at Penn continue to rise and the school prepares for a new endowment tax, changes to student loans, and more potential limitations on federal funding, this proactive cost-cutting approach aims to keep university operations running smoothly.
So what? Penn’s leadership says the university is on stronger financial footing than expected, avoiding large layoffs or program cuts through measured, across-the-board reductions. But as new pressures mount, it remains to be seen whether these incremental cuts are a sustainable long-term strategy.
Cornell receives $372M, its largest-ever gift, to strengthen engineering
The gift includes $250 million for the creation of the Duffield Legacy Fund to support long-term strategic initiatives and $50 million to advance “educational excellence” within the engineering school.
So what? As public funding for private research universities grows less predictable, gifts of this scale are becoming increasingly important to sustaining academic excellence and innovation. Duffield’s donation gives Cornell substantial flexibility to invest in emerging technologies, faculty, and programs without relying on uncertain federal dollars. For Penn, the lesson is clear: protecting academic excellence in a shifting funding environment will increasingly hinge on winning the same level of alumni confidence and long-term support.
Penn Vet builds nearly $100M state-funded research campus in Chester County
Penn Vet is expanding its Chester County location with a new $94 million laboratory facility. The site already hosts Penn’s large animal hospital, and the new campus will house the Pennsylvania Equine Toxicology Research Laboratory (PETRL) and the Pennsylvania Animal Diagnostic Laboratory System (PADLS).
The new construction is fully state-funded. Both PETRL and PADLS are state-funded programs focused on disease surveillance, food safety, and animal and human health. The programs operate as joint efforts among Penn, Penn State, and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
So what? This expansion underscores the importance of Penn’s relationship with Pennsylvania, which supports research, public health, and infrastructure projects. As federal research dollars grow more uncertain, state-backed collaborations offer Penn a valuable and often underappreciated path to sustaining innovation and public impact.
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