What We Might Have Discussed
G K Chesterton | Keep Your Mouth Shut: Learning from academia, Zuckerberg doublespeak, Basecamp’s ‘no political speech’ fiasco.
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, “Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good—” At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their un-mediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.
| G K Chesterton, Heretics
[Emphasis mine.]
Keep Your Mouth Shut
Learning from academia.
A great deal of discourse these days about what institutions — and their staff and executives — should do regarding institutional speech.
In Corporate Leaders Need to Keep Their Mouths Shut, Anthony J. Casey, Tom Ginsburg make a compelling case for institutional neutrality, which is this:
Keep your mouth shut.
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Increasingly, universities have adopted neutrality policies to recommit to their core mission. So can corporations. The key is committing to institutional neutrality, which requires leaders to stay silent on social and political issues that do not directly affect their operations. This means reining in corporate political statements — progressive and conservative — as well as the political activity of chief executives like Elon Musk and political flip-flops by companies like Meta. Our own university, the University of Chicago, committed to this ideal in 1899 and restated that commitment in the seminal Kalven Report of 1967. This has freed individuals in our community to express their own opinions and ideas in lively debate.
They argue that corporations, not just educational institutions, should do the same:
While some other corporate leaders may be enjoying the favor they have found in taking sides, they would be wise to heed the lesson of Ivy League schools that discovered the benefits of institutional neutrality a little too late. These corporations would benefit from adopting a formal policy that guides their leaders on when, if ever, they may speak out.
They say there are two foundational components [emphasis mine]:
First, there must be a commitment by the corporation and its leaders to refrain from speaking. This is valuable because it allows one to assert that silence is a considered (and consistent) policy. In fact, institutional silence should be the default assumption.
[…]
The decision to speak on political issues should be part of a deliberate corporate governance policy.
Which leads to the second maxim, which is perhaps the best takeaway:
There must be a clearly stated — and ideally, narrow — exception for statements that are necessary to maintain or defend the company’s ability to operate. Boards should think about exactly which types of circumstances warrant an exception and then leave it to the judgment of management about how to apply the policy. One could imagine a company saying, “It is our policy that Best Widget Inc. will not make institutional statements on political matters that do not directly affect our ability to operate. We influence society through producing the best widgets.” This would allow speech on widget regulation, as well as on policies implicating the business’s direct relationships with employees and customers. But it would not include a corporate policy extrinsic to its business interests.
So, a car maker’s CEO might make political statements regarding tariffs, which could have a devastating impact on its operations. But that same CEO would be well-served to hold their opinions about wildfire management in California.
I was struck by this observation:
In both the business and university contexts, silence often takes courage and a commitment to institutional modesty. For a corporation, a general policy of silence can remind stakeholders that the business of the business is, well, business.
Yes, courage. The courage to shut the hell up, and to stick to it.
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Zuckerberg doublespeak.
Mark Zuckerberg, King Log at Meta, moved to dramatically change who can use Meta’s platforms, and now, what they can get out there, since he’s dropped all sorts of fact checking. But internally, he’s complaining about leaks from staff to media about what he’s saying to the staff about these policy changes: in essence, he wants staff to shut up.
As Mike Isaac reported, he’s deadly serious:
Mr. Zuckerberg said the meeting changes were intentional because of an increasing number of leaks in recent years.
“I think there are a bunch of things that are value destroying that I’m not going to talk about,” he said, referring to the types of questions that have become public. “Maybe it’s the nature of running a company of this scale. But it’s a little bit of a bummer.”
After the meeting, Meta sent an internal message saying that employees would be terminated if they talked to the media, two people who received the memo said.
Along with that, in a recent town hall video call, he had the chat room disabled, so attendees could no longer side chat in real time. He’s also dropped the former standard where the questions for the town hall would be submitted by staff. He doesn’t care what they want to hear about.
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Remember Basecamp’s ‘no political speech’ fiasco?
Back in 2021, Basecamp CEO Jason Fried walked into a deep internal political sinkhole, one that expanded into an external mess with its user community and the greater tech sphere.
As reported by Verge:
On April 26th, Basecamp founder and CEO Jason Fried posted on his blog about some policy changes that would be happening at the company, which makes team collaboration software. One policy stuck out to many on the internet — the company would no longer be allowing its employees to have discussions about society or politics on its internal account.
What followed was a tidal wave of public outcry, employees speaking out against the policies (and talking about what led to them), several revisions of the blog post, and, finally, almost a third of the company’s employees deciding to accept buyouts and leave.
Fried did apologize:
In a new blog post, Basecamp CEO Jason Fried apologized after the “policy changes” he announced last week ultimately led to a third of the company’s workforce opting to leave.
“Last week was terrible. We started with policy changes that felt simple, reasonable, and principled, and it blew things up culturally in ways we never anticipated,” Fried wrote. “David and I completely own the consequences, and we’re sorry. We have a lot to learn and reflect on, and we will.”
A few working hypotheses drawn from these cherry-picked examples and missteps:
Maybe organizations should adopt institutional neutrality, and only make political corporate statements when ‘necessary to maintain or defend the company’s ability to operate’. Then they can't be made tools of interest groups.
That’s doesn’t mean those organizations should demand staff remain silent on political issues. On the contrary: when organizations have an avowed neutrality, its members enjoy greater freedom to engage in political speech.
And corporations (including other sorts of institutions) must allow internal speech to thrive, even when it makes executives and owners uncomfortable.
There is a huge gulf between corporate speech intended to influence government policy, and the internal speech between corporate managers and their managees. While some would like to conflate these two kinds of speech that is bad policy.
In other words, companies aren’t people, and people aren’t companies.
Great summary of this issue and I agree with the idea that corporations should get out of political debate. It's a distraction that tends to snowball and can even turn into a quagmire that drags down the very thing the company intended to promote.
But it immediately gets muddy. Companies have increasingly marketed specifically to the gay community because gays and lesbians tend to be urban couples with two incomes and no kids. Cha-ching. But in the US, in 2025, marketing to the gay community is a political statement because this society insists that it is, even though a corporation may be doing it for purely profit-related reasons which can be objectively determined. If a company sees that black America is an untertapped market for their products they would be objectively wise to increase the number of black people in marketing and product development, particularly in high positions in the hierarchy. The black market is different than the white market in some respects because the black experience is different than the white experience. White people trying to design for that market, that experience, face a real risk of failing spectacularly and embarrassingly. So the company should specifically target black hiring - the dreaded DEI, the political statement du jour - but it's purely profit-driven.
I remain with the position you've presented - it is better to steer clear of politics unrelated to the success of the company. But as long as corporations are embedded in a society that WANTS to shove corporations into political situations - even when they are not - it's going to be quite the struggle.