Like many other college presidents, I have often been called on to speak out, or have been criticized for not speaking out, on some issue of public moment. This has led me to wrestle mightily with the question of whether "the university," in some form, should make its voice heard on issues of great public importance or concern.

What does it mean for "the university" to take a stand? As universities become increasingly complex, with multiple purposes and very diverse memberships, how and when can one person claim to speak for the whole institution?

Few would deny that faculty members and students, as individuals, have the right to say whatever they wish -- signing petitions, writing op-eds, making speeches. Such statements are inevitably interpreted by some irritated readers as implicating the whole university, but most people readily understand the distinction between the views of an individual faculty member and a formal statement by the institution. The complications arise when those of us who have responsibility for the leadership of the institution as a whole speak out about controversial subjects.

We may claim that we do so only as individuals, that we don't abnegate our individual right to free speech by taking the job of president. Yet such a stance is not easily sustained in practice. Anything a president says about controversial issues while in office can be taken as an official statement. It's very hard for observers to separate the person from the position.

Furthermore, if an officer takes a substantive stand on a thorny topic, those on the campus who hold the opposite point of view may be less likely to speak out -- especially if they lack power and job security -- even if the senior officer has no intention of silencing anyone. In this way, if a university leader takes a position that he or she believes to be in the public interest, that action unintentionally can create a potential chilling effect on the campus and thwart the robust exchange of ideas.

Must university presidents therefore be silent on all controversial public issues? Many people would defend that position. They would argue that no one can legitimately speak "for the university," and that our best course of action is to focus on ensuring the unabated free play of argument and counterargument among others.

That stance has merit, but it neglects the positive potential of using the "bully pulpit" of a university presidency. Such a view also ignores the fact that some major issues affecting society also have significant implications for universities. In such cases, silence may be dangerous, since the field will be left to those who understand little about higher education.

Therefore, I find it useful to distinguish three different kinds of issues -- although they are often blurred in practice -- for a president trying to decide when and how to speak out. They present successive degrees of difficulty.

The easiest cases are those where a topic has clear relevance to the other public purposes of the university. Few would deny that the president ought to make his or her voice heard when the basic goals of the university are at stake: support for research, financial aid that makes education more accessible, academic freedom. People on and off campus may not agree about the specific comments that the president should make, but the connection to the university's well-being is undeniable.

More difficult are cases where the university has an interest but the connection is less clear-cut -- for example, drug use, gun control, or health care. We cannot function well if people pack heat in the classrooms or regularly hold up our students. That became very clear to me a few years ago when a disgruntled ex-employee walked into my office and held my secretaries hostage at gunpoint. University medical centers depend heavily on policy decisions about the type of services they should provide, who should receive them, and how they should be paid for. However, people who live and work on our campuses are likely to hold widely differing views as citizens on such matters. As a result, a president should use care in deciding whether and how to speak out on those sorts of issues.

Finally, there are issues like divestment from South Africa, support for the government of Israel or the rights of Palestinians, perspectives on war in Iraq, corporate ethics, sweatshops, and boycotts. People seriously disagree about whether the university should become involved in such matters at all. To some, these issues are so tenuously connected with the fortunes of the university, and the range of political disagreement is so broad, that no good case can be made for bringing the university formally into the discussion. For others, the issues have such profound consequences for our society that it seems imperative for a respected institution -- and, by implication, its leaders -- to try to influence the outcome. It is in those areas that presidents must determine their course of action very deliberately, realizing that a large contingent of those who care about the university will criticize whatever presidents do -- including doing nothing.

Especially in those vexed third-order cases, a president might well want to distinguish between speaking out as an individual and speaking for the university. Although I have already noted that it is difficult to sustain such a distinction in practice, it is worth trying in certain instances.

For example, I recently addressed a conference on corporate ethics on the campus and took a strong stand that boards of directors should be actively involved in ensuring accountability and trustworthiness in the corporations that they lead. Because of my years as a corporate board member and my training in political and ethical philosophy, I considered myself to be speaking as a corporate director and an ethicist, rather than making an official statement for Duke University -- and that is how I believe my audience heard my remarks. Nonetheless, the fact that I am president of Duke was the reason I was asked to speak to the group, and I am sure that penumbra colored what they heard.

Similarly, I have regularly expressed my general concern about sweatshops. But it could be said that I am speaking "for the university" when, only after due procedures and consultation, decisions were made that Duke would join the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium, and I announced those decisions. Thus, I draw a salient distinction between speaking out and making policy, between expressing an opinion and taking steps that commit the university as a whole to particular types of actions. In such cases, I might be inclined to note this distinction and try to make clear which type of statement is on the table, even as I realize that such distinctions are difficult for others to acknowledge.

Whenever I must decide when and how to speak out, I consider a few key questions. They don't yield easy answers, but they represent the kinds of filters that I think presidents should employ:

How important is the moral principle involved? Are human rights and liberties at stake?

How clear-cut are the moral issues -- are there strong moral arguments on both sides of a dilemma, or is the preponderance of moral argument in favor of one side?

How close to the university is the issue at stake, and how much involvement does it have in the question?

Am I called upon by other thoughtful and engaged people in the university to exercise judgment and take a stand on this issue, or rather am I going out looking for dragons to slay?

Do I have any special competence or experience that might give more credibility to the expression of opinion and make it more likely to be sound? It can sometimes also be relevant for a president to assess how many people on the campus would agree with a stand that he or she might take and proceed if there is considerable sentiment in favor of that perspective. Yet in some situations a president may be bound in conscience to speak out, even if most people on the campus take the opposite view.

In fact, quite a few people these days deplore the idea that university presidents have become a bunch of wimps, concerned only with raising money and keeping the peace -- pale shadows of the giants who walked the earth in ages past, whom an entire society revered as moral arbiters. I have no desire to be a wimp, but also no illusions about becoming widely recognized as a moral arbiter even if I wanted to. That's simply not the way things work in our society of sound bites and talk shows, a society that no longer easily accords moral leadership to anybody in whatever post.

However, I find it hard to accept the viewpoint that many of my colleagues in university presidencies would affirm: that the only place we can stand comfortably as presidents is on some neutral middle ground, that our only role is to make sure freedom of speech is not impaired for others and that both sides are heard. Some of my colleagues believe, as an argument for neutrality, that both sides in contentious issues are attempting to capture the "moral authority" of the university. But if that "moral authority" is never used by those who can speak for the university, then in what sense is there any moral authority at all? Moral authority is eroded and devalued if it is used too often; but, if it is never used, it becomes moribund.

I do sometimes feel morally bound to speak out as president of Duke. And I am well aware that the authority of my office lends weight to what I say. My responsibility, I would argue, is neither to be silent nor to chime in on every possible occasion, but to think very carefully about how I use that kind of weight, and never to do so lightly.

This article originally appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education.