Boston University removed Pride flags that were displayed in campus buildings this month, angering professors who believe school leaders may be suppressing expression because they fear the Trump administration.
University officials have suggested the displays could imply the school endorses them, violating its pledge to be evenhanded with its standards around speech.
The university’s decision is a new skirmish in academia about campus expression, and it comes after more schools across the country embraced so-called neutrality policies, curbing the views they express publicly. Universities have also imposed more stringent limits on protests in the years since demonstrations over the war in Gaza rocked campuses.
But the debate in Boston involves flags, not encampments. According to the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, the school temporarily removed at least three Pride flags, including one belonging to the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. That one was taken down and folded neatly during spring break.
Elsewhere on campus, Nathan Phillips, a physiological ecologist, said workers had twice taken down the flag he displayed in his office overlooking Commonwealth Avenue.
“I don’t think that any passerby that would glance up and happen to see this Pride flag in this random fourth-floor window would somehow think, ‘Oh, that’s B.U.’s official position,’” he said in an interview, adding, “I think it would be reasonable to think, ‘Oh, there’s a person who is up there that is expressing that viewpoint.”
The First Amendment’s speech protections on their own do not apply at the private university, giving campus leaders more authority than some of their counterparts to determine what may be displayed on school property.
The university said in a statement that it “upholds a content-neutral policy” around campus expression and that “outward-facing signage moves speech from an individual perspective to an institutional perspective.”
Some professors nevertheless contend that the university unevenly enforces its policies since it has left undisturbed, for example, a flag celebrating Seattle’s National Hockey League franchise.
Susanne Sreedhar, the director of the women’s studies program, noted that the university acted weeks after a Trump administration directive led to the removal of a Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument in Manhattan.
“I would have thought they did not want to take any action which would associate them with that kind of homophobic response,” said Dr. Sreedhar, who said her program had rebuffed a university request last year to remove the flag. “But they did.”
The university said in its statement that “the suggestion that the university is singling out specific communities with this policy is untrue.” It added that officials were “committed to ensuring B.U. is an inclusive, welcoming and supportive place for the LGBTQIA+ community and for all people.”
Generations of students and professors alike have argued that American universities should be hubs of open debate and expression, though some critics of academia argue that campuses had lately grown far too intolerant.
Boston University has said it has “a responsibility to allow and safeguard the airing of the full spectrum of opinions on its campuses and to create an environment where ideas can be freely expressed and challenged.”
University policy prohibits “unattended placards, banners or other signs,” unless they are displayed at “a location that has been approved for posting.”
Dr. Phillips suggested that the university may be acting beyond the scope of its rules because he said he believed the policy applied to events. And other critics warned that although the First Amendment is not directly enforceable at the university, the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act bans “threats, intimidation or coercion” to interfere with a person’s federal or state rights.
In a letter last week to the university’s president, Dr. Melissa L. Gilliam, the co-presidents of the campus’s A.A.U.P. chapter urged an end to “selectively targeting speech that the Trump administration does not like.” The co-presidents, Mary Battenfeld and Joseph Harris, said Monday that Dr. Gilliam had not responded to the letter.
But there is some skepticism that White House worries fueled the university’s decision.
“This is not going to save Boston University if Trump decides to go after us,” Dr. Sreedhar said, noting that her program was in the process of developing an undergraduate major.
The university has grappled with the question of signage for decades and lost a legal battle in the 1980s over whether students could hang banners urging divestment from Israel. Other schools have faced similar debates.
The Harvard Crimson reported this month that Harvard officials, working not far across the Charles River from Boston University, had rewritten their guidance to allow the public display of signs from private areas, such as offices. Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, whose offerings include the university’s undergraduate programs, had drawn criticism last year over the forced removal of a Black Lives Matter display that could be seen from the outside.
Dr. Phillips and Dr. Sreedhar said Monday that the Pride flags had gone on display again. So far, they said, they had gone untouched.
Dr. Sreedhar added that her program had bought other Pride flags in case university officials confiscate theirs.
“We have a nice stockpile,” she said.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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