After reading the entire essay (including the external links with which Gelman says he now agrees), I understood the point to be that it's OK for administrators

After reading the entire essay (including the external links with which Gelman says he now agrees), I understood the point to be that it's OK for administrators to express opinions in a personal capacity, but it's not and should not be part of their job. See Steven Pinker's twitter post (linked to by Gelman) and Michael Baily's essay (linked to by Pinker): https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1716098101830676854 https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/1716098101830676854 https://hxstem.substack.com/p/kalvenizing-northwestern-university https://hxstem.substack.com/p/kalvenizing-northwestern-unive... I added quotes around "shut up and do their job" in the root comment to make it clear that those are Pinker's words, not mine.