<p>Against the backdrop of intensifying normative conflict in universities, this article asks what it means for the university to serve as a critical institution. It argues that the two contested ideas of viewpoint diversity and normative neutrality are central to that role. Drawing on post-positivist critiques of neutrality and agonistic democratic theory, the article contends that the university’s function is not to resolve normative conflict but to sustain it as a condition for pluralism and critical engagement. Diversity is thus reframed not so much as a demand of social justice, but as the institutionalization of contestation among competing truth claims. Normative neutrality—understood as a principled refusal to endorse any single worldview—is presented as a necessary condition for maintaining dissent and avoiding ideological closure. Together, these concepts serve as institutional mechanisms for preserving the university as an agonistic space—one in which contestation, dissent, and intellectual plurality protect against the emergence of an academic monoculture, where critical engagement is stifled by homogeneity.</p>