STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

April 22, 2024

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Punishments Rise as Student Protests Escalate

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“Six months after the Israel-Hamas war set off a new wave of campus activism in the United States, students are still protesting in full force. And at some institutions administrators are responding to student demonstrators -- especially supporters of Palestinians -- with increasingly harsh discipline.

 

“In late March, Vanderbilt University police arrested four students and a local journalist after protesters took over the chancellor’s office, demanding the administration restore an Israeli divestment-related amendment removed from the student government ballot. Three students were subsequently expelled and others received suspensions or disciplinary probation.

 

“Less than two weeks later in California, 20 students were arrested at Pomona College -- and some have since been suspended --after masked protesters from the Pomona Divest from Apartheid coalition stormed the president’s office and allegedly hurled a racial slur at an administrator....

 

“‘The outside pressures are real, larger than they’ve been in my memory and are going to continue to build,’ said Tom Ginsburg, a law professor at the University of Chicago and faculty director of the university’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. He noted that incidents of students shouting down campus speakers with whom they disagree in recent years is part of the larger context.

 

“‘That’s been building and it’s changed the academic culture in a bad way,’ Ginsburg said. ‘We’re seeing some backlash against that and university leaders are caught in the middle.’ …

 

Full article at Inside Higher Ed

 

Universities Must Be Freed from the Safe Space Bureaucrats

 

Excerpts:

 

“Recent events have demonstrated the need to re-establish free inquiry, free speech and academic freedom at universities throughout North America. But current efforts by academic administrators to remedy the situation are often missing the point. You cannot restore free speech by creating further restrictions on what speech is appropriate, and by focusing on what sanctions may be appropriate and when.

 

“The United States has a legal system that not only enshrines free speech, but creates a strong barrier against the success of false or misleading accusations. Due process and evidentiary hearings with the right to confront accusers are central features of legal proceedings, that, while they may make it difficult for alleged victims to bring suits to seek the justice they believe they deserve, also protect the innocent. As English jurist William Blackstone famously put it, ‘It is better that 10 guilty persons should escape than one innocent suffer.’

 

“University tribunals are famously not law courts, but that does not imply they shouldn’t uphold high legal bars when it comes to complaints about conduct. Rather, given that one of the purposes of higher education is to encourage intellectual discomfort as a means to motivate thinking and reflection, universities should be extremely hesitant to take any inhibitory actions at all. Even more so because of the recent pressure, in the skewed notion of what constitutes a safe environment, to adjudicate offenses that should never have required adjudication at all....

 

“There is no place for generic ‘safe spaces’ for students who, for one reason or another, feel victimized without them. Nor should students feel that they should control the educational direction of the institution they are attending. If they find the environment not conducive to what they are seeking in their education, they are free to work with faculty to try and improve it. But the final decisions on curricular issues should not be theirs, and if they are not satisfied, they are free to study elsewhere. Faculty should never be concerned about possible retribution for raising controversial issues within the classroom or while mentoring students.  Moreover, and perhaps most important, human resources, DEI and Title IX offices (which monitor compliance with U.S. prohibitions on sex-based discrimination in federally-funded education programs) should have no place in governing what faculty say in the classroom or think outside of it....”

Full op-ed by Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krauss at National Post

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Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya’s Recent Lecture at MIT on How the Government, Silicon Valley and Even Stanford Had Censored Him

 

Description of the Lecture:

 

“Stanford University medical school professor and epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya, a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration on pandemic response, spoke at MIT on April 4, 2024. Dr. Bhattacharya spoke of, among other issues, the censorship his research and commentary faced under pressure from the U.S. government, which later became the subject of a case recently argued at the Supreme Court. Dr. Bhattacharya was hosted by the MIT Students for Open Inquiry, with additional support provided by the MIT Free Speech Alliance.”

 

Full lecture including detailed slides now posted at YouTube

 

See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and where we have asked, among other things, “How did it come about that Stanford has taken the legal position, in its own filings before the U.S. Supreme Court and elsewhere, that it is somehow ok for non-faculty members at Stanford, or anyone for that matter, to play a role in censoring Stanford's own faculty members and, still worse, in areas that are within the recognized expertise of those faculty members?”

 

With State Bans on DEI, Some Universities Find a Workaround: Rebranding

 

Excerpt (link in the original):

 

“At the University of Tennessee, the campus D.E.I. program is now called the Division of Access and Engagement.

 

“Louisiana State University also rebranded its diversity office after Jeff Landry, a Trump-backed Republican, was elected governor last fall. Its Division of Inclusion, Civil Rights and Title IX is now called the Division of Engagement, Civil Rights and Title IX.

 

“And at the University of Oklahoma, the diversity office is now the Division of Access and Opportunity.

 

“In what appears to be an effort to placate or, even head fake, opponents of diversity and equity programs, university officials are relaunching their D.E.I. offices under different names, changing the titles of officials, and rewriting requirements to eliminate words like “diversity” and “equity.” In some cases, only the words have changed....”

 

Full article at NY Times

 

Other Articles of Interest 

 

Stanford Daily Suggests Specific Priorities for Incoming President Jon Levin

Full editorial at Stanford Daily

 

USC Cancels Valedictorian’s Speech After Jewish Groups Object

Full article at NY Times

 

Quinnipiac Law Scholarship Excludes Heterosexual Males, Faces Title IX Complaint

Full article at College Fix

 

Two-Thirds of U.S. Colleges and Universities Require DEI Classes to Graduate

Full article at NY Post

 

A Tale of Two Protests: UVA v. Berkeley Law

Full op-ed by David Lat at Substack. See also “No, the Berkeley Law Student Didn’t Have a First Amendment Right to Interrupt the Dean’s Backyard Party” at FIRE’s website

 

Annual Provosts’ Survey Shows Need for AI Policies, Worries Over Campus Speech

Full article at Inside Higher Ed

 

Introducing Harvard’s Values Statement

Full article at Harvard Crimson

 

Why I’m Leaving Clark University

Full article at WSJ

 

Samples of Current Activities at Stanford

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Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. 

 

Gossiping Can Give You an Edge

 

AI Improves Accuracy of Skin Cancer Diagnoses in Stanford Medicine-Led Study

 

‘Geoeconomics’ Explains How Countries Flex Their Financial Muscles

 

Two Key Brain Systems Are Central to Psychosis, Stanford Medicine-led Study Finds