STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

December 8, 2025

 

Now Is the Time to Fix the Office of Community Standards

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“Stanford has a new leadership team, so now is the time to address a years’ long problem at the Office of Community Standards (OCS) that has been an affront to the core values of our University for at least 15 years. To her credit, Provost Jenny Martinez has already acted aggressively, recently appointing law professor Larry Marshall as Interim Director at OCS. Marshall has the requisite background, and skill sets to bring about needed changes. Members of both the undergraduate and graduate senate have also taken up the cause this school year.

 

“In 2011, two other alumni and I represented three students in a cheating case processed through what was then Stanford’s Judicial Affairs Office (JAO; now known as the OCS).

 

“All of our three clients were acquitted in November 2011. As their representatives, all of whom have substantial administrative law experience, we were appalled at the inability of JAO employees to follow the University’s Judicial Charter and provide any semblance of a fair hearing.

 

“Our group of alumni volunteered to work with the JAO to improve their systems. They referred the matter to the Office of the General Counsel headed, then and now, led by Debra Zumwalt. The attorney assigned to work with us said that General Counsel’s Office would be pleased to do so if we all started with the same predicate which she described as: ‘This is a discipline system designed to correct bad behavior.’

 

“The problem with her predicate is that it reflects a presumption of guilt of anyone that goes into the system. Our three students were all acquitted. Why were they in what the University referred to then, and even oftentimes now, as a ‘discipline system’?

 

“We were so troubled by the despicable treatment of the students, and this presumption of guilt that permeated the processing of these cases, that we prepared a 62-page, single spaced Case Study of that case identifying 99 distinct errors, mistakes or violation of student rights in the course of OCS’s handling of the matter.

 

“Only when it became clear that administrators and others had no interest in improving the system, did we provide the Case Study to The Stanford Daily, 18 months after we first started our efforts to make that process fair. The Daily highlighted the Case Study in a front-page story on May 13, 2013. 

 

“We took the undisputed facts of that Case Study to every level of the University, including the Provost and the President, as well as select Trustees. With no interest from anyone, we issued our second report entitled: 2013 Internal Review of Stanford University’s Office of Judicial Affairs. Both reports are still online....

 

“In the 2021-22 school year, Stanford student Katie Meyer was involved in a seven-month OCS investigation. She took her own life in March 2022, the night she received a charge letter from that office. In the ESPN documentary that aired in May of this year ('Save: The Katie Meyer Story') her family shared that her laptop was opened to the letter from the OCS when she took her last breath....

 

“Students are transitory. Alumni are not. Our group is still here, and we have now spent 14 years trying to protect students. We ought to be able to resolve the myriad of issues at OCS without asking the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to initiate a full scale investigation. 

 

“A wrongful conviction at OCS goes on a student’s permanent record. That wrongful conviction then has the potential to destroy your life dreams before you even have a chance to pursue them.”

 

Full op-ed by Stanford alum Bob Ottilie at Stanford Daily. 

 

See also “Control of Student Life Must Be Restored to Stanford's Students” at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, especially paragraphs 2.e. through k. re our own proposed reforms to the student disciplinary process. 

 

See also “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including PDF documents about the abuses of systems like this.

 

Stanford Loves Innovation, Its Bureaucracy Does Not

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“I can still picture myself at 18: bright-eyed and bushy tailed, hunched over my Stanford supplemental essays and meticulously typing and deleting words as if my future depended on every sentence. I dreamed of an education built not just on classes but the un-manufacturable serendipity of being surrounded by the brightest young minds on the planet. Before I even stepped on campus, I believed, wholeheartedly, in the vision of an education shaped by community. And that belief carried me here.

 

“As I write this, I’m heading into my final week at Stanford, which feels surreal to put into words.... Founding Stanford Sustainable Investment Group (SSIG) -- now the university’s largest climate organization -- and helping organize Stanford Climate Week became my way of building the climate ecosystem I wish had existed when I first pictured Stanford. 

 

“But in the process of trying to build that kind of vibrant, student climate community, I ran headfirst into the countless layers of institutional bureaucracy that quietly shape campus life. Again and again, I found myself fighting tooth and nail for things that were objectively positive for the student body. Things that should’ve been easy, obvious and even welcomed somehow became uphill battles.

 

“Take something as simple as booking a room. For Stanford Climate Week -- a series of educational panels and speaker events on topics like climate innovation, energy abundance, career pathways and nature-based solutions -- our student team had to fundraise and pay thousands of dollars just to reserve campus spaces. $5,650, to be exact, for events that aligned squarely with the University’s own academic mission and attracted over 1,300 individuals from across the Bay Area. And let’s not even mention the countless back and forth email chains with administrators and the outdated booking systems.

 

“Even more perplexing, we were required to hire a designated vendor to place chairs in those rooms -- a service that brought total costs past $7,000 -- because students are not permitted to set up the chairs themselves.....

 

“I’m writing this because these experiences reveal institutional flaws in how Stanford supports -- or fails to support -- student initiatives. If it takes thousands of dollars to book rooms, if student groups are unable to accept funding and if administrative infrastructure can’t keep pace with the urgency and ingenuity of students, something is off. Bureaucracy goes from a safeguard against risk to a bottleneck stifling creativity and bias to action.” ... 

 

Full op-ed by Stanford recent graduate and current masters student Samir Chowdhury at Stanford Daily.

 

See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including 15,340 non-teaching personnel (19,169 if you add clinical and SLAC staff) as compared to 2,345 total faculty (1,738 of whom are members of the Academic Council) and 17,469 total students; also, highest administrative costs per student of any U.S. university at $48,231 annually per student, and that is solely for central administration and does not cover staff for student services, housing and similar activities.

 

See also "From a Current Undergraduate Student: Stanford's Bureaucracy Undermines the University's Academic Mission" at our Stanford Concerns webpage as reprinted from Stanford Review, includiing this excerpt:

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“Former Provost John Etchemendy, in an interview with the Review, has been candid in his assessment of the university’s bloat. ‘When I first came to Stanford, I just felt that if you had a good idea, you could do it at Stanford -- anything was possible,’ Etchemendy said. ‘And now people will say that Stanford is a no-can-do university.’ Faculty and students alike are drowning in a sea of red tape. Processes that should take minutes, such as the procurement of services for campus events, now drag on for weeks, weighed down by unnecessary layers of approvals and oversight.

 

“As one university insider put it, ‘Its [administrative size] has grown too much. And it's actually hampering the mission of the university.’ These layers of inefficiency don’t enhance the university -- they actively harm it.”​​

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See also Section 3 of our Back to Basics webpage, “Stanford’s Administrative Bureaucracy Must Be Reduced Significantly and Immediately in Both Size and Costs.”

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Ten Goals for Campus Leaders

 

[Editor’s note: Four years ago, a group of Princeton alumni created Princetonians for Free Speech in order to start a discussion about policies and procedures that were increasingly working against campus free speech and academic freedom. Princetonians for Free Speech is now approaching 20,000 members which is close to a third of Princeton's living undergraduate alumni. Their founders subsequently helped create a nationwide network of similar entities, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, and of which Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking is a member entity. In their recent annual report, Princetonians for Free Speech highlighted ten goals for Princeton's leaders and which we commend to Stanford’s leaders as well.]

 

Excerpts, and where the word "university" is substituted at times for "Princeton":

 

1. Protect the reputation of the university and its commitment to diversity of viewpoints by adopting as a core principle an institutional policy such as the Kalven Report.... [See our own compilation of the Kalven Report here.] 

2. ​​Eliminate the use of DEI statements for faculty hiring, promotion and funding throughout the university. As compelled speech, such statements are ideological litmus tests that incentivize insincerity as they undermine freedom of expression.

3. Develop a comprehensive program to teach all students about the university's policies. These actions should include: A required freshman orientation program that explains the university's commitment to freedom of expression and its policies around respectful disagreement....

4. Develop a program led by faculty whereby all university faculty, particularly those in leadership roles, affirm and celebrate the university’s commitment to freedom of expression and academic freedom....

5. Adopt principles for academic appointment similar to those embodied in the University of Chicago’s Shils Report, which prioritizes academic excellence in research and teaching.... [See our own compilation of the Shils Report here.]​

6. Educate and train all administrators on the importance of free expression and viewpoint diversity. Administrators have an outsized and widely criticized influence on the student experience. They are likely to lack appreciation for freedom of thought and viewpoint diversity, and they often act to create restrictive boundaries on what they deem to be acceptable speech and expression....

7. Work with faculty to encourage academic and administrative departments to post statements in support of freedom of expression, academic freedom and viewpoint pluralism that resemble the departmental commitment to diversity and anti-racism. Faculty should be required to communicate that sharing private classroom discussion for the purpose of inviting external attention, ridicule or harassment is strictly forbidden. This rule should be made explicit in the honor code.

8. The university should establish a free-standing ombuds office specifically dedicated to examining claims of breaches of free speech protections....

9. Reform the university's anonymous reporting system to ensure transparency, prompt notification, a right of rebuttal, and swift rejection of all complaints against First Amendment protected speech.... [These concerns very much exist at Stanford; see, for example, paragraphs 2.i, j. and k. at our Back to Basics webpage and “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.]

10. Admissions reform: In marketing, recruitment and evaluation, the university should reform admissions to expand viewpoint diversity and reward open inquiry. Add recruitment efforts to encourage intellectual pluralism.” ...

 

Full text at Princetonians for Free Speech website. 

 

Free Speech Requires a Pious Commitment

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“Too many Americans who say they believe in free speech mean only their speech. Adopting progressive dogma, the Biden administration claimed that free speech had limits, and broadly suppressed dissenting views. On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order to restore traditional (and constitutionally mandated) protections, but his administration’s adherence to that order has been situational....

 

“The Supreme Court explained that with few exceptions, the ‘First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content’ (Ashcroft v. ACLU), or because it is false (United States v. Alvarez), or because it is hateful (Matal v. Tam). The remedy is more speech that corrects the record (Whitney v. California)....

 

“The Trump administration’s efforts to regulate or defund universities that permit antisemitic speech or favor anti-Israel speakers is unconstitutional, though defunding universities that tolerate the intimidation of Jewish students is laudable. We don’t have to issue student visas to foreigners who oppose American principles, but once students arrive, unless they lied on their applications or commit crimes, deporting them for their distasteful views, as the administration apparently has sought to do, is inconsistent with American values....

 

“In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it is ‘directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action’ and is ‘likely’ to do so....

 

“A majority of Americans believe government is the biggest threat to free speech. In 1783, George Washington warned that if ‘the Freedom of Speech may be taken away,’ then 'dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.' ..."

 

Full op-ed at Real Clear Politics.  

 

A Solution to Campus Extremism

 

Excerpts:

 

“The ideological partisanship, dogmatism and bigotry on display in our society today are to some degree the fruit of our educational system. Too many college classrooms have become indoctrination camps....

 

“So what should we do? The answer isn’t complicated, but acting on it will take determination and courage. Colleges and universities must return to offering a rigorous liberal arts education that refuses to engage in indoctrination and challenges groupthink. College courses must actively cultivate the virtues of curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual humility, analytical rigor and, above all, dedication to the pursuit of truth....

 

“...Twenty-five years ago, Princeton University authorized me to establish and direct a program in civic education dedicated to helping young men and women become determined truth seekers, courageous truth speakers, lifelong learners and responsible citizens.

 

“The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions provides undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with the intellectual community, opportunities and resources to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of truth. We insist, as does the university, on intellectual honesty and integrity. But the program welcomes students of all points of view. There are no political, religious or secularist orthodoxies or litmus tests. We treat no perspectives as out of bounds, nor do we exempt any idea from being challenged. In short, everything is on the table. Ideas stand or fall on their merits.” ...

 

Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George at WSJ. See also the Stanford Civics Initiative.

 

Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Ideological Teaching in Higher Ed

 

Excerpt (links in the original):

 

“Most Americans say colleges should prioritize critical thinking and citizenship over political activism and ideological teaching, according to a new poll from Vanderbilt University.

 

“The survey of 1,033 U.S. adults, conducted Nov. 7-10, found that 90 percent believe developing the ‘ability to think more logically’ is very or most important for a college education. 

 

“Fewer Americans support colleges getting involved in politics. Just 28 percent said universities should engage in broader political debates. 

 

“Additionally, 85 percent said colleges should help students ‘get along with and understand people,’ and 80 percent supported strengthening students’ ability to be a ‘more useful citizen.’...”

 

Full article at Campus Reform.

 

Other Articles of Interest

 

College and University Leaders Discuss How Campuses Are Preparing for the Future 

NY Times Deal Book panel consists of Stanford President Jon Levin along with Sian Leah Beilock (Dartmouth), Daniel Diermeier (Vanderbilt), Carmen Twillie Ambar (Oberlin), Ron Daniels (Johns Hopkins), James Harris (U San Diego) and SUNY (John B. King).

Full video at YouTube (1 hour 19 minutes). 

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Recent NBC Poll Shows Nearly Two-Thirds of Americans Say College Degree Isn’t Worth the Cost

Full article at College Fix. See also “Overton Insights Poll Finds Just 14% of Voters Think Bachelor’s Degree Is Worth the Cost" at College Fix and “Most Americans Don’t See Value of Four-year College Degrees” at The Hill.

 

Meet the Millionaire Masters of Early Decision at Colleges

Full article at NY Times. 

 

AI May Be Scoring Your College Essay; Welcome to the New Era of Admissions

Full article at AP. See also “Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Warns AI Could Think for Itself in Four Years” at Harvard Crimson.

 

The American Higher Education Restoration Act

Full text as PDF download at James Martin Center.

 

Peer Review Gone Wild

Full text as PDF download at James Martin Center.

 

Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford 

 

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

 

Why We Can’t Stop Clicking on Rage Bait 

“Rage bait is the negative, vengeful cousin of clickbait. Where clickbait titillates your imagination with an alluring headline (‘You’ll never believe what happened next!’) that nudges you to click, rage bait engages negative emotions, often provoking you to make harsh comments.” 

 

A Trustworthy AI Assistant for Investigative Journalists

 

Cancer-promoting DNA Circles Hitchhike on Chromosomes to Spread to Daughter Cells

 

Teen Video Game Addiction -- Five Things to Know

 

The Hottest Stanford Computer Science Class Isn't Banning AI Tools, It's Embracing Them (Business Week)​​​​​​​​​