STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

August 31, 2026​​

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Institutions Should Take Chances on People -- But They Also Need to be Honest

 

Jason Arday and What's Wrong with DEI

  

Excerpts (link in the original):

 

“I am saddened by the story of Jason Arday. There was the life, as he told it: autistic, unable to speak until 11 or to read and write until 18, and at 37 the youngest black professor in the history of Cambridge. I was 30 when I became the youngest black professor to get tenure at Harvard.

 

“There was the unraveling: a July report that passages of his thesis matched another scholar’s, an investigation, his resignation and, nine days later, his death. And there was the press’s unrelenting scrutiny, which I too know something about. I felt something similar watching the frenzy around Claudine Gay two years ago, despite my history with her, and around Jayson Blair two decades before that. I don’t know the whole truth of these cases, and for what economics has to say about how to avoid them, it doesn’t matter.

 

“Each case raises the same question: Have elite institutions become so eager for diversity that they take chances on people whose credentials wouldn’t otherwise get them in the door?

 

“I hope so.

 

“Many people took chances on me. My grades weren’t impressive, my home life was a mess, and a vocational-education teacher had to talk me into finishing high school. At each step someone looked past the record and bet on what I might become. My quarrel with DEI has never been that it takes chances. It’s with what happens after the initial opportunity.

“At the University of Chicago, where I finished graduate school, nobody confused potential with accomplishment.... 

 

“The Chicago approach did two things at once: It built my skills and tested whether I had any. While I was there, Mr. Heckman was developing a theory of skill-building, published in 2007 with Flavio Cunha as “The Technology of Skill Formation.” Skills at each stage of life, in their model, are produced from the skills one already has and the investment made at that stage. Skills persist and feed on one another, and skill already in place raises the return on new investment, so by the same logic early investment fades unless it is followed up. Their canonical example was early childhood education, but the logic applies just as well to faculty development....

  

“[The University of Cambridge] answered detailed complaints about Mr. Arday’s work in 2023 with his department’s ‘full support,’ according to Retraction Watch. The scandal was only the last chapter; the failure was in every earlier one, when someone could have been harder on the work and wasn’t.

 

“As I was leaving Chicago in 2003, a professor told me, ‘Be careful of the liberals.’ I thought it was about politics. It wasn’t. He wasn’t worried that I would be ignored at Harvard, the usual concern of junior faculty. He was worried that I wouldn’t get feedback -- that the people around me would want so badly for me to succeed, and for themselves not to be mistaken for bigots, that they would flinch from the uncomfortable things required to make me better....

 

“The people who took chances on me changed my life. The people who risked being called bigots to tell me I wasn’t good enough yet changed it even more.”

 

Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Roland Fryer at WSJ.

 

See also “Did the HR Industry Kill Jason Arday?” at YouTube -- a one-hour video where journalist and HR advisor Tanya de Grunwald engages in what, to us at least, is a thoughtful and intelligent discussion with clinical psychologist Jaco Van Zyl about some difficult but timely issues. 

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MIT Says AI Is Forcing a Rethink of College Itself

 

Excerpts (link in the original):

 

“MIT is telling its faculty, students and staff that generative AI now demands a more comprehensive approach, rather than a new classroom policy. In a report released [three weeks ago] by its Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training, the Institute calls for a broad reconsideration of what students should learn, how professors can tell whether they learned it, where AI belongs in that process, and where it should stay out. President Sally Kornbluth describes the moment as a ‘watershed’ for MIT and higher education. The recommendations include redesigned assessments, renewed attention to hands-on learning, explicit AI rules for courses and new communities of practice for faculty.

 

“That matters far beyond Cambridge. MIT helped create much of the intellectual foundation on which modern AI rests, developed a widely used open STEM curriculum and its graduates populate laboratories, startups, universities and corporate technology groups around the world. When an institution with that lineage says its educational model needs structural work, the message is difficult for other universities to dismiss. It is just as relevant to employers as other higher education institutions. Colleges and companies now face versions of the same problem. AI can produce work that once served as evidence of human competence, and the finished product no longer tells you quite as much about the person who made it.

 

“The larger question goes beyond whether students or employees should use AI as many already do. The bigger issue being grappled with by MIT is what human beings still need to know, practice and prove when capable machines can perform a growing share of the cognitive work around them. MIT’s answer is starting to take shape. The institute sees that people need to become skilled users of AI without surrendering the judgment, technical understanding, curiosity and social experience that let them recognize when the machine is wrong....

 

[Followed by discussion that the issues are more than just how to deal with cheating and how assessments may be the first thing now needed.]

 

“One of the report’s less technical recommendations focuses on the role of AI in human relationships. MIT wants to protect the value of residential education and the human relationships around it.” ...

 

Full article at Forbes.

 

See also “MIT Warns AI Can Now Credibly Complete Most Undergraduate Assignments” at Washington Post:

 

“In a message to campus sharing the committee’s report, MIT President Sally Kornbluth called the opportunities and risks of AI a ‘watershed for MIT -- and for all of higher education.’ The report found that even as AI accelerates and expands discoveries, it is also driving dramatic changes in campus culture, upending foundational experiences such as study groups, office hours and undergraduate research.”

 

See also “U Chicago’s Social-Sciences Division Bans Tech and AI in Core Courses” at Chronicle of Higher Education including a link to the policy memo.

 

Here’s How Mega-Foundations Do Not Negotiate with Universities 

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“A donor, let’s call him Steve, recently tried to support a faculty member’s work at his alma mater. Months of negotiation came down to one clause, quietly inserted, letting the dean redirect the funds if circumstances changed. Steve struck it. The university put it back. Several more months of wrangling followed, the grant nearly died, until the university conceded on the last day of the fiscal year. 

 

“Who can blame a university for trying to maximize its options? That is simply what any rational economic actor does. The interesting question is how some funders skip the process entirely. Foundations can hand the university a form, say ‘take it or leave it,’ and the university signs it. The difference is not, as one might assume, the size of the funder. Rather, it appears to be routing and frequency.  

 

“Public disclosures and public records requests have revealed how three large funders -- the Gates Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation -- approach grant contracting with universities. The striking thing is not what any of them ask for. It is that, on paper at least, none of what they asked for was contested, period.” ...

 

[Followed by a chart comparing the three foundations’ policies; followed by discussion about how one or more use their leverage, where most donations go, lessons for donors generally and links to sample proposals and agreements.]

 

Full article at Philanthropy Roundtable. 

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Judge Sides with The Stanford Daily, Rules Federal Government Violated Constitution
 

Excerpt (link in the original):

“In a sweeping ruling with national implications, a federal judge sided with The Stanford Daily and ruled on Friday that the federal government violated the U.S. Constitution when it targeted student journalists whowrote stories that criticized Israel and participated in pro-Palestinian demonstration.

“In a 90-page ruling that liberally cited Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, United States District Judge Noël Wise found that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security violated the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment of the constitution when government officials detained and tried to deport noncitizen students who spoke out against Israel.” ...

Full article at Palo Alto Online.

See also “Stanford Daily Wins Free Speech Lawsuit Against Trump Administration” at Stanford Daily and “Judge Rules Trump Administration Unlawfully Targeted Foreign Students Who Criticized Israel” at NY Times.

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Other Articles of Interest

 

The University Against Its Own Curriculum

Full op-ed by Appalachian State Prof. Michael C. Behrent at James Martin Center:

 

“In future histories of higher education, the current moment may be called the ‘Great Confusion.’ At present, no one really knows why universities exist. Various ideas about the university’s purpose compete with one another, without altering the underlying uncertainty. In this disorienting context, attempts are sometimes made to give universities something resembling a general direction. A case in point is ‘Foundations of American Democracy’ (or FAD), a curriculum requirement approved by the University of North Carolina’s Board of Governors in 2024 and implemented in Fall 2025.”

 

Most Faculty Support Viewpoint Diversity but Struggle to Practice It

Full article at College Fix:

 

“A sizable minority of college faculty are not regularly engaging with people who disagree with them, a recent national survey found.”

 

Is America Transitioning to a Postliterate Society?

Full op-ed by Assumption University Prof. Lee Trepanier at Law & Liberty. See also “Schools Are Assigning Fewer Novels; Are Excerpts Just as Good?” at Washington Post.

 

Why We Care -- 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.

 

Inside the Race to Prepare Cities for Extreme Heat

 

Molecular Glue Turns Cancer Driver into a Built-In Kill Switch

 

Measuring Biological Age One Organ at a Time (Time Magazine)

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