STANFORD ALUMNI
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CRITICAL THINKING

 

January 26, 2026​

 

The Power of Saying ‘I Don't Know’

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“One of the most important intellectual skills a student can learn is also one of the first we train them out of: the ability to say, plainly and without embarrassment, I don't know.

 

“In education today, ‘I don't know’ is often treated as a failure -- a sign of weakness, disengagement, or insufficient preparation. 

 

“From a remarkably young age, students learn that uncertainty is penalized. We test four- and five-year-olds. We score confidence. We reward quick answers, fluent guesses, and verbal assertiveness. Hesitation is read as a deficiency. Silence is suspect. Studies of early assessment environments show that children quickly learn to associate speed and certainty with approval, even when accuracy suffers....

 

“This is backwards.

 

“Saying I don't know is not an intellectual weakness. It is intellectual honesty. And in many cases, it is a marker of higher-order thinking. Cognitive psychologists have long shown that recognizing the limits of one's knowledge -- what in academic terms is called metacognition -- is strongly associated with deeper learning, better problem-solving, and long-term academic success. 

Students who can accurately judge what they do and do not understand consistently outperform peers who express high confidence but poor calibration.

 

“To recognize what you do not know requires judgment. It requires self-awareness. It reflects humility before complexity and an openness to learning rather than performance. In advanced fields -- from science and medicine to philosophy and engineering --

I don't know is often the beginning of real inquiry, not its end. Expertise, research shows, is defined less by constant certainty than by the ability to slow down, reassess, and revise in the face of incomplete information.” ...

 

Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education.

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American Studies Can’t Stand Its Subject

 

Excerpts:

. . . . 

“On the one hand, America’s is a story of greatness: The U.S. is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. Its founders created what is now the world’s longest-lasting liberal democratic constitution. The Declaration of Independence put forth revolutionary ideas about human freedom and equality that ushered in a new era for the world. At the same time, the American experience is complicated. Our history includes the mistreatment of Native Americans, slavery and Jim Crow, and high levels of economic inequality that persist to this day.

 

“Yet we found only one part of this narrative presented in most of almost 100 articles we examined from over a three-year period in American Quarterly, the flagship journal of the American Studies Association. Published by Johns Hopkins University, it’s widely considered the country’s premier journal of American studies.

 

“The journal’s scholarship paints a one-sided and unrelentingly negative portrait of the U.S. We found that 80% of articles published between 2022 and 2024 were critical of America, 20% were neutral, and none were positive. Of the 96 articles we examined, our research identified 77 as critical, focused on American racism, imperialism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia. Some articles went to absurd lengths to identify sins. One essay posited that thermodynamics -- the science dealing with the relationship between energy, heat, work and temperature -- is ‘an abstract settler-capitalist theory that influenced the plunder of Indigenous lands and lives.’...

 

“Academics will point out that they’re not running for office. Their commitment is to writing what is true, not what is popular. But on that measure, American Quarterly is a failure. The cartoonish picture of America found in its pages constitutes educational malpractice.”

 

Full op-ed at WSJ. 

 

Meantime, click here for a full listing of courses currently offered by Stanford’s history department and where these are the only course groupings (clusters) considered relevant by the department’s own search engine:

 

• Activism, Public History, and Service

• Economics/Political Economy

• Environment, Science, Medicine, and Technology

• Gender and Sexuality

• Global Affairs/International Relations

• Law and Public Policy

• Race and Ethnicity

• Religion and Intellectual History

 

And without even a passing mention of American History and/or the History of Western Civilization. 

 

97.6% of the Money Yale Faculty Members Gave to Political Groups Last Year Went to Democrats

 

Editor’s note: The concern isn’t whether someone is a Democrat, Republican, independent or something else politically. It’s to what extent this obviously skewed percentage reflects other types of systemic biases as to who is recruited, hired and promoted on the faculties of major universities, and not just at Yale.

 

Excerpts:

 

“In 2025, Yale professors made 1,099 donations to federal political campaigns and partisan groups reflected in fundraising disclosures. Not one of the recipients was Republican.

 

“The [Yale Daily News] analyzed data from more than 7,000 Federal Election Commission filings from 2025 for which the employer was listed as Yale. Of 1,099 filings that included ‘professor’ in their occupation, 97.6 percent of the donations went to Democrats, while the remaining 2.4 percent went to independent candidates or groups.

 

“This data is consistent with conservative criticism that university professors are not representative of the country’s political spread -- one rationale used by the Trump administration for its threats to universities’ funding in the past year....

 

“Political science professor Steven Smith said in a phone interview that the overwhelming support for the Democratic Party among faculty is ‘characteristic’ of standard demographic trends.

 

“‘That’s old news,’ he said. ‘That’s no surprise. It’s true, generally across the culture, not just in universities, on the whole, in the country, educated people vote Democrat.’

 

“But Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis said in a Monday interview with the News that the vast majority of professors teach subjects, such as physics, in which political views are minimally relevant. Even in classes where politics is more relevant, he noted, professors want students to understand various perspectives of subject matter, and he doesn’t think the professors’ party affiliation affects that goal.” ...

 

Full article at Yale Daily News. This is a followup article to one from College Fix that was linked in our December 22, 2025 Newsletter and that provided statistics for specific departments at Yale. See also Buckley Institute reports on this same subject dated December 1, 2025 and September 23, 2024.

 

Lawmakers Zero In on the NCAA and the Economics of College Sports

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“An effort to curb the big business of college sports is gaining steam on Capitol Hill, where a growing number of lawmakers in both parties are outraged at the NCAA and signaling intervention from Congress on athlete compensation and revenue sharing is inevitable.

 

“[Last week’s] college football national championship game served as a marquee symbol of the profitability of the current system for college football....

 

“’We have way too many gaps in the process. I’m all for the players making money, but there’s got to be some rules that play into it,’ said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), was a college football head coach for 21 years and won the 2004 national Coach of The Year award at Auburn before seeking public office.

 

“The NCAA should have been running it the right way [in prior years], giving money to players out of revenue sharing. So now we’re in a spot where there’s no rules and it’s pretty much out of control,’ he said." ...

 

Full article at The Hill.

 

Other Articles of Interest

 

Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Slips

Full article at NY Times: “Six prominent American schools that would have been in the top 10 in the first decade of the 2000’s -- the University of Michigan, the University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University -- are producing more research than they did two decades ago, according to the Leiden tallies. But production by the Chinese schools has risen far more.”

 

Up to 25% of U.S. Colleges May Close Soon, Brandeis President Warns

Full article at College Fix: "Levine is working on the Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts, aiming to revamp the curriculum, enhance career readiness, and implement competency-based assessments."

 

Cuts to the Liberal Arts Will Backfire

Full article at American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).

 

Women Far Outnumber Men in Law School, Med School, Vet School and Other Professional Programs 

Full article at Hechinger Report.

 

Even MBAs From Top Business Schools Are Struggling to Get Hired

Full article at WSJ.

 

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.

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ASSU Town Hall Solicits Input on Fun, Housing (Stanford Daily)

 

Empowering Users to Discern Fact from Fiction in the Age of AI

 

Study Reveals Promising Diet for Managing Crohn’s Disease

 

New Allergen-free Dining Supports Safer Meals for Stanford Students​

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