Past Newsletters
April 14, 2025
Editor’s note: We present here four articles with competing messages. The first article includes the results of recent polling showing that the majority of U.S. students believe their campuses have a climate that promotes free speech. The second article discusses some of the conflicts that nevertheless also are taking place. The third is an example of the tensions that have long existed and the fourth is a call for better civic education.
These are themes that have been consistently presented ever since these Newsletters and the related website were launched in September 2022, and long before these issues became the subject of more widespread public discussion. Stanford itself has been a participant in what many/most observers believe were seriously wrongful actions such as the government-coordinated censorship that was based at Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates, the attacks by Stanford’s own faculty and others on Prof. Jay Bhattacharya, and related issues (see examples at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage).
On the other hand, Stanford’s administration and faculty are to be commended in their trying to address these concerns including President Levin's and Provost Martinez’s recent statement on disruption along with Stanford's updated policies on freedom of expression, the Civic Dialogues program for freshmen, the Democracy and Disagreement course being offered this spring quarter and the long existing Stanford Civics Initiative. We welcome here your own comments on these issues.
Gallup Poll Says Majority of Students Feel Safe with Campus Speech
Excerpts:
“About three-quarters of currently enrolled bachelor’s degree students say their college or university does an ‘excellent’ (31%) or ‘good’ job (43%) promoting free speech on campus. Nineteen percent say their institution is ‘only fair’ at promoting free speech, while 5% say their school does a ‘poor’ job. Republican, Democratic and politically independent students are about equally likely to say their school does an excellent or good job promoting free speech....
“Bottom Line: Amid significant national debate over free speech protections on college campuses, particularly in response to last year’s protests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict, most students report that their institution fosters a respectful and open environment. The majority of bachelor’s degree students believe their college does a good job of promoting free speech, with similar ratings across political affiliations.
“Additionally, most students say they feel respected by both their peers and faculty, and a substantial majority report a sense of belonging at their institution. These findings suggest that although high-profile controversies have sparked public discourse about campus tensions, most students feel their school does a good job promoting free speech, respect and feelings of belonging on campus.”
Full article at Gallup website and including a link to a PDF copy of the full report.
But see also FIRE's and College Pulse's most recent report and rankings (released September 2024) re campus speech, including this student comment about Stanford which ranked 218 out of 251 schools: “Generally, other students are not particularly accepting. If you don't follow whatever Instagram or TikTok is claiming to be the most 'moral' political view at the moment, people don't want to hear it and they will label you as non-politically correct. This behavior usually comes from liberal students -- I'm saying this as a very liberal person myself. I don't think I have non-politically correct viewpoints. I often agree with these students, but the manner in which they enforce their viewpoints across campus is something I disagree with....”
I Was Called an ‘Inbred Swine’ at a Recent Princeton Event
Excerpt (links in the original):
“[Last week] at Princeton, Jewish students were called ‘inbred swine,’ told to ‘go back to Europe,’ and taunted with gestures of the Hamas triangle by masked protesters. Sadly, slurs like these have become commonplace at anti-Israel protests at my college in the months since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, but university president Christopher Eisgruber insists he is ‘proud of the campus climate at Princeton.’
“What would it take for him to question that belief?
“The latest outrage was sparked by a visit from former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett. More than 200 students had turned up to hear Bennett talk about his time as prime minister from 2021 to 2022 and the current government under Benjamin Netanyahu post-October 7.
“Days before Bennett arrived, the Princeton chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine had plastered posters all over campus, calling him a ‘war criminal,’ and flooded listservs and social media with messages saying the college was ‘complicit in normalizing his murderous policies.’ SJP students publicly declared that ‘Bennett should be in prison, not at Princeton.’ Never mind that he was the first Israeli PM to form a coalition with the Arab party in the Knesset. Or that Princeton’s Hillel and four other organizations had invited him to the talk in good faith. All students who registered for the event were encouraged to submit questions in advance; only those with a Princeton ID were able to register...."
Full op-ed at Free Press. See also “Tackling Antisemitism in Higher Education Requires Boldness, Not Moderation” at Real Clear Education.
The Campus Cold War – Faculty vs. Administrators
Excerpts (link in the original):
“If you’ve ever worked in higher education, you know the stereotypes. College administrators are soulless careerists brimming with will to power who ram through clueless decisions, whether the rest of the institution likes it or not. College faculty members, meanwhile, are myopic, overeducated children who take forever to do anything and throw tantrums anytime their routines are disrupted.
“These caricatures are unfair to the actual people who run and teach at colleges. But they’ve only gained purchase in recent years. Behind closed doors, presidents are more likely to grumble about obstreperous, obstructionist professors. In faculty-senate meetings and other public forums, those professors are directing distrust, even disdain, at administrative leaders.
“The two factions aren’t meant to move in lockstep, and they never have. Tension is baked into the way colleges are run, says Brian C. Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College who’s now a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. The American Association of University Professors’ 1966 ‘Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities’ laid out the blueprint most colleges follow. ‘The faculty has responsibility for the academic programs and curriculum,’ Rosenberg says. ‘The president has responsibility for the other stuff. You have built into the shared-governance model this divide, so it’s always been strained.’ ...
[Followed by a detailed discussion of likely causes and effects.]
“Ultimately, most administrators and professors want the same thing: to do right by their students and continue their work. Many of the obstacles they face they share, including their own foibles. ‘Tension is inevitable because we’re humans,’ says Mills, of Buena Vista University, ‘trying to do human things.’ If administrators and professors can look beyond their own immediate concerns and consider those of their counterparts, who knows what could happen?”
Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education.
Why Civic Education Must Be at the Forefront of Reform
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Gen Z was expected to be more instrumental in the 2024 presidential election than they turned out to be. Despite their active engagement in political discourse online, only 42 percent turned out to vote, down from 50 percent in 2020. While the reasons for this vary, one core issue can be remedied: American grade schoolers aren’t learning what it means to be American....
“Civic education is not a partisan issue. Society benefits when citizens are knowledgeable and invested in the functions of their government. That’s why we need programs like California’s State Seal of Civic Engagement and initiatives like Project Citizen, which have demonstrated measurable success in increasing political participation among young people. The Ramos Research Institute is developing a Citizenship Empowerment Framework, with plans to release it this summer as a comprehensive, actionable model for strengthening civic education in higher education institutions. With its emphasis on media literacy, this program addresses the growing digital crisis where algorithm-driven newsfeeds influence public discourse...."
Full op-ed at DC Journal. See also discussion of model legislation -- the REACH Act -- at James Martin Center.
The Costs of Federal Taxation on Endowments and Cutbacks in Federal Funding
Late last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article discussing the possible impact on 77 named colleges and universities of the proposed cutbacks in federal funding as well as the proposed tax on endowment income. The article also includes a detailed interactive chart for the named schools, including these highlights but all of which also are subject to the various assumptions set forth in the article:
Among other things, the endowment tax, which is only in discussion stages, could potentially cost Stanford $404 million a year as compared to $566 million for Harvard, $460 million for Yale, $390 million for Princeton and $273 million for MIT.
When you combine the endowment tax along with proposed cutbacks in National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation funding and compare that total with the total of all expenses at a given school, the total impact as a percent of total expenses -- again, subject to various assumptions -- would be 19% for Princeton, 18% for Grinnell, 13% for Yale and 7% for Stanford and where the total cost per student of the proposed cutbacks and tax would be $49K at Princeton, $42K at Yale, $41K at Caltech, $32K at Stanford, $30K at MIT and $27K at Harvard.
The schools most impacted by reductions in NIH funding, in descending order, would be Johns Hopkins, Yale, Penn, Michigan and Columbia (Stanford could come in as eighth with a loss of $113 million). The schools most impacted by reductions in NSF funding, again in descending order, would be Texas, Michigan, UC San Diego, Cornell and Washington (Stanford would come in as twenty-first with a loss of $43.5 million).
Full article and interactive chart at Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription may be required). See also the detailed charts we have previously published at our Stanford Concerns webpage including a chart from Open the Books showing schools with the highest federal contracts and grants (2018 to 2022) and where Stanford shows as the highest of all schools at $7 billion during those years.
Other Articles of Interest
ASU’s Investments in Virtual Reality Education Are Paying Off
Full article at Inside Higher Ed.
Lawsuit Is Filed Alleging University Discrimination Against Asians
Full op-ed at Substack. In addition to the substance of the complaint, note the quotes of one or more university leaders and also the fact that the complaint was largely drafted with the use of AI. Note also, an SAT score of 1590 is at the top 99%.
A Colloquy on Free Speech
A PDF copy of the discussion featuring ACTA President Michael Poliakoff and former ACLU President/Prof. Nadine Strossen can be downloaded here.
I Led Harvard’s Medical School, and I Fear for What’s to Come
Full op-ed by former Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier at NY Times.
NYU Cancels Doctor’s Speech, Citing Anti-Government Tone
Full article at NY Times.
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.
A PDF copy of the full report is here.
3D Printed Human Organs -- ‘It Really Is the Holy Grail of Curative Medicine’
Six Big Ideas to Help Avoid a U.S. Electricity Crisis
Gene Linked to Development of a Critical Coronary Artery
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"It’s very important that if we’re going to have free speech, we have it for everyone." — Stanford Prof. (now deceased) and one of the pioneers in AI John McCarthy
April 7, 2025
Colleges Have to Be Much More Honest with Themselves
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Leaders of American higher education have largely reacted to the Trump administration’s rhetorical and financial assaults by locking down in a defensive crouch. That is understandable given the administration’s view of universities, which JD Vance once called ‘hostile institutions,’ and its apparent admiration of the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban’s takeover of higher education. But there will be scant room for American higher education to tell its story of opportunity, transformation and discovery as long as colleges and universities deny what many of us know but few will say: Our critics have a point.
“I worked in Democratic politics before my second career in higher education. Many ideas commonly espoused on the academic left would have been considered bizarre in the Democratic mainstream, assuming they could be understood at all. As a sector, higher education is considerably left of the American public, a perspective often expressed in language that is less offensive than it is incomprehensible.
“We decry state censorship while ignoring a comparable threat to free expression on campuses: the crushing pressure inside many colleges and universities to conform with dominant political views. This pressure is hardly new. But the outrage emanating from campuses about Trump administration policies places our lack of self-awareness about longstanding dynamics within higher education in sharper relief....
“Taken together, those survey results [discussed earlier in the op-ed] suggest that some of the most intense pressure to conform to political orthodoxy comes from within the academy. The solution is neither more regulation nor more denial. It is sitting in front of us: Colleges and universities should retreat from politics and renew our core mission of teaching, learning and discovery.
“That is easily said, of course. But faculties have immense powers of self-governance. Neither academic administrators nor elected officials should regulate what is taught in college classrooms. But members of faculties can formally recommit to what the principle of academic freedom has long required: not only tolerating but also encouraging different perspectives. Even those disciplines in which contemporary controversies may seem more relevant -- such as my own field, political science -- serve students better by focusing on enduring ideas rather than transient events....
“Colleges and universities have a compelling story to tell. But we will have neither an audience for that story -- nor the moral authority to tell it -- until we are as fearless about examining ourselves as we are about decrying interference from beyond our walls."
Full op-ed by Assumption University President Greg Weiner at NY Times. And once again, see our "Back to Basics at Stanford" webpage.
Principles That Should Stand at the Foundation of Universities
Excerpts (endnotes deleted):
“To assert that American universities, and in fact most western universities, are in a crisis simply restates the obvious. The crisis, long in the making, is not just one of financial solvency, costly and rapidly expanding bureaucracies, worthless academic programs or declining enrollments. It is primarily a crisis of meaning resulting from the pursuit of divergent, often wildly contradictory goals: the traditional pursuit of Truth, wherever it leads, social engineering in the name of repairing the world, or simply vocational training to help students to advance their careers.
“Finding possible solutions to this malaise is the main focus of the essay but, before engaging in this task we: 1) recall what are the putative, i.e., commonly accepted, principles of our institutions of higher learning, 2) provide a diagnosis of the degree to which those principles are being adhered to and 3) formulate what principles should lay at the foundation of future universities -- or perhaps educational and scientific institutions more broadly. Once done, a series of proposals are presented that could be used to bring universities more closely in line with both the current putative principles of the university as well as those proposed for the future university....
[Followed by detailed discussion of the points stated above.]
“Here are some ideas about the steps which need to be taken:
a. Ban DEI, based on Trump’s recent executive actions and reduce university administrations significantly, perhaps to about 30% of their current size.
b. Eliminate all grievance-based academic programs, based on their low intellectual content and discriminatory axioms, approaches and practices.
c. In new institutions, replace tenure with a 5-10 year renewable contract to allow departments and universities to get rid of dead wood and reward people willing to take risks with faster promotions and higher salaries....
d. Bring back the Great Books programs and make them obligatory for all first-year students. Introduce serious, broad based, courses on the history of mathematics and the natural sciences, including Philosophy, and history of Western civilization, and make these courses mandatory for first and second year students.
e. A special effort must be made to reform the Humanities....
f. Reduce the reliance on NSF, NIH and other major US government [agencies] for funding research and rely more on private organizations, like the Simons Foundation, who will, hopefully, choose to fund new and risky directions of research.
g. Reform NSF and NIH by cutting all programs which are not directly connected to fundamental research and which can be funded by industry. Make sure that projects are evaluated on scientific merit alone. We applaud the recent efforts to reduce the percentage of allowed indirect funds to universities. There is little rationale for indirect funds except to allow these universities to divert government funds to other projects unrelated to the grants....
h. Reform the National Academy of the Sciences (NAS).... The NAS is a much too important national institution to be left to wither on the vine....
i. Pressure existing professional organizations, heavily compromised by wokeism, by creating alternatives ones.”
[Followed by details of other proposals.]
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Sergiu Klainerman at Substack.
The Case for Economic-Based Affirmative Action
Excerpts:
“In November 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic raging, I took off my mask and sat down nervously in the witness stand at the federal district courthouse in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“I was there to testify as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a conservative group challenging racial preferences at the University of North Carolina. (SFFA and I were also involved in a parallel suit against Harvard University.) I would be testifying that racial student body diversity is very important to achieve on college campuses, but that, according to my research, UNC-Chapel Hill could create an integrated campus without using race -- if it jettisoned its preferences for privileged children of alumni and faculty and gave a meaningful admissions boost to economically disadvantaged students of all races.
“This was a very unusual position for me to be in. Over the years, I’d allied myself closely with civil rights groups and leading Black officials -- from civil rights activist and attorney Maya Wiley to politicians like Sen. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and President Barack Obama’s Education Secretary John B. King -- on issues of schooling, housing and employment. But on the issue of whether preferences at elite colleges should be based on race or class, I was on the opposite side from many of my friends....
“I had long been convinced, however, that there was a better way to achieve the valid goals of racial affirmative action. I agreed with my liberal friends that campuses needed to be racially integrated. It is crucial that in a multicultural democracy students learn to appreciate and value individuals of all backgrounds. And I agreed that the nation had to take steps to remedy a terrible history of racial oppression. But giving a break to economically disadvantaged students, the evidence showed, could help universities do both without all the divisiveness and unfairness associated with counting skin color in who gets ahead...."
[Followed by a discussion of political pressures, the Supreme Court decision re Harvard admissions, responses by various universities, and related matters.]
Full op-ed by GW Prof. Richard D. Kahlenberg at Politico.
Other Articles of Interest
President Levin and Provost Martinez Discuss Key Issues at the Start of Spring Quarter
Full letter at Stanford Report. See also “President Levin and Provost Martinez Discuss Campus Uncertainty in Light of Recent Federal Actions” at Stanford Daily.
About the Proposals to Increase Taxation of University Endowments
Full analysis by Stanford law school alum Ed Yingling at Princetonians for Free Speech.
The College Essay Is Everything That’s Wrong with America
Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Yascha Mounk at Substack.
Why Censorship Is Making Us All Dumber
Full op-ed at Substack.
The Bias in Health Science
Full op-ed by Indiana Prof. Richard Gunderman. See also “UConn Med School Drops Mandatory DEI-infused Hippocratic Oath” at College Fix.
A College Education Still Easily Beats the Alternatives
Full op-ed by Cornell Prof. Emeritus Glenn C. Altschuler and Hamilton College President Emeritus David Wippman at The Hill.
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.
An Open-Source AI Agent for Doing Tasks on the Web
Glucose’s Surprising Role As Master Manipulator of Tissue Maturation
A Prevention Plan for Avoiding a Bird Flu Epidemic
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"The greatest threat to academic freedom is not external censorship but self-censorship -- the fear of speaking one's mind in an environment that should encourage, not stifle, debate." – Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy
March 31, 2025
Scholarship and Activism Are Two Different Things
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Disciplines have been central to the organization of academic life since the dawn of the modern university. They serve as communities for organizing the interrogation of knowledge, each making claims to expertise in a distinct approach or subject matter.
“Yet many disciplines now seem to be destabilizing. The complexity of the world never fits into neat boxes, and there is an increasing recognition that major problems require interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle. Disciplinary coherence is also being challenged by constantly shifting border claims in knowledge production.
“At the same time, some disciplines have become highly ideological, creating echo chambers that stall progress. This in turn has diminished the image of universities in the eyes of the general public, posing a profound political threat. Some disciplines have become, one might say, undisciplined -- freely pronouncing on matters outside their putative field of expertise, or expanding their claims of special knowledge to match political exigencies....
“The question is particularly salient in light of the variable stances of disciplines with regard to core governance questions. Disciplines are not uniformly disciplined in exercising their role as gatekeepers of good scholarship, nor are they all equally tolerant of dissent. Some of them purport to speak via collective associations about issues of the day, a major trend in our era. And many are not content with knowledge formation as the sole or primary mission of academe but instead seek to advance versions of activism....
“When one’s scholarship is designed to include advocacy -- what Tarunabh Khaitan has called ‘scholactivism’ -- risks are obvious. Advocates may reject or downplay inconvenient results, distorting academic debates. More deeply, they violate the “role morality” -- the notion that some roles entail specific ethical commitments -- of scholarship, which is the very basis for the social tolerance of academic freedom in the first place. While of course there is always a deep politics of scholarship, for example in the selection of topics for inquiry or methods for approaching them, these biases ought to be examined and minimized in genuine inquiry, not celebrated. This requires a humility about the limits of one’s own perspective....
“In a prescient observation in 2001, Clark Kerr noted that there was a conflict between the traditional view of the university that flowed from the enlightenment, embodied in a vision of seeking truth and objectivity, and a postmodern vision in which all discourse is political, with university resources to be deployed in ways that were liberatory and not repressive. He thought the conflict might further deepen, and noted that ‘any further politicization of the university will, of course, alienate much of the public at large.’
“As we stand at a moment of deep alienation, stepping back from the further politicization of scholarship is an existential step.”
Full op-ed by U Chicago Prof. Tom Ginsburg at Chronicle of Higher Education and initially published at Inquisitive (Prof. Ginsburg is also the founding faculty director of Chicago's Forum on Free Inquiry and Expression).
See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage where we have long advocated that the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that do little if any front-line research or teaching but instead are engaged primarily if not exclusively in advocacy and implementation activities need to stop using the Stanford name and need to be moved off the core campus.
How Campuses Can Better Cultivate Critical Awareness, Civic Engagement, Student Development and Global Literacy
Excerpt (link in the original):
“In 2019, sociologist Musa al-Gharbi called for a college education that would help students ‘understand biases and cognitive distortions (including and especially their own!)’ and prioritize civic education and engagement.
“Al-Gharbi noted that despite significant increases in the number of Americans with college degrees and a rise in average IQ levels, civic, historical and cultural literacy have remained stagnant. Meanwhile, political polarization, mistrust and social fragmentation have intensified, with many Americans increasingly reluctant to marry, date or even befriend those with different political views. Trust in one another and confidence in the future have steadily declined.
“Al-Gharbi’s observations raise a troubling question: If more Americans than ever are educated, why hasn’t this translated into greater civic knowledge or social cohesion? One answer may lie in the fragmented structure of today’s college curriculum. While most universities attempt to balance breadth, depth and choice, these elements often don’t work together to produce the kind of well-rounded, civically engaged graduates higher education aspires to cultivate....”
[Followed by a discussion of these topics:
-
Addressing deficiencies in civic and cultural literacy
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The need for holistic multidimensional development
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Toward a transformative and cohesive curriculum
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Development of an integrated and purpose-driven program of learning
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From passive learning to active engagement
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Redefining faculty roles
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Enhancing the student experience
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Strengthening civic and ethical engagement
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Encouraging critical self-reflection and self-awareness
-
A path toward holistic education]
Full op-ed by U Texas Prof. Steven Mintz at Inside Higher Ed.
Other Articles of Interest
Brown U. Student Asked Administrators: What Do You Do All Day?
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also the student-created website, “Bloat@Brown." (NOTE: the students' homepage says that after they went public with their investigation, someone with a Brown IP address hacked their website and that access to a public data base also was blocked; some of their webpages nevertheless remain in operation while they are working to restore all of the website's functionality.) See also article at FIRE website.
New Law Requires Utah State Students to Study Western Civ in General Ed Revamp
Full article at College Fix.
How Universities Could Reduce Poor Teaching and Shoddy Research
Full op-ed at Heritage.
Feds Tell Med Schools to Stop Discriminating
Full article at James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
AI Ethics in Higher Education
Full article at Ed Tech.
Cornell Says Deletion of DEI Language Was a Clerical Error
Full article at College Fix.
Senate Committee Probes the Censorship Industrial Complex
Full video at YouTube (1 hour 40 minutes) including references to the Virality Project at Stanford and similar activities at other universities and nonprofits. See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage.
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.
Can Generative AI Tackle Global Health Problems?
Science-Backed Ways to Combat Self-Doubt
Roles of Nature and Nurture in Brain Organization
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"Colleges and universities are among the few places in the United States today where people from remarkably different backgrounds, cultures, and ideologies come together to wrestle with the complexity of what it means to be a democratic community." – Penn professor and education historian Jonathan Zimmerman
March 24, 2025
More About the Indirect Costs of Federal Research
Excerpts:
. . . . .
“Previously, the NIH was adding up to 69 percent of a research grant to cover the facilities & administration infrastructure that allegedly undergirded subsidized research. For every dollar that a university received to support a particular project, NIH would throw in as much as an additional 69 cents for indirect costs, say, bringing the total amount of the grant to $1.69.... Now, the NIH announced in February, those indirect cost rates would be capped at 15 percent of the direct cost of a grant and would not be negotiated on a university-by-university basis. The 15 percent indirect cost-rate cap applied to grants already under way, not just to future grants.
“Reaction was apocalyptic....
“University skeptics reject the advocates’ arguments. A number of red flags suggest that federal overhead payments are not the lean and mean reimbursements that the universities claim they are. The principle of economies of scale appears to have been suspended in the indirect cost funding context. Ordinarily, one would think that bigger universities with richer grant portfolios would spend a lower percentage of their grants on indirect costs. The opposite is the case....
“Furthermore, similar indirect cost rates apply to wildly different types of research grants....
“In 2023, NIH gave Stanford University $2 million to cover the direct costs of enrolling ‘sexual minorities (individuals with a sexual orientation that is not heterosexual) and gender minorities (individuals with a gender identity that is not congruent with their sex assigned at birth)’ in a federal health database, in the words of the NIH grant. According to the agency, ‘sexual and gender minority communities’ share a ‘common experience of social marginalization, legal discrimination, political disenfranchisement, and familial rejection.’ The NIH grant included $907,660 in indirect costs. It is unlikely that that database project imposed nearly $1 million in overhead on Stanford University, even if the target population is, as NIH insists, ‘socially marginalized’ and ‘politically disenfranchised.’
“The NIH guidance justified its new 15 percent indirect cost cap by comparing what foundations typically pay for indirect costs: zero. The Gates Foundation has a maximum indirect cost rate of 10 percent. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation pays up to 12 percent. If universities accept zero to 12 percent indirect cost rates from foundations, they should accept a similar rate from the government, argues the NIH....”
Full op-ed at City Journal. See also "The Angst of Well-Endowed Colleges" by Matt Taibbi at Substack.
Democracy and Disagreement Course Encourages Students to Explore Differing Viewpoints in Peer-led Discussions
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In a winter quarter course, Stanford undergraduates learned another way to disagree: by learning why people hold the positions they do.
“Approaching difference through curiosity was at the center of an optional, peer-led discussion seminar for undergraduates enrolled in Democracy and Disagreement, the popular course taught by Debra Satz, the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S), and Paul Brest, professor emeritus (active) and former dean at Stanford Law School (SLS). The course features scholars with opposing viewpoints modeling meaningful conversations on contentious topics such as hate speech, presidential immunity, the composition of the Supreme Court, and reparations....
“Students discovered that disagreement can lead to a better understanding of complex issues.
“‘We’ve created an environment where we encourage everyone to try and view arguments in their full complexity,’ explained ICDP fellow Shreya Mehta, ’26, who is co-facilitating a discussion group with Ryan Loo, ’25.
“‘One thing we really emphasized is asking clarifying, or dialogic, questions,’ Mehta added.
“While students agreed on a problem or issue, they found they often disagreed on solutions. Probing questions helped uncover nuances and dig deeper into issues....
“This distinction became clear on Feb. 25 when, for the first time in the course’s two-year history, several individuals who were not Stanford students disrupted a session featuring former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and economist Emmanuel Saez, preventing Summers from delivering his opening remarks for about 12 minutes.
“Frustrated, students attending the course asked the demonstration to stop so they could listen to the speakers. Afterward, Brest addressed the class, noting that this was the first disruption in 18 sessions on controversial topics, including one featuring politicians from Israel and Palestine....
““It goes against the whole point of class,’ one student said. Another agreed: ‘It was ineffective, given the audience is a group of people who want to hear a debate.’ Some noted that a more constructive approach would have been to challenge Summers with questions during the discussion portion of the class.
“Loo also invited students to consider protests and disruptions more broadly. ‘What do you think is the point of protest?’ he asked.
“Students discussed how protests can raise awareness or mobilize actions versus when they backfire, as seen in the Democracy & Disagreement class that week....”
Full article at Stanford Report.
See also “Dorm-Based Civic Salons Engage Students on Complex Issues” also at Stanford Report.
The Misinformation Crisis Isn’t About Truth, It’s About Trust
Excerpts (links in the original):
[This op-ed begins with a discussion of controversial subjects in recent years and how they were treated politically, in media and elsewhere. After that discussion:]
“It’s difficult to overstate just how much damage our academic, scientific, and intellectual elites have done to our universe of shared facts, our institutions, and the public’s ability and willingness to believe them. There is a growing sense among people that trust and confidence in our experts and institutions is unwarranted -- and particularly in the last ten years, there has been no shortage of behavior to justify this suspicion.
“The paperback edition of [Greg Lukianoff’s] and Rikki Schlott’s 2023 book ‘The Canceling of the American Mind’ hits shelves on April 29 with updated data, reflections on FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings, and an entirely new epilogue. The book is filled with examples and case studies illustrating how the behavior of our social and intellectual elites has contributed to this crisis of trust in expertise and institutions. This includes Cancel Culture itself, which Greg has previously described as ‘the military arm of the Anti-Discourse Industrial Complex.’
“In the last decade or more, we have seen people getting in trouble for being on the ‘wrong’ side of virtually every hot button issue in the United States. Cancel Culture has ruined lives. It has cost people their livelihoods. And combined with the constant denial that Cancel Culture even exists, it has understandably fomented a general distrust in academia, journalism, and expertise -- the very mechanisms of knowledge creation in our society.
“This shouldn’t be surprising. When the penalty for having a disfavored opinion can be life-destroying, trust in the objectivity of experts is inevitably going to take a hit. As Greg mentioned in an early [Eternally Radical Idea] post, ‘When even a single thinker is punished for their academic opinion or for engaging in thought experimentation, it leads the public to be justifiably skeptical that any expert on that topic is being fully honest.’ ...
“This shouldn’t have been a surprise. Studies have shown that politically or ideologically homogenous media and institutions
increase polarization -- but you shouldn’t have needed that data to see how counterproductive a move like that would be. Actions like these have the aftereffect of politicizing everything, making the acceptance of a scientific fact a signal of tribal affiliation more so than a pragmatic position based on empirical evidence. It’s not hard to imagine how this will destroy trust in science overall....
“Our expert class and our institutions need to earn back the trust they lost. And they need to do this by consistently showing themselves to be transparent, honest, and competent.... This is also why academic freedom is critical. A circumstance where people do not feel free to dissent, challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, and engage in good-faith debate is one in which our ability to discern truth and produce knowledge ceases to exist....”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff and co-author Angel Eduardo at Substack.
See also “Stanford’s Censorship: An Interview with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya” at Stanford Review (May 7, 2024) and various articles re censorship at our Stanford Concerns 2 webpage.
How Business Metrics Broke the University
Excerpts:
….
“In eras past, when power was more decentralized, distinguished faculty voices of varied political persuasions might compete with the president from power bases inside the institution. Today, in contrast, politically active junior faculty see that attracting controversy can be a way to get ahead, while traditionally minded senior faculty who once acted as moderating forces in academic life have been sidelined as their departments and disciplines have been merged and dissolved in favor of new interdisciplinary programs....
“Addressing the hyper-politicization of academia must therefore start with a recognition that metrics-based centralized planning nurtured this tendency [of politicization] in the first place. While other factors played a role, the centralized university became an incubator for ideological extremism above all because its structural design makes students into customers and incentivizes faculty to seek visibility through controversy rather than through traditional scholarly achievement....
“The most visible leader of the centralization movement was Arizona State University President Michael Crow, who first articulated his model for a ‘New American University’ when he took the helm in 2002. His ‘reinvention’ and ‘transformation’ involved breaking down disciplinary ‘silos’ to put students before faculty and ‘impact’ before everything else....
“The intellectual vacuum on campus is filled by junior faculty who gain visibility by taking extreme positions that respond to the incentives of the attention economy. The rise of metrics-driven administration coincided with the rise of social media, making it easier for politically driven faculty to build followings outside of department structures. The most radical voices bypassed traditional academic hierarchies entirely, deploying online attention to demonstrate their ‘impact’ directly. A star system was born. Adjunct instructors, lacking job security, also came to see that provocation and siding with students could serve as a kind of employment insurance, ensuring popular classes. The traditional forces that once encouraged moderation and scholarly rigor have been replaced by incentives that reward polemics and ideological fervor.
“The push for scale further nudges the climate toward politicization. Administrative metrics favor large or online courses that can process hundreds of students simultaneously....
“Universities must recognize that their experiment with centralized planning has had unintended consequences that have damaged the institution’s status and pose serious political risks. They must support their own faculty voices and devolve power to departments, not in deference to quaint traditions but as an essential mechanism for maintaining academic standards and intellectual diversity. Only by addressing the vacuum that enabled polarization can universities claim their proper role as centers of reasoned debate and scholarly inquiry.”
Full op-ed by Utah Prof. and former Dean of the College of Humanities Hollis Robbins at Compact.
See also Part 1 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage where we have long suggested that control of academic matters must be restored to Stanford’s faculty and Part 4 of that same white paper where we believe a significant part of the problem are the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that use the Stanford name and campus resources but have little if any involvement of tenured faculty and do little if any front-line research or teaching but instead are engaged in advocacy and implementation activities determined by donors and non-faculty staff. Tenured faculty at Harvard have identified a similar problem at Harvard: approximately 5,000 personnel at centers, etc. and that the Harvard faculty pejoratively refer to as "the peripherals" -- people and entities that don't have to meet academic standards but publish white papers, hold panels, seek media coverage, etc. using the Harvard name.
See also “Stanford's Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including the charts that show, among other things, that Stanford’s faculty went from 1,640 in 2000 to 2,304 in 2022 while Stanford's managerial staff went from 3,127 in 2000 to 12,336 in 2022. Or that Stanford, with a total of 17,529 undergraduate and graduate students, has 4,140 administrative personnel in its business and finance offices as compared to Ohio State that has 2,652 comparable personnel for a student population of 60,540 – and these are numbers provided by the universities themselves.
Other Articles of Interest
A Look at Princeton’s DEI Structure, the Federal Attacks and Related Matters
A detailed examination of the issues by Princeton alum Stuart Taylor at Real Clear Politics.
SpaceX Parachutes Use Zylon, a Fabric Invented at Stanford
Full article at space.com. See also “SpaceX Completes Crucial Tests of Its Crew Dragon Parachutes” at Engadget (November 2019).
UC Bans DEI Statements in Faculty Hiring
Full article at College Fix.
Amherst’s Title IX Office Goes After Student Following His Article in the Campus Newspaper Criticizing DEI
Full article at College Fix.
Aftermath of DEI
Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars.
Modern Learners Demand a Change to the Status Quo
Full article at University Business.
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.
Jon Levin and His Father Rick Levin (President Emeritus of Yale) Discuss Generational Shifts
Micro-lightning in Water Droplets May Have Sparked Life on Earth
Researchers Develop Easy-to-Apply Gel to Prevent Abdominal Adhesions in Animals
Five Things to Know About the Effects of Seed Oils on Health
Theta Delt Alumni File Appeal in Lawsuit Against Stanford
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"In a free society, universities must be strong, they must be free, and they must be creative. Freedom of the mind is the best defense against the ignorance that would destroy democracy." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
March 17, 2025
More Universities Are Choosing to Stay Neutral
Excerpt (links in the original):
“Just a few years ago, university statements on the day’s social and political issues abounded.
“When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, Harvard’s president at the time called it ‘senseless’ and ‘deplorable,’ and flew the invaded country’s flag in Harvard Yard. After George Floyd died under the knee of a white police officer, Cornell’s president said she was ‘sickened.’ The University of Michigan’s president described the Oct. 7, 2023, violence against Israel as a ‘horrific attack by Hamas terrorists.’
“But over the last year, each of those universities has adopted policies that limit official statements on current issues.
“According to a new report released on Tuesday [March 11, 2025] from the Heterodox Academy, a group that has been critical of progressive orthodoxy on college campuses, 148 colleges had adopted ‘institutional neutrality’ policies by the end of 2024, a trend that underscores the scorching political scrutiny they are under. All but eight of those policies were adopted after the Hamas attack....”
Full article at NY Times.
See also “Institutional Neutrality Is Sweeping Across American Higher Ed” at Heterodox.
See also the Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social matters at our Chicago Trifecta webpage.
Students Speak Up -- Fill the Empty Buildings
Excerpts (link in the original):
“In recent years, Stanford University has repurposed prime student housing into administrative offices, significantly reducing the availability of on-campus accommodations. Buildings such as Bechtel International Center, Mariposa House, and Attneave House -- once vibrant student residences -- now sit empty as administrative staff continue working remotely.
"A Stanford Review investigation revealed that these buildings, which once housed students, remain eerily deserted during business hours. Over multiple visits, The Review found them completely unoccupied -- offices meant to justify the displacement of student housing are now unused....
“The emptiness of these buildings reflects a systemic failure in Stanford’s resource management. The university’s adoption of flexible work policies has allowed many administrators to work remotely, leaving these office conversions vastly underutilized. Meanwhile, the housing crisis has reached critical levels: singles have been converted into doubles, doubles into triples, and in Roble Hall, formerly spacious rooms have been repurposed into cramped quads. Many students have been pushed off campus entirely, while prime residential spaces remain empty....
"The university has a clear path forward: relocate administrative offices and restore student housing to its rightful place....”
Full op-ed at Stanford Review.
See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also possible ways to address these concerns at Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage including not only reducing the size of the administrative staff but also moving the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities off the core campus if they are not primarily engaged in frontline teaching and faculty-supervised research versus the advocacy and implementation activities that often are their primary and sometimes sole functions.
Department of Education Sends Letters to 60 Universities Under Investigation for Antisemitism, Including Stanford
Excerpt (link in the original):
“The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters to 60 universities currently under investigation for alleged antisemitic harassment and discrimination.
“The letters, issued Monday [March 10, 2025], warn the universities of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus, according to department press release. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. National origin includes shared Jewish ancestry....”
Full article at Campus Safety Magazine.
9th Circuit Rules in Favor of Professor Punished for Criticizing College for Lowering Academic Standards
Excerpt (link in the original):
“[On March 10, 2025], the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of Lars Jensen, a math professor unconstitutionally punished for criticizing what he believed was his college’s decision to water down its math standards.
“Reversing a federal district court, the Ninth Circuit held Jensen suffered wrongful dismissal of his claims against Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, and that he should have his day in court to prove college administrators violated his First Amendment rights. The court also held Jensen’s right to speak out about the math standards was so clearly established that the administrators were not entitled to dismissal on qualified immunity grounds.
“‘This decision is a major victory for the free speech rights of academics,’ said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression attorney Daniel Ortner, who argued the case before a Ninth Circuit panel in November 2024. ‘This decision will protect professors from investigation or threats of termination for their speech, and promote accountability for administrators who violate the First Amendment.’ …”
Full article at FIRE website.
The Power of the Classroom -- Why Diversity in Higher Education Matters
Excerpts (link in the original):
. . . .
“A university education is more than lectures and exams; it’s a gateway to opportunity, transformation, and belonging. Diversity in the classroom isn’t just important -- it’s essential. As a faculty member who studies leadership in post-secondary education, I see both the challenges and opportunities within higher education. The lack of diversity at top institutions impacts not just who enters our classrooms, but how students experience their education. Representation matters, and universities must reflect the diverse realities of the students they serve.
“For centuries, great universities have been bastions of knowledge, passing on a rich heritage to the next generation of scholars and leaders. For me, teaching at the university feels like an immense responsibility. Entering that classroom isn’t just about transmitting knowledge; it is about honoring a legacy passed down by my mentors and predecessors, while also shaping the future through my students, although in some small way. The impact of what occurs at the university extends far into society and democracy....
“Providing access and opportunity to high-quality education for every student is an important societal goal. Elite institutions of higher learning play a pivotal role and bear the responsibility of shaping future leaders. True fulfillment of both the students’ aspirations and our democratic principles is achieved when access to college classrooms is made inclusive for all.”
Full op-ed by U Wisconsin Prof. Anthony Hernandez at Fulcrum.
College Application Surge; Underrepresented Students Lead Growth in 2024-25 Admissions Cycle
Excerpts (link in the original):
“According to Common App's latest Deadline Update report released Thursday [March 13, 2025], college applications for the 2024-25 admissions cycle continue to show strong growth, particularly among underrepresented and first-generation students....
“One of the most significant trends is the substantial growth among underrepresented minority applicants, which increased by 12% over last year. Specifically:
-
Latinx applicants rose by 13%
-
Black or African American applicants increased by 10%
-
The share of domestic applicants identifying as Black or African American grew from 13.3% to 14%
-
White applicants' share of the applicant pool continued its long-term decline, dropping from 48.2% to 45.7%
“First-generation college students showed remarkable growth, with a 13% increase in applicants while continuing-generation applicants remained flat. Similarly, applicants eligible for Common App fee waivers increased by 9%, compared to just 2% for non-eligible students....
“Applications to public institutions grew at 10%, significantly outpacing the 2% growth rate for private institutions. Additionally, less selective institutions (those with admit rates above 25%) saw application growth of 6-7%, while the most selective institutions (admit rates below 25%) experienced the slowest growth at 4%....”
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
Other Articles of Interest
USC Shutters DEI Office but Keeps Racially-Themed Graduation Ceremonies and Dorms
Full article at College Fix.
When Student Protest Goes Too Far
Full op-ed by Barnard College President Laura Ann Rosenbury at Chronicle of Higher Education.
National Association of Scholars Supports Legislation to Combat Foreign Influence in Higher Education
Full article at NAS website.
Whatever Happened to Freedom of Association?
“Nearly 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the propensity of Americans ‘of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions’ to form voluntary associations. Indeed, he regarded the free pursuit of a common interest among like-minded citizens as key to the survival of our democracy.” Full op-ed by Carleton College Professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron at Substack.
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.
Stanford Researchers Team Up with Student-Athletes to Unlock Peak Performance
Newly Discovered Molecule Rivals Ozempic in Weight Loss and with Fewer Side Effects
What’s the Deal with the Gut-Brain Connection?
From Stanford Review - Stanford’s Hiring Freeze Exposes the Big Lie of Research Funding
From Stanford Daily - Student Favorite Places on Campus
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“The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue -- questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.”
Former U.S. Supreme Court Judge William O. Douglas
March 10, 2025
The Smearing and Resurrection of Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
Editor's note: Many of the attacks on Dr. Bhattacharya discussed below came from the leaders of the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of medical research in the world, and related entities. Ironically, Dr. Bhattacharya has now been nominated to head the NIH.
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Jay Bhattacharya was in pretty terrible shape five years ago. He was losing sleep and weight, not because of the COVID-19 virus but in response to the efforts of his colleagues at Stanford University and the larger medical community to shut down his research, which questioned much of the government’s response to the pandemic.
“Some of his Stanford colleagues leaked false and damaging information to reporters. The university’s head of medicine ordered him to stop speaking to the press. Top leaders at the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, dialed up the attacks, dismissing him and his colleagues as what Collins termed ‘fringe epidemiologists’ while their acolytes threw mud from a slew of publications, including the Washington Post, The Nation, and the prestigious medical journal BMJ....
“‘Free speech is fundamental for science to function properly,' [Bhattacharya] notes simply....
“Bhattacharya first caught the attention of the nation’s scientific bureaucracy in April 2020 when he reported that the COVID virus was not as dangerous but more widespread than many of his colleagues and government officials were maintaining. This suggested a policy focusing on the most vulnerable populations with fewer restrictions on younger, healthier Americans. The study was discussed at the highest levels of the government and was passed around by Fauci and others in the White House, according to emails made public by a Freedom of Information Act request.
“‘For anyone with an open mind, the study’s results implied that the lockdown-focused strategy of March 2020 had failed to suppress the spread of the disease,’ Bhattacharya wrote in a 2023 essay. But the paper’s other obvious conclusion put Bhattacharya in the crosshairs of Stanford faculty: It suggested that fear-mongering about the fatality rate of the virus was irresponsible....
“Responding to the Buzzfeed flurry of reports, Stanford announced a fact-finding investigation of Bhattacharya’s research, which he began calling an ‘inquisition.’ The administration later informed him there was no ‘whistleblower’ as Buzzfeed had falsely reported, and they sent a confidential report that found him and his colleagues at no fault.
“‘I got a letter which basically says we did nothing wrong. But also a condition that I’m not allowed to release the letter,’ Bhattacharya explained in a 2023 interview. ‘This was a low period in my life. I was getting death threats, racist attacks, because the press was attacking me.’ …”
[Followed by a detailed discussion of the coordinated attacks on Bhattacharya; his research and the Great Barrington Declaration that to date has been signed by over 940,000 scientists, doctors and others worldwide; alleged conflicts of interest of those leading the attacks; some of the activities at the Wuhan labs, and related issues.]
“[Former CDC Director Robert] Redfield said that Collins, Fauci, and other critics should apologize to Bhattacharya for the years of harassment and actions that were both wrong and unprofessional. ‘If you survive these attacks, and you have a resurrection, you do very well,' Redfield said. ‘You now have a reputation for substance and standing up for what you believe is true. Not everyone has that. I’m pretty confident he’ll do well, move forward, and do the right thing.'"
Full article at Real Clear Investigations.
See also “Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back" (September 11, 2023) at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage.
Five Goals of Dr. Bhattacharya If Confirmed As Head of NIH
Reproduced in their entirety, as excerpted from Dr. Bhattacharya’s opening statement at his Senate confirmation hearing last week:
. . . . .
“I have five concrete goals if confirmed as director of the NIH.
“First, NIH research should focus on research that solves the American chronic disease crisis. American health is going backwards. Life expectancy flatlined between 2012 and 2019, plummeted during the pandemic, and still has not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. The chronic disease crisis is severe, with hundreds of millions of Americans, children and adults, suffering from obesity, heart disease, cancer, and more. If confirmed, I will carry out President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s agenda of committing the NIH to address the dire chronic health needs of the country with gold-standard science and innovation.
“Second, NIH-supported science should be replicable, reproducible, and generalizable. Unfortunately, much modern biomedical science fails this basic test. The NIH itself, just last year, faced a research integrity scandal involving research on Alzheimer’s disease that throws into question hundreds of research papers. If the data generated by scientists is not reliable, the products of such science cannot help anyone. It is no stretch to think that the slow progress on Alzheimer’s disease is linked to this problem. The NIH can and must solve the crisis of scientific data reliability. Under my leadership, if confirmed, it will do so.
“Third, if confirmed, I will establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH. Over the last few years, top NIH officials oversaw a culture of coverup, bias, and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs. Dissent is the very essence of science. I’ll foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists, including early-career scientists and scientists that disagree with me, can express disagreement respectfully.
“Fourth, the NIH must recommit to its mission to fund the most innovative biomedical research agenda possible to improve American health. My plan is to ensure that the NIH invests in cutting-edge research in every field to make big advances rather than just small, incremental progress over years.
“Fifth, the NIH must embrace and vigorously regulate risky research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic. It must regulate risky research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic. It should embrace transparency in all its operations. While the vast majority of biomedical research poses no risk of harm to research subjects or the public, the NIH must ensure that it never supports work that might cause harm...."
See Dr. Bhattacharya's full opening statement at his Senate confirmation hearing at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage here.
Santa Clara County DA Dismisses Criminal Case Against Stanford Daily Reporter
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Prosecutors in California said Thursday [March 6, 2025] that they are not going to pursue a criminal case against Dilan Gohill, the Stanford student journalist who was arrested while covering a pro-Palestinian campus protest and occupation of the university president’s office last June.
“Gohill had faced allegations of burglary, vandalism, and conspiracy -- all felonies. He was never formally charged, even though Stanford’s provost and then-president had publicly urged the Santa Clara County district attorney to prosecute the teenager. The case raised concerns among press and civil liberties groups about how authorities should handle a journalist who is caught up in a lawbreaking event.
“‘This Office supports a free press and recognizes that the law gives reporters latitude to do their jobs in keeping the public informed,’ District Attorney Jeff Rosen stated. ‘We have no evidence that this student did anything other than cover this event as a journalist.’ …
“The news comes nine months after Gohill, then nineteen and a freshman reporter for the Stanford Daily, was handcuffed and jailed while covering the predawn break-in and occupation of Building 10, where the Stanford president’s office is located. A story about his arrest and the journalistic issues surrounding it appeared in CJR last December.
“By most accounts -- including contemporaneous Slack messages as well as interviews with protesters and Daily staffers -- Gohill was there to report on the demonstration, not to participate in it.... Gohill spent the next twelve hours in jail, until his mother mustered the money to cover his $20,000 bail....”
Full article by Stanford alum and Columbia U Prof. Bill Grueskin at Columbia Journalism Review.
See also letter from the Daily's editorial board that was sent shortly before the DA made his announcement. See also “District Attorney Declines to File Charges Against Daily Reporter” at Stanford Daily.
Editor's note: We likewise had questioned Stanford’s longtime equivocation in the matter. Trespassing has to be without the consent of the property owner, and Stanford itself had concluded there was no trespassing or other wrongful behavior by this freshman reporter, so why was Stanford then so reluctant to tell the DA to drop the case?
Harvard College's Intellectual Vitality Statement
Reproduced in its entirety:
"During spring 2020 a group of students convened to discuss campus climate and the critical need to develop principles around respectful dialogue and understanding not only among the student body but for the entire College community. From those conversations, the following statement was created:
“Members of the Harvard College community affirm the value of intellectual vitality -- meaning, a spirit of open and rigorous inquiry. To this end, we believe that our community is best served through the charitable exchange of ideas, where we take as given one another’s best intentions and treat each other as partners in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. In doing so, we recognize the importance of giving and receiving criticism of ideas without extending these critiques to people themselves. Further, an engagement with and sincere consideration of competing views lies at the heart of education more broadly.
“To maintain a spirit of intellectual vitality, we must cultivate in ourselves an attitude of humility, respect, and curiosity toward each other. Through the spirit of intellectual vitality, we are able to strengthen our perspectives and reconsider foundational assumptions about the world, society, and our place in it -- while this may prove discomforting, the capacity to test core ideas is a precondition of growing in wisdom and understanding.
“All members of the Harvard College community therefore commit ourselves to uphold intellectual vitality in our respective capacities. We agree to foster this spirit of rigor, charity, and open exploration in classrooms, student organizations, and social interactions.”
Editor's note: Harvard’s Intellectual Vitality project is a much broader multiyear program, and we urge readers to look at the project’s more complete website here.
Two-thirds of Colleges Show At Least One Sign of Financial Stress
Editor’s note: In the detailed table, linked below, Stanford shows as having one year of operating losses and one year of endowment losses as compared to, for example, Harvard (2 years of operating losses and 3 years of endowment losses), Yale, Princeton and MIT (each with 3 years of operating losses and 3 years of endowment losses), UC Berkeley (3 years of operating losses and 2 years of appropriations losses) and Pomona (4 years of operating losses and 4 years of endowment losses).
Excerpt (links in the original):
“The first month of the Trump administration has been a series of body blows to American colleges. These actions include the freezing of grants for research and outreach that were even tangentially related to topics of race or gender, attempts to sharply reduce indirect cost rates for existing grants, and a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter that seeks to go well beyond the current Supreme Court’s decision limiting race-conscious admissions. This has led to a series of major research universities implementing hiring ‘chills’ and freezes while they wait to see how everything plays out in the courts.
“See the table to look up how your college has performed over the past 10 years [subscription may be required].
“It is somewhat ironic that the universities most affected by the Trump administration’s actions to this point are the ones that have fared the best over the last decade. Enrollment growth in recent years has been concentrated at a small number of flagship public and wealthy private universities, while regionally focused institutions -- engines of social mobility -- have generally struggled. Tuition prices have increased more slowly than the rate of inflation for much of the last decade, and rising tuition-discount rates have reduced revenue for many colleges. On the other side of the ledger, operating costs have risen quickly since the pandemic and typically outpace gains in revenue. While there was some rare good news on enrollment across higher education last fall, this does not make up for a lost decade for many institutions....”
Full article and table by U Tennessee Prof. Robert Kelchen at Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription may be required).
See also “NIH Funding Cuts Leave Stanford Researchers in Limbo” at Stanford Daily.
Don't Derail Universities, America's Innovation Engine
Excerpt (links in the original):
“Since World War II, American universities have served as our nation's engines of innovation, combining government funding with academic research to yield breakthrough discoveries in medicine, agriculture, engineering, and computer science. This was made possible largely by the system of funding that underpins university-based research. That system is now under attack from the Trump administration. Critics charge that the system is inefficient, unduly costly, and that universities can fund these efforts through other means. We think the decision is short-sighted and will harm U.S. interests by debilitating the system of research that underpins our national security and the most innovative sectors in our economy.
“Most of the important research at our universities relies on funding from federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and others. Universities negotiate an 'indirect cost rate' with the government whereby each dollar of research funding comes with additional support for building, maintaining, and staffing the facilities needed to conduct the research in question. The most research-intensive universities charge rates in excess of 60 percent to support these costly research activities. However, the Trump administration ordered the NIH to reduce its indirect rate to 15 percent. Federal judges issued restraining orders temporarily pausing the change. If this reduction ultimately occurs and spreads to other federal government funding agencies our national capacity for research will rapidly decline....”
Full op-ed by USC Deans/Professors Pedro A. Noguera and Mark Power Robison at Newsweek.
Other Articles of Interest
Students Question the Appropriateness of Using Memorial Church for Fashion Shows
“To see random people . . . posing in front of the crucifix, wearing revealing clothes on a Saturday night, showing up drunk in the church, treating it like it’s a party, or like a place to see and be seen, it’s so upsetting.” Full op-ed at Stanford Review.
Penn State Will Close Some Campuses Amid Enrollment Decline
Full article at Higher Ed Dive.
University of North Carolina System Makes It Nine Years in a Row with No In-State Tuition Increase
Full article at Just the News.
How Many Administrators Do Colleges Have?
Full op-ed at AEI. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including detailed graphs and charts.
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.
Stanford to Introduce Revenue-sharing Model for Athletes
New Antibodies Show Potential to Neutralize Virus That Causes COVID-19
A Stanford-led team has found two antibodies that can work together to defeat all SARS-CoV-2 variants. More research is needed, but the approach could help in the development of treatments to keep pace with evolving viruses.
Stanford Engineers Help Prepare Air Force Test Pilots for Autonomous Technology Advances
A Prescription for Produce Improves Health
Summit Explores Role of Human-Centered AI in the Learning Ecosystem
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“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” – Plato
March 3, 2025
Recent Developments at Stanford
President Levin’s and Provost Martinez’s Statement Re Recent Classroom Disruption
Reproduced in its entirety (February 26, 2025):
On Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 25, several individuals disrupted the Democracy and Disagreement course in Cemex Auditorium to protest a guest speaker, former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, who was there to debate with the economist Emmanuel Saez on the idea of a wealth tax.
The protestors were not Stanford students.
This behavior violates university policy and will not be tolerated. The Department of Public Safety collected information from the disruptors and is referring the information to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. We are taking steps to ban these individuals from our campus, which is private property. We extend the university’s apologies both to the speakers and to the students who were in attendance.
The expression of divergent views is welcome and expected in our community, and our policies provide ample opportunities for protest. But the classroom is at the center of the university’s educational mission. Disruption in the classroom setting is a fundamental disruption of the university’s operations and of the enrolled students’ opportunity to learn. Indeed, the Stanford students in the class on Tuesday afternoon vocally demanded that the demonstration stop so that the students could hear the speakers. The Democracy and Disagreement class has successfully hosted eighteen sessions of respectful debate on controversial topics in the last year, and we are encouraged by the fact that a few hundred audience members were present to actually hear the debate and promote the values of civil discourse.
President Jonathan Levin
Provost Jenny Martinez
Full text also at Stanford Report. See also articles at Stanford Daily, Stanford Review and College Fix.
Stanford Announces Freeze on Staff Hiring
Reproduced in its entirety (February 26, 2025):
Dear Stanford community,
We are in the process of developing Stanford’s budget for the 2025-26 academic year. This work is occurring as potential financial uncertainties are mounting for universities across the United States.
Most recently, as you know, the National Institutes of Health sought to dramatically reduce the payments it makes to universities for the indirect costs associated with research. Though this is currently under review by the courts, a cut of this magnitude would have a significant negative budget impact at Stanford. There is also uncertainty about the level of direct federal funding for scientific research as agencies like NIH and NSF face cuts.
In addition, there are Congressional proposals to expand the current endowment tax paid by universities including Stanford. This too would negatively affect Stanford’s finances, because the annual payout from the endowment forms a crucial part of our yearly budget. In particular, the endowment supports roughly two-thirds of the budget for undergraduate and graduate financial aid, as well as a significant portion of faculty salaries, research, and key programs like libraries and student services. Taken together, these are very significant risks to the university.
We have more work to do on our next budget, and we will learn more in the coming months about the outcomes of the various federal policy proposals. Given the uncertainty, we need to take prudent steps to limit spending and ensure that we have flexibility and resilience.
To better prepare us to meet these challenges, we are implementing a freeze on staff hiring in the university. Critically needed positions may be approved by the cognizant dean, vice president, or vice provost, though these situations should be limited. Similarly, hiring may continue for positions that are fully funded through externally-sponsored research awards; please confirm these hires with the cognizant dean’s office. The freeze does not apply to faculty positions, contingent employees (temporary and casual), or student workers.
We will be in further touch as the budget for next year develops. In the meantime, we do urge that new financial commitments be given careful consideration in the current environment.
President Jonathan Levin
Provost Jenny Martinez
Full text also at Stanford Report. See also articles at Stanford Daily and Stanford Review.
Making Stanford More Agile
Excerpt (link in the original):
“As the academic year began, Stanford President Jonathan Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez identified simplification -- making processes and decision-making on campus more agile -- as one of their top three priorities.
“Levin charged former President Richard Saller, former Provost John Etchemendy, and Vice President for University Affairs Megan Pierson with leading the simplification initiative, whose goal, as he explained last fall, is to 'reduce frictions and help make it easier to get things done.'
“The effort builds on work begun during Saller’s presidency when he asked Etchemendy to explore ways to enhance efficient use of resources and to cut down and ease hurdles that sometimes stand in the way of progress...."
Full Q&A at Stanford Report. See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage.
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An Analysis of DEI at Princeton and Nationwide
Editor’s note: Stuart Taylor, the author of this op-ed, is an American journalist, author and lawyer; has served as a fellow at the Brookings Institution; is currently president of Princetonians for Free Speech; and is the co-author of two books, the first of which broke open the wrongful actions of prosecutors, university officials and others in the notorious Duke lacrosse case.
Excerpts (links in the original):
. . .
“The pressure is intense on Princeton and all other universities to have a deep and prompt review of their DEI policies, their design and effectiveness, their use of overt and covert racial and gender preferences in admissions, financial aid, faculty hiring and training, racially segregated dormitories, graduation ceremonies, and other programming.
“The little-known nature and size of Princeton’s DEI -- ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’-- activities appear by some estimates to be more extensive, at least in terms of numbers of DEI personnel, than at most other Ivy League schools, and much more extensive than at most larger state schools -- although modest by comparison with some, such as the huge and much-remarked DEI bureaucracy at the University of Michigan. Meanwhile, the University of Virginia spends an estimated $20 million a year to or for employees who work on diversity, equity and inclusion, according to an analysis of the public school’s spending by a group called OpenTheBooks.com. It said UVA has at least 235 employees whose job titles signal they do DEI work for the school. (UVA has claimed this was inaccurate.)
“This article will describe in some detail Princeton’s DEI activities and the effects university DEI programs have had across the nation, and will sketch the Trump Administration’s anti-DEI policies....”
Full op-ed at Princetonians for Free Speech including a detailed discussion of programs at Princeton and elsewhere, their impact on free speech and on numerous faculty members personally, and what the various responses have been to date.
Third party comment at end of the op-ed: “Thank you for this insightful analysis. DEI was meant to foster inclusion, but at places like Princeton, it has morphed into an expensive, ideological bureaucracy that stifles free speech, fosters division, and prioritizes optics over true equity. When administrators wield more power than faculty and students fear speaking openly, it’s clear how far we’ve drifted from the university’s mission. We can and should encourage diverse perspectives, but never at the expense of intellectual freedom.”
See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” and Stanford’s Program re DEI” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
USC Scrubs DEI Amid Crackdown
Excerpts:
“After the Trump administration told schools to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs or face federal funding cuts, USC has deleted the website for its university wide Office of Inclusion and Diversity and merged it into another operation, scrubbed several college and department-level DEI statements, renamed faculty positions and, in one case, removed online references to a scholarship for Black and Indigenous students.
“The University of Southern California’s actions -- similar to some other universities throughout the country -- appear to be aimed at avoiding federal scrutiny, according to USC faculty and staff and reviews of portions of the USC website archives....
“Nationwide, universities have taken different stances. The president of Colorado State University, citing a need for federal funding, said it would remake its race-related programs and avoid a ‘gamble’ in challenging the Trump administration. At the University of Cincinnati, the president said that he had ‘little choice’ but to fall in line. Regents for the University of Alaska voted for DEI to be scrubbed from the system. The University of Iowa will end dorm communities next year for Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ students, according to news reports.
“Jerry Kang, a law professor and DEI expert who was UCLA’s first vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion until 2020, said it was not surprising that ‘universities engage in risk-averse overcompliance.’ ...
“At the [USC] Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the ‘diversity and inclusion’ section of its website now says ‘mission and vision.’ The title of a professor, Laura Castañeda, has changed from associate dean of ‘diversity, equity, inclusion and access’ to ‘community and culture.’
“Castañeda declined to speak with The Times. Speaking to Annenberg Media, a student publication, she said the goal was to ‘soften language.’
“'I think the idea was -- and I think this is true university-wide -- [that we would] soften language, just because it might buy us some time. We’re going to continue the work -- the work doesn’t stop,' Castañeda said...."
Full article at LA Times.
Vanderbilt and Wash U Publish a Statement of University Principles
Editor’s note: A week ago, Vanderbilt and Wash U (of St. Louis) published a full-page ad in the WSJ and possibly elsewhere setting forth a statement of university principles. While we welcome this type of action, we still believe Stanford and other colleges and universities would be best served by adopting all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta which were written by faculty and have withstood the test of time. That said, here are the first two paragraphs of the recent ad:
“American higher education is at a crossroads. Ideological forces in and outside of campuses have pulled too many universities away from the core purpose, principles and values that made them America’s great engines of learning, innovation and discovery, and the envy of the world.
“It is imperative that universities reaffirm and protect those core principles, strengthen their compact with the American people, and build on their unmatched capacity for teaching and innovation. They must do so not only because universities provide education that is transformative and research that improves everyday life – but also because their work is vital to American property, competitiveness and national security....”
[Followed by a summary of basic principles: (1) excellence, (2) academic freedom and free expression, and (3) growth and development, followed by a discussion of creeping politicization.]
For more information, visit their website here.
What College Presidents Really Think
Excerpts (link in the original):
“College presidents showed tepid support for tenure with a little more than a third agreeing that the pros outweigh the cons, according to Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents, conducted with Hanover Research and released in full [on February 26, 2025].
“That was just one of many findings across the annual survey, now in its 15th year.
“Presidents were optimistic in some areas, with most expressing confidence that their institutions will be financially stable over the next five to 10 years and positivity about the job itself. But campus leaders also expressed concerns about politicians trying to shape institutional strategies, which they see as an increasing risk, plus a seeming lack of improvement on undergraduate mental health, even as campuses make more investments in related services....”
[Followed by discussion and graphs re faculty tenure, campus speech, economic confidence, being a president, student mental health and other findings.]
Full article at Inside Higher Ed including links to the full report and a future webinar.
UW-Madison Cancels Planned Tech Talk of Blind Doctor with Conservative Views
Editor’s note: We present the following article not because we favor any particular political views but rather because this is another example of colleges and universities still not realizing the importance of free speech and critical thinking.
Excerpts (links in the original):
“University Health Services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has canceled a talk scheduled to be given by an addiction psychiatrist who said he has been ‘canceled’ due to his outspoken conservative views.
“Dr. Timothy Cordes, a UW–Madison alumnus and former employee -- and the second blind person ever to be accepted to an American school of medicine -- was invited to speak to a group of physicians and counselors who treat students at the university about the psychological effects of social media and technology use and what can be done to help combat the adverse effects....
“Although university brass claim some sort of scheduling conflict, the event organizer privately informed him that the UHS administration canceled his talk due to concerns that hosting someone with conservative views, which he has publicly expressed on his podcast and Substack, might have a ‘negative impact … on some members of the team.’...
“[Dr. Cordes] received an official cancellation notice via email from the university, which The College Fix reviewed. The email stated his talk was canceled due to a scheduling conflict. However, there was no attempt to reschedule the event.
“A spokesperson for UW-Madison told The College Fix via email the event was cancelled so UHS admin could meet to focus on changes they are making in their program....”
Full article at College Fix.
See also "I'm a Surgeon and I've Never Been More Alarmed About My Profession" at City Journal.
Teen Hired by Google Was Rejected by 16 Colleges; Now He’s Suing for Discrimination
Excerpts (links in the original):
“He had a 4.42 GPA and a near perfect 1590 score on his SAT. Yet he was rejected by 16 colleges he applied to. Now he’s suing for discrimination.
“Stanley Zhong, who ended up taking a PhD-level software engineer job at Google out of high school, is fighting for other Asian-American students who might face the same dilemma -- a kid who is perfect on paper but rejected due to his ethnicity.
“At least, that’s what the Zhong family hopes to prove in court.
“‘The story is bigger than Stanley himself,’ his father, Nan Zhong, recently told ABC Bay Area News. ‘And what we’re trying to get out of this is a fair treatment of Asian applicants going forward, including my other kids and my future grandkids.’
“The lawsuit, filed Feb. 11, names the University of California system and campus leaders as defendants -- as well as leaders at all five UC schools he applied to that had rejected him....”
Full article at College Fix.
Other Articles of Interest
American Bar Association Suspends DEI Standards for Accreditation
Full article at Inside Higher Ed.
The Secret That Colleges Should Stop Keeping – The Cost of Obtaining Higher Education is Getting Cheaper
Full article at The Atlantic.
Which Type of Note-Taking Is Better for Learning – Laptop or Pen and Paper?
Full article at The Conversation.
Eleven Steps to Revitalize the Practice of Medicine
Full op-ed at Brownstone.
How Educators Are Using Kindness to Transform Schools
Full article at UC Berkeley Greater Good Magazine.
Harvard College Dean Says He Will Focus on Re-centering Academics
Full article at Harvard Crimson.
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.
Town Center Project to Reshape White Plaza and Stanford Bookstore
The Future of Geothermal for Reliable Clean Energy
Managing Risks in AI-Powered Biomedical Research
Immune ‘Fingerprints’ Aid Diagnosis of Complex Diseases
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"The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else." – Deceased Stanford alum, former Stanford trustee and founder of Common Cause John W. Gardner
February 24, 2025
Active and Passive Academic Freedom
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In a NYTimes op-ed by former NCI and NIH director, and Nobel Laureate, Harold Varmus, Varmus argues that future NIH director Jay Bhattacharya is wrong to tie NIH funding to academic freedom. He calls the plan ‘outlandish’ [long quote deleted] ….
“Varmus’ claim begs the questions: What is academic freedom? Is there a public interest to incentivize universities that honor it? How can the NIH practically consider it in grant giving?
“I consider academic freedom to come in two forms: passive and active.
"Passive academic freedom means that Universities should take no disciplinary action towards faculty based on their point of view or speech (as long as it is legally permitted), while active academic freedom means University should actively encourage debates and discussion on important, disputed topics, particularly those with relevance to ongoing policy decisions....
“Bob Harrington, Chair of Medicine at Stanford, told Eran Bendavid, an [infectious diseases] doctor, to stop speaking to the press with his view that school closure and lockdowns were misguided. Bob was rewarded by being promoted to Dean of Cornell. Eran went silent.
“Scott Atlas, a radiologist, underwent academic censure for stating that kids should not wear cloth masks, that covid-19 posed low risks to children, and that school closure was misguided....
“On the issue of active academic freedom, universities failed even more spectacularly. There were no debates on school closures, masking children, vaccine mandates, and other health policy of incalculable significance at major universities, including Johns Hopkins, Harvard, or Stanford. These discussions were simply not held....
“In short, there is nothing 'outlandish' [typo corrected] about Jay Bhattacharya considering academic freedom alongside other facilities and opportunities present at universities in deciding whether federal funding should be invested. We already ensure universities treat women fairly, lest they lose [typo corrected] funding. We already ensure universities have the physical space to conduct the work that is being funded. We now ask only that universities offer the intellectual environment that is conducive to free and open thought. That is not only in the interest of universities, it is directly in the public interest as well.”
Full op-ed by UCSF Prof. Vinay Prasad at Substack.
JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon Sounds Off on Bureaucracy
Excerpts (link in the original):
“The breaking point came at a town hall in Ohio [a week ago]. According to audio obtained by Barron's, JPMorgan's CEO unleashed his frustration when he learned a single wealth management project needed approval from 14 different committees. ‘I am dying to get the name of the 14 committees, and I feel like firing 14 chairmen of committees. I can't stand it anymore. I want it out of the company.’
“For Dimon, the issue goes beyond wasted time. Every year brings more controls, more checkpoints, more coordination meetings. Until one day your organization can barely move. ‘It just kind of creeped in,’ he said....
“He went on to say:
"’Bureaucracy is also centralizing too much. Everything's got to be documented too much, and so it's just creeped in in a million different ways’
“This is how bureaucracy works -- it spreads under the guise of prudence, risk management, and coordination. Each additional approval step seems reasonable. Each new committee appears to add valuable oversight. Each documentation requirement feels prudent. But the cumulative effect is organizational sclerosis....
Full article at Michele Zanini website.
For an example of what Dimon is talking about, see Stanford’s party planning webpages for what it now takes for students to hold a party at Stanford.
TreeHacks Awards $200,000 in Prizes to Students from Around the World
Excerpts:
“At 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, students were hard at work under bright lights in the basement of the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center competing in TreeHacks, Stanford’s annual hackathon.
“TreeHacks is a 36-hour sprint. Over 1,000 students from around the world convene on Stanford campus for two days of intense collaboration to create a prototype or functioning product by the end of the event. While there is no set challenge, participants are instructed to ‘turn [their] crazy ideas into real projects,’ according to the TreeHacks website.
“Teams of up to four competed for over $200,000 in prizes, with awards including the ‘Most Creative Hack,’ ‘Most Impactful Hack’ and ‘Most Technically Complex Hack.’...
“For Legasse Remon, a junior from the University of Florida, coming to TreeHacks has long been a dream. Remon applied four times before being accepted this year, and he believes that hundreds of students applied from his university.
“’I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t come to [TreeHacks],’ he said. ‘They gather people from around the world -- it’s the biggest [hackathon] with a lot of the biggest prizes.’...
Full article at Stanford Daily.
There’s Good News in U.S. Higher Education If You Look for It
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Anxiety and uncertainty are high within U.S. higher education right now. Anyone attending or working at an American university is struggling to understand what 2025 and beyond will bring. And, of course, the whirlwind of challenges did not start this year. Throughout 2024 there was no shortage of surveys revealing that an increasing percentage of Americans are disappointed with traditional colleges and universities.
“Given this turbulence and uncertainty, it would seem almost perverse to talk about good news in higher education. Still, it exists and needs to be highlighted, if only to remind ourselves of our collective mission to educate students and advance their social and economic mobility.
“First, college applications are up....
“On employability, student demand for apprenticeships currently outstrips supply. And three-year degrees are gaining momentum: good news for working adults and those seeking to accelerate their pathway to a degree. This is evidence of innovative thinking within higher education and a deep commitment to college completion for more Americans.
“Access is also getting fairer....
“None of this is to deny the profound challenges higher education must address. But amid the current uncertainty, it is as well to acknowledge that while US post-secondary education is imperfect, it remains among the best strategies for individuals to gain a foothold in the middle class and contribute to the nation’s economic and social prosperity.”
Full op-ed by UCLA Prof. Eileen L. Strempel at Times Higher Ed.
Other Articles of Interest
AI Grading -- A Game-Changer or a Double-Edged Sword?
Full op-ed at Educators Technology.
Alumni Reactions Around the Country
Full article at Real Clear Investigations
Theory and Practice of Excellent University Governance (podcast)
Full interview (24 minutes) at Higher Ed Now.
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.
How to Turn Old Ideas into Creative Solutions to Modern Problems
Why Corporate AI Projects Succeed or Fail
New Findings on the Power of Enzymes Could Reshape Biochemistry
Researchers Identify DNA Changes, Biological Pathways Associated with Inherited Cancer Risk
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"Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think." – Albert Einstein
February 17, 2025
President Levin Discusses Recent Wave of Executive Orders and Other Federal Actions
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In a Friday [February 14, 2025] interview with The Daily, University president Jonathan Levin ’94 commented on the storm of policies under President Donald Trump that have rocked Stanford since January, including potential federal funding cuts, escalating immigration enforcement, a clampdown on DEI efforts and changes to Title IX rules.
“Levin acknowledged the instability in federal policies, expressing his opposition to research funding cuts, and said he was ‘very concerned’ about the potential effects of new immigration policies on international and undocumented community members. He refrained from overtly criticizing the Trump administration, instead emphasizing institutional neutrality....
[From the Q and A interview:]
Levin: “I believe it’s a critical moment for universities, and a moment not just to wrestle with specific issues, of which there are many, but to renew the social contract between universities and the federal government, which is such a defining source of strength for the country.
“The U.S., after World War II, established a brilliant strategy for scientific leadership. It’s allowed the U.S. to be the leader in the world. The government funds research in universities through a competitive merit-based process. Universities share the results openly, the private sector builds on them, and that is what drives innovation in the country.
“That’s just an exceptional model. Virtually every study of federal funding has shown that a dollar allocated to university research generates several dollars in return. The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, and the research that it funds is what drives advances in human health and in biomedicine. It benefits everyone in the country and everyone in the world.
“Last week, the agency announced that it would make a sharp cut in the indirect cost payments to universities. It’s not the greatest terminology, but the concept is pretty simple. That is the money that goes to fund the construction and maintenance of labs and facilities, equipment and administrative support for research. It’s hard to do research without a lab and the equipment that’s in it.
“The order has been rescinded, and we’re part of a lawsuit objecting to it, but the threat to federal funding is very real and it’s hugely consequential for Stanford, every research university in the country and for the country as a whole. This is a moment not just to respond to that particular issue, which we have to do, but to be focused on, ‘How do we strengthen this core partnership between universities and the government on which everyone depends?'… "
Full interview at Stanford Daily including re cutbacks in federal funding, Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya as nominee to head the NIH, the future of the U.S. Department of Education, immigration, institutional neutrality and other issues.
New Guidance from U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights re Non-Discrimination Policies
Editor's note: The following is the text of the letter from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights sent on Friday, February 14, 2025 to Stanford and all other U.S. colleges and universities and that is also referenced in the interview with Pres. Levin, above.
Excerpts (footnotes deleted):
“Dear Colleague:
“Discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is illegal and morally reprehensible. Accordingly, I write to clarify and reaffirm the nondiscrimination obligations of schools and other entities that receive federal financial assistance from the United States Department of Education (Department). This letter explains and reiterates existing legal requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution, and other relevant authorities.
“In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families....
[Followed by discussion of the Supreme Court decision in the Harvard admissions case and how those principles will now be applied to all aspects of a school's operations.]
“Although some programs may appear neutral on their face, a closer look reveals that they are, in fact, motivated by racial considerations. And race-based decision-making, no matter the form, remains impermissible....
“All educational institutions are advised to: (1) ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law; (2) cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends; and (3) cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race.
“Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding....”
Full text of letter including with footnotes at U.S. Department of Education website.
UK University Adds Over 200 Trigger Warnings to Shakespeare
Excerpts (links in the original):
“A university in England has put over 200 trigger warnings on Shakespeare works and adaptations for things such as the ‘popping of balloons,’ violence, ‘psychological trauma,’ ‘extreme weather,’ and more.
“The University of the West of England issued warnings for murder, suicide, violence, and family trauma in Macbeth, as well as ‘storms’ and ‘extreme weather’ in The Tempest, The Telegraph reported.
“The school also placed a warning on a stage adaptation of The Tempest due to the ‘popping of balloons,’ while another work, Much Ado About Nothing, has been flagged for ‘treatment of women’ and ‘mourning.’
“For Romeo and Juliet, the university issued warnings for ‘death, suicide, violence, knives and blood,’ the outlet reported.
“Further, ‘Students are warned that the Winter’s Tale has ‘accusations of adultery’ and ‘references to wild animal attack,' the New York Post reported...."
Full article at College Fix.
Science Returns to Science
Excerpts (link in the original):
“I thought the academic DEI juggernaut was unstoppable. Then, a week after President Trump’s inauguration, I got an email with an announcement from the Department of Energy: ‘The Office of Science is immediately ending the requirement for Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) Plans in any proposal submitted. . . . Reviewers will not be asked to read or comment on PIER Plans. Selection decisions will not take into consideration the content of PIER Plans or any reviewer comments on PIER Plans.’
“PIER plans, which the Biden administration instituted in 2022, required every grant application to ‘describe the activities and strategies of the applicant to promote equity and inclusion as an intrinsic element to advancing scientific excellence.’ In the words of the announcement, ‘The complexity and detail of a PIER Plan is expected to increase with the size of the research team and the number of personnel to be supported.’
“The end of the PIER Plan and other DEI-related requirements is seismic. The major source of physical science research support in the country has sent a message to universities: Stick to science. It may be the death knell of what appeared to be an invulnerable academic bureaucracy that has been impeding the progress of higher education and research for at least a decade....
“Last year a colleague of mine and I used ChatGPT to examine all 12,065 awards made by the National Science Foundation and classified more than 1,000 of them, accounting for more than $675 million, as focused on DEI rather than science. And under Biden decrees, even science-focused grants were evaluated on DEI grounds....”
Full op-ed by ASU Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krause at WSJ.
A Call for a Return to Core Medical Principles
Excerpts (link in the original):
. . . .
“The original Hippocratic Oath, though not penned by the Greek physician Hippocrates himself, encapsulated ethical responsibilities that resonate with the essence of patient-centered care. The Oath’s call to avoid harm and respect the dignity of patients has been a guiding light for countless physicians....
“A recent trend has emerged in medical schools across the United States and Canada, where the incorporation of terms like 'equity,' 'diversity,' and 'social justice' have been incorporated into revised versions of the Hippocratic Oath. A 2022 survey by the Association of American Medical Colleges revealed that a staggering 96% of participating institutions are prioritizing diversity and inclusion as key learning outcomes. While the intentions behind these changes may in some cases be commendable -- aimed at acknowledging the social determinants of health -- the implications for medical education are deeply troubling....
“As a physician trained within the framework of the Hippocratic tradition, I find these developments misguided. The focus on demographic categories risks overshadowing the rigorous scientific education that is vital for effective medical practice. Rather than equipping future healthcare providers with the profound understanding of disease mechanisms, prevention, and treatment, we are diverting attention to a discourse that categorizes patients into overly simplistic boxes. This approach not only undermines the complexity of individual health needs, but also has the potential to dilute the mastery of clinical skills required for effective patient care....
“We can recognize diversity and treat everyone fairly without promoting division and ostracization. Personalized care can and should be provided based on demonstrated evidence of need. By prioritizing the fundamental tenets of the Hippocratic tradition, we can cultivate a healthcare system that respects individual differences without allowing them to overshadow the art and science of medicine. Let us not forget that the ultimate goal is to improve patient health outcomes -- something that can only be achieved through unwavering dedication to the craft of medicine.”
Full op-ed by Dr. Nikki M. Johnson at Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.
What Do We Mean by the Liberal University?
Excerpts (links in the original):
“When faculty members attempt to raise their students’ political awareness or mobilize them to political action, are they living up to their highest calling or betraying it? When university presidents take official stands on issues like the Black Lives Matter protests or Israel’s actions in Gaza, are they displaying civic responsibility or undermining their institutions’ intellectual mission? Underlying these topical concerns is the vexed and longstanding question about the proper relationship between academe and politics.
“The positions people take on this question range between two poles. At one end are those who regard academic work, especially in the humanities and social sciences, as political activism by other means. Richard Rorty speaks for this group when he writes that “we cannot take the idea of unpoliticized humanities any more seriously than our opposite numbers in the clergy can take seriously the idea of a depoliticized church.” For Rorty, there is no return to the humanist myths of universal values, disinterested criticism, or objective knowledge. Teaching and scholarship are inescapably political because knowledge, culture, and subjectivity are inescapably political. Classrooms are political spaces, whether we like it or not. The honest thing is to admit it.
“At the other end of the spectrum are those who hold that academe and politics are distinct realms which should be kept as far apart as possible. Stanley Fish, the most-trenchant proponent of this view since Max Weber, insists that academics are neither trained nor qualified -- let alone paid -- to act as moral guides or political seers. We have no business shaping the political consciences of the students who wander into our classes. Our job is to train them in the forms of knowledge and methodology appropriate to our disciplines. When we go further by trying to recruit students to our pet political causes, we overstep the bounds of our professional remit.
“I think it’s fair to say that, after a decade of activist ascendency, Fish’s view is about to have its moment in the sun....
“To put my cards on the table: I believe this course correction is, on the whole, a good thing. The aggressive framing of academic scholarship, pedagogy, and administration in overtly progressive terms has yielded few demonstrable gains for progressive politics, while causing real harm to individual careers, institutional reputations, and academic culture at large. A reaction was bound to happen....
“Doing the job of an academic requires checking one’s politics at the classroom’s door -- not because a professor’s political opinion is a dirty secret, but because once politics are allowed in, the discussion ceases to be academic and becomes something else. In fact, the more a professor’s politics are a matter of public knowledge -- which is not uncommon, as many academics are also public intellectuals -- the more stringently they should depoliticize their classrooms. To check one’s politics at the door is not to compromise one’s values; it is to make room for another kind of value....”
Full op-ed by Tel Aviv Prof. Nir Evron at Chronicle of Higher Education.
Other Articles of Interest
Yale Jewish Students Kicked Out of Their Own Center During Pro-Palestinian Protest
Full article at College Fix.
New Stanford Database Tracks Learning Losses and Gains in California and Other School Districts Nationwide
Full article at Ed Source.
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.
Study Reveals Striking Variations in Pandemic Recovery Among U.S. School Districts
Additional Benefits of Tool for Carbon Dioxide Removal
New Sepsis Test Significantly Reduces Life-or-Death Diagnosis Time
Physicians Make Better Decisions with Help of AI Chatbots
Student Voices
Stanford Review: A Place to Debate
Stanford Daily: DEI Information Disappears from University Web Pages
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"Stanford remains steadfast in its dedication to academic freedom, which serves as a key foundation for the university’s truth-seeking scholarship and impactful research.” -- Stanford Board Chair Jerry Yang
February 10, 2025
Removing the Ivy-Tinted Glasses
Editor’s note: Stanford has long been a key member of what are called the “Ivy-Plus” schools, including as discussed in the article that follows.
Excerpts (links and most italics in the original):
“Many Americans are frustrated by elite private universities. We’ve seen their hostility to diversity of opinion and free speech, politically imbalanced faculty and administrators, galling instances of antisemitism, enormous costs, unfair admissions processes, and more. For such reasons, public approval of higher education had been low and falling for some time, particularly on America’s right. And that was before the campus unrest of 2024, which was concentrated at the most affluent private schools.
“As a result, a growing number of hiring managers claim to be looking elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on firms souring on Ivy grads, and 13 federal appeals court judges now won’t hire clerks from Columbia. However, according to two major new studies, it would take a whole lot more to make even a dent in the influence of America’s most prestigious private schools.
“It’s no secret that a few American institutions are led by a disproportionate number of elite-college graduates. For example, all nine of today’s US Supreme Court justices went to private colleges; seven went to Ivies as undergraduates, and eight went to Ivies for law school. And since 1989, every president other than Joe Biden has had at least one Ivy degree. But that might be only the tip of the iceberg. A 2023 paper by a team of Ivy economists about ‘Ivy+’ schools (the eight Ivies plus four other highly selective privates) argued that 'leadership positions in the US are disproportionately held by graduates' of these colleges. Covering the study for The Atlantic, a Harvard-educated author wrote an essay titled, ‘You Have to Care About Harvard’ with the subtitle, ‘It creates the super-elite. The super-elite create America.’ …
“[On the other hand,] I researched the educational backgrounds of those holding an array of top public positions: governors, state attorneys general, state supreme court justices, state legislative leaders, and state education superintendents. I also identified which law firms were considered the most elite in each state and then researched the schooling of those firms’ leaders (e.g., managing partner, practice leader, management-team member).
“My findings challenge the notion that the graduates of a small number of elite private schools dominate our leadership ranks and show the importance of geography when considering leadership development....
“More than half of governors went to a public college, and all of these went to a school in their state or in a state that bordered their own. Demonstrating that America has many pathways into public leadership: The 49 governors with a college degree graduated from 46 different colleges. State legislative leaders (like house speakers and senate presidents) were seven times likelier to go to a public flagship than an Ivy+.
“Possibly the most surprising office is state supreme court justice. Vastly different than U.S. Supreme Court justices, these leading figures were likelier to go to public undergraduate and public law schools than private. In fact, in 22 states not a single Supreme Court justice went to an Ivy+ college; in half of states, not a single justice went to an Ivy+ law school....”
Full article by former chair of the Maryland Higher Education Commission Andy Smarick at Law and Liberty.
We also recommend the full text of the report here including the egalitarian education of American leaders, rightsizing for opportunity, American pluralism, the Ivy-Plus universities as compared to the state flagship and other public universities, degree inflation, and detailed charts regarding federal and state supreme court and lower court judges, legislators, governors, education chiefs, attorneys general and top law firms.
Celebrating Ten Years of the Chicago Principles
Editor’s note: Not only do we concur with the following, but we again suggest that Stanford’s faculty, administration and trustees should adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta as set forth here. And if anyone disagrees with any of the specific items in any of the three parts, they should consider the following questions: What provision do you disagree with, what specific language do you suggest instead, and why? This process would put in place a fundamental framework for decisions and operations while allowing the various governing bodies to debate any specific changes they think are needed.
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In 2014, American colleges faced an existential crisis -- campuses erupted over controversial speakers as the heckler’s veto
increasingly replaced debate. In response, the University of Chicago drafted a landmark statement reaffirming the school’s commitment to free speech.
“Since then, more than 110 colleges and universities have adopted the ‘Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression,’ commonly known as the Chicago Statement or the Chicago principles, transforming the landscape of higher education in the country.
“In a star-studded, all-day symposium last month, the University of Chicago celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the iconic Statement and its famous assertion, ‘It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.’ ...
“Geoffrey Stone, the First Amendment scholar and chair of the committee, spoke of the ‘fundamental challenge’ universities face in encouraging students and faculty to speak their minds. Kenneth Warren, professor of English, echoed this by speaking of faculty members ‘who are taking on the deep responsibility of exploring difficult questions.’
“The conversation was engaging and frank -- all faculty members acknowledged challenges and remained open to the possibility that mistakes may be made along the way -- sentiments true to the ethos of the principles themselves....”
Full article at FIRE.
Harvard Committee Reports Students Frequently Self-Censor and Give Extracurricular Activities Higher Priority Than Academics
Excerpts:
“A Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee released a report Friday concluding that many Harvard College students self-censor when discussing controversial topics and frequently prioritize extracurricular commitments over their academics.
“The committee recommended strengthening course attendance requirements, discouraging phone use in class, standardizing grading, and amending student and faculty handbooks to include a classroom confidentiality policy....
“The report concluded that some undergraduates avoid politically fraught conversations, opting instead to socialize and take courses with like-minded peers and instructors. Only 33 percent of graduating College students feel free to express their views on controversial issues, according to a 2024 survey of graduating seniors cited in the report....”
Full article at Harvard Crimson including a summary of recommendations.
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The Costs of DEI
Editor’s note: We are presenting below a mere sampling of articles from the past week re DEI issues universities are facing nationwide with respect to the recent Executive Orders. We do so not to reflect a political view, one way or another, but rather to put a spotlight on activities that have been allowed to accrue in recent years that turned out not only to be very costly but also appear to have been largely counterproductive to diversity and inclusion.
We suggest a solution is not to reinvent the wheel but to simply adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta and then to address all of the pending issues based on those concepts. See also Back to Basics at Stanford where we have proposed (paragraph 3.c.) that as these and other programs are reduced or eliminated, all savings, dollar for dollar, “shall be redirected SOLELY to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and graduate student fellowships.” In other words, let’s move resources from administrative overhead back to where they should be spent: solely on the core educational activities of the students themselves.
DEI Costs at U Michigan
Excerpts (links in the original):
“New research has found the number of University of Michigan employees who work either full-time or part-time on diversity, equity, and inclusion-related efforts now tops 1,100.
“The findings come as the U.S. Department of Education under President Donald Trump has eliminated all its DEI initiatives, including placing DEI staff on paid administrative leave and removing DEI language, trainings, directives, and advisory boards throughout the agency....
“Economist Mark Perry, a University of Michigan-Flint emeritus professor who tallied up the latest number of DEI jobs at UMich, told The College Fix its DEI bureaucracy is extraordinary in its size and scope.
“The report identifies 248 full-time UM staff members whose main duties are to provide DEI programming services and advance DEI 2.0 at an annual payroll cost of $24 million.
“When fringe benefits are added at a rate of 32 percent of base salaries it brings the total annual compensation of UM’s DEI staff to nearly $31.7 million -- or enough to pay in-state tuition and fees for approximately 1,800 students.
“On top of [the activities of the central DEI staff], the university employs 167 staffers across UM’s schools, colleges, centers, programs, offices, and libraries to advance DEI, such as the College of Engineering’s Office of Culture Community and Equity (21 staffers) and Michigan Medicine’s Office for Health, Equity, and Inclusion (20 staffers) ....
“Michigan maintains an Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, or ODEI, that includes a chief diversity officer, Chavous, who earns $417,000 annually plus benefits.
“'In contrast, Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer’s salary is $159,300, and the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at UM (all campuses) are $130,037, $145,360, and $207,827 respectively,' according to the research study compiled by Perry and provided exclusively to The College Fix....
“But wait -- there’s more. To enact its massive ‘DEI 2.0 Plan,’ the university has tapped 118 ‘Unit Leads’ -- a mix of deans, scholars and staffers -- 46 who are full-time diversity employees and 72 who work part-time alongside their normal jobs to oversee the implementation of the various DEI goals within each of the university’s 51 units, from 17 academic schools and colleges to the IT division to Athletics to the Department of Public Safety to three libraries to the Museum of Art and even the Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum.
“To support those ‘Unit Leads,’ a total of 679 additional staffers across the 51 units have been tasked with helping roll out the DEI 2.0 plan, according to Perry, who reviewed each of the 51 Unit Strategic Plans to count the number of employees tasked with DEI advancement.
“All told, that’s roughly 1,122 jobs dedicated to advancing DEI at the University of Michigan, according to Perry’s findings. The University of Michigan-Flint emeritus professor also notes in his report he didn’t even include 51 jobs in the Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX Office in his round-up....”
Full article at College Fix.
See also “Stanford’s Program re DEI” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
DEI Courses Consume 40 Million Hours of Undergraduate Time and $1.8 Billion in Selected States
Excerpts from summary article (links in the original):
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion course requirements in at least 30 states cost students and taxpayers at least $1.8 billion per four-year period. Meanwhile, ‘the current undergraduate population at public universities will spend at least 40 million hours’ fulfilling these mandates in order to graduate, a conservative think tank report found.
“The author of the Goldwater Institute report told The College Fix that DEI initiatives are costly to taxpayers not only due to the funds diverted to them but also because consultants and faculty profit from these programs.
“‘One of the reasons DEI is so costly to taxpayers is because its proponents actively enrich themselves as they increase its scope and influence over institutions,’ Matt Beienburg, director of education policy at the Goldwater Institute, told The College Fix.
“‘DEI ‘consultants’ and other ‘gurus’ such as Ibram X. Kendi extract speaking fees from taxpayer-funded public institutions at rates of tens of thousands of dollars per engagement,’ Beienburg said....”
Full article at College Fix; full text of the report here.
Other Articles of Interest
Survey Indicates Students Feel Unprepared to Use AI in the Workplace
Full article at Ed Tech.
UNC’s New School Uses AI to Promote Civil Discourse
Full article by UNC Prof. Mark McNeilly at James Martin Center.
The Use and Misuse of AI in Higher Education Writing Courses
Full op-ed by Indiana Wesleyan Prof. Russell Fox at Minding the Campus.
UConn Requires Medical Students to Take DEI Oath
Full article at FIRE.
Brown Medical School Gives DEI More Weight Than Clinical Skills in Promotion Criteria for Faculty
Full article at Free Beacon.
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
Alumni and Others Again Seek Dismissal of Charges Against Stanford Daily Reporter
How Four Stanford Researchers Are Using 3D Printing to Improve Health
Advances in the Science, Prevention and Care of Cancer (an entire issue of Stanford Medicine magazine)
Stanford Professor Tells Davos Attendees That Billions of Dollars Are Being Wasted on AI
Recycling Lithium-ion Batteries Delivers Significant Environmental Benefits
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"The freedom to question and challenge ideas -- even those held sacred -- is what makes the university the engine of progress and the guardian of truth." — Clark Kerr, former President of the University of California
February 3, 2025
Interview of Stanford President Jon Levin (podcast)
This interview by Freakonomics co-author and University of Chicago Prof. Steven Levitt took place in a podcast that was initially broadcast on January 17, 2025. The interview began with questions and answers about Pres. Levin’s academic background including his obtaining a PhD in economics at MIT following his undergraduate studies at Stanford and then his returning to Stanford years ago as a new member of the faculty. The discussion later turned to the challenges of being the president of a modern university like Stanford, including these excerpts:
LEVITT: In the abstract, being the president of perhaps the most important and influential university in the world, Stanford University, sounds like it would be fun. But the actual tasks that I imagine you do on a daily basis, those don’t sound at all fun to me -- trying to please a dozen different constituencies, fundraising, making difficult budget decisions, saying no on tenure cases. You’re probably working 70 hours a week doing these things. Do you actually enjoy your job?
LEVIN: I love my job. The opportunity to lead a great academic institution like Stanford, it’s an incredible honor. It’s a big responsibility. But it’s mostly just an extraordinary opportunity and pleasure. And that’s because -- look around the world. There’s just very few places on the planet that assemble the collection of people and talent and brilliant scholars, students across so many disciplines, that you have on a campus like this. And your job is, first and foremost, to gather those people and then ensure that they have the freedom and the resources to accomplish really extraordinary things.
That’s a great job to have. There’s just so much to take pride in terms of what people are doing and to see their success. And of course, there’s strategic elements -- what should the university be investing in, and direction. And there’s some challenges too. There’s certainly legion at the moment when it comes to higher education. One of the things I discovered in my career, which was -- serendipity was I loved being a economist and a faculty member and a researcher. You could more or less spend your time thinking about any problem that you’re interested in. What job gives you that kind of freedom to explore and be curious and be creative and engage in problems and have collaborators to do it with?
Maybe 15 years ago, I became a department chair and I realized being a faculty member is a very entrepreneurial thing. It’s you, your graduate students, a few collaborators, you get grants, you kind of run your own ship with a lot of freedom and autonomy. And I really enjoyed when things went well, whether it was hiring colleagues or seeing people get tenure or success in student programs. The collective feeling of success, that kind of got me hooked on academic leadership and ended up taking my career in a little bit different direction. And of course, at the scale of a university like Stanford, it’s a great feeling to have an institution that you care about and deeply want to succeed, and you have a whole set of people who want the same thing. And to feel that if you can articulate a compelling vision for the future and bring people along and empower them, great things happen. And many, many people can take pride in the success of a great university. Who wouldn’t love to be in that position? And I feel fortunate to be in it....
LEVITT: Where a lot of universities got into a kind of trouble was in trying to define hate speech. As you say, look, it’s pretty easy to say that we’ll put restrictions on activities like blockading classrooms or shouting down invited lecturers because those are interfering with other people’s activities. But my impression is that this slippery slope came around this idea of hate speech and hate speech is hard to define because somebody’s got to draw a line someplace and people won’t necessarily agree where that line is. Do you see that definition of hate speech as being fundamentally challenging for what you do?
LEVIN: At Stanford, the boundary for what speech is permissible and at what point it crosses the boundary into discrimination or harassment is we protect constitutionally protected speech. So we use the Constitution of the United States and the First Amendment as our formal rules. The Constitution protects a lot of speech that is not necessarily what you’d want to have on a campus. It’s not necessarily productive and conducive to discovery and learning, which is what we’re here to do. Some of that is having rules, but a lot of that is culture.
So much of what drives behavior at a university and drives the quality of dialogue and discourse is just people’s thinking about: why am I here? What am I fundamentally involved in? Campuses should be places with deep curiosity about ideas and they should be places where you can take chances and test things out. And your research is a great example of this, Steve. You’ve done some research that was very controversial on issues that got people quite upset because you were pushing and testing ideas that went against the grain of how people necessarily wanted to think about things. And having a university that protects that kind of activity is so important because it might be right and it might change the way people think.
So you want people to come into a university to help them understand that about a campus, and tell them this is a place to be curious. This is a place to have an open mind. This is a place to try to engage with people who don’t think about things in the same way, to ask them questions. And it’s so important for the faculty to set that example in the classroom. And rules can get you so far there, but really that’s about culture. That’s about people’s expectations of: what does it mean to be a constructive member of this institution and be here and contribute to the learning of others? There’s an important role there for university leadership and there’s a very important role there for the faculty and there’s a very important role there for actually everyone who’s on the campus....”
Full podcast (58 minutes) at Freakonomics, including a written transcript.
Hate Endowment Taxes? Reform the University
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Now that the second Trump administration has begun, colleges are busy navigating what could be the most adversarial relationship between the presidency and higher education in American history.... One avenue that Republicans may pursue is to tax college endowments.... Rather than simply denouncing these developments, college leaders should work to understand why they came about -- and why they might be in a weaker position to fight them off than they imagine....
“There is nothing inevitable about endowments as a financial basis for education, and the vastness of the present endowments of the major American colleges is anomalous both in a comparative and historical perspective. Other countries’ universities have nothing like endowments of this size, when they have endowments at all. And historically U.S. college endowments were smaller and covered a smaller proportion of their overall costs. It is not a law of nature that societies be so permissive toward the accumulation of capital and property beyond the necessary operating expenses of educational institutions. Laws can be made that tightly condition the privileged tax position of endowed nonprofits on certain spending and institutional requirements; or that restrict or disincentivize gifts to colleges; or that simply stipulate that colleges distribute each year such a portion of their assets that their endowments dwindle. Measures of this sort were contemplated in this country a mere half-century ago in the deliberations that led up to the 1969 Tax Reform Act that placed heavier regulations on private foundations, and other liberal nations have policies in place that are designed to discourage endowment accumulation.
“Nor should we think of skepticism toward endowments as an intrinsically right-wing proposition, even if that is the direction from which hostility is coming at present. As I have noted before, what historians considered liberalism’s heyday saw liberal politicians and authors express wariness toward educational endowments and encourage the state to reform them. Arguably the greatest liberal statesman in history (not to mention one of the most devoted to education), William Gladstone, proposed removing the tax exemption from the endowments of charitable foundations, including schools and colleges. In this attitude, such figures were drawing on a venerable legacy. Animosity toward endowments of all sorts was a feature of the French Enlightenment, and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations included an extended discussion of how inappropriate endowments were for educational purposes, arguing that they insulated professors too much from the realities of market demand (or lack thereof) and left colleges ill-adapted in the long run to the needs of the population....
“Finally, and at the risk of stating the obvious, we should remind ourselves that exemption from taxation is a subsidy. To pay no or less tax than other similarly situated institutions or persons effectively increases the resources available to the exempt entity no less than receiving a direct financial grant from the government would. And it likewise increases the burden on others. As one report puts the matter plainly, 'the favorable tax treatment of private nonprofit and public higher education is a mechanism to transfer resources to higher education.' If colleges wish for their endowments to remain in this fiscally privileged position, what is needed is a set of justifications for the specific proposition that the current methods of financing higher education, which facilitate the development of institutions at once less reliant on consumer preferences and on government largesse, are so valuable that we should continue placing extra fiscal requirements on the rest of the public to preserve it, rather than simple denunciations of endowment taxes as attacks on education. After all, higher education is provided the world over, while American colleges almost alone enjoy such enormous untaxed or undertaxed resources....”
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Gregory Conti at Chronicle of Higher Education.
Censorship in the Sciences -- Interdisciplinary Perspectives
A three-day conference (January 10 through 12, 2025) was held at USC regarding censorship in the sciences. A full conference schedule is available here, and videos of all three days are now posted at YouTube:
Day One - "What Is Censorship and How Does It Operate?" and "Research Freedom versus Ethical Restraints"
Day Two - "Scientific Freedom versus Social Responsibility" and "Consequences of Censorship for Public and Society"
Day Three - "Censorship in Life Sciences and Medicine"
In addition, these presentations have been individually posted at YouTube:
We Must Defend Liberalism – Brookings Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch
The Censorship Crisis Gripping Academia – ASU Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krauss
The Rise of Women in Science and Society – Behavioral Scientist Cory Clark
How Woke Warriors Destroyed Anthropology – San Jose State Prof. Elizabeth Weiss
The Free Speech Recession and How to Reverse It – Danish Commentator Jacob Mchangama
Transgender Discourse & Censorship – Northwestern Prof. Michael Bailey
Mechanisms of Censorship in Academia – Stony Brook Prof. Musa al-Gharbi
Other Articles of Interest
Why I’m Celebrating the End of the DEI Era
“As a Black woman born into poverty in rural Virginia, I benefited tremendously from the Civil Rights Movement. But today’s DEI policies are not advancing that cause.”
Full op-ed by retired Vanderbilt and Princeton Prof. Carol M. Swain at Katie Couric Media.
Is Classroom Discussion a Dying Art?
Full article at Ed Surge.
Polarization Is Battering Campuses; Here Is How College Leaders Are Fighting Back
Full article at Higher Ed Dive.
America Needs New Science Standards
Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars and also published at Real Clear Education.
Time to Abandon the College Lecture
Full op-ed at Vanderbilt Hustler.
Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI
Full article periodically updated at Chronicle of Higher Education.
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
California Historical Society Archives Are Being Moved to Stanford
Includes 600,000 items as the 154-year-old society ends its operations.
Cancer-Fighting Compound Shows Immense Potential to Eradicate HIV
Stanford’s Multimodal AI Model Advances Personalized Cancer Care
Bigger Than Basketball -- Tara VanDerveer Launches Stanford Class
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“At a university like Stanford, we give the faculty and the students extraordinary freedom to choose what they’re going to think about, what they’re going to write about, what they’re going to say. And there’s a reason for that, which is: that’s part of the freedom, the underlying freedom, that gives rise to great research.” – Pres. Jon Levin
January 27, 2025
Stanford Students Speak Up
Stanford’s Bureaucracy Undermines the University’s Academic Mission
Excerpts (links in the original):
"Stanford University stands at a crossroads. Once a beacon of innovation and academic excellence, it is now suffocating under the weight of its own bloated bureaucracy. Administrative growth has spiraled out of control, alienating students, frustrating faculty, and diverting resources from the university’s true mission.
"Over the past two decades, administrative staff have tripled, ballooning to nearly 17,000 employees -- almost outnumbering students. Yet this explosion of bureaucracy has made the university less functional, less innovative, and less aligned with its core mission.
“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....
“For faculty, simple tasks like securing research funding or hiring staff for labs have become ordeals. Each step involves multiple levels of approval, requiring sign-offs from finance, compliance, and legal departments. One administrator who wished to stay anonymous shared an experience where a straightforward grant reimbursement was delayed for weeks, bouncing back multiple times for minor clarifications, only to be approved in the end without any changes....
“For students, the burden is equally stifling. Administrative offices that should exist to support them have become regulatory mazes that punish them instead. Bob Ottilie, an alum who has long defended students in disciplinary cases with the Office of Community Standards (OCS), highlighted the absurdity of Stanford’s processes: ‘Instead of hiring a bunch of people to help educate students on risk...they [OCS] hire a bunch of people to prosecute you for offenses associated with the risk that they never spent any time trying to help you avoid.’
“A prime example of this is the coffee-throwing incident and the ensuing OCS investigation that now deceased Stanford soccer star Katie Meyer was subject to. Processes that could once be resolved with a quick conversation between students and an RA or dean now require extensive paperwork, hearings, and follow-ups....”
Full op-ed by Stanford senior Abhi Desai at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Also posted at Stanford Review. See also:
Challenges of Becoming a Less Hierarchical Organization at Harvard Business Review.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Flat Organizations at Business.com.
Fitter, Flatter, Faster -- How Unstructuring Your Organization Can Unlock Massive Value at McKinsey & Company website.
See also proposals to address these concerns at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage.
President Levin Confirms Daily Reporter Will Not Face Campus Disciplinary Action
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Stanford has dropped the disciplinary case against Daily reporter Dilan Gohill ’27, according to an email from President Jon Levin ’94 obtained by the Daily. Gohill had been detained last June while covering the occupation of Building 10 by pro-Palestinian protesters.
“‘I can confirm that this process is complete and resulted in no disciplinary action,’ Levin wrote to Ginny LaRoe, advocacy director at the First Amendment Coalition (FAC), and Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) in an email on Monday. The email was in response to a letter he received from FAC and the SPLC....
“Levin also wrote in the email that Stanford will let the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office ‘determine how to proceed based on the evidence it has assembled’ and will ‘leave that judgment up to the DA.’ …
Full article by Stanford sophomore Anna Yang at Stanford Daily, including comments subsquently posted; see also prior Daily article.
A PDF copy of the January 17, 2025 letter from national press advocacy groups to Pres. Levin is available here.
Alumni and Others Speak Up
2025 -- A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campuses Nationwide
Excerpts (links in the original):
“It is now widely understood that for years many of our country’s colleges and universities have been losing their way; they are no longer bastions of the core values of free speech, open discourse, and academic freedom, nor are they focused on promoting learning and the advancement of knowledge. Instead, they have increasingly become focused on a specific agenda and advancing that agenda, in the process often repressing these core values.
“There have been individuals and institutions fighting back, trying to reform universities and to restore these core values, but it often seemed a lonely fight. Much of the effort was to support those who had been ‘cancelled.’ In more recent years the reform side gathered new advocates and began to coordinate. Existing organizations -- such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), and the Heterodox Academy (HxA) -- became stronger and expanded their efforts. Faculty across the country organized to form the Academic Freedom Alliance....
“In 2024, there was important movement on many fronts in the battle to restore universities to their historic and critical role. Yet still there were warning signs of the walls that had to be scaled. Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, has stated that, according to FIRE’s database, 2024 was the worst year ever for deplatforming attempts, such as shout downs and disinviting speakers, since FIRE started tracking them in 1998.
“There were many green shoots in 2024, but 2025 is sure to be a year of dynamic and disruptive change....”
[Followed by specific discussion of students, prospective students, parents and employers; faculty; alumni; Congressional action; regulatory action; and university administrations.]
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and co-founder of Princetonians for Free Speech Ed Yingling at our Commentary webpage. Also posted at the PFS website. We note that Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking is a member of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance which was started by the leaders of PFS; see also our Resources webpage for other websites and organizations.
Bias Reporting Systems Were a Nightmare on Campus, and Now They’re Everywhere
Excerpts (links in the origina):
“Neighbors reporting neighbors for speech that is protected under the First Amendment is textbook totalitarianism, and it must not be tolerated.
“As regular readers [of my Eternally Radical Idea postings at Substack] and followers of FIRE will know, I’ve been defending free speech on campus since 2001 -- nearly all of FIRE’s 25-year history. In 2022, FIRE expanded its mission, going from being the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. This was in no small part because we grew more and more concerned that the free speech crises we were dealing with on campus could and would spill over to other areas of our country.
“That has actually been my biggest nightmare, and it has become reality in more ways than one. As I posted on X this morning, the word ‘fascist’ is overused, mainly for things that look nothing like fascism. Words have meanings, and ‘fascism’ is often invoked for a range of things -- from the very bad but nonetheless distinct idea of ‘authoritarianism’ to something more akin to ‘anything I don’t like.’ Hell, I’ve even heard people equate support for free speech with fascism, which is just about the most ahistorical assertion imaginable....
“I am speaking about bias reporting systems, sometimes called bias response teams, which are essentially snitch hotlines where people can report others for ‘offensive’ or ‘hateful’ speech. The act of doing this to your fellow Americans over protected speech would be bad enough, but these systems go further. They often consist not only of administrators, but also law enforcement. Your eyes are not deceiving you. These systems include law enforcement dedicated to ‘responding’ to reports on First Amendment-protected speech....
[Quoting from an article in Free Beacon:]
“In January 2020, the top law enforcement agency in the state of Oregon launched a ‘Bias Response Hotline’ for residents to report ‘offensive jokes.’
“Staffed by ‘trauma-informed operators’ and overseen by the Oregon Department of Justice, the hotline, which receives thousands of calls a year, doesn’t just solicit reports of hate crimes and hiring discrimination. It also asks for reports of ‘bias incidents’ -- cases of ‘non-criminal’ expression that are motivated, ‘in part,’ by prejudice or hate.
“Oregonians are encouraged to report their fellow citizens for things like ‘creating racist images,’ ‘mocking someone with a disability,’ and ‘sharing offensive jokes about someone’s identity.’ One webpage affiliated with the hotline, which is available in 240 languages, even lists ‘imitating someone’s cultural norm’ as something ‘we want to hear’ about....
[Followed by additional examples in Connecticut, Philadelphia, California and elsewhere.]
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack.
See also “Stanford’s Program re Title VI/Bias” at our Stanford Concerns webpage regarding Stanford’s own bias reporting system that was modified in September 2024 but appears to still use the same computerized case management system as was previously used and that, if true, maintains permanent records about the speech and actions of students and others that may be reported from time to time.
See also “Stanford’s Program re Speech,” also at our Stanford Concerns webpage, that includes a PDF copy of the list of words and phrases Stanford’s IT department created (who originally authorized this and how much time did they spend on it?) and which reportedly has been deleted but some at Stanford say still is being used by some administrators and staff.
Should What Happens in the Classroom Stay in the Classroom?
Excerpts (links in the original):
“If 2024 is remembered as the year when ‘DEI’ was deservedly put on the defensive and institutional neutrality gained traction as a long overdue higher-ed reform, what big changes could 2025 bring?
“Some hope this will be the year when ‘the Chatham House Rule’ takes academia by storm....
[Followed by discussion of the history and use of the Chatham House Rule]
“Solveig Lucia Gold, a Senior Fellow in Education and Society for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (or ACTA), calls it a ‘pro-speech policy that is ripe and ready for prime time’ in this new Real Clear Education piece.
[Quoting from the Gold article:]
“Harvard’s ‘Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue’ working group recommended that the university’s various schools consider adopting the Chatham House Rule -- a recommendation that was accepted by the president and provost and endorsed by most (though not all) of the Harvard Crimson’s editorial board. Now it’s up to individual faculty members at Stanford and the deans of Harvard’s schools to follow through....”
Full op-ed at Alumni Free Speech Alliance "Alma Matters" website.
The Courage to Disagree in Academia
Excerpts (links in the original):
“If a college education doesn’t teach students to disagree constructively with status quo opinions and perspectives then then it’s not fulfilling its mission. Yet too often this is precisely what happens. Colleges and universities were established on the premise of open inquiry, critical thinking, discovery, and invention. The courses students take typically expose them to new, unfamiliar topics and ways of thinking. Students who are open and curious often find that these exposures trigger questions, including questions about the disciplinary status quo that they are being taught. If colleges do not honor students’ openness and curiosity and encourage their questioning of the status quo, then they are not properly performing their function.
“Challenging the academic status quo involves asking questions and introducing new perspectives or explanations that interrogate and even threaten dominant ideologies or frameworks. For example, is racism always the reason for racial disparities in academic achievement among students? Or, how does one determine which, if any, aspects of school curriculum are so influenced by white supremacist ideology that they require ‘decolonization’? Asking such questions does not indicate condemnation or dismissal, but rather the motivation to develop a critical, multifaceted understanding of these and other issues.
“I’m a professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I’m a proponent of the work of Dr. Craig L. Frisby, Professor Emeritus of School Psychology at the University of Missouri, because it challenges the orthodoxy that has saturated school psychology research and practice. In his book, Meeting the Psychoeducational Needs of Minority Students, he addresses how contemporary school psychology research is focused on portraying racial and ethnic minority students as individuals who are endlessly victimized by racism, microaggressions, discrimination, and systemic oppression in schools at the hands of educators and administrators. Although these are certainly real forces that affect some students, an extreme emphasis on these particular topics reflects an ideological and political bias of many researchers. The dominant perspective in school psychology risks doing a real disservice to the very students it purports to help because it encourages all minority students to see themselves as helpless victims with no control over their lives. The problem is that this ‘in essence absolves them from any personal responsibility or accountability for life outcomes’ (p. 34) ….
“As I reflect upon the state of academic free speech, I am reminded of a comment that a colleague once made to me early in my career as a professor: ‘As professors, our job is to think.’ That comment deeply resonated with me. Most of our days are taken up with teaching, service, and publishing, but the core of our job, our real job, is to think objectively and critically about topics that concern our field. Objective, critical, and of course intellectually humble thinking allows us to ponder the multitude of ways in which an issue can be solved while simultaneously being open to the reality that we could be wrong. Although it can be scary to do so in an academic environment that is very much politically lopsided, we owe it to ourselves and to our students to have the courage to disagree and the courage to challenge the academic status quo.”
Full op-ed by UC Santa Barbara Prof. Miriam E. Thompson at Journal of Free Black Thought.
Everything a University Does Can Be Done in Half the Time for Half the Cost
Excerpts (links in the original):
“When I was a business executive and CEO in the transportation and technology sector, we used a concept called ‘lean thinking.’ This concept is a manufacturing philosophy developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Jim Womack, who has been called the ‘Godfather of Lean,’ a nickname that stemmed from his work as a consultant to the Japanese automobile industry. While bringing the industry back to the United States, Womack helped transform our automotive industry into one of the best in the world. ‘Lean thinking’ means always looking for ways to reduce waste and improve quality while continuously lowering costs. It particularly focuses on time management and doing things faster than you thought possible. This takes discipline and leadership, but the results can be astonishing.
“Why not apply lean management methods to our universities?
“The U.S. bachelor’s degree takes students four years to complete. It can easily be done in three years, or even two if you include the summer semesters. The same goes for graduate professional degrees. The MBA can be finished in one year. The J.D. degree can easily be done in two years or even one full year. The M.P.P. is usually a two-year graduate track, but it is antiquated and will be decommissioned. That leaves the medical degree or M.D. There is nothing sacrosanct about it either, and even New York University (NYU) has cut it down to three years. With the right undergraduate preparation and focus, it can be done in two years, getting doctors where they need to be—working. Indeed, paralegals in law and nurse practitioners in medicine can do at least 50 percent of what their fully credentialed superiors do, and they can do so for a fraction of the cost. In business, the undergrad business major from schools like the University of Texas McCombs School and many others are very competitive, and they are more efficient programs for gaining technical skills like financial accounting.
“Then there’s the Ph.D. In the United Kingdom, it’s a three-year program. It’s twice as long in the United States, and in the Humanities, it is not unusual to see a candidate spend up to eight years....
“Lean business thinking can bring enormous benefits to education because it forces us to ask basic questions about how we do things, what they cost, and how to improve 'throughput.' Because education, at an institutional level, is very much like manufacturing, the throughput concept is relevant and helpful in understanding education production, cost, and efficiency....”
Full op-ed at Minding the Campus.
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford to Review DEI Programs Following Trump’s Executive Orders
Full article at Stanford Daily.
Wanted: More Young Men Enrolling in College
Full article at Deseret News.
Can Cornell Alumni Steer Their University Away from Campus Madness?
Full op-ed at National Review.
Harvard Settles It’s Title VI Antisemitism Lawsuits
Full article at The Hill.
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
AI Agents Simulate 1,052 Individuals’ Personalities with Impressive Accuracy
Stanford Launches NIH-Funded Study on Gut-Brain Connection in Parkinson’s Disease
Brain-Cell ‘Periodic Table’ for Psychiatric Disorders Reveals New Schizophrenia Clues
What We Know About the Health Effects of Wildfire
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"Education requires confrontation with ideas that we don’t like. Part of education is unsettling people’s considered opinions and getting them to think in new ways and learn from ideas that are outside their comfort zone." -- Prof. Debra Satz, Dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences
January 20, 2025
Judge Rebukes Stanford Misinformation Expert for Using ChatGPT to Draft Testimony
Editor’s note: This is an update to a previous article that was in our Newsletter dated December 23, 2024. We also note that the faculty member who is the subject of these articles was and remains the faculty supervisor of Stanford Internet Observatory, the activities of which have been the subject of ongoing concerns both at Stanford and nationwide.
We further note that SIO and Stanford itself are named defendants in several cases around the country, including one or more cases that may eventually make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Because of California’s labor, corporate and other laws, Stanford may have obligations to defend former and current members of the SIO staff, something that could be extremely expensive and, if true, would be paid from the university’s general funds absent government contracts and private donations that allowed payment for these types of legal costs.
The point is, the 100 to 300 centers, incubators, accelerators and similar entities at Stanford come with their own financial and reputational risks. See our Back to Basics at Stanford with suggestions as to ways to possibly address these types of concerns.
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage including this link regarding the past funding and operations of SIO.
Excerpts (links in the original):
“A federal district judge issued a harsh rebuke and tossed out the testimony of a Stanford misinformation expert who submitted a court document, under penalty of perjury, containing misinformation in a Minnesota election law case.
“Jeff Hancock, who specializes in ‘research on how people use deception with technology,’ was retained by the office of Attorney General Keith Ellison to submit expert testimony defending Minnesota’s new law banning election deepfakes, which was signed in 2023 and updated the following year.
“After Hancock filed written testimony last November, attorneys for plaintiffs Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, and YouTuber Christopher Kohls noticed that the document contained several citations to academic articles that do not exist.
“The plaintiffs moved to have the testimony thrown out, and Hancock subsequently filed a document admitting he used a version of ChatGPT to draft the testimony, which included the non-existent citations, known among AI researchers as 'AI hallucinations.' The Attorney General’s Office argued Hancock should be allowed to file an amended declaration containing correct, non-hallucinated citations....
“Hancock is billing the Attorney General’s office $600 an hour for his services, according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Reformer under a Data Practices Act request, with billing capped at $49,000....”
Full article at Minnesota Reformer, and a PDF copy of the January 10, 2025 ruling can be found here.
About the Growth of Administrative Staff at Universities Nationwide
Excerpts (links in the original):
. . . .
“In recent decades, the growth in university bureaucracies has far outpaced the growth in faculties and student bodies. Department of Education data shows that, between 1993 and 2009, college admin positions grew by 60 percent, a rate ten times that of tenured faculty. Moreover, between 1987 and 2012, the number of administrators at private schools doubled, while their numbers public university systems rose by a factor of 34. Overall, colleges added more than half a million administrators and then even more in the decade after that. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects their number to grow by 7 percent a year between 2021 and 2031.
“Around 2010, schools started employing more administrators than full-time instructors. Through the following decade, some, especially elite places such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, and MIT even started having more administrators than students. Yale's administration rolls grew by 45 percent in 2003–21, expanding at a rate nearly three times faster than that of the undergraduate student body. At Stanford, administration grew by 30 percent in 2017–22 alone, with the biggest growth coming in the first full pandemic year of 2020–21. Stanford now has nearly twice as many nonteaching staff as undergrads and nearly six times as many as faculty. The ratios tend to be lower at public schools, but still, administrative growth at UCLA has far outpaced growth in other sectors, so there are now four times as many staff as faculty....”
Full op-ed at Reason. And for more detailed numbers at Stanford, see “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and possible solutions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage.
AI Finds Widespread Bias in Stanford's Required Reading and Writing Classes
Excerpts (links in the original):
. . . . .
“First for some context, under the [Programme in Writing and Rhetoric] students are mandated to choose from two classes over their freshman and sophomore years. These classes include ‘The Rhetoric of Plants,’ investigating ‘how plants can be a markers for social inequality,’ ‘The Politics of Pleasure, Love and Joy,’ where students explore 'the politics of sexual pleasure, heteronormative structures of joy, decolonization of joy, and love under capitalism,’ or the ‘Rhetoric of Ethnic narratives’ to learn ‘how biracial and bicultural people define their ethnicity.’...
“Notably, the issue is not that we are having discussions involving oppression, inequality and anti-imperialist perspectives on the indigenous communities' use of psychedelics. (which are all real class discussions). Nor do I have a qualm with the quality of instruction: PWR lecturers are dedicated and eminently intelligent. The issue arises when the only topics and conclusions PWR deems worthy of teaching are aligned with the unique philosophical tradition of critical theory and grievance studies. When alternative centrist viewpoints and opposition to extreme views are bereft from curricula, PWR devolves into radically progressive opinions masquerading as mandatory introduction to writing and research classes....
“If the Western canon and classical conceptions of critical thinking were more universally taught, PWR students would likely realize the infamous aspiration of John Stuart Mill encapsulated in the lines ‘He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.’
“We cannot maintain the platitude that there is still room for debate when we overwhelmingly teach one set of opinions and facts in introductory classes. By broadening the range of perspectives in PWR classes, Stanford has an opportunity to foster a more inclusive and robust intellectual environment. This would not only enrich students' understanding but also uphold the university's commitment to rigorous and open academic inquiry.”
Full op-ed at Stanford Review
Letter to the Incoming President from FIRE’s CEO
Headings:
1. Support the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act
2. Address the abuse of campus anti-harassment policies that erode free speech
3. Rein in government jawboning
4. Protect First Amendment rights in the regulation of AI technologies
Full text of letter from Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff here
Colleges Are Businesses -- A Budget and Business Forecast
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Oftentimes, those concerned with the state of higher education get wrapped up -- rightly so -- in bringing awareness to the loss of rigor, excellence, and pursuit of merit in academia. However, there is another facet of higher education forgotten right under our noses.
“A former business professor of mine, and vice president of the college I attended, never let his students forget a simple fact: colleges are businesses. Though a liberal arts education, emphasizing the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty, is paramount to becoming a virtuous citizen, we cannot forget that any college or university must be run well to teach students and achieve its academic mission. Whether you agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, there is an indisputable element of truth -- good business practices make for more successful institutions in the long-run. I would add, an eye to economic trends is also imperative....
“California governor Gavin Newsom revealed last week a $322 billion budget plan for the state with a mixed bag for higher education. Some higher ed administrators expressed dismay over the proposed 2025-26 fiscal budget slashes to ongoing state funding, including an almost eight percent reduction -- i.e., $375 million -- to the California State University system, and $271 million slashed from the University of California system....”
[Followed by discussion of specific colleges and specific states, potential federal cutbacks and predictions of other future actions.]
Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars
What It Takes to Be an Effective Education Scholar
Excerpts:
“On [January 16], I’ll be publishing the 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, tracking the 200 education scholars who had the biggest influence on the nation’s education discourse last year. Today, I want to take a few moments to explain the nature of the exercise. (I’ll reveal the scoring formula tomorrow.)
“I start from two simple premises: 1) Ideas matter, and 2) People devote more time and energy to those activities that are valued. The academy today does a passable job of acknowledging good disciplinary scholarship but a poor job of recognizing scholars who move ideas from the pages of barely read journals into the real world of policy and practice. This may not matter much when it comes to the study of physics or Renaissance poetry, but it does if we hope to see researchers contribute to education policy and practice. Of course, it’s vital that those same scholars engage constructively and acknowledge the limits of their expertise.
“After all, I’m no wild-eyed enthusiast when it comes to academic research. I don’t think policy or practice should be driven by the whims of researchers. I think that researchers inevitably bring their own biases, that decisions around education policy and practice are value-laden, and that decisions should therefore be driven by more than the latest study.
“That said, I absolutely believe that scholars can play an invaluable role when it comes to asking hard questions, challenging lazy conventions, scrutinizing the real-world impact of yesterday’s reforms, and examining how things might be done better. Doing so requires both that scholars engage in these endeavors and that they do so in responsible ways. Of course, while it’s incredibly tough to evenhandedly assess how constructively they’re playing this role, it’s more feasible to gauge which scholars are wielding the most influence. From there, we can make our own judgments about whether their contributions add value to the public discourse....
“The contemporary academy offers many professional rewards for scholars who stay in their comfort zone and pursue narrow, hypersophisticated research, but few for five-tool scholars. One result is that the public square is filled with impassioned voices (including scholars who act more like advocates than academics), while we hear far less than I’d like from careful, scrupulous researchers who are interested in unpacking complexities and explaining hard truths....”
Full op-ed at Education Next
Other Articles of Interest
Limitations on DEI Will Likely Accelerate in 2025
“Though the Department of Education has spent over $1 billion on DEI grants since 2021, the incoming Trump administration is poised to cut federal spending and potentially abolish the department.”
Full article at Campus Reform
The Number of 18-Year-Olds Is About to Drop Sharply, with Significant Impact on Colleges and the Economy
Full article at Hechinger Report. But also see “College Freshman Enrollment Is Up, Not Down; Error Led to Undercount” at Washington Post
University of Washington Alumni Seek to Revive the Spirit of Free Inquiry
Full article at FIRE website
Is Higher Education Inevitably Stuck in the Past?
Full book review at James G. Martin Center
The College Student Mental Health Epidemic
Full article at Yale Alumni Magazine
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
From Graduate School of Business: Is a Lack of Corporate Competition Stifling the U.S. Economy?
From School of Medicine: AI Predicts Cancer Prognoses and Possible Responses to Treatment
From Stanford Law School: Want to Save Democracy? Start by Reforming the Criminal Legal System
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“Freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge ... it must be guaranteed by law. But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population." -- Albert Einstein
January 13, 2025
Reflections of a Stanford Alum
Excerpts (links in the original):
“I started at Stanford Law School in 1997. I don't say this to note how old I am, but rather to point out that my tenure there was just two years after the notorious Stanford Law School speech code was defeated, in a court case called Corry v. Stanford University (FIRE Executive Vice President Nico Perrino interviewed the case’s namesake, Rob Corry, for the So to Speak podcast back in 2017, which I encourage you to check out!).
“Stanford is a private university, which would normally mean that it isn’t beholden to First Amendment standards. However, after the passing of a 1992 California Education Code statute known as the Leonard Law, this was no longer the case. Named after its legislative sponsor Sen. William R. Leonard, the Leonard Law essentially extends some (but not all) First Amendment protections to students at non-religious, private institutions of higher education in California. It was passed to prevent universities like Stanford . . . from adopting a politically correct speech code -- which by then was increasingly seen as a relic of the excessively politically-correct 1980s and early 1990s, and which would infringe upon the free speech rights of students....
“It was only in 2001, when I began working as the first legal director for FIRE, that I started to understand the true nature of speech codes like these. Going back all the way to the 1960s, and accelerating through the 1970s and 80s, all attempts to regulate speech with what might be called ‘politically correct speech codes’ used anti-discrimination as their rationale....
“Unfortunately there are plenty of examples of precisely the kind of thing I’m talking about here. Carole Hooven, for instance, was forced out of Harvard for having the opinion that biological sex is real. Also at Harvard, Roland Fryer was targeted for publishing a study that found no racial differences in the frequency of officer-involved shootings. At Stanford, Jay Bhattacharya was targeted for questioning mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the University of Pittsburgh, Associate Professor of Cardiology Norman Wang’s teaching privileges were revoked because he published a research paper examining the potential harms of affirmative action policies. The list goes on.
“When the general public witnesses incidents like these, they are eventually going to come to the realization that dissent is not tolerated in higher education. It will be a clear sign to them that these institutions are holding ideological conformity above free inquiry, open debate, and intellectual diversity. As a result, the public will no longer trust any ‘truths’ or ‘information’ our institutions enshrine or disseminate. This is terrible -- not just for the institutions themselves, but also for our ability to rely on expertise and, most importantly, our ability to discover knowledge....”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack.
See also Greg Lukianoff “There’s Cause for Optimism on Campus Free Speech” at Dispatch.
See also former Stanford President Gerhard Casper, “Statement on Corry vs. Stanford University” at our Stanford Speaks webpage
How Trustees Can Bring Viewpoint Diversity Back to Their Universities
Editor’s note: We present the following op-ed because it raises some important issues about intellectual diversity at colleges and universities today. On the other hand, we question a fundamental concept that underlies much of what is discussed in the op-ed, which is that trustees and regents should play a more direct role in the academic activities of a given college or university.
We remind readers that most campuses operate with the concept of shared governance. That is, the trustees are fiduciaries for the facilities and the endowment, have a direct role in hiring and firing the president and sometimes other senior officers, and usually review and approve the budgets. Sitting inside that structure is a separate professional body that consists of the faculty, usually with its own rules of governance and operating in the form of an academic senate or similar body and which is usually in charge of the academic activities of the relevant college or university. We also have serious concerns about one of the author's proposals as a way to overcome the current situation, which is the creation of centers that are focused on the perspectives and desires of donors, and in fact, we think that is a large source of the problems at modern universities, including Stanford, NOT a solution. See Back to Basics at Stanford.
That said, we agree that trustees and regents need to be better informed about what the president and other senior administrators are doing with respect to the college or university. And like directors of all other nonprofit and for-profit entities, they should regularly sample the activities of the college or university and quiz senior administrators whether they agree or disagree with those activities. There also are obligations of trustees and regents, acting as fiduciaries, when approving budgets and allocating funds, looking at performance ratios such as the number of administrators as compared to the number of faculty and students, the costs of overhead imposed on research, the ranges of salaries of administrators and staff, the adequacy and costs of facilities and support systems and the like.
Trustees, regents and senior administrators also have obligations to interact with faculty when the school's teaching and research are losing the support of alumni, government and other funders, parents, students and other essential constituents. See, for example, last week's Newsletter dated January 6, 2025 that had links to a long list of articles showing the major cutbacks already taking place this year at elite and other colleges and universities, all of which are clear warning signs for what lies ahead.
Excerpt (endnotes deleted):
“There is no issue more important for higher education than ensuring the free exchange of ideas. Acquiring and teaching knowledge requires the ability to expose facts, theories, and beliefs to intense investigation without political pressure.
“Unfortunately, the American campus is in danger of lapsing into a rigidly partisan mentality. In many places, it has already done so; at times, it seems that the ideological bias of higher education is so great that its institutions are beyond reforming.
“This rigidity of mind did not appear overnight. Higher education, which depends on collegiality and consensus among faculty, seems especially prone to groupthink -- a gradual process in which ‘majoritarianism tends to produce ideological conformity in a department,’ according to former National Association of Scholars president Steve Balch. Since a large majority of faculty already lean to the left, groupthink puts constant pressure in that direction on all....”
[Followed by these topics: Subversive principles in higher education, ideological imbalance in practice, the public-private distinction, the board problem, a reform that would empower boards, board structure and control, direct board action, improving the intellectual environment, take control out of the wrong hands, employment, and conclusion.]
Full op-ed at Manhattan Institute website
From the Archives
Stanford’s War on Fun
Editor’s note: In this new feature, we will present from time-to-time past articles from our Newsletters and postings at our website. Today, we are taking excerpts from then-freshman Theo Baker’s October 24, 2022 Stanford Daily article, “Inside Stanford's War on Fun” along with this commentary that has long been posted at our website, combined with indications that Stanford's new leadership is already addressing these types of concerns.
Commentary at our website: In addition to the main theme of this October 2022 Daily article about student social life at Stanford, reprinted below, a number of us were struck with a secondary theme regarding what comes across as a climate of fear, stonewalling and retaliation. These words and phrases are in the order they appear in the Daily article, including the redundancies:
Has exerted pressure ~ Lack of communication ~ Adversarial approach ~ Broadly declined comment ~ Communication … broke down ~ There was no guidance ~ Lack of communication ~ Declined to comment ~ Bureaucratic nightmare ~ Requested anonymity because much of the group’s funding is supplied by the office they criticized ~ You feel like you're being audited by the IRS ~ Excessively bureaucratic ~ Burnt out ~ Did not respond ~ Requested anonymity after supervisors warned staff against communicating with reporters ~ Requested anonymity because of [office] policy ~ Requested anonymity in fear of retaliation from superiors ~ Declined to comment ~ Did not respond ~ Couldn’t speak to that ~ Declined to be interviewed fearing retribution for being associated with criticisms of the University ~ The perception would be terrible if I’m associated in any way ~ Were similarly skittish ~ Walked out of an interview after being told he couldn’t review the article in advance ~ Any conversations with the media ‘need to be cleared by me first’ ~ Declined to comment ~ Have to be hyper-cautious ~ They hired outside lawyers to investigate.
Excerpts (links added):
. . .
“Students interviewed said discontent about campus social life has been on the rise since last winter, but discourse was kicked into high gear in the spring when San Francisco magazine Palladium published an article called ‘Stanford’s War on Social Life’ written by then-senior Ginevra Davis. (A derivative of that article’s title, the ‘war on fun,’ was a term used by multiple students to refer to the University’s approach to social events.)
“Though the article drew some criticism for its portrayal of Greek life as an innocent actor in the University’s alleged ‘war on fun,’ the article also galvanized outrage over the steady decline of spontaneity. The piece was followed by other student articles in campus publications, including an op-ed earlier this month in The Stanford Review titled ‘Take Stanford Back: A Call to Revitalize Fun.’
“The Daily spoke with three employees of the Office of Substance Use Programs Education & Resources (SUPER) who requested anonymity after supervisors warned staff against communicating with reporters, according to emails provided to The Daily. One employee characterized the new alcohol policy as ‘hopelessly out of touch with reality’ and ‘absolute s**t.’ Students interviewed agreed, broadly characterizing it as an unhelpful, adversarial system.
“One Resident Assistant (RA), who requested anonymity because of an Office of Residential Education policy preventing RAs from speaking with reporters, explained that ‘a lot of [Resident Fellows] in the neighborhood have said, ‘This is the University’s policy on alcohol and drugs, let’s make our own policy.’ [They] are telling us, don’t worry about half of this stuff.’ When asked about RFs disavowing University alcohol policy, Harris declined to comment.
“Another RA vented that ‘people are still drinking, their doors are just closed. And that leads to people who are drinking for the first time who don’t know their limits,’ whom RAs can’t help...."
Full article at Stanford Daily (October 24, 2022)
See also Stanford’s current website that contains what apparently are still the policies and procedures for holding a party, and you wonder why students complain about a lack of spontaneity? Also consider, how many staff people, and at what cost, administer all of this? And how is it possible that contemporaries of Stanford students who attend non-residential colleges and universities somehow do just fine without this sort of micromanagement? As noted above, we trust that Stanford's new leadership is already addressing these concerns.
Other Articles of Interest
Recently Adopted Title IX Regs Blocked Nationwide; Here’s What That Might Mean
Full articles at Chronicle of Higher Education, at National Association of Scholars website and at Title IX for All website
AAUP Survey Shows Faculty Feel They Have Less Academic Freedom Than Six Years Ago
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education including a link to a PDF copy of the report. See also FIRE’s recent survey of faculty with similar findings.
Three Reasons to be Optimistic for 2025
Full op-ed at Campus Reform
Yale Free Speech Survey Suggests Change Is in the Air
Full article at Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) Substack website
Three-Year Medical Schools Are Coming
Full op-ed 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
Five Books to Help You Disagree Productively in 2025
Report Outlines Stanford Principles for Use of AI
In Stanford’s Practical Ethics Club, Students Examine Life’s Moral Complexities
Hoover Initiative Addresses the Erosion of Trust in American Institutions
Economics Major Expanded to Better Suit Different Career Paths
Researchers Use AI to Help Predict and Identify Subtypes of Type 2 Diabetes
Blood Test Can Predict How Long Vaccine Immunity Will Last
A New Ultrathin Conductor for Nanoelectronics
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“We need to encourage real diversity of thought in the professoriate, and that will be even harder to achieve. It is hard for anyone to acknowledge high-quality work when that work is at odds, perhaps opposed, to one’s own deeply held beliefs. But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth. It is absolutely essential to the quality of our enterprise.” – Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy
January 6, 2025
College Faculty Are More Likely to Self-Censor Now Than at the Height
of McCarthyism
Excerpt (link in the original):
“For a number of faculty members, the threat of censorship is so pervasive on campuses across America that not even the cloak of anonymity is enough to make them feel safe expressing their ideas. This year, FIRE surveyed 6,269 faculty members at 55 major colleges and universities for “Silence in the Classroom: The 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey Report,” the largest faculty free speech survey ever performed.
“What we found shocked even us here at FIRE. A deeply entrenched atmosphere of silence and fear is endemic across higher education.
“We found that self-censorship on US campuses is currently four times worse than it was at the height of the McCarthy era. Today, 35% of faculty say they have toned down their written work for fear of causing controversy. In a major survey conducted in 1954, the height of McCarthyism, by the sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, only 9% of social scientists said the same.
“In fact, the problem is so bad that some academics were afraid even to respond to our already anonymous survey for fear of retaliation. Some asked us by email, or in their free response replies, to keep certain details they shared private. Some asked us to direct all correspondence to a private personal email. Others reached out beforehand just to confirm the results would truly be anonymous. Still others simply refused to speak at all....”
Executive summary at FIRE website
PDF copy of the full report available here including specific numbers for Stanford (page 61)
See also “Professors’ Self-Censoring Has Consequences” at Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) Substack website
Deficits and Cutbacks from Around the Country
Editor’s note: The following is a mere sample of articles appearing in recent months. We present them here not to say that Stanford itself may have financial challenges (it might or might not), but rather that all of higher education is facing a moment of truth and when political, social and now financial issues have come to the forefront. The winners will be those colleges and universities that address the issues with honesty that is backed by facts and effective, long-term actions. We also bring readers attention to “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and proposed corrective actions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. It would be tone deaf to say that Stanford is so wealthy that none of these issues are of concern.
USC Is Facing a $158 Million Deficit This Year
Full article at Campus Reform
Brown Is Facing a $46 Million Deficit This Year
Full articles at Inside Higher Ed and at Real Clear Education
Harvard Medical School Is Facing a $26 Million Deficit This Year
Full article at Harvard Crimson
Harvard Is Facing a $151 Million Decline in Donations This Year
Full article at Harvard Crimson
Boston University Is Suspending Admissions for Humanities and Social Sciences PhD Programs (American and New England studies, anthropology, classical studies, English, history, history of art and architecture, linguistics, philosophy, political science, religion, Romance studies and sociology)
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Colleges in Crisis - Had Prior Warning Signs
Full article at NBC News and Hechinger Report
Colleges Slash Majors - An Effort to Cut Costs
Full article at CBS News
Three More Major Universities Reveal Plans for Budget Cuts (Penn State, U Connecticut, U New Hampshire)
Full article at Forbes (January 2024)
U.S. Colleges Cut Programs Because of Budget Deficits, Fewer Students
Full article at Voice of America
More Academic Cuts - May 2024 Edition
Full article at Bryan Alexander website
Ohio State's Potential Budget Cuts in Athletics Could Be a Canary in the Coal Mine
Full article at Extra Points website (August 2024)
Watchlist of Schools in Trouble
Full article at Scholarship Foundation website
Other Articles of Interest
Is University Worth It? Yes, for Both Students and Society
Full op-ed by York President Rhonda Lenton at The Conversation
Association of American Medical Colleges Pushes for DEI ‘To Be Embedded in Everything’
Full article at Daily Wire
Do No Harm Releases Report Showing How Association of American Medical Colleges Has Been Politicizing Medical Education (MCAT, applications, admissions, curriculum, accreditation, licensing, lobbying and more)
Full article and link to PDF copy of the full report, "Activism Over Meritocracy," at Do No Harm website
What Today’s Economics Students Aren’t Learning About Economics
Full op-ed by Texas Tech Prof. Alexander William Salter
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
Predictions for AI in 2025 - Collaborative Agents, AI Skepticism and New Risks
Five Tips for Keeping Winter Bugs at Bay
How Cellular Neighbors Shape the Aging Brain
Students Help Archivists Preserve the Past
More Beans, Peas, Lentils - A Nutrition Expert’s Take on New Guidelines
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"Critical thinking is not something you do once with an issue and then drop it. It requires that we update our knowledge as new information comes in." - McGill Prof. Emeritus Daniel Levitin
December 23, 2024
Why Harvard Faculty Are Leaving the University to Pursue Their Work Elsewhere
Editor’s note: There are growing concerns that prominent faculty members nationwide, especially in engineering and the hard sciences, are finding that the bureaucracies at their universities as well as the bloated overhead have reached a point where they would prefer doing their research and other work elsewhere. Some have said they will continue teaching, but for free and as a contribution to the next generations, but that remaining at their universities was no longer worth the time and cost. We hope this trend will not take hold at Stanford. In that regard, see our long-existing webpages Back to Basics at Stanford and
Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy.
Excerpts:
“Not infrequently, companies lure professors to highly paid positions directing scientific research in pharmaceuticals, technology, and related fields. But the recent departures of some leading Harvard scientists deeply committed to improving human health point to a different phenomenon: challenges to conducting translational life-sciences research in academic settings. Given the University’s emphasis on and investment in the life sciences and biomedical discovery, these scientists’ differing decisions suggest emerging issues and concerns about current constraints and the future of such research.
“Applying for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants can take a substantial portion of an investigator’s time, and as much as a year can pass between a submission deadline and the point when funds are received and disbursed by the recipient’s home institution. With the NIH the dominant funding source for university biomedical research, what’s at stake is not only the ability of academic institutions to remain at the cutting edge of biomedical discovery, but also their ability to attract and train the next generation of scientific talent. The typical for-profit pharmaceutical or biotechnology company can move far more quickly and mobilize vastly greater resources -- from top-notch facilities to copious funding -- enabling the private sector to rapidly move basic science research discoveries to the point of clinical application. Increasingly, researchers committed to improving human health wonder whether working within the constraints of university research settings is really in the public interest....”
[Followed by interviews of specific Harvard faculty members and others]
Full article at Harvard Magazine
Federal Court in Louisiana Allows Case to Move Forward Against Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory
Editor’s note: We are posting this story not to embarrass Stanford but rather to again highlight the dangers of censorship activities, especially when funded by and coordinated with government agencies while using Stanford as a way to shield the activities and drawing upon the prestige of the Stanford name. These activities also again demonstrate the risks of Stanford's estimated 100 to 200 centers, accelerators and incubators that are not primarily engaged in the front-line teaching and cutting-edge, peer-review research of tenured members of the faculty but instead are largely run by third parties and who are engaged primarily or even exclusively in political and social advocacy and implementation activities. We would hope that Stanford can find a way to admit what took place here while limiting the university’s financial and reputational exposures and thereby bring closure to these matters once and for all.
Excerpts (link in the original):
“From Hines v. Stamos [Stanford, et al.], decided [December 18, 2024] by Judge Terry Doughty (W.D. La.):
“‘This case stems from Defendants' alleged participation in censoring Plaintiffs' speech on social media. Defendants are ‘nonprofits, academic institutions, and researchers alleged to have been involved in examining the issue of the viral spread of disinformation on social-media and the resulting harms to society.’ Plaintiffs are social media users, each with significant followings, who allege that the acts of Defendants caused Plaintiffs' disfavored viewpoints to be censored -- namely their speech concerning COVID-19 and elections. As a result of this alleged past and ongoing censorship, Plaintiffs filed this putative class action lawsuit on behalf of themselves and ‘others similarly situated,’ against Defendants….
“The court didn't agree with plaintiffs that they had conclusively established that the federal court in Louisiana had personal jurisdiction over defendants -- but it did conclude that plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged facts that would justify further discovery as to personal jurisdiction....
“'Plaintiffs have alleged -- to the point of ‘possible existence’-- that the Stanford Defendants effectuated censorship in Louisiana by ‘assigning analyst[s] specifically to Louisiana, determining whether speech originated in Louisiana, tracking the speech's spread from Louisiana, and communicating with state officials in Louisiana about supposed disinformation.’ And as such, Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that the Stanford Defendants' online activities may support personal jurisdiction. Limited jurisdictional discovery is thus necessary to show to what extent Defendants' online activities were ‘directed’ at the forum state....”
Full article by UCLA Prof. Emeritus and Hoover Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh at Reason, including a note that one of the attorneys representing the Plaintiffs in this case is expected to be nominated as Solicitor General of the United States.
And here's an additional excerpt taken directly from the court’s order, citations deleted: “... we find that Plaintiffs have provided sufficient allegations to put beyond mere conjecture or suggestion that Defendants [including Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory], through their participation in the Election Integrity Project and Virality Project, caused Plaintiffs to be censored on social media platforms. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Defendants were active participants, if not architects, of a vast censorship scheme, and -- in collaboration with government officials -- actively monitored, targeted, and ultimately induced social media platforms to censor Plaintiffs’ speech (among many others) ….”
See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, “Greater Control Must Be Exercised Over the Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford.”
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage and where, for convenience, we also have posted a PDF copy of this recent court order.
See also this prior analysis of Stanford Internet Observatory
Western Accreditor Reverses Course on DEI Requirement
Editor’s note: Last week’s Newsletter had a link to an article stating that the accrediting agency for California colleges and universities, including Stanford, had deleted its requirement that a school demonstrate its commitment to DEI. In the intervening week, the accreditor has reversed course, saying it will leave the language in place and will study the issue some more.
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Higher Education Is in Trouble
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Higher education in the U.S. faces a crisis: Its credibility is under attack. The public is increasingly skeptical of university-trained experts and the test-score-based meritocracy that dominates America’s upper middle class....
“Education level has become the great divider in contemporary American politics, eclipsing race and sex. Those with four-year college degrees tend to vote differently than those without....
“Measures reportedly under consideration include ending government loans for graduate students, capping the total amount a student can borrow, holding educational institutions at least partially responsible for student-loan defaults, and linking student aid to institutional policies on diversity, equity and inclusion. Colleges and universities will likely face increased congressional oversight of the political imbalance of their faculties. President-elect Trump has suggested he will use the college accreditation process to make higher education toe the line. And with deficit hawks in Congress hoping to offset a portion of Mr. Trump’s proposed tax cuts with increased revenue, Mr. Vance’s December 2023 proposal to raise the excise tax on elite universities’ endowment income from 1.4% to 35% is likely to resurface.
“Faced with these challenges, colleges and universities should adopt three strategies.
“First, they should get their houses in order. They should end mandatory DEI statements for faculty and staff candidates. They should adopt the principle of institutional neutrality spelled out in the University of Chicago’s seminal 1967 Kalven Report and should extend a similar policy to all academic divisions and departments, as Dartmouth College did last week....
“Second, four-year colleges and universities should broaden their support by expanding their alliances with local institutions, especially community colleges....
“Finally, these institutions should refocus on their civic mission: imparting basic knowledge about American history, political institutions and civic culture to every student; promoting social mobility by helping students who are the first in their families to attend college; and promoting civil discourse with campus wide programs such as College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, which gives students opportunities to engage in civil discourse and debate.
“By modeling the balance between social order and individual liberty, higher education can best promote the common good -- and its own long-term best interests.”
Full op-ed at WSJ
For convenience, we have posted a PDF copy of the Dartmouth policy, discussed above, at our Commentary from Others webpage
See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage
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“Principles of free speech are among those we most cherish, as Americans and as members of a university dedicated to the open, rigorous and serious search to know.” – Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper
December 16, 2024
Stanford Daily Interview of Jon Levin – Excerpts re Levin’s First Quarter as
Stanford’s President
Excerpts (links in the original):
“I started this year with a real sense of optimism, and also some uncertainty given all of the campus dynamics around the country last year. The first priority that Provost Martinez and I set for the year was to strengthen the culture of inquiry at Stanford and to foster constructive dialogue. I’m very happy about how that’s going.
“We’ve had seminars, discussions and conferences on the election, the Middle East, COVID policy. There have been forums for discussion even on contentious topics. We announced the new ePluribus initiative, and I love that the faculty are volunteering to host discussions in the dorms -- that’s part of the ‘Pizza, Politics and Polarization’ series. I really believe that Stanford can be a model for how students approach each other with curiosity and with open minds.
“We had two other main priorities for the year that we talked about in our first interview. The second is to advance Stanford’s leadership in AI and data-driven discovery. We opened the Stanford robotics center this quarter and it’s amazing to see the work that the faculty and the students from different departments are doing -- everything from autonomous drones to household robots. We opened the new high-performance shared computing facility, and that’s one of the leading academic facilities for research computing, and there [are] incredible opportunities there.
“The third priority we set was to help make Stanford work better for faculty, students and staff. We tasked John Etchemendy Ph.D. ’82, the former provost, Richard Saller, our former president and [vice president for university affairs] Megan Pierson to lead a simplification initiative to reduce frictions and help make it easier to get things done. Everyone at Stanford wants to see the administrative parts of the university, which play an essential role supporting research and teaching, be enabling forces for faculty and students.
“The last thing I’ll say is, it’s been a joy to get out around campus and meet students, faculty, staff and alumni. Every day I walk on campus, and I’m reminded how extraordinary this place is. The range of talent and ideas at Stanford [is] extraordinary. The fact that we can give students and faculty such freedom to be ambitious and to accomplish great things, it’s inspiring....
Full interview at Stanford Daily including re the incoming Trump administration, the roles of Stanford faculty and others in the incoming administration, special issues for international students, the pending University and criminal actions against Stanford Daily reporters, revised free speech guidelines, developments in intercollegiate athletics and other matters of interest.
Bari Weiss Interview of Marc Andreessen – Excerpts re Censorship and AI
[From Wikipedia: Marc Andreessen is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.]
Excerpts:
…
“[At a White House meeting,] they said, AI is a technology basically that the government is going to completely control. This is not going to be a start-up thing. They actually said flat out to us, ‘Don’t do AI start-ups. Don’t fund AI start-ups.’ ...
“The federal government didn’t let start-ups go out and build atomic bombs. You had the Manhattan Project and everything was classified. And at least according to them, they classified down to the level of actual mathematics.
“Part two is there’s the social control aspect to it.
“Which is where the censorship stuff comes right back and is the exact same dynamic we’ve had with social media censorship. That is happening at hyper speed in AI....
[After discussing a wide range of issues including re the election, Elon Musk, etc.:]
“At these big companies, there’s been absolute intentionality. That’s how you get black George Washington at Google. Because there’s an override in the system that basically says, everybody has to be black. Boom.
“There are large sets of people in these companies that determine these policies and write them down and encode them into these systems. So overwhelmingly, what people experience is intentional. There’s just no question about that. These companies were born woke. They were born as censorship machines.
“My concern is that the censorship and political control of AI is a thousand times more dangerous than censorship and political control of social media -- maybe a million times more dangerous. Social media censorship and political control is very dangerous, but at least it’s only people talking to each other and communicating.
“The thing with AI is I think AI is going to be the control layer for everything in the future -- how the healthcare system works, how the education system works, how the government works.
“So if that AI is woke, biased, censored, politically controlled, you are in a hyper-Orwellian, China-style, social credit system nightmare. This hasn’t rolled all the way out yet because AI is still new and it’s not in charge yet. But this is where things are headed....”
Full interview at The Free Press
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage
The Hidden Cost of Academic Bloat
Excerpts:
“A Stanford Computer Science degree requires 180 units to graduate. However, only 58 of these units -- less than a third -- consist of actual computer science coursework....
“The reason why lies within the labyrinth of additional requirements Stanford has constructed under the guise of a ‘liberal arts education.’ Take the mandatory COLLEGE program for freshmen, for instance -- two-quarters of discussion-based courses, where it's an open secret that virtually nobody completes the readings, and assignments are graded on completion only. Without any reason to engage meaningfully with the content, COLLEGE just becomes a useless 6-unit obstacle for already overwhelmed freshmen.
“The WAYS requirements also illustrate this academic padding. For example, the Exploring Difference and Power (EDP) requirement, featuring classes like Intersectional Feminism, Black Feminist Theater, Introduction To Queer Theory, or Antiracism and Health Equity, generally translates to courses that seem more focused on ideological conformity than academic rigor. Similarly, the Creative Expression (CE) requirement compels software engineers and mathematicians to briefly dabble in theater, art, or dance -- enjoyable hobbies perhaps, but hardly relevant to their chosen disciplines.
“Even within the technical majors, there is no shortage of unnecessary padding. Computer Science students must fulfill science electives requirements, leading to the common spectacle of future developers memorizing rock formations in an introductory geology class. Extensive physics and mathematics requirements, though theoretically relevant, seldom connect practically in any way with computer science applications....”
Full op-ed at Stanford Review
U Michigan Ends Required DEI Statements in Hiring but Stops Short of Cutting Funds to DEI Programs
Excerpt (links in the original):
“The University of Michigan on Thursday [December 5] announced it will no longer require diversity statements in faculty hiring, promotion and tenure decisions -- but several members of its Board of Regents at their monthly meeting denied reports they plan to cut DEI spending at this time.
“In announcing the decision on diversity statements by Provost Laurie McCauley, campus leaders pointed out that most faculty surveyed ‘agreed that diversity statements put pressure on faculty to express specific positions on moral, political or social issues.’
“The top-down decision means different departments can no longer formulate their own rules on diversity statements, as had been the practice....”
Full article at College Fix
Other Articles of Interest
CSU's New 'Other Conduct of Concern' Rule Is Administrative Overreach
Full op-ed by San Diego State Prof. Peter Herman at Times of San Diego as republished at MSN News
UC Riverside's DEI Guardians Came After Me
Full op-ed by UC Riverside Prof. Perry Link at WSJ
Yale Event Explores Role of Merit in Higher Education and Hiring
Full article at College Fix
Students Think Faculty Should Be Mentors, but What Does That Look Like?
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
University Accreditor Proposes Cutting Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from Its Required Standards
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Editor’s note: This is the accreditor for colleges and universities in California, including Stanford. See also article on the same subject at College Fix
How Will Colleges Fare Financially in 2025? It Depends
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
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
Stanford Welcomes First GPU-Based Supercomputer
Decoding the Mysteries of the Universe
AI Could Help Reduce Injury Risk in Pianists
What Soccer Fans Can Teach Us About Irrationality
Making Robots Real Partners in Daily Life
Existing EV Batteries May Last Up to 40% Longer Than Expected
Portola Valley Approves New Housing for Stanford Faculty and Local Community
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"Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate." — Hubert H. Humphrey
December 9, 2024
An Exceptional Example at Stanford - From the Farm to The Farm, Elic Ayomanor Took an Unlikely Path to Stanford
Excerpts (link in original):
“Each week during the football season, Elic Ayomanor is introduced in some way -- to a television audience, in a game program, on a flipcard distributed in a press box.
“He is a redshirt sophomore wide receiver from Stanford, and one of the best in college football. His major is computer science. And he’s from Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada.
“But where is someone from exactly? Is it their birthplace? The town where they grew up? Or is it the place they feel they belong?
"Medicine Hat is Ayomanor’s point of origin. It’s where he grew up, where his mother raised him, where his dreams sprouted. But where does he belong? Maybe it’s a remote farm on a gravel road, a prep school in the countryside, or a green swath 100 yards long under bright lights.
“‘Medicine Hat’ is the simple answer. The long answer is not so simple....
“Pamela Weiterman split from Elic’s father when her son was an infant. A farm girl growing up, Weiterman settled in Medicine Hat, a small prairie city of 63,000 along the South Saskatchewan River. It’s known as the ‘The Gas City,’ for its natural gas reserves, and ‘The Sunniest City in Canada,’ belying the fact that temperatures dip to minus-40 Fahrenheit during the winter. And it’s a hockey town, home of the Medicine Hat Tigers, a major junior team in the Western Hockey League....
“The family brand was the Flying J and during branding season, Elic helped tag calves and hold them down while their ears were clipped.
“Elic witnessed the difficulties of calving season, when pregnant cows need to be checked frequently, including in the middle of the night in the coldest of winters. If a mother was in trouble, [Elic's grandfather Jack] would have to pull the calf out, sometimes even bottle feeding until they were strong enough to return to the mother, who sometimes would reject it.
“‘They were long days, but that was farm life,’ Pam said. ‘We grew up as strong kids because we worked. We really worked.’ …
“As a single working mom, Pam was conscious of outside influences and tried to keep Elic as busy as possible. That meant signing up for every sport imaginable.
“His middle school doubled as a hockey academy and each day Elic alternated between a day of classes and a day of hockey. There were camps, trips, and games in whatever the sport and because Medicine Hat was so remote, Elic and his friends spent much of their time in Pam’s car, traversing across the emptiness of the northern plains.
“This was where Pam felt like she really got to know her son. She could hear his conversations, learn his music....
“Early on, [scout Justin Dillon] put Stanford out there as the ultimate goal, the epitome of all that Elic and Pamela valued. Dillon had a Stanford connection through Wesley Annan, a 6-4, 275-pound defensive tackle from Whitby, Ontario, who Dillon steered through Lake Forest (Ill.) Academy to The Farm. Though Annan never played at Stanford because of injuries, he graduated with a human biology degree in 2019. That connection helped Dillon get the attention of Cardinal coaches, especially David Shaw’s receivers coach, Bobby Kennedy.
“After sending video to Kennedy, Dillon’s declaration was being put to the test. Dillon, his wife and mother-in-law were on the way to visit relatives when a call came to Dillon’s cell. It was Kennedy, who had just watched a compilation that Dillon provided the night before.
“‘I love this kid,’ Kennedy said. ‘This guy’s going to be special.’ …”
Full article at Go Stanford website
Another Exceptional Example at Stanford - Prof. Jay Bhattacharya
[Editor’s note: Ever since the launch three years ago of our website and weekly Newsletters, we have attempted to shine a light on what appeared, to us at least, as inappropriate censorship of scientific and social discourse, including by government involvement in Stanford’s own activities. This includes the external and internal attacks on Prof. Jay Bhattacharya who has spent his entire academic career at Stanford but received little if any support from Stanford’s own leaders and fellow faculty members for his speaking out on issues directly within his areas of expertise. We and many others also had serious concerns about the activities of the Stanford Internet Observatory and its involvement in deciding what was and wasn’t allowable speech regarding Presidential elections and then regarding COVID.
[With that in mind, we present here excerpts from one of hundreds of articles that have appeared this past week regarding the nomination of Prof. Bhattacharya to head the all-important National Institutes of Health. Link in the original.]
“Jayanta ‘Jay’ Bhattacharya’s Bengali first name means ‘one who is victorious in the end.’ That fits the past 4½ years of his life, in which Dr. Bhattacharya has gone from a pariah in the medical and scientific establishment to President-elect Trump’s nominee to direct the National Institutes of Health.
“Dr. Bhattacharya’s tale begins on these [WSJ] pages with a March 25, 2020, op-ed titled ‘Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?’ Co-authored by Eran Bendavid, a fellow professor of medicine at Stanford, the article argued that many asymptomatic cases of Covid were likely going undetected, making the disease far less dangerous than authorities were claiming.
“‘That is when the attacks started,’ Dr. Bhattacharya, 56, says in a Zoom interview from his office in Palo Alto, Calif. In April 2020 he and several colleagues published a study that confirmed his hypothesis. The prevalence of Covid antibodies in Santa Clara County, where Stanford is located, was 50 times the recorded infection rate. That, he says, ‘implied a lower infection mortality rate than public-health authorities were pushing at a time when they and the media thought it was a virtue to panic the population.’ His university opened a ‘fact finding’ investigation into him after BuzzFeed made baseless charges of conflict of interest. ‘This was the most anxiety-inducing event of my professional life,’ he says....
“To the limited extent that the NIH is a household name, it is sullied because of the pandemic. Dr. Bhattacharya wants Americans to understand what it does. ‘It is the single most important funder of biomedical research in the world,’ he says, dispensing grants of nearly $50 billion a year. ‘It has a track record of funding some of the most important biomedical projects in history,’ including the human genome project, and it is ‘the gold standard for institutional support for biomedical scientific research.’ …
“Dr. Bhattacharya says he will ‘rebalance the portfolio of the NIH so that it emphasizes newer ideas that have the potential for huge breakthroughs.’ …
“Another issue Dr. Bhattacharya intends to address is ‘the major problem of scientific fraud.’ We’ve had ‘scandal after scandal of biomedical scientists publishing papers where they Photoshopped key scientific data.’ Major scientists had to retract papers. Science depends on being able to trust results, so that fraud can produce ‘a whole tower of ideas built on a foundation of sand. And the ultimate consequence of that is that clinical advances that we think we have ended up not working to actually help people.’ ...
“Dr. Bhattacharya believes ‘very strongly that I have a purpose in life, and I’m supposed to use my gifts for this purpose.’ As a health economist and epidemiologist, his avowed purpose is ‘to use my knowledge so that I can make discoveries and suggest policies that would improve the health and well-being of the poor, the vulnerable, and the working-class.’ It wasn’t only the scientist in him but also the Christian that rose up in revolt during the pandemic when he ‘saw the widespread adoption of policies that were not grounded in science, that were harming the welfare of the vulnerable, particularly children.’ He felt he ‘had an obligation to speak. Because what’s the purpose of my career otherwise?’
“Any reform of America’s scientific institutions, Dr. Bhattacharya says, must ensure that they ‘work for the people again.’ Instead of ‘this haughty relationship, where the scientists sit above the public and say, ‘Look, you can’t think that,’ or ‘You’ll be censored if you say that,’ they need to remember that they are servants of the American people. The people are the ones paying the bills. They’re the ones giving the $50 billion a year. We scientists serve the people, not the other way around.’”
Full interview at WSJ
See also "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back" by Stanford Prof. Bhattacharya at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage
See also former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy “The Threat from Within”
How UNC and Others Are Restoring a Core Curriculum
Excerpt (links in the original):
“As the autumn sun warms the historic campus outside, a professor specializing in ancient and modern political philosophy guides undergraduate students through the seemingly ruthless nuances of Machiavelli’s 16th-century philosophy of morals.
“In another class, a professor specializing in political theory offers students a guided tour of the early American republic, as seen through the enlightened eyes of French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville.
“And a professor of rhetoric, who moonlights as a conservative political consultant in national races, diagrams the components of a bulletproof argument on a blackboard as he preps students for an upcoming class debate on the pros and cons of universal basic income.
“These vignettes may seem unexceptional, but they are at the center of an ambitious movement to reform.... The classes taught this fall in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s newly launched academic experiment, the School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL), revive approaches and values that were once accepted as essential to shaping informed and virtuous citizens in a liberal democracy, but are now regarded with deep suspicion by many academics: the classical liberal arts, the great books, Western Civilization, Socratic dialogue, civil discourse....”
[Followed by discussion of similar programs at other colleges and universities nationwide]
Full article at Real Clear Investigations
See also “University of Utah Creates Task Force for Intellectual Diversity” at Campus Reform
See also “University of Austin Fights College Censorship Culture” as broadcast on 60 Minutes and posted at YouTube (13 minutes)
See also the Stanford Civics Initiative website
Students Unable to Speak with Those Who Disagree with Them
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Students can no longer converse with people who disagree with them because of a rise in online ‘echo chambers,’ an Ivy League university president has warned.
“Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientist who took the reins at Dartmouth College last year, said social media has made it difficult for young people to interact with each other in person.
“‘We’re seeing that students aren’t practiced at having conversations with people who disagree with them, in part because social media puts you towards people who agree with you,’ Ms. Beilock told The Times.
“The Dartmouth College president said that ‘learning to talk to people who are different from you is a muscle that you build with training’ and that it is something her university encourages alongside counselling and wider support mechanisms....
“At the new Texas-based university [University of Austin], students are encouraged to disagree with each other and it is all but impossible for faculty members and undergraduates to get cancelled.
“UATX claims to be a place where students and faculty ‘have the right to pursue their academic interests and deliberate freely, without fear of censorship or retribution’.”
Full article at NY Times, as republished at MSN News
What I Would Fix at the National Science Foundation
Excerpt (link in the original):
“As outlined in a recent Senate report, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has become a swamp of identity politics. With a new Presidential Administration coming to power, it’s a good time to think about reform. I’d like to see NSF focused on funding excellent scientific research again, using fair and merit-based criteria to award grants....”
[Followed by seven specific recommendations]
Full op-ed by University of Chicago Prof. Dorian Abbot at Heterodox
Other Articles of Interest
Supreme Court Urged to Hear Cases re Campus Bias Response Teams
Full article at Speech First website
See also “Stanford’s Program re Title VI/Bias” at our Stanford Concerns webpage (updated 12/5/24)
Study Shows Fewer People Want to be Unique – a Warning re Free Speech
Full article at FIRE website
Two Cheers for Viewpoint Diversity
Full article at Law & Liberty
Higher Ed’s Staffing Concerns Eased by Technology
Full article at Ed Tech
How Universities Are Trying to Stop Another Year of Anti-War Activism
Full article at Intercept
Law Schools Have Created Two Legal Systems, Two Teaching Standards and Two Personalities
Full article at Minding the Campus
Why Colleges Are Turning to Institutional Neutrality
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
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
For Major U.S. Cities, the Donut Effect Persists
Legal Representation Is Out of Reach for Many – How to Remedy
Making AI Work for Health Care
FDA Approves Stanford Medicine-Developed Drug That Treats Rare Heart Disease
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“There is absolutely no data that shows better facilities and more administrators lead to better education outcomes; however, they are highly effective for branding and recruiting, and they create a lot of high-paying jobs for bureaucrats who don’t even teach students.” – Author Robert Glazer
December 2, 2024
More About Academic Freedom at Stanford
[Editor’s note: Last week's Newsletter (November 25, 2024) featured articles about the recent refusal of Stanford’s Faculty Senate to rescind their censure four years ago of Dr. Scott Atlas.
[Stanford’s President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez have been at the forefront of university leaders nationwide to emphasize the importance of free speech and academic freedom, which makes the recent actions of the Faculty Senate all the more disconcerting, especially when one would hope that such freedoms would be among the highest priorities of the faculty.
[Subsequent to last week’s Newsletter, the Stanford Review published an op-ed about these issues, excerpts below, and in this regard, we also think it appropriate to quote directly from the Chicago Principles:
[“Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.... Because the university is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the university community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.”]
Excerpts from Stanford Review op-ed "Atlas Censure Vote Reveals Academia's True Colors" (links in the original):
“Last Thursday [November 21], the Stanford University Faculty Senate voted against repealing the 2020 censure of Dr. Scott Atlas, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Trump administration advisor on the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
“Our faculty’s rejection of the motion to rescind Dr. Atlas's censure is a definitive blow to academic freedom at Stanford. Worse yet, it reveals a troubling reality within elite academic institutions: the hollow nature of their proclaimed commitment to free speech. Initially twice postponing the vote to avoid political interpretation, the Faculty Senate has now taken the dramatic step of refusing to rescind the censure, cementing its politically motivated decision.
“The Senate's outright rejection is particularly striking given the subsequent dismissal of several positions for which Atlas was initially censured. When Stanford faculty censured him in 2020 for questioning COVID-19 policies like lockdowns and mask mandates, they did so without even offering him an opportunity to defend his positions. Even as evidence has mounted supporting many of Atlas' positions, the institution has doubled down on its censure....
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the state- and academia-sanctioned suppression of alternative viewpoints prevented crucial debate about the effectiveness and consequences of lockdown policies. As Atlas notes, these policies resulted in significant harm, particularly to vulnerable populations and children, yet the academic community's unwillingness to engage with opposing views hindered proper scrutiny of these measures. Stanford itself played a massive role in the suppression of free speech, not only through the censure of Scott Atlas and the silencing of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, but it also engaged in the censorship of American citizens through the Stanford Internet Observatory....”
Full op-ed at Stanford Review
See also comments at end of Stanford Daily article (November 22)
See also video of Dr. Atlas discussing civil discourse and the free exchange of ideas at YouTube (28 minutes)
Universities Have a 2025 Rendezvous with Reality
[Editor’s note: In our minds at least, this isn’t a question of political beliefs. That’s personal. It’s a question of whether all of this demonstrates a longtime and systemic lack of intellectual diversity and inclusion.]
Excerpts:
“Universities have suffered a cataclysmic decline in public approval and support.
“A Gallup poll taken this year found that only 36 percent of Americans polled either expressed ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in higher education -- once the agreed-on touchstone to upward mobility.
“Gifting to most universities has been down for two consecutive years.
“There is zero intellectual diversity on most university campuses.
“Stanford University may be representative of these crises.
“In the 2020 election, 94% of Stanford faculty voted for the Biden-Harris ticket. Four years later, some 96% of all Stanford-affiliated donations went to Democrats during the 2024 election season.
“Former Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried -- parents of mega-Democratic donor and now imprisoned Sam Bankman-Fried, and recipients of millions in gifts from their felonious son -- were reportedly heavily involved in either bundling large left-wing campaign donations or offering legal advice to their son's bankrupt and Ponzi-like business.
“In 2023, a federal judge was shouted down at Stanford Law School, his lecture aborted and then hijacked -- by a Stanford DEI administrator!
“Former Trump health advisor and Hoover Institution scholar Scott Atlas in 2020 was censured by the Stanford faculty.
“Yet subsequent events supported Atlas's prescient warning that a complete lockdown of the country and the shutdown of K-12 schools would not only not retard the COVID epidemic, but would cause far greater economic, social, cultural, and health damage than the virus itself.
“Two recent attempts to lift that censure failed -- in part because some faculty claimed -- that to do so would empower the Trump reelection bid!
“In contrast, Stanford Professor Jeff Hancock, who founded the ‘Stanford Social Media Lab,’ boasts he researches ‘how people use deception with technology.’ Yet when liberal Minnesota officials wanted such ‘experts’ to support their new law banning ‘deep fake’ technology at election time, they called in the expert deception-detector Hancock.
“However, the references Hancock provided to prove his support for the law allegedly never existed.
“In fact, the lawyers who challenged his online expertise argued his sources apparently were invented by artificial intelligence software like ChatGPT.
“Who will police the deception police? …”
Full op-ed by Hoover Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson at Real Clear Education
See also former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy “The Threat from Within”
Study Finds DEI Initiatives Are Creating Hostile Attribution Bias
Excerpts from a report published by the Rutgers Social Perception Lab (citations deleted):
“DEI programs purport to cultivate inclusive environments for people from diverse backgrounds and encourage greater empathy in interpersonal interactions. A key component of DEI offerings lies in diversity pedagogy: Lectures, trainings and educational resources ostensibly designed to educate participants about their prejudice and bias in order to eliminate discrimination. As institutions across corporate and educational sectors increasingly embed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) into their foundational strategies, it is crucial to evaluate the effectiveness of common aspects of this pedagogy.
“A 2023 study by the Pew Research Center found that 52% of American workers have DEI meetings or training events at work, and according to Iris Bohnet, a professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, $8 billion is spent annually on such programs. Despite widespread investment in and adoption of diversity pedagogy through lectures, educational resources, and training, assessments of efficacy have produced mixed results....
“[Based on the studies that were undertaken and are discussed in detail in the report,] the evidence presented in these studies reveals that while purporting to combat bias, some anti-oppressive DEI narratives can engender a hostile attribution bias and heighten racial suspicion, prejudicial attitudes, authoritarian policing, and support for punitive behaviors in the absence of evidence for a transgression deserving punishment. Although not addressed in the studies reported herein, it is also possible that these factors are mutually reinforcing and spread through social contagion. Our findings raise this possibility which we offer here in the form of a post-hoc process model (to be investigated in future studies).” …
Full PDF copy of the report at Rutgers website
See also “Researchers Find People Are More Suspicious and Hostile after DEI Trainings” at College Fix
President Levin Interviewed by Stanford Review
Excerpts:
“I’ll just start by saying I'm 100 days into this role. So, of course, I’m still at a point where I’m learning a lot about everything. I came into this role knowing that it has been a very challenging period for universities nationally and the experience I've had so far has been really positive. It's been incredibly exciting to see just the breadth of excellence across the university, the feeling of openness and discussion on the campus this year, which has been particularly gratifying given the last couple of years, and just the overall sense of optimism at Stanford, something I really love and value. And that's what I talked about in my inauguration.
“You asked about the differences over time and in university leadership. I think that's a very good question. I think universities like Stanford have for many years played such an important role in the country as the source of ideas and new knowledge and discovery and innovation and the place that is the magnet for talent from all over the world. People have the chance to explore and learn and go off and make significant contributions. The most important part of university leadership is to try to sustain that crucial mission. So that hasn't changed, that's always there and always will be there in another 20 or 100 years.
“There are some distinctive challenges about today because of just everything that's going on in the world and on campuses and so that's part of current university leadership. But the part that's exciting about being university president is really all the people on the campus and all the things, ideas they come up with and things they're doing. And I think that is an enduring aspect of nursing leadership....”
Full interview at Stanford Review including Q&A re priorities, COLLEGE, political concentration of Stanford faculty and others, institutional neutrality, Stanford Internet Observatory, integrity of research, role of AI and much more
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya to Head NIH
Full article at BBC
See also “Poetic Justice for Jay Bhattacharya” at Bari Weiss Free Press
See also "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back" by Stanford Prof. Bhattacharya at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage
How Scientific American's Departing Editor Helped Degrade Science
Full op-ed at Reason
See also “National Science Foundation Spent Over $2 Billion Imposing DEI on Scientific Research” at College Fix
Want to Find Highly Engaged Students at 4-Year Colleges? Look at Transfer Students
Full article and link to podcast at Ed Surge
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
Andrew Luck Named General Manager of Stanford Football
See also Stanford Daily
AI Tool ‘Sees’ Cancer Gene Signatures in Biopsy Images
Milky Way Is an Outlier Among Similar Galaxies
Exotic Quantum State of Matter Visualized for First Time
Combatting a Gravely Serious Clotting Condition
Dopamine and Serotonin Work in Opposition to Shape Learning
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“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Winston Churchill
November 25, 2024
University Liberalism and Independent Thinking, Versus the Push for Relevance
Excerpts:
....
“Visit most any university or college campus today, and the vision of the idyllic community -- the stately buildings, well-tended lawns, state-of-the-art athletic facilities, and lively local hangouts -- survives. So do broad fields of genuine excellence, particularly in STEM fields such as biomedical research, astrophysics, and computer science. And universities still play a vital role as educators of future doctors, attorneys, nurses, engineers, and other essential professions.
“But the broader argument for universities has become harder to make in recent years....
“How did universities fall off their pedestals? Many reasons, but one is central: the turn away from liberalism as the dominant mindset of the academy.
“By liberalism I do not mean the word in the usual ideological or political sense. I mean it as the habit of open-mindedness, a passion for truth, a disdain for dogma, an aloofness from politics, a fondness for skeptics and gadflies and iconoclasts, a belief in the importance of evidence, logic, and reason, a love of argument rooted in intelligent difference. Above all, a curious, probing, independent spirit....
“Except in a few surviving corners, that kind of university is fading, if not altogether gone. In its place is the model of the university as an agent of social change and ostensible betterment. It is the university that encourages students to dwell heavily on their experience of victimization, or their legacy as victimizers, rather than as accountable individuals responsible for their own fate. It is the university that carefully arranges the racial and ethnic composition of its student body in the hopes of shaping a different kind of future elite. It is the university that tries to stamp out ideas or inquiries it considers socially dangerous or morally pernicious, irrespective of considerations of truth. It is the university that ceaselessly valorizes identity, not least when it comes to who does, or doesn’t, get to make certain arguments. It is the university that substitutes the classics of philosophy and literature with mandatory reading lists that skew heavily to the contemporary ideological left. It is the university that makes official statements on some current events (but not on others), or tips its hand by prominently affiliating itself with political activism in scholarly garb. It is the university that attempts to rewrite the English language in search of more 'inclusive' vocabulary. It is the university that silently selects an ideologically homogeneous faculty, administration, and graduate-student body. It is the university that finds opportunistic ways to penalize or get rid of professors whose views it dislikes. It is the university that has allowed entire fields of inquiry -- gender studies, ethnic studies, critical studies, Middle Eastern studies -- to become thoroughly dogmatic and politicized.
“A charitable term for this kind of institution might be the relevant university -- relevant in the sense of playing a direct role in shaping public and political life. In fact, there are many less political and more productive ways in which universities can credibly establish their relevance to the world around them: by serving as centers for impartial expertise, making pathbreaking discoveries, and educating students with vital skills, not just academically but also with the skills of good citizenship and leadership....
“There’s a straightforward way out of this mess. It’s a return to the values of the liberal university.
“Already, there are academic leaders willing to go there. In his impressive inaugural speech, Jonathan Levin, Stanford’s new president, put the point clearly: ‘The university’s purpose is not political action or social justice,’ he said. ‘It is to create an environment in which learning thrives.’ Sian Leah Beilock, the president of Dartmouth, has been equally clear: ‘Universities must be places where different ideas and opinions lead to personal growth, scientific breakthroughs, and new knowledge,’ she recently wrote in The Atlantic....
“What will turn the system around? Leadership is essential, starting with boards of trustees who must refuse to serve as mere cheerleaders or rubber stamps for university administrators drawn from the usual academic ranks and in tune with their ways of thinking and acting. It’s also essential to change the value system on campus, not only by moving away from identity politics but also by finding ways to rekindle the dying art of disagreement....”
Full op-ed by editor-in-chief Bret Stephens at Sapir Journal
See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, including questions as to what extent the centers, incubators, accelerators and similar entities at Stanford are engaged primarily in advocacy and implementation activities (and run primarily by the thousands of non-teaching personnel now housed at Stanford), versus the front-line teaching and peer-reviewed research of Stanford’s faculty themselves.
In Praise of Institutional Neutrality
Excerpt:
“We are engaged today in a struggle for the future of the university. Do universities today want to preserve -- or restore -- their status as institutions of teaching and learning or do they see themselves as engines of social change? It is one thing to provide students with the tools they need to become agents of social change -- we all hope they will -- but quite another to say that the university should seek to determine the direction of that change. Let me explain why the position of institutional neutrality is best suited to achieve this end.
“Our basic values are not only contestable, they stand in deep tension with one another. The English philosopher Isaiah Berlin was profoundly correct when he said that everything is what it is and not something else. Freedom is not justice; equality is not liberty; and diversity is not excellence. To deny these basic facts is either to indulge in wishful thinking or Orwellian double-speak.
“However it might appear, issues of equality, freedom and social justice are inherently contestable. Can a university devoted to the cause of rectifying past injustices maintain its commitment to intellectual excellence? Can a university seeking to guarantee safe spaces for students maintain an atmosphere of free and open debate?
“It is our job as educators to bring out the complexity of moral and social issues, not to put our thumb on the scale in advance to determine what kind of change is deemed morally or politically acceptable. When this happens, education becomes indoctrination and teaching a form of ideology training....”
Full op-ed by Yale Prof. Steven B. Smith at Yale Daily News
Stanford's Faculty Senate Refuses to Rescind Its Censure Four Years
Ago of Dr. Scott Atlas
[Editor’s note: Compare the following with the two articles, above. And did it not occur to anyone on Stanford's faculty, especially the medical school's own leaders and faculty, that an open debate on the issues was in order, not motions of censure? Isn't that how an academic community is supposed to function?]
By a secret vote of 21-13, Stanford's Faculty Senate on Thursday, November 21 refused to rescind its censure four years ago of Dr. Scott Atlas. See summaries of the Faculty Senate's actions at Stanford Report and Stanford Daily.
See also Stanford Prof. Ivan Marinovic op-ed dated October 24, 2024 at Stanford Review on reasons to rescind the censure, including these excerpts:
"In November 2020, the Stanford Senate convened to deliberate disciplinary actions against Scott Atlas. His offense? Expressing views on COVID policy that challenged those of other faculty. Atlas was neither informed of the meeting nor given an opportunity to attend and respond to the accusations. In essence, he was denied the right to defend himself and was judged for his speech in absentia.
“Several months prior, in September 2020, ninety-eight professors from the Stanford School of Medicine had circulated a letter, addressed to the entire Stanford academic council, using the university's academic secretary, condemning Atlas in harsh terms: ‘To prevent harm to the public’s health, we also have both a moral and an ethical responsibility to call attention to the falsehoods and misrepresentations of science recently fostered by Dr. Scott Atlas…. Many of his opinions and statements run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy… Failure to follow the science -- or deliberately misrepresenting the science -- will lead to immense avoidable harm.’ …
“The censure of Atlas marks a low point in Stanford’s history. Never before had Stanford censured a professor without affording him the fundamental right to defend himself. And while the resolution condemned Atlas’s conduct with moral indignation, the Senate was blind to its own moral failure in passing this resolution.
"The censure also sent a chilling message to the Stanford community: Any faculty member who challenges orthodoxy risks public condemnation and institutional ostracism. The lesson is clear: those who dissent will face not just academic and online mobs targeting their reputations and careers, but also formal denunciation from the university itself.
“By censuring Atlas, the Senate revealed the fragility of Stanford’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom....”
There’s an Answer to College Diversity Right in Front of Us
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Several leading universities recently released enrollment data on the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision gutting affirmative action. As critics -- myself among them -- predicted, the reports show a dramatic decline in the enrollment of Black and Latino students in these institutions.
“A survey of 50 top-ranked schools concluded that, at three-quarters of them, fewer Black students were enrolled than before the court’s ruling. In some instances, the drop-off has been substantial. At Columbia University, for example, 12 percent of the class of 2028 is Black, compared to 20 percent in previous years. Black student enrollment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dropped from 20 percent to 12 percent, while at Amherst College, Black students, who make up 11 percent of the class of 2027, constitute only 3 percent of the class of 2028.
“How can elite universities maintain a diverse student body in a post-affirmative-action world? Here’s one promising approach: recruit community college graduates....
“The transfers in my 60-student undergraduate class, ethics in a cataclysmic era, are hungry to learn and eager to try out new ideas. I invite them to link their life stories -- being homeless or raising two children as a single parent, for instance -- to the topic we’re discussing. They introduce a reality check -- especially valuable in an applied ethics class -- during sessions that could otherwise become hyper-theoretical....”
Full op-ed by UC Berkeley Prof. Emeritus David Kirp at Washington Post
The Fall of the AAUP
Excerpt (links in the original):
“One of the great disappointments of my professional life has been watching the decline of the American Association of University Professors, formerly the gold standard for defense of academic freedom on campus. Of course, there have always been and still are good, principled AAUP members and chapters out there. But since the beginning of my career back in 2001, the national AAUP have gone from being principled (if slow and plodding) defenders of academic freedom to increasingly partisan critics of freedom of speech and the First Amendment -- taking institutional positions that directly threaten academic freedom.
“This week Joan W. Scott, a current AAUP member and former chair of the AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, published a piece in Inside Higher Education making a number of false accusations about my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. This is on the heels of a contentious exchange on X two weeks ago, where FIRE’s Vice President of Campus Advocacy Alex Morey called the AAUP out for their continuing fall from principle, and the AAUP replied with even more (mostly now-deleted) false accusations.
“FIRE’s principled, nonpartisan defense of free speech and academic freedom is not only on record, but baked into our very founding in 1999 by left-leaning libertarian Harvey Silverglate and right-leaning libertarian Alan Charles Kors. The AAUP are, sadly, a different story....”
Full op-ed by FIRE president and Stanford alum Greg Lukianoff at Substack
See also “AAUP’s New President Is Not Staying Neutral” at Inside Higher Ed
Stanford’s New Program for Student Civic Engagement and Constructive Dialogue
Excerpt (link in the original):
“Stanford University has announced a new, university-wide initiative, ePluribus Stanford, designed to empower students to think critically and empathetically, engage in meaningful conversations across their differences, and embrace active, life-long roles in civic life through whatever field or career path they pursue.
“The initiative, which builds on Stanford’s long commitment to civic purpose, comes at a critical time for democracy and freedom of expression in the country.
“‘Freedom of speech and academic freedom are critically important,’ said Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez. ‘To create an environment in which free ideas flourish, though, it’s not enough to just avoid official censorship. We hear a lot about self-censorship, and about people feeling like their ideas and voices aren’t being heard and valued in the conversation on campus. To address those concerns, we need to cultivate a culture of openness and curiosity in our community. What’s more, we need to help students develop the skills to think critically and to engage constructively. These are essential to the university’s mission of research and education, and also to sustaining democracy in the broader society.’ ...”
Full article at Stanford Report
See also “Civic Dialogues Program Helps Freshmen Tackle Tough Conversations”
Other Articles of Interest
Academe’s Divorce from Reality
Full op-ed by former Yale Prof. William Deresiewicz at Chronicle of Higher Education
Meet California’s Most Neglected Group of Students with Special Needs - the Gifted Ones
Full op-ed at LA Times
UC Berkeley to Offer New Course That Describes Hamas as a 'Revolutionary Resistance Force Fighting Settler Colonialism'
Full article at Campus Reform
ASU's Religious Studies Department Teaches Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Even Witchcraft - but rejects courses on Christianity
Full article at Alma Matters
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
The Unexpected Journey of Neural Networks in AI
More Accessible Yet Less Personal - The Two Sides of Digital Banking
Mysterious Brain Malformations in Children Linked to Protein Misfolding
How Ketosis Influences Metabolism
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“When we truly understand another person’s perspective, it opens a door to compassion and can bridge the deepest divides between us.” – Stanford Prof. Geoffrey Cohen
November 18, 2024
AI May Ruin the University as We Know It
Excerpts (links in the original):
“A social-media post for a Google product known as NotebookLM outlines the following instructions to college students for ‘how to do school.’ First, close your laptops, use your phone to record lectures, and write down only the important bits. Next, upload the recording and scans of any handwritten notes to Google. Finally, process the material through an executive summary generated by NotebookLM. An added perk, or shortcut, as the case may be: At the end of the week, generate a summary of the summaries in the form of a synthetic podcast narrated by a pair of conversational agents. No more extracting concepts from long-form arguments, no more psychic struggle with complex ideas: just autosummary on demand, made possible by a vast undifferentiated pool of content that every successive use of the service helps to grow.
“Such is the ed-tech vision of higher education now. What the example of NotebookLM’s promotional campaign demonstrates is the emergence of a new model or template for education, if not for learning itself: a productivity schema ready to be laid across the full spectrum of the postindustrial knowledge economy. It is not difficult to see that in the next phase one can eliminate the lectures and discussions and simply start with the summaries (and eventually the summaries of the summaries), streamed on demand....
“In essence, the university itself has become a service. The idea of the University as a Service extends the model of Software as a Service to education. Software as a Service refers to the practice of businesses licensing software and paying to renew the license rather than owning and maintaining the software for themselves. For the University as a Service, traditional academic institutions provide the lecturers, content, and degrees (for now). In return, the technological infrastructure, instructional delivery, and support services are all outsourced to third-party vendors and digital platforms.
“Licensing and subscription agreements favor short-term budget planning; so too do they enable an administrative vision of universities as customizable, scalable, cost effective, and available on demand. Too often the decision-making about the IT systems that will shape the research and instructional environments is largely or even exclusively in the hands of CIOs, IT staff members, and instructional development, with academic affairs relegated to the position of managing the implementation of commercial ed-tech applications that promise continuous pedagogic improvement, which is now to be accelerated by new AI features, all of them generating revenue through the scraping of data. As with other industries like health care, the ‘service’ that the university now provides is the concentration of human capital and engagement for the magnitude of data collection necessary to the continued growth and financial viability of AI systems....”
Full op-ed by U Maryland Prof. Matthew Kirschenbaum and UC Santa Barbara Prof. Rita Raley at Chronicle of Higher Education
See also Stanford Prof. Russell Berman’s remarks to the Faculty Senate about the situation where Stanford’s IT department had developed a list of words and phrases that Stanford faculty, students and staff then were told they should no longer use, “Does Academic Freedom Have a Future at Stanford” at our Stanford Speaks webpage
How Department of Education’s Guidance re
Title VI May Conflict with the First Amendment
[Editor’s note: At the start of the current academic year, Stanford revised its controversial bias reporting policies and procedures with new policies and procedures that treat such matters as arising under Title VI of the Federal Civil Rights Act. See “Stanford’s Program re Title VI/Bias” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. We had noted at the time that this seemed to be a positive development but where we also had surmised, without confirmation, that the same automated emails and protocols that the student services staff had used in the past for handling alleged bias would still be used, but with a different name since the same templates are embedded in the computerized case management system that is used by Stanford and other colleges and universities nationwide.
[More recently, guidance from the U.S. Department of Education on these issues has become the focus of a lawsuit, as discussed below.]
Excerpts:
“The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a lawsuit last week against the U.S. Department of Education, demanding the release of all guidance it has given to colleges on how to fight discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin.
“The free-speech advocacy group believes the federal agency has been privately instructing college administrators on how they should respond to campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
“‘Some universities seem to be under the impression that they are under an obligation to suppress speech protected under the First Amendment,’ said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute.
“The department, the institute alleges, has denied several requests to make public parts of its guidance to colleges since the start of the war.
“The Department of Education declined to comment on the pending litigation....”
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
See also our articles about “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” and “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System” at our Stanford Concerns webpage
The Decline and Fall of the University
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Since retiring from the university, several people have asked if I miss it. I tell them I miss what it was, but not what it has become. Higher education in America has gone from being the best in the world to one of the most pathetic. Why? It’s hard to describe what academia was to me and to millions in the past. It was not just a job, but a way of life, and of Western Civilization; and I’m so close to it, that it’s hard to describe -- like trying to describe one’s own mother (hence alma mater!).
“But let me try. University life at its best was both the most serious, difficult, challenging and maddening existence; and yet, it was also the most exciting, lively, rewarding, and fun experience.
“It was deadly serious because we constantly examined the most intense human issues: historical and personal tragedies; ethical dilemmas, philosophical complexities; theological mysteries; and scientific wonders. It was hard because it stretched you intellectually and emotionally, made you question everything and be changed by that knowledge. And it was difficult, because of the enormous workload and demands; assignments, exams, papers, presentations and seminars. I don’t know of another situation, except possibly the military during a war, where one could be tested so much....
“Academia was full of eccentric professors with various crazy ideas and habits (some brilliant), naïve students, and pompous administrators; but they all adhered to the same standard of knowledge. This led not just to scientific discovery and technological progress, but to every other kind of progress: economic, political, social, and ethical....
“Political correctness effectively replaces free, diverse debate and a positive collegial community with Nazi-like speech control. In place of a ‘free-marketplace of ideas’ examining all subjects and perspectives is one official ideology that eclipses all the other views. That PC doctrine, essentially, is that Western Civilization in general, and America in particular, is racist, sexist, imperialist and unjust. This means that nothing good can be said about certain figures or subjects (Jefferson, the founding, Christianity, etc.) and nothing bad or ‘offensive’ can be said about ‘protected groups’.... This ideology has pretty much captured the humanities and social sciences in American universities (as well as the most prominent academic associations and journals, and the most prestigious awards).
“This system of thought was codified and weaponized by the largely illegal and unconstitutional expansion of the Title IX Regulations in 2014. This was a provision of the Civil Rights Acts requiring equal expenditures on college sports along gender lines. It was deftly transformed into a PC blitz by equating ‘discrimination’ with ‘harassment.’ When ‘harassment’ was expanded to include ‘verbal’ harassment, it allowed censorship and punishment of any speech that was deemed offensive or 'unwanted' by anyone. Title IX offices at every American university (with names like: The Office of Conduct, Compliance, Control, Diversity, Inclusion and Demasculinization) run Gestapo-like operations of surveillance, mandatory reporting, investigations, interrogations (without due process) and reprimands, dismissals and expulsions....
“My guess is that in 10 years, half of America’s universities will be turned into vocational-technical schools or closed entirely (or possibly turned into minimum-security prisons or drug rehab centers). The remaining, I hope, will return to a model similar to the lively, rigorous and useful universities we once had. Combinations of online efficiency with onsite community may be the best solution. And if secondary schools returned to teaching the best of Western Civilization (literature, history, art, music, philosophy) it would prepare Americans who do not go to college to be well-informed, thoughtful citizens, Jefferson’s ideal for American democracy....”
Full op-ed by U Virginia Prof. Emeritus Garrett Sheldon at The Jefferson Council website and previously published at Brownstone Institute. Also republished at our Commentary from Others webpage.
The Economics of Political Correctness
Excerpts:
“One morning, chatting with Harvard undergraduates just before my class, I reminisced about my own college years in the late 1990s -- debating religion in our residence hall or arguing about the role of discrimination in America in common rooms.
“Those conversations were uncomfortable and even heated at times. But they were positive experiences for me and I’m pretty sure everyone else. Grappling with different views helped us understand one another, and that helped me understand, and sometimes change, my own outlook.
“I asked a student in the front row: With all this technology and social media, where do you have these types of conversations? She looked up from her turquoise notebook and replied: ‘We don’t.’ I looked around the amphitheater and asked, ‘Really?’ A hundred heads nodded in unison....
“Even if stone cold economists have fallen prey to self-censorship, economics can tell us why. A brilliant analysis by Stephen Morris -- a formalization of early ideas developed by Glenn Loury-- develops the basic economics of political correctness. Here is an example:
“Suppose there is an informed professor advising a less informed politician as to whether diversity, equity, and inclusion policies help minorities. If the professor says DEI is harmful, the politician might interpret the recommendation as the honest findings of an unbiased researcher. But he also might interpret it as the motivated reasoning of a racist, and might even stop asking the professor for advice.
“Mr. Morris demonstrates mathematically that if the professor is sufficiently concerned about being thought a racist, he will lie and recommend DEI even when he knows it’s a bad idea for minorities....
“The question is what can be done. First, we need to take a careful look at how we hire and promote faculty. Instead of having them sign statements swearing fealty to DEI, perhaps they should promise to tell the truth. Second, we need high-powered incentives for people who are correct regardless of politics. If someone scientifically demonstrates that systemic racism is the main factor in racial disparities in America, this should be celebrated. If someone finds that health disparities are driven by genetics rather than social factors -- that too should be celebrated. We need something like the MacArthur Fellowship or the X Prize for telling the truth about data.
“I am gravely concerned about the rise of political correctness on college campuses, its effect on the type of analysis that is being published and being taught, and how this will undermine, among many other things, efforts to help the marginalized in America. Such efforts will succeed only if they are rooted in the truth.”
Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Roland Fryer at WSJ
How to Save Free Speech on Campus
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Back in February, Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer was supposed to give a lecture on toxic polarization in American discourse at the University of Puget Sound. He didn’t. The event was canceled after pro-Palestinian protesters forced themselves into the lecture hall and stormed the stage.
“That same month, Israeli Defense Forces reservist and lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat was supposed to speak on the geopolitical dynamics of Israel’s war in Gaza at the University of California-Berkeley. He didn’t. The event was canceled after hundreds of angry protesters surrounded the venue, broke glass doors, obstructed entryways, and forced themselves into the building....
“In the last decade we have seen more than 1,000 campaigns to get professors punished for their First Amendment-protected speech. Nearly two-thirds of those campaigns succeeded, and almost 200 professors ended up being fired or forced out. For perspective, during McCarthyism, about 60 communist professors were fired, and about 100 professors were fired for political belief overall. We know this is a wild underestimate, given that about 1 in 6 professors say that they have been punished or threatened with punishment for their speech, teaching, or research. To give further perspective, if extrapolated nationally that would be about a hundred thousand professors targeted for speech. There is no parallel to that in American history....
“Our institutions of higher learning have done this to themselves. As Tyler Austin Harper put it in a piece for The Atlantic, higher education created this problem by favoring applicants who are interested only, or primarily, in engaging in activism. Indeed, they made activism a part of their marketing and recruitment materials....
“Right now, many students enroll with a predetermined moral and political certainty and an intolerance for dissent -- and schools largely encourage and reinforce it....
“Our institutions of higher education should protect their activists, but they should also prioritize recruiting scholars. The ideal student should think more like a field anthropologist, someone who is trying to figure out where the other side is coming from, rather than a strident warrior in a battle of good versus evil. That open, curious, intellectually humble, and receptive mindset is the foundation of actual learning, and is critical to fostering an educational environment that lives up to its intended purpose....
“However difficult it might be for universities to reestablish these norms after decades of encouraging the opposite, failing to do so will have dire consequences. Our institutions will be little more than dogma factories, churning out wave after wave of activists and leaving us with no scholars, no thinkers, and no higher learning at all.”
Full op-ed by FIRE President and Stanford alum Greg Lukianoff at Substack
Other Articles of Interest
A Frosh’s Reflection on Free Speech at Stanford
Full op-ed at Stanford Review
How Stanford Students Can Bring the Fun Back
Full op-ed at Stanford Daily
Universities Like Yale Need a Reckoning
Full op-ed by Yale Prof. David Blight at NY Times
The Department of Education’s Approach to Antisemitism Is Dangerous and Won’t Work
Full op-ed at The Hill
Is It Time to Regulate AI Use on Campus?
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Study Shows Most Workers Pay Back Student Loans on Time
Full article at College Fix
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
New Center Unites Stanford’s Robotics Expertise Under One Roof
Civil Dialogues Program Helps Freshmen Tackle Tough Conversations
Stanford Researchers Probe Consistency and Bias in AI
Historian Jonathan Gienapp Challenges Originalist Interpretations of the Constitution
New Specialty Spaces Coming to the Graduate School of Education
Scientists Find Novel Use for Ancient Malaria Remedy
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“An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life -- becoming a better person.” -- Leo Tolstoy
November 11, 2024
Cancel Culture, Administrative Bloat and the Misguided Concept
of Student Consumerism
Excerpts (links in the original):
. . . .
“Cancel culture has made it possible for students to amplify grievances or objections to give them a type of veto power over faculty. Recording of classes posted on social media can lead to intense and immediate backlash, often for things taken out of context or at the whim of an emotional reaction. In many cases, faculty who attempt to introduce controversial ideas, engage in difficult discussions, or simply express an unpopular opinion may find themselves targeted, with students mobilizing to demand their removal, disciplinary action, or public apology. This climate has forced many faculty members to censor their teaching, avoid contentious topics, and minimize challenging coursework, all to avoid the potential repercussions of offending students. The power students hold in this dynamic can be oppressive, leaving professors with limited control over their curriculum and pedagogical approach, weakening the educational value of open inquiry and debate....
“[Meantime,] administrative bloat has increased the number of non-academic staff in universities, often in roles designed to cater to student needs, experiences, and complaints. While some of these roles serve legitimate purposes -- such as ensuring student safety, compliance with regulations, and supporting diverse student populations -- this growth has created an extensive support network that can empower students to challenge faculty more directly and frequently.
“With more administrators available to field student grievances, students find it easier to report issues, file complaints, and demand change within university structures. Administrative staff often feel pressured to respond quickly and decisively to these complaints to maintain student satisfaction and prevent potential public relations issues. This can create an institutional bias in favor of student concerns, even when they conflict with faculty perspectives or academic freedom. Administrators may side with students in disputes to avoid controversy or backlash, reinforcing student authority over faculty. With administrative structures expanding in this way, students gain leverage to challenge faculty decisions on grading, content, or classroom management, effectively placing themselves above faculty judgment....
“Addressing this imbalance requires universities to reevaluate their approach to governance, student relations, and administrative structure. It must first start with reinforcing academic freedom and support for faculty. Universities must explicitly protect faculty members’ right to academic freedom and provide them with institutional support when they engage in challenging or controversial teaching. Clear policies that protect professors’ ability to engage in intellectual discourse are essential.
“A mindset shift is also important. Educational institutions should actively promote a culture where students see themselves as active participants in learning rather than as customers. This could involve orientation programs, campaigns, or statements from leadership that emphasize the role of education in personal growth and critical thinking, not simply as a commodity....”
Full op-ed by U San Diego Prof. Rebekah Wanic at Minding the Campus. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage
Upcoming USC Conference on Censorship in the Sciences (January 10 to 12, 2025)
Excerpt:
“Censorship in sciences entails suppression of the investigation of scientific questions, or the publication or dissemination of scientific research, on the grounds that such knowledge would be dangerous, undesirable, or contrary to moral, political, or religious beliefs, attitudes or values adhered to by some segment of the population.
“This conference brings together experts (both within and outside academia) to address a series of contentious issues about scientific censorship. When, if ever, does rejection of manuscripts for publication or grants for funding constitute censorship? How much of a role, if any, should ethical/moral issues play in deciding which scientific ideas to disseminate? What are the likely costs and benefits of institutionalized censorship, how do we decide, and who decides, when the benefits outweigh the costs?
“When and how do university administrations and funding agencies, through either action or inaction, mask censorship by finding ostensibly ‘other’ reasons to silence scientists? How does censorship of scientists or scientific ideas manifest? Is compelled speech a form of censorship, and, if so, how does it manifest in science? …"
PDF copy of schedule and full description and registration at USC website; speakers include Stanford professors Jay Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis, former Caltech provost and Hoover fellow Steven Koonin, FIRE CEO and Stanford alum Greg Lukianoff, and over 30 other prominent scientists and commentators
A More Practical Argument for Free Speech
Excerpts (links in the original):
“One of the most persistent pitfalls in political argumentation is a version of the fallacy of false equivalence. A friend dubs it the fallacy of ripe apples and rotten oranges. In a political context, it's when an advocate compares an idealized or best-case version of his preferred position with a realistic -- or perhaps even exaggeratedly negative -- version of his opponent’s....
“As the broad American consensus in favor of free speech erodes, we have seen a similar unsatisfactory form of disputation proliferate. Critics of ‘free speech absolutism,’ as it is condescendingly dubbed -- we don’t refer to ‘rule of law absolutists’ or ‘separations of powers absolutists,’ for example -- highlight all manner of alleged deficiencies with the status quo and trace them to an alleged excess of free speech. If we could just get rid of free speech, then the ills associated with this ‘unmitigated disaster,’ as one ... journalist calls it, would vanish, with apparently none of the good things we might wish to retain being threatened.
“These opponents of free speech typically provide little sense of what the new, non-free-speech dispensation would look like in practice. In this asymmetrical theoretical comparison, implicit in much of today’s fashionable attacks on free speech, the alternative is hardly laid out at all. Somehow, we are led to believe, falsehoods and hurtful talk will vanish without truths getting caught in the dragnet, and no one, it appears, will be left any the worse off....
“As the requirements of correct speech are not only essentially vague but also shifting and nebulous, systems of speech-restraint predictably take on the exclusionary dimensions of codes of etiquette and manners. Appeals to ‘decency’ and ‘civility’ then become pretexts for ignoring the voices of those, often from less polished or less privileged backgrounds, who have not had the opportunity to master these codes, and mistakes of phrasing or word choice are magnified into markers of ‘being a bad person.’ Caste loyalties are entrenched, and instead of approaching disagreeable remarks charitably, with an eye toward learning from the other person, a feeling of superiority at having stayed current with the latest shibboleths crowds out a shared sense of civic commonality. Snobbery based on petty linguistic gamesmanship spreads, and respect for real intellectual achievement is lost to an inegalitarianism founded on ‘not saying the wrong thing.’ ...
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Gregory Conti at City Journal (free registration may be required)
See also our PDF download of the list of proscribed words and phrases that Stanford’s IT department somehow felt itself empowered to create and enforce until the entire matter became the subject of national embarrassment (scroll down to “Stanford’s Program re Speech” at our Stanford Concerns webpage)
In Time of Campus Turmoil, More Colleges Try Teaching Civil Discourse
Excerpts (links in the original):
“As Alexandra Delano prepared to moderate a civil discourse event for fellow students at Providence College in anticipation of the presidential election, some people quipped ‘good luck with that’ or ‘you’re brave for that.’
"They predicted that the event, whose blue and red flier read ‘There’s an election in two weeks? Let’s talk about it!,’ would be tense. It was sponsored by the college’s Dialogue, Inclusion and Democracy Lab, where Delano is a student fellow....
“Colleges have gradually increased their efforts to promote civic dialogue in the past several years, as partisanship has grown. But a new push has happened in higher ed after conflict erupted in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, along with campus protests -- college administrators have realized that they can’t provide a quality education in a chaotic environment, says Michael Murray, the president and chief executive officer of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, which has funded several campus dialogue projects. Students need stability and a way to handle tense situations in order to succeed in and outside of the classroom, he says.
“Many colleges have sought that help from nonprofit organizations, such as Interfaith America or Braver Angels, he says. They provide toolkits, strategies and training to help administrators grow their programs. They also offer colleges resources on the best practices in constructive dialogue or suggest specific types of events, such as the round table strategy at Providence.
“The Constructive Dialogue Institute, for instance, offers a series of videos and online lessons for students to work through at their own pace, training for faculty and staff and a yearly program to help campus administrators learn more about constructive dialogue. Last year, the organization worked with 30 colleges. This year, that number has grown to 122 campuses, says Mylien Duong, senior director of research at the institute....”
Full article at Ed Surge
Cheating Has Become Normal; Faculty Are Overwhelmed
and the Solutions Aren’t Clear
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Before she returned to teaching last spring after a leave of absence, Amy Clukey braced for the possibility that her students might cheat with ChatGPT. She’d heard complaints from her fellow professors and thought, sure, that’s not good. But plagiarism had never been much of a problem in her English classes.
“‘I was always, like, I’ll create unique assignments and they will be somewhat plagiarism-proof, and some students will get by me,’ said Clukey, an associate professor at the University of Louisville. ‘But that’s fine because most of them will be doing their own work, and it’ll be great.’
“It wasn’t great....
“Some institutions, including Middlebury College, in Vermont, and Stanford University, are reconsidering elements of their honor codes because they’re simply not working. At Middlebury, the percentage of students who admitted on an annual survey to violating the honor code rose from 35 percent in 2019 to 65 percent in 2024. The most common self-reported violations were using unauthorized aids, such as SparkNotes or a friend, cheating on a test, and misusing AI....
“But do more students cheat today than in the past? It’s hard to know. Data so far is limited, and studies often rely on students to self-report. Some research documented a spike in cheating in online courses during the pandemic. Another study, which surveyed high-school students before and after ChatGPT’s arrival, did not find an increase in cheating over time. Other studies done before 2020 suggest that cheating may have fallen since the 1990s or early 2000s....”
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Other Articles of Interest
The Renaissance of Civic Education
Full op-ed by Michael Poliakoff, president of ACTA, and Jack Miller, founder and chairman emeritus of center devoted to these issues
See also “Reopening the American Mind” at City Journal
But see also “Why the Election Is Keeping Current Events Out of the Classroom This Fall” at WSJ
UCSF Med Professor Suspended for Post Asking if Israeli Student Participated in Genocide
Full article at College Fix
Columbia Needs to Stop Doing Politics and Start Doing Higher Education
Full op-ed at FIRE website
As Illiberal Anti-Israel Protests Continue, Let Dartmouth Serve as a Shining Example
Full op-ed at Real Clear Education
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
Cracking the Code of DNA Circles in Cancer, Stanford Medicine-Led Team Uncovers Potential Therapy
Stanford Launches Center Focused on Human and Planetary Health
Digital Health Symposium Highlights Trustworthy and Equitable Innovation
Stanford Experts Detail Democratic Decline, Authoritarian Trends in the Middle East
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“On Veterans Day, we are called to consider the meaning of their service and to reflect on the liberties we enjoy as a result of their sacrifices. I’m inspired by the courage and selflessness of our nation’s veterans. I am especially proud of Stanford’s veterans, who enrich our campus community with their talent, dedication and spirit of leadership.” – Former Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, November 11, 2021
November 4, 2024
Internal Emails Show University Leaders at Harvard and Elsewhere Debating Responses to Hamas Attack
[Editor’s note: Many of us learned long ago that email is a useful form of one-way communication, that is, for statements like "attached is the agenda" or “the meeting has been cancelled.” It is a very inefficient and often destructive method for problem-solving which is best accomplished via two-way communication in the form of face-to-face meetings or other simultaneous interactions. And, as described in the following article, email creates a potentially embarrassing record.
[This is also a reason we raised concerns over a year ago regarding Stanford's massive use of automated emails and other interactions with students in connection with disciplinary and similar matters, versus the student services staff actually meeting and talking with students and resolving issues in more humane and personalized ways. See "Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior" at our Stanford Concerns webpage.]
Excerpt (link in the original):
“Two days after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel last year, senior administrators at Harvard University wrestled with how to respond. Drafting a public statement, they edited out the word ‘violent’ to describe the attack, when a dean complained that it ‘sounded like assigning blame.’
"They debated whether to explicitly disown a declaration by some Harvard student groups that Israel was responsible for the violence, but ultimately decided not to.
“The internal debate among Harvard leaders including Claudine Gay, then the school’s president, played out furiously in emails and text messages that were released in a report on Thursday by the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
“The report, part of a nearly yearlong inquiry by House Republicans investigating antisemitism on university campuses, offers a rare window into the discussions at multiple universities and how difficult judgment calls made by a small handful of people were scrutinized around the world....
Full article at NY Times, including detailed examples at Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern and elsewhere
Students and Faculty Express Differing Views re Stanford’s Free Speech Policies
Excerpt:
“Some students have expressed concern that campus activism and free speech is experiencing a chilling effect following the University’s updated free speech guidelines that were announced early this school year.
“The University announced a series of free speech guidelines in September that detail the parameters of what’s allowed in campus demonstrations, following a tumultuous year of protests and counter-protests over the Israel-Gaza war.
“Several faculty members have expressed their support for the guideline, calling it a proactive measure. Introduced in September by Provost Jenny Martinez and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Michele Rasmussen, the new guidelines outlined several points include advance registration of major events, designated outdoor spaces for gatherings, identification and masking guidelines and an emphasis on the policy’s viewpoint neutrality....”
Full article at Stanford Daily. See also Stanford’s Freedom of Expression website
Civil Liberty on Campus (video)
SUMMARY (quoted from YouTube): “What is the proper relationship between free speech and civility in an academic context? How can students and faculty be afforded broad rights to free expression and academic freedom without sacrificing order and education on campus? Which forms of protest are permissible and which go too far for a university community to tolerate? This panel features world-renowned experts considering these topics and offering ideas for a positive path forward for American higher education during these challenging times.”
MODERATOR: Carleton College Prof. Amna Khalid
PANELISTS:
-
NY Law Prof. Emerita Nadine Strossen (and past president of the ACLU)
-
Yale Law Prof. Keith Whittington (and founding chair of the Academic Committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance)
-
George Mason Prof. JoAnn Koob
Full video of American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) panel at YouTube (1 hour, 13 minutes)
See also “Pursue Truth; Never Fear, Never Waver,” Harvard Prof. Roland G. Fryer, accepting ACTA award, at YouTube (21 minutes, core discussion starts at the 11-minute mark)
It’s Getting Still Harder to Get Admitted to America’s Top Colleges and Universities
Excerpt:
….
“In general, schools seeing increases in median SAT scores vastly outnumber those seeing decreases.
From 2016 to 2023:
-
median SAT scores for 4 percent of schools increased by 100 points or more.
-
median SAT scores for 38 percent of schools increased by 50 points or more.
-
median SAT scores for 9 percent of schools decreased.
[Followed by examples of specific schools and a link to a larger data base although not including Stanford]
Full article at Education Next
Law Student Faces Expulsion for Aggressive Pointing
[Editor’s note: While we don’t know firsthand whether Pace uses the same automated case management system that Stanford uses, these are the types of templates, emails and case management protocols, as also noted in an earlier article in this Newsletter, that are contained in the automated systems in use at Stanford and hundreds of other colleges and universities around the country and that are similar to the types of communications Katie Meyer reportedly was receiving.]
Excerpts (link in the original):
“When Houston Porter, a 28-year-old law student at Pace University, first walked into the college auditorium last month, he was surprised to see a packed house for the ‘Saving Women’s Sports’ panel he was co-moderating.
“’Our events normally don’t get that kind of turnout,’ says Porter, a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative advocacy group that sponsored the panel at Pace’s law school in White Plains, New York. ‘So it was exciting.’ ...
“But not long after, Porter’s world started ‘crumbling down’ -- with at least one professor shouting at panelists and another allegedly rushing the stage, followed by a Title IX investigation that accuses him of having ‘aggressively pointed’ at a transgender student and misgendering her. Now Porter faces the possibility of suspension, expulsion, and even being barred from practicing law....
“Nine days later, the situation became even stranger. Porter saw an email flash across his phone, titled ‘Notification Letter.’
“‘I felt scared, like time stopped. I was shocked,’ he told me.
“When he expanded the email, he saw a PDF attachment from Bernard Dufresne, the school’s Title IX coordinator, stating that Porter is being investigated for a potential act of ‘sex-based discrimination’ against a transgender student who attended the Federalist Society event along with about two dozen members of the school’s LBGTQ+ affinity group. The charge? That he ‘aggressively pointed’ at the transgender student and ‘purposefully referred to her as a man in front of classmates, law school faculty and administrators, and guests.’ He now faces a disciplinary hearing that could result in community service, suspension, or even expulsion....”
Full article at Free Press. See also “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
Other Articles of Interest
Yale Adopts Institutional Neutrality
Full article at College Fix
Stanford-Affiliate Donations Lean Further Left Than Previous Election Cycles
Full article at Stanford Daily (nearly $800,000 to Harris versus $18,280 to Trump, along with comparisons with past years)
AI Tutors Are Reshaping Higher Education
Full article at Axios as reprinted at MSN
No U.S. History?
Full PDF report at ACTA website including detailed charts re history curricula at major U.S. colleges and universities including Stanford (page 58)
By Politicizing Health Care, Medical Schools Are Putting Lives on the Line
Full article at College Fix including link to Do No Harm full report
How to Help Students Debate Constructively
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Should AI Be Allowed in the College Application Process?
Full article at Ed Scoop including link to survey results
Educating for Freedom
Full video of ACTA panel at YouTube (one hour, six minutes), including discussion of the benefits of a core curriculum for incoming students, the ongoing risks of self-censorship, etc.
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
Can AI Improve Medical Diagnostic Accuracy?
New Study Shows that Partisanship Trumps Truth
A New Technique Signals Cancer Cells to Self-Destruct
Innovative Techniques Shed Light on Hamstring Injury in Athletes
New Voltage Indicator Enables Ultra-Sensitive Synaptic Imaging
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"Gratitude encourages reciprocity, with all the social benefits it brings. Grateful people enjoy better physical and emotional health, increased happiness, decreased depression and decreased materialism.” – Former Stanford Pres. Richard Saller
October 28, 2024
A Bipartisan Vision for Higher Education Reform
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Higher education has taken a beating lately. The industry has been roiled by seemingly endless crises on topics ranging from affordability and student debt to free speech and antisemitism. It is hardly surprising that public confidence in higher education has plummeted, as over two-thirds of Americans now believe it is headed in the wrong direction. This broad, bipartisan malaise has yet to translate into any action at the federal level, as divisions between the House and Senate have forestalled all attempts at enacting meaningful reforms. This has been the case for the past decade, as political polarization has doomed multiple attempts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act -- a task that Congress is charged with performing every four years and yet has failed to accomplish since 2008.
“Though reform has been stymied at the federal level, America’s statehouses have continued to pursue new and innovative ways to strengthen public colleges and universities. In the past few sessions alone, Connecticut provided trainings for its trustees and regents, Ohio pledged $24 million to fund a number of institutes focused on improving civic education, and five states moved to ban legacy admissions. The states, while certainly not immune to partisan rancor, have continued their proud tradition of serving as laboratories of democracy.
“The strength of this tradition was in full display with the release of a new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) -- a bipartisan nonprofit that serves state lawmakers and their staff. After over two years of work by a task force representing legislators and their staffs from 32 states, NCSL published in October a wide-reaching new vision for public higher education entitled, A State-Led Strategy to Enhance the Value of Degrees....
“The task force directly addresses college trustees, suggesting that boards of public institutions should take greater pains to evaluate program-level student outcomes to ensure that degree offerings ‘lead to desirable life, career and earning outcomes.’ This push for program-level evaluation is long overdue, as too many colleges promote programs -- particularly graduate degrees -- that saddle students with life-altering debt without providing a path toward financial stability....”
Full article at American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) website
American Academy of Sciences and Letters Honors Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya with Its Highest Award for Intellectual Freedom
Excerpt (link in the original):
“Dr. Jay Bhattacharya received the American Academy of Sciences and Letters’ top intellectual freedom award on Wednesday [October 23] for resisting attempts to politically control his scientific work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The academy presents its annual Robert J. Zimmer Medal for Intellectual Freedom to a scholar ‘who displays extraordinary courage in the exercise of intellectual freedom,’ according to its website.
“Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, received the honor during the academy’s annual investiture ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Afterward, he joined Princeton University Professor Stephen Macedo for an interview on stage.
“Macedo began by asking about the first time Bhattacharya pushed back against the government’s handling of the pandemic.
“‘I wasn’t prepared for it,’ Bhattacharya said.
“‘I had never published an op-ed. I had never been on TV. I was a quiet scholar, and I had this idea regarding the pandemic that the disease was more widespread than people realized,’ he said.
“Then, after he wrote an op-ed about it, he ‘got death threats.’ Bhattacharya said attacks came from Stanford as well.
“‘The university, which I loved, … investigated me for false allegations … that they knew were false,’ he said. ‘I got sent a very clear signal that I needed to stay quiet.’
“‘I lost sleep, I couldn’t eat,’ he said. ‘But I decided that I didn’t care about my career anymore and I needed to say what I saw.’...”
Full article at College Fix
Over Half of Harvard Professors Are Too Afraid to Discuss Controversial Subjects
with Students
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Harvard professors are biting their tongues and dodging political issues out of fear of losing their jobs, being ‘cancelled’ or attracting heat online.
“Harvard is the nation’s premier university and produces a disproportionate number of our leaders. It’s expected to set an example and be a bastion of discourse and debate -- with its professors boldly leading the way.
“But a survey published by the university’s own Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group found a solid majority of profs now avoid touchy topics both inside and outside of the classroom, after things boiled over in the last year with campus protests related to the war in Gaza.
“The 1,411 surveyed faculty and staff were prompted to ‘think about teaching a controversial issue in a class at Harvard’ -- and their primary reaction seems to be fear.
“Just 18% said they would be very comfortable doing so, and 31% somewhat comfortable. But more than half said they would be somewhat (33%) or very (18%) reluctant.
“According to the report, professors said they fear for their reputations and their jobs: ‘They cited potential damage to their professional standing as the reason for their reluctance, in particular, the prospect of negative teaching evaluations, the possibility of contract nonrenewal or tenure denial, the potential for criticism on social media, and the possibility that difficult conversations might trigger complaints about bullying and harassment.’ ...”
Full op-ed at NY Post
The Ongoing Problems of Administrative Capture
Excerpts (links in the original):
“‘The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small,’ former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once restated Sayre’s law in this famous quip on competition in academia. That was the 1970’s when scholarly debates about communism and Marxism had little influence on government policies at the height of the Cold War. Times have changed....
“There is a more insidious and equally consequential battle taking place on college campuses: the battle of administrative capture, in which full-time, unelected bureaucrats actively usurp higher learning, academic freedom, and the marketplace of ideas. Once in position, agents of administrative capture work tirelessly to maintain the status quo for purposes of ideological proselytizing, self-aggrandizing, or both....
“Dr. Matthew Garrett was a tenured history professor at Bakersfield College, a two-year public community college and part of the Kern Community College District (KCCD). In April 2023, the school fired him on grounds of ‘immoral/unprofessional conduct,’ ‘dishonesty,’ ‘violation of COVID guidelines,’ ‘unsatisfactory performance’ and other politically charged offenses. In a 19-page report, Bakersfield College substantiated the litany of charges against the conservative academic, starting with Garrett’s 2019 op-ed, criticizing the school’s labeling of anti-Marxist stickers on campus as a ‘hate crime.’
“Bakersfield College’s troubles with Dr. Garrett escalated in 2022 when he co-founded the Renegade Institute for Liberty, a faculty free speech coalition. When the group posted a chart breaking down KCCD’s spending on segregated classes and programs in the 2021-22 academic year, the school disparaged the effort as ‘harmful,’ ‘divisive,’ and ‘inflammatory.’ Garrett was also removed from the school’s diversity committee after questioning the school’s use of grant money on social justice initiatives....”
[Followed by a detailed discussion of the Garrett case]
Full article at Minding the Campus
See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage, and recommendations for addressing these types of issues at our Back to Basics webpage
Professors in Trouble Over Protests Wonder if Academic Freedom Is Dying
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Universities have cracked down on professors for pro-Palestinian activism, saying they are protecting students and tamping down on hate speech. Faculty members say punishments have put a ‘chill in the air.’ ...
“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has intensified what many faculty members and their allies believe is part of a growing assault on the ideals of academic freedom, a principle that most American colleges and universities hold dear.
“Visiting scholars, adjuncts and lecturers without tenure have had their contracts terminated or not renewed. Some had their classes suddenly canceled. Faculty members say they have been publicly criticized in ways that have trampled on their reputations and hurt their careers....
“The disciplinary actions have followed a movement to ensure students feel safe on campus. In the last year, many Jewish students have said protests and classroom discussions about the war have threatened that feeling of safety, sometimes intimidating them from expressing their views and making them nervous about revealing their Jewish identity.
“Academic freedom is also not absolute. It does not protect ‘propagating wrongheaded ideas’ in teaching or research, said Nadine Strossen, a former head of the American Civil Liberties Union. And it does not put faculty members above the law or above campus rules meant to make sure protests, whatever their point of view, do not disrupt learning.
“But it means that academics are broadly allowed the First Amendment right to express opinions or to speak beyond their area of expertise outside the classroom, including on social media.
“Yet that is where many faculty members are getting into trouble, Ms. Strossen said.
“Professors have been criticized for creating hostile environments in classrooms and stifling the speech of students who might not agree with them, taking on the role of activists instead of teachers. And some say faculty members are professing views that could cross legal lines requiring universities to protect students from discrimination....”
[Followed by discussion of specific cases at various campuses]
Full article at NY Times
Institutional Neutrality Applies to Actions, Not Just Words
Excerpts:
“Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier has emerged as a strong advocate for institutional neutrality in recent years, arguing that institutions often go beyond their core mission when they strike stances on public issues. He expounded on those views in an interview with Inside Higher Ed in which he discussed the growing number of institutions that have adopted institutional neutrality and how tensions in the Middle East and related protests on campuses are driving university leaders to rethink how they engage on contentious issues at home and abroad....
[Followed by Q&A with Chancellor Diermeier, including the following]
“Q: What is your threshold for speaking out on an issue now for taking a position on something?
“A: Institutional neutrality means [asking], ‘Am I taking a position that goes beyond that core purpose of the university?’ … It’s not about being silent all the time. Of course, you can talk to your community, but you have to be careful that you restrict your comments and focus your comments on the values related to the core purpose of the university, like access for students, financial aid, research support for your faculty. These are all related to values, but they are related to the core purpose of the university.
“You can and you should talk about the important value that universities bring to society, forcefully. That’s not a problem with institutional neutrality, because it’s your core purpose.
“When you have a tragedy, for example, that affects the members of the community deeply, I think there is a need for the leader of the institution, a president or chancellor, to have a pastoral function, where you connect with the community emotionally, with empathy, with the suffering, with the concerns that they have. That can be a natural disaster or, as we had in Nashville, a school shooting that was only a few miles from campus, and that affected members of our community in the most horrendous way. When you do that, you need to comfort people and connect with them empathetically in an authentic fashion. But it’s not about decision-making. It’s not about position taking on policy issues. In the case of the school shooting, you can connect with people as a community that’s suffering. What you shouldn’t do is now come down with a position on gun control; that’s a policy issue.” ...
Full text of interview at Inside Finance
See also ACTA fireside chat with Chancellor Diermeier, "Leading a University in a Time of Turmoil," at YouTube
Other Articles of Interest
New College Protest Rules Spur an Outcry from College Faculty
Full article at Associated Press
America’s Schools Are Facing a Public Emergency
Full article at The 74 website including quotes from co-chair Condoleezza Rice
Zombie Psychology, Implicit Bias Theory and the Implicit Association Test
Full report at National Association of Scholars
Why Very Few Colleges Will Divest from Israel
Full op-ed at The Hill
Viewpoint - College Officials Must Condemn On-Campus Support for Hamas Violence
Full op-ed by UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky at NY Times
A Higher Ed Renaissance?
Full podcast at Law & Liberty (47 minutes)
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
Is the United States’ Borrowing Binge About to Burst?
Scientists Glue Two Proteins Together, Driving Cancer Cells to Self-Destruct
Ten Questions Predict Mental Health Risk After Emergency Hospitalizations
Ten Tips for Picking and Solving the Next Great Problem
The Transformative Power of Film
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"Universities are the great repositories of knowledge...yet they have become bastions of orthodoxy, where diversity is extolled in everything but thought." – Former University of Chicago Prof. Allan Bloom (1930-1992), author of The Closing of the American Mind
October 21, 2024
NY Times Analysis of Michigan’s DEI Experiment
Excerpts from NY Times summary article (links in the original):
“A decade ago, the University of Michigan intentionally placed itself in the vanguard of a revolution then beginning to reshape American higher education. Around the country, college administrators were rapidly expanding D.E.I. programs. They believed that vigorous D.E.I. efforts would allow traditionally underrepresented students to thrive on campus -- and improve learning for students from all backgrounds.
“In recent years, as D.E.I. programs came under withering attack, Michigan has only doubled down on D.E.I., holding itself out as a model for other schools. By one estimate, the university has built the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any big public university.
“But an examination by The Times found that Michigan’s expansive -- and expensive -- D.E.I. program has struggled to achieve its central goals even as it set off a cascade of unintended consequences....
“The percentage of Black students, currently around 5 percent, remained largely stagnant as Michigan’s overall enrollment rose -- and in a state where 14 percent of residents are Black. In a survey released in late 2022, students and faculty members across the board reported a less positive campus climate than at the program’s start and less of a sense of belonging....
“Instead of improving students’ ability to engage with one another across their differences, Michigan’s D.E.I. expansion has coincided with an explosion in campus conflict over race and gender. Everyday campus complaints and academic disagreements are now cast as crises of inclusion and harm....
“At Michigan, as at other schools, campus protests exploded after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza. So did complaints of harassment or discrimination based on national origin or ancestry. This June, civil rights officials at the federal Department of Education found that Michigan had systematically mishandled such complaints over the 18-month period ending in February. Out of 67 complaints of harassment or discrimination based on national origin or ancestry that the officials reviewed -- an overwhelming majority involving allegations of antisemitism, according to a tally I obtained -- Michigan had investigated and made findings in just one.”
AND FROM THE MORE DETAILED NY TIMES INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:
....
“These growing bureaucracies represented a major -- and profoundly left-leaning -- reshuffling of campus power. Administrators were even more politically liberal than faculty members, according to one survey, and far more likely to favor racial preferences in admissions and hiring. They promulgated what Lyell Asher, a professor of English at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, has called ‘an alternate curriculum,’ taught not in classrooms but in dorms, disciplinary hearings and orientation programs.
“Some administrators discovered that student activists could be a potent campus constituency. The former president of one top research institution recalled for me how students once came to his office with demands, presented in a kind of theatrical performance, to enhance the university’s D.E.I. program. The former president, who asked for anonymity for fear of risking his present job, later learned that some of the program’s senior staff members had worked with and encouraged the students to pressure the administration on their behalf. ‘That was the moment at which I understood that there was a whole part of the bureaucracy that I didn’t control,’ he said....
“On their private text-messaging group, deans across the university grumbled about the mountains of data they were required to submit each year. Their public progress reports and D.E.I. strategic plans were heavily vetted by the university counsel’s office and [former Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion Robert M.] Sellers’s team; the resulting public documents, though meant to ensure accountability, were often both lengthy and vague. ‘No one knew what they were supposed to be doing,’ the former dean said. ‘And no one would tell us. But we had to show that we were doing something.’
“At the same time, Sellers and his allies began building what amounted to a parallel hiring system, giving them a more direct role in reshaping Michigan’s faculty. [State initiative] Proposal 2 expressly prohibited racial or gender preferences in hiring. But in 2016, Michigan began a new program called the Collegiate Fellows, reserved for postdoctoral scholars ‘in all liberal-arts fields who are committed to diversity in the academy.’ Based at the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, Michigan’s largest division, the program provided additional budget dollars with each fellow hired, a further incentive to department chairs....
“Even within the academy, though, some long-accepted precepts of D.E.I. are coming under closer scrutiny. Some researchers argue that teaching students to view the world chiefly through the lens of identity and oppression can leave them vulnerable instead of empowered. Psychologists have questioned whether implicit bias can be accurately measured or reduced through training. The notion that microaggressions are not only real but ubiquitous in interracial encounters is widespread in D.E.I. programs; a 2021 review of the microaggressions literature, however, judged it ‘without adequate scientific basis.’ ..."
Summary article at NY Times
More complete investigative report at NY Times Magazine
See also “University of Michigan Spent $250 Million on DEI, Made Students Unhappier” at Reason Magazine
College Administrative Bloat Is Robbing Our Children of Their Futures
[Editor’s note: Last week’s Newsletter included an article from Minding the Campus, “Student Loans Are the Fudge Factor in University Costs.” Contained within that article was a link to an article from a few years earlier arguing that the continual increase in the nation's student loan programs is a major factor in the dramatic increase in the administrative staffs at U.S. colleges and universities, "College Administrative Bloat Is Robbing Our Children of Their Futures."
[While universities with large endowments, including Stanford, provide significant financial support to students, especially undergraduates, the point remains, a major reason for the huge growth in the number of managerial and other administrative personnel at Stanford and elsewhere has been the result of few if any pressures coming from the financial side of the university’s operations incuding as a result of student debt. We believe this is a key reason the nation’s public universities -- including major research universities like UCLA, UC Berkeley, Michigan, Ohio State, etc. -- are operating with a fraction of the administrative staff and a fraction of the costs as compared to our elite private universities since the public universities are under the continual scrutiny of taxpayers, elected officials and others.
[See, for example, the charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage, “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” and that show, among other things, the growth of managerial and professional staff of slightly more than 3,000 at Stanford in the year 2000 to over 18,000 in the current year as compared to a very modest growth in members of Stanford's faculty in those same years, that is, from approximately 1,500 faculty in 2000 to 1,730 faculty in 2024. Or that show, based on publicly reported data, that in 2022, administrative costs per student at Stanford were $40,227 as compared to $11,128 at Michigan, $9,211 at UC Berkeley and $7,640 at UCLA.
[And the huge increase in managerial and professional staff seems to have resulted in little if any improvement in the student experience. In fact, quite the contrary. Much of the discontent of students at the nation’s elite private universities seems to be the result of the constant involvement of the administrative staff in student life. See for example "Stanford’s War on Fun” by Stanford undergraduate Theo Baker at Stanford Daily and separately "Stanford's War Against Its Own Students" by Francesca Block at Free Press.
[With that background, we are providing excerpts from the article that was linked in last week’s Minding the Campus op-ed.]
Excerpts (links in the original)
. . .
“Everyone agrees that something must be done about skyrocketing costs at colleges and universities. Second only to mortgage debt, student loan debt has grown approximately 157% in the past 11 years to $1.6 trillion....
“[Many are now calling for the forgiveness of this student debt.] These policies are dangerously misguided. First, the policies are regressive. According to a recent study from the University of Chicago, full college debt forgiveness would distribute $192 billion to the top 20% of earners while only giving $29 billion to the bottom 20%.
“These plans also transfer the burden to millions of taxpayers who have worked hard to pay off their student loans, especially those who scrimped and saved and those who were employed during school to pay for them. In turn, those former students would be forced to foot the bill for people who did not make such sacrifices. The people who make these cost-saving decisions often come from lower-income backgrounds, while those who rack up expensive debt by attending private and out-of-state schools are typically from affluent families....
“Instead of forgiving student debt and tolerating the superfluity that is now common in higher education, we need to cut costs. We must attack the growing monster of administrative bloat.
“Between 1993 and 2007, administrative costs increased an outrageous 61.2%, while instructional costs increased 39.3%. According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, noninstructional spending at colleges and universities from 2016 to 2017 exceeded the gross domestic product of 134 countries. We have seen the explosion of vice presidents, counselors, diversity coaches, and all kinds of administrative staff. Someone must supervise the addition of climbing walls, spectacular gyms, and the now-ubiquitous ‘safe spaces.’ Some administrators now see their mission to be more political than educational, and the student ends up funding their ideological initiatives....”
Full article at American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) website
See also our Back to Basics webpage including setting targets for reducing costs not directly related to faculty teaching and research and redirecting the savings (paragraph 3.c.) solely to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and graduate student fellowships.
Stanford Trustees’ Special Committee on Investment Responsibility Declines to Act
on Student Demands for Divestment
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Dear Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine,
“Thank you for sharing your divestment petition on May 6th. We are empathetic to your deep concern for the tragic events of the past year in Gaza and Israel. They have been painful to observe and particularly distressing for those with loved ones in the region who have been living with violence and fear....
“Your petition asks for the endowment to divest certain companies. The university strives to provide a forum for the exchange of diverse perspectives among members of its community. However, as cited in the Board’s Statement on Investment Responsibility, ‘Just as the University does not take positions on partisan or political issues, the Trustees maintain a strong presumption against using the endowment as an instrument to advance any particular social or political agenda.’ It further provides that the Trustees ‘may choose to take no action on a request if an issue is divisive within the campus community.’ The Board additionally reaffirmed in a recent resolution the ‘avoidance of institutional orthodoxy’ as a critical principle that supports Stanford’s environment of free inquiry.
"As a result, the [Special Committee on Investment Responsibility] agreed to take no action on the divestment petition after discussing the matter with the Board ...."
Full letter at Stanford Report
See also “Brown University Says No to Pro-Palestinian Students' Demands for Divestment” at NPR
An Anti-Israel Agenda Motivated the AAUP to Abandon Core Principles
Excerpts (links in the original):
“After more than 100 years as the 'primary defender of academic freedom' in American higher education, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) rejects its long-held principles with its controversial endorsement of academic boycotts.
“While the AAUP claims that its recent embrace of academic boycotts is not intended to target Israel, make no mistake, it is clearly motivated by an anti-Israel ideology and, to some, smacks of antisemitism.
“What makes the AAUP’s ideological shift in support of academic boycotts so striking is the seeming ease with which it ignores its long history of steadfast and principled opposition to such tactics....
“Over the years, the AAUP has remained resolute in opposing academic boycotts, even of institutions whose governments have faced international condemnation, including China, Nigeria, Iran, and Brazil....
“By abandoning its core principles and endorsing academic boycotts, the AAUP has not only compromised its commitment to academic freedom, but has also set a dangerous precedent where ideology trumps open inquiry and the free exchange of ideas -- principles it once championed.”
Full op-ed by the former longtime general counsel of the Massachusetts Community College System and former faculty member Ken Tashjy at Campus Reform
See also “AAUP Continues to Back Away from Academic Freedom” by its new statement supporting mandatory diversity statements in faculty hiring, at FIRE website
Other Articles of Interest
What’s Behind the Push for ‘Institutional Neutrality’?
Full article at Insider Higher Ed
Contrary to Media Reports, Americans Have Actually Not Turned Against Higher Ed
Full op-ed at New America. A version of this op-ed also appears at Chronicle of Higher Education.
Using Faculty Meetings to Declare Political Positions Undermines Princeton’s Mission
Full op-ed at Daily Princetonian
A Student Group’s Endorsement of Violence Splits Columbia’s Faculty
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Poll Shows That One-Quarter of Applicants Ruled Out Colleges Because of States’ Political Climate
Full article at The Hill
Harvard’s Ten-Minute Rule for Speaker Disruptions
Full article at Simple Justice
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
From School of Business – Promoting Free Speech in the Classroom
From Geo-Physics and School of Engineering – The Search for Water in Space Results in Gains on Earth
From School of Medicine – How Stanford Medicine Diagnoses Diseases Using Nuclei.io
From School of Medicine – Liver Cancer Stem Cells Shown to Use Immune System as Shield to Spark Disease Recurrence
From AI Center – How Large Language Models Could Speed Promising New Classroom Curricula
From Cyber Policy Center – The Stanford Adolescents and Social Media Initiative
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“Colleges and universities exist for one reason above all: to promote learning. They are democracy’s greatest arsenal.” -- Harvard Prof. Cass R. Sunstein
October 14, 2024
Censorship, Academic Freedom and the Pandemic
Excerpts:
. . . . .
“Truth is not determined by consensus, or by numbers of people who agree, or by titles. It is discovered by debate, proven by critical analysis of evidence. Arguments are won by data and logic, not by personal attack or censoring others....
“As a professor and physician at top universities for 30 years -- as a graduate of the University of Chicago School of Medicine, when facts mattered, I fear for our students. Students cannot learn critical thinking without hearing differing views, especially ideas they may not agree with -- and critical thinking is THE most important lesson to learn in college.
“Yet many faculty members of our acclaimed universities are dangerously intolerant of opinions contrary to their favored narrative. Some employ toxic smears and organized rebukes against those of us who disagreed….
“Finally, to the students, never forget what G. K. Chesterton said: ‘Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it.’”
Full text of speech by Dr. Scott Atlas at the recent pandemic policy conference held at Stanford, as published at Stanford Review
See also Stanford Daily's coverage of the conference. See also “Will Free Speech Come to Stanford?” at Stanford Review.
President Levin Emphasizes the Importance of Open Dialog
Excerpts:
. . . .
“When I was invited to participate in this event [the pandemic policy conference] a few months ago, it was with the understanding that the goal was to bring together people with different perspectives, engage in a day of discussion, and in that way, try to repair some of the rifts that opened during COVID.
“That struck me as a valuable goal, and the sort of goal we should aim for at Stanford. So I agreed to give a few brief remarks to that effect.
“What followed was disappointing.... When an initial and partial agenda was posted, it was immediately perceived as one-sided, and as I’m sure you all noticed became the subject of op-eds and social media posts.
“Ironically, instead of repairing rifts as intended and perhaps spurring fresh thinking, the process seemed to reopen old and existing divisions.
“As an observer and as the leader of this university, I found the episode dispiriting, in a way that goes beyond the specifics of this particular event.
“We have many issues today at Stanford, and on other campuses, where views are divided, and in some cases, like this one, where feelings are raw.
“Yet I believe we need to make every effort to get people who disagree, even sharply, in dialogue with one another. I believe it’s essential for us to do that as members of the faculty and university leaders -- not just because it’s a way to advance knowledge, but because we need to model that behavior if we want to expect it from our students. And in today’s world, we absolutely need to ask and expect our students to be able to engage with, listen to, and debate with people with whom they disagree. My view is that we need to err on the side of talking to one another...."
Full text of Pres. Levin’s remarks at Stanford Report
Higher Education Shouldn’t Mean Higher Indoctrination
Excerpts (links in the original):
“University faculty and staff face one of the oldest problems on campus: what free speech means. Our students are entering an extraordinarily polarized world that encourages them to think only in binary terms: yes, this is right, or no, this is wrong. It is our responsibility to equip them with the critical thinking skills to navigate this world, not to indoctrinate them.
“We cannot teach people to be critical thinkers if we do not allow for different opinions, views, and belief systems on campus and in classrooms. To forbid expressing other views risks indoctrinating students instead of educating them. Indoctrinated students have no room to question, challenge, debate, or defend positions on complex issues -- in fact, it leaves no room to even fathom that other perspectives may exist....
“The dean of Berkeley’s School of Law, Erwin Chemerinsky, summed up what our role is not: ‘It’s not our role to make them safe from ideas that they don’t want to be exposed to. But that line, I think, has gotten blurred.’ If we operate from that premise, our next question is: how do we unblur that line? Do we focus only on the First Amendment, the kind of ‘hard-nosed constitutionalism’ that once prevailed and left vulnerable student populations in the cold? Surely that can’t be the right path forward. But how do we even start building spaces where free speech is respected on campus?" ...
Full op-ed by UC Berkeley International House CEO Shaun Carver at Minding the Campus
Student Loans Are the Fudge Factor in University Costs
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Imagine an American college or university president making the following public statement:
“‘I regret that my institution, along with many others, has contributed to burdensome federal student loan debt and to rising college tuition levels, allowing our institutions to profit from the existence of student loan monies. At the same time, we have failed to offer our students adequate skills and knowledge required to compete in today’s world.’
“If collegiate presidents struggled with questions about antisemitism on their campuses -- as they did during recent Congressional testimony -- they would surely be unable to speak frankly on student loan burdens, high and rising tuition levels, institutional profiteering from student loans, and whether students benefit academically from attending college....
“Institutions can apply the increased tuition revenue to budgetary expenditures of their choice. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has shown that much of the increased tuition revenue has financed administrative bloat such as diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and other administrative bureaucracies such as student counseling rather than expanding educational offerings....
“[In addition, at major research universities,] federally sponsored research awards carry additional ‘indirect cost’ funding intended to reimburse institutions for overhead expenses of providing campus space and services for grant-funded research. Indirect cost rates, which typically range from 35-50% of direct costs, are negotiated with federal grant-sponsoring agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, and numerous others that fund the research. Thus, for example, a federal research grant funded at $100,000 in direct costs is awarded a total $135,000-150,000 including indirect costs....
“Investigation of these sweeping issues is a discussion for another day. In the meantime, where is the collegiate president who will speak the truth about federal student loans?”
Full op-ed at Minding the Campus
See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
See also “Stanford’s Administrative Bureaucracy Must be Brought Under Control” at our Back to Basics webpage including setting targets for reducing non-teaching costs and redirecting the savings (paragraph 3.c.) solely to undergraduate and graduate student research grants and similar student-based educational activities.
Other Articles of Interest
Harvard President Is Disappointed by 2023 Fundraising Numbers
Full article at Harvard Crimson
A Detailed List of Cancel Culture Events in Higher Education
Full article at National Association of Scholars and including a detailed chart of 238 academic cancellations in recent years
Reflections on the Loss of Rigor in College Classes
Full op-ed by UCLA Prof. Emeritus Stan Trimble at Minding the Campus
Oct. 7 Kicked Off a Difficult Year for Higher Ed; How Universities Might Move Forward
Full article at Inside Higher Ed, including statements from various university presidents, faculty and third parties
Colleges Could Benefit from Taking a Data-Driven Look at Hostility Toward Jews on Campus
Full op-ed by Brandeis Prof. Leonard Saxe and Brandeis Associate Research Scientist Graham Wright at The Conversation
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
Nanotechnology is Everywhere - Why Very Small Tech Matters
Why the Risk of Rogue AI is Significantly Overstated
Possible Ways to Generate New Neurons in Old Brains
How the Unchecked Power of Companies Is Destabilizing Governance
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“If you want to create a culture of free speech on campus, it needs to start with the students in the classroom, not with faculty or administrators.... Students are not the problem, they’re the solution.” -- Former Duke, now UNC Prof. John Rose
October 7, 2024
Stanford’s New President Is Hitting the Right Notes
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Attending Stanford over two decades ago was a privilege. I was surrounded by brilliant faculty, bright peers, and a great basketball team. But I relish my time at Stanford because I was often intellectually uncomfortable. I had my views challenged and my norms questioned; I had to be introspective and ready to explain ideas and practices which were a given. I also had to accept difference and tried to understand new values, traditions, and narratives that were previously quite foreign to me; I had to be open and address my own ignorance. That discomfort helped shape me into an empathic, inquisitive scholar and prepared me to effectively contribute to the community and my future students.
“I moved west to Stanford as a religious Jew from the East Coast and found myself in an extremely different world -- one that was far more racially and ethnically diverse than home and was very religiously secular. While a student, I had my views and biases challenged in class, in the dorms, and in the dining halls; I did not understand other cultures, beliefs, or traditions, so I asked questions. Many did not understand my cultural upbringing, and fellow students approached me, asking about my values, my history, and my worldview. We engaged with each other inside and outside of the classroom, and we started to gain insight into cultures different than our own. Disputes and differences became heated at times, but this is the essence of a liberal educational experience....
“Stanford has changed in recent years. There have been several well-known cases of shouting down speakers and administrative overreach to control ideas and speech.
“With the appointment of economist Jonathan D. Levin as the school’s 13th president, however, Stanford placed at its head a president who is committed to open debate, discourse, viewpoint diversity, and institutional neutrality and has boldly shown the higher education community what a liberal education should look like.
“In his first remarks as President of Stanford, Levin gave an inspiring speech referencing former President Casper. President Levin noted that Casper was taken with the idea of freedom in a university and worked to ensure that while he was president, he understood the school’s motto -- 'The wind of freedom blows’ -- to mean that there was ‘freedom of faculty and students to pursue knowledge without constraints; the freedom to challenge orthodoxy, whether old or new; and the freedom to think and speak openly' for ‘these freedoms nurture the conditions for discovery and learning.’ [followed by quotes from Levin’s inauguration address]
“Levin is correct on every point. While only time will tell how well these ideas will play out on campus, Stanford is showing the world what higher education can be. The students are quite fortunate to have such principled leadership now, and the higher education world should be looking west for principled and authentic leadership from President Levin.”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams
See also article at Campus Reform
Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein Delivers Free-Speech Lecture at Princeton
Excerpts:
“‘Universities should follow the First Amendment, period. That’s it. That’s the framework.’ ...
“Sunstein emphasized that the First Amendment is a solid foundation to underpin universities’ free speech policies. ‘Building a building from the ground up is really hard and people are going to disagree about how many doors and how many windows. To say, ‘we are following the first Amendment’ makes life far more manageable.’
“He maintained that his proposition is not as simple as free speech absolutism. Universities occasionally must enforce content-neutral restrictions if speech impedes upon their educational mission. Some of these restrictions, he explained, are simple and unobjectionable. Universities need not tolerate speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment. Speech must pass the ‘clear-and-present-danger test’ -- that is, if speech is likely to incite imminent lawless action, it should not be allowed on college campuses....”
Full article at Daily Princetonian. Sunstein's book “Campus Free Speech – A Pocket Guide” is available at Amazon.
UNC Aims to Create a Free-Speech Culture at Its New School
of Civic Life and Leadership
Excerpts:
“Why American politics in the 21st century is marred by incivility and mistrust is the subject of more books and essays than any normal person would wish to read. The premise underlying most of them is that it’s a left-right problem: The right hates the left and the left hates the right, only the reasons for the hatred vary according to the author.
“But what if it isn’t a left-right problem at all? What if the acrimony and loathing that animate our politics have more to do with class than ideology, more to do with educational status than any set of views on culture and policy? ...
“An awareness of this state of affairs recently led the trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- among the nation’s top public universities -- to imagine a way forward. In January 2023 the board voted 12-0 to create a School of Civic Life and Leadership. Its purpose, according to an official statement, is to prepare students ‘for the responsibilities of citizenship and civic leadership by fostering a free-speech culture’ dedicated to the ‘human search for meaning and developing the capacities for civil discourse and wise decision-making.’ ... [followed by comments by Jed Atkins, dean of the new School of Civic Life and Leadership]
“‘The civic crisis,’ Mr. Atkins says, using his term for Americans’ inability to engage civilly on political subjects, ‘is downstream from the crisis of meaning.’ A properly liberal education of the sort UNC’s new school aims to foster ‘asks students to rise above their partial viewpoints and perspectives to consider questions that transcend their own time and place, and to do that together.’
“What sort of questions? ‘What is the best political form? What is the best economic form? Does history have a direction and purpose? How do we reconcile liberty and our responsibilities to society? Is there a God? Maybe more particularly to the American regime: The foundational principles of the Declaration, liberty and equality -- are they universal?’ ...
“Mr. Atkins speaks frequently about his students coming to appreciate the complexity and fluidity of their own social and political views, and by extension the recklessness of judging the views of others too easily. ‘There’s a humility that comes with recognizing how complicated the world can be,’ he says. We don’t often hear about students at top-rated universities learning and exhibiting the virtue of humility. Maybe, in time, we will.”
Full article at WSJ. See also our posting of the WSJ op-ed three years ago by former Duke Prof. John Rose, “How I Liberated My College Classroom.” Prof. Rose is now the director of a similar program at UNC.
See also Prof. Rose’s comments at the free speech conference at Stanford in November 2022 (starting at the 22-minute mark and continuing for ten minutes, including “Half of America is missing from the college classes at elite universities,” and followed by an audience Q&A).
Commitment to DEI a Requirement in Increasing Numbers of Mental Health Degree Programs
Excerpts:
“For twenty years, Suzannah Alexander functioned as a wife and mother with four children as well as a community volunteer. Then her vision for her entire world imploded. Her marriage ended and she realized she needed to begin her life all over again. Ms. Alexander decided helping others to heal would be the best way to get back on her feet. She decided to enter the counseling profession and soon attended the University of Tennessee’s Clinical Mental Health Counseling Master’s program....
“The faculty told the students that the classroom was a ‘brave space’ and a safe place to share ideas and feelings. Ms. Alexander believed them. As a practicing Buddhist, in class, she shared some of her meditation practices to help others maintain control over their emotions during difficult future counseling sessions and view clients with more compassion. Unexpectedly, her professors warned her to stop.
“The course lectures soon turned to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). One professor introduced Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies. Ms. Alexander learned she was a privileged White person and marginalized persons must work at tolerating her whiteness. After one such class, she told her professor she believed this type of thinking promoted ‘tribalism and hostility.’ ...
“Ms. Alexander was soon told, that despite excellent grades, she would not be moving forward in the program with the rest of her cohort....” [followed by discussion of the major accreditation agencies now demanding acceptance of DEI by people seeking a mental health counseling degree, versus studies at ASU and elsewhere showing the negative impacts of these types of requirements]
Full op-ed at Substack
Other Articles of Interest
A Radical Idea to Save College Football
"A group of disruptive sports executives has unveiled a vision for a breakaway by the biggest programs, promising collective bargaining for student players, a salary cap and a cascade of new TV money." Full article at WSJ
New Yale Law School Center Seeks to Safeguard and Promote Academic Freedom and Free Speech
Full article at Yale Law School website
The Two Fiduciary Duties of Professors
Full op-ed by Heterodox Chair and NYU Prof. Jonathan Haidt at Heterodox Academy website
Freedom of Speech Isn't Just a Legal Right, but a Way of Life
Full transcript of speech by Matt Taibbi at Substack
Harvard Alum Bill Ackman Publishes an Analysis of Harvard as an Entity to Buy, Sell or Hold?
PDF copy of slides at Pershing Square Foundation website
At Yale Listening Sessions, Students Largely Oppose Institutional Neutrality, Faculty Split on the Issue
Full article at Yale Daily News. See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta including the Kalvin report on a university’s involvement in political and social matters.
The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books
Full article at The Atlantic
Harvard Issues Report on Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialog
Download PDF copy of the report here. See also Harvard Crimson.
Alternative Viewpoint - Institutional Neutrality Doesn’t Go Far Enough
Full op-ed by San Diego State Prof Peter C. Herman at Inside Higher Ed, including a discussion of Stanford’s antisemitism report from last spring. See also “Depoliticizing the University” at Law & Liberty. See also "Committees on Antisemitism and Islamophobia Find Widespread and Pernicious Bias, Restricted Speech and Harassment on Campus" at Stanford Daily.
Building a Free Speech Culture (video)
Full interview of Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Big Think website (32 minutes)
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
Stanford Education Scholar Uses AI to Help Medical Students Hone Diagnostic Skills
Creating a Culture of Civic Engagement
The Science of Mental Time Travel and the Brain's GPS System
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"A society that fails to teach its young people the basics of democracy and civic engagement is at risk of losing the very values and principles on which it was founded." – Stanford alum and former Harvard President Derek Bok
September 30, 2024
Investiture of Stanford’s 13th President Jonathan Levin
As longtime readers know, we largely avoid a cheerleading function on behalf of the university. That occurs in lots of other places, and our primary purpose, instead, has been to raise issues that need discussion but where there are few other forums in which to have that discussion. It is in that context that we are providing a link to a video of the investiture last Friday of Stanford’s thirteenth president, Jonathan Levin. At least in our minds, and notwithstanding the challenges nationwide that are discussed in some of the other articles that follow, this is an example of everything that is right about Stanford and its future.
Full video at YouTube (Levin's remarks start around the 32-minute mark, 11 minutes in length; transcript at Stanford Report)
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Reflections on the New Encampment Culture
Excerpts (links in the original):
“This is a story of two political cultures. One of them shapes the attitudes that dominate political discussion in American universities. The other culture persists among a broad and reasonably well-informed public outside the universities and their government and philanthropic tributaries. When, in the academic year 2023-24, the two cultures faced each other with expressions of mutual dismay, the moment had been coming for a long time. On October 7, 2023, scores of Hamas fighters broke through the boundaries of Gaza, killed more than 1200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 200 others: the worst terror attack in Israel’s history. Within hours, 34 student groups at Harvard University had circulated a public letter affirming that ‘We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.’ (The word ‘unfolding’ covered the violence of the past, the present, and the future.) ‘Today’s events,’ the letter went on to say, ‘did not occur in a vacuum,’ and it added: ‘The apartheid regime [of Israel] is the only one to blame.’ The signers concluded by urging solidarity with the Palestinian suffering which was sure to follow once the Israeli retaliation in Gaza had commenced.
“What shocked many people about the student letter was its heartlessness. Even as the bodies were being counted, the signers told us not to blame the killers but to redirect our gaze and fix all responsibility on Israel. To anyone acquainted with the climate on American campuses, the timing of the letter was disturbing (not a moment’s pause for grief), but the sentiments were hardly surprising. They reflected the only highly visible political viewpoint that exists in universities today. Other opinions are tolerated, and have a lively presence in the curriculum, but settler vs. colonized, oppressor vs. oppressed, white people vs. persons of color -- these moral antinomies guide the discourse in student-initiated and faculty-sponsored groups and events alike....
“Where did this leave Jewish students? ‘I don’t know which I found more discouraging,’ one of them told me, ‘the fact that they hate us, or that they don’t really know why they hate us.’ At Yale, during the first couple of days, I walked around the embryonic protest site and saw a table and makeshift awning with a placard identifying Jews against the bombing and another identifying non-Jews. They joined forces later, but an expansion of aims would have been more impressive. After all, it seemed to begin as an anti-war protest, delivered against the United States as the sponsor of so many wars and proxy wars. Yet the passion and momentum soon went the other way. Enlistment in the cause became indistinguishable from rooting for one side, the Palestinians, against the other side, the Israelis (or ‘Zionism’). The exclusionist temper of the Columbia protest emerged in tactics like one leader's announcement, ‘We have Zionists who have entered the camp. We are going to create a human chain where I am standing so that they do not pass this point and infringe upon our privacy and try to destroy our community. Please join me in this chain’ -- followed by step-by-step instructions to the human chain....
“The long-term consequences of the specialization of campus politics have been unhappy for American society generally. Political complexity of mind is rare among students, but the same students will go on to be full-time citizens. Some of the fault is traceable to university administrators: their political position-taking, after recent elections and supreme court decisions and certain shocking local or national events, has seemed to define the boundaries of polite opinion. Such public statements are now being pulled back, with recent moves toward ‘institutional neutrality,’ and that is a good thing. The idea that universities, as if they were a person, should carve out an official stance on social and political issues of the day is a recent innovation; it has had a fair trial and been found useful mainly as an instrument of social control and conformity -- neither of which qualifies as an educational value....”
Full op-ed by Yale Prof. David Bromwich at Persuasion. Also see again our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta regarding freedom of speech, a university’s involvement in political and social matters, and standards for the hiring and promotion of faculty.
Why Engineers Should Study Philosophy
Excerpts:
. . . .
“One of the most important skills I’ve learned in decades of managing engineering teams is to ask the right questions. It’s not dissimilar with AI: The quality of the output of a large language model (LLM) is very sensitive to the quality of the prompt. Ambiguous or not well-formed questions will make the AI try to guess the question you are really asking, which in turn increases the probability of getting an imprecise or even totally made-up answer (a phenomenon that’s often referred to as ‘hallucination’). Because of that, one would have to first and foremost master reasoning, logic, and first-principles thinking to get the most out of AI -- all foundational skills developed through philosophical training. The question ‘Can you code?’ will become ‘Can you get the best code out of your AI by asking the right question?’ ...
“Generative AI changes our relationship with knowledge, flattening barriers that not only provide access to it, but also explain it in a tailored approach. It creates a gentle slope between your level of knowledge and the level of knowledge required to attack a particular subject. But the ability to access knowledge that is appropriately tailored and, more importantly, accurate, starts -- and ends -- with the user....”
Full op-ed by Marco Argenti, Chief Information Officer at Goldman Sachs, at Harvard Business Review
It’s Easy to See What Drove Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway to Quit
[Editor’s note: Jonathan Holloway is a Stanford alum, Class of ‘89]
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Last week Jonathan Holloway, the president of Rutgers University, announced he would be stepping down at the end of this academic year -- the latest in a series of university president departures....
“‘It’s a punishing job in normal times,’ Holloway, a scholar of African American history, told me when I spoke to him last week. ‘But the standards we’re being held to are impossible. I had to ask myself, ‘What is it I want to do, how can I do it, and is this the right position?’
“Holloway, who previously served as a dean at Yale and a provost at Northwestern, said he struggled with how to balance the role of a college president today, which demands quick responses, with what he described as his own values -- listening to people, carefully weighing potential actions and having the freedom to speak his mind....
“His goal, he told me, is to challenge students to be critical thinkers in an era of righteousness, an atmosphere in which people have stopped considering whether someone else may be right....
“The atmosphere on campus, he realized, has fundamentally changed in discouraging ways. The culture of curiosity, the culture of empathy seemed to have gone. He no longer felt he could function to the best of his abilities as a leader in this charged university environment. He didn’t feel he could do the job and stay true to himself....
“If American universities continue to lose leaders like Jonathan Holloway, higher education is in even greater trouble than it already was.”
Full op-ed at NY Times
Have Americans Actually Lost Faith in Higher Education?
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In the last year, a growing collection of polls has suggested grim prospects for the public perception of higher education. Most notably, Gallup found in 2023 that only 36 percent of Americans have ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in higher education -- down about 20 percentage points from 2015
“At the same time, many higher education institutions have faced sharp drops in enrollment and intense political scrutiny, leading media organizations to link the drop in confidence to a decline in both the perceived value of a college degree and the number of prospective students.
“But analysts from the left-leaning think tank New America argue in a policy brief released Monday that that might not be the case after all, and that rumors of higher education’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, to borrow from Mark Twain’s famous words to the New York Journal.
“Ben Cecil, senior education policy adviser at Third Way, a center-left think tank, said looking at recent higher education survey data is like walking and chewing gum at the same time -- and Americans are smart enough to do both.
“‘There’s a real difference between trust and value, and the definitions of those two have often been conflated when they’re actually two different things,’ he said. ‘You can not trust something as much as you would like to, but you can also still see that it has value.’...
““We engaged in a societywide experiment of financing higher education through long-term individual debt, and it went badly,” [Vanderbilt Prof. William Doyle] said. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to say … it’s strictly just what’s going on in partisan politics. There is another aspect of this which has to do with the price, which I absolutely think is related.’...
Full article at Insider Higher Ed
Reporting Professors for Wrongthink
Excerpts (links in the original):
“As [Eternally Radical Ideas] readers will likely recall, ‘the Conformity Gauntlet’ is the name Greg [Lukianoff] and his ‘Canceling’ co-author Rikki Schlott gave to the layer after layer of social pressures, ideological litmus tests, and punishments both formal and informal that a would-be academic must endure from high school on up to become a tenured professor. Plenty of research and data was used to back up these claims, and thanks to the 2024 American College Student Freedom, Progress and Flourishing Survey, we now have even more.
“The survey shows that the (already stunning) 71% of students who believe professors should be reported for their speech aren't just focused on disagreeable words or rude behavior; many are openly policing professors’ viewpoints.
“The survey’s creator, North Dakota State University’s Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth, describes it as follows:
“’The survey assesses student perceptions about viewpoint diversity and campus freedom; human progress and beliefs about the future; and student attitudes toward entrepreneurship, capitalism and socialism, and how college is influencing their views.’...
“Almost a decade ago, Jeanne Suk Gerson wrote about criminal law professors who avoided teaching sexual assault and rape law because they feared being reported for a Title IX violation. Now imagine that same fear, except it’s about every topic, all the time. In the NDSU survey, one-third of students want professors to drop uncomfortable readings, and a quarter want professors to drop uncomfortable discussion topics. [followed by a detailed discussion of percentages of students who think professors should be reported for even talking about specified topics] ....
“In many cases, the proliferation of bias response teams on campus has made reporting a professor or peer for having the wrong opinion almost frictionless. A 2022 study of over 800 schools found that most (56%) have bias response teams of some sort; that study also found that ‘nearly every’ system permitted anonymous reporting. They also encourage it however they can. As Rikki Schlott has pointed out in the past, the number for the Bias Response Line is printed on the back of NYU’s student ID cards....
“Given the numbers in all of these surveys, it’s no surprise that people are unwilling to speak up.”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff and FIRE VP Adam Goldstein at Substack
See also our September 23 Newsletter about Stanford’s previous bias response program and the articles at our Stanford Concerns webpage, Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior and Stanford's Program re Title VI/Bias
Other Articles of Interest
New California Law Signed in Honor of Former Stanford Goalkeeper Katie Meyer
Full article at NY Times/The Athletic.
See also paragraph 2.e. that has long been included in our Back to Basics webpage, “All students facing potential disciplinary actions must be treated fairly, humanely and with a focus on protecting the individual’s constitutional and other rights. Students must also be offered emotional and other support from the outset of and throughout any disciplinary warnings, discussions and proceedings and thereafter.” That section 2 of our Back to Basics white paper also suggests other needed reforms to the student disciplinary process.
See also “Katie’s Save” that has long been linked at our Resources webpage.
What Happened to Free Speech?
Full op-ed at WSJ
University Cancels Panel Because Author Is a ‘Zionist’
Full article at Free Press
When Should Colleges Call the Cops?
Full article at The Hill
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.
The Neuroscience of Campus Memories
By Stanford junior Lara Selin Seyahi at Stanford Daily
The New Tech That Could Improve Care for Parkinson’s Patients
The Digitalist Papers: A Vision for AI and Democracy
Stanford Researchers Lead Efforts to Cut Carbon in Concrete Production
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“Appointive bodies must remember that universities are, insofar as their major intellectual functions are concerned, places for scientific and scholarly analysis and training in such analysis, not theaters for the acquisition of vicarious experiences.” -- From the Shils Report, the third of the three parts of the Chicago Trifecta
September 23, 2024
President Levin Welcomes Incoming Students
Excerpts (link in the original):
“In his first Convocation address as Stanford University president, on Tuesday evening [September 17], Jonathan Levin reflected on his own first days at Stanford and encouraged students to embrace uncertainties, grapple with big questions, and be grateful for the opportunities and community around them....
"In his address, President Levin stressed that asking questions is central to the college experience. He encouraged students to engage in Socratic dialogue, following the example of the Greek philosopher Socrates, who used probing questions to challenge others with strong convictions.
“’Unlike the people around him, he [Socrates] was comfortable not knowing,’ Levin said. ‘He was comfortable asking questions and not having answers.’ ...
“[Levin] advised students to find a balance in their approach to Stanford. He said that during his many years on the Farm, he’s observed that the most successful students set goals and make plans, but also remain open to serendipity. ‘They put themselves out there to try new things and to take a risk in meeting new people,’ he added.
“Lastly, Levin reminded students to be grateful for the rare opportunity ahead. ‘We should all try, through humility and service, to be deserving of these circumstances, and to help the people around us make something of these opportunities.’”
Full article at Stanford Report
Update re Bias Reporting
The special edition of our Newsletter last Tuesday, September 17, had text and links regarding Stanford’s revised policies re speech, protests and related matters. The changes also included ending the controversial Protected Identity Harm Reporting system and merged this area into Stanford’s Title VI policies and procedures re discrimination. We have therefore updated our prior article about bias reporting at our Stanford Concerns webpage, including the benefits of the changes but also some ongoing concerns.
Excerpts (from our Stanford Concerns webpage, links in the original):
. . . .
“Stanford’s newly revised website focuses on Title VI rather than ‘bias’ and where it further says:
‘To be considered a violation of Title VI, unwelcome conduct must create a ‘hostile environment,’ meaning it must be based upon an individual’s actual or perceived protected class (e.g., race, color, national origin, shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics) that, considering the totality of the circumstances, is subjectively and objectively offensive, and is so severe or pervasive that it limits or denies a person’s ability to participate in or benefit from a university education program or activity.’
“These changes are a very welcomed improvement, although much will depend on who administers this revised policy since a wide range of statements and actions could still be covered by the revised policy. In addition, it looks like Stanford is still planning to post reports on a public dashboard. It also looks like Stanford is still using the same module in the computerized case management system that it uses for all aspects of student activities and behavior (see the article "Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System" at our Stanford Concerns webpage) and that it has been using for these same monitoring and reporting purposes in the past. Stanford had previously renamed this particular module “Protected Identity Harm Reporting” instead of the term “Bias Reporting” that is used by most other schools that are using the same system. But the fact remains, this module remains largely the same as before and remains part of the far more comprehensive system for monitoring and managing all aspects of student life.
“Assuming our discussion above is correct, a report for Title VI purposes about someone saying or doing something, even if not followed up on, will still be permanently stored in that student’s profile in the computerized case management system, will still be cross-referenced with all other students, and can still be pulled up at any time in the future by the student services staff if ever there is a future issue about the student who was the subject of the Title VI report. And in which case, the prior Title VI (discrimination/bias) report, even if the student didn’t know one had been made about her or him, can be used against them in any new matters.
“Which is why, as we said in our September 17 Newsletter and have said numerous other times in the past, we again urge that Stanford advise students at least annually of their rights to review their files and be able to correct incorrect and even false information that has been reported about them. See also in paragraphs 2. h, i. and j. at our Back to Basics webpage....”
Study of Yale Faculty Shows Significant Lack of Intellectual/Political Diversity
Editor’s note: Longtime readers know that the purpose of these Newsletters and the related website is not to promote political doctrines but rather to raise issues about free speech and critical thinking and from all parts of the political spectrum. We thus present the following not to promote or attack specific political viewpoints but rather to note concerns about the apparent lack of intellectual diversity that has developed in recent years at major universities.
Excerpts (links in the original):
“The Buckley Institute is proud to present our annual Report on Faculty Political Diversity at Yale. This report examines the voting history and political affiliation of Yale’s faculty members as part of our mission to promote free speech and intellectual diversity on campus....
“The discrepancy was most apparent in the social sciences and the humanities. Across 14 departments in those two areas (as classified by Yale), the report identified 312 Democrat faculty (88%) and only 4 Republicans (1.1%), a ratio of around 78 to 1. Of those 14 departments, Buckley identified zero Republicans in 10, or 71% of the total, including American Studies, Economics, and Philosophy....”
Full news release at Buckley Institute website and including a link to the report
The Politicization of Science Funding
Excerpts (links in the original):
“How should taxpayer money earmarked for science funding be used? This is a $90-billion-per-year question....
“The traditional, time-tested criteria have been scientific merit, the track record of the investigators, and alignment with the agency’s mission. Decision making relies on a peer-review process involving reviewers with appropriate expertise, clear guidelines for assessment, and avoidance of personal or professional conflicts of interest. The success of this merit-based approach to science funding can be seen in the achievements and excellent worldwide reputation of the U.S. research enterprise.
“But this is changing, and not for the good. To get funding today, scientists must show that their research will advance the goals of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI)….
“In practice, this means that scientists seeking research funding must now profess their belief in the existence of systemic barriers in their institutions and present plans for how, through their research, they will advance the goals of DEI, such as by giving preference to historically underrepresented groups in the hope of achieving representation proportional to their numbers in the general population. Agencies require researchers to dedicate resources to DEI activities, and some even recommend the hiring of paid ‘DEI consultants.’ What’s more, they require researchers to submit diversity statements that will be evaluated along with the scientifically substantive parts of the research proposal....
“The NIH’s efforts toward advancing racial equity also offer an invitation to ‘Take the Pledge,’ which includes committing to the idea that ‘equity, diversity, and inclusion drives success,’ ‘setting up a consultation with an EDI [DEI] liaison,’ and ‘ordering the ‘EDI Pledge Poster’ (or … creat[ing] your own) for your space and hav[ing] your team sign it.’
“As Kevin Jon Williams, a cardiovascular researcher at Temple University, explains, this creates a moral dilemma for scientists of ‘diverse’ ancestry who are skeptical of the DEI regime. ‘If I refuse to identify myself as African American, our application is more likely to lose on ‘diversity’ grounds. It’s a double wrong. Not only is the system rigged based on nonscientific -- and possibly illegal -- criteria; it encourages me to join in the rigging.’ Williams doesn’t mince words: ‘I can never forgive the National Institutes of Health for reinjecting racism into medical research.’
“For its part, NASA requires applicants to dedicate a portion of their research efforts and budget to DEI activities, to hire DEI experts as consultants -- and to ‘pay them well.’ How much do such services cost? A Chicago-based DEI firm offers training sessions for $500 to $10,000, e-learning modules for $200 to $5,000, and keynotes for $1,000 to $30,000. Consulting monthly retainers cost $2,000 to $20,000, and single ‘consulting deliverables’ cost $8,000 to $50,000. Hence, taxpayer money that could be used to solve scientific and technological challenges is diverted to DEI consultants. Given that applicants’ DEI plans are evaluated by panels comprising 50 percent scientists and 50 percent DEI experts, the self-interest of the DEI industry is evident.
“Instructions to applicants and examples of successful proposals make it abundantly clear that DEI plans must adhere to a specific ideological doctrine. According to NASA, ‘the assessment of the Inclusion Plan will be based on […] the extent to which the Inclusion Plan demonstrated awareness of systemic barriers to creating inclusive working environments that are specific to the proposal team.’ Thus, to get funding, scientists must declare that their own institution and research groups are uninclusive and discriminatory, which is an offense to the many scientists who have worked hard to ensure fair and transparent hiring practices in their institutions. These requirements effectively constitute DEI loyalty oaths as prerequisite for funding....
“We know from the history of totalitarian regimes that when science is subjugated to ideology, science suffers. And the current approach to linking DEI considerations to funding decisions weakens achievement- and merit-based criteria in science funding, which means that money paid by hardworking taxpayers is not being used to support the best scientific projects.
“Moreover, when funding agencies use their power to further a particular political or ideological agenda, they contribute to public distrust of science and scientific institutions. When scientists become complicit by infusing ideology into their research, they are no longer perceived as trustworthy experts -- nor should they be. Should the public withdraw its support for science, loss of funding will ultimately ensue, with attendant detrimental consequences to the nation....”
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George and USC Prof. Anna I. Krylov at Chronicle of Higher Education and based on a paper recently published in Frontiers of Research Metrics and Analytics
See also "Stanford Tech Marketing Course Requires a DEI Statement to Enroll" at College Fix and also linked below
The Sorry State of Medical School Curricula
Excerpts (links in the original):
“If medical schools are short-changing rigorous training in science for the political indoctrination of future doctors, there are real consequences. Lives are on the line. This is why documenting the extent to which medical education has become politicized is critically important....
“Several prominent medical school professors and students have shared accounts revealing the distorted priorities of America’s medical schools, sparking concerns. Stanley Goldfarb, previously the associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and currently the chair of the board for Do No Harm, was the first to draw attention to the issue in 2019 with a Wall Street Journal article and book, both titled, ‘Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns.’
“Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, expressed similar concerns in a more recent piece in the Free Press, warning that ‘diluting rigor and precision with ideological agendas will degrade the quality of medical education.’ Kevin Bass, who attended medical school at Texas Tech, cataloged his experiences in the New York Post, declaring: ‘Ideology has replaced health care.’ …”
PDF copy of report, including re Stanford Medical School, at Do No Harm Medicine website
See also “How the Modern Law School Promotes Political Division and Lawfare” at Minding the Campus
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford Tech Marketing Course Requires a DEI Statement to Enroll
Full article at College Fix
It Took Years, but Elite Colleges Are Learning the Value of Institutional Neutrality
Full op-ed by ACTA’s Steve McGuire at The Hill
A Guide to Distinguishing Legitimate Protest from Antisemitism
Full op-ed at LA Times and republished at MSN
Learning Civics from History
Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. James Hankins at Law & Liberty
What Makes You Ready to Be a College President?
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also articles at Diverse Issues in Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed.
An AI Tutor Helped Harvard Students Learn More Physics in Less Time
Full article at Hechinger Report
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.
A free, seven-week program led by Stanford H&S Dean Debra Satz and Stanford Prof. Larry Diamond; first session is this Wednesday, September 25.
A Stanford Treasure - Monterey Bay Scientists on Preserving Kelp Forests
Synthetic Neuroscience Grants Promote Transformative Brain Tech
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“[A university] cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted.” – From the Kalven Report, the second of the three parts of the Chicago Trifecta
Special Edition
September 17, 2024
Stanford Takes Major Steps Forward re Free Speech
Today, Stanford's office of the provost sent a letter to all students about campus speech and related issues. A full copy of the letter is linked here. It is, in our view, a major step forward in creating a campus climate where, per Jon Levin’s Stanford Magazine interview, respectful discourse and critical thinking can thrive.
Excerpts:
. . . .
“Our community comes together this September amid a presidential election, continued conflicts around the globe, and impassioned public debate about a wide range of issues. At Stanford, our work of research and education is contributing to deeper knowledge and understanding of many of these issues....
“Freedom of expression is a fundamental value for the university’s knowledge-bearing mission, alongside the inclusion of all viewpoints and the promotion of rigorous and reasoned academic debates. The freedom to explore and present new, unconventional, and even unpopular ideas is essential to the academic mission of the university; therefore, Stanford shall promote the widest possible freedom of expression, consistent with the university’s legal and moral obligations to prevent harassment and discrimination. Accordingly, university policies must not censor individuals’ speech based on the content of what is expressed, except in narrow circumstances.” …
This text is followed by further discussion and these links:
1. A new Freedom of Expression webpage and a two-page summary of specific policies and procedures for events, including but not limited to protests.
2. A “What’s New” webpage that highlights major elements of these new policies and procedures.
3. The previous Protected Identity Harm Reporting program, which for several years was subject to criticism on campus and nationwide, has been replaced with a new set of policies and procedures and including these FAQs.
We trust that orientation for new students will emphasize these important values, that there will be ongoing dialog among students and faculty about implementation of these values, and that the administrative staff will understand that Stanford exists for educational purposes and that their activities must therefore give priority to these values.
We assume Stanford's computerized case management system will continue to be used to monitor and act upon student behaviors, including behaviors that are subject to these revised policies and procedures. Which is why we again urge that Stanford annually advise students of their rights to review their files and be able to correct incorrect and even false information that has been reported about them.
But let’s also keep all of this in context. These are major developments in restoring a campus climate of free speech and critical thinking, and in that regard, we believe President Levin, Provost Martinez and the rest of Stanford’s leadership are setting a standard that will be a model for colleges and universities nationwide.
September 16, 2024
Board of Trustees Commends Recent Actions in Support of Academic Freedom
Excerpt (links in the original):
“The Stanford Board of Trustees has approved a resolution reaffirming the university’s commitment to free inquiry, the avoidance of institutional orthodoxy, and the open exchange of ideas. The timing coincides with the 50th anniversary of the 1974 board adoption of Stanford’s Statement on Academic Freedom.
“The resolution commends the Faculty Senate for adopting in May of this year a Statement of Freedom of Expression and an Institutional Statements Policy, both of which complement and strengthen Stanford’s long-standing principles of academic freedom.
“'Stanford remains steadfast in its dedication to academic freedom, which serves as a key foundation for the university’s truth-seeking scholarship and impactful research,' said board Chair Jerry Yang. 'We are immensely grateful for the Faculty Senate’s deliberations earlier this year on this critically important issue, which benefits our entire university community and beyond.'” ...
Full article at Stanford Report
See also “Law School Professor to Serve as Special Advisor to the Provost on University Speech” at Stanford Report
Editor’s note: While we appreciate recent actions by Stanford's faculty, provost and trustees, we think it is important to also read this Stanford Report article regarding discussions in May of this year and which, in our minds at least, raise these follow-up questions:
1. Why won’t Stanford’s administration, faculty and/or trustees simply adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta and resolve issues that otherwise are going to plague the campus in the months and years ahead? And why spend so much time and resources reinventing the wheel? We again note that all three reports that comprise the Chicago Trifecta were written during prior times of considerable campus turmoil regarding campus speech and academic freedom, were considered and acted upon by highly distinguished faculty members at the University of Chicago and subsequently copied by other leading universities nationwide, use extraordinarily concise language and have withstood the test of time.
2. If there are one or more specific items in the Chicago Trifecta with which Stanford’s administration, faculty and/or trustees disagree, why not propose alternative language to those specific provisions and explain the reasons for the changes?
3. Why did Stanford’s Faculty Senate insist that the proposal they adopted in May of this year be treated solely as a statement and not a policy? What's the difference, especially when it then is posted as a Core Policy Statement (see below)?
4. For several decades, the 1974 Statement on Academic Freedom was set forth solely in the Faculty Handbook, and then of all things buried in the handbook’s chapter on research. It recently was moved to a section in the Faculty Handbook called Core Policy Statements but where the other provisions solely concern faculty discipline and appeals. So what is being done to give this and related statements and policies greater visibility and distribution, and what does Stanford’s leadership intend to do to stimulate greater dialogue among its faculty and students on these important issues?
Saving the Idea of the University
Excerpts (link in the original):
. . . .
“Universities must be places where different ideas and opinions lead to personal growth, scientific breakthroughs, and new knowledge. But when a group of students takes over a building or establishes an encampment on shared campus grounds and declares that this shared educational space belongs to only one ideological view, the power and potential of the university dies -- just as it would if a president, administrators, or faculty members imposed their personal politics as the position of the institution....
“In the 1950s, the social psychologist Solomon Asch conducted a series of experiments that showed how easy it is to quash the differences of opinion essential for advancing knowledge. In one experiment, Asch brought groups of college students together to take a simple perceptual test with two possible responses, one right, one wrong. The catch: In each group, all students were instructed to say in turn the incorrect answer -- except for one unsuspecting student, who went last.
“The results were stark. Three-quarters of the unwitting students went along at least once with the incorrect answer that the majority had given. When asked why, the hoodwinked students typically articulated a fear of ridicule and said they doubted their own knowledge. In short, conformity won.
“But when Asch ran a modified version of the test, the results looked very different. If even a single other student gave a dissenting, correct answer, the unbriefed student chose the consensus view only a quarter as often.
“Instead, students, faculty members, even university presidents should feel able and willing to speak out and break with uniformity when good evidence compels it.
“At Dartmouth, our faculty members do exactly this.... [followed by discussion of approaches used at Dartmouth, including faculty with different perspectives teaching together]
“As Asch’s work showed, being willing to stand alone can be very difficult, especially when one looks around and sees the consequences that can come with a failure to conform. Appeasement can feel safe and easy -- if that means giving in to the demands either of student protesters or of vocal donors. But when the future and credibility of American higher education is at stake, university leaders have no choice but to be laser-focused on the academic mission of their institutions, even when doing so prompts discord and disagreement. It’s the engagement in argument that makes universities great.”
Full op-ed by Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at The Atlantic and republished at MSN
See also our compilation of the Shils Report regarding principles for academic appointments (the important third part of the Chicago Trifecta)
See also The Threat from Within, speech in 2017 by former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy: “The threat from outside is apparent.... But I’m actually more worried about the threat from within. Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country -- not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines -- there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.”
Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya - What Happens When Scientific Discourse Is Hijacked by Dogma
Excerpts (links in the original):
“The COVID era has been difficult for scientists whose ideas run against the grain of powerful scientific and government bureaucracies. Even for university scientists with unblemished reputations in the before times, the price of speaking up has been vilification by social media companies, the media, and, unfortunately, even scientific journals and our fellow scientists. It is a wonder that any scientists dared to speak out, with only their commitment to the truth as a reason to do so....
“One of the authors of this piece, Jay Bhattacharya, coauthored the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) in October of 2020, which called for the focused protection of the vulnerable elderly, for opening schools, and for lifting lockdowns. In response, the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a piece falsely alleging that the GBD had received support from the dreaded Koch brothers. In Left-leaning academia, such an accusation is like the mark of Cain, and many scientists feared associating with the GBD as a result, though they agreed with its ideas.
“Embarrassingly, the BMJ had to issue a correction to the article because there was no Koch funding for the GBD. But the defamatory damage was already done, and many scientists stayed silent as schools closed and children were harmed, even though they knew better. They did not want to be similarly smeared.
“Next month, a conference will be held at Stanford University, featuring civil discussions among scientists who differ on how best to manage pandemics and prevent their occurrence. Four-plus years into the COVID-era, it is far past time for such a discussion....
“Amazingly, some scientists and media figures have vilified the conference for including lockdown skeptics like Dr. Vinay Prasad of UCSF and Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford University among the speakers. A Baylor doctor, Peter Hotez, a devotee of Tony Fauci and author of The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science, accused the conference of indulging in ‘anti-science aggression’ for the crime of having scientists who disagree speak with one another. ‘While I'm all for free speech, this type of anti-science aggression doesn't have to be promoted by the Stanford leadership, given the chilling message it sends to the serious science faculty/students,’ wrote Hotez on Twitter in a typical act of projection. Elsewhere he wrote about ‘antiscience as a killing force,’ further explaining ‘My point: ‘health freedom’ antiscience aggression = a leading killing force’.
“Scientists should be able to disagree on public health policy without being branded monsters. The public is watching this spat and has lost trust in science, medicine, and public health.
"Society forfeits the benefits of science when scientific discourse is hijacked by dogma, when dissenting views are silenced out of fear of career repercussions, and when questioning the prevailing narrative invites accusations of bigotry or even murder.
“Science thrives on skepticism, on challenges to the status quo. When the pursuit of scientific truth is sacrificed on the altar of ideological conformity, science ceases to be a beacon of enlightenment and instead becomes a tool of oppression. Let's hope the upcoming Stanford conference marks the beginning of a course correction.”
Full op-ed by Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya and Rutgers Prof. Bryce Nickels at Newsweek
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage and including prior essays by Prof. Bhattacharya and others
How to Restore Trust in American Higher Education
Excerpts:
. . . .
“The turbulent campuses seem far removed from the desired ‘marketplace of ideas,’ where diverse perspectives on contemporary issues are discussed with civility and respect. A ‘cancel culture’ where speakers are shouted down or even kept off campus is the norm at some universities. Arguably even worse, the honesty and integrity of the academic research is increasingly questioned, with well-documented incidents involving faculty and administrators plagiarizing and deliberately falsifying research results. One respected publisher, Wiley, recently closed down a number of academic journals because of continuing evidence of downright fraudulent results....
“Universities are inherently inefficient and costly. Internal forces within schools are constantly pressuring the president for costly changes -- higher salaries, more staff, nicer facilities. With the possible exception of medical care (which has had huge qualitative improvements), no other major form of consumer spending has increased prices as much as higher education in the four decades between 1980 and 2020. Expensive facilities (for example, classroom buildings with fancy atriums) often are constructed to meet a frenzied ‘edifice complex,’ but heavily utilized typically only about eight months a year. Most faculty offices are used less than 20 hours weekly for fewer than 35 weeks a year. Students getting bachelor’s degrees are typically in classes about 33-36 months total, easily attainable in three calendar years but typically stretched out over four years or more. Moreover, partly a byproduct of grotesque grade inflation, time-use studies show most students actually study an average of under 30 hours weekly -- less than middle school students....
“Mitch Daniels as Purdue’s president froze tuition fees for a decade while reexamining the noncore activities of the school, a model worth emulating....
“Over time, the balance of collegiate power has shifted largely to an army of administrators typically far outnumbering those actually teaching students and conducting research. Rather than supporting the teaching/research mission, often these administrators detract from it, diluting the emphasis on learning and discovery. I once estimated that if we reduced the administrator-student ratio to what it was a generation ago, we could reduce tuition fees 20 percent and restore emphasis on job No. 1: educating students and expanding discovery and pursuit of truth....”
Full op-ed by Ohio U Prof. Emeritus Richard K. Vedder at Independent Institute
See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” including charts and comparative data at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also our recommendations for Back to Basics at Stanford.
See also op-ed by DePauw Prof. Jeffrey M. McCall at The Hill (links in the original): “Colleges and universities face many challenges as the new academic year gets underway. But the American public has no sympathy for these supposed ‘enlightened’ institutions, because college administrators and boards of trustees are only facing the consequences for the bad decisions they themselves have made. Colleges have failed to effectively manage the rhetorical sphere around higher education. Students, parents and the public at large have been kept largely in the dark as tuition hikes, vacuous curriculum expansions, administrative bloat and ideological activism have taken root....”
Students Increasingly Treat College as a Transaction; Who or What Is to Blame?
Excerpts (link in the original):
. . . .
“How widespread is this crisis? It’s difficult to know. Professors frustrated by these dynamics fear being accused of undermining student-success efforts on their campus if they publicly criticize students’ work ethic or challenge their behaviors. And students rarely speak openly about why they feel disengaged or shortchanged by their education, or why they are inclined to cheat. But a key study, described in the 2022 book The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be, sheds light on some aspects of these evolving dynamics....
“What they heard from students alarmed them: a preoccupation with grades, jobs, and institutional reputation; little discussion or understanding of the intellectual opportunities campuses present; feelings of alienation. The findings troubled them enough to issue a warning: ‘While in fact there remains much to admire in U.S. higher education,’ they wrote, ‘the sector has lost its way and stands in considerable peril.’ …
“While highly selective colleges are unlikely to experience this dystopian future, students at these institutions describe an environment in which the pressure to succeed can also lead to a transactional attitude.
“This past spring, Niheer Patel, then a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote an opinion piece for the student newspaper describing this ecosystem, 'Where Dreams Come to Die.' Patel came to Penn expecting to find people who were highly driven and hoping to do good in the world. But the drive he found was toward landing jobs in consulting and finance, the dominant careers for recent graduates....”
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Other Articles of Interest
The Top U.S. Colleges That Make New Graduates Rich
Full article at WSJ and where the top ten are, in descending order: MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Georgia Tech, Penn, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Babson, Missouri S&T and Carnegie Mellon
See also our prior article (September 6, 2024) where Stanford was ranked third in the WSJ’s overall rankings
How Colleges Are Changing Their Rules on Protesting
Full article at NY Times including a discussion of specific actions at specific schools; see also summary of college protest policies at Chronicle of Higher Education
Alternative Viewpoint - Elite Colleges Are More Diverse Than Ever; They’re Still Unequal
Full op-ed by Boston U Prof. Anthony Abraham Jack at Chronicle of Higher Education
More About the Chilling Effect of AAUP’s Decision Allowing Academic Boycotts
Full op-ed at WSJ
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.
MicroDicer and MicroGrater Make Quick Work of Tumor Dissection
Researchers Make Mouse Skin Transparent Using a Common Food Dye
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression Can Lead to Lasting Changes in the Brain
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“I’m looking forward to using Stanford as a model for other universities, especially in terms of protecting expression and developing protocols that ensure all community members are heard, while sustaining our rich educational environment.” – Stanford Law School Professor Bernadette Meyler who also is the newly named special advisor to the provost on university speech
September 9, 2024
Follow-Up on Recent College Free Speech Rankings
Last Friday's Newsletter dated September 6, 2024 included a summary and links to FIRE’s recently released free speech survey and where Stanford was ranked #218 out of 251. We therefore are providing this link to a follow-up article by Stanford alum and FIRE’s CEO Greg Lukianoff about reactions to the survey and other matters, as published at Substack.
A Second Chance for Universities
Excerpts:
“As students return to school this fall, universities have a second chance at managing difficult conversations about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This past spring, we saw news and social media videos showing groups pitted against one another. Violent images, like those that surfaced out of UCLA, included students battering each other with sticks, using chemical sprays, and launching fireworks as weapons. Hateful rhetoric like “F--- you, Jew” and “take off your hijab and get a job” have further fueled these firestorms. Students were being attacked for their identity and beliefs, causing them to feel unsafe on the campuses they called home. Did it have to be this way? Is this the only vision for free speech on college campuses?
“Recently, I participated in a Braver Angels Common Ground Workshop on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Braver Angels, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bridging America’s partisan divide, teaches Americans of all ages how to share their perspectives in a healthier, more productive way. Our core approach is built on structured dialogue. In my workshop, we had five people who leaned pro-Israel and five who leaned pro-Palestine sitting across a table from one another. Two trained Braver Angels moderators led the conversation and established explicit norms and ground rules. Throughout the workshop, I felt safe to share my most honest opinions and always felt heard despite disagreements....
“Creating spaces for structured dialogue on college campuses requires change. Firstly, there needs to be a shift in institutional culture towards valuing and prioritizing open discussions. This includes training faculty and staff in conflict resolution and dialogue facilitation by providing them with the necessary resources and support. Secondly, there should be a commitment to structural reform, including establishing dedicated offices or roles focused on promoting dialogue and helping navigate conflicts. Policies should encourage staff to engage in debates without fear of repercussions, creating guidelines that ensure safety in facilitating and participating in controversial dialogues. Universities could also partner with organizations like Heterodox Academy, FAIR, BridgeUSA, and Braver Angels to bring their expertise in facilitating constructive disagreement at universities to their campuses....”
Full op-ed at Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism website
See also the articles at our Stanford Concerns webpage regarding Stanford’s program for reporting bias, Stanford’s list of proscribed words and phrases, and Stanford’s computerized program for controlling student behavior and ask yourself: Aren’t these and similar staff-initiated and staff-run programs key contributors to the negative campus climate re free speech? And how many of the staff members who create and administer these programs are part of the 18,369 non-teaching personnel at Stanford?
We also suggest it is time for Stanford to create an office or ombudsperson for free speech and who will speak up on behalf of students and faculty who believe their rights of free speech and academic freedom are being infringed upon and even to participate at Cabinet and similar meetings to help counteract contrary pressures.
Other Articles of Interest
License Plate Cameras to Be Installed at Entrances to the Stanford Campus
Full article at Stanford Report
See also “Stanford’s Security Regime Takes Root” at Stanford Review September 28, 2023, “Faculty Senate Debates Expansion of Video Surveillance" at Stanford Daily April 21, 2022, and “240 New Security Cameras on Campus Raise Privacy Concerns” at Stanford Daily November 27, 2023
How Colleges Plan to Deal with Student Protests
Full article at The Hill
UCLA Aims to Rebuild Trust with New Free Speech Zones, More Security, More Dialogue
Full article at LA Times
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“A sure sign that a college or university is failing in its promise to provide a liberal education is the prevalence of ideological dogmatism and intolerance, and the presence of groupthink.” -- Princeton Prof. Robert P. George
September 6, 2024
Editor's note: Because there are so many items of current interest, we are distributing this edition of the Newsletter a few days earlier than usual.
Stanford Is #3 in New Best U.S. Colleges Ranking by WSJ and College Pulse
Excerpts (links in the original):
"Princeton University took first place in the WSJ/College Pulse ranking of U.S. colleges for the second year in a row. But there are plenty of new schools in the upper echelon of the ranking.
"Half of the colleges in the top 50 this year are new, with a wide range of schools -- large and small, public and private, technical and liberal-arts -- serving their students especially well and leaving them broadly satisfied with their college experience.
"Our ranking measures how well each college sets graduates up for financial success. We look at how much a school improves students’ chances of graduating and their future earnings, balancing these outcomes with feedback from students on college life. We don’t measure reputation, nor the college’s own finances....
“[While Princeton was first,] schools with strong tech or business programs also fared well, including No. 2 Babson College and No. 3 Stanford University. Stanford is one of 17 California colleges in the top 50, up from six last year and by far the most for any state...."
See the full ranking and methodology here, and with the top ten being Princeton, Babson, Stanford, Yale, Claremont McKenna, MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech and Davidson.
See also College Pulse "the voice of college students" homepage
Stanford Is #218 Out of 251 in New Free Speech Ranking by FIRE and College Pulse
Editor’s note: Last year, Stanford was ranked #207 out of 237 schools in the comparable 2024 survey.
The top ten in the new 2025 survey, in descending order, are: Virginia, Michigan Tech, Florida State, Eastern Kentucky, Georgia Tech, Claremont McKenna, North Carolina State at Raleigh, Oregon State, North Carolina at Charlotte and Mississippi State.
And the bottom ten, also in descending order, are: Pomona, Indiana, UT at Austin, USC, Syracuse, Barnard, Penn, NYU, Columbia and Harvard.
Stanford student quote from the survey:
“Generally, other students are not particularly accepting. If you don't follow whatever Instagram or TikTok is claiming to be the most 'moral' political view at the moment, people don't want to hear it and they will label you as non-politically correct. This behavior usually comes from liberal students -- I'm saying this as a very liberal person myself. I don't think I have non-politically correct viewpoints. I often agree with these students, but the manner in which they enforce their viewpoints across campus is something I disagree with. I study communication and psychology and I've put a lot of time and effort into understanding the propaganda that is spread on social media. Stanford students on both sides are constantly posting infographics with no citations, video/photo media that is doctored or not even of what they claim it is, and straight up incorrect information. Stanford desperately needs a mandatory media literacy class for freshmen where they learn to identify propaganda. It's very concerning." – Survey respondent from Stanford Class of 2024
Full report at FIRE website including specific writeup for Stanford
See also “Free Speech Is in Trouble - Higher Education Needs Higher Standards” by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at The Hill
See also Stanford's system for reporting allegedly biased statements and actions of others as well as Stanford's computerized systems for overseeing all aspects of student behavior at our Stanford Concerns webpage
Carleton Faculty Members Discuss Statement on Academic Freedom
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Colleges and universities across the country are busy revisiting and revising their free speech and academic freedom policies. Here at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, we were part of a special committee charged with drafting a new academic freedom statement. The statement was approved by the faculty and the Board of Trustees last academic year and has now been incorporated into Carleton’s faculty handbook. The full text of the statement appears below -- followed by some bullet points that spell out what we see as the statement’s key features....
“The four pillars of academic freedom are as follows:
1. Freedom of inquiry and research: faculty are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of results. Research for pecuniary return should be based on an understanding with the College.
2. Freedom of teaching: faculty are entitled to freedom in the classroom in teaching their subject and in developing their pedagogy. Inside the classroom, professors have the authority to decide what to teach based on their academic expertise and the parameters of a particular discipline or field. They also have the prerogative to decide how to teach based on their pedagogical goals and the broader objective of helping students develop critical thinking skills.
3. Freedom of intramural speech: faculty governance depends on academic freedom, with professors holding the primary responsibility for educational matters ranging from design and content of the curriculum to recommendations for faculty hiring and promotion. Academic freedom protects speech in the context of faculty governance.
4. Freedom of extramural speech: faculty are private individuals and community members. As such, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline when speaking on matters of public concern. However, as associates of learned professions and employees of the College, they should remember that the public may judge their institution by their utterances. Hence, they should make an effort to indicate that they are not speaking for Carleton when engaging in extramural speech....”
Full op-ed by Carleton professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder at Substack
See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta regarding freedom of speech, a university’s involvement in political and social matters, and standards for the hiring and promotion of faculty
The First Amendment Seen as an Arms Control Agreement
Excerpts:
. . . .
“Here's something that might produce, if not a smile, at least a nod: Seeing the First Amendment, in its current form, as an arms control agreement. Some people would much like to ban critical race theory on campus. Other people would like to ban teaching, or perhaps speech, that puts the United States and U.S. history in the most unfavorable light -- emphasizing, for example, what might be seen as the centrality of slavery and racism.
“Some people would like to ban antisemitic speech on campus. Other people would like to ban racist and sexist speech, regarding it as incompatible with the educational mission. How, it might be asked, can students learn, if they are demeaned by virtue of their skin color or their gender?
“If we understand the First Amendment as an arms control agreement, we can give essentially the same answer to all these people. Properly understood, the Constitution requires all censors to lay down their arms.... [Followed by discussion of specific court decisions and universities.]
“For the current period, the lesson is not obscure. College and university administrators have been, and might be, sorely tempted to punish points of view that are inconsistent with their values and that seem beyond the pale. They should avoid that temptation. They should lay down their arms.”
Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Cass Sunstein discussing his recently published book “Campus Free Speech,” as posted at the Eugene Volokh Conspiracy website and republished at Reason
See also "Cass Sunstein Wants to Help Universities Navigate Free Speech" at Inside Higher Ed
What the Freshman Class Needs to Read
Excerpts (link in the original):
“All universities claim to provide some kind of intellectual foundation for their students. Sadly, the reality of what freshmen and sophomores are required to study usually belies the admissions-office propaganda.
“In our view, liberal education requires that students, like rowers, face backward in order to move forward. If they are to become active and reflective individuals, they must learn to regard the past not merely as the crime scene of bygone ages, but as the record of human possibilities -- an always unfinished tapestry of admirable and shameful lives, noble and base deeds. They must develop an ear for the English language and the language of ancestral wisdom as well as the various languages of intellectual inquiry, including mathematics. They need a good grasp of modern statistical methods. But they must also allow themselves to be inwardly formed and cultivated by the classics -- what the English critic Matthew Arnold called ‘the best which has been thought and said.’ …
“A core curriculum cannot be both foundational and comprehensive. The further Columbia has strayed from its original purpose, the more skewed the Core Curriculum has become, as the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat recently noted. The 20th-century readings, he writes, now cover ‘progressive preoccupations and only those preoccupations: anticolonialism, sex and gender, antiracism, climate.’ Instead of reading George Orwell, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or Hannah Arendt, students read Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and the Combahee River Collective Statement -- which, as Douthat argued, are ‘texts that are important to understanding only the perspective of the contemporary left.’ This looks to us like a clear case of a university teaching its students what to think, not how to think.
“But at least Columbia offers a genuine core. Pity the poor freshmen at Harvard and Stanford, who each year look in vain for anything remotely as coherent....”
Full op-ed by Niall Fergusson and University of Austin Provost Jacob Howland at The Atlantic; article also available here
Admissions at Elite Universities
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Since the Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina in June 2023 that repealed race-conscious admissions policies, many observers have wondered what would happen to the racial makeup of elite universities. In the past, such schools have proudly advertised the data on the racial makeup of incoming freshmen. So far this year, most have remained strangely silent.
“Last week, however, MIT broke the silence by reporting that the percentage of underrepresented minorities enrolling had precipitously dropped. Whereas black and Hispanic students, respectively, made up 15 percent and 16 percent of MIT’s Class of 2027, the Class of 2028 is just 5 percent black and 11 percent Hispanic. Meanwhile, Asian Americans have increased their enrollment from 40 percent to 47 percent, while the white share stayed essentially unchanged at 37 percent. That Asian Americans were the primary beneficiaries of the removal of racial preferences is consistent with the work we have published on the SFFA cases....
“While MIT is to be lauded for actually releasing its numbers, the picture is more complicated than MIT and the media let on: it depends heavily on how one defines ‘diversity.’ As MIT and the media are using it, the term seems to mean ‘representative of the national population.’ Asian Americans are a diverse group, representing many different cultures and ethnicities. But MIT and the media treat them as a monolith. To them, the diversity they bring as individuals of particular cultures and ethnicities is less important than their representativeness of the U.S. Asian-American population as a whole.
“The framing of the MIT numbers also neglects another component of diversity. Compared with the classes of 2024 through 2027, the number of first-generation college students rose from 18 percent to 20 percent, and the number of students eligible for Pell grants increased from 20 percent to 24 percent. MIT actually became more diverse based on socioeconomic measures, perhaps partly in response to the ruling....”
Full op-ed by Duke Prof. Peter Arcidiacono at City Journal
Other Articles of Interest
Revised Policies Nationwide Will Impact Campus Protests
Full article at FIRE website including FAQ’s re student protests and re political speech
College Free Speech Policies Are a Mess and a Liability
Full op-ed by former Northwestern Law School Dean Kimberly A. Yuracko and Northwestern Prof. Max M. Schanzenbach at Chronicle of Higher Education
Editor’s note: Stanford, unlike Northwestern and most other private colleges and universities around the country, in fact is subject to First Amendment requirements pursuant to California law.
The Fight for Political Neutrality in America’s Classrooms
Full review of book "You Can't Teach That" by Yale (formerly Princeton) Prof. Keith Whittington at Law & Liberty
See also “Academic Freedom Under Fire” by Harvard Prof. Louis Menand at The New Yorker
Yale Divinity Students Forced to Read from Witch’s Spell at Orientation
Full article at College Fix
UC Faculty Challenge University’s Free Speech Suppression
Full article at Brownstone
Survey Finds College Students Reluctant to Discuss Race, Abortion, Israel
Full article at College Fix along with a link to the report itself
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.
From School of Humanities & Sciences - Stanford Participates in Pathway to College for Military Vets
From Neurosciences Institute - Depression's Distinctive Fingerprints in the Brain
From Graduate School of Business - How Does Workplace Secrecy Affect Employees?
From Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) - Covert Racism in AI and How Language Models Are Reinforcing Outdated Stereotypes
From Graduate School of Business - A Little Humor-Bragging Could Help You Land Your Next Job
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“I couldn’t imagine a better job than getting to be the president of Stanford. It’s a great institution, and I think the same is true of our peer universities. We play a very important role in the country and in the world. Yes, we face many significant and contentious issues that have to be the subject of discussion and debate on campus, and that does create challenges to be a university president.” – Stanford President Jon Levin
September 2, 2024
President Jon Levin’s First Interview with Stanford Daily - ‘A Stronger Culture of Inquiry’
Excerpts:
.....
“We are here as the University to facilitate discovery and learning, and an important part of having that happen is to create an environment on the campus where all of the students and all the faculty get the opportunity to think for themselves. And to feel encouraged to be able to speak up, even if they have a viewpoint or an opinion that might be contrary to the majority of people on the campus, and that there are forums on the campus to talk about those issues so we can learn from each other....
And asked later in the interview about Stanford’s alleged war on fun: “I think my pro-fun position continues. One, I’ve stated my pro-fun position. But the second [thing] is, coming to college at Stanford, there are many things about it that are really special for students. It certainly was in my experience. It just opens your mind in so many different ways -- getting to be in Stanford classrooms and getting to be around all the other students and the faculty.
“Education is all about encountering different ideas and different people and different cultures. And the opportunity to do that at Stanford is extraordinary. And, it is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be a time to be able to explore and to meet people and have freedom in a way as you’re coming into adulthood. A beautiful part of the Stanford culture is that there’s also an aspect of joy and a reverence to being a student at the University. That’s something that I personally benefited from and I want all students to have that opportunity....”
Full interview at Stanford Daily
The Examined Life - Ignorance Is Not the Only Thing from Which a True Liberal Education Frees Us
Excerpts:
“Those of us who teach or study at American colleges and universities are facing the academic year that is about to begin with more than a little trepidation. Will there be protests? Encampments? The occupation of buildings? The invasion of classrooms? Riots?
“The fact that we are asking those questions should itself prompt us to ask a more fundamental question: What is the purpose of higher education?
“Most American colleges and universities proclaim themselves to be providers of ‘liberal education’ (or ‘liberal arts education’). But what does that mean? Why should students want it? Why should their parents pay -- a lot -- for them to get it?
“The word ‘liberal’ in this context means ‘freeing.’ So, what is it that liberal education is supposed to be freeing us from?
“An obvious answer is that liberal education frees us from ignorance. A liberally educated person knows some things -- some things worth knowing -- about, for example, history, philosophy, literature, politics, economics, religion, civics, art, music, biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics....
“Ignorance, however, is not the only thing from which a true liberal education frees us. It frees us from conformism -- that is, slavery to fashionable opinions and causes. A sure sign that a college or university is failing in its promise to provide a liberal education is the prevalence of ideological dogmatism and intolerance, and the presence of groupthink....
“That is the truth James Madison had in mind when he remarked that ‘only a well-instructed people can be permanently a free people.’ …”
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George at Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism website
D.E.I. Is Not Working on College Campuses; We Need a New Approach
Excerpts (links in the original; bracketed language added):
“With colleges and universities beginning a new academic year, we can expect more contentious debate over programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Progressives are doubling down on programs that teach students that they are either oppressed peoples or oppressors, while red states are closing campus D.E.I. programs altogether.
“For all of the complaints, some of these programs most likely serve the important goal of ensuring that all students are valued and engaged participants in their academic communities. But we fear that many other programs are too ideological, exacerbate the very problems they intend to solve and are incompatible with higher education’s longstanding mission of cultivating critical thinking. We propose an alternative: a pluralist-based approach to D.E.I. that would provide students with the self-confidence, mind-sets and skills to engage with challenging social and political issues....
“D.E.I. programs often assign participants to identity categories based on rigid distinctions. In a D.E.I. training program at Stanford a few years ago, Jewish staff members were assigned to a ‘whiteness accountability’ group, and some later complained that they were shot down when they tried to raise concerns about antisemitism. The former D.E.I. director at a Bay Area community college described D.E.I. as based on the premises ‘that the world is divided into two groups of people: the oppressors and the oppressed.’ She was also told by colleagues and campus leaders that ‘Jews are white oppressors,’ and her task was to ‘decenter whiteness.’
“Rather than correcting stereotypes, diversity training too often reinforces them and breeds resentment, impeding students’ social development. An excessive focus on identity can be just as harmful as the pretense that identity doesn’t matter. Overall, these programs may undermine the very groups they seek to aid by instilling a victim mind-set and by pitting students against one another....
“Pluralism [on the other hand] does not ignore identity or pervasive structural inequalities. Rather, it provides a framework in which identity is construed broadly and understood as a starting point for dialogue, rather than the basis for separation and fragmentation. It commits questions about the causes and persistence of inequalities to the classroom, where they can be examined through the critical, evidence-based methods at the root of a university education. Respecting the diverse perspectives of one’s fellows and adhering to norms such as active listening, humility and generosity enable classroom conversations about contentious social and political issues....”
Full op-ed by former Stanford Law School Dean Paul Brest and Stanford Prof. Emily J. Levine at NY Times
The Dangerous Evolution of Cancel Culture
Excerpt (links in the original):
“Academic boycotts targeting ideas, individuals, and institutions deemed problematic are no longer just in vogue for faculty. This illiberal and anti-intellectual tactic has now been adopted by students -- presumably taking a cue from faculty and administrators -- to cancel faculty who hold views they disagree with.
“I encountered this personally during the most recent course interview week at Sarah Lawrence College, during which I learned that several groups -- like the Sarah Lawrence Socialist Coalition and the Sarah Lawrence Review -- decided that because I support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, my lectures will be corrupted and therefore should be boycotted....”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus
SCOTUS Versus Free Speech - the Murthy v. Missouri Case
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In a 6 to 3 ruling on the Murthy v. Missouri case, the Supreme Court ruled against me and my fellow co-plaintiffs, in effect rendering the US First Amendment a dead letter in the social media age. At stake in the case was the status of a preliminary injunction issued by lower federal courts ordering the Biden Administration to stop coercing social media companies to censor and shadow ban people and ideas that the government does not like....
“Depositions of high-ranking career staff and political employees and unearthed emails between the government and social media companies like Facebook and Twitter/X revealed the government’s tactics to suppress speech. The Surgeon General’s office, the FBI, the CDC, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House were all closely involved.
“Government agencies funded universities and NGOs to support enterprises with Orwellian names like ‘Virality Project’ and ‘Center for Countering Digital Hate’ to create a target list for the Administration’s censorship efforts. With government backing, these entities -- linked sometimes to prominent universities like Stanford and the University of Washington -- work with corporate teams in social media companies’ ‘trust and safety’ divisions to censor offending speech....”
Full op-ed by Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya at Brightstone
See also “Marc Zuckerberg Regrets Caving to White House Pressure to Censor Content” at Politico and “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage
Back to COLLEGE at Stanford
Excerpts:
“This course is only open to Stanford University alumni who have completed three quarters as a matriculated, degree-seeking student, in a degree-granting program at Stanford (bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate)…. [For those who wish to enroll, will need to create a My Stanford Connection/Stanford Online account if don't already have one; differs from the Stanford alumni account.]
“In COLLEGE 101, which stands for Civic, Global, and Liberal Education, first-year Stanford students consider answers to the question: What is the role of education in a good life? As alumni like you know, answering this question is a lifelong pursuit. This course gives you the opportunity to experience a modified version of what Stanford students are experiencing, with a small group of fellow alumni, led by the instructors who are teaching the course to current Stanford students. Together you will revisit some of the fundamental questions about a liberal education and sample some of the most compelling material from the undergraduate COLLEGE 101 course....
“This course will be offered in 10 separate sections: Sections 1-8 will be held live on Zoom, Section 9 (on-campus) and 10 (in San Francisco) are in person. All times listed are Pacific Standard Time. Sections will meet during the timeframe listed every other week for a total of six sessions. Specific dates will be listed when you enroll and can be found on this table.
“This course brought to you by Stanford Alumni Association, Stanford Introductory Studies, and Stanford Online. Questions? Please email backtocollege@lists.stanford.edu.”
Full description and form for enrollment ($250 total tuition for all six sessions) at Stanford Connection/Stanford Online website, including a choice of sections that will meet on specific days and times depending on the section selected
Other Articles of Interest
Report Reveals Ongoing Tensions Over Student Speech
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Pro-Palestinian Protestors Shut Down U. of Michigan Student Government
Full article at Campus Safety Magazine
How to Fix American Higher Education with Morals and Markets
Full op-ed by Cornerstone University President Gerson Moreno-Riaño at The Hill
I Told You Something is Coming and Now It’s Here
Full talk by Victor Davis Hanson at YouTube (8:54 minutes)
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.
From Bio X - Stanford Team Develops First New Clinical Imaging Platform in a Quarter of a Century
From School of Medicine - How the Smallest Units of Life Rule Our Health
From Graduate School of Business - A ‘Grumpy Economist’ Weighs in on Inflation’s Causes And Its Cures
From Department of Psychology - Finding Hope in a Cynical World
From School of Engineering - New Gels Could Protect Buildings During Wildfires
From School of Medicine - How to Avoid a Pickleball Injury
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“As you begin your time at Stanford, embrace the freedom to explore ideas and challenge assumptions. This university is a place where free speech and critical thinking are not just rights, but responsibilities. It is through these principles that we advance knowledge, foster innovation, and prepare you to make a difference in the world." -- Former Stanford President John Hennessy
August 26, 2024
Update re Stanford's Administrative Overhead
From time to time during the past two years, we have posted charts and other information about the large number of administrators and other non-teaching personnel at Stanford, something that is especially of concern when compared with comparable numbers at other major colleges and universities throughout the country.
For example, Stanford Facts 2024 (pages 32 and 33) states that Stanford now has a total of 18,369 non-teaching personnel as compared to 1,730 members of the Academic Council (faculty). And our Newsletter last week featured numbers just published by the Chronicle of Higher Education that show, among other things, that Stanford has the highest number of financial and business administrators of any college or university in the country, both public and private, made all the more concerning when one realizes that most of these other schools have two to three times the number of students yet a fraction of the staff. In addition, the website How Colleges Spend Money on which many of our prior charts were based has now supplemented its data with an additional year and revised some of its other numbers.
We have therefore updated the material at our Stanford Concerns webpage with these new numbers and charts, and we urge readers to take a look at the updated information that is set forth there.
We also again bring to readers’ attention the proposals that have long been posted at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage -- including that there be a significant reduction in Stanford’s administrative personnel not directly involved in teaching and research and that every dollar saved, dollar for dollar, be devoted instead solely to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and to graduate student fellowships.
Stanford has recruited some of the most capable students and faculty found anywhere, so why is it assumed that these highly intelligent people cannot manage their own interactions without interference from an ever-expanding bureaucracy? In this regard, we are reminded of comments regularly made by former Stanford Vice President Ken Cuthbertson: “People like the janitor and me get our kicks out of providing the means and services that allow faculty and students to teach and learn under the best possible conditions. After that, our task is to stay the hell out of the way.”
Again, we urge readers to look at the updated information at our Stanford Concerns webpage and we likewise welcome reader comments on these and other issues at our Contact Us/Subscribe webpage.
California Public Universities Ban Encampments, Masks
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Student activists at public universities in California will no longer be able to build tent cities or hide their faces behind masks following new rules.
“California State University introduced its new policy Thursday [August 15], banning encampments, overnight protests, and ‘unauthorized barricades,’ according to EdSource.
“Students ‘who attempt to start an encampment may be disciplined or sanctioned,’ CSU spokesperson Hazel Kelly told EdSource....
“Similarly, University of California President Michael Drake announced Monday [August 19] in a letter to UC chancellors that all campuses within the [UC system] must prohibit ‘unauthorized structures’ and encampments.
“In addition, they must ban ‘anything that restricts movement on campus, which could include protests that block walkways and roadways or deny access by anyone on campus to UC facilities,’ EdSource reported.
“‘I hope that the direction provided in this letter will help you achieve an inclusive and welcoming environment at our campuses that protects and enables free expression while ensuring the safety of all community members by providing greater clarity and consistency in our policies and policy application,’ Drake stated in the letter...."
Full article at College Fix. See also “Colleges Face Growing Demands to Step Up Enforcement on Student Protesters Who Cross a Line” at Chronicle of Higher Education.
Forthcoming FIRE/College Pulse Survey Shows Most College Students Don’t Know Their College’s Protest Policies
Excerpt (links in the original):
“Ahead of what could be another tumultuous year for free expression on college campuses, forthcoming FIRE/College Pulse survey data shows just a fraction of undergrads have a solid understanding of their own campus’s protest policies.
“Conducted near the end of the Israeli-Palestinian campus protests, between May 17 and June 25, 2024, the survey sampled 3,803 undergraduates at 30 four-year colleges and universities in the U.S.
“Asked how aware they are of their college’s written speech policies on campus protest, almost half of students surveyed said they are either ‘not aware at all’ (19%) or ‘not very aware’ (29%). Only 19% of students -- less than a fifth -- responded they are ‘extremely’ (6%) or ‘very’ (13%) aware of the relevant policies....”
Full article at FIRE website
See also newly added free speech pages at U North Carolina website
Other Articles of Interest
What I Want a University President to Say About Campus Protests
Full op-ed at NY Times
How Colleges Can Repair Their Reputations
Full op-ed by former Purdue President Mitch Daniels at Washington Post
More Than 1,000 Scholars Sign Petition Against AAUP for Supporting Academic Boycotts
Full article at College Fix
The Ongoing Censorship of Canadian Psychologist Jordan Peterson
Full article at Zero Hedge
Losing America’s Memory 2.0 - A Civic Literacy Assessment of College Students
Full report at American Council of Trustees and Alumni website
College Presidents for Civic Preparedness Now Up to 70 Members and Growing
Including Amherst, Carnegie Mellon, Claremont McKenna, Cornell, Dartmouth, Davidson, Duke, Georgetown, Grinnell, Harvey Mudd, Howard, Indiana U, Johns Hopkins, Rutgers, St. Olaf, U Illinois, Notre Dame, U Tennessee, U Virginia, U Wisconsin, Vassar, Wake Forest, Wash U St. Louis and Whitman.
Full article and annual report at Institute for Citizens & Scholars website. See also Stanford Civics Initiative homepage.
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.
Drugs That Improve Brain Metabolism Could Help Alzheimer’s Patients
"Blocking the kynurenine pathway in lab mice with Alzheimer’s Disease can improve, or even restore cognitive function by reinstating healthy brain metabolism."
How the Brain Helps Cancers Grow
Electric Reactor Could Cut Industrial Emissions
Dialysis May Not Be the Best Option for Some Older Adults with Kidney Failure
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"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." – Aristotle
August 19, 2024
Editor's note: Why a Newsletter last Friday and again on Monday? Because there is so much happening, we thought it best to break up the material into two parts. We don’t mean to flood your in-boxes but appreciate instead that readers can pick and choose what items might be of interest. As always, we welcome your comments, questions and suggestions (click on the Contact Us/Subscribe button at the top of this webpage).
Stanford Civics Initiative
Editor’s note: A year ago, we called readers' attention to the Stanford Civics Initiative, a project that involves faculty and students throughout the university and with assistance from the nonprofit Zephyr Institute. In light of current issues at Stanford and colleges and universities nationwide, we again bring this initiative to your attention.
Excerpt:
“The Stanford Civics Initiative (SCI), home-based in Stanford’s Department of Political Science, is the project of a group of Stanford faculty from the Departments of Political Science, Classics, Philosophy, and Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, working together with the staff of the Zephyr Institute. We are united by our belief that U.S. universities have a responsibility to offer students an education that will promote their flourishing as human beings, their judgment as moral agents, and their participation in society as democratic citizens. A healthy democracy requires that citizens and leaders be conversant with the great ideas of the past and present, ideas that produced and sustain their system of government. Citizens living in a pluralistic society must learn to engage one another in rational discourse. They must find ways to meet new challenges and to promote the common good, together.
“The Initiative aims to provide students with a series of superbly taught courses relevant to the ideas and practices of democratic citizenship. The SCI is intended to further Stanford’s mission, as laid out in the University’s Founding Grant, to prepare students for virtuous and effective citizenship by ‘teaching the blessings of liberty, regulated by law, and inculcating love and reverence for the great principles of government as derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.’
“The university has a vitally important role to play in the education of citizens. That role was recognized not only in Stanford’s Founding Grant, but also in Stanford’s first required survey course: ‘The Problems of Citizenship,’ introduced in 1923. Now, a century later, the need for addressing problems of citizenship is more pressing than ever. The Initiative serves the needs of all Stanford students who are eager to pursue a curriculum that would enable them to explore in-depth issues of the common good and human flourishing, who seek to debate important ethical and moral issues, and who want a classroom setting that encourages both frankness and civility as they delve into big ideas. We believe that students’ own ethical judgment is improved and their deepest commitments are strengthened when they have the chance to make and to respond to reasoned arguments from all sides of morally challenging issues.” …
Full statement at SCI website
See also sample courses and sample publications
Latest Chronicle of Higher Education Rankings
On August 16, 2024, the Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual almanac (127 pages total) with extensive data and charts. Here are some items that stood out to us.
Best ratio of undergraduate students to tenured or tenure-track professors at private universities (page 44):
#1 Caltech (3.8). #2 Johns Hopkins (6.3). #3 Duke (6.8). #4 MIT (6.9). #5 U Chicago (8.3) #6 Yale (8.4). #7 Harvard (8.7).
#8 Columbia (9.3). #9 Stanford (9.8). #10. Wash U St. Louis (10.7).
Largest number of staff in business and financial operations (page 46; also consider comparative enrollments of each of these schools):
#1 Stanford (4,140). #2 UCLA (4,078). #3 U Washington (4,069). #4 U Michigan (3,305). #5 Harvard (3,290).
#6 Ohio State (2,652). #7 Johns Hopkins (2,503). #8 U Maryland College Park (2,383). #9 U Minnesota Twin Cities (2,131). #10 Duke (2,095).
Highest average pay for full professors at private universities in 2022-23 (page 58):
#1 Stanford ($288,663). #2 Princeton ($280,268). #3 MIT ($268,486). #4 Yale ($268,188). #5 Harvard ($264,272).
Highest average pay for full professors at public universities in 2022-23 (page 58):
#1 UCLA ($248,620). #2 UC Berkeley ($230,856). #3 UC Santa Barbara ($222,396). #4 UC San Diego ($212,651).
#5 UC Irvine ($203,773). #6 U Virginia ($198,212).
Highest paid administrators and faculty at 4-year private colleges and universities in 2021 (page 59):
Stanford was usually not on the lists for various categories, although in athletics:
#1 Gary Patterson at Texas Christian ($17,163,326). #2 David Shaw at Stanford ($7,392,068). #3 Jerold T. Wright at Villanova ($6,651,081). #4 Michael Kryzewski at Duke ($6,443,725). #5 Patrick Fitzgerald at Northwestern ($5,898,137).
Highest Paid CEOs (presidents, chancellors, etc.) at 4-Year Private Colleges and Universities in 2021 (page 61):
#1 Amy Gutmann at Penn ($22,866,127). #2 Lee Bollinger at Columbia ($3,865,304). #3 Andrew Hamilton at NYU ($3,554,120). #4 Carol Folt at USC ($3,479,049). #5 Robert Zimmer at U Chicago ($3,427,953).
Stanford was not on the list of the 50 highest paid CEOs at private colleges and universities. On the list of CEOs at public universities, the highest paid was Reny Khator at U Houston ($1,901,444) followed by CEOs at U Kentucky, U Delaware, U Nebraska, Texas State U system, U North Texas, U Texas Austin, Iowa State, Penn State and Florida State.
Highest admissions selectivity (percent of applicants admitted) for doctorate degrees at private universities in 2022-23 (page 67):
#1 Caltech (2.7%). #2 Harvard (3.2%). #3 Stanford (3.7%). #4 Columbia (4.0%). #5 MIT (4.0%).
Highest admissions selectivity (percent of applicants admitted) for doctorate degrees at public universities in 2022-23 (page 67):
#1 UCLA (8.6%). #2 UC Berkeley (11.3%). #3 U North Carolina Chapel Hill (17.1%). #4 Georgia Tech (17.1%).
#5 U Michigan (17.7%).
Full articles and charts at Chronicle of Higher Education website
Campus Protests Pushed Ivy League Presidents Out; How Some Leaders Are Holding On
Excerpts (links in the original):
"Running a high-profile university during a war in the Middle East where students, faculty and alumni are at odds has turned into one of the toughest jobs in America to keep....
“Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier described his North Star as an unwillingness to appease one side or the other through intense protests, arrests and student expulsions on his campus.
“‘You have to be clear about what your purpose is, and then act accordingly,’ he said. ‘If you believe that your purpose is to have a platform where ideas can really flow then you should think twice about taking a position on this issue or that issue because it may undermine’ campus debate....
“If a university had not already adopted institutional neutrality before Oct. 7, it was in a bind once the war began.
“If, for example, presidents had previously condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the murder of George Floyd, they often felt compelled to weigh in when Hamas militants murdered 1,200 Israelis in October or when the Israeli military responded by attacking Gaza. If they didn’t, their silence was noted....
“At Dartmouth College, President Sian Beilock said she asked herself after Oct. 7, ‘What are we trying to do here?’
“She turned to faculty and asked what education was happening on the topic. It turned out the university had strong resources in both Jewish Studies and Middle Eastern Studies. They had been team teaching on the politics of Israel and Palestine for years. She asked them to stream it so everyone could learn from the debate....”
Full article at WSJ
See also article about Stanford’s new president, Jon Levin, at Stanford Magazine
See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta (freedom of expression, a university’s involvement in political and social matters, and standards for the appointment and promotion of faculty)
What Does Academic Freedom Really Mean?
Excerpts (link in the original):
“After opposing academic boycotts as ‘inimical to the principle of academic freedom’ for nearly 20 years, the American Association of University Professors declared this month that boycotts may be ‘legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.’
“Earlier this summer, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in a case challenging Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, which bans the teaching of ‘divisive concepts’ related to race and gender. Insisting there is no ‘purported right to academic freedom,’ Florida argued that the classroom speech of faculty at public colleges and universities is ‘government speech,’ subject to state control....
“In the new book ‘Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right,’ David Rabban examines these and a host of related questions. Rabban demonstrates that the law remains ‘frustratingly inconsistent and confusing’ and proposes a ‘theory of academic freedom as a distinctive subset of First Amendment law.’
“Like Rabban, we believe a more precise understanding of academic freedom is urgently needed....
[Followed by a detailed discussion comparing academic freedom with concepts of free speech.]
Full op-ed by Cornell Prof. Emeritus Glenn C. Altschuler and Hamilton College Prof. Emeritus David Wippman at The Hill
Other Articles of Interest
Colleges Can’t Say They Weren’t Warned
Full op-ed at NY Times
Real AI Threats Are Disinformation, Bias and Lack of Transparency
Full op-ed by Stanford Prof. James Landay at India Times
College Students Lack Rudimentary Knowledge of History and Civics
Full op ed at College Fix
We Must Live Up to the Promise of Free Speech
Full podcast interview (55 minutes) at ACTA website
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.
Massive Biomolecular Shifts Occur in Our 40s and 60s, Stanford Medicine Researchers Find
Stanford’s Farm-to-Table Camp Cultivates Kids’ Love for Veggies
City of Belmont Releases Environmental Review of Proposed Stanford Campus
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“Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.” –- AAUP 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure
August 16, 2024
A Model Statement re Academic Freedom
Editor’s note: We recently came across a webpage at Stanford’s Department of Political Science that sets forth what we believe is a well-considered statement about academic freedom as it affects both faculty and students and suggest it or something like it be considered for more widespread use at Stanford.
Excerpts (link in the original):
“The Department of Political Science is committed to academic freedom as a foundational value of higher education and research. As Debra Satz, Dean of Humanities and Sciences, writes ‘academic freedom is, in the first instance, the freedom of the scholarly community to pursue, disseminate, and openly discuss their work.’
“Academic freedom is a prerequisite for the duties associated with the role of a scholar. These duties include the creation, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge in the spirit of truth-seeking....
“Academic freedom is more limited than the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. To adapt an example from the legal scholar Robert Post: ‘Although the First Amendment would prohibit government sanctioning an editorialist for the New York Times if he were inclined to write that [the astrological signs of world leaders explain the incidence of inter-state wars], no [political science] department could survive if it were unable to deny tenure to a young scholar similarly convinced.’ Of course, scholars have constitutional rights to express outlandish views as private citizens or in public discourse. They do not have the same protections if they propagate such views in their position as scholars....
“Students also possess a set of rights as members of the Stanford academic community. They have the right to provide feedback on teaching and to disagree with their professors without fear of reprisal. They have the right to have their work judged by the internal standards of the relevant discipline and not, for instance, on the basis of their personal or political views, or on the basis of the political implications of their results.”
Full statement at Stanford’s Department of Political Science website
See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta (freedom of expression, a university’s involvement in political and social matters, and standards for the appointment and promotion of faculty)
Higher Ed’s Crisis of Confidence
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Higher education . . . is in the midst of a worsening ‘crisis of confidence.’ Consider surveys from the last six months alone. In March, the American National Election Study (ANES) pilot found only 26% of Americans approve of ‘how colleges and universities are run these days.’ A May survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression discovered that a mere 28% of the public has ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in colleges and universities. Last month, Gallup reported that the number of Americans with ‘little’ or ‘no’ confidence in higher education tripled since 2015, with distrust increasing ‘among all key subgroups in the U.S. population.’ Gallup’s data also showed more than two-thirds of Americans believe higher education is headed in the ‘wrong direction.’ ...
“Why have Americans lost faith in higher education? This deepening stream of discontent is fed by many tributaries, including the soaring costs of a degree and the growing misalignment between what colleges teach and what today’s job market demands. One of the most important factors, however, is the perception that colleges and universities are more interested in political indoctrination than in ‘truth-seeking.’ In the ANES data, for example, nearly 60% of Americans -- including 47% of liberals -- said ‘most colleges have a liberal bias in what they teach students.’ Similarly, Gallup found that 41% of those distrustful of higher education attributed their distrust to colleges and universities being ‘too liberal,’ trying to ‘brainwash’ students, or failing to encourage students to think for themselves." …
Full op-ed by Cal State Long Beach Prof. Kevin Wallsten at Real Clear Education
New Rules Re Student Conduct at Colleges Across the Country
Excerpts:
“University presidents are taking a stricter approach to the rules of daily life for students, hoping to tamp down protests and return campus life to a state of normalcy.
“The University of Denver is banning protest tents. Indiana University wants people to stop writing on the walls or holding late-night rallies. At Harvard University, students and others will need advance approval to use bullhorns or sidewalk chalk....
“A number of schools are turning the turmoil into opportunity, or trying to, with new programs aimed at helping students have more constructive arguments.
“William & Mary, a public university in Virginia, is training staff and faculty on the nonprofit Aspen Institute’s Better Arguments Project, which has principles such as ‘take winning off the table’ by focusing on learning rather than on one-upping debate opponents.
“‘People are hungry for tools that can help us manage a really difficult time in our national history and on our campuses,’ said Ginger Ambler, senior vice president for student affairs and public safety.
“At the University of Denver, orientation will include workshops on freedom of expression, where students will discuss the types of rhetoric to which they might be exposed on campus, including hate speech, and how to handle themselves in those situations.
“The university also plans to expand a program that brings a communications professor into classes and arranges debates to help students get comfortable disagreeing with each other....”
Full article at WSJ
Columbia Restricts Access Ahead of Fall Semester to Mitigate Protests
Excerpt (links in the original):
“Columbia University announced it has indefinitely restricted campus access to ‘non-affiliates’ in preparation for the start of the 2024-2025 academic year.
“Columbia administrators announced over the weekend that starting Monday [August 19], the school would move to ‘orange’ status,' which only allows students and staff with university ID cards on campus and places limits on entrances and exits, NBC New York reports. Guests will be allowed on campus but must go through a pre-registration process that university officials announced back in June....”
Full article at Campus Safety Magazine
See also "Columbia President Resigns After Months of Campus Turmoil" at NY Times
More Disclosures About Stanford Internet Observatory
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In March 2023, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) put out an article asserting that the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) -- comprised of the CIP, the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), Graphika, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) -- was not a ‘government cut-out’ controlled by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
“Racket has sent out numerous Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests about the Election Integrity Partnership. Recently, we received several new batches of results from the University of Washington that cast doubt on their earlier assertions....
[Followed by a screenshot of an email addressed to a NY Times reporter and a newly appointed fellow at Stanford Internet Observatory.]
“The response came from Matthew Masterson, at the time a non-resident policy fellow at the Stanford Internet Observatory. Masterson then only just finished working as a senior cybersecurity advisor at CISA, a position he held from March 2018 to December 2020. He stayed at CISA through the 2020 election, then moved to Stanford just in time to receive Ovide’s inquiry as a private citizen. His response is humorous in its frankness:
“’Happy to talk regarding the work we (the feds) did in coordination with social media companies to anticipate and respond to efforts to undermine the election.’
[Followed by more screenshots of email exchanges that took place during the subsequent year.]
“These emails illustrate the synergies between the ‘anti-disinformation’ industry and the national security state. In theory, the two factions are supposed to be separate entities, but in practice, they represent the same interests. It’s not often that a single disclosure offers evidence of the alacrity with which outfits like the EIP did the bidding of federal law enforcement agencies. We should be grateful for their candor....”
Full article at Substack. See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” and “Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back” at our Stanford Concerns -- 2 webpage
See also Stanford Internet Observatory press release re current status
See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, “Greater Control Must Be Exercised Over the Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford”
Editor’s note: Questions we have previously raised: Who gets to decide what is and isn’t true and subsequently gets to enforce the answers? Is it a proper role for Stanford not only to research the issues, but then to be the implementer of the solutions and the rejecter of alternative viewpoints? Is it appropriate that the Stanford name is seen as an endorsement of these activities? At what point does an entity, especially at Stanford, lose its independence and, in turn, its trustworthiness?
Also, how did it come about that Stanford reportedly spent a million dollars or more on lawyers to assert the position that it was appropriate for entities at Stanford, or anywhere for that matter, to play a role in censoring Stanford's own faculty members and even in areas that are within the recognized expertise of those faculty members?
AAUP Abandons Academic Freedom
Excerpt (link in the original):
“Last week, the American Association of University Professors set aside its hundred-year defense of academic freedom by opening the door to any number of individually initiated academic boycotts. Individual students and faculty have always had the right to advocate for academic boycotts, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. But an unqualified right ‘to make their own choices regarding their participation in them’ and not face discipline for doing so validates ‘rights’ that have not previously existed.
“That will include the right to refuse to write letters of recommendation for highly qualified students who wish to study at Israeli universities, an action that will be defended as only boycotting Israeli institutions. Not that any affected student will accept the distinction.
“I predict that hundreds of those and other individual micro-boycotts of Jewish and Israeli students and faculty will be initiated during the 2024-25 academic year as a consequence of the AAUP policy change. There will also be dedicated group efforts to criminalize collaborative research projects between faculty in America and Israel, projects that often entail institutional endorsement and support...."
Full op-ed by former AAUP president and U Illinois Prof. Emeritus Cary Nelson at Chronicle of Higher Education
See also Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams “The AAUP Is Wrong”
See also National Association of Scholars, "The AAUP's new statement places academic freedom on the backburner for temporary political gain."
See also Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford Produced Most Olympic Medals and Most Gold Medals of All U.S. Schools
Full article at WSJ
A Trustee’s Guide to Preventing Encampments and Occupations on Campus
Full document (20 pages) at ACTA website
Colleges Prepare for Students to Return After Spring Protests
Full article at Center Square
Cornell Student Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for Threats Against Jews
Full article at College Fix
U Chicago Law Students Fight Graduate Student Union Dues Being Used for Anti-Israel Boycott
Full article at College Fix
How College Enrollments Have Changed in the Past Decade
Full article and charts at USA Today
Colleges Are Cutting Majors and Slashing Programs After Years of Putting It Off
Full article at Associated Press
It’s Time for Colleges to Play Moneyball
Full op-ed at Minding the Campus
National Science Foundation Will Require Prior Consent for Research Impacting Tribes
Full article at Minding the Campus
Two-thirds of Colleges Are Prioritizing Online Versions of On-Campus Programs
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
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.
Paving a Path for Human-Centered Computing
Tapping Interdependent Motivation Shrinks Racial Achievement Gaps in Schools
Engineers Conduct First In-Orbit Test of Swarm Satellite Autonomous Navigation
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“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.” -- Former Democrat Senator and Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy
August 12, 2024
Yes, You Do Have to Tolerate the Intolerant
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Free speech is under attack.
“In the United States, government officials are increasingly telling social media companies which forms of damaging ‘misinformation’ they should censor, and now have the Supreme Court’s implicit blessing to do so. In Europe, overly broad restrictions on hate speech have been used to threaten people making unpopular statements with jail time. According to a government-sponsored draft bill in Canada, political opinions that could be construed as supporting genocide would be punished with life imprisonment.
“Plenty of arguments against free speech lack any credible pretense of sophistication. They simply jump from the undoubted fact that many people say dumb or disgusting things on the internet to the understandable, if wrong-headed, wish that anybody who says such things should be made to shut up. But those who argue for restrictions on free speech with an ounce of sophistication have increasingly begun to invoke an idea by a philosopher whose work they otherwise studiously ignore: Karl Popper and his ‘paradox of tolerance.’...
“People of vastly differing political persuasions, fighting for vastly different political purposes, now press into their service the work of a philosopher whose books they have likely never read. But for all of their differences, they have two things in common: First, they distort the nature of Popper’s thought. And second, they have created a deep and dangerous confusion about what freedoms liberal democracies should grant their members -- including those whose views may rightly be perceived as less than tolerant....
“The emphasis on skepticism and free inquiry that stood at the core of Popper’s views on science also shaped his political thought. He was deeply concerned about the fact that, even after World War II, many of his contemporaries continued to believe that there was something anachronistic about liberalism. These thinkers argued that liberal democracies would likely be outcompeted by other political systems, including both fascism and communism, that gave vastly more power to its rulers....
“Fears about placing too much power in the hands of a society’s rulers were also front of mind for Popper throughout the chapter of Open Society in which he went on to discuss the Paradox of Tolerance. Ever since Plato, he lamented, political philosophers have focused on the question of who should rule. Once the question is posed in that way, it is inevitable that people will give such answers as ‘the wise,’ the ‘faithful,’ or ‘the proletariat.’ But in Popper’s mind, even the best ruler is likely to do terrible things if his power goes unchecked. The better question, he suggested, was: ‘How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?’ Throughout his work, Popper made clear that his answer to that question included strict limits on the power of the state and a special emphasis on what he called ‘intellectual freedom.’ …
“The idea that there is something paradoxical about tolerating intolerant views is a product of anxiety and self-doubt. It is understandable that this anxiety and self-doubt has grown in our politically turbulent times -- as evinced by the headlines about the upcoming American elections or the recent riots in the United Kingdom. But the historical record suggests that liberal democracies have reason to be a lot more sanguine about the appeal of their values. When they allow genuinely open debate about sensitive issues, plenty of people will say plenty of offensive things; but the arguments that carry the day have, so far, proven to be the tolerant ones -- not all the time, but much more so than under any alternative form of government.
“Conversely, when societies start to censor and exclude, they nearly always do so in the name of truth or toleration or enlightenment. But the people who get to make decisions about who should be censored or excluded are, virtually by definition, the powerful rather than the marginalized. And as Popper recognized, the powerful have since the origins of recorded history been very adept at convincing themselves that they are defending freedom even as they tighten the screws of tyranny. His abiding obsession was to warn his readers about the ‘propagandists who, often in good faith, developed the technique of appeal to moral, humanitarian sentiments for anti-humanitarian, immoral purposes.’
“Eighty years later, his argument for an open society which refuses to let the powerful decide what ideas we can publicly question remains as urgent as ever.”
Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Yascha Mounk at Substack. See also Karl Popper bio at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
See also the following articles at our Stanford Concerns webpages, all of which describe activities we believe should not be taking place at Stanford, or at any other college or university, and for the reasons discussed in the above op-ed:
Helping Students Think in Morally Complex Ways
Editor’s note: We are impressed that the educational culture of this Carlsbad, California middle and high school is not the result of a vast bureaucracy but rather a set of simply stated values that then are self-executing by the students and faculty themselves. In our opinion, it’s an example of what could be done by de-bureaucratizing colleges and universities in a similar way.
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Consider this moment in history from a teenager’s perspective. The world inflamed by wars, hatred, and conflict. Social media platforms that encourage individuals to affirm one correct answer to every problem and assume a posture of aggressive self-righteousness in response to every challenge. No one believes anything can really change, and time seems to be running out.
“What’s missing from this dire picture is what psychologist Darcia Narvaez calls ‘moral complexity,’ or mature moral functioning. This includes practicing emotional regulation to allay reactivity and avoid impulsive judgments; holding multiple, often competing viewpoints in mind while deliberating between them; and, over time, developing head-and-heart expertise through ethical engagement with a specific community or cause.
“In other words, being a complex moral agent means being resilient, flexible, pragmatic, and kind. As Narvaez notes, citizenship scholars agree that the skills needed in the 21st century include ‘critical thinking, cooperation, tolerance, conflict resolution,’ and ‘the skills of a positive, mature moral functioning.’ Practiced collectively, these skills could change our world for the better.
“Yet it goes without saying that there aren’t enough adult exemplars of these skills visible today. In countless ways, adolescents are led to believe that what’s on offer is what moral maturity looks like. So the cycle repeats, cynicism deepens, and little does change....
“Conceived at Phillips Exeter Academy, the Harkness method makes the whole classroom into a student-centered space for listening and discussion. Typically the teacher or another student tracks participation using a variety of data gathering devices, which they share with the class during a debrief following the discussion. The purpose of Harkness is to promote student leadership and peer learning as well as accountability and self-reflection, so that one’s participation in discussions grows more thoughtful over time.
“On that particular day, I sat outside the circle and let students talk freely. Speaking politely through their masks of different shapes and colors, these pandemic-era eighth graders seemed to have a genuine thirst for moral knowledge. They clearly wanted to know what was true, and within the Harkness container, they engaged each other respectfully. Instead of jumping toward judgment and yelling at each other, as can happen with adolescents in less structured contexts, this group had practiced well enough to regulate their emotions and deliberate carefully....”
Full article by Pacific Ridge School teacher Michael Fisher at UC Berkeley Greater Good Magazine
See also Academic Excellence at Pacific Ridge School
See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage
Duke Doctor Fired After Questioning Mandatory DEI Pledge
Excerpts (links in the original):
“A former Duke University Health System emergency medicine physician is speaking out after he says he was terminated for questioning statements about systemic racism in his employer’s pledge.
“Dr. Kendall Conger had been with the Raleigh, North Carolina medical provider for 12 years before he lost his job this summer. He also was an adjunct associate in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the Duke University School of Medicine.
“The physician said he opposes racism and believes people should be treated with respect, but the pledge went too far by claiming racism is a 'public health crisis.'
“In a recent phone interview with The College Fix, Conger said he felt frustration with the lack of clinical data backing the pledge....
“Color Us United, a group dedicated to a race-blind society, recently launched a petition criticizing the university and its related health system for ‘unethical, dangerous, and potentially illegal practices in hiring and training.’
“‘Judging applicants, employees, or patients according to things like skin color is shockingly inappropriate and completely unacceptable,’ the petition states. ‘The primary function of any doctor or employer of doctors is to take care of patients, not promote political activism or racial ideology.’..."
Full article at College Fix
You Are Supposed to Pretend - Can Harvard and Other Universities Be Saved?
Editor’s note: This is a compelling, one-hour panel discussion from a few months ago that included former Suffix Prof. Kathleen Stock, Harvard Prof. Steven Pinker, FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff and Columbia Prof. John McWhorter and where, among other things, they discuss specific and often personal examples of the anti-intellectual behaviors that have arisen at our modern universities. They also discuss the obstacles to achieving reforms but ongoing efforts to do so.
Excerpt (from the YouTube program description):
“Leading academics come together to discuss and debate whether Western universities can be saved from peril. With free speech on campus in jeopardy, and weekly Palestine protests following years of attacks on curriculum and the pulling down of statues, can they be salvaged or do new universities need to be built?”
Full video (one hour) at YouTube
Proposal for Campus Teach-Ins on Freedom of Speech
Excerpts:
“With the academic year just a few short weeks away at college and university campuses nationwide, many are bracing for a reprise of last spring’s ugly protests, encampments and violent clashes among faculty, staff and students.
“Many administrators seemed like deer caught in headlights, unable or unwilling to acknowledge how serious the problem was at their institutions. Their feeble public responses made matters worse....
“Here’s a practical and impactful step that can be implemented at various higher education institutions right before classes begin. Remember teach-ins? This educational format became popular in the 1960s, as campuses brought all students together to learn about threats to the environment on what became known as Earth Day. Other teach-ins soon became popular, including those regarding the Vietnam War....
“Organizing a successful teach-in on freedom of speech needs to be approached thoughtfully and supported by necessary resources from various academic units. It will require organizing a range of speakers and a defined agenda. Community outreach will also be necessary.
“One critical element should be considered. The college or university president should marshal all required support for a freedom of speech teach-in and have all activities coordinated directly from his/her office. That will send a strong signal about its importance....”
Full op-ed by U Tennessee Prof. Stuart N. Brotman at DC Journal
Other Articles of Interest
Harvard Asking Applicants How They Handle Disagreement
Full article at Capital Gazette, and also at Bloomberg (paywall after a few articles per month)
The State of Civics Education and Free Speech on American College Campuses
Full Q and A with ACTA Fellow Steve McGuire at ACTA website
Colleges Race to Ready Students for the AI Workplace
Full article at WSJ
The Growing Trend of Attacks on Tenure
Full article at Edvocate, and a more complete discussion at Inside Higher Ed
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.
The Challenge of Aligning AI Chatbots
A Bronze Age Technology Could Aid the Switch to Clean Energy
Shortcomings in Heart Transplant Wait Lists for Kids
* * * * * * * * * *
I’m honored to start my term as Stanford president. I do so with the same sense of possibility I had when I first arrived at Stanford more than 30 years ago and an enduring belief in the excellence, innovation, and freedom that Stanford represents.” – Stanford President Jon Levin
August 5, 2024
Book Review - Stanford Alum and Former Harvard President Derek Bok Discusses the Plusses and Minuses of America's Elite Universities
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Derek Bok has served as president of Harvard twice, from 1971 to 1991 and again from 2006-07. He has written much about higher education and is by no means a reflexive defender of the status quo -- see, for example, his The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, which I reviewed here.
“Bok’s latest book is Attacking the Elites: What Critics Get Wrong -- and Right -- About America’s Leading Universities. He explains that his motivation for it was the absence of response from our ‘elite’ higher-education institutions to the surge in criticism from both sides of our political divide. As his subtitle suggests, he thinks that much of the criticism is weak, but not all of it. Since many will read the book (or at least its title) and say, ‘Bravo to Bok for answering those pesky critics,’ let’s see how well he’s done.
“First, Bok ruminates about what it means to be an ‘elite’ college or university and whether the nation benefits from having them. The elite schools, he says, are distinctive by virtue of admitting only a small percentage of their applicants (they’re selective), because they employ professors with stellar reputations (on the basis of having published lots of books), and because they have high rankings in the places that purport to tell us which schools are best.
“Fine, but does this ‘eliteness’ necessarily lead to excellent education? Later in the book, Bok admits that there are reasons to doubt that.
“More significantly, is it good for the U.S. to have such colleges and universities? Bok says yes, declaring, ‘The justification for a system of higher education marked by such inequality ultimately rests on the proposition that a few individuals, both students and adults, have exceptional ability to produce lasting and important additions to knowledge or to make other significant contributions to society in later life.’ Of course, some ‘elite school’ professors and graduates do great things, but so do many who attended colleges that aren’t regarded as elite, as do many who never went to college at all....
[Followed by a discussion of Bok’s observations about what seems to be going well and what needs improvement.]
Full book review at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal website. See also Amazon.
The Growing Threats to Academic Freedom
Excerpts (links in the original):
“The ability to teach and conduct research free from political interference is the cornerstone of higher education and its contribution to the public good. Academic freedom, however, has become increasingly threatened.
“V-Dem Institute, a global research organization that monitors indicators of democracy around the world, determined that academic freedom has ‘substantially worsened’ in the United States in recent years. This is largely due to political and social polarization.
“In recent months, professors across the country have sounded the alarm about infringements on academic freedom following crackdowns on pro-Palestine protesters on campus. The current conflict, however, is only the latest iteration of an intensifying decline in academic freedom....”
[Followed by a discussion of the five alleged causes: (1) legislation and academic gag orders, (2) activist governing boards, (3) donor influence, (4) erosion of tenure, and (5) delegitimization of higher education.]
Full article at The Conversation
Students Express Ambiguity About Free Speech
Excerpts (link in the original):
“For all the cries about free speech when it serves their purpose, 70% of students on campus believe that ‘speech can be as damaging as physical violence’ according to a new Knight Foundation campus survey.
“Sixty percent believe that ‘[t]he climate at my school or on my campus prevents some people from saying things they believe, because others might find it offensive,’ which is down from 65% in 2021, but still substantial. At the same time, students believe it has become more difficult to express themselves, with black students feeling it most....”
Full op-ed at Simple Justice. See also “Key Trends in Student Speech Since 2016” at Knight Foundation website and “70 Percent of College Students Say Speech Can Be as Damaging as Physical Violence” at Reason Magazine.
Discussing Controversial Subjects with the Use of Mapping
Excerpts (link in the original):
“In the fall of 2022, before classes had begun at Carnegie Mellon University, Simon Cullen sent a survey to students enrolled in his philosophy course, called ‘Dangerous Ideas in Science and Society.’ He was curious about what was driving the massive popularity of the class, in which students explore multiple sides of hot-button issues like abortion, guns and immigration.
“‘Why are you taking this class?’ was the first survey question.
“The answers from students astonished him. Learning and discussing ideas not allowed in their high school classrooms was one common answer. Speaking openly about controversial topics without getting attacked was another.
“Students get plenty of practice doing both of these things in Cullen’s class. But they also learn how to visualize, or map, arguments using informal reasoning. Cullen, an assistant teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon, teaches students how to diagram their arguments with supporting reasons and objections.
“At a time when concerns are mounting that sizable shares of students are intolerant of opposing views and graduating without critical thinking skills, Warren and Cullen are among a growing number of university faculty who want to teach students how to argue with civility....”
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
Anti-Semitism and the Demise of the American University
Excerpts (links in the original):
. . . . .
“The dark secret of anti-Semitism is that ignorance alone cannot explain it away or absolve those who adhere to it. If anything, the most vivid episodes of history’s anti-Semitism have begun with a country’s elites. The Inquisitors of early-modern Spain were from the elite of the Catholic world, hand-picked by monarchs and sanctioned by the Pope. In addition to founding the Inquisition, Pope Sixtus IV (1414-1484 AD) oversaw the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Library. He also founded Uppsala University in Sweden. Half a millennium later, the Nazis emerged not out of an uneducated rabble, but out of Germany’s elites. Proto-Nazi intelligentsia carefully created a deep philosophical basis for their worldview and set about promoting it. At least 80 members of the Nazi SS were German intellectuals. Other than the ideology in question, today’s elite anti-Semites are engaged in the same exercise with their theories of oppression and intersectionality and efforts to translate theory into activism.
“Adherents of intersectionality view the world through a matrix of ‘marginalized’ groups -- a binary society divided into the ‘oppressed’ and the ‘oppressor.’ This idea of a ‘matrix’ of oppression is the philosophical glue behind several academic fields built around ideas of shared grievance with a consistent lack of methodological rigor. While pervasive throughout today’s colleges and universities, research driven by intersectionality is fueled by confirmation bias more than anything scientific. Rather than trying to disprove a theory, studies on intersectionality rely on piling up data favorable to the argument. Over time, this creates fields lacking any notion of objectivity; instead, it lends academic weight to ideology rather than the production and dissemination of knowledge. In other words, many ideas found on today’s campus are worthless. Now, the world is taking notice...."
Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars
Other Articles of Interest
U.S. Diversity on Full Display at Paris Games
Full article from Reuters at US News
Financial Armageddon Is Coming for College Sports
Full op-ed by Ohio State Prof. Emeritus Richard Vedder at Minding the Campus
Two Major Academic Publishers Signed Deals with AI Companies; Some Professors Are Outraged
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
What Happened to American Civics?
Full op-ed at Brownstone Institute
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.
From Graduate School of Business: Why Research Matters
From School of Engineering: AI and Autonomous Driving
From School of Medicine: Health Risks of Forever Chemicals
"Free expression enables genuine diversity. It recognizes that a person’s identity -- be it racial, ethnic, sexual or any other identity -- doesn’t just manifest in ways that we see but also in ways that we hear through dialogue and debate. Diversity comes with unique worldviews and belief systems, and we cannot celebrate a person’s diversity without hearing them out.” – Cornell alums Dave Ackerman and Dr. Loretta Graziano Breuning at DC Journal
July 29, 2024
Stanford’s Incoming President Jon Levin Discusses a Culture of Dignity and Related Issues
Excerpts from Stanford Magazine:
. . .
“It’s no secret that it’s been a tough year to be a university president. Consider the headlines: ‘Wanted: New College Presidents. Mission: Impossible’ (the Wall Street Journal). ‘Is Running a Top University America’s Hardest Job?’ (the Economist). ‘You Could Not Pay Me Enough to Be a College President’ (the Chronicle of Higher Education). And, perhaps, a tonic: ‘Why Being a University President Is the Best Job in the World’ (Forbes).
“Levin is naturally inclined toward the latter camp. ‘Jon’s the perpetual optimist, glass overflowing all the time, but not in an over-the-top way,’ says [Stanford Prof. William Robinson]. ‘It’s understated, and it’s like, ‘We can do this.’
“Take the question uppermost in the public’s mind: how to handle free expression, dissent, and protest on campus. ‘I think the principles are very simple. The execution is not always simple,’ Levin says. ‘The university has a very noble and distinctive purpose, which is inquiry and learning. And in order to support that mission, we give students and faculty a very broad range of freedom of inquiry -- what to study and think about; and expression -- what they can say and write. It’s actually different than in a democracy. In a democracy, it’s there to protect the citizens from tyranny. At the university, the freedom is there to promote inquiry and learning. And at the same time, we have other rules around expression that are there to protect the freedoms of other people. You can’t disrupt a class; you can’t disrupt an event; you can’t interfere with other people being able to get to class or go to events or participate in activities.’
“To get a sense of Levin’s approach in action, look to the GSB. ‘I’m really proud of the culture of the school, and that was in evidence this year,’ which he calls a ‘very complicated’ one. ‘Particular students, but also the faculty and the staff, were so willing to engage in discussion and debate and to talk about complex issues and to do everything in a really open, curious, respectful way,’ he says. ‘I think it was a model for how educational institutions should navigate challenging times.’ He relies on a set of ideas from sociology, introduced to him by GSB professor Neil Malhotra, MA ’05, PhD ’08, to set the tone. ‘You can have an environment where people respond to disagreement or something going wrong or a conflict by escalating. It’s a culture of honor,’ says Levin. ‘You can have an environment where they respond by appealing to authority or social media. It’s a culture of grievance. Or you can have an environment where people respond by talking to each other. That’s a culture of dignity. So we want a culture of dignity, and that’s something we talk about with the students here from the very moment that they arrive. I always tell them -- I use this line from Ted Lasso -- 'Be curious, not judgmental.’
“Meanwhile, the university itself, Levin says, should not be a discussant. ‘Universities are not social justice organizations,’ he says. ‘They create immense societal good. And it is absolutely the freedom of the faculty and the students to be involved in political affairs, but it’s not the role of the university. Universities would do well where they can institutionally step back from politics and leave room for the faculty and students to debate and have discussion.’
“Furthermore, Levin says, he has come to the view that it’s ‘really not a good idea’ for university leaders to issue statements on political topics. That ‘actually undermines the educational mission because it sets the wrong example for students,’ he says. ‘What we really want is students to come to recognize that most of the issues that come from the world are complex and more nuanced than they might have otherwise thought. So we want students to think slowly, to ask a lot of questions, not to rush to think that everything is simple and clear-cut and has an obvious answer that just needs to be said more loudly and more forcefully than the way everyone else is saying it. And certainly not to be said in a 400-word email sent around 30 minutes after some global event.’ …
Full article at Stanford Magazine. See also Stanford Report.
Higher Education Is Key to Bridging Political Divisions
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Amid an especially fraught presidential election, polarizing armed conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, and deepening political divides over issues like immigration, the economy, and even our democracy itself, the nation is facing a politically charged moment that shows no signs of abating. Tribalism is on the rise, as is an intense -- and historic -- distrust of many of our nation’s most important institutions, including Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidency. Higher education has not been spared from this crisis of faith, with just 36 percent of Americans now expressing confidence in the country’s system of colleges and universities....
“Americans across the political spectrum agree that the country is facing a civic awareness. But healing America’s partisan divide requires more than just decreasing the temperature, calming the political rhetoric, and waiting for the election to pass. America's civic and educational infrastructure needs repair on a deeper, more fundamental level. Bridging this divide requires a renewed commitment to teaching college students about what it means to participate in a democracy—and to ensuring more learners complete their education so they can put that knowledge to work....”
Full op-ed at Real Clear Education
Other Articles of Interest
Academic Integrity in Academic Publishing
Full op-ed at Academe Magazine
Why You Should Still Want to Be a College President
Full op-ed at National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities website
Major Increase in Percent of Recent Graduates Who Now View Higher Ed as a Good Investment
Full 2024 graduation employment report at Cengage website; see also Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
3,000 Arrested at Campus Protests, But Most Charges Dropped
Full article at The Hill
University of California Spends $29 Million on Protest Security and Cleanup
Full article at College Fix
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.
How Stanford’s Law and Policy Lab Helps Establish Government Policy
Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology Studies How Elephants Communicate
How Saharan Dust Regulates Hurricane Rainfall
Modified Cell-Based Therapy Shows Promise for Lymphoma
SLAC and Stanford Researchers Advance Understanding of a Key Celiac Enzyme
“If we want a better society that produces better solutions to the problems it faces, we need to be teaching nonconformity at every single level of the education process . . . And yet our education system is incentivizing conformity and groupthink. Unless this environment drastically improves – and quickly, we shouldn’t be surprised that trust in the accuracy of professors’ and experts’ findings diminishes.” – From The Canceling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott
July 22, 2024
FIRE Survey Shows Rising Reports of Campus Censorship, Including Self-Censorship
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In a year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict went from barely a blip on most students’ radars to an almost all-consuming concern. Findings from FIRE’s forthcoming 2025 College Free Speech Rankings survey reveal that far more students this year than last year worry about censorship and self-censorship related to the war in Gaza.
“As of May 2, FIRE analyzed almost 1,900 open-ended responses from university students nationwide for this year’s CFSR survey. The survey asked students who reported self-censoring at least once or twice a month, ‘Please share a moment where you personally felt you could not express your opinion on your campus because of how you thought other students, a professor, or the administration would respond.’ In almost 9 in 10 responses, students explicitly stated concerns about censorship when discussing Israel, Palestine, and/or Gaza with friends, classmates, and/or professors. Students also overwhelmingly reported witnessing or experiencing censorship and/or self-censorship when discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“One student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote that the university’s administration ‘threatened to suspend students over protesting the Israeli genocide of Palestine.’
“Another at Emory University reported that ‘according to other upperclassmen, my school has recently started tracking people’s data to see if they have attended any protest going on in campus, in regards to the Palestine-Israel conflict.’ …
“According to the 2024 barometer survey, since the war in Gaza began on October 7, both students and Middle East scholars experienced higher levels of censorship than they did before the war began, with scholars facing pressure from external advocacy groups and administrators and students facing pressure from peers and the administration....
“The barometer survey results further reveal that 76% of U.S.-based scholars of the Middle East have felt a greater direct or indirect need to self-censor since the start of the war. And 69% reported self-censoring on topics involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (By contrast, in 2023’s barometer survey, conducted only a little more than a month after October 7, that percentage was 57%.)
“Even before October 7, FIRE reported faculty members were self-censoring more than they did during the McCarthy era. The barometer survey’s findings suggest that conditions for free speech on campus are deteriorating even further....”
Full article at FIRE website
ACTA Survey Shows Today’s Students Are Dangerously Ignorant of Nation’s History
Excerpts (link in the original):
“When Benjamin Franklin famously said, ‘A republic, madam, if you can keep it,’ he was, as usual, prescient.
“This summer, the democratic republic known as the United States of America is 248 years old, and civically minded organizations around the country are already busily working on plans to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. Such a milestone is a cause for real celebration; by most reckonings, we are the longest-lasting democracy in history. Democracies are fragile: The Athenian democracy never made it to 200. Americans should use this anniversary as an opportunity for sober reflection on the current state, as well as the future, of our own democratic republic....
“How much do today’s college students really know about their nation’s past? The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has conducted a fresh national survey of college students to answer just this question. The results are concerning.
“Sixty percent of college students could not correctly identify the term lengths of members serving in U.S. Congress. Sixty-three percent were unable to identify the chief justice of the Supreme Court. These are multiple-choice questions. Students did not have to recall John Roberts’s name, they merely had to recognize it, and a large majority failed. The same is true for the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, whose name was only known to 35% of students. Sixty-eight percent did not know that impeachment trials occur before the Senate, despite living through two presidential impeachments as well as the impeachment trial of a cabinet official....
“In a democratic republic such as ours, citizens must be informed for the commonwealth to function. As George Washington said in his Farewell Address, ‘In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.’ Far from being enlightened, our students today are seldom even taught the basics. This must change, for the sake of the students and for the future of our nation.”
Full op-ed and survey at ACTA website
See also “Do Our Students Know Enough?” at Diverse Issues in Higher Education and “Ten College Presidents Act on Civic Preparedness” at Civic Preparedness website.
See also Ohio State Prof. Emeritus Richard K. Vedder: “The results show that collegiate Americans today are extremely knowledgeable about relatively trivial matters of transitory interest, but rather clueless about important events, laws, and personalities related to our history and civic institutions. For example, responding to four-answer multiple choice questions, an overwhelming majority know that Jay-Z is married to Beyonce, or that Jeff Bezos is the owner of Amazon...” as also posted at the ACTA website.
UC Regents Ban Views on Israel, Other Political Opinion from University Homepages
Excerpts:
“University of California regents voted Thursday [July 17] to ban political opinion from main campus homepages, a policy initially rooted in concern about anti-Israel views being construed as official UC opinion.
“Political opinions may still be posted on other pages of an academic unit’s website, according to the policy approved at the regents meeting in San Francisco. It will take effect immediately.
“The main homepage of a campus department, division or other academic unit will be reserved for news about courses, events, faculty research, mission statements or other general information.
“Opinion must be published on other pages specifically labeled as commentary, with a disclaimer that they don’t reflect the entire university or campus. Those who want to post statements on their department websites must follow specific procedures and allow faculty members to weigh in through an anonymous vote....
“[An ongoing] review concluded, in consultation with university attorneys, that departments have the right to weigh in on political and social issues, although they cannot endorse candidates. The Academic Senate provided guidelines, such as making clear that statements represented faculty members or groups and not the university and ensuring that minority or dissenting views are not squelched.
“The policy now includes most of those guidelines but makes them mandatory. It requires campus departments to come up with procedures to develop statements, anonymously poll members to reduce pressure on those who may hold minority views and disclose how broadly the opinions are backed -- by a ‘supermajority,’ for instance -- along with vote totals....”
Full article at LA Times. See also Inside Higher Ed.
But see also the University of Chicago Kalven report: “The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars.... The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints...."
Alternative Viewpoint - The Illusion of Institutional Neutrality
Excerpts (link in the original):
“In April, I published a tiresomely long explanation of why the newly popular idea of ‘institutional neutrality’ is a dead end. My essay, ‘The Illusion of Institutional Neutrality,’ took up so much space because I wanted there to be at least one easily available account of where this idea came from, why it was about to be promoted as the perfect solution to campus unrest, and why it wouldn’t solve anything at all. Now that Harvard, among other universities, has hoisted the institutional neutrality flag and a whole gaggle of organizations -- left, right, and center -- have expressed their joy that the era of institutional neutrality has arrived, it is time for a mercifully short refresher.
“For those new to this discussion, ‘institutional neutrality’ is the idea that colleges and universities should refrain from taking positions on controversial public issues. They should exercise this restraint so that students and faculty members will have maximal freedom to discuss and debate various sides of those issues. The principle of institutional neutrality can be extended as a call for colleges and universities to refrain from taking substantive positions on all matters, not just currently controversial ones, because who knows what will be controversial tomorrow? A few years ago, it was uncontroversial that humanity had two biological sexes. Now, that is, at least in some quarters, a matter of hot dispute....
“Institutional neutrality turns out to be a soothing phrase to cover a complicated reality. Sometimes the university says the doctrine doesn’t apply to matters that touch key issues to the college’s survival. The debate over taxing university endowments, for example, is not one on which Harvard will ever be neutral, regardless of whether some faculty members are pro-tax and want to debate....
“American colleges and universities, embarrassed by students and faculty members who have behaved egregiously in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, are scrambling to find high moral ground. Institutional neutrality, however, isn’t it. What these colleges and universities really need to do is find the correct principles and stand on them. That’s not a formula. It’s a call for the hard work of determining when the university should forthrightly take a position -- regardless of the cost -- and when it should just as forthrightly say it welcomes open debate -- irrespective of the costs.”
Full op-ed by President of National Association of Scholars Peter Wood at Minding the Campus. In contrast, see the University of Chicago Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social matters.
Other Articles of Interest
Free to Speak, versus Modern Thought Police
This is the third episode in a three-part documentary at PBS and includes commentaries by NYU Prof. Emeritus and former ACLU President Nadine Strosser, U Chicago Prof. Jeffrey Stone and others (a PBS passport may be needed to stream).
See also Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative at our Stanford Concerns webpage, which includes our downloaded PDF copy of Stanford’s list of proscribed words and phrases and the parallels with what the documentary presents as modern forms of Newspeak in George Orwell's 1984.
Academic Freedom Alliance Calls for an End to Required Diversity Statements in Federal Grant Funding
Link to PDF copy
Medical Education Is at a Critical Crossroads
Full op-ed by Medical College of Wisconsin Prof. Russ S. Gonnering at Brownstone
What I Learned in the 1960s About Universities and Political Statements
Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Emeritus and former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School Joseph S. Nye at The Hill
Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
The Groundwork of Campus Civil Discourse
Podcast at Higher Ed Now
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.
Reversing Chemotherapy Resistance in Pancreatic Cancer
Trial of Cell-Based Therapy for High-Risk Lymphoma Leads to FDA Breakthrough Designation
A New Approach to the Problem of Water Affordability
“A great university can perform greatly for the betterment of society. It should not, therefore, permit itself to be diverted from its mission into playing the role of a second-rate political force or influence.” -- From University of Chicago's Kalven Report
July 15, 2024
Anti-Semitism Is a Real Problem, but the Antisemitism Awareness Act Is Not the Solution
Excerpts (links in the original):
“‘You are not doing the Lord's work until you get hate mail.’ That’s what a good law school friend of mine who used to work for the ACLU once told me -- and it’s true! Almost every day of a First Amendment lawyer's life is punctuated with hate mail, and boy, have we gotten a lot of it this year.
“The real test, however, is if you get it from ‘both sides’ -- or, really, all sides -- because that means you’re not playing favorites. It means you’re not just defending speech you agree with, which is easy, and that you’re willing to stick your neck out even for speech that you personally find objectionable or even repulsive....
[Followed by discussion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism and its use in the proposed legislation.]
“Our freedom of speech must include the freedom to express ideas that might be widely reviled because at times, some of the ideas that are widely reviled turn out to be our path forward: abolition, desegregation, and gay rights, for example. Of course, one might argue that it’s easy to know that anti-Semitism has no value the way those examples do; that there will come no point in the future where anti-Semitism turns out to be correct. But as I’ve articulated in my ‘pure informational theory of free speech,’ hearing each other out always has value, and making it possible for people who hold these views to air them is what gives us space to confront them. And even when you don’t succeed in changing anyone’s mind, there is a vast and irreplaceable inherent worth to knowing what people really think. Without it, you have literally no hope of having an accurate picture of the world. And without an accurate picture of the world, very little you do to try to improve it will be successful....
“Beyond just being clearly incorrect, the idea that crafting the right regulation will solve speech conflicts on campus neglects one important detail: The speech conflicts are being created on campus. People need to remember that all the problems we're seeing today have largely been caused by administrators who were on campus five, 10, and 20 years ago, when everything started to go really south for viewpoint diversity, freedom of speech, and academic freedom. The culprits are often the very same people who run the bias-related incident programs, draft the speech codes, and enforce the punishments of students, professors, and student journalists for their First Amendment-protected speech.
“And believe me, they are not unbiased....
“DEI bureaucracies have been built out in the vision of the social justice fundamentalist mindset, which believes in intersectionality -- an ideological oversimplification of complex realities. There’s really no way that you can hope to repurpose or expand DEI bureaucracies to protect the rights of American Jews because anti-Semitism is common to so many different groups; applying intersectionality to anti-Semitism just results in a much more potent anti-Semitism. The idea that empowering these DEI bureaucracies to fight anti-Semitism could have any effect that isn’t anti-Semitic suggests a total absence of familiarity with their work.
“It isn’t a psyop: Anti-Semitism is a problem on campus. But we won’t end it (or any other bigotry) by empowering the offices that exacerbated the problem, or by a government fiat to punish its expression.
“Our best path out of this bad situation is to work to limit how much these attitudes can be used to bias institutions, and to engage rather than silence the people who hold those attitudes....”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and CEO of FIRE Greg Lukianoff at Substack
See also "ACLU Urges Opposition to the Antisemitism Awareness Act" at ACLU website.
See also “Stanford’s Administrative Bureaucracy Must Be Brought Under Control” at Part 3 of our Back to Basics webpage.
See also “Reaping What We Have Taught” by former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis at our Commentary webpage.
Stanford Insists Internet Observatory, Which Engaged in Election-Time Censorship, Will Stay Open
Editor’s note: We repeat here what we stated months ago in Stanford's Roles in Censoring the Web at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage -- "These legal issues are obviously important, but putting aside what the courts decide now and in the future, there are important policy questions that separately must be addressed, also now and in the future, by Stanford and nationwide, including: Who gets to decide what is and isn’t true and subsequently gets to enforce the answers? Is it a proper role for Stanford not only to research the issues, but then to be the implementer of the solutions and the rejecter of alternative viewpoints? Is it appropriate that the Stanford name is seen as an endorsement of these activities? At what point does an entity, especially at Stanford, lose its independence and, in turn, its trustworthiness?"
Excerpts (links in the original):
“The status of Stanford University’s controversial Internet Observatory, a research group accused of participating in social media censorship, appears unclear after recent conflicting reports about its future.
“A recent report by the tech newsletter Platformer suggested the observatory may be closing after several key staffers, including founding director Alex Stamos, left or did not have their contracts renewed.
“Other news outlets reported the observatory was 'collaps[ing] under pressure,' being 'wound down' and 'closing.' Some popular social media posts suggested it was being permanently 'shut down.'
“However, the university contradicted those reports in a recent statement on the observatory’s website.
“‘Stanford has not shut down or dismantled SIO as a result of outside pressure,’ it stated. ‘SIO does, however, face funding challenges as its founding grants will soon be exhausted. As a result, SIO continues to actively seek support for its research and teaching programs under new leadership.’
"SIO will continue its 'critical work' through the 'publication of the Journal of Online Trust & Safety, the Trust & Safety Research Conference, and the Trust & Safety Teaching Consortium,' it stated.
"Furthermore, the observatory’s staff will be conducting research on 'misinformation' during the 2024 election, according to the statement....
“According to a Real Clear Investigations report, the Election Integrity Partnership [as run by Stanford Internet Observatory] ‘surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts and collected from the cooperating government and non-governmental entities that it calls its ‘stakeholders.’ …
“During the 2020 election cycle, ‘EIP generated a total of 639 tickets, covering some 4,784 unique URLs … disproportionately related to the delegitimization of election results,’ according to the report.
“Platforms such as Twitter, Google, and Facebook responded to tagged tickets at a response rate of 75 percent or higher; the platforms 'labeled, removed, or soft-blocked' 35 percent of the URLs shared through EIP, the report states.
“[Reporter Matt Taibbi] wrote the EIP scheme occurred on as many as 10 different platforms, including Twitter, now known as X. However, Stanford has outright denied its actions of ‘switchboarding’ and ‘censorship,’ he wrote.
“According to Taibbi, Stanford also wrongly claimed the Election Integrity Partnership did not ‘receive direct requests from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to eliminate or censor tweets’ and ‘did not make recommendations to the platforms about what actions they should take.’
“According to Taibbi, a U.S. House committee investigation, led by Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, found 75 instances of the EIP ticketing system specifically using the words ‘recommendation’ or ‘we recommend.’
“‘Imagine the arrogance of denying that one makes concrete recommendations while sitting on a pile of documents doing exactly that,’ Taibbi wrote.
“‘As for not receiving direct requests to eliminate or censor tweets,’ he wrote, ‘a combination of emails Jordan’s team dug up and documents we ourselves either had in the Twitter Files or obtained via FOIA made it clear that the EIP’s labyrinthine reporting system was designed so the government could deny it originated complaints, while EIP could deny it received complaints from the government.’ …
Full article at College Fix
See also "Greater Control Must Be Exercised Over the Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford" at Part 4 of our Back to Basics webpage.
Other Articles of Interest
Universities Should Promote Rigorous Discourse, Not Stifle It
Full op-ed by Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya and attorney Wesley J. Smith at Real Clear Education
MIT Grew Staff Size by 1,200 In a Single Year While Enrollment Barely Budged
Full article at College Fix. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
USC Prof. Shaun Harper Has a Plan to Save DEI, Including Targeting Dissenters
Full op-ed by USC Prof. Emeritus James E. Moore II at Minding the Campus
This College Professor May Have Figured Out How to Kill DEI
Full article at Substack
After Being Temporarily Suspended from Campus, USC Jewish Professor Fully Exonerated for Saying ‘Hamas are Murderers’
Full article at College Fix
Columbia Permanently Removes Three Administrators Caught Mocking an Alumni Panel on Antisemitism
Full article at College Fix
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.
Exploring the Complex Ethical Challenges of Data Annotation
Blending Disciplines for a Brighter World
New AI Approach Optimizes Antibody Drugs
"Because the university is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the university community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn." -- From the Chicago Principles for Freedom of Expression
July 8, 2024
Farewell to Academe
Excerpts (links in the original):
“After 42 years of academic life -- not counting five years spent getting a Ph.D. -- I am hanging it up. A while back, I concluded that the conversation that I would most dread overhearing would be an alumna saying to a current student, 'I know, I know, but you should have seen the old man in his prime.' I believe I dodged that one.
“My more than four decades, interrupted by stints of public service in the Defense and State Departments, were spent at just three academic institutions. Harvard formed and launched me; the Naval War College exposed me to America’s senior officer corps and its leadership culture; and Johns Hopkins, where I spent 34 years, gave me the opportunity to teach wonderful students, build a department, and become a dean. In all three places, I was given extraordinary freedom to think, write, speak, and serve my country, alongside remarkable colleagues, superiors, and, above all, students.
“And yet I leave elite academe with doubts and foreboding that I would not have anticipated when I completed my formal education in 1982. Watching the travails of Harvard -- where I received my degrees and served as an assistant professor and assistant dean -- has been particularly painful. Its annus horribilis did not even end with commencement, because Harvard’s dean of social science recently decided that he should publish an inane and dangerous article calling for the punishment of faculty who ‘excoriate University leadership, faculty, staff, or students with the intent to arouse external intervention into University business.’
“Inane, because how does one define excoriate, and how does one prove intent? Dangerous, because this is an open door to the suppression of freedom of speech, plain and simple, let alone academic freedom. And the article was also both arrogant and politically obtuse, because after the abuse Harvard has rightly taken this year from outraged alumni, students, donors, and faculty, not to mention journalists and members of Congress, it most definitely did not need a dean musing publicly about how best to suppress faculty impertinence.
“But Dean Lawrence Bobo’s call for the punishment of disaffected speech is symptomatic of deeper diseases in our elite universities. Job candidates being required to pledge fealty to progressive views on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are but one manifestation of a university culture that is often intolerant of free speech, unwilling or unable to protect unpopular minorities, and uninterested in viewpoint diversity. As a politically conservative young professor, I was in a minority -- but a large one. More important, I never felt that my views would be held against me by my colleagues. Now I would not be so sure. Inevitably, and justly, the public immunities, including tax exemptions, on which universities have thrived are endangered by the arrogance with which they respond to criticism, and their failure to live up to their own stated principles....
“There are many thousands of dedicated and capable teachers and scholars out there, no doubt. But I wonder whether in academe overall, the single-minded and inflexible commitment to the value embodied in the mottoes of my two universities –'Truth’ and ‘The truth will make you free’ -- still stands. The replication crisis, first detected in the discipline of academic psychology, makes one wonder. I suspect, however, that that value will flourish, together with broad intellectual culture and a genuine breadth of perspectives, but in different institutions than in the past, and I look forward to that....”
Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Emeritus Eliot A. Cohen at The Atlantic. See also the Commentary from Harvard Alumni, below.
How Congress Could Protect Free Speech on Campus
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Last year at Harvard, three Israeli Jews took a course at the Kennedy School of Government. They say that because of their ethnicity, ancestry, and national origin, their professor subjected them to unequal treatment, trying to suppress their speech in class and allowing teaching assistants and classmates to create a hostile climate for Jews.
“Afterward, they filed a complaint with Harvard alleging a violation of their civil rights. In May, their allegations appeared in a federal civil-rights lawsuit. It cites their claims as evidence that Harvard ‘ignores and tolerates’ anti-Semitism. Their professor, who is also Jewish, rejects that narrative and maintains that he taught the class appropriately....
“If you had to choose just one of these cases to illustrate their fraught implications, you couldn’t do better than the dispute at Harvard. The students make a strong case that they were subject to discrimination, strong enough that an outside attorney hired by Harvard to investigate agreed. At a minimum, I think they were treated unfairly.
“Yet validating their claims would also mean rejecting their professor’s plausible defense of his pedagogical judgments, despite his indisputable expertise, undermining academic freedom.
“More worryingly, Title VI doesn’t just guarantee equal treatment. It has been interpreted to mandate that colleges stop and remedy harassing behavior and prevent a persistently hostile climate. The lawsuit defines those concepts so expansively that, should all its arguments prevail, Title VI will conflict with free-speech protections more than it already does -- and in doing so, the suit underscores the problem with Title VI, because its interpretation of the statute is plausibly consistent with the law’s vague and malleable text....
[Discussion of students and teaching assistants organizing and then demanding specific elements to be incorporated into the course in question here.]
“Ganz was surprised, then angry, when a Title VI complaint, a precursor to the lawsuit, was filed with Harvard. ‘In my organizing years in the 1960s and ’70s in Mississippi and rural California, I was routinely called out as a Jew Communist outside agitator,’ he wrote in The Nation. ‘But now, I was being investigated at the Kennedy School? As an antisemite?!’ He believes that he taught not just lawfully, but with sound pedagogy informed by decades of experience as an organizer and a teacher.
“The outside investigator Harvard hired, an attorney named Allyson Kurker, reached a different conclusion. Her June 2023 report sided with the students in significant respects, finding that their free speech was stymied and that they faced a hostile learning environment based on their Jewish ethnicity. When Ganz rejected their campaign, he was motivated by ‘real concern’ for ‘students and teaching fellows he viewed as members of a group oppressed by Israel,’ she wrote, but the Kennedy School’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities emphasizes that the school should expose students to ‘even unpopular and controversial’ ideas and encourage them to ‘talk openly’ about ‘highly charged issues.’ …
“Though I question his approach, I am hesitant to advocate for federal courts or bureaucrats to second-guess the judgments of a longtime professor who has expertise in the field in a dispute where the ostensibly wronged students got good grades and course credit.
“Title VI allows students who feel they’ve experienced unequal treatment to appeal to civil-rights bureaucrats and the courts for a remedy. Yet the mere possibility of Title VI complaints creates an incentive for colleges to maintain costly, invariably biased speech-policing bureaucracies. Most monitor and micromanage interactions among faculty, teaching assistants, and students, chilling pedagogy and speech that should be protected....
“Rather than risk policing everyone’s speech more intensely, Americans should demand a reaffirmation of that most foundational civil right: the ability of everyone to speak freely. Safeguarding this right requires Congress to act. It should not repeal Title VI -- the prohibition on discriminatory double standards should stand. Instead it should amend the statute to clarify that nothing in the law requires policing speech protected by academic freedom or the First Amendment.”
Full op-ed by Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic
See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta regarding freedom of expression (the Chicago Principles), a university’s involvement in political and social matters (the Kalven Report), and standards for the hiring and promotion of faculty (the Shils Report).
How DEI Becomes Discrimination
Excerpts:
“In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court held that colleges and universities couldn’t engage in racial discrimination in the name of diversity. The 45-year-old dispensation from civil-rights law that the court effectively overturned had never applied to employment decisions. But its end ought to provoke institutions to scale back ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ initiatives more broadly. Some appear to be doing so: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard said recently they would no longer require ‘diversity statements’ from prospective hires.
“Yet there is evidence that many universities have engaged in outright racial preferences under the aegis of DEI. Hundreds of documents that I acquired through public-records requests provide a rare paper trail of universities closely scrutinizing the race of faculty job applicants. The practice not only appears widespread; it is encouraged and funded by the federal government.
“At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a large hiring initiative targets specific racial groups -- promising to hire 18 to 20 scientists ‘who are Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander.’ Discussing a related University of New Mexico program, one professor quipped in an email, ‘I don’t want to hire white men for sure.’ …
“A key requirement is that recipient institutions heavily value diversity statements while selecting faculty....
“Emails reveal candid discussions about the perceived aim of the [NIH] program. In April 2023, a professor running the University of New Mexico’s cluster hire emailed Jessica Calzola, the NIH program official overseeing the First program, to ask whether Asian-Americans count as underrepresented. The professor later wrote, ‘I really need a response at least by tomorrow, because it is now holding up our search teams.’ …
“The documents I reviewed point to a large-scale sleight-of-hand in the application of the NIH First program. They give all the more reason to reconsider one of the most controversial practices in higher education, mandatory diversity statements, which provide a convenient smokescreen for discrimination. Lawmakers would be wise to investigate this practice closely -- especially the NIH First program....”
Full op-ed by John Sailor of National Association of Scholars at WSJ
Commentary from Harvard Alumni
Excerpts (links in the original):
“The recent Harvard Crimson op-ed by professor and dean of social science Lawrence D. Bobo calling for sanctions against faculty members who criticize Harvard University leadership with the intent to arouse the intervention of ‘external actors’ into university business was stunning....
“When we attended Harvard, we learned that our thinking improved through critical analysis and debate. Criticism exposed the flaws and weaknesses in our arguments and forced us to better present and support our ideas or to change them in the face of compelling evidence that they were not altogether correct. We were taught not what to think but how to think. Open and free debate was the path to arriving at the best answer, particularly debating the arguments that we found most disagreeable....
“In countries like China and Russia, one is punished if they present an idea that is classified as antipatriotic or that is deemed to promote a foreign ideology. Is this truly the direction that Harvard should now be turning?
“Bobo’s call for punishing heretics is difficult to understand in light of surveys that year after year demonstrate that self-censorship, by students and faculty, is a significant issue at Harvard and other schools. The degree to which students and faculty withhold their views diminishes materially the intellectual experience that many come to Harvard to realize and detracts from the public debate on how to improve the university. It is also difficult to reconcile Bobo’s proposal with steps that have been taken in the past year to foster more open dialogue at Harvard and to create a culture of civility and tolerance....
“Is Harvard moving forward toward open dialogue and greater academic freedom or will it cling to the strand of illiberalism that has stained the university in recent years?”
Full op-ed by Harvard Free Speech Alliance alumni at Boston Globe
Other Articles of Interest
Student Loan Borrowers Owe $1.6 Trillion; Nearly Half Aren’t Paying
Full article at NY Times
Charges Dropped Against UT Austin, Columbia University Pro-Palestine Protesters
Full article at Campus Safety Magazine
Jewish Students Sue UCLA, Claim School Allowed Anti-Israel Protesters to Block Them from Campus
Full article at Campus Reform
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.
Chip-Scale Titanium-Sapphire Laser Puts Powerful Technology in Reach
Stanford Medicine Offers Gene Therapy for a Devastating Pediatric Neurologic Disease
“A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.” University of Chicago Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social action
July 1, 2024
Seeking Solutions
Editor’s note: Last week’s June 24 Newsletter had links to two Stanford reports, one from the university’s Jewish faculty, students, staff and alumni and one from its Muslim faculty, students, staff and alumni along with a NY Times article that included this rather downbeat summary, “One report documented antisemitic threats. The other, anti-Muslim threats. Both signaled that there may be little room for agreement.”
We see it differently. Yes, these and many other groups have encountered wrongful behavior, some of it seriously inappropriate and even dangerous for a college or university campus. Both groups who worked on these reports are sincerely seeking solutions. But the two reports advocate still more separateness as key elements of their solutions. That is, more faculty and staff representing each separate group, more courses that focus on the perspectives of each separate group, more student services staff for each separate group, etc. Which is why we are pleased to present the following article by Carleton College professors Anna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder who once again demonstrate, as they have in numerous other articles that we have posted in prior Newsletters, the benefits of scholars with very different backgrounds and interests speaking and working together.
We thus make this proposal for Stanford. Rather than promoting still more separateness in what Stanford’s faculty teach and research, we suggest instead that Stanford needs to offer, within its existing structures, more cross-disciplinary courses such as comparative religion, the causes and history of war, how diverse and often antagonistic cultures have been clashing and assimilating for hundreds and thousands of years, etc. (See former Stanford President Gerhard Casper’s speech, “Concerning Culture and Cultures” at our Stanford Speaks webpage.) In doing so, the participating faculty members could demonstrate in both their teaching and research how scholars with different backgrounds and interests can work together; that by discussing their different perspectives and drawing upon their different areas of expertise, they can enhance the quality and relevance of their own teaching and research; and that in the process, they could help restore the campus climate and demonstrate the types of open dialog that have made Stanford and our other U.S. colleges and universities the extraordinary intellectual and economic engines that they have become.
Campus Protests Don’t Undermine the College Mission
Excerpts (links in the original):
“As professors at a small liberal arts college, we are deeply committed to teaching. The classroom is the nerve center of campus life. It’s a space devoted to the dissemination of knowledge and the development of critical thinking skills. As such, shouting, personal attacks and political sloganeering have no place in the classroom. Civil discourse is the name of the game. And the game is governed by the rules of academic freedom where expertise, evidence, and reason should prevail over gut feelings and grandstanding.
“The quad, however, is more akin to a public square than to a seminar room. (It really is a public square at public universities where the First Amendment pertains.) We must tolerate a much wider range of speech on the campus green than in the classroom. Some of it will be misinformed, intemperate, or offensive, especially when it comes to student protests. It isn’t possible to stake out a public position on highly contentious issues such as Israel-Palestine without causing a stir and ticking people off. But that’s a price college leaders must be willing to pay if they are genuinely committed to free expression. As the Chicago Principles explain, ‘concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.’ …
“Citizenship in the United States is a big tent that requires lots of different skills in different contexts. Political protest is just one of its many aspects. There’s a time for listening, discussion and considered deliberation. There’s also a time when the ‘fierce urgency of now,’ in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorable words, calls for ‘direct action’ like marches and sit-ins.
“As long as protesters are not targeting classroom instruction and directly hampering the learning of their peers, their actions are squarely within the realm of exercising their civic rights. If colleges and universities are to remain true to their dual mission of training thinkers and citizens, the space for non-violent political activism on campus must be protected. As legal scholars John Inazu and Bert Neuborne have noted, ‘the freedom to assemble peaceably remains integral to what Justice Robert Jackson once called ‘the right to differ.’ If there is one place where ‘the right to differ’ should be protected, it’s institutions of higher education, where disagreement and debate ought to be the coin of the realm.”
Full op-ed by Carleton College professors Anna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder at Education Next
More About the Adverse Impacts of Mandatory Diversity Statements
Excerpts (links in the original):
“MIT’s announcement that it will no longer require prospective faculty members to submit ‘diversity statements’ is good news for American higher education. Academic institutions around the world should follow MIT’s example.
“‘Diversity statements’, a one or two-page essay about the job applicant’s commitment to advancing diversity at the university often evidenced by stories from the past and/or their pledges for the future, have been increasingly used as a primary filtering mechanism for faculty hiring. Young scholars seeking to enter the profession, who have spent years pouring themselves into the highly specialized scholarly literatures of their fields, found themselves at the gateway to the profession pitched a hard curve: write an essay that will convince some unknown hiring committee of the depth and sincerity of your commitment to the ill-defined goal of ‘diversity and inclusion.’
“Only a bigot could oppose such a requirement, right? Hardly. As MIT recognized, this recent fad in academic hiring may have begun with the best of intentions, but the experiment failed....
[Followed by discussion of the negative impacts of diversity statements, etc.]
“Law professor Eugene Volokh illustrates the moral hazard of this approach with a simple thought experiment: imagine asking prospective faculty for the same kind of required statement of contributions and commitments, except to ‘the war effort’ instead of to diversity.
“University leaders might have good reasons to support a war, or to oppose one. But requiring applicants to declare one way or the other would be a shoddy way to invite scholars into a community of open inquiry. Nor would such an approach be likely to foster a culture of healthy debate. Certainly, it would not be a process likely to recognize and reward scholars with intellectual courage and personal integrity. Quite the opposite....”
Full op-ed by Brown University Prof. and Heterodox Academy President John Tomasi at Real Clear Education
Other Articles of Interest
Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences to Stop Requiring Diversity Statements for Tenure-Track Positions
Full article at ACTA website
A New Way to Hire Great Faculty
Full op-ed at James Martin Center
Harvard Task Forces Release First Recommendations on Antisemitism, Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Bias
Full article at Harvard Crimson
How DEI Corrupts Universities
Full op-ed at City Journal
Correction
In our June 26 Newsletter re the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Murthy v. Missouri, there was one place that had an incorrect case name, and which has been corrected at our website. We regret the error.
Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Digital Advertisers Often Fund Misinformation Unwittingly
Using Wastewater as an Early Warning of Disease
Customizable AI Tool Helps Identify Diseased Cells
"Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom." -- From the Chicago Principles for Freedom of Expression
June 26, 2024
Supreme Court Decision in the Murthy Case [with case name corrected]
Editor’s note: Earlier today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Murthy v Missouri in which the plaintiffs had obtained an injunction from a lower court to prevent government agencies from advising social media and similar platforms that the agencies believed postings were misleading and/or should even be removed, including the use of intermediaries such as Stanford Internet Observatory. In addition to the plaintiffs for several states, there were several individual plaintiffs including Stanford School of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
Six on the nine Justices (Barrett, Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Jackson) concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing for the remedies they were seeking. A dissenting opinion was filed by Justices Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch.
We have posted a PDF copy of the majority and dissenting opinions at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage (“Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web”) in addition to a copy of the brief that had previously been filed on behalf on some individual journalists, a copy of Stanford’s amicus brief opposing the plaintiffs and a copy of the oral arguments several months ago at the Supreme Court.
No matter how one looks at the appropriateness of government entities engaging in these activities, we have long questioned the roles of Stanford – not in Stanford's researching the issues, but rather the situation where one or more centers at Stanford were implementers of censorship activities. We would not allow those types of active roles in other types of research. For example, the inappropriate involvement of the researchers in the Stanford Prison Project led to national standards about the need for independence in university and similar research.
That said, here are some related commentaries:
Fire's Statement on Murthy v. Missouri at Fire website.
"The Supreme Court Punts on Censorship" by Matt Taibbi at Substack
Section 4 of our Back to Basics webpage about the roles of centers, incubators and accelerators at Stanford.
"The End of the Stanford Internet Observatory" at Stanford Review.
Alternative Viewpoint - "What Happened to Stanford Spells Trouble for the Election" by Renée DiResta, former research director of Stanford Internet Observatory, at NY Times.
House Committee report concerning alleged activities of government agencies.
June 24, 2024
Two Reports Issued re Impact of October 7 on Stanford’s Jewish and Muslim Communities
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Two separate committees -- the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Communities Committee and the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias -- have each released reports from their seven-month reviews of what people in their communities have experienced before and after the events of Oct. 7, 2023.
“As at many universities across the country, the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel and Israel’s military response have profoundly impacted the Stanford community and highlighted longstanding concerns.
“Two reports from separate committees – one from the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias and another from the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian Communities Committee – reveal the extent of these effects on Stanford students, staff, and faculty as well as parents and alumni.
“Each committee examined a wide range of issues and distinct experiences within their communities and identified numerous ways to address biases while enhancing life on campus for everyone. The committees make a wide variety of recommendations on topics ranging from campus policies and procedures to norms around campus expression, to academic infrastructure and educational offerings....
Full article at Stanford Report. See also NY Times “One report documented antisemitic threats. The other, anti-Muslim threats. Both signaled that there may be little room for agreement.”
The Intellectual Narrowing of Our Universities
Excerpts (link in the original):
[Introductory paragraphs about Harvard, Penn, etc.] . . . “Those who sense more than a whiff of political opportunism and anti-intellectualism in this assault are not mistaken. But the public's impression that American higher education has grown increasingly closed minded is undeniably correct. Indeed, concerns about the ideological drift of the university are no longer limited to conservatives, but now include some left-leaning faculty who worry that higher education has become, in the words of Princeton professor Gregory Conti, ‘sectarian.’
“This mounting sectarianism manifests itself in various aspects of the university, including the scope of debate within and outside the classroom, the growth of campus administration, and the tenor of student life. For a professor like myself, the character of the professoriate is the most salient aspect. And where conservative faculty are concerned, the facts are beyond dispute: Their numbers are low and continue to fall....
[Extensive discussion of factors that impact the pipeline for faculty recruitment and advancement, etc.]
“... Academia has leaned left for quite some time, as one can see from some of the earliest studies of the subject -- such as Everett Carl Ladd and Seymour Martin Lipset's 1975 book The Divided Academy (notable in part because one would be hard-pressed to name a sociologist in an elite university today as conservative as Lipset). But when The Divided Academy was published, one could still find highly prestigious social-sciences departments featuring a large group of prominent conservatives. In my discipline, to take one example, conservative scholars James Q. Wilson, Edward Banfield, Harvey Mansfield, and Samuel Huntington were all part of Harvard's government department in 1975. When I studied at the University of Virginia from 1989 to 1994, my dissertation committee featured three extraordinarily learned and serious conservative thinkers: Martha Derthick, James Ceaser, and Steve Rhoads. Thirty years later, I cannot think of a top political-science department in the country where one could put together such a committee....
“This is a depressing state of affairs. Most of what I have described are deeply path-dependent processes, and social scientists tend to be much better at describing how such processes reproduce themselves than how they can be disrupted....
“For some liberal institutionalists, this translates into a commitment to merit in scholarship and hiring. For others, like myself, merit needs to co-exist with pluralism -- a commitment to accepting diverse ways of studying reality and basic moral precepts. True scholarship -- the kind that leads one to check the footnotes and dig into the datasets of fellow scholars -- depends on conflict. Without that, it is too easy to let sloppiness slide....
“In some ways, the problem is even worse for liberal institutionalists than it is for those on the right. Conservatives have organizations that can facilitate collective action and mutual support. We the non-aligned barely have a name to call ourselves, much less a way to organize and promote our interests in places like universities. What's more, liberal institutionalists tend to have an atomistic sense of the academic vocation, believing that uniting to defend 'our' interests is inconsistent with the individualistic character of scholarship. This means they are in a poor position to organize for self-defense....”
Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Steven Telles at National Affairs. See also former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy, "The Threat from Within."
A Harvard Dean’s Assault on Faculty Speech
Excerpts (links in the original):
“It is not surprising for a boss to think that employees should avoid saying things in public that might damage the organization for which they both work. It is not even surprising for the boss to understand ‘damage’ to include making the boss’s own life more difficult.
“But college faculty members have fought very hard, for a very long time, to be protected from such attitudes. They have established that, unlike employees at most organizations, they have the right to publicly criticize their employer and their administration. So it is notable when an especially prominent administrator publicly announces that faculty speech rights should be rolled back a century or so. That is what Lawrence D. Bobo, dean of social science and a professor of social sciences at Harvard University, did last week in an opinion essay published in The Harvard Crimson with the ominous title, ‘Faculty Speech Must Have Limits.’
“Members of the faculty, Bobo argued, have the right to debate ‘key policy matters’ in ‘internal discussion,’ but they should be careful that their dissent not reach outside ears:
“‘A faculty member’s right to free speech does not amount to a blank check to engage in behaviors that plainly incite external actors — be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government -- to intervene in Harvard’s affairs. Along with freedom of expression and the protection of tenure comes a responsibility to exercise good professional judgment and to refrain from conscious action that would seriously harm the university and its independence.’ …
[Followed by extensive discussion of free speech, academic freedom, etc.]
“Of course, it is easier to tell whether a theater is on fire than whether a college has gone astray, but it is precisely because uncertainty is unavoidable that administrators must not be able to suppress speech criticizing them. What might look to a dean like a moral panic might, to others, seem like a necessary reform movement. Settling that dispute requires speech and persuasion, not threats of discipline.”
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington at Chronicle of Higher Education
Confidence in Colleges and Universities Continues to Plummet to New Lows
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Confidence in institutions of higher education among Americans continues to plummet to new lows, according to recent national polls commissioned by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“The polls, one conducted in February with a follow-up in May, asked a sample of American households: ‘How much confidence, if any, do you have in U.S. colleges and universities?’ The results were then compared to a Gallup poll that asked a similar question in 2023....
“The results not only demonstrate a significant decline in national confidence since the 2023 Gallup poll, but that this decline was especially severe among young people ages 18 to 34, Democrats, and women, with those demographics showing the largest drops, FIRE researcher Nathan Honeycutt wrote in a news release.
“What’s more, the drop in confidence from FIRE’s February to May polls shows the unrest and pro-Palestinian protests that have engulfed campuses in recent months has hurt higher education’s reputation further....
“Asked to weigh in on the polls’ results, Professor Michael Taylor, dean of students at Thomas More College, said he thinks both students and the institutions they attend have in some ways lost sight of the true purpose of higher education.
“There is too little focus on truth and too much focus on practical ends, which has caused a general disillusionment regarding the overall worth of education, Taylor said.
“‘So when confronted with these polls today,’ Taylor told The Fix via email, ‘the question we should be asking is: Confidence in what? In other words, what are colleges claiming to offer, and what are students hoping to achieve?’ …
Full article at College Fix. See also College Pulse/FIRE Free Speech Rankings at FIRE’s website.
Policy Center Says Stanford Internet Observatory Has Not Shut Down and Criticizes Those Who Have Been Criticizing It
Excerpts:
“The Stanford Internet Observatory continues its important work following the departure of founding director Alex Stamos under the leadership of faculty director Jeff Hancock, whose research program focuses on areas of trust, deception and online harms; social media and well-being; and, AI in human communication....
"Additionally, SIO faculty and staff will continue their work looking into psychological and media research questions associated with misinformation around the 2024 election....
“SIO and Stanford remain deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much needed academic research -- both at Stanford and across academia.”
Full statement at Stanford Cyber Policy Center website. See also "Stanford's Roles in Censoring the Web" at our Stanford Concerns archived webpage and prior articles by Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger.
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford Censorship - The End of the Stanford Internet Observatory
Full article at Stanford Review
See also "My First Job, at the Stanford Internet Observatory" by Stanford undergraduate Julia Steinberg at Free Press.
Let’s Give Frats Another Look
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education
New Title IX Regulations Blocked by Increasing Numbers of Courts
Full article at NY Times. See also Inside Higher Ed.
Employers Want Career Readiness Skills, Not Just Good Grades
Full article at College Fix
Heterodox Academy Conference - Where Is the University Going?
Full article at College Fix
The Choice - Should Jewish Students Accept the Mantle of a Marginalized Group, or Should They Reject DEI Ideology Altogether?
Full op-ed at Quillette
See also Making DEI a Required Course Is Part of the Problem at Association of College Trustees and Alumni website.
See also The Funding of the Anti-Israel Protest Groups including detailed charts at Off the Press.
Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Commencement Remarks by Stanford President Richard Saller
A Message of Joy for ’24 Grads
Six Distinct Types of Depression Identified in Stanford Medicine-Led Study
"To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures." -- From University of Chicago's Kalven Report
June 17, 2024
About Stanford Internet Observatory
Editor’s note: Two years ago, one of our readers called our attention to something called the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). We had never heard of it previously and weren’t sure how valid the reader’s concerns were. In subsequent months, the SIO and its affiliated activities (the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project) became the subject of increasing attention in national media and elsewhere.
Over time, we likewise became concerned about why such an entity was allowed to engage in what appeared to be censorship activities, coordinated with government entities and Big Tech companies, and including restricting or even removing emails, Tweets, articles and other items on the web based on the content and/or who was the author. SIO was being run by Stanford-paid staff who were not members of the faculty, were using Stanford’s name and facilities and even were recommending restrictions on or the removal of statements by tenured members of Stanford’s own faculty and on topics on which those faculty members had widely recognized expertise.
For anyone interested, we refer you to our prior articles, “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web,” that have now been moved to our Stanford Concerns archived webpage. This includes PDF copies of briefs filed by Stanford and others. We also ran periodic articles in our weekly Newsletters that can be found at our Past Newsletters webpage.
Some of the legal issues raised by these activities are expected be addressed in the case of Murthy v Missouri that is pending before U.S. Supreme Court. We will post articles about this decision, whichever way it comes out, once the Court issues its opinion in the next week or two. With that background, we bring you this update.
Stanford Internet Observatory Closes
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Last night [June 13], a story by Platformer -- the home of Zoë Schiffer, who authored the Extremely Hardcore book about life 'inside Elon Musk’s Twitter' -- made a blunt announcement. The Stanford Internet Observatory, she and Casey Newton wrote, is being ‘dismantled’:
“‘After five years of pioneering research into the abuse of social platforms, the Stanford Internet Observatory is winding down. Its founding director, Alex Stamos, left his position in November. Renee DiResta, its research director, left last week after her contract was not renewed. One other staff member’s contract expired this month, while others have been told to look for jobs elsewhere, sources say.’
“After sources in and out of government confirmed the Platformer report, opponents of digital censorship across the Internet were quick to celebrate....
“During a frenetic period at the end of the Twitter Files, I [Matt Taibbi] joined other site contributors like Andrew Lowenthal and Undead FOIA in focusing on SIO’s Election Integrity Partnership as a possible key to a government-partnered content-flagging scheme in the 2020 election. Their Virality Project seemed to perform a similar role in the pandemic. Reporters like Lee Fang (who sniffed around Stanford even before the Twitter Files) and Michael Shellenberger also dug in. Subscribers’ patience with this not-always-thrilling, acronym-laden material helped us produce research aiding both the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court case and [Congressman] Jordan’s high-profile investigation....
“Eventually emails showed Twitter knew from the start that the EIP was the idea of Homeland Security officials (‘DHS want to establish a centralized portal for reporting disinformation’ lawyer Stacia Cardille wrote in April 2020). Twitter execs described how the firm had already done a ‘demo with DHS/CISA’ of the program by June of 2020, and by October, Twitter execs were receiving ‘Hello EIP friends’ emails for an ‘all-hands’ meeting that was sent to 111 people across the four non-governmental partner organizations, a fair indication of the size of the project. Humorously, the program was originally called the ‘Election Disinformation Project,’ until SIO chief Alex Stamos concluded that the name might lead people to think the group was promoting disinformation....”
Full op-ed by Matt Taibbi at Substack/Racket
Stanford Shuts Down Censorship Operation
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Over the last 18 months, Public has extensively documented the mass censorship effort led by the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) for the United States government. Accounts vary, but either the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked SIO to lead the effort or SIO’s ostensible leader, Alex Stamos, proposed the idea.
“The brains of the SIO operation was Renée DiResta, an ostensibly ‘former’ CIA employee. Senate Democrats, the New York Times, and other news media close to the Intelligence Community (IC) heavily promoted DiResta starting in 2018, when she spread disinformation exaggerating the influence of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. In 2020 and 2021, DiResta and SIO led a DHS effort that successfully pressured social media platforms to censor disfavored views of Covid and interfere in the 2020 elections.
“Now, in a major victory for free speech advocates, SIO has decided not to renew its contracts with DiResta and Stamos, who have both left the organization. A blog called ‘Platformer,’ which is sympathetic to SIO’s censorship efforts, reported yesterday that ‘the lab will not conduct research into the 2024 election or other elections in the future.’ …"
Full op-ed by Michael Shellenberger at Substack/Public
Alternative Viewpoint: Stanford’s Top Disinformation Research Group Is Shut Down Under Pressure
Excerpts (link in the original):
“The Stanford Internet Observatory, which published some of the most influential analysis of the spread of false information on social media during elections, has shed most of its staff and may shut down amid political and legal attacks that have cast a pall on efforts to study online misinformation.
“Just three staffers remain at the Observatory, and they will either leave or find roles at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, which is absorbing what remains of the program, according to eight people familiar with the developments, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
“The Election Integrity Partnership, a prominent consortium run by the Observatory and a University of Washington team to identify viral falsehoods about election procedures and outcomes in real time, has updated its webpage to say its work has concluded....
“Stanford University spokesperson Dee Mostofi said in a statement that much of the Observatory’s work would continue under new leadership, ‘including its critical work on child safety and other online harms, its publication of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, the Trust and Safety Research Conference, and the Trust and Safety Teaching Consortium.’
“‘Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much needed academic research -- both at Stanford and across academia,’ Mostofi added.” …
Full article at Washington Post
Other Articles of Interest
John Stuart Mill’s Enduring Arguments for Free Speech
Full op-ed at Fire website
Senior Columbia Administrators Trade Hostile Messages During Jewish Panel
Full article at Free Beacon. See also “Dean Says Disparaging Texts, Vomit Emojis Don't Reflect the Views of Administrators”.
Stanford Commencement 2024
Video (2:27 minutes) and other highlights at Stanford Report
“. . . on any campus where intersectionality thrives, conflict will be eternal, because no campus can eliminate all offense, all microaggressions, and all misunderstandings.” -- Jonathan Haidt
June 14, 2024
How College Leaders Can Overcome the Current Campus Crisis
Excerpts (links in the original):
“It’s not enough to say that free speech is important. Now is the time for colleges and universities to put words into action....
“First thing’s first: Colleges and universities must ensure their policies safeguard expression rather than stifle it. While this sounds simple, 85% of America’s four-year institutions either clearly and substantially restrict free speech or impose vague regulations on expression. Worse yet, more than 1 in 5 students reported that their college administration’s stance on free speech on campus is not clear....
“Second, universities must not strangle free speech with red tape. Institutions like Kean University mandate that students reserve an area multiple days before protesting or passing out pamphlets and brochures. These unnecessary hurdles chill speech by limiting students’ ability to express themselves in the moment or overburdening students to the point they may choose not to express themselves at all.
“Third, we must educate incoming students on the principles of free speech from day one. Unfortunately, colleges today cannot expect students to arrive on campus with knowledge about the boundaries of free speech and academic freedom. For instance, more than a quarter of students said that using violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable to some degree, according to FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings. Another 45% said that students blocking other students from attending a speech is at least “rarely” acceptable. These illiberal forms of mob censorship create environments in which students become afraid to speak up....
“Finally, colleges must cultivate an environment where students and faculty are free to push the boundaries of human understanding and challenge themselves and established orthodoxies.
“Some of the country’s premier institutions are already rising to that challenge. Within the past two weeks, Harvard University, Syracuse University, and Stanford University have taken proactive steps by committing to institutional neutrality, promising to refrain from issuing statements on political or social issues that do not impact core operations of the school. These declarations affirm the schools’ dedication to providing a platform where students and faculty can engage in debates on contemporary issues, free from institutional bias or commentary....”
Full op-ed at FIRE website
See also Stanford’s still-existing policies and procedures for reporting students and others for something they might have said or done as allegedly being “biased” and notwithstanding the Leonard Law and the Corry court decision that prohibits private colleges and universities in California, including Stanford, from imposing restrictions in ways not allowed under the First Amendment.
Princetonians Student Free Speech Survey Shows More Work Needs to Be Done
Excerpts (link in the original):
"The Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) second annual survey of Princeton students is now available. This survey provides information on student attitudes on key free speech issues. Because the survey is being done annually, comparisons can be made to see if Princeton is making progress. Unfortunately, with three important exceptions, on most issues the survey shows little or no progress from the troublesome results in the first survey. In a few cases, the results are worse than last year. Clearly Princeton still has work to do.
"The survey was carried out by College Pulse, a highly respected survey company with specific expertise in surveying college students. College Pulse also does the highly respected national free speech survey of colleges and universities for the Foundation for Individual Freedom and Expression (FIRE)….
"Very disturbing is the response to question 7, which asks how acceptable it would be to block other students from hearing a controversial speaker (which would be a clear violation of Princeton policy). The number who said it would sometimes or always be acceptable increased from 12 to 17 percent.
"Perhaps most troubling is the response to question 9, where the students were asked how clear it was that the administration protects free speech. The number who said it is not very or not at all clear increased from 13 to 31 percent. This is one of the questions where there was a significant change in the answers given before and after the encampment first appeared on campus. After the encampment and the University’s response, a much higher percentage of students questioned whether the administration protects free speech. We believe this shows the continuing need to educate students about free speech. It appears to us that students do not understand that free speech does allow appropriate and targeted regulation of time, place, and manner...."
Full summary by Stanford and Princeton alum Ed Yingling at Princetonians for Free Speech website. And click here for a full copy of the report itself.
Students’ Private FERPA Data Given to Third-Party Voting Firm
Excerpts:
“Universities nationwide each year hand over students’ private information to a third-party vendor that reviews their personal data to help study students’ voting trends -- a practice that some watchdogs argue flouts privacy laws.
“The third-party vendor may still retain the valuable data of college-aged students, who mostly vote Democrat. There is no mechanism for ensuring it’s deleted or not used in some way for get-out-the-vote efforts, some election integrity experts argue.
“What’s more, they argue, the voting trends study doesn’t meet the FERPA exemption required to release the data, which states it must be used to improve academic instruction....”
Full article at College Fix
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford’s Explanation for the Arrest of Stanford Daily Staff Members
Full statement at Stanford website
And the Daily's Response
Full statement at Stanford Daily website
Stanford Will Resume Standardized Test Requirement for Undergraduate Admission
Full article at Stanford website
Stanford's Rigged Housing Accommodations
Full article at Stanford Review
Protecting Free Speech, Promoting Free Inquiry
Full op-ed at Inside Higher Ed
UC Berkeley’s Leader, a Free Speech Champion, Has Advice for Today’s Students: Tone It Down
Full article at NY Times
House Bill Calls for an End to Government Funding of Censorship
Full op-ed at Cato website
DEI is Unraveling at Our Universities
Full op-ed at USA Today
Number of Some College, No Credential Students Continues to Increase
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
More About the Controversy at Columbia Law Review
Full op-ed at City Journal
Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
A ‘Waterbender’ Pursues His Global Goal
Learning Policy Skills through ‘Blue Food’ Research
“. . . one way university administrators, professors, and students can fail in their duties and even undermine the university’s mission is by thwarting the very process of truth-seeking by forbidding the expression of certain ideas and lines of inquiry and argument.” – Princeton Prof. Robert P. George
June 10, 2024
Campus Protests at Stanford
There are lots of news sources regarding recent protests at Stanford and we do not intend to try and update readers on those events. Rather, we refer you to:
Coverage at Stanford Daily (including these articles: Pro-Palestine Students Occupy Building 10, Protestors Detained and Face Immediate Suspension, Stanford Removes Pro-Palestine Encampment and Protestors Receive Felony Charges).
As well as coverage at Stanford Review (including these articles: Pro-Palestine Activists Seize President’s Office and Deface Main Quad and Meet the Intruders).
We also refer readers to the letter dated April 26, 2024 from President Saller and Provost Martinez which outlined the policies and procedures that would be followed. We also refer readers to the letter they issued on June 5, 2024 (also available at Stanford Report) a few hours after the occupation and clearance of Building 10.
Stanford Faculty Approve Free Speech Statement
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Stanford University scholars recently recommitted themselves to the principles of free speech and freedom of expression in a new statement that updates, reaffirms and complements a Statement on Academic Freedom first passed 50 years ago, in 1974, according to Stanford Report.
“The move comes thanks in part to the work of an Ad Hoc Committee on University Speech, formed last year to address several free speech and academic freedom controversies at the school, including a ‘Protected Identity Harm’ reporting system deemed Orwellian by many observers and a 13-page “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative” discouraging the use of more than 125 mostly innocuous words, including 'American.' …
“The Faculty Senate, after much debate, approved last week [end of May] a statement that aims to address some of those problems.
“’The freedom to explore and present new, unconventional, and even unpopular ideas is essential to the academic mission of the university; therefore, Stanford shall promote the widest possible freedom of expression, consistent with the university’s legal and moral obligations to prevent harassment and discrimination. Accordingly, university policies must not censor individuals’ speech based on the content of what is expressed, except in narrow circumstances,’ it reads in part.
“‘At the same time, Stanford’s educational role as well as its academic and legal obligations differ across locations and contexts on campus, such as spaces open to all community members, classrooms, and dormitories. Community members also have varying privileges and responsibilities in different contexts,’ it adds.
“‘Likewise, legal rights and obligations pertain in different ways to community members depending on whether they are acting as students, teachers, staff, or faculty members. The principles of freedom of speech and expression will be understood in light of these variations across contexts and roles. The campus disruption policy furnishes an example of how some of these distinctions may be drawn.’
“The free speech statement is non-binding, as [faculty members] had talked it down from a policy, according to Stanford Report.
“The Faculty Senate also approved an Institutional Statements Policy, ‘which calls for institutional restraint in making statements and aims to prevent the establishment of institutional orthodoxy that might chill dissent,’ Stanford Report added....”
Full article at College Fix
See also a PDF copy of the list of words and phrases that were included in Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
See also the policies and procedures that still exist at Stanford for turning in students and others, even anonymously, for what someone thinks is a biased statement or action and where the targeted person often does not even know such a complaint has been filed but where a computerized record of the complaint is kept permanently on file for possible future reference and use.
See also paragraph 2.h. at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage where we propose that all students should be notified in writing at least annually of their FERPA and other legal rights to inspect all files created or maintained at Stanford about them.
Can Harvard Win Back America's Respect?
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Harvard has had a very bad year. It began last summer with the Supreme Court’s verdict in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which declared that the university’s admissions policies were unconstitutionally discriminatory -- or in plain terms, racist. Then came October 7, when Hamas unilaterally broke a cease-fire to attack Israel, killing 1,200 and kidnapping some 250, with many of the horrific atrocities captured on camera. Harvard, along with many elite universities, issued public statements that revealed, to put it delicately, an absence of moral clarity. Then came the disaster of Claudine Gay’s testimony in Congress, followed by the humiliating exposé of her history of plagiarism, followed by her grudging resignation....
“Pressure from [the faculty Council for Academic Freedom], concerned alumni, and some elements within the Harvard administration led Interim President Garber in April to announce the formation of the Institutional Voice Working Group. According to the Harvard Gazette, an official publication (wags call it Harvard’s Pravda), the group was tasked with ‘the question of whether and when Harvard as a University should speak on matters of social and political significance and who should be authorized to speak for the institution as a whole.’ The group issued its report on Tuesday [end of May], and it was immediately accepted by the administration and endorsed by the Corporation as university policy. It is the clearest sign yet of the university’s intention to take more vigorous damage control measures and perhaps alter the ship’s direction entirely. Whether it will be enough to restore the immense respect Harvard once enjoyed with the public is, however, doubtful....
“In fact, it seems unlikely that either the Harvard faculty or its administration will engage with any project to depoliticize the university. (The number of persons in the Harvard administration has never been publicly acknowledged for obvious reasons, though the well-informed Ira Stoll estimates it at four times the number of faculty.) …
“[On the other hand,] if a president and a few well-chosen deans know what excellence is, set real standards, and back the best candidates with ample funding, an institutional culture can quickly change. A president of Harvard also has the power to use the university’s extraordinary resources in public relations to foreground the work of its best scientists and scholars. He or she can make sure the world knows the wonderful things that are being done by our faculty and researchers. If the news coming out of Harvard is about its scientific and scholarly achievements and not about its political stances, public attitudes will change. Intemperate persons on the right who want to punish the university will have a harder time doing it if the country is more aware of the good things Harvard has been doing. A president can also, by precept and example, create an ethos among university administrators that public comment on partisan political issues is inappropriate. Such an ethos existed among administrators when I came to Harvard in 1985 and it should be possible to restore it. The university has traditions of science and scholarship unequaled by any university in the world and, under the right leadership, the country will come to value the university’s achievements again, and for the right reasons.”
Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. James Hankins at Law & Liberty. See also FIRE's commentary on these Harvard actions.
See also “Colleges Back Away from Hot-Button Issues” at The Hill.
See also part 3 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage including proposed numerical targets for reducing administrative excesses.
Campus Political Litmus Tests
Excerpts (links in the original):
“It’s been a very interesting couple of weeks for free speech and academic freedom on campus. On May 28, Harvard University officially announced that it ‘won’t issue statements on hot-button social and political issues’ -- in other words, adopting the principles of institutional neutrality as described in the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report.
“Less than 24 hours later, Syracuse University followed suit. The day after that, May 30, the faculty senate at Stanford University -- Greg’s alma mater – ‘approved an amended statement on freedom of expression and an amended policy on institutional statements.’
“And that’s not all. There has also been a recent wave of colleges and universities, including MIT and most recently Harvard, moving to eliminate DEI statements from faculty hiring.
“As FIRE’s Nico Perrino wrote on X, ‘the dominoes, they continue to fall.’ …
“However, we want to be very clear that although DEI statements (and the larger DEI bureaucracy on campus) are absolutely threats to free speech, our primary objection is to the larger issue of political litmus tests -- and those can come in a variety of flavors and forms. Florida’s ‘Stop WOKE Act,’ for example, was anti-DEI but still a plainly ideological attempt to restrict what students or faculty can say, which is why we sued (and won).
“What we need are policies that go after the root of the problem: ideological conformity and pressure that threatens free speech and academic freedom on campus. FIRE drafted model legislation called the Intellectual Freedom Protection Act, which the state of Kansas has already adopted, that singles out political or ideological litmus tests regardless of whether they’re from the right or the left. We’re hopeful that more and more states will come to adopt it, as universities continue to recognize how hamstrung the existing policies have made them in pursuit of their primary mission: fostering an environment where ideas can be voiced, explored, and challenged in search of truth.
“And speaking of that, there’s a lot more universities can do to ensure colleges stay on mission -- beginning with students.
“DEI statements haven’t just been a tool for faculty hiring in recent years. They also play a large role in student admissions for universities. If these schools want to get serious about being oases of free thought, they will have to make some changes to the way they cultivate their student bodies.” …
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and CEO of FIRE Greg Lukianoff and Angel Eduardo at Substack
The Impossible Job of a College President
Excerpts (links in the original):
“The 2023-24 academic year has inarguably been one of the toughest years in recent history to be a college president....
“The role of the college president has always been complex and difficult. The sheer breadth of stakeholders they manage, from students and faculty to alumni, trustees, donors, and state and federal regulators, illustrates the magnitude of their responsibilities.
“The job can involve overseeing a large medical center, running a sporting organization, or being at the helm of the largest employer in their town. In this way, college and university presidents are sometimes viewed as chief executive officers or even mayors.
“‘One of the biggest challenges of the president’s role is balancing all of the various constituencies,’ said Frederick Lawrence, the former president of Brandeis University and a lecturer at Georgetown Law, who recently testified before Congress in a hearing about antisemitism on campuses. ‘And that is always true about any issue, but it’s particularly true when it’s one that’s quite so polarized and so fraught as issues of our present moment.’ [Followed by discussion of responses to the American Council on Education’s 2023 The American College President survey.] …
“Some free-speech experts think the presidents made it harder for themselves this year. By shutting down student protests over controversial phrases such as ‘from the river to the sea,’ presidents suppressed debate and stood accused of violating free-speech commitments.
“‘They’ve been exposed as being hypocritical on free speech, since many have preached how we need to punish offensive speech that makes people feel uncomfortable to ensure that campuses remain civil and peaceful,’ said Zach Greenberg, a senior program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an organization that defends free-speech rights on colleges campuses. The group also urges higher education leaders to adopt ‘institutional neutrality -- that is, taking positions on social and political issues only when they ‘threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.’ …
“'I hope that we will be able to restore a sense that when one has concerns about one’s college, as an alumnus, as a student, as a faculty member, that it should be viewed constructively, in terms of, ‘How can I help?' [said former Brandeis President Lawrence]."
Full article at Vox . See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta re free speech, institutional neutrality and standards for the hiring and promotion of faculty.
Other Articles of Interest
Top Producers of Asian-American Graduates
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. See also Tables at Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
Note that Stanford is #1 in engineering doctorate degrees, #3 in all doctorate degrees combined but not even in the top 50 for all bachelor’s degrees combined.
See also “New Research Center on Asian American Studies” at Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences website.
Censorship at Columbia Law Review
Full article at The Intercept
When Education Fails to Align with the Workforce
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. See also “Why Can’t College Grads Find Jobs” at NY Times.
How an Academic Department Replaced Diversity Statements with Service Statements
Full op-ed by U Colorado Professors Matthew Burgess and Peter Newton at Heterodox Academy website
Universities Try Three-Year Degrees to Save Students Time, Money
Full article at Association of College Trustees and Alumni website
Stanford Alum Stephen Breyer on Law and the Courts
Brookings interview of Justice Breyer at YouTube (90 minutes)
Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Catching Up with the Stanford Solar Car Project (video)
Inside the Protein Factory of the Cell
AI Can Outperform Humans in Writing Medical Summaries
A New Way to See Viruses in Action
Night Owl Behavior Could Hurt Mental Health, Sleep Study Finds
“The ever-growing bureaucracy devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion naturally recommends that more time and energy be spent on these issues. The most obvious lack of diversity at universities, political diversity, which clearly affects their ability to analyze many issues, is not addressed, showing that these goals are not centrally related to achieving, building or sustaining excellence.” -- Fareed Zakaria, CNN journalist
June 3, 2024
President Saller’s Remarks About Recent Demonstration at Stanford
Editor’s note: On Monday, May 20, per the Stanford Daily and other news sources, a number of demonstrators entered Mechanical Engineering Building 570 and reportedly disrupted activities in the building. At the Faculty Senate meeting four days later, President Saller made the following remarks.
Full text:
“On Monday evening, as part of a protest march on campus, a group of individuals entered an engineering building where students were present and working in labs. The marchers who entered the building blocked entryways with constructed barricades they had brought with them and furniture from the building, and vandalized an interior wall and door with spray paint.
“We have learned that students who were at work in the building were frightened by the intrusion and were concerned for their research and lab equipment as well as their personal safety. A faculty member whose lab is in the building shared that the research in that lab was sensitive and dangerous to those unfamiliar with the safe operation of the equipment.
“The individuals who entered the building dispersed once public safety officers entered. Nevertheless, the actions that occurred on Monday evening threatened the health and safety of our community. The peaceful expression of viewpoints, which we value, can and should occur within the university's time, place, and manner provisions, without vandalism, and without jeopardizing the safety of our community members.
“Over the last three days, the university and the Department of Public Safety have been investigating what occurred and collecting evidence. We are beginning disciplinary proceedings based on the evidence collected, which included items left behind such as personal identification, hardware associated with the barricades, a respirator mask, and other items that indicated an intention to occupy the building. The investigation also is continuing. We will respect the privacy rights of those involved. However, I want to be clear that students responsible for actions that threaten the safety of our community, such as those that occurred on Monday, will face immediate suspension and the inability to participate in Commencement based on the president's authority in cases of threats to community safety. In addition to being referred to the Office of Community Standards conduct process, they may also be subject to criminal charges.”
At Reason Magazine and also at Campus Report
See also “Outgoing President Richard Saller Reflects on a Turbulent Year” interview at Stanford Daily (June 2, 2024).
See also “Stanford Starts Disciplinary Referrals but Allows Encampment to Remain,” “Pro Palestine Students Want University to Drop Charges," "Some Campus Buildings Now Require ID” and "Some Students Felt Trapped" at Stanford Daily.
Harvard Will Refrain from Controversial Statements About Public Policy Issues
[Editor’s note: Subject to further clarification, the Harvard faculty report and related Q&A, linked below, leave unanswered to what extent Harvard departments, centers and similar entities can take official positions in the names of those entities and even publicize those positions as being official positions, as opposed to circulating or posting research and other papers as signed by individual faculty members. We believe the faculty report and related Q&A also seem to misunderstand that the University of Chicago's Kalven Report (now being adopted by colleges and universities nationwide, see our compilation here) has always upheld the concept that a university can take official positions on issues that go to the core of the university’s functions, such as admissions, standards for tenure, etc.]
Excerpt (link in the original):
“After months of grappling with a campus fractured by a polarizing debate over the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard announced on Tuesday that the University and its leadership will refrain from taking official positions on controversial public policy issues.
“The University’s new stance followed a report produced from a faculty-led 'Institutional Voice’ working group, which advised leadership to not ‘issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.’ Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 wrote in an email that he accepted the working group’s recommendations, which were also endorsed by the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.
“‘There will be close cases where reasonable people disagree about whether a given issue is or is not directly related to the core function of the university,’ the report stated. ‘The university’s policy in those situations should be to err on the side of avoiding official statements.’
“The policy will apply to all University administrators and governing board members, as well as deans, department chairs, and faculty councils, according to the working group....”
Full article at Harvard Crimson
A Q&A about the faculty report is here and includes a link to full text of the report itself.
See also Harvard Crimson editorial, “Harvard Must Learn Its Lesson; Institutional Neutrality Is Step One”.
UC Regents Again Postpone Vote on Policy re Statements on Department Homepages
Excerpts (links in the original):
“The University of California’s board of regents on Thursday [May 16] again postponed a vote on a controversial policy to restrict faculty departments from making opinionated statements on the homepages of university websites. The regents could next consider the policy at their July meeting in San Francisco.
“The proposal was initially introduced after some faculty departments, such as the ethnic studies department at UC Santa Cruz, posted statements on their websites criticizing Israel’s invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas assault in Israel. The potential adoption of the policy comes as pro-Palestinian protests and encampments have popped up across the system’s 10 campuses, with arrests of hundreds and, at UCLA, a violent counter-protest....
“Faculty across UC have criticized the policy, arguing that it would infringe on academic freedom and questioning how it would be enforced. But supporters of the policy, led by regent Jay Sures, say it is needed to ensure that the views of faculty departments aren’t misinterpreted as representing UC as a whole. Sures could not be reached for comment Thursday about why the item was delayed again.
“Under the latest version, political and other opinionated statements would not be allowed to appear on the homepages of departmental websites. They would be permitted elsewhere on those websites, but only with a disclaimer stating that the opinions don’t represent the entire campus or university system....”
Full article at Ed Source
Stanford and the Rise of the Censorship Industrial Complex
Excerpts (links in the original):
“This summer the Supreme Court will rule on a case involving what a district court called perhaps ‘the most massive attack against free speech’ ever inflicted on the American people. In Murthy v. Missouri, plaintiffs ranging from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to epidemiologists from Harvard and Stanford allege that the federal government violated the First Amendment by working with outside groups and social media platforms to surveil, flag, and quash dissenting speech -- characterizing it as mis-, dis- and mal-information -- on issues ranging from COVID-19 to election integrity.
“The case has helped shine a light on a sprawling network of government agencies and connected NGOs that critics describe as a censorship industrial complex. That the U.S. government might aggressively clamp down on protected speech, and, certainly at the scale of millions of social media posts, may constitute a recent development....
[Followed by discussion of and links to what have become known as the Censorship Files and the Twitter Files.]
“If there is one ever-present player in this saga, it is the storied institution of Stanford University. Its idyllic campus has served as the setting over the last 70-plus years for a pivotal public-private partnership linking academia, business, and the national security apparatus. Stanford's central place, particularly in developing technologies to thwart the Soviet Union during the Cold War, would persist and evolve through the decades, leading to the creation of an entity called the Stanford Internet Observatory that would serve as the chief cutout -- in critics' eyes -- for government-driven censorship in defense of ‘democracy’ during the 2020 election and beyond....
[Followed by discussion of alleged interactions of Stanford with government agencies and companies including the creation and use of Stanford Research Institute after WWII and the more recent roles of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, Graphika, DARPA, the Atlantic Council and others.]
“As RCI [Real Clear Investigations] previously reported, the project had two main objectives:
“First, EIP [Election Integrity Partnership] lobbied social media companies, with some success, to adopt more stringent moderation policies around 'content intended to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters as to election processes, or delegitimize election results without evidence.' …
“Second, EIP surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts for content that might violate the platforms' moderation policies. In addition to identifying this content internally, EIP also collected content forwarded to it by external ‘stakeholders,’ including government offices and civil society groups. EIP then flagged this mass of content to the platforms for potential suppression....
“Among those targeted by the government for silencing, and who social media companies would censor, in part for his opposition to broad pandemic lockdowns, was Stanford's own Dr. Jay Bhattacharya -- one plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri (Dr. Bhattacharya and [Matt] Taibbi were recipients of Real Clear's first annual Samizdat Prize honoring those committed to truth and free speech). As he sees it, the Virality Project helped ‘launder’ a ‘government … hit list for censorship,’ which he finds ‘absolutely shocking’ and at odds with Stanford's past commitments to academic freedom and general ‘sort of countercultural opposition to government overreach.’ …
Full article at Real Clear Investigations
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage regarding the need for better oversight of the various centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities and activities at Stanford.
A Black Man's Concerns About DEI
Excerpts:
“Am I not good enough to compete? Am I being hired because I'm Black and fulfill some quota, or do I stand out from the crowd because of my competency? …
“I understand the motivation for wanting to help people that some feel are disadvantaged by ensuring a fairer environment for everyone, no matter their ethnicity, sex, or sexuality. But the problem with DEI is that in practice, it is inconsistent with the message that discrimination is bad because it engages in discriminating against some to elevate others. And in so doing, they aren't setting an equal playing field for all but skewing the field to create an ideologically satisfying outcome. And no one likes it when there are favorites in a competitive market, including the people who didn't ask to be anointed....”
Full op-ed by Adam B. Coleman at Newsweek
Alternative viewpoint: "I Saw the Importance of Affirmative Action at My Ivy League University Firsthand" at Truthout.
Former President Casper on the Purposes of the University
Excerpts (from statement dated October 4, 1995 re affirmative action):
“... Let me begin by speaking about what Stanford has stood for since its founding. When Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane, lost their 15-year- old only child, Leland Jr., in 1884, they decided to use their wealth to do something for ‘other people's’ sons and daughters. This sentiment led to the founding of our university.
“In a 1902 address, which formally amended the Founding Grant, Jane Stanford stressed that the moving spirit of the founders was ‘love of humanity and a desire to render the greatest possible service to mankind.’ I quote: ‘The University was accordingly designed for the betterment of mankind morally, spiritually, intellectually, physically, and materially. The public at large, and not alone the comparatively few students who can attend the University, are the chief and ultimate beneficiaries of the foundation.’ The university's ‘chief object’ was to be ‘the instruction of students with a view to producing leaders and educators in every field of science and industry.'
“The university's initial policy of not charging tuition was adopted, I again quote Jane Stanford, to ‘resist the tendency to the stratification of society, by keeping open an avenue whereby the deserving and exceptional may rise through their own efforts from the lowest to the highest station in life. A spirit of equality must accordingly be maintained within the University.’ I point out that Stanford admitted women when many of its peers would not even have considered the possibility....
“This evocation of our institutional purposes is helpful in reminding us that it would be exceedingly narrow-minded to assume that the pursuit of the university as envisioned in the founding documents calls for a one-dimensional approach in choosing those to whom we give the opportunity to study at Stanford. As we look for the leaders of tomorrow, if all we considered were capacities measurable on a scale, without taking into consideration other aspects of being ‘deserving and exceptional,’ we would be betraying the Founders. We would be betraying the Founders if we disregarded their stated concern about ‘the tendency to the stratification of society.’” …
Full text at Stanford website
Other Articles of Interest
The Battle Over College Speech Will Outlive the Encampments
Full op-ed at NY Times Magazine
We Argue About Campus Free Speech Because We Forget What the University Is For
Full op-ed at Washington Examiner
Private Thought and Public Speech
Full op-ed by Yale Prof. David Bromwich at Compact Magazine
Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Stanford Lab Introduces Students to Cutting-Edge Biomedical Research Tools
Stanford Researchers Study the Role of Plankton in Regulating Natural Systems
Stanford-Led Study Links School Environment to Brain Development
Humans Use Counterfactuals to Reason About Causality. Can AI?
“To do their work well, universities need a protected sphere of operation in which free speech and academic freedom flourish. Scholarship and teaching cannot achieve their full potential when constrained -- externally or internally -- by political, ideological, or economic agendas that impede or displace the disinterested process of pursuing truth and advancing knowledge.” – From Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry
May 27, 2024
The Crisis of Confidence in Higher Education Will Not End with the
Student Protests
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Another day, another no-confidence vote for a university president.
“On Thursday [May 16] the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University approved a no-confidence resolution of the school’s president, Nemat Shafik. It did so after concluding that her handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and her public pledge to a congressional committee to discipline several faculty members who had espoused similar views violated the 'fundamental requirements of academic freedom and shared governance’ and engaged in an “unprecedented assault on student’s rights.’
“But Shafik is not the only university leader who has lost the confidence of significant constituencies on their campuses.... [followed by discussion of Barnard, NYU and Emory]
“But as the academic year ends, and with it the season of campus protests, the broader crisis of confidence in higher education will not end. Colleges and universities, especially those branded ‘elite,’ will have to work hard to win back the goodwill of many Americans who no longer trust them.
“Evidence of that loss of trust is plentiful.
“In 2019, a Pew survey found what it described as ‘an undercurrent of dissatisfaction -- even suspicion -- among the public about the role colleges play in society, the way admissions decisions are made, and the extent to which free speech is constrained on college campuses.’
"Pew noted that when asked whether the American higher education system is generally going in the right or wrong direction, most Americans (61 percent) said it’s going in the wrong direction....”
Full op-ed by Amherst Prof. Austin D. Sarat at The Hill
Yale Tells Hopeful Scientists They Must Commit to DEI
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Want to be a molecular biologist at Yale? Well, make sure you have a ten-step plan for dismantling systemic racism. When making hires at Yale’s department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, faculty are told to place ‘DEI at the center of every decision,’ according to a document tucked away on its website.
“Meanwhile, every job advertised on the site links to a DEI 'rubric' that tests candidates’ ‘knowledge of DEI and commitment to promoting DEI,’ their ‘past DEI experiences and activities,’ and their ‘future DEI goals and plans.’ …
“Applicants for professor and lecturer jobs, currently advertised on the site, will get ‘zero’ points if they:
-
Have ‘no knowledge or awareness about DEI issues’
-
Do ‘not feel personal responsibility for helping to create an equitable and inclusive environment’
-
Were ‘not involved in activities that promote DEI’
-
Have ‘no goals or plans for promoting DEI’ …”
Full op-ed by John Sailer of National Association of Scholars at Free Press
See also how Cornell uses DEI statements to weed out candidates who don’t sufficiently support DEI, including in STEM, at College Fix.
See also a copy of Cornell’s rubric for hiring faculty, including notes from the Cornell Free Speech Alliance (CFSA).
See also “UNC System Spends at Least $90 Million per Year for 686 DEI Staffers” at College Fix.
See also Washington Post editorial, “The Problem with Diversity Statements and What to Do about Them”. Excerpt: "The last thing academia -- or the country -- needs is another incentive for people to be insincere or dishonest. The very purpose of the university is to encourage a free exchange of ideas, seek the truth wherever it may lead, and to elevate intellectual curiosity and openness among both faculty and students. Whatever their original intent, the use of DEI statements has too often resulted in self-censorship and ideological policing."
Updated ACE Report Reveals Progress, Persistent Disparities in Higher Ed
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Though the number of Hispanic and Black students enrolling in undergraduate programs has increased in recent years, completion rates continue to lag somewhat behind, according to a report released by the American Council on Education (ACE).
“[Led by Stanford alum Dr. Ted Mitchell,] ‘The Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education: 2024 Status Report’ comprises updated data showing significant disparities in attainment levels among underrepresented groups by race and ethnicity despite growing diversity. It examines over 200 indicators to determine who accesses a variety of educational environments and experiences, to explore how student trajectories and outcomes differ by race and ethnicity, and to provide an overview of the racial and ethnic backgrounds of faculty, staff, and college presidents....
“Bachelor’s degrees were mainly earned by Asian, white, and multiracial students, while other minority groups earned a larger share of associate degrees and certificates, according to the report....”
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
The Diversity Leadership Fallacy
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has taken America by storm. It’s in almost every public school, college, corporation, and organization you can imagine, including pharmaceutical companies, entertainment companies, and even the United States Department of Defense....
“Diversity researchers Alice H. Eagly and Jean Lau Chin are typical of scholars who attempt to justify DEI initiatives based on broad assumptions about identity. In arguing that surface-level diversity leads to better leadership, they say that ‘leaders and followers from diverse identity groups generally face some degree of pressure to behave like leaders from the majority group’ while continuing to ‘express their own cultures to some extent’ and this increases their multicultural competence while explaining some of the challenges that hold minorities back....
“All of these claims rely on broad generalizations about beneficial leadership characteristics that supposedly flow from identity. But we have evidence that the surface-level diversity that Eagly, Chin, and others like them are obsessed with does not necessarily contribute to good leadership on its own.
“For example, in a rebuttal to Eagly and Chin, University of Maryland researchers Kristen M. Klein and Mo Wang provide four reasons why surface-level diversity does not equate to strong leadership.... [followed by discussion of the four reasons]
“However well-intentioned DEI initiatives may be, they rely on fundamentally flawed assumptions and broad, unfounded generalizations about identity, which reinforce old negative stereotypes and create new ones. Competence, not identity, should be the primary criteria for hiring, promotion, and leadership, not arbitrary surface-level qualities like race, ethnicity, or gender.
"Every time an organization encourages people to divide themselves by these surface-level characteristics, the organization entrenches stereotypical thinking and all but guarantees negative organizational outcomes. We shouldn’t encourage people to shackle themselves to stereotypes and call it liberation. Instead, we should hire and promote people based only on their job-relevant experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics that have real value....”
Full op-ed at Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR)
Stanford Panel Discusses Mandatory Diversity Statements Versus the Challenges of Achieving Real Diversity
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Brian Soucek, a professor at the U.C. Davis School of Law and an advocate of D.E.I. statements, started the panel off by making his case. Mere statements of belief in D.E.I. are not enough, he said. In an effort to reach consensus on what a D.E.I. hiring statement should look like, in lieu of U.C. Davis’s current required statement, he proposed an abbreviated version that asked candidates specifically about D.E.I. shortcomings and gaps in their fields of discipline and concrete steps they’ve taken or plan to take to address them.
“The rest of the panel wasn’t having it.
“Amna Khalid, a historian at Carleton College, endorsed the goal of diversifying staffs. The problem isn’t principle or legality, she said; it’s practice. Diversity according to whom? And in what context?
“‘It’s always ‘historically excluded and underrepresented,’ she said. ‘But historically when? Conservatives could argue they have been historically excluded. What’s underrepresented at Hillsdale College will be different from what’s underrepresented in the U.C. system.’ ...
“Simply requiring D.E.I. statements gives a pass to universities for not fixing existing problems, added Carol Sumner, the chief diversity officer of Northern Illinois University. She then raised another question: ‘Is the statement the problem, or is it the subjectivity of the person reading the statement you don’t trust?’
“Ralph Richard Banks, a professor at Stanford Law School, expressed concern that poorly designed D.E.I. encourages essentialist thinking -- the idea that all women or members of the group have similar views or experiences. In his view, D.E.I. programs can be ‘a way to offload responsibility from the rest of the university and take pressure off them for what actually could be substantive policies that are harder and more expensive.’
“One thing on which everyone agreed: Schools are failing at real diversity. D.E.I. statements aren’t necessarily helping. Instead of potentially creating problems, academia needs to fix existing ones.” ...
Full article at NY Times (3/7/24)
Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Impact of Censorship on Free Speech and Scientific Inquiry
Excerpt:
“As things stand, the situation regarding free speech is dire in the Western world. The Missouri v. Biden case is currently under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court. It has the promise to limit the government’s power to censor, but I do not know how the Supreme Court will rule. In any case, it is not enough. The whole scientific community and the public need to understand the stakes because I do not believe the suppression of scientific ideas and debate will die with the pandemic. Without a concerted political program to restore free speech, the American civic religion of free speech and the very nature of our republic may not survive.”
Full text of speech at Washington Examiner
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also Paragraph 4.d. at our Back to Basics webpage: “Under no circumstances may any of these [centers, accelerators, incubators or other Stanford entities], whether on or off the core campus, be engaged in censorship activities, either directly or in coordination with government entities, and especially regarding members of Stanford’s own faculty.”
Debt-Free College Is More Important Than a Flashy Piece of Paper
Excerpt (links in the original):
“It’s hard to make the right choices about college when so much messaging is coming from so many corners. That’s why it’s important that parents help their kids keep perspective, and show them how to look past the brightly colored fliers, and focus on what’s most important: getting a degree that’s debt-free.
“This goes against generations of cultural conditioning, which encourages spending whatever it takes to get the most prestigious four-year degree you can find. But as billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban told me last year, ‘Every college has strong programs that can educate you,’ and ‘Nothing will hinder your ability to use your college education (more) than debt,’ because ‘debt pushes you to take a job that pays your loans rather than picking a job you love.’...”
Full op-ed at DC Journal
Editor’s note: Stanford’s Office of Financial Aid recently reconfirmed that 80% of Stanford’s undergraduate students leave Stanford with zero student loan debt. Also, per Stanford Report, starting with the 2023-2024 academic year, undergraduate families with under $100,000 income pay no tuition, room or board at Stanford.
Other Articles of Interest
The Litigation After the Protest Storm
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
CUNY and Columbia -- A Tale of Two Campuses
Full article at The Nation
Knives, Bricks, Bowling Ball, Pellet Gun Found at DePaul Encampment
Full article at Campus Reform
Protesters Target Officials with Body Bags, Cockroaches
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Five Surprising Facts About the Sun
Stanford AI Projects Greenlighted in National AI Research Resource Pilot
Student-Run Service Offers a Safe Ride
From Undergraduate Course, "Democracy and Disagreement." A Discussion About Meritocracy (video)
“The only way that we can have true inclusion and belonging for everyone is a radical openness to the free exchange of ideas, carried out respectfully and civilly, accepting that others will disagree with us, accepting that we have different moral understandings about right and wrong, and accepting that we may find some ideas painful and hurtful.” – Harvard Prof. Tyler J. VanderWeele
May 20, 2024
The Wrong Way to Fight Anti-Semitism on Campus
Excerpts (links in the original):
"The House of Representatives passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act last week in a bipartisan vote of 320 to 91. 'Antisemitism is on the rise,' it declares, and is 'impacting Jewish students.'
"Bigotry against Jews is vile and warrants the nation’s attention. As President Joe Biden said Tuesday at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, 'This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world and requires our continued vigilance.' But the Antisemitism Awareness Act is the wrong way to fight those ills....
“Earlier this week, the Department of Education published a 'Dear Colleague' letter suggesting that protected speech alone can give rise to a hostile campus environment that requires administrators to respond in some way, even if they cannot punish the speech in question. It states that 'a university can, among other steps, communicate its opposition to stereotypical, derogatory opinions; provide counseling and support for students affected by harassment; or take steps to establish a welcoming and respectful school campus.' This seems to create an incentive for preemptive crackdowns on protected speech by administrators who want to avoid federal investigations. The guidance could lead to the hiring of still more administrators assigned to police speech, manage student concerns about it, and lead DEI-style initiatives aimed at anti-Semitism as distinct from anti-racism....
“The First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh offers a hypothetical example in a post explaining why he opposes the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Imagine that Kamala Harris is president, he writes, and enacts a statute that codifies examples of anti-Palestinian discrimination -- such as denying Palestinians their right to self-determination, and comparing Palestinian attitudes toward Jews to those of the Nazis. Many people would be concerned that these examples ‘were likely to (and probably intended to) deter people from expressing their political views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,’ Volokh points out....”
Full op-ed at The Atlantic and also republished at Real Clear Education
From a Leader of Former Campus Protests: We Have a Mass Movement of Young People Advancing Horrifying Ideas
Excerpts (link in the original):
“In 1968, Paul Berman was a freshman at Columbia University and a central organizer of the protests that convulsed that university and then spread to other campuses across the country and around the world. He was part of the group that seized Hamilton Hall; he occupied the office of Columbia’s president, Grayson L. Kirk; he was arrested -- though not beaten, as many others were -- by the police. ‘The uprising of 1968 receded into the past, and, even so, the embers went on smoldering,’ Berman wrote in the foreword to a collection of remembrances of those events, A Time to Stir, published by Columbia University Press in 2018.
“Berman, who has taught at Columbia, New York University, Princeton, and the University of California at Irvine, went on to become one of the most astute chroniclers of the ’68 generation. In two books -- A Tale of Two Utopias (1996) and Power and the Idealists (2005) -- he traced those smoldering embers around the world and through the decades, showing how the insurrectionary spirit of ’68, in time, morphed into political movements both laudatory (gay rights, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia) and deplorable (the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Weather Underground). Berman has aptly been described in The New York Times as ‘not only an alumnus of the rebellion’ but ‘the keeper of its yearbook and its funeral director.’ ...
“Berman: ‘The real meaning of the ‘river to the sea’ is that the state of Israel should not exist, that 50 percent of the world’s population of Jews should be rendered stateless. And the real meaning of ‘globalize the intifada’ is that there should be a globalization of the events that introduced the word ‘intifada’ to the world, namely the intifada of circa 2001, which was a mass movement to commit random acts of murderous terror. But people don’t want to acknowledge that.'
“‘I blame the professors for this, not the students. I know from personal experience that students can be uninformed. But the professors have created a climate in which this stuff can go on. The professors for the most part don’t use these slogans. But they find ways to defend them. So I see a tremendous intellectual crisis.’ ...”
Full interview at Chronicle of Higher Education
Colleges Have Strayed from Their Higher Purpose and Are Now Paying the Price
Excerpts (links in the original):
“There was a time when colleges and universities had enough sense to stay in their lanes and focus on their historic mission to teach, learn and do research.
“That objective has been derailed over the years, with higher education institutions now smugly assuming they should indoctrinate the nation on a laundry list of sociopolitical hobby horses. That misguided and self-righteous repositioning has turned out to be a blunder of great proportion....
“Whether it’s immigration, abortion, globalism, climate, gun rights, gender or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), college administrators have been eager to express their approved opinions. Curricula reflect the campus mob mentality, as course titles and syllabi clearly show. Hiring practices make sure all employees, from professors to dorm coordinators to groundskeepers, salute the prevailing mindsets. 'Diversity offices' keep an eye out for wayward thinkers, making sure everybody stays of one mind.
“Check out the list of invited speakers to any campus and odds are there will be no presenters with views contrary to the accepted campus dogma. And if an unapproved speaker does show up, be ready for shout-downs and disruption....
“College administrators have been misreading the market for years, stifling free speech at their respective campuses and wanting to become sociopolitical provocateurs. They are now holding a losing hand. A recent survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression indicates a majority of Americans disapprove of colleges taking stands on political fashions. It is, indeed, sad to see how American higher education has deteriorated under the condescending 'leadership' of highly educated, but not very smart, administrators.”
Full op-ed by DePauw University Prof. Jeffrey M. McCall at The Hill
See also our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta including the Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social matters.
From Stanford Review: Stanford’s High-Cost War on Parties
Excerpts (links in the original):
“On April 20th, the Olive neighborhood, one of Stanford’s eight arbitrarily created housing groups, held an all-campus partywhere students could ‘enjoy fine dining, a live band, and a dance floor.’ Attendance was lackluster, as only around 100 people showed up over the course of three hours. The kicker? This mild party cost Stanford around $60,000, or $600 per student that attended.
“The party was organized by a group of Stanford administrators ‘in collaboration’ with the rest of the Olive neighborhood council, a group of student representatives.... As it turns out, student representatives weren't so well represented. They originally had plans for an Ancient Greece-themed party, where people could show up in togas to a field with large columns and other ornamentation, but this harmless idea for a community-bonding event was vetoed because it was deemed to be ‘culturally insensitive.’ ...
"Stanford has over 10,000 administrators, some of whom are responsible for organizing events like this for students....
“Silicon Valley giants like Google, Tesla, and Meta recently performed significant layoffs to increase operational efficiency and become more nimble, and Stanford should take note. Instead of throwing more money at the problem and further bloating our cumbersome bureaucracy, we need an administration which can facilitate natural socialization and take it upon themselves as a priority to serve students and, by extension, the future of Stanford....”
Full op-ed at Stanford Review
See also Stanford’s official “Party Planning Guide” as well as the highly detailed “Student Party Policy & Guidelines”.
See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage, including data and charts.
See also “Control of Student Life Must Be Restored to Stanford’s Students” at our Back to Basics webpage.
Newly added: "Clips of the Party Planning Committee" from The Office, at You Tube.
Other Articles of Interest
Harvard Alumni Report Includes Startling Testimony from Students and Faculty re Campus Antisemitism
Full editorial at WSJ
Divesting Endowments Is Easier Demanded Than Done
Full article at The Conversation and also republished at Real Clear Education
How Diversity Became the Master Concept of Our Age
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education and also republished at Real Clear Education
Complaint Alleges MIT Hired Six New Diversity Deans, and that Two of Them Are Serial Plagiarists
Full article at Free Beacon
Will Chicago Stand by Its Principles?
Full op-ed by Holy Cross Prof. Emeritus David Lewis Schaefer at Law & Liberty Magazine
Three Actions We Can Take Now to Heal Our College Campuses
Full op-ed at Greater Good Magazine
The Leadership Industrial Complex Is Setting Up Academic Leaders to Fail
Full op-ed at The Hill
The Public Stands with Shutting Down the Encampments
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel Abrams at Real Clear Education
ChatGPT Is Really Helpful
Full interview at James Martin Center
Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Meet the Robot that Learned to Sauté Shrimp
What the Ancient Greeks Can Teach Us About Democracy
“Critical thinking is the foundation of intellectual growth and progress. It is the ability to analyze information, question assumptions, and evaluate evidence, leading to deeper understanding and better decision-making." – Former Stanford President John Hennessy
May 13, 2024
No One Knows What Universities Are For
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Last month, the Pomona College economist Gary N. Smith calculated that the number of tenured and tenure-track professors at his school declined from 1990 to 2022, while the number of administrators nearly sextupled in that period. ‘Happily, there is a simple solution,’ Smith wrote in a droll Washington Post column. In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, his modest proposal called to get rid of all faculty and students at Pomona so that the college could fulfill its destiny as an institution run by and for nonteaching bureaucrats. At the very least, he said, ‘the elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.’
“Administrative growth isn’t unique to Pomona. In 2014, the political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg published The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters, in which he bemoaned the multi-decade expansion of ‘administrative blight.’ From the early 1990s to 2009, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew 10 times faster than tenured-faculty positions, according to Department of Education data. Although administrative positions grew especially quickly at private universities and colleges, public institutions are not immune to the phenomenon. In the University of California system, the number of managers and senior professionals swelled by 60 percent from 2004 to 2014.
“How and why did this happen? Some of this growth reflects benign, and perhaps positive, changes to U.S. higher education....
“But many of these jobs have a reputation for producing little outside of meeting invites. ‘I often ask myself, What do these people actually do?,’ Ginsberg told me last week. ‘I think they spend much of their day living in an alternate universe called Meeting World. I think if you took every third person with vice associate or assistant in their title, and they disappeared, nobody would notice.’
“In an email to me, Smith, the Pomona economist, said the biggest factor driving the growth of college admin was a phenomenon he called empire building.... As Tyler Austin Harper wrote in The Atlantic, university administrators have spent years ‘recruiting social-justice-minded students and faculty to their campuses under the implicit, and often explicit, promise that activism is not just welcome but encouraged.’ …
“Complex organizations need to do a lot of different jobs to appease their various stakeholders, and they need to hire people to do those jobs. But there is a value to institutional focus, and the past few months have shown just how destabilizing it is for colleges and universities to not have a clear sense of their priorities or be able to make those priorities transparent to faculty, students, donors, and the broader world. The ultimate problem isn’t just that too many administrators can make college expensive. It’s that too many administrative functions can make college institutionally incoherent.”
Full op-ed at The Atlantic and also republished at MSN
See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
See also our “Back to Basics at Stanford” webpage.
Stanford Review Special Series: Censorship and Academic Freedom
at Stanford
Excerpts (links in the original):
"'Die Luft der Freiheit weht,’ translated as ‘The Winds of Freedom Blow,’ sits boldly on Stanford University’s insignia as its guiding motto. Yet in the past several years, Stanford has become notoriously intertwined with academic censorship and the suppression of free speech. To adjust our sails correctly, we must first understand where and how we went wrong....
“In November of 1900, [Stanford Economics Professor Edward] Ross was forced out of the University at the demand of Jane Stanford, and his resignation initiated a stunning chain of events at Stanford and across the country. While seen as a villain by a few on campus, he quickly emerged as an American hero to the working class and supporters of academic freedom alike. As one op-ed in the Oakland Enquirer proclaimed, ‘When it is known that science in a university is under bonds to prejudice or dogmatism, the usefulness of that university is at an end and its further existence is without reason.’ …
“Fast forward over sixty years to when Bruce Franklin, like Ross, was a young and outspoken Stanford professor in the 1960s and early 70s....
“A few years after Franklin’s dismissal, a Stanford PhD student of anthropology named Steven Mosher had an exclusive opportunity to travel to China. On his expedition to the Guangdong province, Mosher documented something striking: forced abortions and sterilizations thrust upon women living under the Chinese government and its now notorious one-child policy....
“The Chinese government leveraged Mosher’s case to pressure American institutions to comply with stringent demands when sending researchers to its country. Eventually, the committee of eleven Stanford anthropology faculty members, possibly as a result of this Chinese pressure, unanimously voted to expel Mosher, stating that he was guilty of ‘illegal and seriously unethical conduct.’ His research methods and style were deemed dubious and said to jeopardize the integrity of his research, but Mosher maintained that Stanford expelled him to placate China.
“In 1992, Stanford President Gerhard Casper stated that ‘A university's freedom must be first of all the freedom that we take mostly for granted, though the humanists had to fight for it and others must still do battle for it even today: the pursuit of knowledge free from constraints as to sources and fields.’...”
Full article at Stanford Review, first in the series
See also second article in the series, “An Interview with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya,” and third article in the series, “An Interview with Dr. Scott Atlas.”
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
See also Gerhard Casper, “The Winds of Freedom -- Addressing Challenges to the University," read sample at Amazon.
Stanford to Review U.S. Department of Education’s Revised Title IX Regulations
Excerpts (link in the original):
“The Biden Administration released revised Title IX regulations on Apr. 19, impacting policies across educational settings. The main changes include increased protections for LGBTQ+ students and sexual assault survivors. These changes, which Stanford and all universities are required to implement, will take effect on Aug. 1.
“The Stanford Sexual Harassment/Assault Response & Education (SHARE) Title IX Office started its review process. SHARE is ‘just now beginning to review these new regulations, comparing them to what was originally proposed, and determining what is needed in order to comply,’ wrote Patrick Dunkley, vice provost for Institutional Equity, Access, and Community, and Stephen Chen, director of the SHARE Title IX Office, in a statement published in the Stanford Report....”
Full article at Stanford Daily
See also from our April 29 Newsletter:
-
“The Civil Rights Rollback” at Free Press
-
"Education Department’s Final Title IX Regulations Draw Mixed Reactions" at Higher Ed Dive
-
"New Title IX Rules Erase Campus Due Process Protections" at Reason
The Problem with America’s Protest Feedback Loop
Excerpts (links in the original):
“The country is stuck in a protest feedback loop. In recent months, students opposed to the Israel-Gaza war have occupied lawns and buildings at college campuses across the country. Emulating climate activists who have stopped traffic on crucial roadways, pro-Palestine demonstrators have blocked access to major airports. For months, the protests intensified as university, U.S., and Israeli policies seemed unmoved. Frustrated by their inefficacy, the protesters redoubled their efforts and escalated their tactics.
“The lack of immediate outcomes from the Gaza protests is not at all unusual. In a new working paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Amory Gethin of the Paris School of Economics and Vincent Pons of Harvard Business School analyzed the effect of 14 social movements in the United States from 2017 to 2022. They varied in size: About 12,000 people marched against a potential war with Iran in January 2020; 4.2 million turned out for the first Women’s March. Pons told me that these large social movements succeeded in raising the general public’s awareness of their issues, something that he and Gethin measured through Google Trends and data from X.
“Yet in nearly every case that the researchers examined in detail -- including the Women’s March and the pro-gun control March for Our Lives, which brought out more than 3 million demonstrators -- they could find no evidence that protesters changed minds or affected electoral behavior.
“The Gethin and Pons study about the inefficacy of modern American mass movements identified one glaring exception: the protests over George Floyd’s murder [and Black Lives Matter]….
“Still, other stances taken by protesters -- such as pushing universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel or, in some cases, calling for an end to Israeli statehood -- have scant support among the general public. And the college protests themselves are widely frowned upon: In another poll from May 2, when asked whether college administrators had responded too harshly to college protesters, just 16 percent of respondents said administrators had responded too harshly; 33 percent thought they weren’t harsh enough....”
Full op-ed at The Atlantic and also republished at MSN
See also “I Was Once a Student Protester; the Old Hyperbole Is Now Reality” by Princeton Prof. Zeynet Tufecki at NY Times and also republished at DNYUZ.
Other Articles of Interest
See also our May 9, 2024 Special Edition Newsletter re National Campus Unrest.
MIT Becomes First Elite University to Ban Diversity Statements
Full article at College Fix, as republished from UnHerd
DEI Ideological Litmus Tests Have No Place in Academia
Full op-ed by Harvard Law School Prof. Randall L. Kennedy at Harvard Crimson as also previously excerpted at our April 8, 2024 Newsletter
Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Universities and Colleges Search for Ways to Reverse the Decline in the Ranks of Male Students
Full article at Hechinger Report
Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Why Exercise Is So Good for You
Stanford Medicine Delivers First FDA-Approved Cell-Based Therapy for Solid Tumors
“The university has an obligation to protect all lawful speakers and to sanction those who violate the rights of others by materially disrupting speakers. The ‘heckler's veto’ is a form of denying ideas and opinions to those who choose to hear them, including those who disagree with the speaker but have chosen to listen to a speech.” -- From Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry
May 9, 2024
Special Edition - National Campus Unrest
Editor’s note: Because there are so many issues to cover, we are circulating this Special Edition a few days earlier than normal and will circulate a regular Newsletter next Monday afternoon with other items.
**********
Universities Face Misinformation Amid Pro-Palestinian Protests
Excerpts (links in the original):
“False reports about a raised Palestinian flag at Harvard University. A misinterpretation of Muslim students gathering at the University of California, Los Angeles. Conflicting stories about a bike lock used during an occupation at Columbia University.
"As the pro-Palestinian protests continue, universities are contending with fake, conflicting and confusing reports about events on and off campus. Videos and photos of the protests have flooded social media sites, and some are altered or given misleading labels or headlines....
“Experts are torn on whether a university should address misinformation about events on their campuses. [Darren Linvill, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University] said universities, at the very least, need to put correct information on their websites to dispel false reports.
“‘They want this to go away and want no one to talk about it, but that ship has sailed,’ Linvill said. ‘You always want to be putting out the truth. I think sitting there and letting others tell your story often goes wrong.’" …
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
How Trustees Can Save Their Schools
Excerpts:
“In an unprecedented display of leadership, the president, flanked by the provost and the chairman of the board of trustees, announced to the chanting and drumming students encamped in the South Quad: [followed by made-up text of a speech not given]….
“Colleges now reap the grim fruit of years of tolerating intolerable behavior. How many Middlebury College students were suspended for shouting down Charles Murray and violence that left a distinguished Middlebury professor seriously injured? Zero. How many Stanford Law School students were suspended for shouting down Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan? Zero again. Washington College students who shouted down invited speaker and Princeton University Professor Robert George? …
“The 1967 Kalven Report, which articulates the principle of institutional neutrality, offers a powerful preventative to the blackmail tactics of the protests. Institutional neutrality, as Chancellor Diermeier explained, means that politics do not enter into decisions about the institution’s investments and portfolio. Divestment is off the table. Student and faculty demands regarding the portfolio must be, to use a favorite phrase of protesters, ‘non-negotiable.’
“With a commitment to the rule of law, the campus will enjoy robust debate and academic freedom, unfettered by the mob rule that now substitutes for freedom. This is a time for firmness, not demoralizing compromise that invites more such protests and signals that the adults are no longer in charge.”
Full op-ed by Michael Poliakoff and Paul S. Levy for American Council of Trustees and Alumni at Real Clear Education
See also our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta, including the Kalven Report.
Age of Unreason
Excerpts:
“Last week, a disruptive ‘Free Palestine’ protest broke out on my campus, the University of Southern California. As a philosophy major, I’m often curious to talk with people and ask them why they believe the things they do. So, I spoke with one of the protesters. He was outfitted in black jeans and a black shirt bearing the phrase ‘Free Palestine.’ He wore sunglasses and a mask emblazoned with the flag of Palestine. He carried a large Palestinian flag. I suspect that he was a student, but I could not confirm this....
“Continuing in attempted Socratic fashion, I asked: ‘So the morality of something depends on individual intuition? There is, as the saying goes, ‘no right or wrong, but thinking makes it so?’
“‘Yeah, morality is, like, just what people believe, and what people believe changes over time and across cultures,’ he said.
“‘If that is the case, then I don’t see why you are marching,’ I responded. ‘One person thinks genocide is bad, and the other thinks it is fine. In your view, both are equally correct because there is no correct answer. What right do you have, then, to march up and down this campus telling others to change their opinion to match yours, if yours is no more right or wrong than theirs?’
“At this point, the protestor offered several incoherent sentences before shouting wildly at me. This drew the attention of his fellow marchers, who accosted me similarly. I left to avoid a scene....
“In part, today’s campus protests are the fruit of our educational institutions’ failure to impart an appreciation of the humanities. They point to a troubled future: one where slogans replace arguments, contradiction is accepted as fact, and public disorder is mistaken for private virtue.
“We need to reverse course. Students shouldn’t be able to graduate from college without studying the Federalist Papers or Aristotle’s Ethics or having read Shakespeare and Tolstoy. Universities must once again transmit the best of the Western tradition, the ideas that have guided countless young people throughout the ages and taught them how to interrogate our world in search of truth. Only folly and arrogance prevent us from doing so once again.”
Full op-ed by USC undergraduate Chad Beauchamp at City Journal
Universities Consider Divestment Demands
Excerpts (links in the original):
“As pro-Palestinian protests have spread across college campuses nationwide two key demands have emerged: that colleges disclose how endowment funds are invested, and that they divest from weapons manufacturers and other businesses profiting off of the war in Gaza.
“Student stipulations vary by campus, often going beyond disclosure and divestment, but those two themes are universal. And while national news coverage focuses on the use of force to clear encampments, violent clashes with police and protester arrests, it belies the fact that some colleges are making negotiations on these demands....
“Brown University has arguably taken the biggest step in striking a deal with protesters who folded up their tents in exchange for face time with board members to make a pitch for divesting from companies profiting off the war. A divestment vote is scheduled for October....
“Elsewhere, Northwestern University has agreed to reestablish an Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility, which will include student, faculty and staff representatives, and provide funding for both Palestinian students and visiting faculty members, among other moves....
“Mary Papazian, executive vice president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, identifies the two responses -- meeting directly with protesters or arresting them -- as two points at opposite ends of a response spectrum. But she believes presidents can operate in the middle, engaging protesters indirectly and keeping order without mass arrests, depending on the situation....
“And regardless of what decision a president makes on encampment protests, they should be able to explain what led to their decision and discuss their positions clearly and transparently, Papazian argues.
“’There has to be clarity about whatever action it is that the president takes. There may be good reasons for it but it has to be articulated and explained clearly and consistently,' she said."
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
See also “What Does Divestment from Israel Really Mean?” at Vox
Articles of General Interest
The Consequences of Capitulation
Full article at Simple Justice
Why the Campus Protests Are So Troubling
Full op-ed by Thomas Friedman at NY Times
Stanford Has ‘No Plans’ to Cancel Commencement
Full article at Stanford Daily
Berkeley Law School Dean Edwin Chemerinsky re Campus Speech
Full interview (one hour) at YouTube and also at Reason
Listen to What They’re Chanting
Full op-ed at The Atlantic
Specific Issues at Other Colleges and Universities
Pro-Palestinian GWU Student Tribunal Calls for Campus Leaders to be Beheaded
Full article at College Fix
Some UNC Faculty to Withhold Final Grades for All Students Until Suspended Protesters Are Re-Instated
Full article at Carolina Journal
Harvard Threatens to Place Its Occupiers on Involuntary Leave, Citing Indefensible Behavior
Full article at Campus Reform
Protesters March to Harvard President Garber’s Home and Demand Start of Negotiations
Full article at Harvard Crimson
Why I Ended the University of Chicago Protest Encampment
Full statement by University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos at WSJ
U Chicago Says Free Speech Is Sacred, but Some Students See Hypocrisy
Full article at NY Times
Columbia Law School Students Send Menacing Email to Jewish Classmates: ‘You Threaten Everyone's Safety’
Full article at Free Beacon
A Message from Jewish Students at Columbia University
Full letter at Google Docs
Behind the Ivy Intifada
Full op-ed by Columbia Prof. Musa al-Gharbi at Compact
Columbia Custodian Trapped by Angry Mob Speaks Out
Full article at Free Press
Why I’m Not Calling the Police on My Students’ Encampment
Full statement by Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth at New Republic
Activist Groups Trained Students for Months Before Campus Protests
Full article at WSJ
UCLA, Yale and Michigan Up Next on Congressional Hot Seat
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
ACTA Survey Finds Texans Support Strong Actions at University of Texas in Response to Protests
Full article at ACTA website
“Though a university should not punish a student for holding up a placard, it has a legitimate interest in preventing a group from permanently repurposing its walls as political billboards or from forcing students to walk through a gauntlet of intimidating slogan-chanters on their way to class every day.” – Harvard Prof. Steve Pinker
May 6, 2024
Colleges Can Safeguard Both Free Speech and a Safe Campus Environment
Excerpts (links in the original):
“The First Amendment protects even subjectively harmful, hateful, and offensive speech -- and for good reason. When people face punishment for their words just because someone, somewhere, finds them distasteful, the window of public discussion becomes stultifyingly narrow.
"University leaders must not let this happen on campus.
“If leaders at both public and private institutions want to preserve an environment where teaching, research, and learning flourish, they should staunchly protect even the most objectionable speech.
“Critically, as FIRE says in its “10 common-sense reforms for colleges and universities,” they should do so in policy and in practice, making the scope of speech rights abundantly clear....
“[On the other hand,] universities should be battlegrounds for ideas -- not literal battlegrounds. A campus where unprotected conduct and expression -- such as violence, true threats and intimidation, incitement, and discriminatory harassment -- go unaddressed is a campus where faculty and students will be afraid to speak....
“When people feel physically safe, they’re willing to express themselves. And when people express themselves, their peers feel comfortable doing the same. The resulting sense of comfort is not merely psychological: Knowing what those around us really believe, especially if it’s ugly, can help us take intelligent and informed action.
“When either freedom or physical safety is compromised, it undermines the other. When both break down -- well, then we have a crisis on our hands....”
Full article at FIRE
The Continuing Growth of DEI at Stanford
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Stanford University, its campus lined with redwoods and eucalyptus trees, has long been known as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship. But in recent years, another ideological force has taken root: ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ …
“I have obtained exclusive analysis from inside Stanford outlining the incredible size and scope of the university’s DEI bureaucracy. According to this analysis, Stanford employs at least 177 full-time DEI bureaucrats, spread throughout the university’s various divisions and departments....
“Stanford’s DEI initiatives are not limited to humanities departments or race and gender studies. The highest concentration is in Stanford’s medical school, which has at least 46 diversity officials. A central DEI administration is led by chief DEI officer . . . with sub-departments throughout the medical school. Pediatrics, biosciences, and other specialties all have their own commissars embedded in the structure.
“In the sciences, DEI policies have advocated explicit race and sex discrimination in pursuit of ‘diversity.’ The physics department, for example, has committed to a DEI plan with a mandate to ‘increase the diversity of the physics faculty,’ which, in practice, means reducing the number of white and Asian men. Administrators are told to boost the representation of ‘underrepresented groups,’ or ‘URGs,’ through a variety of discriminatory programs and filters.
“Ivan Marinovic, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that DEI programs have had a disastrous impact on campus. He describes DEI as a ‘Trojan horse ideology’ that undermines ‘equality before the law, freedom of expression, and due process.’” …
Full op-ed by Christopher Rufo at City Journal and also republished at Substack
**********
See also "The Path to Hell Is a Sign That Says Diversity, Equity, Inclusion" by Niall Ferguson at YouTube
Excerpts:
“I know these words sound nice and nobody wants to be against them, but I have to tell you that in George Orwell’s 1984, words mean the opposite of what they appear to mean.
“What diversity, equity, inclusion turned out to mean at Harvard was uniformity of thought, no equity, no due process for anybody who fell foul of the Inquisition, and exclusion of conservatives .…
"I feel passionately about this because I was a lucky young person. I got to think freely, speak freely, take risks in classrooms, say dumb stuff in tutorials, write stupid stuff in student magazines without the thought police, without the social media, without that sense that there would be terrible, irreparable consequences for my entire life.
"Today’s 18, 19, 20, 21-year-olds who are in undergraduate programs in the U.S. live in a climate that’s almost like a totalitarian life, fearful of what their comrades may say to the high authorities. Worrying if the Dean for Student Affairs or the Vice Provost for this or that, or the Diversity-Equity-Inclusion officers will send them the dread email saying would you please report, there’s going to be an investigation into the party that you held in which somebody wore an inappropriate costume. That stuff is like something out of Stalin’s Soviet Union. The secret letter of denunciation. I had one read to me once. It’s sick and we’ve allowed it to happen in the greatest universities in North America." …
See also:
-
Stanford's War on Fun by Stanford undergraduate Theo Baker at Stanford Daily.
-
DEI Meets East Germany - U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another for Bias by Stanford Prof. Ivan Marinovic at WSJ.
-
Stanford's Protected Identity Harm Reporting System at Stanford website.
-
Stanford’s Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
Not in Our Name -- Politicians Are Using the Rise in Antisemitism as an Excuse to Curtail Free Speech; Jews Must Not Let Them
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Free speech is not a divisible concept. Either everyone is free to say what they want, no matter how noxious others find it, in order to create and sustain the free market of ideas -- or else speech isn’t free.
“Institutions that curtail speech -- that make people’s social media postings grounds for expulsion, that ban or suppress speakers they disagree with, that penalize dissenting opinions in classrooms and workplaces with bad grades and HR reports -- should not be allowed to then turn around and invoke the principles of free speech to defend problematic speech with which they happen to agree, let alone disruptive or illegal behavior.
“And yet, recent years have seen the emergence of two different speech regimes, one for alleged oppressors and one for the allegedly oppressed. Huge swaths of often innocent speech by the former is deemed out of bounds, even criminal, whereas any speech coming out of the mouth of someone with a claim to victim status -- including speech that actively incites violence -- is considered sacrosanct.
“As a result, there is now a great deal of confusion about freedom of speech, which is a very basic -- and very central -- principle of American history and society. For those interested in being de-confused, which we humbly submit should be all thinking American citizens, herewith: a primer.…
“What this looks like in practice is something that every American should be alarmed and repelled by: A small group of powerful people are now using public-private partnerships to silence the Constitution, censor ideas they don’t like, deny their opponents access to banking, credit, the Internet, and other public accommodations. (Here, for the skeptics, is a link to ten examples of times when Facebook, YouTube and Amazon passed censorship policies because the government told them to do so.)
“When a platform like Facebook, which currently accounts for a staggering third of all traffic to news sources, colludes with the federal government to suppress reporting on COVID-19, say, or when Twitter, a major digital reincarnation of the public square, kicks out an American political candidate for being too extreme while allowing users like the genocidal leader of Iran to remain, the rules have changed. 'Bad speech,' an old adage goes, 'is best corrected by good speech.' That was true until these public-private fingers hit the scales, making sure that fight couldn’t ever be fair.…
“The freedom and successes that Jews have enjoyed in America have been due to the protections afforded by our Constitution, and the respect for individual rights that became part of our culture. The most legitimate tax we owe -- to each other, to our fellow citizens, and to those who fought for our right as Americans to say whatever the f***we want -- is the work we are asked to put in, day in and day out, to protect that freedom.
“That’s where our strength lies. Don’t lose sight of it.”
Full statement by the editors of Tablet Magazine
See also “There Are Two Sets of Rules for Speech – Frat parties with offensive themes are swiftly punished. But publicly contemplate murdering Zionists? That’s a different story.” by Abigail Shrier at Free Press
See also “You’re Only for Free Speech if You Defend It for People You Hate” by Alex Gutentag and Michael Shellenberger at Public
See also "Some Jewish Students at Stanford Are Learning to Hide Their Identities” at Jewish News of Northern California and “Discriminatory Harassment at UVA” at Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web,” “Stanford’s Program for Reporting Bias” and “Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative” at our Stanford Concerns webpage
U.S. Has Long History of College Protests; Here's What Happened in the Past
Excerpt:
“USA TODAY revisited four monumental campus protests to explain how college protests have become a staple of American life and often influence the outcomes of political strife. Here's a look at how previous campus protests unfolded -- and whether they were successful in their causes.”
Full article at USA Today
Other Articles of Interest
What Makes a Protest Antisemitic?
Full op-ed at NY Times
Can the Current Universities Be Saved?
Full op-ed by Victor Davis Hanson at Real Clear Politics
America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed
Full article by Prof. Tyler A. Harper at The Atlantic
Drawing Comparisons Between Current Protests and Those of the Past
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
New Princeton Faculty Group Brings a Common-Sense Approach to Restoring Academic Freedom
Full article at Princetonians for Free Speech
Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Women’s Sailing Team Wins Fourth National Title
About Those Seasonal Allergies
Stanford and Bay Area Schools Launch National AI Literacy Day
“Surveys suggest that the principal reason students keep controversial ideas to themselves is to avoid the disdain not of their professors but of their peers.” -- Stanford alum and Yale Law School Prof. Stephen Carter
April 29, 2024
The Pedagogy That Broke Higher Education
Excerpts:
“. . . A university isn’t a state -- it can’t simply impose its rules with force. It’s a special kind of community whose legitimacy depends on mutual recognition in a spirit of reason, openness, and tolerance. At the heart of this spirit is free speech, which means more than just chanting, but free speech can’t thrive in an atmosphere of constant harassment. When one faction or another violates this spirit, the whole university is weakened as if stricken with an illness....
“A long, intricate, but essentially unbroken line connects that rejection of the liberal university in 1968 to the orthodoxy on elite campuses today. The students of the ’68 revolt became professors -- the German activist Rudi Dutschke called this strategy the ‘long march through the institutions’ -- bringing their revisionist thinking back to the universities they’d tried to upend. One leader of the Columbia takeover [in the '60's] returned to chair the School of the Arts film program. ‘The ideas of one generation become the instincts of the next,’ D. H. Lawrence wrote. Ideas born in the ’60s, subsequently refined and complicated by critical theory, postcolonial studies, and identity politics, are now so pervasive and unquestioned that they’ve become the instincts of students who are occupying their campuses today. Group identity assigns your place in a hierarchy of oppression. Between oppressor and oppressed, no room exists for complexity or ambiguity. Universal values such as free speech and individual equality only privilege the powerful. Words are violence. There’s nothing to debate....
“Elite universities are caught in a trap of their own making, one that has been a long time coming. They’ve trained pro-Palestinian students to believe that, on the oppressor-oppressed axis, Jews are white and therefore dominant, not 'marginalized,' while Israel is a settler-colonialist state and therefore illegitimate. They’ve trained pro-Israel students to believe that unwelcome and even offensive speech makes them so unsafe that they should stay away from campus. What the universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another.”
Full op-ed by George Packer in The Atlantic. Editor’s note: Mr. Packer is the son of Stanford Professor Emeritus Nancy Packer and the late Stanford Professor Herb Packer.
About the Cacophony on Campus
Excerpts (links in the original):
“As campuses continue to be plagued with protests and unrest in response to the October 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed, there’s a ton of hypocrisy projection going on....
“FIRE’s recent survey at Stanford shows that three-quarters of Stanford students believe shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is acceptable, three-fifths believe blocking other students from attending a campus speech is acceptable, and more than a third believe using physical violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable to at least some degree....
"Universities need to take a long hard look at the 'anti-debate' certainty culture they’ve created, in which issues are dealt with by students locking arms, shouting others down, and sometimes even resorting to violence rather than talking to one another.
"That’s a terrible sign for the search for truth and cultivating habits people need in a democratic society. It’s also a terrible look for an institution whose primary purpose is cultivating precisely those values and habits in its student body....
"We’ve made a lot of suggestions for how colleges and universities can change course, beginning with “FIRE’s 10 common-sense reforms for colleges and universities,” and more:
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Eliminating political litmus tests.
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Cutting administrative bloat.
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Five ways university presidents can prove their commitment to free speech.
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More big ideas for reforming higher ed.
"The solutions are right there. The only thing that’s missing is the collective will to act on the problem."
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Eternally Radical Idea. See also "Protest and Civil Disobedience Are Two Different Things" by Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington at Chronicle of Higher Education and "The Unreality of Columbia's Liberated Zone" by Michael Powell at The Atlantic.
The Civil Rights Rollback
Editor's note: The Title IX law, first enacted more than 50 years ago, bans sexual discrimination against individuals at schools that receive federal funding, including colleges and universities. In subsequent years, federal agencies have expanded the scope of Title IX through the issuance of "Dear Colleague" advisory letters and, under the Administrative Procedure Act, regulations. The Department of Education, after years of discussion and debate, has issued new regulations to take effect on August 1, 2024. This action, in turn, has stimulated numerous commentaries, including the following:
Excerpts (links in the original):
"One of the most concerning is the return of the 'single-investigator' model that was barred under [the prior administration]. This means 'one administrator can act as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury on a Title IX complaint.'
"Justin Dillon, a D.C. attorney who has represented accused students for a decade, says of the rollback, 'You arrive at truth by asking hard questions. But single investigators have no incentive to do that, which is why they are the worst possible model if you want to get to the truth. This is going to lead to more erroneous outcomes, and more lawsuits.' ...
“'The new regulations are a self-promoting piece of political theater that diminish the rights of all parties,' says Samantha Harris, an attorney who represents both accusers and accused. They 'allow universities,' she adds, 'to violate students’ rights to due process and fundamental fairness in ways that have already been held impermissible by courts around the country.'" ...
Full op-ed by Prof. KC Johnson at Free Press. Among other things, Prof. Johnson co-authored the book "Until Proven Innocent" which exposed the hoax in the infamous Duke lacrosse case. See also "Education Department’s Final Title IX Regulations Draw Mixed Reactions" at Higher Ed Dive and "New Title IX Rules Erase Campus Due Process Protections" at Reason.
In Praise of Institutional Neutrality in Academia
Excerpts (links in the original):
"The free-speech organization FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) defines institutional neutrality as 'the idea that colleges and universities should not, as institutions, take positions on social and political issues unless those issues ‘threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.’ Instead, these discussions should be left to students and faculty.
"The propensity to take stances on every issue was reexamined by higher-ed leaders after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and the disastrous House hearings featuring the presidents of Harvard, UPenn, and MIT. Pushback from alumni, donors, and the public, combined with internal tensions on the left that fractured the usual ideological unity, led many college presidents and chancellors to reconsider the wisdom of continually making political statements. …
"University leaders and governing bodies should formally adopt policies of neutrality to return our institutions to being bastions of diverse thought and debate and to restore trust among students, faculty, alumni, and the wider community. We can prioritize truth-seeking and intellectual freedom by adopting institutional neutrality today."
Full op-ed by UNC Prof. Mark McNeilly at James Martin Center
See also “Institutional Neutrality” from this quarter’s Democracy and Disagreement Series at Stanford (video of April 16, 2024 lecture featuring Stanford professors Emily Levine and Diego Zambrano and Yale professor Robert Post).
Other Articles of Interest
University Shares New Free Speech Policies with ASSU
Full article at Stanford Daily
Say 'Yes' to the First Amendment
Full article at Minding the Campus
In This Time of Chaos, Choose Stanford
Full article at Stanford Review
How to Reboot Free Speech on Campus
Full op-ed by David French at NY Times
College Protesters Want Amnesty; At Stake: Tuition, Legal Charges, Grades and Graduation
Full article at Associated Press
UC Berkeley’s Campus Is in Turmoil; It’s Unlike Anything in Recent Memory
Full article at Politico
Reluctance to Discuss Controversial Issues on Campus: Raw Numbers from the 2023 Campus Expression Survey
Full article at Heterodox Academy
If AI Takes Over More Work of College Graduates, Where Does That Leave Higher Ed?
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
How to Fix College Finances? Eliminate Faculty, Then Students
Full satire at Washington Post
Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
ChatGPT’s Latest Bot Behaves Like Humans, Only Better
Stanford Medicine-Led Study Identifies Novel Target for Epilepsy Treatment
A Greener Future Begins with Small Steps
Stanford Wins Fifth Consecutive NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championship
“Critical discourse was in critical condition on American campuses even before reactions to the war between Israel and Hamas left it with no discernible pulse.” – Stanford Prof. Paul Brest
April 22, 2024
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
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
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
"The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true." – Albert Einstein
April 15, 2024
Updated Responses to Reader Survey
Click here to see updated responses to our Reader Survey: What should be the two or three highest priorities for Stanford's current or next president?
For those still interested in responding, the survey form remains available here.
Stifling University Free Speech: A Tale of Two Campuses
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Last week, student demonstrators at the University of Michigan drowned out the University president’s speech during an Honors Convocation and brought an end to the event. The protest was organized by the TAHRIR Coalition, a group of 80 University of Michigan student organizations advocating for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. Ironically, the Michigan student chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, once associated with free speech, is part of the coalition and helped to organize the protest.
“Also last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D) was at the University of Maryland to deliver the Irving and Renee Milchberg Endowed Lecture on the subject of ‘Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century.’ Here, too, student protestors shouted down and heckled Rep. Raskin. Here, too, the event ended abruptly. Raskin had only been able to deliver a few minutes of his intended lecture.
“In Michigan and Maryland, we see two polar opposite responses to infringements on freedom of speech: one that endeavors to uphold free speech values and one, while using words that suggest otherwise, that fundamentally undermines campus speech. We can only hope that the Michigan model prevails.
“Darryll Pines, president of the University of Maryland, seemed positive about the outcome of the Raskin lecture. ‘What you saw play out actually was democracy and free speech and academic freedom’ [said Pines]. Professor Howard Milchberg, a professor of physics at the university, reiterated the president’s sentiments: ‘It didn’t go as planned…it was an actual exercise of democracy rather than a story of about democracy.’
“Back at Michigan, the response of the university president was, at first, to release a fairly milquetoast statement on the right to protest but not to disrupt. This was followed, however, by three students who had been identified as part of the protest being issued citations for trespassing. These students are barred from entering four campus buildings and may now be unable, in a poetic turn of events, to attend their own graduation....”
Full article at Real Clear Education
Campus Censorship Set for Record-Breaking 2024
Excerpts (links in the original):
. . . “2023 was the worst year ever for campus deplatforming attempts -- and 2024 is already on track to blow it out of the water. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has already recorded 45 deplatforming attempts as of 15 March, a pace of around 200 for the year, but I suspect that it will be even higher as shout-downs have become such a popular tactic among activists. Free speech on campus has been threatened for a long time, it’s not getting better, and anyone who can’t see that is being willfully blind.
“FIRE noted a record-setting 155 deplatforming attempts in 2023. Almost half (70) of those succeeded -- also a new record. These included the Whitworth University disinvitation of Chinese dissident Xi Van Fleet; the cancellation of multiple screenings of the film Israelism at Hunter College and the University of Pennsylvania; and the shout-down of 5th Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford Law School....”
Full op-ed at UnHerd
Stanford’s Faculty Senate Postpones Motion to Rescind Its Prior Condemnation of Dr. Scott Atlas
Excerpts:
“Stanford University’s Faculty Senate will weigh dueling motions [on Thursday, April 11] about whether to rescind its 2020 condemnation of Scott W. Atlas, a Hoover Institution senior fellow who was an adviser to former President Donald Trump about Covid-19.
“At the height of the pandemic, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution criticizing Atlas for promoting ‘a view of Covid-19 that contradicts medical science.’ It cited his remarks that discouraged mask-wearing and that encouraged Michiganders to ‘rise up’ against their governor in response to public-health measures, among others. The November 2020 resolution, which was approved by 85 percent of the senate membership and drew national attention, characterized Atlas’s behavior as ‘anathema to our community, our values, and our belief that we should use knowledge for good.’ …
“‘Our motion to rescind the censure of Atlas is not about relitigating the 2020 motion but about restoring due process, which everyone recognizes was not given to Atlas,’ John W. Etchemendy, a former Stanford provost and one of the faculty members behind the effort, said in an email. ‘I believe the great majority of senators acknowledges the flawed process and is in favor of correcting that mistake.’
“At the same time, the Faculty Senate committee that sets the agenda has proposed a competing motion: to table the call for a retraction until it undergoes further discussion....”
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. According to Stanford Daily, at last Thursday's Faculty Senate meeting, the motion to rescind the censure of Dr. Atlas was not adopted but instead was sent to committee.
Colleges Are Supposed to Make Citizens, Which Is Why Protecting the Right to Protest Is Essential
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In the now infamous December 5th Congressional hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT and UPenn, Republican Congressman Brandon Williams told Claudine Gay that ‘your mission is to educate’ but all he sees is ‘hateful and threatening anti-Semitic demonstrations.’ ...
“The shut-up-and-study crowd ignores the fact that virtually every college and university in the United States has a dual mission: the development of students’ critical thinking skills (via knowledge production and dissemination) and the preparation of students to be informed, engaged citizens....
“Appealing to safety concerns and community belonging, a number of universities, including Columbia, Cornell and Lehigh, have tightened their rules governing student demonstrations. At least three schools -- Columbia, Brandeis and George Washington University -- have suspended their chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman noted that the failure of these universities to offer detailed justifications for the suspensions has ‘left the impression that they may be engaging in viewpoint-based censorship, and attempting to deliberately silence pro-Palestinian voices critical of Israel.’ …
“The administrative impulse to avoid controversy at all costs is making a mockery of higher education’s avowed commitment to preparing students for citizenship. When student free expression rights are trampled on, they are deprived of the opportunity to practice the hard work of living in community with people who hold diverse views. We are reminded here of Jacob Mchangama’s astute observation that ‘To impose silence and call it tolerance does not make it so.’ How will students learn to navigate the sometimes rough-and-tumble world of life in a pluralistic, multicultural democracy? When their future neighbors put up lawn signs with messages they oppose or find offensive, there will be no dean on call to remove them....
“To be clear, while colleges and universities should have a high level of tolerance for confrontational and disruptive student protests, there are some basic ground rules that must be followed. The targeted harassment of individual campus community members is, of course, verboten. So too is the heckler’s veto -- that is, shouting down campus events -- as happened last month at the University of Michigan when pro-Palestine student protesters derailed the university’s annual Honors Convocation. It’s also important for students to keep in mind that exercising their free expression rights does not extend to violating reasonable time, place and manner restrictions such as keeping clear of fire exits or prohibiting the use of megaphones in the library.” …
Full op-ed by Carlton Professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder at “Banished” on Substack
Other Articles of Interest
Protestors Disrupt Dinner for Graduating UC Berkeley Law Students at Dean’s Home
Full article at Yahoo as reprinted from Telegraph. See also copy of Dean Chemerinsky’s letter as well as NBC News video of the incident.
Poll Shows Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Efforts to Roll Back Campus Due Process Rights
Full article at FIRE website
Legal Experts Say Pending Title IX Changes Threaten Free Speech and Due Process
Full article at College Fix
Employers Find Gen Z Is Failing in the American Workplace
Full article at Red Balloon. Compared to Washington Post Gen Z Needs to Be Treated Differently.
Harvard DEI Office Plans Another Year of Segregated Graduation Ceremonies, Finally Adds One for Jewish Students.
Full article at Campus Reform
Harvard Students Form Academic Freedom Group Amid Debates Over Speech, Neutrality
Full article at Harvard Crimson
Tara VanDerveer Announces Retirement After 38 Seasons at Stanford
Full article at Go Stanford. See also Stanford Daily.
Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Stanford Study Flags Unexpected Cells in Lung as Suspected Source of Severe COVID
Stanford Doctors Develop First FDA-Approved Gene-Editing Treatment
Generative AI Develops Potential New Drugs for Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
Navigating the Nuance: The Art of Disagreeing Without Conflict
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts." - Abraham Lincoln
April 8, 2024
Results of Last Week’s Reader Survey
Click here to see responses to last week’s Reader Survey: What should be the two or three highest priorities for Stanford's current or next president?
For those still interested in responding, the survey form remains available here.
More About Jonathan Levin, Stanford’s Next President
[Editor’s note: Last Thursday, we circulated a special edition of our Newsletter with a link to Stanford Report regarding the selection of Jonanthan Levin as Stanford’s next president, effective August 1. We are adding below some excerpts and links from other news sources.]
Excerpts from Stanford Daily, “Incoming University President Jonathan Levin ’94 Charts Optimistic Future” (links in the original):
“Graduate School of Business (GSB) Dean Jonathan Levin ’94 is charting a new direction for the University.... [Richard] Saller will continue to serve as president on an interim basis until Levin assumes office on Aug. 1.
“‘We want students to be comfortable with complexity and to hear many different views, and to think for themselves about complex events in the world,’ [Levin] told The Daily on Thursday.
“His position aligns with Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez’s public commitment to neutrality over their tenure. Levin said he would work closely with Saller and Martinez during his leadership transition.
“Over the past year, university presidents including Saller have contended with mounting political scrutiny over antisemitism, Islamophobia and free speech boundaries on campus amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. Lawmakers signaled at a congressional hearing last month that universities such as Stanford could face investigations....
“‘Universities should try to get out of the business of making statements on current events and focus on encouraging students to listen to different perspectives and engage in dialogue,’ Levin said.
“However, ‘that doesn’t mean abdicating responsibility -- it means that the responsibility of University leaders is to foster a culture of dialogue,’ he continued.
“Levin acknowledged that the challenges to higher education ‘are real and they’re going to need thoughtful attention, but the foundational strength that makes American universities the envy of the world endures.’” …
Excerpts from Stanford Review, “A New Day at Stanford” (links in the original):
“. . . We thank President Saller -- who recently sat down for a lengthy interview with the Review -- for his stability and sanity during a year of great upheaval. But as this tumult subsides, we are excited that 51-year-old Jonathan Levin, current dean of the Graduate School of Business has been named Stanford’s 13th president.
“Among many faculty members, Hoover fellows, and us at the Review, Levin was a highly anticipated candidate for the Stanford presidency. He has demonstrated exceptional leadership capacity, support for free speech, and a keen ability to balance academic success with administrative responsibilities. Unlike recent administrative picks at top universities, Levin was clearly chosen on the merits of his experience and capabilities, not his racial or sexual identity. For the past eight years, Levin has led Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. And in each of the five most recent years, Stanford has ranked number one on Bloomberg’s list of the best business schools based on surveys of students, alumni, and employers.
“Most importantly, Jonathan Levin has seen the inner workings of Stanford from every angle: as a student, a professor, and an administrator. He completed his undergraduate education at Stanford in 1994 with degrees in both English and Mathematics. Having a foot in both the humanities and quantitative subjects will ensure that Levin sees Stanford as more than a mere laboratory. He later taught in the Department of Economics, of which he became the chair in 2011. Then in 2016, Levin assumed his current role as head of the Graduate School of Business. He has experienced firsthand the frustrations of Stanford students, the bureaucracy dealt with by faculty, and the bloat that plagues our administration. Professor Jennifer Aaker, a member of the Presidential Search Committee, even claims that Levin is 'pro-fun.'
“As an academic, Levin is no slouch.... [He] has excelled in his field without taking shortcuts, earning the John Bates Clark medal in 2011. The Clark medal is given to the most promising economist under the age of forty and is widely regarded as one of the field’s most prestigious awards, second only to the Nobel Prize in Economics.
“He has also defended academic liberties in his leadership of the GSB. In November of 2022, Levin allowed the GSB’s Classical Liberalism Initiative to sponsor the controversial Academic Freedom Conference. On free speech, he stated, 'We’re trying to create a collision of ideas that gives rise to research and to learning, and we give faculty and students extraordinary freedom to that end to pursue that goal.' Based on his actions, Levin’s presidency promises a return to free expression and institutional neutrality in an era when the climate at universities is increasingly restrictive....”
See also:
“Renowned Economist to Take the Stanford Helm at a Time of Profound Upheaval at U.S. Universities” at WSJ, "Stanford Appoints Business School Dean As Its Next President” at Washington Post and “Dr. Levin Faces the Challenge of Guiding the University Through Politically Fraught Times” at NY Times.
One-Sided Departmental Statements Are a Threat to Academic Freedom
Excerpts:
“In the post-October 7 world, many of the fiercest battles in the campus culture wars have taken a strangely Talmudic form: What is antisemitism? How should we demarcate the boundary between antisemitism and anti-Zionism? What is the meaning of ‘from the river to the sea’? All of these interpretive skirmishes are playing out on the shifting ground of the debate over free expression: What can be said? What is forbidden to be said? And what must be said?
“Nowhere have those ritual collisions been more charged than at my own institutions, Barnard College and Columbia University. And nowhere is the power of those battles to illuminate the limitations of the left’s newfound embrace of free expression more evident than in the fight that emerged after the Barnard administration removed the ‘Statement of Palestinian Solidarity’ from the website of the department of women, gender, and sexuality studies (DWGSS) soon after October 7.
“All of this underscores the problem with departmental political side-taking in the name of academic freedom....
“I absolutely support my colleagues’ right to hold, and to express as individuals, the views contained in the DWGSS statement, misguided though I think they are. But I do not support their right to impose those views on Barnard and Columbia students. Despite the sinister image of jackbooted administrators tearing down a website, the view of the statement’s removal as ‘censorship’ reflects a confusion about the varying speech rules and rights that should attach to speakers in different zones of the academic workplace. Properly understood, the prohibition on doctrinaire departmental statements doesn’t quash academic freedom -- it protects it.” …
Full op-ed by Barnard and Columbia Prof. Jonathan Rieder at Chronicle of Higher Education
Mandatory DEI Statements Are Ideological Pledges of Allegiance; Time to Abandon Them
Excerpts:
“On a posting for a position as an assistant professor in international and comparative education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, applicants are required to submit a CV, a cover letter, a research statement, three letters of reference, three or more writing samples, and a statement of teaching philosophy that includes a description of their ‘orientation toward diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.’
“At Harvard and elsewhere, hiring for academic jobs increasingly requires these so-called diversity statements, which Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning describes as being ‘about your commitment to furthering EDIB within the context of institutions of higher education.’
“By requiring academics to profess -- and flaunt -- faith in DEI, the proliferation of diversity statements poses a profound challenge to academic freedom.
“A closer look at the Bok Center’s page on diversity statements illustrates how.
“For the purpose of showcasing attentiveness to DEI, the Center suggests answering questions such as: ‘How does your research engage with and advance the well-being of socially marginalized communities?’; ‘Do you know how the following operate in the academy: implicit bias, different forms of privilege, (settler-)colonialism, systemic and interpersonal racism, homophobia, heteropatriarchy, and ableism?’; ‘How do you account for the power dynamics in the classroom, including your own positionality and authority?’; ‘How do you design course assessments with EDIB in mind?’; and ‘How have you engaged in or led EDIB campus initiatives or programming?’
“The Bok Center’s how-to page mirrors the expectation that DEI statements will essentially constitute pledges of allegiance that enlist academics into the DEI movement by dint of soft-spoken but real coercion: If you want the job or the promotion, play ball -- or else....
“It would be hard to overstate the degree to which many academics at Harvard and beyond feel intense and growing resentment against the DEI enterprise because of features that are perhaps most evident in the demand for DEI statements. I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice. The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince. The practice of demanding them ought to be abandoned, both at Harvard and beyond.”
Full op-ed by Harvard Law School Prof. Randall L. Kennedy at Harvard Crimson
Concerns Raised Over Universities Signing Over Students’ Private FERPA Data to Voter Data Companies
Excerpts (link in the original):
“A relatively new report outlines how universities nationwide have signed over students’ private FERPA data to a third-party vendor that reviews their personal information to help study college students’ voting trends.
“The nine-page report describes how a national voting study run out of Tufts’ Institute for Democracy in Higher Education gets university administrators from across the country to agree to release students’ Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, where it's kept, to a voter data company....
“For a university to participate, its leaders sign a two-page contract that states administrators are allowing the National Student Clearinghouse to release their students’ FERPA data to a ‘third party vendor,’ a company not named in the contract, according to the 2022-2033 reauthorization form.... More than 1,200 campuses participate in the study....
“‘The third-party vendor of choice from inception until recently has been Catalist, the Democrat’s exclusive voter data provider. Tufts maintains a relationship with Catalist but also has an agreement with L2 Political for analysis of the NSC data,’ the report states.” …
Full article at College Fix
Colleges Use His Antisemitism Definition to Censor; the Author Calls It a Travesty
Excerpts:
“When Kenneth Stern drafted the working definition of antisemitism 20 years ago as director of the antisemitism division for the American Jewish Committee, he wanted to help researchers better understand the frequency of violence targeted at Jewish communities.
“Antisemitism, he determined, should include any rhetorical and physical manifestations of hatred toward Jews, their community institutions, and their religious facilities. He exempted criticism of Israel, ‘similar to that leveled against any other country,’ but said that ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor’ and ‘holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ should count as antisemitism....
“Stern, who is now the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, is alarmed by its use on college campuses. He believes colleges and politicians who adopt his definition into antidiscrimination policies could then censor anyone who criticizes or says something controversial about Israel. While the definition itself should help people identify clear harassment, using it in legislation allows colleges and lawmakers to clamp down on any protected speech, no matter if it’s harmful or offensive, Stern says.” …
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also "The Problem with Defining Antisemitism" at New Yorker.
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford Department of Athletics Approves Name Image Likeness Collective for Stanford Athletes
Full article at Stanford Daily
While Other Elite Universities See Applications Spike, Harvard’s Applications Drop
Full article at College Fix. See also Just the News.
Protecting a Regime of Robust Speech on the Campus Without Falling into Relativism
Full op-ed by Amherst Prof. Emeritus Hadley Arkes at Public Discourse
The Fall of Critical Thinking
Full op-ed by Prof. Bruce W. Davidson at Brownstone
The Triumph of ‘Equity’ Over ‘Equality’
Full op-ed by Dartmouth Prof. Darren M. McMahon at Chronicle of Higher Education
Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
SLAC Completes Construction of the Largest Digital Camera Ever Built for Astronomy
Stanford Prof. Michael Genesereth Is on a Mission to Bring Logic Education to High Schools
Are Long COVID Sufferers Falling Through the Cracks?
Old Immune Systems Revitalized in Stanford Medicine Mouse Study, Improving Vaccine Response
A four-minute spectacle will not repair the fabric of our country rent by years of mutual distrust, yet if enough of us stand in the path of the moon’s shadow on April 8, the eclipse may remind us of the unity we long to restore.” — David Baron, former NPR science correspondent
April 1, 2024
Editor's notes: We have included with this Newsletter an optional survey function, immediately below, and which is something we might periodically include in the future as well.
Second, for the past 18 months we have culled through as many as 80 articles a week to select a much smaller number that might be of interest to readers. This past week, we came upon two articles that are especially well written and very much on point regarding issues specifically at Stanford as well as nationally. We thus are posting only these two articles, with the additional suggestion that readers click on the links at the end of each article to read them in their entirety.
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Reader Survey: Tell Us What You Think
If interested, please click here to answer the question, "What should be the two or three highest priorities for Stanford's current or next president?" Responses are anonymous.
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From Stanford Student Theo Baker at The Atlantic: The War at Stanford
Excerpts:
“. . . For four months, two rival groups of protesters, separated by a narrow bike path, faced off on Stanford’s palm-covered grounds. The ‘Sit-In to Stop Genocide’ encampment was erected by students in mid-October, even before Israeli troops had crossed into Gaza, to demand that the university divest from Israel and condemn its behavior. Posters were hung equating Hamas with Ukraine and Nelson Mandela. Across from the sit-in, a rival group of pro-Israel students eventually set up the ‘Blue and White Tent’ to provide, as one activist put it, a ‘safe space’ to ‘be a proud Jew on campus.’ Soon it became the center of its own cluster of tents, with photos of Hamas’s victims sitting opposite the rubble-ridden images of Gaza and a long (and incomplete) list of the names of slain Palestinians displayed by the students at the sit-in....
“‘We’ve had protests in the past,’ Richard Saller, the university’s interim president, told me in November -- about the environment, and apartheid, and Vietnam. But they didn’t pit ‘students against each other’ the way that this conflict has.
“I’ve spoken with Saller, a scholar of Roman history, a few times over the past six months in my capacity as a student journalist....
“When we first met, a week before October 7, I asked Saller about this. Did Stanford have a moral duty to denounce the war in Ukraine, for example, or the ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims in China? ‘On international political issues, no,’ he said. ‘That’s not a responsibility for the university as a whole, as an institution.’ …
“In making such decisions, Saller works closely with [Jenny] Martinez, Stanford’s provost. I happened to interview her, too, a few days before October 7, not long after she’d been appointed. When I asked about her hopes for the job, she said that a ‘priority is ensuring an environment in which free speech and academic freedom are preserved.’
“We talked about the so-called Leonard Law -- a provision unique to California that requires private universities to be governed by the same First Amendment protections as public ones. This restricts what Stanford can do in terms of penalizing speech, putting it in a stricter bind than Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, or any of the other elite private institutions that have more latitude to set the standards for their campus (whether or not they have done so)….
“By March, it seemed that [Saller’s] views had solidified. He said he knew he was ‘a target,’ but he was not going to be pushed into issuing any more statements. The continuing crisis seems to have granted him new insight. ‘I am certain that whatever I say will not have any material effect on the war in Gaza.’ It’s hard to argue with that.
“People tend to blame the campus wars on two villains: dithering administrators and radical student activists. But colleges have always had dithering administrators and radical student activists. To my mind, it’s the average students who have changed....
“The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong. You don’t have to understand what you’re arguing for in order to argue for it. You don’t have to be able to name the river or the sea under discussion to chant 'From the river to the sea.' This kind of obliviousness explains how one of my friends, a gay activist, can justify Hamas’s actions, even though it would have the two of us -- an outspoken queer person and a Jewish reporter -- killed in a heartbeat. A similar mentality can exist on the other side: I have heard students insist on the absolute righteousness of Israel yet seem uninterested in learning anything about what life is like in Gaza.
“I’m familiar with the pull of achievement culture -- after all, I’m a product of the same system. I fell in love with Stanford as a 7-year-old, lying on the floor of an East Coast library and picturing all the cool technology those West Coast geniuses were dreaming up. I cried when I was accepted; I spent the next few months scrolling through the course catalog, giddy with anticipation. I wanted to learn everything.
“I learned more than I expected. Within my first week here, someone asked me: ‘Why are all Jews so rich?’ In 2016, when Stanford’s undergraduate senate had debated a resolution against anti-Semitism, one of its members argued that the idea of ‘Jews controlling the media, economy, government, and other societal institutions’ represented ‘a very valid discussion.’ (He apologized, and the resolution passed.) In my dorm last year, a student discussed being Jewish and awoke the next day to swastikas and a portrait of Hitler affixed to his door....
“As a friend emailed me not long ago: ‘A place that was supposed to be a sanctuary from such unreason has become a factory for it.’
“Readers may be tempted to discount the conduct displayed at Stanford. After all, the thinking goes, these are privileged kids doing what they always do: embracing faux-radicalism in college before taking jobs in fintech or consulting. These students, some might say, aren’t representative of America.
“And yet they are representative of something: of the conduct many of the most accomplished students in my generation have accepted as tolerable, and what that means for the future of our country. I admire activism. We need people willing to protest what they see as wrong and take on entrenched systems of repression. But we also need to read, learn, discuss, accept the existence of nuance, embrace diversity of thought, and hold our own allies to high standards. More than ever, we need universities to teach young people how to do all of this." …
Full op-ed by Stanford sophomore Theo Baker at The Atlantic. As noted above, we have presented here only a small portion of Theo’s article and we again urge readers to read it in its entirety.
The Coddling of the American Undergraduate
Excerpts:
“. . . Today, the ‘college experience’ centered on a residential life that promises to envelope students in a warm, intimate community has hardened into something more totalizing than even the blundering late-20th-century project of enforcing political correctness. An expansive definition of ‘harm’ has fueled the prioritization of an equally expansive definition of ‘safety’ as the aim of student life. The newest iteration of campus paternalism, or perhaps its terminal acceleration, was precipitated in 2011 by a wave of campus activism in response to concerns about sexual assault....
“The ‘hostile environment’ was a repurposing of a concept from labor law to the new goal of measuring student perceptions of their safety and comfort.... To enforce a nonhostile environment, the new policies encouraged (and in many instances required) a campus culture of reporting on private interactions in which sexual misconduct was revealed or just suggested -- overheard conversations, social-media posts, rumors, confidential confessions -- even if the information was unverified or the alleged victims declined to make a report. The Title IX model was easily extrapolated to race-related offenses, with the creation of mechanisms that permitted anonymous ‘bias reporting’ of slights based on race and other group identities. Campus climate surveys, which regularly solicit anonymous student reports of real or perceived threats to one’s sense of safety on campus, all but ensure a regular stream of complaints that could be evidence of a hostile environment, and thereby license ongoing intervention into students’ interpersonal relationships.
“As colleges have increasingly come to view student life as an arena to be policed for hostility, their behavior-monitoring paternalism has given way to the behavior-prohibiting paternalism it was meant to replace. After information-technology groups at Stanford University launched an Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative discouraging the use of such offensive terms as ‘walk-in’ and ‘you guys’ in 2020, and the university imposed draconian restrictions on student gatherings, many complained, even forming a group called ‘Stanford Hates Fun.’ (After much criticism and even ridicule, Stanford removed the language-initiative document from the university website in January 2023.)
“Stanford has perhaps gone further than its peer institutions in its heavy-handedness.... The new imperative to avert hostile environments is different from the old paternalism. Like the old paternalism, it directs students’ personal interactions with faculty and each other, it surveils their speech, and it restricts their freedom of association. But under the old in loco parentis dispensation, such restraint was temporary, intended to prepare students for a future independence in which they could freely do what was prohibited on campus. The new paternalism holds out no such future independence. Instead, students are being prepared for a life of continued monitoring and restriction in professional and social life, a lifetime of dependence on the adult analogs of student-life administrators and grievance officers, located in human-resource departments and even in Facebook group-moderation policies....
“If genuine education is to remain possible at institutions that seem increasingly intent on strangling every spontaneous interaction within them, becoming a little more ungovernable might unfortunately become the means of attaining it.”
Full op-ed by University of Houston Prof. Rita Koganzon at Chronicle of Higher Education as republished from Hedgehog Review.
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We also refer readers to these articles long posted at our website:
Back to Basics at Stanford, where we outline detailed proposed reforms to address the types of issues discussed in the articles above.
Theo Baker’s “Inside Stanford’s War on Fun” at Stanford Daily and Francesca Block’s “Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students” at Free Press.
Stanford’s Computerized Student Case Management System which has all too often replaced human counseling and judgment with a highly bureaucratized and even dangerous automated system and which we believe may be a significant cause in recent years for student disaffection as well as several highly publicized student crises.
Stanford’s Program for Reporting Bias, even anonymously, and which largely uses the same forms and automated case management software as are used on campuses nationwide and, in the process, have further contributed to the divisive cultures now found on campuses nationwide.
Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative and where we have been advised that, although the list (a PDF copy of which is posted at our website) is no longer available to the public, various departments may be using the list anyway. What also is of concern is that this and many of the other programs described above are largely if not exclusively the result of decisions by Stanford's non-teaching administrative staff, apparently now in excess of 13,000 in number.
Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy and its Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy, all of which are not only very costly but we believe are a fundamental source of the problems discussed above.
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” – Socrates
March 25, 2024
Competing Perspectives of College Presidents - Their Campus Versus Everywhere Else
Excerpts:
“The past five months have shown the world just how toxic speech is on college campuses. The climate for open inquiry and dialogue is under attack nationwide, and students are scared to speak, question, and express themselves freely. Using disparaging rhetoric, even violence, to prevent speech is now commonplace on campus, and thus, many students are turning inward, and genuine liberal learning is being interrupted. Yet, most college presidents believe their campuses are perfect examples of viewpoint diversity.
“The 2024 edition of Inside Higher Ed’s survey of college and university presidents sadly reveals that many higher education leaders are oblivious to the issues of free speech on their own campuses. This should give anyone interested in the state of our colleges and universities pause. The 2024 survey captured the voices of 380 presidents, 206 from public and 174 from private institutions. While presidents remain hopeful for the future of their schools, they clearly are unaware of what is happening outside their very offices....
"Nearly 82 percent of college and university presidents rate the climate for open inquiry and dialogue on their campus as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ 92 percent of presidents who have been in charge of their institutions for 10 or more years rate their campus’s dialogue as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ …
“Oddly enough, when these leaders were asked about open inquiry in higher education generally, just 30 percent of collegiate presidents believed that the climate for open inquiry and dialogue in higher education generally is good or excellent. And . . . presidents with 10 or more years at their current institution . . . rate the overall collegiate speech climate poorly -- just 21 percent agree that it’s ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ …”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sara Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. A copy of the survey itself is available for downloading at Inside Higher Ed.
The Censorship Activities of Stanford Internet Observatory and Its Virality Project
[Editor's note: The issues discussed in the following article were heard in oral arguments last week before the U.S. Supreme Court and are summarized, among many places, at Tech Policy, NY Times and Reason. Copies of the amicus briefs from the Twitter Files journalists and from Stanford as well as a transcript of the oral arguments are now posted at our Stanford Concernswebpage, and a recording of the oral arguments is available at C-SPAN. Note also two Supreme Court decisions a week before that, both of which concluded unanimously that officials who block critics on social media could conceivably be violating the First Amendment, although the pending Murthy case raises numerous other issues that could affect the court’s decision.]
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Initiated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and led by the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the Virality Project sought to censor those who questioned government Covid-19 policies. The Virality Project primarily focused on so-called ‘anti-vaccine’ ‘misinformation;’ however, my Twitter Files investigations with Matt Taibbi revealed this included ‘true stories of vaccine side effects.’ …
“Led by former CIA fellow Renee DiResta, the Virality Project functioned as an intermediary for government censorship. Ties between the US government and the academic research center were extremely close. DHS had 'fellows' embedded at the Stanford Internet Observatory, while SIO had interns embedded at CISA, and former DHS staff contributed to the Virality Project’s final report....
“The Virality Project hosted a launch with the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as part of the Surgeon General’s campaign against ‘misinformation.’ In the presentation, Renee DiResta also introduced Matt Masterson, former senior adviser at DHS, and now a ‘non-resident policy fellow’ at SIO.
“Murthy ends the presentation by telling Renee, ‘I just want to say thank you to you, for everything you have done, for being such a great partner.’" …
Full op-ed at Brownstone and also at Substack. See also our updated article “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web.”
See also Matt Taibbi’s op-ed, “Why State Lies Are the Most Dangerous,” including his detailed discussion of the research done by, and screenshots of the efforts to censor, Stanford Medical School Prof. Jay Bhattacharya.
See also Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists and We Fought Back" as well as our proposed reforms in Part 4 of Back to Basics at Stanford including (at paragraph 4.d.) that Stanford must never again play a role in censoring members of its own faculty.
UC Regents Delay Vote That Would Ban Political Positions at Department Websites
Excerpts:
“The University of California’s board of regents has delayed voting until May on a controversial policy proposal that would restrict faculty from using some university websites to make opinionated and political statements, such as opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.
“The proposal would ban faculty departments and other academic units from using the homepages of their department websites to make ‘discretionary statements,’ which the proposal defines as comments on ‘local, regional, global or national’ events or issues and not related to daily departmental operations.” …
Full article at EdSource. See also op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education arguing that the Kalven Principles should not apply to departments. See also our compilation of the Kalven Principles.
The Cost of DEI at University of Virginia
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Recently, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that the University of Virginia (UVA) employed 235 people in roles related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) costing taxpayers some $20 million for salaries and benefits last year.... UVA’s stunning headcount includes 82 student interns with many paid the equivalent of half to full tuition waivers....
“In April 2023, UVA told the New York Times it had only 40 DEI positions. In June 2023, the university told its governing body, the Board of Visitors, it has 55 DEI staffers....The administration is deliberately misleading its governing board, the public, Virginia’s taxpayers, and the media.... Again, all of our information comes from the university payroll produced to us by UVA itself and you can review it for yourself." …
Full article including detailed salaries and a link to the data base at Open the Books. See also our own prior article about “Stanford’s Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy.”
Other Articles of Interest
Is Running a Top University America’s Hardest Job?
Full article at The Economist
A Vision for a New Future of the University of Pennsylvania
Full statement at U Penn Forward
The New Campus Fanaticism
Full op-ed by NYU Prof. Robert S. Huddleston at Chronicle of Higher Education
Why Intellectual Diversity Requirements on Campus Won’t Work
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington at The Dispatch
The Affair of Yale and Rural China
Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars
It’s Harder to Hate the Other Side When You Come Face to Face
Full op-ed at Free Press
How This Ivy Tech Program Is Giving Formerly Incarcerated Students a Second Chance
Full article at Open Campus
Alternative Viewpoint: Evidence-Based Discourse on DEI
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Selected Trivia from Stanford's Tour Guides
Sustainability Accelerator Announces First Greenhouse Gas Removal Grants
What Makes a Super Communicator
“Our purpose in life is to help others along the way. May you each try to do the same.” -- Sandra Day O’Connor, from a letter to her sons as quoted in STANFORD Magazine
March 18, 2024
Concerns re Stanford’s Computerized Student Case Management System
Last week’s Newsletter included an article about the bias reporting programs at colleges and universities nationwide. As previously reported, Stanford itself has such a system in place that, among other functions, allows students, faculty and staff to report others for allegedly biased statements and actions, euphemistically called Protected Identity Harm Reporting. Stanford's program largely uses the same bias complaint forms, standardized emails, timelines and procedures that are part of the same automated case management system used not only by Stanford, but by over 1,300 other colleges and universities around the country.
This computer-based system has functions covering virtually every aspect of student life, not just bias reporting. For example, it has functions for student disciplinary matters (alleged cheating, alleged sexual misconduct, etc.), residence staff observations about a student seen drinking or using drugs, etc., all of which are then cross-referenced in the system’s data base, including with all other students who might be named in any given report.
It should also be noted that in most cases, the student records are maintained on the vendor’s own servers or cloud-storage and, unless a school has opted out, participating schools are allowed to make electronic inquiries as to whether any of the other schools have records about a specifically named student.
Late last summer, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni distributed a press kit to over 100 student newspapers about the serious impact these automated systems can have on campus cultures, student rights and free speech. Given the timeliness of the issues, we have posted a copy of the ACTA cover letter, press kit and FERPA request form in a new article at our Stanford Concerns webpage. We think everyone -- students, faculty, trustees, parents, alumni and others -- will benefit by reading how these systems work, the types of records that are permanently kept on file and without most students knowing that this is taking place, and how even anonymous reports can be used against students in current and future actions in which they might be involved.
This is why we again suggest that students at Stanford (former students, too) should exercise their legal rights under FERPA (the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) as well as applicable state laws to see what is contained in their files, to correct any wrong information and/or to demand that any erroneous and all anonymous information be deleted.
PDF copies are posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also our proposed remedial actions in paragraphs 2.h, i and j at our Back to Basics webpage.
From Stanford Review: Interview with President Richard Saller
Excerpts (please note that both the questions and answers are significantly abbreviated here and we urge readers to go instead to Stanford Review for the full interview):
Q: Why haven’t you adopted the Chicago Trifecta at Stanford?
Saller: I don’t have the power to adopt it. The President doesn't dictate that. Right now, the Faculty Senate has a committee that’s working on it. Particularly in my position as an interim, if any principles are going to have any long-term effect, they need to have broader support among the community. Not a President who has maybe another six months to serve.
Q: The physics department is just one of many that requires a DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] statement for prospective candidates. And DEI statements are, to some extent, inherently political. How is this requirement not an affront to institutional neutrality?
Saller: We have left it to departments, and this was in place before I started as interim president. We have left it to departments to make their own decision about that, but we’ve made it clear that after the Supreme Court decision [against affirmative action], the statement cannot include a direct statement about race. So you’re right to identify this as an area that has ambiguity. And I think that’s why it’s been left to the departments.
Q: I've heard from many Jewish students that days after October 7th was not the right time to say that the University will not take a firm position on institutional neutrality. Why do you disagree?
Saller: I disagree because I think the following weeks have shown that this war in Gaza is an issue that sharply divides the campus, and having an official pronouncement about taking sides would be counterproductive.
Q: I think in some ways meritocracy has become a dirty word: ‘You are standing up for the establishment; meritocracy has been a tool of the establishment.’ How do you respond to that?
Saller: I’m a historian who goes back two thousand years and I can see the progress in knowledge that’s come through recognition of excellence. That’s fundamental to my values.
Q: Many students blame Stanford’s current climate on its administrative bloat. As of Fall 2023, Stanford has 18,369 staff members, and 17,529 students. Do you think administrative bloat is a problem?
Saller: There's actually an article in this morning’s Stanford Daily about the increase in staff.... In the area of clinical care, that’s where most of the growth is, and it brings in more revenue than it costs.... And, in research, our research funding is up substantially.... It’s also true that there's been an increase in staff for student services.... I’ve asked that we get better data and the Provost has to get better data on where the growth is and what the justification is....
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We again urge readers to read the full interview at Stanford Review. See also our own charts contained in “Stanford’s BallooningAdministrative Bureaucracy.” And quoting again from one of our readers: “Does a master organizational chart exist to show the density of administrators in all specific areas of responsibility? Would love to see it, if it exists.” To which we again say, the time is long overdue for Stanford to produce the type of chart this reader has suggested so that faculty, students, alumni and donors can better understand who these people are and what they do. A related but very important question to the trustees and others: Is this saying that the income and potentially significant liabilities of the Medical Center's clinical activities are now coming onto the University's budget and not the separately incorporated entities at the Medical Center, something that was scrupulously avoided for decades? If so, who did this and why?
See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta.
Colleges Are Putting Their Futures at Risk
Excerpts (links in the original):
“‘Academic freedom allows us to choose which areas of knowledge we seek and pursue them,’ said Anna Grzymala-Busse, a professor of international studies at Stanford. ‘Politically, what society expects of us is to train citizens and provide economic mobility, and that has been the bedrock of political and economic support for universities. But if universities are not fulfilling these missions, and are seen as prioritizing other missions instead, that political bargain becomes very fragile.’
“Her remarks came during a recent conference on civil discourse at Stanford, ranging from free expression on campus to diversity, equity and inclusion hiring statements, which I wrote about last week. But underlying all the discussions was a real fear that universities had strayed from their essential duties, imperiling the kind of academic freedom they had enjoyed for decades....
“At last month’s conference, Diego Zambrano, a professor at Stanford Law School, made the downsides of [universities making statements re political and social matters] clear. What, he asked, are the benefits of a university taking a position? If it’s to make the students feel good, he said, those feelings are fleeting, and perhaps not even the university’s job. If it’s to change the outcome of political events, even the most self-regarding institutions don’t imagine they will have any impact on a war halfway across the planet. The benefits, he argued, were nonexistent.
“As for the cons, Zambrano continued, issuing statements tends to fuel the most intemperate speech while chilling moderate and dissenting voices. In a world constantly riled up over politics, the task of formally opining on issues would be endless. Moreover, such statements force a university to simplify complex issues. They ask university administrators, who are not hired for their moral compasses, to address in a single email thorny subjects that scholars at their own institutions spend years studying. (Some university presidents, such as Michael Schill of Northwestern, have rightly balked.) Inevitably, staking any position weakens the public’s perception of the university as independent.” …
Full op-ed at NY Times. See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta, including the Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social matters.
Behind Stanford’s Doubled Staff-to-Student Ratio
[Editor’s note: We are reprinting below excerpts from a Stanford Daily article published last week re the growth of the non-teaching staff at Stanford in the past two decades. Readers might also want to compare these charts and explanations with the charts and explanations at “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” long posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also Back to Basics at Stanford.]
Excerpts:
“The number of staff at Stanford has more than doubled since 2000, drawing some criticism of administrative bloat....
“Between 1996 and 2023, the number of staff, or non-teaching employees, grew at an average rate of 382 new staff per year -- 950 per year since 2019. The University’s staff-to-student ratio concurrently increased from 0.42 to 0.94 staff per student, higher than 46 out of the 50 top universities as ranked by the U.S. News and World report.
“This expansion is largely at the School of Medicine, where the yearly staff growth rate of 5.6% is significantly higher than the 1.7% rate across the rest of the University. New staff are also being hired at the Doerr School of Sustainability and other incipient programs, and for research support across departments....
“Some professors said increasing compliance requirements on universities is partially responsible for staff increases. Between 1997 and 2012, the number of government compliance requirements on universities increased by 56%, with a 2015 study finding that compliance with these requirements consumes 3-11% of a university’s non-hospital expenses....
“Universities have also hired more staff to support students, such as for mental health, diversity and inclusion and career preparation. Stanford’s spending on student services accounts for 5.2% of the University’s overall expenses, an increase from 2.7% in 2000. Student service salary data, which is only available for 2019 and subsequent years, has remained relatively constant at 2.9% of the University’s total expenses....”
Full article at Stanford Daily
The Impact of DEI on College Campuses
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Thank you for giving me a platform to speak on the issue of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education. I have been faculty, I have been a writing program director, and I’ve even been a diversity officer.
“DEI is built upon a foundation whose very mission is to perpetuate racism.... The primary tenet of Critical Social Justice is this: ‘The question is not ‘did racism take place?’ but rather ‘how did racism manifest in that situation?’ So, according to Critical Social Justice, racism is always already taking place. There is no need to think for oneself; the narrative -- one of perpetual oppression -- does the thinking for you....
“I don’t know if you’ve all noticed yet, but I’m black and I’m against DEI. Why? Because I really like being black. And this ideology is infantilizing, it is anti-intellectual, and since I am a mature intellectual person, it doesn’t align with me. I am too good for contemporary DEI, and so are many others.”
Full Congressional testimony by York College Prof. Erec Smith at Journal of Free Black Thought
Campus Free Speech Was in Trouble in 2018, and the Data Show It Has Gotten Much Worse
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Six years ago, in a three-part series for Heterodox Academy, Sean [Stevens] and Jonathan Haidt proposed that a ‘new dynamic’ was emerging on American college campuses and that current college students were more hostile toward freedom of speech than their older counterparts. Sean and Haidt proposed that this ‘new dynamic’ represented a set of ‘politically correct’ viewpoints that made it harder for students and faculty who dissented from these viewpoints to express themselves....
“At the time, Sean and Haidt’s ‘new dynamic’ hypothesis was met with skepticism. Jeffery Sachs declared, ‘There is no campus free speech crisis, the kids are alright, those that say otherwise have lost all perspective, and the real crisis may be elsewhere,’ and ‘The campus free speech crisis is a myth and here are the facts.’ Rich Smith let everyone know, ‘There’s No Free Speech Crisis on Campus, So Please Shut Up About It.’ And Matt Yglesias claimed in Vox, ‘Everything we think about the political correctness debate is wrong.’ …
“The crux of the ‘new dynamic’ hypothesis is this: Do we have data supporting the claim that a significant portion of college students have become more hostile toward free speech than previous generations? ... According to FIRE’s new Campus Deplatforming Database (last updated Feb. 29, 2024), the answer is yes....
“We hope the wealth of data supporting the ‘new dynamic’ hypothesis will continue to persuade skeptics that there is really a problem on campus worth reckoning with....”
Full op-ed by Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE Greg Lukianoff and FIRE's chief research advisor Sean Stevens at Substack
Other Articles of Interest
Interrupting University Events Is Not Free Speech
Full op-ed at Stanford Review
Stanford Athletes to Deliberate Employment Status Post Dartmouth Unionization
Full article at Stanford Daily
College Students Love Sidechat; Colleges, Not So Much
Full article at USA Today
We’ve Seen This Hate Before
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education
Johns Hopkins Medicine Chief Diversity Officer Resigns After 'Poorly Worded' Email About Men, ‘White People’ and 'Christians'
Full article at Campus Reform. See also Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
Alternative Viewpoint: Diversity Proponents Respond to Divisive Narrative
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Received a Low Grade? Arizona Bill Would Let Students Allege Political Bias
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
University of Georgia Moves to Active Learning
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also University of Georgia website.
On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
AI Makes a Rendezvous in Space
Stanford Researchers Dial In on Genetic Culprit of Disease
“Free expression of ideas necessarily includes protection for some forms of controversial and even offensive speech, both as a matter of Stanford’s policy on academic freedom adopted by the Faculty Senate in 1974 and California’s Leonard Law.” – Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez
March 11, 2024
Update re Bias Reporting Systems
[Editor’s note: We have previously posted at our website and in prior Newsletters concerns about Stanford’s bias reporting policies and procedures. We therefore bring to your attention an editorial that appeared in last week’s WSJ, all of which raise these additional questions and concerns:
[Since Stanford is prohibited, pursuant to the Leonard Law and the 1995 decision in Corry v Stanford, from adopting limitations on speech that would not be permitted under the First Amendment, isn’t it worse when Stanford administrators flag students (and possibly faculty and others) for counseling and other actions for something the students or others might have said or done (bias reporting) based solely on what a Stanford staff member thinks, case by case and without any written standards, is wrongful speech or conduct?
[It may also be useful to remember that, under the computerized case management system that Stanford uses, every report is automatically cross-referenced to any other named students, and all of the reports and cross-references are then automatically pulled up in any new and totally unrelated disciplinary actions about any of the named students -- often where students don’t even know that these types of permanent files are being kept about them and used against them.]
Excerpts:
“The Supreme Court said Monday it won’t hear a challenge to Virginia Tech’s old system of soliciting anonymous speech complaints via an official bias response team. Instead the Justices declared the case moot, after the college’s president told them the policy had been discontinued, while also promising -- he swears -- not to revive it.
“Good for Hokies, but as a dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas says, failing to answer the legal question leaves the First Amendment up for grabs at other schools. Speech First, which brought the Virginia Tech case, ‘estimates that over 450 universities have similar bias-reporting schemes,’ Justice Thomas writes....
“His opinion includes some examples of what happens when all of a campus is urged to submit anonymous tips about ‘bias.’ One report was on male students who were privately ‘talking crap’ about the women playing in a snowball fight, ‘calling them not athletic.’ Another report concerned a room white board on which someone ‘observed the words Saudi Arabia.’
“No context? No problem. Virginia Tech advertised the BIRT [Bias Intervention and Response Team] with a chirpy slogan: ‘If you see something, say something!’ …
Full editorial at Wall Street Journal
See also Stanford Prof. Ivan Marinovic's op-ed, "DEI Meets East Germany; U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another for Bias" at WSJ, April 2023: "The snitches will be people who don’t understand the damage Stasi-like behavior will do to our universities."
See also paragraphs 2.h. i. and j. at our Back to Basics webpage where we propose that all Stanford students should be notified in writing at least annually of their FERPA rights to inspect all files created or maintained about them, that they should have a right to request that any inaccurate including intentionally false information be removed or alternatively that they be allowed to submit corrective information, and that a website should be available explaining the policies and procedures for students to inspect these files, including a single office to process the student requests. We also suggest that the Protected Identity Harm Reporting system and all similar systems should be ended and all anonymous reports should be removed immediately and permanently.
Stanford to Offer Spring Quarter Course on Constructive Disagreement
Excerpts:
“‘In a pluralistic society, people are going to have disagreements about issues of policy based on their own backgrounds and their own interests -- that’s simply the nature of pluralism,’ said [Interim Law School Dean Paul Brest]. ‘The goal of democracy is to manage disagreements in a way that, ideally, improves the welfare of the overall society while respecting people’s differences.’
“Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez sees this course as one of many opportunities at Stanford for students to learn with experts about some of the most urgent issues of today and prepare themselves as citizens in a democracy.
“‘One of the skills of citizenship is engaging in civil discourse,’ Martinez said....
“Throughout the course, students will also learn how disagreement can help them be curious -- about each other, but also about themselves and their own beliefs and values.
“‘Confronting an opposing opinion forces you to think, ‘OK, why don’t I agree? Am I missing something? Is there a different way of framing this?’ said [H&S Dean Debra Satz, who will be co-teaching the course with Brest].” ...
Full article including samples from the syllabus at Stanford Report
In Defense of Free Speech and the Mission of the University
Excerpts (link in the original):
“My friend and former student Yoram Hazony has argued in Public Discourse that it’s time for universities to abandon any commitment to ‘absolute free speech.’ In light of rampant expressions of anti-Semitism on university campuses since the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, Yoram thinks universities should forbid and punish the expression or advocacy of certain ideas or positions by students and faculty, and ‘suspend’ or ‘terminate’ those who, for example, advocate genocide.
“Yoram suggests that I and others -- especially my friend Jonathan Haidt -- have been ‘reduced’ to defending a ‘fundamentally wrongheaded’ pro-free speech view. Here I will explain why I persist in believing that the research and teaching missions of nonsectarian colleges and universities, such as the one at which Yoram was a student and at which I teach, are best served by the most robust commitment to freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression -- that is, the right to examine and defend or criticize any idea, including ideas we judge to be extreme and even evil. …
“Pursuing truth is often a difficult and uncomfortable process. It can even be terrifying -- since it could be the case that certain things we desperately want to be true are in fact false, and things that we desperately want to be false are in fact true. And, of course, our wanting things to be true (or false) doesn’t make them so. The temptation is to abandon truth; to favor comfort over it; to allow our emotional investment in our beliefs to cause us to prefer persisting in them to discovering that they are in fact not true (or in some way deficient or defective).
“So, one way university administrators, professors, and students can fail in their duties and even undermine the university’s mission is by thwarting the very process of truth-seeking by forbidding the expression of certain ideas and lines of inquiry and argument....
“If we were to adopt Yoram’s call for censorship in areas where I am calling for freedom of speech, I invite him -- and you, gentle reader -- to consider the following question: Would the result be anything other than the further entrenchment of current campus orthodoxies, and the further weakening of protection for dissent and dissenters?” …
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert George at Public Discourse. See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta.
2023 Was the Worst Year on Record for Deplatforming Attempts; 2024 Is on Track to Beat It
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Whenever people argue that we’re exaggerating or overemphasizing the free speech crisis on campus, we have to take a deep breath and count to 50 -- sometimes 100.... As we will show below, 2023 was the worst year on record for deplatforming attempts and successes, and 2024 is unfortunately already looking like it can top it.
“Last month, FIRE released its Campus Deplatforming Database, an expansion and evolution of its previous Campus Disinvitation Database. In addition to tracking attempts to disinvite speakers from campus, this enhanced database now includes attempts to cancel performances, take down art exhibits, and prevent the screening of films. It spans the past two and half decades, with recorded attempts going all the way back to the heyday of the Backstreet Boys, 1998.” …
Full op-ed by Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE Greg Lukianoff at Substack. Among other things, note the number of times Stanford is reported in the database linked above.
From The Economist: America’s Elite Universities are Bloated, Complacent
and Illiberal
Excerpts:
“The struggle over America’s elite universities -- who controls them and how they are run -- continues to rage, with lasting consequences for them and the country. Harvard faces a congressional investigation into antisemitism; Columbia has just been hit with a new lawsuit alleging 'endemic' hostility towards Jews.... Behind these struggles lies a big question. Can American universities, flabby with cash and blighted by groupthink, keep their competitive edge? …
“As challenges from abroad multiply, America’s elite universities are squandering their support at home. Two trends in particular are widening rifts between town and gown. One is a decades-long expansion in the managers and other non-academic staff that universities employ. America’s best 50 colleges now have three times as many administrative and professional staff as faculty, according to a report by Paul Weinstein of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank. Some of the increase responds to genuine need, such as extra work created by growing government regulation. A lot of it looks like bloat. These extra hands may be tying researchers in red tape and have doubtless inflated fees. …
“A second trend is the gradual evaporation of conservatives from the academy. Surveys carried out by researchers at UCLA suggest that the share of faculty who place themselves on the political left rose from 40% in 1990 to about 60% in 2017 -- a period during which party affiliation among the general public barely changed. The ratios are vastly more skewed at many of America’s most elite colleges. A survey carried out last May by the Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper, found that less than 3% of faculty there would describe themselves as conservative. Three-quarters called themselves liberal.” …
Full article at The Economist. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and proposed solutions at our Back to Basics webpage.
Other Articles of Interest
Two-Day Stanford Conference Takes Up Issues re Civil Discourse
Full article at NY Times
University of Virginia Spends $20 Million on 235 DEI Employees, With Some Making $587,340 Per Year
Full article at the Jefferson Council website: “It takes tuition payments from nearly 1,000 undergraduates just to pay their base salaries.” See also Stanford’s ballooning administrative and DEI bureaucracies.
Ph.D. Student Testifies Before Congress on Antisemitism at Stanford
Full article at Stanford Daily. Copy of testimony at Congressional website. See also press release and Times of Israel.
UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Letter to Alumni re Antisemitism and Responses to Protests at Berkeley
Full text at UC Berkeley website. See also Jerusalem Post.
George Mason’s Orwellian ‘Just Societies’ Requirement
Full op-ed by George Mason Prof. Bryan Caplan at James Martin Center
DEI Initiatives Not Supported by the Empirical Evidence, Canadian Researcher Says
Full op-ed by Canadian journalist Ari Blaff at National Post
UC Santa Barbara Multicultural Faculty Plan ‘Day of Interruption’ to Protest Protections for Jews
Full article at College Fix
AI Will Shake Up Higher Ed; Are Colleges Ready?
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Protecting Free Speech on Campus from Attacks from Both Sides
Full article at The Hill
On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Stanford Medicine Uses Augmented Reality for Real-Time Data Visualization During Surgery
New Research Consortium Seeks to Help Optimize Future of a De-Carbonized Grid
“We tend to think of censorship as a violation of the rights of the censored. And it is that, of course. But censorship creates other victims we give less consideration to: the millions who are denied the chance to hear the perspectives of those who are silenced.” – Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya and journalist Leighton Woodhouse
March 4, 2024
Larry Summers: What Went Wrong on Campus
Excerpts:
“I think, unfortunately, with considerable validity -- that many of our leading universities have lost their way; that values that one associated as central to universities -- excellence, truth, integrity, opportunity -- have come to seem like secondary values relative to the pursuit of certain concepts of social justice, the veneration of certain concepts of identity, the primacy of feeling over analysis, and the elevation of subjective perspective. And that has led to clashes within universities and, more importantly, an enormous estrangement between universities and the broader society....
“I don't think any reasonable person can fail to recognize a massive double standard between the response to other forms of prejudice and the response to anti-Semitism. And yes, you could have debates about when anti-Zionism or the demonization of Israel is and is not anti-Semitism. But on any reasonable conception of what's going on, there has been a double standard. And I think those of us who are concerned about the double standard come to a view about how we want it remedied. And I think for the most part, the right way of remedying it is with a de-emphasis rather than a re-emphasis on identity.
“Everyone needs to be enabled to feel safe. That doesn't mean that they have a right to avoid being triggered by speech they don't like, or to be spared exposure to ideas they find noxious. That doesn't mean they have a right to bean-counting exercises where the share of members of their group is evaluated against a share of its population. It does mean that they're entitled to the maintenance of an open and tolerant community where no one is allowed to shut down any set of ideas, that they have the right to be protected from discrimination, and that they have the right for there not to be indoctrination. I think in many ways what would be most problematic would be an indoctrination arms race in which a larger and larger fraction of an education is consumed by a recitation of the grievances of various groups....”
Full interview of former Harvard President Larry Summers at Persuasion
US Government and Stanford Pioneered the Censorship Scheme That Europe May Impose on Us
Excerpts:
“Europeans are free to speak their mind as they wish, most of them believe. They can express their views on controversial political and social issues on social media platforms from Facebook to X.
“But all of that may soon change. Europe is implementing the Digital Services Act, which is using the exact same censorship system we exposed as part of the Twitter Files, notes Michigan State University legal scholar Adam Candeub. …
“As we saw with the Twitter Files, the EU is demanding that supposedly independent fact-checkers do the censorship. ‘How do the flaggers get trusted?’ asked Candeub. ‘Well, they get certified by the government. So essentially, Google and Facebook will have to hire government-certified flaggers to give them content, which they then must remove.’ …
“'What's disturbing is that now the platforms will have two choices,’ he explained. ‘They'll be able to have one EU-compliant platform worldwide. Or they'll have an EU and American Facebook. It seems like the cheaper version is the former version.’
“The EU is putting in place the very same system that the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Stanford Internet Observatory put in place to engage in mass censorship in 2020 and 2021. …
“The First Amendment is important because it protects Americans from abuses of power by the government, like the censorship DHS and Stanford did. ‘Unless we have a strong doctrine on First Amendment protection,’ Candeub said, ‘it's very difficult for the expansive administrative state to exist with these sorts of freedoms.’”
Full article at Public. For convenience, we have posted a copy of Prof. Candeub’s U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief (see especially pages 18 to 24 regarding Stanford's actions and responses) in an update to the prior article “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also “Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists -- We Fought Back and Won” at our Stanford Concerns archived webpage.
And here is what we said in our June 2, 2023 Newsletter: Our own observation is that these are important topics to be studied. The more difficult questions are: Who then gets to decide what is and isn’t true and subsequently gets to enforce the answers? Can a democratic society trust such centralized activities, both short term and long term? Is it a proper role for Stanford not only to research the issues, but then to be the implementer of the solutions and the rejecter of alternative viewpoints? Is it appropriate that the Stanford name is seen as an endorsement of these activities? At what point does an independent researcher lose its independence and, in turn, its trustworthiness?
To which we add this question: Is it appropriate that Stanford’s administration and lawyers are arguing that it somehow is ok to censor members of Stanford’s own faculty?
Universities Are Making Us Dumber
Excerpts (links in the original):
“As direct forms of discrimination are now virtually nonexistent in academia, discrimination has been redefined as an invisible, structural form of bigotry that is suddenly everywhere. Like witchcraft, this form of prejudice cannot be observed directly. Rather, it manifests instead through unequal outcomes. Once justice was reformulated in terms of equality of results, it became untenable to insist on merit and the pursuit of truth; these values had to be abandoned or redefined, whenever they came into conflict with the new orthodoxy....
“Elite research universities have been the hardest hit by these developments. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), among 248 universities ranked in 2023, Brown is the only Ivy which is listed in the top 70. My own institution, Princeton University, ranks a dismal 189. All the others are below 200, with Penn (247) and Harvard (248) coming in dead last. Top non-Ivies like MIT, Caltech, or Berkeley do slightly better, while Stanford (207) is as bad as the Ivies. If one regards the absence of free speech as a likely indicator of future academic prowess, then America’s top universities are headed for greatness. If not, their futures look dismal. And so does the future of the U.S. by virtue of being run by elites educated at these very ‘elite’ universities....
“So can universities be reformed? Many reform-oriented academics insist that this can be achieved, at least in part, by demanding that universities commit to the Chicago principles of academic freedom, the Kalven report on institutional neutrality and the Shils report on merit-based hiring. It is doubtful, however, that they will be all adopted or, if adopted, if they will be implemented by the current university administrations. Princeton, for example, boasts of its strong commitment to academic freedom, but in practice has no difficulty ignoring its own regulations. Calls for abolishing the DEI bureaucracy, an integral part of our ever-expanding managerial class, seem equally futile in the present circumstances, as DEI could simply change its name without changing its habits.” …
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Sergiu Klainerman, with historic photo of Stanford at the top, at Tablet. See also our own compilations of the Chicago Principles, the Kalven Report and the Shils Report. See also the charts showing Stanford's ballooning administrative bureaucracy at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
69% of Americans Believe Country on Wrong Track re Free Speech
Excerpts (link in the original):
“More than two-thirds of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track when it comes to freedom of speech, according to new survey results from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the Polarization Research Lab at Dartmouth College.
“When asked about 'whether people are able to freely express their views,' 69% of respondents said things in America are heading in the wrong direction, compared to only 31% who believe that things are heading in the right direction....”
Full article including detailed charts and poll results at FIRE's website
Stanford Undergraduate and Graduate Student Legislative Bodies Consider Resolution re Free Speech
Excerpts (link in the original):
“The Graduate Student Council (GSC) was joined by Samuel Santos, Vice Provost of Inclusion, Community and Integrative Learning, who provided an administrative perspective on a free speech resolution, during its Tuesday meeting.
“Santos shared the administration’s perspective on the proposed free speech policies. He emphasized the student gatherings with overnight displays or electricity, such as the recently removed sit-in, must seek permission in advance.
“The resolution, developed in partnership with the Undergraduate Senate (UGS), calls for ‘clearer policies regulating the speech of University students,’ in response to ‘increasing campus tensions and hate-based violence, Protected Identity Harm (PIH) Reports, and student protests.’”
Full article at Stanford Daily. See also former Stanford President Gerhard Casper's statement re the Leonard Law, the Corry court decision and issues of campus free speech generally at our Stanford Speaks webpage. See also “Stanford’s Prof. Gerald Gunther Warned About Limits on Campus Free Speech Three Decades Ago” at our Stanford Concerns archived webpage.
Other Articles of Interest
The Disinformation Playbook
Full op-ed by Union of Concerned Scientists in 2017-2018, including the use of academic institutions for both cover and credibility. See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage.
Barnard College Students Required to Remove Door Decorations in Order Not to Isolate Those with Different Views
Full article at College Fix
Repressive Legalism – College Top Lawyers Have Never Been More Powerful
Full article at Chronical of Higher Education
DEI Rebranded
Full article at Minding the Campus
Looking at a Service Animal Could be a Micro-Assault per Syracuse U. Workshop
Full article at College Fix
University of California Lifts Ban on Online Degree Programs
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
College Transfers Are On The Increase Again
Full article at Forbes
More Than Half of Job Postings Don’t Have an Education Requirement
Full article at The Hill
Why Study Abroad is Essential to Our Future
Full op-ed at The Hill
On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
A New Avenue for Treating Neurodegeneration
How Stanford Professor Flipped Traditional Genomics Analysis on Its Head
“Speech protections are not just for views we agree with; we must strenuously protect speech for the views that we most strongly oppose. Only in the public square can these views be heard and properly challenged.” – From the Westminster Declaration
February 26, 2024
[Editor’s note: We have long had posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage some charts and numbers about Stanford’s ballooning administrative bureaucracy, but even we could never have imagined this type of increase this past year, per the university’s official publication, Stanford Facts 2024 and as recently brought to light by Stanford Review. As a result, we have also updated our charts and we suggest that you likewise take a look at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
[Also, when we first posted last year’s numbers, one of our readers wrote: “Wow! 17K Stanford administrators is absurd. Does a master organizational chart exist to show the density of administrators in all specific areas of responsibility? Would love to see it, if it exists.” We think the time is long overdue for Stanford to produce the type of chart this reader has suggested so that faculty, students, alumni and donors can better understand who these people are and what they do.]
Excerpts (links in the original):
“While we mock the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, and Stanford distances itself from the list, its guiding principles are ascendant at Stanford....
“While we denounce Stanford stifling social life through overbearing rules and excessive administration, Stanford responds by creating a ‘Social Life Accelerator Task Force’ and ‘action plans’ to purportedly solve the issue. But in the last year, Stanford hired an additional 1,406 administrators, bringing the total number to an eye-popping 18,369 people. Meanwhile, social life on campus has remained largely unchanged.
“Actions speak louder than words. So where do we go from here? …
“It is understandable that alumni feel grateful for what Stanford has done for their lives, and hope to keep it strong for their children and their children’s children. But the proper response to that gratitude isn’t to fund the sprawling, unaccountable bureaucracy that Stanford has become.... Nothing happens unless people step up and make things happen.” …
Full op-ed by former editor-in-chief Walker Stewart at Stanford Review
See also Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students at Free Press and which describes the extraordinarily destructive campus environment that has been created in recent years by the bureaucracy described in this op-ed. In that regard, see also the first item under Other Articles of Interest, below, where the student services staff have written new kissing and related regulations for Full Moon on the Quad and instructed the RA's to demonstrate these kissing rules to current freshmen.
See also our Back to Basics webpage with specific recommendations to, as stated in the op-ed, "make things happen."
Yale Faculty Group Says Teaching Must Be Kept Distinct from Activism
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Over 100 faculty members now have their signatures displayed on a website for a new faculty group, Faculty for Yale, which 'insist[s] on the primacy of teaching, learning and research as distinct from advocacy and activism.'
“Among other measures, the group calls for ‘a thorough reassessment of administrative encroachment’ and the promotion of diverse viewpoints. The group also calls for a more thorough description of free expression guidelines in the Faculty Handbook; Yale’s current guidelines are based on its 1974 Woodward Report. The group also wants Yale to implement a set of guidelines regarding donor influence, which were first put forth by the Gift Policy Review Committee in 2022....”
Full article at Yale Daily News. See also NY Post.
See also our compilation of the Shils Report re academic appointments and our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. We have now also posted the entire "Faculty for Yale" statement at our Commentary webpage.
From NY Times: The Fight Over Academic Freedom
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Academic freedom is a bedrock of the modern American university. And lately, it seems to be coming under fire from all directions....
“Over the past year, faculty groups dedicated to academic freedom have sprung up at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, where even some liberal scholars argue that a prevailing progressive orthodoxy has created a climate of self-censorship and fear that stifles open inquiry.
“The fallout from the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel has upended many campuses, as college presidents have been ousted, campus protest has been restricted and alumni, donors and politicians have pushed for greater control. And it has also scrambled the politics of academic freedom itself....
“The roiling debates have even opened up rifts among champions of academic freedom. Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard Law School and a leader of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, said that the cause stands ‘at a crossroads.’
“‘Do we think about academic freedom as something that protects everyone, regardless of content and ideology and politics?’ she said. Or do we ‘carve out an exception,’ as some advocates seem to argue, and forbid speech that is considered anti-Israel or antisemitic? …
“‘The mission of a university is to sponsor truth-seeking scholarship and provide non-indoctrinating teaching,’ said Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton and a founder of the Academic Freedom Alliance, a multi-campus group created in 2021.
“And for that to happen, George said, ‘we must be free to challenge any view or belief.’ …”
Full article at NY Times. See also The Threat from Within by former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy.
Stanford and Others Crack Down on Student Protests
Excerpts (links in the original):
“As college and university presidents face growing backlash from state and federal lawmakers for their responses to student protests against the war between Israel and Hamas, higher education leaders are cracking down on student demonstrations -- particularly those that support Palestinian people.
“In the last week, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became one of several institutions that have suspended student groups for violations of campus protest rules, and Stanford University threatened to take disciplinary action against students who occupied a campus plaza for nearly four months." …
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
See also "Undergraduate Student Senate Debates Free Speech" at Stanford Daily, "Graduate Student Council Debates Free Speech" at Stanford Daily, “Stanford Removes Pro-Palestine Sit-In Following Negotiations” at Stanford Daily, “Stanford Warned About Its Negotiations” at Campus Reform, "Stanford Agrees to Four Demands" at Campus Reform and “Harvard Shouldn’t Silence Protest, but It’s Their Right to Regulate It” at Harvard Crimson.
See also “Cornell Professor Backs Unruly Protests -- Democracy Needs Disruption” at College Fix
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford RA's Told to Demo Kissing for Freshmen in Bizarre Consent Lesson
Full article at Stanford Review, also including a copy of the newly required Full Moon on the Quad Participation Agreement
Harvard Set to Consider Institutional Neutrality
Full article at Harvard Crimson
Department of Justice Funds Research on Disinformation and Misinformation
Full article at College Fix
NCAA Leader Resigns Over Transgender Policy – Calls it Authorized Cheating
Full article at College Fix
Top 10 Changes Colleges and Universities Need to Implement
Full op-ed by U Texas Prof. Steven Mintz at Inside Higher Ed
On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
A New RNA Editing Tool Could Enhance Cancer Treatment
Bridging the Opportunity Gap in Social Sector Artificial Intelligence
Emerging Issues That Could Trouble Teens
“Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.”
-- Mark Twain
February 19, 2024
Artificial Intelligence Will Censor Speech at Scale, Bias Included
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Until recently, many efforts to censor and suppress speech have required manual labor; human beings have been tasked to put their eyeballs on the page and then decide what stuff gets to remain. In the good old days, books were banned this way. Now, those eyeballs are turned toward the virtual spaces online, an environment that is much more unwieldy to monitor and control....
“With the advent of machine learning, the government will now be able to control speech using Artificial Intelligence (AI). The House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have obtained ‘non-public documents’ proving the NSF [National Science Foundation] is issuing grant money to ‘university and non-profit research teams’ to develop automated speech intervention at scale using AI. The Judiciary Committee believes the move to use automation to censor speech will violate civil liberties in ways previously unseen....
“According to Monday's Judiciary Report, the NSF has embraced the idea of machine-generated censorship. This activity will occur in ways people will never fully comprehend or notice. The process will be both reactive and proactive, curating information at the behest of ‘a small and isolated coterie of partisan social engineers’ programming machines to do it.... According to the report, Marc Andreessen, co-creator of Mosaic, a graphical browser and co-founder of Netscape, ‘warned that the level of censorship pressure that's coming for AI and the resulting backlash will define the next century of civilization.’ …
“We already know about Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which was created at the request of the DHS and CISA. That partnership worked to flag online speech related to the 2020 election. We have already found evidence of the Biden White House 'directly coercing large social media companies, such as Facebook, to censor true information, memes, and satire, eventually leading Facebook to change its content moderation policies,' as reported by the Judiciary. And we now know the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has harassed Elon Musk's Twitter (now X) because of Musk's commitment to free speech, even going so far as to target certain journalists by name,' according to the report. To be honest, the partnerships are too numerous to list.
“However, this Feb. 5, 2024, report focuses on how the NSF has funded ‘AI-powered censorship and propaganda tools’ and attempted to ‘hide its actions to avoid political and media scrutiny.’ NSF has been issuing millions in federal grants to its partners to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech. The aim is to ‘shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others,’ according to the Judiciary report. These are taxpayer-funded projects that are allegedly already being weaponized in one way or another to limit our free speech. The partners include the University of Michigan's AI-powered WiseDex tool, Meedan with its Co-Insights tool, The University of Wisconsin's CourseCorrect, and MIT's Search Lit. These censorship tools represent state-of-the-art software that would instantaneously identify the types of speech biased humans program the software to eliminate....”
Full article at Uncover DC. See also our prior postings about “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” and Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists; We Fought Back and Won” as well as our proposals for addressing these issues as set forth in Part 4 of “Back to Basics at Stanford."
We're Losing Our Privacy to Surveillance Devices Which Don't Even Protect Us
Excerpts:
“Civil libertarians are celebrating the recent announcement by Amazon that law enforcement agencies will no longer be able to obtain Ring doorbell camera videos just by asking. Henceforth, the company will require a subpoena or a search warrant.
“That’s great news. One needn’t be anti-cop (I’m certainly not) to agree that government should jump through a hoop or two before seizing images people reasonably believe to be private. Yet we’re dealing here only with the tip of the proverbial iceberg....
“In the words of criminologist Eric Piza, ‘While lay persons (and even some ‘experts’) may assume conspicuous camera presence alone sufficiently communicates heightened risk, such causal mechanisms can be difficult to generate in practice.’
“According to his data, actively monitored video systems do have a small crime-reducing effect; passively monitored systems have none. But until AI brings Orwell’s ‘telescreens’ to life, no government on earth has the resources to monitor every camera in real time....
“Maybe my attitude about privacy is old-fashioned. We live at a time, after all, when some 3 out of 10 young people support the installation of surveillance cameras in private homes. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of the novel ‘1984’ and maybe those always-on telescreens are a lot closer than we think.
“So by all means let’s celebrate Amazon’s decision to make it a little bit harder for government to get its hands on doorbell videos. But with respect to the rest of the banality of security, let’s bear in mind that we’re giving up an awful lot of privacy for a questionable improvement in safety.”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Yale Law School Prof. Stephen Carter at Bloomberg and other sources. See also Stanford Review“Stanford’s Security Regime Takes Root” and Stanford Daily article from a year ago about Stanford installing 250 cameras a year for the next four years.
See also Stanford student Theo Baker, "Inside Stanford’s War on Fun."
From The Atlantic: The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism from Silicon Valley
Excerpts (links in the original):
“To worship at the altar of mega-scale and to convince yourself that you should be the one making world-historic decisions on behalf of a global citizenry that did not elect you and may not share your values or lack thereof, you have to dispense with numerous inconveniences -- humility and nuance among them. Many titans of Silicon Valley have made these trade-offs repeatedly. YouTube (owned by Google), Instagram (owned by Meta), and Twitter (which Elon Musk insists on calling X) have been as damaging to individual rights, civil society, and global democracy as Facebook was and is. Considering the way that generative AI is now being developed throughout Silicon Valley, we should brace for that damage to be multiplied many times over in the years ahead.
“The behavior of these companies and the people who run them is often hypocritical, greedy, and status-obsessed. But underlying these venalities is something more dangerous, a clear and coherent ideology that is seldom called out for what it is: authoritarian technocracy. As the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley have matured, this ideology has only grown stronger, more self-righteous, more delusional, and -- in the face of rising criticism -- more aggrieved....
“In October, the venture capitalist and technocrat Marc Andreessen published on his firm’s website a stream-of-consciousness document he called ‘The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.’ …
“‘Our enemy,’ Andreessen writes, is ‘the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable -- playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.’ …
“We do not have to live in the world the new technocrats are designing for us. We do not have to acquiesce to their growing project of dehumanization and data mining. Each of us has agency.
“No more ‘build it because we can.’ No more algorithmic feedbags. No more infrastructure designed to make the people less powerful and the powerful more controlling. Every day we vote with our attention; it is precious, and desperately wanted by those who will use it against us for their own profit and political goals. Don’t let them.”
Full article at The Atlantic. See also our prior posting “The Current Student Climate at Stanford."
See also “Government Funds AI Tools for Whole-of-Internet Surveillance and Censorship” at Brownstone, “How AI Has Begun Changing University Roles and Responsibilities” at Inside Higher Ed and “How Will AI Disrupt Higher Education in 2024?” also at Inside Higher Ed.
Higher Education Reform, Civic Thought and Liberal Education
Excerpts:
“For decades, American colleges and universities have desperately needed reform. The urgency of the moment may create openings to mitigate the damage and restore the basic elements of liberal education.
“Over the last few months, turmoil on campus has provoked outrage among wealthy donors, members of Congress, parents of college and college-bound students, and no small number of ordinary citizens. The sympathy exhibited by students and faculty for Hamas’ barbaric Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis, mostly civilians, along with the vacillating and mealy-mouthed response of many elite university administrators to students’ championing jihadist genocide threw into sharp relief how badly higher education has lost its way....
“Our colleges and universities have been policing speech. They have been curtailing due process, particularly concerning allegations of sexual misconduct. They have been relaxing to the point of eliminating core curriculum requirements. And they have been packing course offerings, particularly in the humanities....
“The extent of the disrepair of U.S. colleges and universities and the urgency of the moment necessitate the recovery of the traditional principles of liberal education to guide the long, arduous work of higher education reform.”
Full op-ed by Hoover Fellow Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics and also at MSN
On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
At the Intersection of Science and Humanity, He Found a Sweet Spot
Stanford Business Students Get Up-Close Look at Faculty Research Projects
Vibrating Glove Helps Stroke Patients Recover from Muscle Spasms
Reintroducing “Good Fire” to Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve
Other Articles of Interest
University Budget Cuts Were Overdue
Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. See also our prior postings “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” and “Back to Basics at Stanford.”
Harvard Is Accused of Obstructing House Antisemitism Inquiry
Full article at New York Times. See also WSJ and Washington Post.
Northwestern Launches Center for Enlightened Disagreement
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Only 16% of Faculty Members Are Ready for GenAI in Higher Education
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Why Give Money to a College That Only Wants to Mock Your Values?
Full op-ed at Giving Review
Almost Half of Stopped-Out Community College Students Cite Work as Major Reason for Leaving
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
University Rankings Are Unscientific and Bad for Education
Full op-ed at The Conservation
“Impediments to free speech are impediments to free thought and can only interfere with that search. That’s why academic freedom is so precious.” -- Stanford alum and Yale Law School Prof. Stephen Carter
February 12, 2024
Medical Schools Should Combat Racism, but Not Like This
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Throughout my career, I have been aware of the disturbing history of racism and bias in medicine. Though much has improved in this regard, important problems remain. As dean at Harvard, I worked with colleagues to combat those problems. And so, when I saw a 2020 paper in the journal Academic Medicine authored by my alma mater’s educational leaders about their efforts in ‘addressing and undoing racism and bias’ in medicine, I was eager to read about the work.
“I was soon disappointed. Instead of a scrupulous analysis of an important problem, the paper consisted of dramatic, if unsupported, generalizations about the inherent racism in medical education and practice, and promises of sweeping but vague changes to come....
“Mount Sinai has positioned itself as a leader in the field when it comes to combating racism at medical school. Eleven other medical schools have joined them as ‘partners’ in their Racism and Bias Initiative program. And yet what they have actually accomplished is not clear.
“There are some parallels to this story at Harvard Medical School. In spring 2021, the school announced a task force to review racism in medical education and devise responses to counter it. Last spring, the school announced that the review and recommendations were completed in the form of a 72-page report. To my surprise, this report has never been made public....
“The goal should not be performative discussions and empty virtue signaling; it should be better healthcare outcomes for all. Medical education, when done correctly, should give future physicians the tools they need to treat patients effectively, without racism or bias. But as the focus drifts from evidence-based practices to ideological dogma, we risk graduating doctors who excel in social justice jargon while faltering in the expert delivery of care.
“The Hippocratic Oath tells us to ‘do no harm.’ This oath extends beyond surgical theaters and clinical wards into medical education, where the principles of science and the virtues of care combine to forge the next generation of doctors, and they’re the inspiring goals that motivated me to serve as dean of a great medical school. Sadly, I fear that diluting rigor and precision with ideological agendas will degrade the quality of medical education. In a rush to embed vague, contestable, and potentially harmful versions of social justice into medical education, we risk compromising the very foundation of medical training, and ultimately, patient care.”
Full op-ed by former Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier at Free Press
When Are Appeals to Campus Safety an Excuse to Suppress Speech?
Excerpts:
“On November 15, the president of Indiana University at Bloomington received a letter from Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican. Banks expressed shock at ‘pro-terrorist protests’ occurring ‘on numerous U.S. college campuses’ and warned that IU could lose access to federal funding if administrators there tolerated any antisemitism....
“The next day, the administration denied permission for a talk by a former Israeli soldier critical of Israel that the Palestine Solidarity Committee had organized. A month later, the university imposed sweeping sanctions on the faculty adviser for the student group, Abdulkader Sinno, and canceled an exhibit of abstract art by Samia Halaby, a Palestinian artist and refugee....
“University leaders say the decisions had nothing to do with beliefs; rather, each situation posed a serious security risk to the campus community. They have not explained exactly what those risks were....
“While colleges need to ensure the safety of the campus community, going as far as to cancel an event imposes a dangerous, undue burden on speech, says Jonathan Friedman, director of free-expression and education programs at PEN America. If an event could cause public disagreement, colleges need to adjust for that, not eliminate the situation altogether, Friedman says.” …
Full article at Inside Higher Education. See also Stanford Shuts Down Overnight Sit-ins “based on concerns for the physical safety of [the] community” at Stanford Daily and Save the Tents at Stanford Review. And a copy of last week's original notice from Stanford is posted here.
More About Princeton Libraries’ Trigger Warnings
[Editor’s note: Last week we posted an article about Princeton Libraries having their staff cull though text and photos in order to warn faculty, students and others if they might come upon items that might be offensive or otherwise alarming -- and remember, this is taking place at a major U.S. research university to protect what supposedly are highly educated users. The following more recent article provides additional information about what is involved in this process.]
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In late January, library archivists hosted a focus group study about ‘harmful content’ within the Princeton University Library’s online archives, according to a Jan. 16 post on the university’s Special Collections blog....
“‘In particular, we are interested in hearing from those who identify as member(s) of marginalized communities as well as those who are interested in archives, archival research, and social justice,’ the post states. The researchers said they hope the study will help the library be more effective in moderating its archives for content that may hurt or offend people....
“Trigger warnings have become commonplace at many universities in recent years. Advisories about potentially troubling content have appeared on everything from course descriptions and campus crime alerts to popular novels like ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ and classic literature such as ‘1984’ and ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’
“In 2021, Brandeis University’s Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center even considered the term ‘trigger warning’ to be problematic because ‘the word ‘trigger’ has connections to guns,’ The College Fix reported. The center suggested the phrase ‘content note’ be used in its place.” …
Full article at College Fix. See also “Study Finds Trigger Warnings May Cause More Harm Than Good” at Medical Express and “A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Trigger Warnings” at Sage Journals.
See also our prior posting of Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative including a PDF copy of Stanford's own list of proscribed words and phrases.
Alternative Viewpoint From AAUP: Landscapes of Power and Academic Freedom
Excerpts:
“The landscape of higher education in the United States is now radically changed: academic freedom is no longer guaranteed across the entire country. Professors self-censor their lectures and publications; students cannot engage with key explanations and discussions about the history of their very institution, state, and country; and books have been banned from local libraries. In multiple US states, concepts such as ‘structural racism,’ ‘environmental racism,’ ‘intersectionality’ and the open study of the ‘relationship among race, racism, and power’ (Delgado, Stefancic, and Harris 2017, 3) have been terminated after being characterized as ‘divisive’ and ‘controversial’ by a cascade of gag laws and executive orders. The impact of these political encroachments into the autonomy of institutions of higher education to produce knowledge and to freely understand the workings of settler colonialism, of the lasting impacts of slavery and of racial segregation, will haunt the United States for decades to come. These overt forms of censorship will have long-lasting effects on the ability of US citizens to understand the racial legacies of this postplantation, postcolonial society....
“Within the United States and internationally, we have witnessed the deleterious effects that authoritarian governments, unchecked corporate interests, reactionary movements, and partisan politics have on academic freedom. We could cite a wide range of impacts, from tenure denial, dismissal, and (self-)censorship to imprisonment, political exile, and ‘brain drain.’ By observing the real threats autocracy and authoritarianism pose to academic freedom we can better grasp the contemporary precarity of both democracy and academic freedom....”
Full article at AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom
Congressional Hearing on Free Speech, AI and Regulatory Capture
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Earlier today, I served as a witness at the House Judiciary Committee’s Special Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which discussed (among other things) whether it’s a good idea for the government to regulate artificial intelligence and LLMs [large language models]. For my part, I was determined to warn everyone not only about the threat AI poses to free speech, but also the threats regulatory capture and a government oligopoly on AI pose to the creation of knowledge itself....
“It was profoundly frustrating for me to see the Democrats appreciate that the governmental powers I was warning against are those they would be terrified to grant to a future Trump administration -- but not be similarly alarmed by that same potential for overreach on our [Democrat] side....
“[Part of my testimony:] We have good reason to be concerned. FIRE regularly fights government attempts to stifle speech on the internet. FIRE is in federal court challenging a New York law that forces websites to 'address' online speech that someone, somewhere finds humiliating or vilifying. We’re challenging a new Utah law that requires age verification of all social media users. We’ve raised concerns about the federal government funding development of AI tools to target speech including microaggressions. And later this week, FIRE will file a brief with the Supreme Court explaining the danger of 'jawboning' -- the use of government pressure to force social media platforms to censor protected speech.
“But the most chilling threat that the government poses in the context of emerging AI is regulatory overreach that limits its potential as a tool for contributing to human knowledge. A regulatory panic could result in a small number of Americans deciding for everyone else what speech, ideas, and even questions are permitted in the name of ‘safety’ or ‘alignment.’" …
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE’s president Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also testimony of investigative journalist Lee Fang at Real Clear Politics. See also our prior postings of Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web.
Learning About How to Think
Excerpts:
“If you’ve taken a college tour lately, either as an applicant or as the parent of an applicant, you may have noticed that at some point -- usually as you’re on the death march from the aquatic center to the natural-sciences complex -- the tour guide will spin smartly on her heel, do the college-tour-guide thing of performatively walking backwards, and let you in on something very important. ‘What’s different about College X,’ she’ll say confidently, ‘is that our professors don’t teach you what to think. They teach you how to think.’
“Whether or not you’ve heard the phrase before, it gets your attention. Can anyone teach you how to think? Aren’t we all thinking all the time; isn’t the proof of our existence found in our think-think-thinking, one banal thought at a time? ...
“To the extent that I have learned how to think for myself, it’s because my father taught me. Usually by asking me a single question. For the love of God, I hated that question. And for some reason I always, always forgot to see it coming. My father was an academic and a writer who cared a great deal about teaching, and he was never off the clock.... There would be a moment of silence. And then my father would say -- gently, because there was zero need to say it any other way: ‘And what is the best argument of the other side?’" …
Full op-ed at The Atlantic
On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
The Business Case for Sustainability
Stanford Study Reveals Significant Discrepancies in Measurements of Poverty
Precision Medicine Helps Address Premature Births
Advocating for Individuals with Disabilities Is Personal for This Stanford Med Student
Other Articles of Interest
Too Much Corporate-ness for Members of the Harvard Corporation?
Full editorial at Harvard Crimson. See also list of current members of Stanford’s Board of Trustees.
From Stanford Daily: Picking a President for Stanford, What Really Matters
Full editorial at Stanford Daily
Convinced by the Data, Dartmouth College Reinstates SAT Requirement
Full article at College Fix
Federal Judge Issues Warning Over the Role of DEI, Allows Professor’s Lawsuit Against Penn State to Move Forward
Full article at Campus Reform
Sage Journals Adds DEI to Its Own Peer-Review Process
Full article at Campus Reform
Law Schools Must Adopt Free Speech Policies to Maintain ABA Accreditation
Full article at The Hill. See also ABA Journal.
NLRB Rules That Dartmouth Basketball Players Are Employees
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Lists of Top Producers of Minority STEM Bachelor’s Degrees
Full lists at Diverse Issues in Higher Education (note that Stanford ranks 56th in computer and information sciences, 78th in engineering and 33rd in math and statistics)
Fake Scientific Papers Push Research Credibility to Crisis Point
Full article at The Guardian
Why Campus Antisemitism Matters
Full article at Tablet
The Meltdown of the Universities and Ideas for Rebuilding Them (Video)
“Unless teachers, students, and researchers can inquire and speak freely and fearlessly, innovation will stall, questions will be left unasked and unanswered, and students will be ill-prepared for life, career, community, and citizenship.” -- American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA)
February 5, 2024
Political Solidarity Statements Threaten Academic Freedom
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Barnard College has become the site of the latest flare-up in an ongoing struggle between faculty and university leaders for the control of university communication platforms. On October 23, the department of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies posted a statement of solidarity: ‘We support the Palestinian people who have resisted settler colonial war, occupation, and apartheid for over 75 years, while deploring Hamas’s recent killing of Israeli civilians.’ The statement was to be followed by links to resources for understanding the ‘genocidal violence and ethnic cleansing that we are now witnessing.’
“Shortly afterward, the university removed the statement from the departmental website. The move was in pursuit of the university’s ‘website governance policy’ (established in November, after the department’s initial statement), which specifies that all subdomains of barnard.edu Internet domain are property of the college and all of its content ‘constitutes speech made by the College as an institution.’ Barnard resources such as ‘College letterhead, College website, College-sponsored campus communication tools or systems’ may not be used to ‘post political statements.’
“Members of the department created a private website where they republished their statement of solidarity and protested the ‘increasing curtailment of free speech and academic freedom at colleges and universities across the U.S.' They and their supporters issued a public letter decrying the 'overt act of censorship' by the university in removing the statement from the departmental website. The New York Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Barnard’s president characterizing the website policy as a form of 'prior restraint' inconsistent with academic freedom....
“It is a fundamental tenet of American principles of academic freedom that individual scholars must be afforded the fullest freedom to engage in research and publish scholarship and to introduce controversial but germane material into their classes without fear of university reprisal or censorship. Likewise, members of the faculty are not to suffer institutional consequences for their private political expression or activities.
“Given these longstanding principles, Barnard College unsurprisingly exempts from its restrictions on 'political activity' the creation and publication of faculty research or 'academic materials' and allows the posting of research and 'academic resources' on its website. It likewise protects political activity 'in a personal capacity' that is 'not attributable, in reality or perception, to the College.' There are no doubt some gray areas in such policies, and it is essential that universities apply them in a consistent and content-neutral fashion....
“[In the end,] universities protect a realm of academic freedom and free expression by limiting the domain of institutional speech. The institution as such does not weigh in on either scholarly or political controversies. Individual members of the faculty should be left free to develop and express their own views -- because the university does not elevate orthodoxies. [However,] when universities [themselves] cross that line and expand the realm of institutional speech, they threaten to shrink the freedom of the scholars who work within those universities.”
Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education by Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington, who next year is moving to become a professor at Yale Law School and also director of a new free speech and academic freedom center there. Bracketed text added. See also our compilation of the Kalven Report regarding a university's involvement in political and social matters.
Some Stark Numbers Regarding Political Contributions by University Professors, Employees and Trustees
[Editor’s note: We present the following excerpts and links not to favor one political party or another but because these numbers raise still more concerns about the apparent lack of diversity of thinking in higher education in recent times and as compared to 20 or more years ago.]
Excerpts from Yale Daily News:
“Nearly 100 percent of the money Yale professors donated to political campaigns went to Democrats in 2023.
“The News analyzed over 5,000 Federal Elections Committee filings from 2023 with Yale University listed as an employer, 3,041 of which were professors. Professors donated a total of roughly $127,000, of which 98.4 percent went to Democratic candidates and groups....
“’Yale is nearly fully disconnected from much of US society,’ Edward A Snyder, a School of Management professor wrote, referring to the contributions made by professors. ‘The data speak for themselves.’ …
“Carlos Eire, a professor of history and self-described conservative, said that he was ‘not surprised at all’ by the 98.35 percent figure. ‘Right now, it is extremely difficult for Yale or any other institution of higher learning to create greater political diversity,’ he said. ‘American academia is an echo chamber when it comes to politics.’ …”
Excerpts from Harvard Crimson:
“Members of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, contributed more than $1.5 million in political donations to federal candidates and political action committees in 2021 and 2022. Of that number, just $12,900 went to Republican political causes....”
See also the chart at The Conversation showing political contributions by all higher education employees between 1985 and 2023 as compared to the U.S. population as a whole.
Looking Back on a Decade of Cancel Culture
Excerpts (links in the original):
“In January 2015, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait called attention to the reemergence of political correctness and speech-policing in an article entitled Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say. Shortly thereafter, British-American journalist Jon Ronson published his book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, compiling stories of early internet cancellations.
“In September 2015, Jonathan Haidt and one of us (Greg Lukianoff) co-authored an article for the Atlantic, The Coddling of the American Mind, arguing that the same habits of mind making campuses unfriendly to free speech were also making people depressed and anxious. Professors and public intellectuals, from essayist Meghan Daum to bioethicist Alice Dreger were ringing alarm bells...."
Full op-ed at Quillette. See also Greg Lukianoff, “Yes, the Last 10 Years Really Have Been Worse for Free Speech” at Substack.
Princeton Adds Trigger Warnings for Library Researchers
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Princeton University is in the practice of adding warnings to its library documents to protect researchers’ sensitivities.
“The Ivy League institution in New Jersey has reportedly been adding ‘trigger warnings’ to library archive documents over the course of several years.
“National Review reports that Princeton has been adding such warnings to these documents since at least 2022.
“An email obtained by National Review reveals the existence of a recruitment effort for a focus group on ‘mitigating harm in archival research.’ The email describes 'recent efforts at Princeton University Library to protect researchers from accidentally stumbling on archival materials that are offensive or harmful,' which is done primarily through ‘the use of content mediation, warnings, and descriptive notes in the Finding Aids website.’
“The email, written by a student advertising the focus group, reportedly suggests that this practice is not unique to Princeton, and is an accepted practice at many universities in order to protect researchers from viewing potentially upsetting content." …
Full article at Campus Reform. See also Princeton Library's Statement on Harmful Content and our prior posting of Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative including a PDF copy of Stanford's list of proscribed words and phrases.
Why Campus Life Fell Apart
Excerpt (link in the original):
“Three years after the pandemic’s peak, its lingering effects continue to impede the full revival of student organizations -- a vital factor underpinning retention, graduation, and belonging.
“When Covid-19 shut down campuses in March 2020 and clubs moved online, colleges reported sharp drops in participation as institutions and students went into survival mode. Even as public-health restrictions receded and students returned to campuses, however, the fabric that kept the clubs operating and smoothly passing the torch from year to year remained frayed.
“Faced with the challenge of rebuilding what was once the beating heart of campus involvement, some colleges are rethinking their approaches to engagement in big ways. The cost of student disconnection is too high to ignore.
“Based on conversations with over a dozen experts in student affairs and engagement, here’s an overview of how clubs fell apart during the pandemic, why it matters, and what some colleges are doing about it." …
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Update from Stanford’s Presidential Search Committee
Stanford’s Leadership Clarifies Free Speech Boundaries
Sixth Year MD-PhD Student Working on New Cell Therapies for Blood Cancers (Video)
Solar Power Data Software Can Increase Clean Energy Generation
Ten Years of Team Science in Brain Research
DNA Helps Map Migration During the Roman Empire
Other Articles of Interest
The Impact of “Name Image Likeness” on Stanford Sports
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Stanford Daily, Perspectives from Six Incoming Student Athletes
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Stanford Daily, Prior Administrative Decisions
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Chronicle of Higher Education, Issues with NIL Donor Collectives
College Presidents Are Quietly Organizing to Support DEI
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
There’s Always Been Trouble in ‘The Groves of Academe’
Full op-ed at NY Times
FIRE and Anti-Defamation League Weigh-In on No-Contact Orders Against Student Journalists
Full article at Daily Princetonian. See also FIRE’s update that Princeton has subsequently amended its rules for no-contact orders.
The Real Problem with American Universities
Full op-ed at The Atlantic and also at MSN
DC’s American University Bans Indoor Protests
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
American Miseducation (Video)
Full video at Free Press and also at YouTube
Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: Free Expression and Unsettled Science (Podcast)
Full podcast at Higher Ed Now
“I think that future generations are going to look back on the recent past and compare it to the McCarthy era as a period when campuses which should be the bastion of robust and civil discourse and viewpoint diversity, unfortunately, have not been living up to that mission." – Nadine Strossen, former President of ACLU and currently professor emeritus at NYU Law School
January 29, 2024
College Is All About Curiosity, and That Requires Free Speech
Excerpts:
“True learning can only happen on campuses where academic freedom is paramount -- within and outside the classroom.
“I have served happily as a professor at Yale for most of my adult life, but in my four-plus decades at the mast, I have never seen campuses roiled as they’re roiling today....
“The classroom is, first and foremost, a place to train young minds toward a yearning for knowledge and a taste for argument -- to be intellectually curious -- even if what they wind up discovering challenges their most cherished convictions. If the behavioral economist George Loewenstein is right that curiosity is a result of an ‘information gap’ -- a desire to know more than we do -- then the most vital tasks of higher education are to help students realize that the gap always exists and to stoke their desire to bridge it....
“This process of testing ideas should be encouraged, particularly among the young. But it carries risks, not least because of what we might call influencers, who wind up dictating which ideas it’s fashionable to wear and which should be tossed out. When large majorities of college students report pressure to self-censor, this is what they’re talking about. Surveys suggest that the principal reason students keep controversial ideas to themselves is to avoid the disdain not of their professors but of their peers.
“That is unfortunate, not least because it tells us how badly the educational process has failed....
“My undergraduate education at Stanford in the 1970s was full of serious argument over controversial propositions. Little was out of bounds. In my history courses, we eagerly debated such subjects as whether slavery was more efficient than wage labor, or whether the influence of Christian missionaries on Asia and Africa and Latin America had been a net negative or net positive. When the great Carl Degler solemnly told a lecture class that slavery in Brazil had been harsher than slavery in the United States, nobody got mad, nobody circulated an outraged petition; instead, a group of Black students, myself among them, went to the lectern afterward to question, argue and learn....
“This, I thought then and think now -- this is how one lives the life of the mind! No, not everyone on campus need see things this way; but no one should interfere with those who do.... If telling students and faculty what they must not say is bad, telling them what they must say is often worse." …
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Yale Law School Prof. Stephen L. Carter at NY Times Magazine
How Universities Use DEI Statements to Enforce Groupthink
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Yoel Inbar must not be allowed to teach psychology at UCLA -- or so a student petition informed the California university's administration this past July.
“Inbar is an eminent, influential, and highly cited researcher with a Ph.D. in social psychology from Cornell University. There is no question that he is qualified. Anyone worth their salt doing work on political polarization knows Inbar's name. Inbar also jumped through all the hoops UCLA put up for the job, including submitting a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statement, which is currently all the rage in colleges and universities. He even shares the politics of the majority of the psychology department. But on his podcast, Inbar had expressed relatively mild concerns over the ideological pressures that DEI statements impose and wondered aloud whether they do harm to diversity of thought.
“As a result of this petition -- signed by only 66 students -- UCLA did not hire Inbar. And he's not the only academic this has happened to. Far from it....
“Here's something you probably don't know unless you've learned it the hard way: There are secret hearings at universities all over the country, and too often they are focused on investigating and/or punishing professors for protected speech.
“The Kafkaesque nature of these hearings has been highlighted by authors such as The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum and Northwestern University media studies professor Laura Kipnis, in her 2017 book Unwanted Advances. Readers may recall that Kipnis was herself subjected to a secret hearing after she published an article saying Title IX was being used to squelch speech on campus. Ironically, she was subsequently investigated by Northwestern's office of Title IX.
“With that ever-present threat, it shouldn't be a surprise, then, that faculty reported enormous concerns over academic freedom in FIRE's most recent faculty survey....”
Full article by Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE Greg Lukianoff and his co-author Rikki Schott at Reason. See also Laura Kipnis' book "Unwanted Advances" and Anne Applebaum's article at The Atlantic (August 31, 2021) "The New Puritans".
The Future of Academic Freedom
Excerpts (links in the original):
“On January 2nd, after months of turmoil around Harvard’s response to Hamas’s attack on Israel, and weeks of turmoil around accusations of plagiarism, Claudine Gay resigned as the university’s president. Any hope that this might relieve the outsized attention on Harvard proved to be illusory....
“Over the years, I learned that students had repeatedly attempted to file complaints about my classes, saying that my requiring students to articulate, or to hear classmates make, arguments they might abhor -- for example, Justice Antonin Scalia saying there is no constitutional right to same-sex intimacy -- was unacceptable. The administration at my law school would not allow such complaints to move forward to investigations because of its firm view that academic freedom protects reasonable pedagogical choices. But colleagues at other schools within Harvard and elsewhere feared that their administrators were using concepts of discrimination or harassment to cover classroom discussions that make someone uncomfortable. These colleagues become more and more unwilling to facilitate conversations on controversial topics, believing that university administrators might not distinguish between challenging discussions and discrimination or harassment. Even an investigation that ended with no finding of wrongdoing could eat up a year of one’s professional life and cost thousands of dollars in legal bills. (A spokesperson for Harvard University declined to comment for this story.)
“The seeping of D.E.I. programs into many aspects of university life in the past decade would seem a ready-made explanation for how we got to such a point. Danielle Allen, a political philosopher and my Harvard colleague, co-chaired the university’s Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, which produced a report, in 2018, that aimed to counter the idea that principles of D.E.I. and of academic freedom are in opposition, and put forward a vision in which both are ‘necessary to the pursuit of truth.’ Like Allen, I consider the diversity of thought that derives from the inclusion of people of different experiences, backgrounds, and identities to be vital to an intellectual community and to democracy. But, as she observed last month in the Washington Post, ‘across the country, DEI bureaucracies have been responsible for numerous assaults on common sense.’ Allen continued, ‘Somehow the racial reckoning of 2020 lost sight of that core goal of a culture of mutual respect with human dignity at the center. A shaming culture was embraced instead.’ …
“The post-Gay crisis has created a crossroads, where universities will be tempted to discipline objectionable speech in order to demonstrate that they are dedicated to rooting out antisemitism and Islamophobia, too. Unless we conscientiously and mindfully pull away from that path, academic freedom -- which is essential to fulfilling a university’s purpose -- will meet its destruction....”
Full op-ed by Harvard Law School Prof. Jeannie Suk Gersen at New Yorker
Obstacles to Adopting Institutional Neutrality
Excerpts:
“University leaders are responsible for advancing their institutions’ interests. Adopting the Kalven principles [regarding a university’s role in political and social matters] has various potential benefits: It frees university leaders from taking a stand on divisive topics; it may help slow the decline of institutional trust; and it better aligns the university with the mission of promoting diversity of thought. But . . . there are significant obstacles to sincerely adopting the Kalven principles. A history of following the norm of consistently issuing political statements creates expectations of what university leaders can and will do. Adopting the Kalven principles requires recalibrating these expectations...."
Full op-ed at Heterodox. See also our compilation of the Kalven principles, part of the Chicago Trifecta that has long been posted at our website and which we have long advocated that Stanford adopt.
Third-Rate Governance of First-Rate Universities
Excerpts:
"Governance at elite universities is insular, unaccountable, and marred by conflicts of interest that prevent it from being focused on the historic mission of the university, encapsulated on Harvard’s coat of arms: seeking truth. Many nonprofits face similar structural difficulties that create a gap between the performance of their leadership and the fulfillment of their mission, but elite universities face added difficulties. They are so wealthy and market forces in elite higher education are so weak that there is no continuous pressure disciplining their behavior. Moreover, the returns in prestige and other benefits from being on an elite board of trustees are so substantial that members pull their punches to stay in the good graces of their fellows.
"Only when some cataclysmic event like the Hamas massacre prompts campus upheaval, and only when a group of activists like Christopher Rufo, Aaron Sibarium, and Bill Ackman take advantage of it will the boards of these universities be called to account. And a reckoning is in order. Better governance structures would help improve universities without the dangers created by direct intervention by the state or periodic, short-lived populist eruptions."
Full op-ed by Northwestern Law Prof. John O. McGinnis at Law & Liberty
DEI Is an Ideology for the Privileged
Excerpts:
“My community is so far behind that I no longer look at the data showing how we’re on the bottom of every education and socioeconomic chart. I see the evidence every day. That’s why it sickens me whenever I read news of our culture war over DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), most recently during the public trial of Claudine Gay. What struck me was that several DEI advocates, in their defense of Gay, claimed to be fighting for communities like mine. They talked of how not everybody is born equal, how systemic racism is in the DNA of America, how white supremacy keeps us down at every turn, and the absurd oppressor-oppressed binary that leaves no gray area for nuance.
“This experience was disembodying. It was like listening to people who don’t know you talk about you as if they knew you from way back when. Sometimes this disconnect between this DEI ideology and the realities of my community was so deep that it was laughable.
"For instance, while DEI ideologues and beneficiaries like Gay may share the same skin color with us, there is very little, if anything, that my community had in common with a woman born to a wealthy Haitian family and schooled at the best of America’s schools. These DEI advocates were exploiting the pain of my community to gaslight their opponents and this troubled me the most because it hurts and hinders our efforts to truly make lasting progress.
“The reality is that DEI is an ideology for the privileged. It helps people like Claudine Gay who exploit race for power and prestige and it hurts communities like mine by exploiting them for poverty-porn.
“Let me give you an example of what my life as a pastor to my struggling community is actually like....” [followed by detailed discussion of social actions and outreach]
Full op-ed by Chicago South Side Pastor Corey Brooks at Tablet
More About Stanford’s Alleged Roles in Election Censorship
Excerpts:
“A series of internal documents obtained via open records request by America First Legal (AFL) show that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, was aware of the risks associated with unsupervised mail-in voting in the months leading up to the 2020 election....
“CISA’s use of Deloitte to flag so-called ‘disinformation’ online further confirms the findings unearthed in an interim report released by House Republicans in November. According to that analysis, CISA -- along with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) -- colluded with Stanford University to pressure Big Tech companies into censoring what they claimed was ‘disinformation’ during the 2020 election. At the heart of this operation was the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), ‘a consortium of disinformation academics’ spearheaded by the Stanford Internet Observatory that coordinated with DHS and GEC ‘to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech’ ahead of the 2020 contest.
“Created ‘at the request’ of CISA, EIP [at Stanford] allowed federal officials to ‘launder [their] censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny.’ As documented in the interim report, this operation aimed to censor ‘true information, jokes and satire, and political opinions’ and submitted flagged posts from prominent conservative figures to Big Tech companies for censorship....”
Full article at Federalist as also posted at Real Clear Politics
See also Part 4 of Back to Basics at Stanford regarding the need for better oversight of these sorts of activities at Stanford.
Two Faculty Friends -- One Jewish, One Muslim -- Have an Answer to Campus Conflict
Excerpts:
“On Oct. 26, we organized our first event together, called Pitt Community United in Compassion. Faculty, staff, students, and community leaders -- including religious leaders -- gathered from across the region. We yearned to create a supportive environment where people could gather, focus, meditate, foster meaningful connections, care for each other, and find solace amid the chaos of our lives.
“We asked participants simple questions: What does compassion mean to you? How do you define compassion? Is there something from your own personal background -- religion, upbringing, experiences -- that has taught you compassion? Finally, we asked: How can our community at Pitt be more compassionate?
“Our motivation in organizing this event stemmed from seeing so many campuses torn apart by hatred and an inability to find common ground. Our antidote was to create a kind of prophylactic that would guide our community to celebrate our shared humanity and to prevent us from falling into the same vicious cycle....
“Universities are wracked with debates over the role of freedom of expression. But what is missing from these conversations is any discussion about civil discourse. Universities will never be able to solve the world’s problems unless we see those with divergent perspectives as human first and worthy of respect and care. …We do not want people to walk away with one worldview, but instead we seek that they have the confidence and compassion to deal with those who disagree.”
Full op-ed by University of Pittsburg Professors Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili and Abdesalam Soudi at Tablet
How Civics Can Counter Antisemitism on Campus
Excerpts:
“The shocking scenes of college students, faculty, and staff defending Hamas’s October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians as a ‘legitimate act of resistance’ have rightly been called antisemitism.
“Our father’s antisemitism was the centuries-old hatred of Jews just because they were Jews, different in their beliefs and customs. But this new form of antisemitism is different, and there are reasons why we’re seeing it revealed on our college campuses today. It’s an antisemitism based on an ideology of the oppressed versus the oppressors, which is also being used against people of other races and ethnicities. Because Israel is seen as strong it is viewed as the oppressor, and Hamas, because it is weaker, is seen as the oppressed....
“Civics education rightly understood counters this new form of antisemitism, and all identitarian philosophies, as it promotes an American “unum” through a non-ideological (yet still critical) teaching of the American project....”
Full op-ed by Pepperdine Professor and Dean Pete Peterson and non-profit leader Jack Miller at Real Clear Education
On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
The Incredible Journey of Stanford's Transfer Student Cameron Black
The Impact of Atmospheric Rivers
Possible Major Enhancements in Computer Memory
Stanford Football’s First Year Schedule in the ACC
Other Articles of Interest
Text of Letter from Former Cornell Trustee Demanding Major Changes at Cornell
Full letter by former Cornell trustee Jon A. Lindseth at Ivy Excellence Initiative website
Harvard’s Recent Statement on Rights and Responsibilities
Full statement at Harvard website
AAUP’s Recent Statement on Eliminating Discrimination and Achieving Equality in Higher Education
Full statement at AAUP website
DEI Boomerang
Full op-ed at New Criterion
Nebraska Legislation Proposes an End to Tenure
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
Microcredentials Are on the Rise, but Not at Colleges
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Georgia Universities Rebrand Diversity in Response to Anti-DEI Regulations
Full article at College Fix
"Professors should not be carrying their ideologies into the classroom. Our job as teachers of 'citizens and citizen-leaders' is not to indoctrinate students, but to prepare them to grapple with all of the ideas they will encounter in the societies they will serve.”
-- Harvard Professor and former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis
January 22, 2024
Why I Left Harvard
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Since early December, the end of my 20-year career teaching at Harvard has been the subject of articles, op-eds, tweets from a billionaire, and even a congressional hearing. I have become a poster child for how the growing campus DEI -- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion -- bureaucracies strangle free speech. My ordeal has been used to illustrate the hypocrisy of the assertions by Harvard’s leaders that they honor the robust exchange of challenging ideas.
“What happened to me, and others, strongly suggests that these assertions aren’t true -- at least, if those ideas oppose campus orthodoxy.
“To be a central example of what has gone wrong in higher education feels surreal. If there is any silver lining to losing the career that I found so fulfilling, perhaps it’s that my story will help explain the fear that stalks campuses, a fear that spreads every time someone is punished for their speech....” [followed by a detailed summary of events that transpired]
Full op-ed by former Harvard Prof. Carole Hooven at Free Press
Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts
Excerpts:
“Sometimes in this job I have a kernel of a column idea that doesn’t pan out. But other times I begin looking into a topic and find a problem so massive that I can’t believe I’ve ever written about anything else. This latter experience happened as I looked into the growing bureaucratization of American life....
“Once you start poking around, the statistics are staggering. Over a third of all health care costs go to administration.... The growth of bureaucracy costs America over $3 trillion in lost economic output every year, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini estimated in 2016 in The Harvard Business Review. That was about 17 percent of G.D.P....
“This situation is especially grave in higher education. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology now has almost eight times as many nonfaculty employees as faculty employees. In the University of California system, the number of managers and senior professionals swelled by 60 percent between 2004 and 2014. The number of tenure-track faculty members grew by just 8 percent....
“I’ve found the administrators’ code of safety first is now prevalent at the colleges where I’ve taught and visited. Aside from being a great school, Stanford used to be a weird school, where students set up idiosyncratic arrangements like an anarchist house or built their own islands in the middle of the lake. This was great preparation for life as a creative entrepreneur. But Stanford is apparently now tamed. I invite you to read Ginevra Davis’s essay 'Stanford’s War on Social Life' in Palladium, which won a vaunted Sidney Award in 2022 and details how university administrators cracked down on student initiatives to make everything boring, supervised and safe....”
Full op-ed by David Brooks at NY Times
See also our prior articles “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” and where Stanford now has nearly 17,000 non-teaching personnel, considerably worse than the numbers cited above for MIT, University of California and others; “Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students”; and “Back to Basics at Stanford” where we have long proposed a major reduction in Stanford’s counter-productive bureaucracy and that the savings, dollar for dollar, be devoted solely to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and graduate student fellowships.
From Stanford Law School Dean Paul Brest: Reviving Campus Belonging and Community
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Critical discourse was in critical condition on American campuses even before reactions to the war between Israel and Hamas left it with no discernible pulse.
“At Stanford Law School, where I have taught for many years, students across the spectrum of beliefs and identities have become increasingly reluctant to engage each other productively on controversial issues. As the College Pulse/FIRE 2024 College Free Speech Rankings and the 2021 Stanford IDEAL survey reveal, many students feel excluded from classroom discussions and fear ostracism should they say the wrong thing. Far from being unique, Stanford sadly turns out to be typical....
“If the choice were only between toughing it out and comforting the afflicted, inclusive discourse would create a paradox: One can either promote open discourse among the willing at the cost of other students’ exclusion, or remove barriers to inclusion at the cost of drastically narrowing the range of permissible discourse.
“Fortunately, there’s a third option available, which I’ll call everyone belongs. The idea is to facilitate critical discourse while creating the conditions for inclusive participation. This approach promotes interactive discussions designed to make students with many different identities and viewpoints grapple with difficult issues, even when the process makes them uncomfortable. For this to succeed, however, students must feel that they are genuinely included in those discussions -- that they belong at the table.
“Belonging, in this context, does not imply the cozy feeling of being with like-minded people. Rather, as the social psychologist Geoffrey Cohen defines the term in his 2022 book Belonging, it refers to ‘the feeling that we’re part of a larger group that values, respects, and cares for us -- and to which we have something to contribute.’” …
Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education
Lessons to Learn from University Presidents
Excerpts:
“What will come of the presidents of three of America’s most prestigious universities being called on the congressional carpet to explain their responses to Hamas’ brutal assault on innocent Israelis? …
“The core questions posed by the congressional inquisitors were two: (1) Why did your university not condemn Hamas’ brutal October 7 assault on innocent Israelis? (2) Does your institution’s code of conduct permit the pro-Hamas demonstrations that occurred?
“Implicit in the first question is that there is no acceptable explanation for not condemning Hamas’ actions -- that the presidents failed their responsibilities in not doing so. The second question implies that the schools’ codes of conduct should prohibit such demonstrations with severe consequences for violators. If those conclusions were drawn from this unfortunate saga, we would have missed an opportunity for essential reform....
“Two deeply embedded developments that have distracted higher education from the pursuit of truth and the conveyance of knowledge are institutional advocacy for favored public policies and the suppression of free expression in the name of student comfort....
“Silence is not violence, nor is it indifference. Failure to regulate offensive speech does not endorse the speaker’s message. On the contrary, both are essential to the pursuit of truth. Had the three presidents been able to say that they did not condemn Hamas because, when speaking for the institution, they remain neutral on matters of public concern and that they did not constrain the demonstrators because they embrace untrammeled freedom of expression, they would have been no less condemned but would have stood on two foundational principles that once made American higher education the envy of the world.”
Full op-ed by Lewis & Clark Law School Dean Emeritus James Huffman at DC Journal
See also our compilation of the Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social matters and part of the Chicago Trifecta
Amid National Backlash, Colleges Brace for Fresh Wave of Anti-DEI Legislation
Excerpt:
“At least 14 states this year will consider legislation that could dismantle the ways college administrators attempt to correct historical and structural gender and racial disparities and make campus climates more inclusive, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education analysis.
“The Chronicle has identified at least 19 bills that will be considered in the coming months that seek to ban the employment and funding of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices; the use of pledges by faculty and staff to commit to creating a more inclusive environment on campus, commonly known as diversity statements; mandatory diversity training; and identity-based preferences for hiring and admissions.
“While college administrators argue that they have a legal, moral, and financial obligation to more aggressively tackle forms of discrimination on campus and provide extra resources to historically marginalized employees and students -- who will soon make up more than half of the nation’s population -- opponents say those efforts are ineffective, illegal, and, in fact, discriminatory....”
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Pop Goes the DEI Bubble
Excerpts:
“Have we reached peak DEI? The unraveling of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ initiatives had already begun -- five states banning DEI programs; Google, Facebook and others cutting DEI staff; Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard -- well before Harvard President Claudine Gay was demoted.
“Author Christopher Rufo, echoing 1960s student activists, called the rise of DEI a ‘long march through the institutions’ -- a 50-plus-year ideology infiltration into universities, K-12 schools, government, media and corporations with the goal of telling us all how to live. That’s why I enjoy that the word ‘rot’ is back in style to describe what is happening inside the walls of academia....
“The new societal design, embedded in DEI and ESG, envisioned idyllic communal progress. History shows this never works because power corrupts. Diversity meant ideological conformity. Equity meant discrimination. Inclusion meant blurring the sexes. Men winning women’s athletic events would be considered normal. It was all theatrics, like the tampons I’ve seen in men’s bathrooms on Ivy League campuses. Somewhere George Orwell is rolling on the floor laughing....
“I, like most Americans, am for diversity, but not when it’s forced or mandated....
“Preferred pronouns are fading. College admissions, and maybe hiring, based on race is illegal. DEI departments are being deconstructed. But while the DEI movement may have peaked, like that Monty Python character, it’s not dead yet. The feverish whining of those grasping for the last reins of power will probably get worse before DEI eventually dies with a whimper.”
Full op-ed at WSJ
Reasons for the DEI Rollback
Excerpt:
“When he took office in 2021, Utah governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, made advancing ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ a key priority. He appointed a high-level diversity officer to his administration. His senior leadership was put through a ‘21-Day Equity Challenge,’ which instructed them in microaggressions and antiracism.
“The universities were on board. Utah State’s annual diversity symposium featured talks such as ‘Decentering Whiteness.’ The university also required DEI statements from applicants to the faculty, explaining how they infused diversity and equity -- a focus on race, gender, sexual orientation, and other categories of ‘marginalization’-- into their work. Even for positions in fields such as insect ecology and lithospheric evolution.
“Then, in December, Cox announced a different priority: reversing the excesses of DEI. At a press conference he said, ‘We’re using identitarianism to force people into boxes, and into victimhood, and I just don’t think that’s helpful at all. In fact, I think it’s harmful.’ So harmful that he announced his intention to bar the use of diversity statements in faculty hiring, condemning the practice as ‘bordering on evil.’ …
Full article by National Association of Scholars Senior Fellow John Sailer at Free Press
Alternative Viewpoint: Excellence Isn’t Colorblind or Gender Neutral, In Either Direction, Nor Should It Be
Excerpts (citations deleted):
“As debate rages on about the forced resignation of Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay, a familiar trope has surfaced yet again. As if to echo Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision in the Harvard affirmative action case, many have asserted that Gay got her job because of race and gender, contrasting that with a ‘pure’ merit-based selection of leaders. Aside from the insulting nature of this assumption, there is a stark irony to be considered here -- white men have similarly gotten their positions because of race and gender for centuries, originally by law and ultimately by tradition, precedent, and, one might add, the in-group tendency to choose familiar faces. If, after all, our norms were to choose leaders based on some (more fictional than real) colorblind or gender-neutral metric, would the statistics on CEOs, presidents, and other leaders look as one-sided as they do today? …
“Clearly, there are multiple dimensions that contribute to the excellence of a leader and a scholar -- and in this instance, multiple issues on the table beyond the focus of my comments here -- but it is absurd to suggest that white men never benefit from the ease with which they fit the prototype and thus can be taken ‘at face value’ as appropriate candidates for leadership to be judged on other dimensions. Even more important, it is fundamentally shortsighted to restrict our evaluations of quality and excellence to so-called colorblind and gender-neutral framings that miss the richness of intelligence honed by the lived experiences of identity, and of course, identity comes in many other forms also to be embraced as valuable to our collective power and leadership. Why don’t we test our own powers of perception and judgment to include the valuable nuances that diversity encompasses? Are we just too lazy to learn new ways of seeing merit before our very eyes? …”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Rutgers Chancellor Nancy Cantor at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Higher Education Needs to Reform Itself; It Also Needs to Defend Itself
Excerpts (links in the original):
“These are turbulent times for universities. Rising incidents of antisemitism on campuses across the country -- highlighted in a disastrous hearing in Congress that contributed to the resignations of two Ivy League presidents -- have led to widespread calls to reform higher education, refocusing it on principles of pluralism and free expression.
“It’s true that higher education needs to reform itself. But more than ever, it also needs to defend itself.... [followed by detailed recommendations] ….
“The last three months have set higher education back on its heels, perhaps deservedly so. But these challenges also present an unprecedented opportunity. Universities must seize the initiative on two fronts: Reform the censorial culture that threatens free expression on campus, and defend themselves vigorously against the official government suppression of speech.”
Full op-ed at The Hill
On the Positive Side - Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
The Hunt for a Vaccine That Fends Off Multiple Strains of Infection
If/Then: Business, Leadership, Society (podcasts from Stanford Graduate School of Business)
Study of Twins Indicates That a Vegan Diet Improves Cardiovascular Health
Stanford Scientists Reveal Why We Value Things More When They Cost Us More
Other Articles of Interest
Dartmouth Launches Campus-Wide Program Encouraging Dialogue on Controversial Topics
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
To Revitalize Higher Education, Colleges Need to Refocus on Character and Why They Exist
Full op-ed by Pepperdine President Jim Gash at Newsweek
DEI Squelches Student Reporting at Yale, Penn
Full op-ed by current Yale undergraduate at Tablet. See also Stanford student op-ed from October at Jewish News Syndicate.
Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus
Full op-ed at After Babel
How Private Colleges Are Grappling with Growing Partisan Divides
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
DEI Goes Quiet in Business and Elsewhere
Full article at NY Times
Growing Numbers Question Whether a College Degree Is Worth the Debt
Full article at NY Times
Large Percent of Graduate Students Question Whether It Was Worth It
Full article at USA Today and also republished at Yahoo
After Harvard and Penn Resignations, Who Wants to be a College President?
Full article at Washington Post and also republished at MSN
In Battles Over Offensive Speech, the Cure Is Usually Worse Than the Disease
Full op-ed by U Wisconsin Prof. Franciska Coleman at The Hill
Harvard Tries to Smooth Things Over with Silicon Valley
Full article at WSJ
Foreign Funding of U.S. Academia
Full PDF copy of report here
Can ChatGPT Get Into Harvard?
Full article at Washington Post and also republished at MSN
The U.S. Prevailed in the Space Race; With STEM, We Can Win the Earth Race Too
“My view is that, above all else, we must focus on returning American higher education to its original purposes: to seek the truth; to teach young adults the things they need to flourish; and to pass on the knowledge that is the basis of our exceptional civilization.” -- Bari Weiss, Journalist
January 15, 2024
[Editor's note: Because of the timeliness and relevance of articles in this week's Newsletter, we are again issuing it slightly earlier than is our normal practice and might move to an earlier publication date in the future as well.]
From Stanford Daily: Petition Seeks Reinstatement of Suspended COLLEGE Lecturer
Excerpts:
“A petition circulated by students demands the reinstatement of COLLEGE 101 lecturer Ameer Loggins, who was suspended after reports of identity-based targeting last fall.
“Stanford opened an investigation following reports that Loggins targeted Jewish students based on their identity during two Oct. 10 class sections, following the Hamas attack on Israel three days prior. University president Richard Saller said at a Graduate Student Council (GSC) meeting last December that Stanford has hired external counsel for the investigation.
“Over 1,700 people have signed the petition as of Jan. 10, according to Jaeden Clark ’26, one of the students leading the effort....
“Kelly Danielpour ’25, a co-president of the Jewish Student Association who spoke with several Jewish students from the class and was involved in reporting the incident, wrote that the ‘only students who can speak to whether Loggins created an environment where they felt singled out, targeted, and pressured based on a power dynamic are the Jewish students in his class.’ ...
“Like Clark, Milo Golding ’26 is involved in the petition effort and previously sat in on Loggins’s lectures. He described Loggins as someone who created space for students to exchange different views on important societal issues....
“'I sympathize with the students who felt uncomfortable,’ Golding said. However, Golding argued, Loggins tried to help students understand the people and communities impacted by issues raised in the classroom. Golding said Loggins’s teaching style reflects his experiences growing up with a marginalized, low-income background and going ‘unheard.’” …
Full article at Stanford Daily
The Root Cause of Academic Groupthink
Excerpts:
“The shroud is coming off elite academia and America is not pleased with what it’s seeing. Its leaders have told us that genocidal antisemitism is too complex to recognize and that plagiarism is a problem for students, perhaps for junior faculty, but not for the president of Harvard. DEI policies elevated demographic considerations far above merit at our most prestigious institutions.
“How did this happen? What can be done to fix it?
“Those are tough questions. Major institutions don’t become corrupt overnight. The process is long, slow, and methodical. The solutions go far beyond the removal of a few high-profile officials....
"[T]he safest, surest, most common path to success in academia involves telling those already designated experts precisely what they most want to hear....The net result is a reinforcement of orthodox thinking and a field committed to moving further along whatever path it was already taking. I’ve termed this phenomenon ‘incremental outrageousness.’ It defines the basic incentive structure of academia....”
Full op-ed at Real Clear Education. See also former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy’s “The Threat from Within.”
Harvard’s Faculty Speak Up
Excerpts:
“[Law Professor J. Mark Ramseyer] criticized the growing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion bureaucracy at Harvard, noting in an email to The College Fix that ‘the DEI statements required of job applicants are a straightforward political loyalty oath.’ …
“Ramseyer described the current intolerance as a product of ‘an increasingly large fraction of our colleagues’ spreading their political ideologies across campus. He also placed blame on himself and other professors who were ‘scared to speak up’ and let it happen, while praising some alumni for ‘trying to rescue Harvard from what we let it become.’
“Similarly, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker published an op-ed last month in the Boston Globe in which he denounced Harvard’s ‘notorious incidents of cancelation and censorship’ over the past year and cited a ranking that placed Harvard last in free speech out of 248 universities....”
Full article at College Fix
This Is the Actual Danger Posed by DEI
Excerpts (links in the original):
“There are few national conversations more frustrating than the fight over D.E.I....
“Outside the reactionary right, there is a cohort of Americans, on both right and left, who want to eradicate illegal discrimination and remedy the effects of centuries of American injustice yet also have grave concerns about the way in which some D.E.I. efforts are undermining American constitutional values, especially on college campuses.
“For instance, when a Harvard scholar such as Steven Pinker speaks of ‘disempowering D.E.I.’ as a necessary reform in American higher education, he’s not opposing diversity itself. Pinker is liberal, donates substantially to the Democratic Party and ‘loathes’ Donald Trump. The objections he raises are shared by a substantial number of Americans across the political spectrum.
“To put it simply, the problem with D.E.I. isn’t with diversity, equity, or inclusion -- all vital values. The danger posed by D.E.I. resides primarily not in these virtuous ends, but in the unconstitutional means chosen to advance them....
“There is a better way to achieve greater diversity, equity, inclusion and related goals. Universities can welcome students from all walks of life without unlawfully censoring speech. They can respond to campus sexual violence without violating students’ rights to due process. They can diversify the student body without discriminating on the basis of race. Virtuous goals should not be accomplished by illiberal means.”
Full op-ed at NY Times. See also our Back to Basics at Stanford.
About Campus Activism
Excerpt (links in the original):
“In a thought-provoking essay, Len Gutkin, a senior editor of The Chronicle Review, digs into the evolution of campus activism this past decade. Citing several confrontations between administrators and students (including this infamous one involving the Yale professor Nicholas Christakis, who, along with his wife, Erika, oversaw student activities in one of the university’s residential colleges), Gutkin points out how DEI administrators came to be seen as prioritizing minority students’ feelings of belonging at the risk of censoring controversial speakers...."
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
About Preference Falsification, and Why Merit Is No Longer Evil
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Years ago, Harvard University Press published a book called ‘Private Truths, Public Lies' and explained the work and its author:
"'Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures…
“''A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change. In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge.'
“This week on X, Mr. Kuran, a Duke University economist [and Stanford alum], writes: ‘Preference falsification has been central to the trajectory of DEI. People who abhor DEI principles and methods came to favor these publicly through a preference cascade. Every instance of preference falsification induced others to pretend they consider DEI just, efficient, beneficial to marginalized groups, etc. In time, a false consensus effectively displaced the search for truth as the university’s core mission.... Since October 7, the moral high ground has shifted. DEI has been exposed as a sham. Merit is no longer evil.'
"On X, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen suggests some homework: ‘Make a list of all the things you believe, but can’t say. Then a list of things you don’t believe, but must say.’ …"
Full op-ed at WSJ
Should DEI Be Expanded to Cover Jews?
Excerpts:
“Facing blowback for campus antisemitism, universities have proposed expanding their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs to encompass Jews. Not only does past (and present) persecution justify such expansion, they argue, but it seems politically advantageous. A recent survey showed 79 percent of college-age respondents support the ‘ideology’ categorizing whites as ‘oppressors’ and others as ‘oppressed’ (and deserving of special favor); furthermore, 67 percent concluded Jews ‘should be treated as oppressors.’
“Reconfiguring DEI programs to shift Jews into the ‘oppressed’ category seems highly desirable, but it is a Faustian bargain. DEI is not the solution. It is the problem....
“It is as if jurors decided a case based not on evidence but the litigants’ clothing. No wonder two-thirds of college students consider it acceptable to shout down a speaker; they do not need to hear speech to decide who is right,,,. Unlike Hammurabi’s Code, which based punishments on a matrix comparing the status of offender and victim, the Torah emphasizes conduct over status: ‘Thou shalt not favor the poor, nor honor the rich, but in righteousness shall you judge.’ [Lev. 19:15.] ,,,
“The diversity-industrial complex now decides which speech is ‘worth the squeeze’ and which is not....
“Viewpoint bias among faculty is no surprise; it is why they are chosen. Candidates must submit ‘diversity statements’ demonstrating how they will treat students differently based on their status. It is the most important part of the application; Berkeley rejected 76 percent of applicants based on their diversity statement alone, without even considering their academic record. And faculty must repeat this ‘loyalty oath’ to the DEI regime throughout their careers, in annual reviews. Ideological conformity is not a bug of this system but a feature....
“Universities should not expand the DEI infrastructure but dismantle it. Fundamental justice -- and their academic reputations -- require nothing less.”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum Mitchell Keiter at Jewish Journal
Enforced DEI in Faculty Hiring at the University of California
Excerpts (links in the original):
“From 2016 to 2022, most University of California campuses participated in an experimental program, funded by the state Legislature, to use diversity, equity, and inclusion statements as the first cut in faculty-applicant pools. According to UC’s guidelines, the purpose of diversity statements is for applicants to explain what they have done and plan to do to serve underrepresented-minority people on campus -- specifically, African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics/Latinos.
“Such policies are informed by a series of politically charged assumptions. The first assumption is that such groups have been more oppressed than other racial or ethnic groups in California; the second is that oppression has caused the groups to be represented in numbers lower than their proportions of the California population; the third is that increasing their representation is central to UC’s mission; the fourth is that proactive, race-conscious policies are necessary to hire members of the groups. Each of these assumptions should be open to debate. Instead, the university has assumed that all have been proved and then jumped to a fifth and final assumption: that UC can and should refuse to hire otherwise-competitive applicants for insufficiently endorsing the preceding assumptions.
“By making political values the sole criterion at the initial hiring stage, UC-faculty searches strayed from the American Association of University Professors’ bedrock 1915 “Declaration of Principles,” which states that scholars have a duty to remain neutral and not act in the interests of any particular segment of the population....”
Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education
See also our prior posting "California Community College Professors Sue Over Newly Imposed DEIA Hiring and Performance Standards" including a PDF copy of the California Community Colleges' DEI glossary.
See also the Shils Report regarding the hiring and promotion of faculty and part of the Chicago Trifecta posted at our website.
What’s Bad for Harvard Is Good for America
Excerpts:
“Regardless of your perspective, Harvard looks bad right now -- and that’s good for America.
“Like all of America’s top universities, Harvard has taken on an unhealthy role in the US economy and society. America’s best universities need to return to their original mission: producing academic excellence, not just signaling it.
“These schools have used their reputations for excellence to form an oligopoly with outsized power. An Ivy League degree, or even just attendance at an Ivy League school, conveys a powerful signal that this person is among the smartest and best-connected this nation has to offer....
“This power to signal elitism also proved toxic for the universities themselves. A concentration of market power tends to result in less innovation, more waste and greater distortions. So it was with the Ivy League: Intoxicated by the idea that they were shaping the elite of America, these schools increasingly saw themselves not as educational institutions but as organizers of a vast social project. They were not completely wrong -- but it was a social project with little accountability....
“Reducing market power is never easy, but the U.S. has to find some way to make its elite schools less important....”
Full op-ed at Bloomberg. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” and “Back to Basics at Stanford.”
Harvard’s Board Is Guilty of Five Key Failures; Here’s How to Avoid Repeating Them
Excerpt:
“Harvard’s board implosion will become a classic case study of failed succession planning for colleges and universities everywhere, as well as for failed board governance across sectors. The profound damage to the venerable Harvard brand in terms of its reputation for academic integrity, with its school motto being 'Veritas' (Latin for truth), could have long-lasting consequences: a decline in student applications, diminished employer enthusiasm for Harvard graduates, discouraged fundraising, and a demoralized, fractured campus culture. But it can be corrected if the university acknowledges five classic corporate governance failures -- and then implements key needed remedies quickly....”
[The author then discusses in detail each of these five alleged failures:
-
Failed diligence
-
Poor responsiveness to key stakeholders worried about rising campus antisemitism
-
Failures of duty of care and premature denials of misconduct allegations
-
Failures to address the serious erosion of Harvard’s brand and institutional mission
-
Unexplained violations of collegial shared governance and presumptions of racial bias.]
Full analysis by Yale Management Professor and Senior Associate Dean Jeffrey Sonnenfeld at Fortune
Why the Shocking Campus Behavior Is Only the Beginning
Excerpts:
“I’ve been part of so many conversations over the past few months about the same weighty topic. People are struggling to understand why so many individuals and institutions have openly embraced antisemitic viewpoints, permitting hateful rhetoric they’d never permit against another identity group.... The truth lies in the development of a new and increasingly radical progressive orthodoxy, which has come to dominate many campuses, institutions, workplaces, and online spaces.
“Under this belief set, extreme words and actions, including acts of violence, are considered righteous if employed by the ‘oppressed’. In contrast, words and actions that are far less damaging are rebuked if they come from those who are deemed ‘oppressors’. What’s fine for one group to say or do is completely unacceptable when it comes from another, and double standards are openly applied....
“History is complex, containing not only tales of oppression and injustice that should not be overlooked, but also stories of resilience, innovation, and triumph over adversity. These narratives include many individuals who defied challenges or societal norms and are remembered for their remarkable achievements and contributions....
“These universities’ incessant tuition increases predominantly fund sprawling layers of bureaucracy in their administrations as well as the construction of bigger and better facilities as part of an arms race against other schools.
“For example, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Stanford University had more administrative staff and faculty than it did students. Specifically, there were 15,750 administrators, 2,288 faculty members, and 16,937 students. There is absolutely no data that shows better facilities and more administrators lead to better education outcomes; however, they are highly effective for branding and recruiting, and they create a lot of high-paying jobs for bureaucrats who don’t even teach students....
“Through the lens of the radical progressive orthodoxy, Jews are labeled as oppressors. This labeling is based on American Jews’ disproportionate wealth and perceived access to power, but it conveniently overlooks the constant, systematic oppression Jews faced for thousands of years. This same oppression culminated in the Holocaust, but that was just one horror in millennia of calamities....
“The path forward should not prioritize tearing down the structures of self-determination, success, and achievement; rather, it should attempt to make the starting line more equitable for everyone. This involves addressing systemic issues and biases while preserving the principles of freedom and merit that have been pivotal in fostering innovation, progress, and prosperity. By focusing on enhancing opportunities for all, rather than imposing uniformity of outcomes, we can create a society that is both fairer and freer, where merit and hard work are recognized and rewarded, and where everyone has a chance to succeed based on their abilities and efforts.”
Full op-ed at Friday Forward
Moral Outrage Is Consuming Our Universities; Moral Resilience Can Save the Day
Excerpts:
“As a therapist, clinical ethicist and trauma researcher specializing in moral injury and moral distress, I know well the damaging effects of when a person’s core moral foundations are violated in high-stakes situations. I also recognize when their integrity is compromised due to forces beyond their control or from repeatedly not having their deeply held values respected individually, collectively or institutionally.
“As a vice president of university relations and chief communications officer at California Institute of Integral Studies, I also know well the emotional minefield that college campuses have become. Every day, I survey the precarious landscape of moral offenses, complaints and activations, carefully assessing which ones might explode, sending the community into an uproar, and tiptoe through the harrowing task of crafting the appropriate ‘safe’ language, praying one of the chosen words won’t detonate some hidden trigger....
“Essentially, our rational, meaning-making mind shuts down, giving way to the older areas of the brain that are wired for protection. This shutdown not only diminishes the capacity for empathy, collaboration and clear thinking but also fuels destruction rather than solutions....
“Enter moral resilience.
“Moral resilience, still a nascent concept, focuses on the moral aspects of human experience, the complexity of decisions, obligations and relationships and the inevitable challenges that ignite conscience, confusion and distress....
“For colleges and universities struggling to manage gripping moral outrage, it would be a bold and courageous step forward to abandon the typical ‘contain and restrain’ or ‘damp and stamp’ responses, which require administrators, faculty and staff to tread with trepidation through today’s moral minefields.
“Instead, institutions should embrace a proactive and sustainable model of moral resilience. Here’s what that could look like: [followed by summary of steps to take] ….”
Full essay at The Hill
On the Positive Side - Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
A Salute to Longtime Women’s Basketball Coach Tara VanDerveer See also Go Stanford
New Research on Microbes Expands the Known Limits for Life on Earth and Beyond
Seven Economic Trends to Watch in 2024
Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya re Government Censorship of Social Media (debate on YouTube)
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford’s Welcome Back Message to Students
Full letter at Stanford Report
Stanford’s Undergraduate Neighborhood Housing System Revised Once Again
Full article at Stanford Daily. See also our Back to Basics webpage that has long called for an end to the neighborhood system.
UCLA’s Medical School Divides Students by Race to Teach Antiracism
Full op-ed at WSJ
Johns Hopkins Medical School Rescinds DEI Memo Calling Whites, Christians, Males, Middle-Aged and Other People Privileged
Full article at College Fix
Jewish Students Sue Harvard, Claim Severe Campus Antisemitism
Full article at Harvard Crimson
Citing Campus Antisemitism, Popular Jewish Computer Scientist Resigns from MIT
Full article at College Fix
Group Prepares to Sue MIT Re Admissions Standards
Full article at College Fix. See also Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act
The Flawed Test Behind DEI
Full op-ed by Ohio State Prof. Emeritus Hal Arkes at WSJ
Today’s Universities Are Incubators of Competing Visions
Full interview of Princeton Prof. Robert George at National Catholic Register
Dishonesty in University Research Is Undermining Americans’ Trust in Higher Education
Full op-ed at Josh Barro Very Serious
With Higher Education on Trial, Policy Changes May Be the Only Solution
Full op-ed at Real Clear Education
Promises and Pitfalls of AI Tool Usage
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
“In an age of information overload and easy access to superficial knowledge, critical thinking becomes even more vital. We must learn to navigate through the noise, separate fact from fiction, and think critically to make informed decisions." -- Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy
January 8, 2024
From Former Dean of Harvard College: Reaping What We Have Taught
Excerpts:
"Let’s go back to how Harvard’s current crisis began: charges of antisemitism....
"Unapologetic antisemitism -- whether the incidents are few or numerous -- is a college phenomenon because of what we teach, and how our teachings are exploited by malign actors.
"The Harvard online course catalog has a search box. Type in 'decolonize.' That word -- though surely not the only lens through which to view the current relationship between Europe and the rest of the world -- is in the titles of seven courses and the descriptions of 18 more.
"Try 'oppression' and 'liberation.' Each is in the descriptions of more than 80 courses. 'Social justice' is in over 100. 'White supremacy' and 'Enlightenment' are neck and neck, both ahead of 'scientific revolution' but behind 'intersectionality.' …
“When complex social and political histories are oversimplified in our teachings as Manichaean struggles -- between oppressed people and their oppressors, the powerless and the powerful, the just and the wicked -- a veneer of academic respectability is applied to the ugly old stereotype of Jews as evil but deviously successful people.
"While Harvard cannot stop the abuse of our teaching, we, the Harvard faculty, can recognize and work to mitigate these impacts....
"Professors should not be carrying their ideologies into the classroom. Our job as teachers of 'citizens and citizen-leaders' is not to indoctrinate students, but to prepare them to grapple with all of the ideas they will encounter in the societies they will serve....
"The goal is not to give students a choice between courses reflecting different ideologies. Harvard should instead expect instructors to leave their politics at the classroom door and touch both sides of controversial questions, leaving students uncertain where their sympathies lie. Professors should have no more right to exclude from their teaching ideas with which they disagree than students should expect to be shielded from ideas they find disagreeable.
"All that is required is for faculty to exhibit some humility about the limits of their own wisdom and embrace the formula for educational improvement voiced by Le Baron R. Briggs, a Harvard dean, more than a century ago: 'increased stress on offering what should be taught rather than what the teachers wish to teach.'”
Full op-ed by Harvard Professor and former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis at our Commentary webpage and as initially published at Harvard Crimson
From Bill Ackman: How to Fix Harvard
Excerpts:
“I have always believed that diversity is an important feature of a successful organization, but by diversity I mean diversity in its broadest form: diversity of viewpoints, politics, ethnicity, race, age, religion, experience, socioeconomic background, sexual identity, gender, one’s upbringing, and more.
“What I learned, however, was that DEI was not about diversity in its purest form. Rather, DEI was a political advocacy movement on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under DEI’s own methodology.
“Under DEI, one’s degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so-called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews, and Asians are deemed oppressors, and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people, and/or women are deemed to be oppressed. Under this ideology which is the philosophical underpinning of DEI as advanced by Ibram X. Kendi and others, one is either an anti-racist or a racist. There is no such thing as being “not racist.” …
“The DEI movement has also taken control of speech. Certain speech is no longer permitted. So-called ‘microaggressions’ are treated like hate speech. ‘Trigger warnings’ are required to protect students. ‘Safe spaces’ are necessary to protect students from the trauma inflicted by words that are challenging to the students’ newly acquired worldviews. Campus speakers and faculty with unapproved views are shouted down, shunned, and canceled....
“So what should happen? The [Harvard] corporation board should not remain in their seats protected by the unusual governance structure that enabled them to obtain their seats.... The ODEIB [Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging] should be shut down, and the staff should be terminated. The ODEIB has already taken down much of the ideology and strategies that were on its website when I and others raised concerns about how the office operates and who it does and does not represent. Taking down portions of the website does not address the fundamentally flawed and racist ideology of this office, and calls into further question the ODEIB’s legitimacy....
“Harvard must once again become a meritocratic institution that does not discriminate for or against faculty or students based on their skin color, and where diversity is understood in its broadest form so that students can learn in an environment that welcomes diverse viewpoints from faculty and students from truly diverse backgrounds and experiences.
“Harvard must create an academic environment with real academic freedom and free speech, where self-censoring, speech codes, and cancel culture are forever banished from campus....”
Full op-ed by Bill Ackman at our Commentary webpage. See also our prior article "Stanford's Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy"
From Derek Bok: Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard
Excerpts:
“The public shaming and subsequent resignations of the leaders of some of America’s top universities may shock some observers.... Yet these same institutions are under intense attack from both ends of the political spectrum. Liberals berate them for not doing more to enroll low-income students, pressure them to divest from companies that pollute the environment, and urge them to pay reparations for their complicity with slavery centuries ago. Meanwhile, conservatives -- chiefly governors, legislators, and right-wing pundits -- accuse them of indoctrinating students with liberal beliefs and paying excessive attention to the welfare of minority and LGBTQ students....
“All of these trends have been aggravated by the growing discontent within the public over the state of the nation....
“So how can elite universities better protect themselves? … Universities with predominantly liberal faculties also need to take particular care not to indoctrinate their students or appear to be doing so.... [O]ne of the most effective ways to build the confidence of the public would be to embark on a visible effort to improve the education of students. Two such improvements seem particularly appropriate for elite universities, whose graduates are especially likely to eventually occupy positions of importance in government and the professions. One of these possibilities would be to devise a truly successful model of civic education, and the other is to develop an effective way to help all students acquire a knowledge of practical ethics and a proficiency in moral reasoning....”
Full op-ed by Derek Bok at Chronicle of Higher Education. Prof. Bok is an alum of both Stanford and Harvard and is a former president of Harvard.
From Claudine Gay: What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me
Excerpts:
“On Tuesday, I made the wrenching but necessary decision to resign as Harvard’s president. For weeks, both I and the institution to which I’ve devoted my professional life have been under attack. My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.
“My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth.
“As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning. The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader....
"I have never misrepresented my research findings, nor have I ever claimed credit for the research of others. Moreover, the citation errors should not obscure a fundamental truth: I proudly stand by my work and its impact on the field....
“College campuses in our country must remain places where students can learn, share and grow together, not spaces where proxy battles and political grandstanding take root. Universities must remain independent venues where courage and reason unite to advance truth, no matter what forces set against them.”
Full guest essay by Claudine Gay at NY Times. Prof. Gay is an alum of both Stanford and Harvard and was Harvard's most recent president.
How Not to Defend Claudine Gay
Excerpts:
“The resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University in the midst of a growing plagiarism scandal has invited predictably partisan reactions. On the right, figures like Christopher Rufo and Elise Stefanik have been taking a victory lap, claiming credit for Gay’s departure. On the left and in academic circles, others have — almost as a reflex — bemoaned Gay’s withdrawal as an act of capitulation to a right-wing mob and power-hungry donors. In a country in which everything is a matter of partisan polarization, a knee-jerk defense of Gay is perhaps understandable, but it is nonetheless misguided. First, the arguments mounted in her defense are demonstrably weak. And second, those arguments will do nothing to restore the American public’s confidence in academe, and will do even less to avert political interference in higher education....
“As others have observed, Harvard’s reaction to the plagiarism allegations was both heavy-handed (with its legal threats against the New York Post) and not transparent (with the public’s being informed about the university’s investigation only after it was already complete). The unsatisfactory arguments in defense of Gay are more consistent with a desire to cover up the allegations than with an attempt to honestly address them....
“Academics, of all people, should be able to hold two thoughts in their heads at the same time. It is entirely possible for Professor Gay to be a target of a right-wing smear campaign and to be guilty of plagiarism. By choosing to ignore the latter because of the former, we are succumbing to a kind of us-vs.-them mentality, and, worse, we risk being accused of a willingness to cover up and minimize the mistakes of our peers when it suits us. I can understand concerns about political interference in higher education, but we cannot possibly defend against such interference by calling plagiarism ‘duplicative language.’ When one is faced with politically motivated allegations of plagiarism, the best one can do is to not be guilty of plagiarism. And when allegations turn out to be true, the best that academic institutions can do is to admit it and move on. It seems as if Harvard has yet to learn that lesson.”
Full op-ed by Prof. Aleksandar Stević at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also National Association of Scholars Statement on Plagiarism
The Joke Is On Us
Excerpts:
“When I taught physics at Yale in the 1980s and ’90s, my colleagues and I took pride in our position on ‘science hill,’ looking down on the humanities scholars in the intellectual valleys below as they were inundated in postmodernism and deconstructionism.
“This same attitude motivated the mathematician Alan Sokal to publish his famous 1996 article, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, in the cultural-studies journal Social Text....
“Mr. Sokal’s paper was a hoax, designed to demonstrate that postmodernism was nonsense. But today postmodern cultural theory is being infused into the very institutions one might expect to be scientific gatekeepers. Hard-science journals publish the same sort of bunk with no hint of irony:
-
In November 2022 the Journal of Chemical Education published A Special Topics Class in Chemistry on Feminism and Science as a Tool to Disrupt the Dysconscious Racism in STEM.…
-
In March 2022 Physical Review Physics Education Research published Observing whiteness in introductory physics: A case study.…
-
A January 2023 paper presented at the Joint Mathematics Meeting, the world’s biggest gathering of mathematicians, was titled Undergraduate Mathematics Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Structural Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice.…
“Such ideas haven’t totally colonized scientific journals and pedagogy, but they are beginning to appear almost everywhere and are getting support and encouragement from the scientific establishment....
“The joke turns out to be on all of us -- and it isn’t funny.”
Full op-ed by ASU Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krauss at WSJ
The Rise of the Sectarian University
Excerpts:
“But what really is the peril that these elite universities confront? Unlike lesser-resourced institutions, they face no real prospect of financial catastrophe, even if they lose some big donors.... However much right-wing actors might wish to remake these institutions in their own image, that eventuality also has little chance of coming to fruition....
“The real peril to elite higher education, then, isn’t that these places will be financially ruined, nor that they will be effectively interfered with in their internal operations by hostile conservatives. It is, instead, that their position in American society will come to resemble that of The New York Times or of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Which is to say that they will remain rich and powerful, and they will continue to have many bright and competent people working within their ambit. And yet their authority will grow more brittle and their appeal more sectarian....”
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Greg Conti at Compact Magazine
The Limits of Social Engineering at Harvard
“Where there used to be a pinnacle, there’s now a crater. It was created when the social-justice model of higher education, currently centered on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts -- and heavily invested in the administrative side of the university -- blew up the excellence model, centered on the ideal of intellectual merit and chiefly concerned with knowledge, discovery and the free and vigorous contest of ideas.
“Why did that change happen? I’ve seen arguments that it goes back to the 1978 Bakke decision, when the Supreme Court effectively greenlit affirmative action in the name of diversity.
“But the problem with Bakke isn’t that it allowed diversity to be a consideration in admissions decisions. It’s that university administrators turned an allowance into a requirement, so a kind of racial gerrymander now permeates nearly every aspect of academic life, from admissions decisions to faculty appointments to the racial makeup of contributors to essay collections....
“One of the secrets of America’s postwar success wasn’t simply the caliber of U.S. universities. It was the respect they engendered among ordinary people who aspired to send their children to them.
“Nobody should doubt that there is still a lot of excellence in today’s academia and plenty of good reasons to send your kids to college. But nobody should doubt, either, that the intellectual rot is pervasive and won’t stop spreading until universities return to the idea that their central purpose is to identify and nurture and liberate the best minds, not to engineer social utopias.”
Full op-ed by Bret Stephens at NY Times
See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” and “Back to Basics at Stanford” all of which argue for a very significant reduction in Stanford’s bloated administrative staff and the counter-productive work that they do and a reallocation of the savings, dollar for dollar, to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and to graduate student fellowships.
On the Positive Side - Current Research and Teaching at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.
Stanford Medicine’s Top Scientific Advancements of 2023
Martin Luther King Project at Stanford
Scientists Use High-Tech Brain Stimulation to Make People More Hypnotizable
Fungi and the Future of Forest Health
Other Articles of Interest
How Harvard’s Board Broke Up with Claudine Gay
Full article at NY Times
Wanted: New College Presidents. Mission: Impossible.
Full article at WSJ
Alternative Viewpoint - The Need for More DEI Efforts on College Campuses, Not Less
Full article and report at Education Trust; similar article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
FIRE’s 10 Common-Sense Reforms for Colleges and Universities
Full list at FIRE’s website. See also “How Harvard Can Reform Itself”
What Universities Have Done to Themselves
Full op-ed by Peggy Noonan at WSJ; also available at drive.google.com
U.S. Universities Are Pushing Political Agendas Instead of Excellence
Full video by Fareed Zakaria at CNN
The Dehumanizing Anti-Civilization Dogma Behind DEI’s Destruction of Universities
Full video and transcript by Michael Shellenberger at Public
October 7: A Turning Point for Free Speech?
Full op-ed at Reason Magazine
Policy Experts, Right-to-Left, Weigh In on Taxing University Endowments
Full article at College Fix
The Epitome of a Problematic Higher Education System
Full op-ed by Suffolk Community College Prof. Nicholas Giordano at Campus Reform
University of Michigan Creates a New Research Institute to Combat Antisemitism
Full article at College Fix
UMass Boston Removes DEI Requirements from Job Listings
Full article at College Fix
The Profession of Journalism Has Lost Its Way
Full op-ed by DePauw University Prof. Jeffrey McCall at The Hill
"America’s universities are no longer seen as bastions of excellence but as partisan outposts. American universities have been neglecting a core focus on excellence in order to pursue agendas clustered around Diversity and Inclusion…. They should abandon their long misadventure into politics...and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning." – Fareed Zakaria, global news and policy analyst, CNN commentator
January 2, 2024
[Editor's note: We publish these weekly Newsletters to help inform readers of issues that universities around the country are facing and, very importantly, to help assure that university leaders, including at Stanford, continue to protect free speech and critical thinking, both of which are essential elements for why schools like Stanford exist. This is not meant to detract from the extraordinary teaching, research and patient care that is taking place at Stanford, and we therefore call your attention to a new section, below, that includes examples of these activities.
[Also, this issue of the Newsletter was ready for distribution when we learned earlier today of the resignation of Harvard's President Claudine Gay. We have retained the two articles that had already been excerpted, each of which had been written prior to President Gay's resignation since, as those authors made clear a week ago, the concerns are less with President Gay’s alleged plagiarism and much more about the campus climate that she and other campus leaders nationwide have facilitated in recent years. Take a look and decide for yourself.]
It's a Pattern of Behavior at Harvard
Excerpts:
“Although she is my fellow political scientist, I cannot support the Harvard President’s behavior, as a card-carrying member of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). In Gay’s time as an academic administrator at Harvard, that university has plunged to dead last (238th) on FIRE’s free speech rankings of U.S. universities. Surveys show that many Harvard students fear to say what they think, perhaps because of what they see happening to their professors. FIRE reports that in recent years, Harvard sanctioned four scholars for their views and terminated three of them. Rumors suggest that many more have been fired or had their careers damaged....
“In recent years, I have noticed a disturbing pattern of behavior which seemingly started in elite institutions. Leaders weaponize their vast bureaucracies to selectively enforce rules against those whose ideas they oppose. As one Ivy League professor groused: ‘Many professors are punished for their findings, and this is kept under the radar. It’s common for deans to tell professors they are fired, the professor says they will go public, so then the university pays them to go away.’ …
“With more than its share of Ivy League alumni, the mainstream press has under-reported and even misreported the free speech recession. Now is the time for reporters to stop dismissing the critics of higher education and instead engage in real investigative journalism to see if we are right.”
Full op-ed by University of Arkansas Prof. Robert Maranto at The Hill
See also Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya’s personal account of "How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test" and Stanford Prof. Russell Berman "Does Academic Freedom Have a Future at Stanford?"
What Should Be the Priorities of a University?
Excerpts:
“Harvard faces a historic choice: Is its main mission advocacy for, advancement of, and indoctrination in a particular political and ideological cause, going by names such as ‘woke,’ ‘social justice,’ ‘critical theory’ and ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ (a chillingly Orwellian name since it is exactly the opposite)? Or is its main mission the search for objective truth, via excellence, meritocracy, free inquiry, free speech, and critical discussion, bounded by classical norms of argument by logic and evidence; and to advance and pass on that way of thinking? Even though yes, most of those ideas originated from dead white men whose societies had, in retrospect, some unpleasant characteristics? And to get there, given the BS spreading like cancer and the political and ideological monoculture that pervades the university, it needs a top to bottom cleanup....
“Stanford recently unseated its president, ostensibly over research conduct in his pre-presidential career. He was cleared by the official investigation, but ousted nonetheless. As with Gay, I sense that his enemies really didn't care a whit about just how photoshopped photographs appeared in 20 year old articles. A lot of Stanford didn’t like him because he wasn’t left-wing enough. Stanford has plenty of academic freedom horror stories, from censuring Scott Atlas and Jay Bhattacharya for actually following science on covid policy, to the [Stanford] Internet Observatory, specifically named in the Missouri v. Biden decision for politicized internet censorship, a DEI office every bit as pernicious as the one Harvard just scrubbed from its website, the Stanford Hates Fun outbreak and more. We were very lucky that our new interim president had only been in office a few months when Congress called and couldn’t be dragged in for interrogation! Stanford faces the same historic choice....” [Followed by detailed passages from the Congressional hearing transcripts and comments about parallel concerns at Stanford.]
Full op-ed by Stanford Prof. John H. Cochrane
Example of DEI Training at Another University
Excerpts:
“University representatives told students that they could under no circumstances miss the session and would be reprimanded if absent. The training was completed in small groups. Each group consisted of a residence hall along with the hall’s Resident Advisor (RA) and Peer Counselors. The session lasted around 2.5 hours....
“Students participated in an ‘Identity Compass’ activity, which involved signs placed around a room, each sign representing aspects of identity such as age, health, nationality, ethnicity, sex, gender, religion, and socioeconomic status.
“The facilitator asked questions including ‘Which part of your identity are you most open to exploring?’ or ‘Which part of your identity gives you the most privilege?’ Then, facilitators instructed students to stand by the sign that signified their answers....
“Presenters defined intersectionality as ‘the complex of reciprocal attachments and sometimes polarizing conflicts that confront individuals and movements as they seek to ‘navigate’ among the raced, gendered, and class-based dimensions of social and political life.’ …
“The presenters noted that women of color, in particular, manifest intersectionality, as their ‘layers of oppressed identities … that are not present in white women create a unique perspective on the actions and events surrounding various feminist movements.’ …
“Presenters asked students to volunteer to read portions of the slides. For one slide, the facilitator forced a student to read after no one had volunteered. When asked to read, the student replied: ‘I’d rather not.’ The presenter stated, ‘I’m going to make you.’ The student sighed and reluctantly read the slide out loud.” …
Full article by a freshman reporter at Washington & Lee Spectator. See also our prior article "Stanford's Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy"
Co-Chair of Stanford’s Committee to Address Antisemitism Steps Down
Excerpts:
“Stanford is one of several elite schools that have aimed to address hostility toward Jewish students by forming an advisory committee on antisemitism. But now the committees themselves, and their members, have come under increasing scrutiny from activists who fear they will succumb to the same university culture that allowed antisemitism to fester on campuses in the first place.
“’I was experiencing panic attacks trying to represent a community that did not want me to represent them,’ [Ari Kelman one of the original co-chairs of the committee] told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. ‘So I stepped down.’....
“The committee -- created alongside one for Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities on campus -- has already planned out around 30 listening sessions with Jewish and Israeli members of campus. There are currently no Israelis on the committee, though the school says it is working to recruit them.”
Full article at Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Similar article at The Jewish Voice. See also Stanford’s original announcement of these two new committees
Americans Need to Be on FIRE for Free Speech
Excerpts:
“There’s a reason I call freedom of speech ‘the eternally radical idea.’
“After all, what do you call an idea that has a clear track record of promoting innovation, human flourishing, prosperity, and progress -- but is nonetheless rejected by partisans and authoritarians in every generation throughout history? …
“The fact is that free speech will always be opposed by the forces of conformity and the will of those with authority, because human beings are natural-born censors. It is simply too easy and too tempting to punish speech we disagree with and dislike, and to silence those who hold views contrary to our own....
“Campuses, in particular, have been trying it for decades now, and we know the result: a climate of chilled speech, cancel culture, and an abdication of the most fundamental principle undergirding American society.
“This holds just as true off campus. Without freedom of speech, America as we know it ceases to exist.” …
Full op-ed by Greg Lukianoff, a Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE
Why Campus Leaders Cannot Confront Antisemitism
Excerpts:
“On Oct. 7, we witnessed the most deadly pogrom, excepting the Holocaust, against Jews in modern history, and thousands of people danced in the streets, not only in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Tehran, but also on campuses in Philadelphia, New York, Cambridge, Ithaca, and Berkeley. At the time, no university official on a major U.S. campus that I know of unequivocally denounced this action as a pogrom against Jews and excoriated their students and faculty for celebrating the occasion....
“Two months later, on Dec. 5, presidents of three major universities at which celebrations of the pogroms took place -- Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania -- were questioned at a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee. Their collective responses were even feebler than those issued immediately after the pogrom....
"This is not because they are anti-Semites or embrace the cause of Hamas. Rather, I think it is because they face the FDR dilemma: If they single out, and in no uncertain terms condemn, anti-Semites on their campuses, they run the risk of alienating a significant portion of the social justice constituency that they have helped to create and in part to whom they owe their positions....
“Caught in this dilemma, university officials obfuscate. Department chairs plead for civility. Deans issue insipid statements. University presidents remind Jewish students about free and robust speech, even as they muzzle their own powers of expression. All appoint task forces.” …
Full op-ed by UC Berkeley law school Prof. Emeritus Malcolm Feeley at The Hill
How ‘Antiracism’ Becomes Antisemitism
Excerpts:
“For decades America’s credentialed liberal elite thought of itself as uniquely immune to the appeal of racial bigotry. The rest of the country -- the right-leaning suburbs, the rural places, the Archie Bunkers -- were constantly prone, in the minds of America’s intellectuals and enlightened academics, to indulge in racial grievances. But not the university-educated, well-heeled elite. Not the exponents of mainstream-press conventional wisdom. Not the readers of the New Yorker and the Washington Post.
“Yet here we are. Over the past 2½ months, Jew-hatred has rocked elite college campuses. Tony neighborhoods in blue cities have witnessed marches calling for the elimination of the Jewish state and protests outside Jewish-owned businesses -- this in response not to the accidental killing of a Palestinian by an Israeli soldier, but to the systematic butchering and kidnapping of Israeli Jews by terrorists.
"To these expressions of bigotry, high-ranking public officials and university administrators have issued bland disavowals of ‘violence’ and ‘hatred in all its forms.’ The heads of three top universities, testifying before a congressional committee, couldn’t explain why their institutions prosecute every perceived offense against other minorities but can’t condemn calls for genocide against Jews." …
Full op-ed by Barton Swaim at Wall Street Journal
Declining Faith in Higher Education
Excerpt (links in the original):
“Students and their families are asking tough questions about the value of pursuing higher education. Research shows that the majority of college students say getting a good job is their primary motivation for pursuing a degree. Unfortunately, far too many institutions are struggling to deliver on those expectations. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 40 percent of recent graduates are underemployed and working in jobs that do not require their degrees. It’s no surprise that the public’s faith in higher education is on a steep decline.”
Full article at Real Clear Education
Universities Can Do More to Prepare Students for the Workforce
Excerpt:
“One of the main goals of colleges and universities is to prepare students to enter the workforce, ideally in a manner connected to their fields of study. Likewise, a college degree has largely become the gold standard of baseline qualification for a majority of entry-level positions. While a degree continues to hold value, however, the ability of colleges to prepare students for workplace success may be on the decline.”
Full article at James Martin Center
More re USC’s Banning of Prof. John Strauss
Excerpts:
“Strauss is a tenured Professor of Economics, a specialist in development economics, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Economic Development and Cultural Change. He is an internationalist who rejects large-scale ambush massacres, gang rapes, and hostage takings as tools of statecraft.
“The protesters used smartphones to record their exchange with Strauss, who is Jewish. Strauss’s anti-Hamas remarks angered the protesters, so they worked to cancel him....
“Over the next three weeks, the administration walked back its response. An official statement to USC’s student newspaper reports that Strauss is not technically on administrative leave even though required to teach remotely. The Los Angeles Times viewed a letter to Strauss from USC Provost Andrew Guzman stating that the university was barring Strauss from campus during their investigation of the protesters’ complaints to the EEO and TIX office. The administration subsequently allowed Strauss to proceed with delivering his undergraduate course remotely. He was allowed to return to campus as of Dec 2." …
Full op-ed by USC Prof. Emeritus James Moore at Minding the Campus
On the Positive Side - Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford (click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites)
Stanford Educational Events About Israel-Hamas War
Researchers Uncover On/off Switch for Breast Cancer Metastasis
Generative AI Can Boost Productivity Without Replacing Workers
The Future of Computational Imaging (podcast)
Other Articles of Interest
NAS Outlines Detailed Elements of What Constitutes Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty (Full article at National Association of Scholars)
Chronicle of Higher Education Discusses the New Pushback on College Wokeness (Full op-ed by University of Chicago Prof. Emeritus Jerry Coyne)
And again see our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta regarding freedom of expression, a university's involvement in political and social matters, and academic appointments and which could help put to rest all of these issues, now and going forward.
"When a university takes a public stand, it either puts words in the mouths of faculty and students who can speak for themselves or unfairly pits them against their own employer. It’s even worse when individual departments take positions, because it sets up a conflict of interest with any dissenting students and faculty whose fates they control." -- Harvard Prof. Steven Pinker
December 27, 2023
As we reflect upon this past year, Stanford continues to produce remarkable teaching, research and patient care:
Stanford Moments from 2023
Stanford-produced video at YouTube (two minutes, and more visual than substantive)
Ten Stanford Articles from 2023
Full articles at Stanford Report (as selected by University Communications staff)
************
Even as difficult issues continue to be debated, at Stanford and at colleges and universities nationwide:
The Hypocrisy Underlying the Campus-Speech Controversy
Excerpt:
“Despite these similarities [of the three Ivy League presidents being quizzed by a Congressional committee versus the ongoing White House attacks against the operators of social media], the two pressure campaigns have been received very differently. The Biden administration’s effort to influence social-media platforms’ content policies sparked a vociferous outcry from Republican officials, culminating in a First Amendment lawsuit that is now before the Supreme Court. The pressure campaign over university speech policies, by contrast, has generated very little alarm about the First Amendment interests of either the schools or their students. This is a problem, because the threat of government interference with free speech is very real in both contexts.”
Full op-ed by Stanford law school Prof. Evelyn Douek and University of Chicago law school Prof. Genevieve Lakier at The Atlantic; also posted at MSN News
See also "How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test" by Stanford medical school Prof. Jay Bhattacharya and “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web”
The Future of Speech on Campus
Excerpts:
“Let’s start by clarifying what we are talking about. There are many settings on campus where no one has particularly robust speech rights. Even in public universities, which are bound by the highly speech-protective First Amendment, students are not permitted to plagiarize, repeatedly demand to discuss politics in physics class or physics in politics class, or shout down invited speakers. Any campus has restrictions on the time, place, and manner of expression meant to safeguard the fundamental research and teaching mission. What we are talking about, here, is speech undertaken consistent with such restrictions, within a university’s broad public spaces....
“I’m a Jew on campus. According to First Amendment jurisprudence, a member of my university community is not allowed to follow me around, pointing and yelling ‘kill all the Jews.’ But in a public university -- or any private university whose rules are broadly congruent with the First Amendment -- that same person is typically within their rights if they proclaim from a soapbox on the quad, without intent to produce imminent action and directed at no individual in particular, ‘Religion is the scourge of humanity. We will never be free until we break the shackles of superstition. Kill all the Jews. Kill all the Christians. Kill all the Muslims. Kill them all!’ That speech, by my lights, is offensive and vile. But absent harassment, threat, or imminent incitement, offense and even vileness are not sufficient to merit sanction. The First Amendment does not permit the punishment of advocacy, even of vile ideas. This is why context matters....
“Wherever one comes down on context dependence, it is hard not to conclude that the presidents failed to communicate their point of view effectively. I think they would have done better by focusing on principle, rather than context. They might have said:
“‘I deeply regret that members of my university community have caused pain and fear through their speech. I believe that we should speak civilly and respectfully to one another, especially when we strongly disagree, and that we should teach our students to do likewise. That said, universities are the social institutions in which the free exchange of ideas is most important. As such, we aim to minimize restrictions on speech -- it is not our job to tell our students what to say or think, it is our job to help them learn to think and speak for themselves. For that reason, if a statement is legal under the First Amendment, it is allowed on campus. I am no more of an expert than you, congresswoman, about when calls for genocide are protected by the First Amendment. But the yes or no answer to your question is: if it is allowed by the Constitution, it is allowed on my campus.’” …
Full op-ed by University of Chicago Prof. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita at Boston Review
The Battle for Higher Education
Excerpt:
“The incumbents have spread a gloriously self-serving myth system. In their telling, their institutions are bastions of liberal values, civil discourse, and the free exchange of ideas. They’re open to the finest representatives of every community, perspective, and viewpoint. They’re engaged in educating a new generation in the fine art of critical thinking.
“The truth, however, is almost the polar opposite of that myth. America’s universities are country clubs for insiders who have dispensed with independent thought as the price of belonging....”
Full op-ed at Real Clear Education. See also former Stanford provost John Etchemendy "The Threat from Within"
The Silencing of Student Voices
Excerpt:
“For this series, five young journalists responded to our calls for articles detailing critical issues that impacted young people this year. The group of high school and young college writers pitched and reported on urgent topics like lack of access to mental health support for homeschooled students, student voices being silenced in schools, book bans, attacks on LGBTQ+ students, and school shootings. Of course, these are just a fraction of the issues that shape the lives, conditions, and experiences of young people -- not to mention how these issues intersect with each other. We received more important pitches than we could publish this round. As we close out the year, this package centers the work of young journalists reporting on what affected their schools, communities, and peers in 2023.”
Full article at The Nation
Other Articles of Interest
Elite U.S. Universities Face a Political Crisis They Can’t Control (Full op-ed at CNN)
Donors and Alumni Take Action; Is This a Moment or a Movement? (Full op-ed at WSJ)
Fewer Young Men Are in College, Especially at Four-Year Schools (Full article at Pew Research Center)
Censorship Leaders Play the Victim (Full op-ed by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag at Public. See also our prior posting “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web”)
Harvard Early Applications Take a Dive (Full article at Insider Higher Ed; similar article at NY Post)
Attacks on Tenure Leave College Professors Eyeing the Exits (Full article at Center for Public Integrity)
An Open Letter from a Tufts Alum/Former Faculty Member (Full letter at Algemeiner)
‘From the River to the Sea,' but Students Don’t Even Know Which Ones (Full op-ed at College Fix)
Why October 7 May Mark a Turning Point for Universities (Full op-ed at New York Magazine Intelligencer; also posted at MSN News. See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta regarding freedom of expression, a university's involvement in political and social matters, and academic appointments.)
Policymakers Must Strengthen, Not Dismantle, the College Accreditation System (Full op-ed at Higher Ed Dive)
No, Campuses Are Not in Chaos Over Gaza (Full podcast at NY Times, 8 minutes in length)
“There can be order without freedom, but no freedom without some measure of order.” ― John W. Gardner, Stanford alum, former Stanford trustee, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and founder of Common Cause
December 19, 2023
A Note to Our Readers:
When we launched our website and these weekly Newsletters over 14 months ago, many current and past Stanford administrators and Trustees were questioning the value of these efforts. How times have changed, both locally and nationwide, and we hope Stanford will finally take the actions that have long been needed. See, for example, our Back to Basics at Stanford white paper and our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta which we believe would largely address the issues now in front of university leaders.
From the President of Heterodox Academy: Campus Hypocrisy
Excerpts:
“As many have noted, there was profound hypocrisy in the spectacle of prominent university presidents claiming to be staunchly committed to free expression, when their own institutions have been anything but. For years, a practice of silencing offensive ideas has run rampant on college campuses -- including at Harvard, MIT, and Penn. Just ask Carole Hooven, Tyler VanderWeele, Amy Wax, or the admitted Harvard students who were disinvited for sharing the wrong memes online. Any credible change in principles should start by acknowledging and rectifying such mistakes, not brazenly pretending they never happened.
“We have seen this same pattern of hypocrisy in universities’ enforcement of various speech-adjacent rules. Rules about putting up posters, or taking them down, about bullying and harassment -- such as obstructing the passage of students into and out of classes and events -- have been enforced selectively, if at all. At one Ivy League university, whose handbook explicitly forbids the shouting down of speakers, the university president was recently shouted down -- without disciplinary response.
“But the opposite hypocrisy is also visible. Some advocates of free expression have failed to distinguish between true threats and harassment (which are rightly banned), and debatable slogans or offensive ideas about geopolitics and war. As others have argued, asking university administrators to decide which slogans and arguments count as a ‘call for genocide’ – in the absence of a true threat or harassment – is ill-advised. For example, consider the opinions and slogans that could easily be cast as calls for ‘Gazan genocide,’ ‘trans genocide,’ or “genocide of the unborn.’ History shows that speech codes have a way of coming around to bite their advocates.
“Yet this moment is about more than free speech, because free speech is a low bar for a university. Excellence in research and education also requires a positive set of ideals, habits, and cultural norms. It is these norms that distinguish the academy from an ordinary place for clashing opinions. Without open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement, an institution of higher education can easily degrade into just another outpost for this or that constituency, worldview or monoculture.…”
Full letter from Brown University Prof. John Tomasi, who also is president of the Heterodox Academy, at Heterodox website including list of actions for college and university leaders to consider taking.
Colleges and Universities at a Crossroads
Excerpts:
“The Penn rebels have now upped the ante. They have drafted a new constitution for the school that makes merit the sole criterion for student admissions and faculty hiring. The new charter requires the university to embrace institutional neutrality with regard to politics and faculty research. The rebels want candidates for Penn’s presidency to embrace the new charter as a precondition for employment....
“The donor revolt could have broken out at any number of campuses, all of which featured ignorant students cheering on the deliberate massacre of civilians, those students’ faculty enablers and bureaucratic fellow travelers, and feckless presidents. But it first erupted at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, perhaps because of the organization and self-confidence of their alumni.…”
Full op-ed by Stanford law school alum Heather MacDonald at City Journal. See also Part Two of Ms. MacDonald's essay and a similar article at FIRE
[Editor’s note: Rather than reinventing the wheel, as some Penn faculty seem to be doing, we suggest that Penn and other universities, including Stanford, simply adopt the Chicago Trifecta as long posted at our website.]
A Five-Point Plan to Save Harvard from Itself
Excerpts:
“For almost four centuries, Harvard University, my employer, has amassed a reputation as one of the country’s most eminent universities. But it has spent the past year divesting itself of tranches of this endowment. Notorious incidents of cancellation and censorship have contributed to a plunge in confidence in institutions of higher education, prompting me and more than 100 colleagues to found a new Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. That was before Harvard came in at last place in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s Free Speech ranking of 248 colleges, with a score of 0 out of 100 — originally less than zero, but Harvard benefited from a bit of grade inflation. (I’m a FIRE adviser but had no role in the rankings.) …
“Harvard is now the place where using the wrong pronoun is a hanging offense but calling for another Holocaust depends on context.
“So for the president of Harvard to suddenly come out as a born-again free-speech absolutist, disapproving of what genocidaires say but defending to the death their right to say it, struck onlookers as disingenuous or worse.”
Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Steven Pinker at Boston Globe and republished at MSN, including Prof. Pinker’s five-point plan re free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering DEI.
DEI Bureaucracy Fails the Stress Test at MIT
Excerpts:
“The recent outbreak of antisemitism at MIT and other campuses puts into stark relief the limits of administrative bureaucracies’ ability to solve the problems of human relationships and tribalism.
“. . . the [MIT] administration announced its massive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative which by some counts added up to about a hundred professional administrators with some variation of DEI in their titles.
“The employment site Glassdoor reports that the low end for salaries of Assistant Deans at MIT is about $100K. Add up salaries of over a hundred people at this level, their support staff, benefits for all, and ordinary office overhead at average Institute burden rates, and a $20 million annual price tag for all this feel-good bureaucracy (on top of existing student support such as counseling, psychiatric services, etc.) seems like a very fair rough estimate of the total cost.…
“If current trends do not change, there is no apparent end to the creation of administrative bloat with ever more offices perceived to be responsive to discrete identities, denoted by ever multiplying acronyms. In the long run, I can only hope that we move back toward a culture that seeks to attract talent without discrimination from wherever it may come, and that counsels us all to respect each another simply as individuals who, in Dr. King’s words, ‘will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’ And, along the way, let us reduce administrative costs so they are no more than those at peer institutions and add $30,000 or so in annual per student savings back into student aid!”
Full op-ed by MIT AFSA alumni leader Steve Carhart at The Tech
See also Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy, including ten DEI administrators for every 1,000 students at Stanford.
From Four Harvard Undergraduates: Harvard's Double Standard
Excerpt:
“On Tuesday, we started our day by reading an email from the Harvard Corporation saying that President Claudine Gay's decision to copy-and-paste another author’s paragraph into her own work without citation did not violate Harvard’s plagiarism standards. Thirty minutes later, we signed an academic integrity pledge on an exam stating that it was against the Harvard Honor Code to misrepresent another’s work as your own. The whiplash was incredible.”
Full op-ed by four Harvard undergraduates at Heterodox STEM
Harvard’s President Gay Copied Entire Paragraphs
Excerpts:
“The Free Beacon worked with nearly a dozen scholars to analyze 29 potential cases of plagiarism. Most of them said that Gay had violated a core principle of academic integrity as well as Harvard’s own anti-plagiarism policies, which state that 'it's not enough to change a few words here and there.'
“Rather, scholars are expected to cite the sources of their work, including when paraphrasing, and to use quotation marks when quoting directly from others. But in at least 10 instances, Gay lifted full sentences -- even entire paragraphs -- with just a word or two tweaked....”
Full article at Washington Free Beacon
Progressive Education Isn't What You Think It Is
Excerpt:
“Educating students in progressive pedagogy involves learning how to establish truth, teaching resilience when mistakes are made, and demonstrating how to grow from errors and misfires. Current thinking involving the promotion of self-esteem and avoiding correcting or questioning students is regressive and harms their intellectual and personal development. This happens too often in too many schools. It has nothing to do with the classic model of progressive education.
“Indoctrination in classrooms is a pervasive problem nationwide and it damages our students and their authentic learning, and obfuscates their moral compasses. But that is a function of bad teaching and administrative oversight, not progressive education.”
Full op-ed by Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education
University Presidents and Trustees Flunk Out
Excerpt:
… “First came the speech codes. No, those came second. What began the long downhill roll in the 1970s was grade inflation. Students whose work deserved a C demanded an A or B. Professors who resisted this threat to standards gave up.
“That was an early inkling that traditional college norms could be pushed around and politicized. Speech codes emerged at many schools, not least Harvard, arguing that certain words were—another new vocabulary addition – ‘hurtful.’
“After establishing that words alone could bring reprimand by the university, the speech coders expanded the prohibitions to include something new called microaggressions, or inadvertent slights. Microaggressions had a fraternal twin, trigger warnings, which required profs to warn students that a text or even a thought might distress them.
“It sounds like a joke now, but we know it was no joke. This was the moment when the adults in the room -- presumably the universities’ presidents -- should have intervened to protect free speech and inquiry from being diminished. They did not. Virtually without exception, they were pusillanimous. Fellow ostriches included hundreds of spineless boards of trustees.…”
Full op-ed at Wall Street Journal
See also our article from many months ago about Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative including a PDF copy of the over 100 words and phrases that Stanford’s IT department somehow felt empowered to start censoring.
University Boards of Trustees in the Spotlight
Excerpts:
“University boards of trustees hold immense power over budgets, presidential picks and campus policies. They are also beset with longstanding challenges, including an often-unwieldy size, confusion over their responsibilities and limited relevant expertise.…
“Board members are volunteers, meet only occasionally, and often are asked to vote on complex issues with limited information. That can leave them heavily reliant on the management they are supposed to be overseeing.…
“But just as disengaged boards can cause problems at a school, there is also danger in trustees being too involved, noted some observers. Citing a common rule of corporate governance, [Morton Schapiro, former president of Northwestern,] said, ‘Not-for-profit boards are supposed to have noses in, fingers out.’”
Full article at Wall Street Journal
Why Top Colleges’ Professors Are Giving Up and Just Giving Everybody an A
Excerpt:
“Professors hand out A’s right and left. This is not because it gives their students a leg up in the job market or because our bosses at big universities require it, but because it is just so much safer.
“Grade inflation has been in the discussion at America’s top colleges for a long time, but even seasoned veterans were shocked by a recent study showing that nearly 80 percent of all the grades given to undergraduates at Yale University last year were in the A range.
“We started giving out trophies for participation in school sports, and now we are giving out A’s at top colleges -- heck, for even less than participation. (‘My mental health and social anxiety was too bad to ever attend class.’) The fight to give fair grades is just too much of a pain in the neck, and way too risky, for a mere lone professor to face.…”
Full article at The Hill
More About Stanford’s Alleged Roles in Nationwide Censorship
Excerpts:
“. . . records in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that show a close collaboration between DHS’s Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) and the leftist Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) [based at Stanford] to engage in ‘real-time narrative tracking’ on all major social media platforms in the days leading up to the 2020 election.
“The records discuss ‘takedowns’ of social media posts and the avoidance of creating public records subject to FOIA [the federal laws that require disclosure of documents if created by, sent by or received by federal agencies].…
“The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika. It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State’s Global Engagement Center to file ‘tickets’ requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.
“Three liberal groups -- the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause and the NAACP -- were also empowered like the federal agencies to file tickets seeking censorship of content. A Homeland-funded collaboration, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also had access....
“Setup: [Stanford Internet Observatory] will have dedicated Slack, something like Jira or Salesforce (will ask for donation), separate from Stanford and destroyed once over....”
Full article at Judicial Watch
Still More About Stanford’s Alleged Roles in Nationwide Censorship
Excerpts:
“According to the leaders of the Stanford Internet Observatory and the other groups, they simply alerted social media platforms to potential violations of their Terms of Service. What the platforms chose to do after that was up to them.
“But during the two years that these DHS-empowered researchers were asking social media platforms to take down, throttle, or otherwise censor social media posts, the President of the United States was accusing Big Tech of ‘killing people,’ his then-press secretary said publicly that the administration was ‘flagging violative posts for Facebook,’ members of Congress threatened to strip social media platforms of their legal right to operate because, they said, the platforms weren’t censoring enough, and many supposedly disinterested researchers were aggressively demanding that the platforms change their Terms of Service.
“It's true that social media platforms are private companies technically free to censor content as they see fit and are under no clearly stated obligation to obey demands by the US government or its authorized ‘researchers’ at Stanford or anywhere else.
“... In the case of the [Election Integrity Partnership] and [the Virality Project, both based at Stanford], four think tanks led by Stanford Internet Observatory, or SIO, and reporting to CISA, demanded and achieved mass censorship of the American people in direct violation of the First Amendment and the prohibition on government agencies from interfering in an election.
“AMITT [Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques] was a disinformation framework that included many offensive actions, including working to influence government policy, discrediting alternative media, using bots and sock puppets, pre-bunking, and pushing counter-messaging....
“I believe this dramatic situation requires the abolition of CISA. If it is doing good cybersecurity work, then it should be placed under the supervision of different leadership at a different agency free from the awful and unlawful behaviors of the last three years.
“The turning against the American people of counterterrorism tactics once reserved for foreign enemies should terrify all of us and inspire a clear statement that never again shall our military, intelligence, and law enforcement guardians engage in such a recklessly ideological and partisan ‘warfare against civilians.’”
Full testimony by Michael Shellenberger at Public
I Teach a Class on Free Speech. My Students Can Show Us the Way Forward
Excerpts:
“Free speech is very hard to get right, especially on campus -- as has been evident all fall at the University of Pennsylvania, where I teach a course on the history of free speech and censorship. If colleges and universities are best understood as microcosms of the larger world, they should be governed by the First Amendment alone. This would mean restricting only speech that directly incites violence, threatens specific individuals or constitutes targeted harassment.
“But if colleges and universities -- public or private -- are better understood as special spaces with missions distinct from the world at large, they need some special rules of operation, tailored to the
classroom, the student club and the college green.
“One problem is that neither the left nor the right knows which model fits, making it difficult to determine any fair boundaries for campus speech. The politics around free speech have also shifted. And norms about what counts as dangerous speech, and what ought to be done about its articulation, have been changing faster than any of us can keep up with them.
“No wonder students are confused when it comes to speech on campus right now. Frankly, so are faculties, administrators and, yes, donors and trustees....
“Students go to college largely to gain knowledge that will be useful in the here and now: the workplace, the democratic public sphere and private life. Importantly, that includes how to think about all sides of a given problem. It also includes how to get along with others across differences. But neither of these tasks is done without some informal rules. In my classroom, when we are conversing about the history of speech, we are also following a series of speech protocols that we’ve worked out in practice. No one, for example, can speak on top of anyone else, and no one can personalize the conversation in ways that draw attention to individuals rather than arguments. Free speech was never imagined, even by its earliest advocates, as a free-for-all. This is something that needs to be instilled.…”
Full op-ed by Penn Prof. Sophia Rosenfeld at NY Times
Don’t Create More Safe Spaces on Campus
Excerpts:
“I’m a Jew and, heaven knows, no one has been more critical of elite colleges than I’ve been, but the greatest intellectual threat of these times is neither antisemitism nor Ivy League schools -- it’s to academic freedom and the First Amendment’s protection of speech. Without a rapid course correction, [former Penn president Liz] Magill’s ouster will undermine the values of the American academy and the essence of what it means to be a college student....
“[At the Congressional hearings,] it would have been worth noting that even the advocacy of genocide -- however abhorrent -- would be protected speech. The touchstone here should be the University of Chicago’s free speech principles, which were created following a series of disputes over controversial commencement speakers and have been adopted by over 100 universities and endorsed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the nation’s leading defender of campus speech. Neither Harvard, Penn, nor MIT, have adopted what’s known as the Chicago Statement, though the free speech code at Harvard contains several similar elements and a petition at MIT to adopt the Chicago Statement has 163 faculty signatories....
“Our job is not to promote intellectually safe spaces but rather to challenge students with controversial ideas and views. As the Chicago Statement puts it, ‘education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.’ It is from engaging with people and ideas with which they disagree that people learn and evolve. This is the essence of the value of college.
“No professor would protect a student who expressed a hateful view with the aim of disrupting a class or making a fellow student uncomfortable. But any teacher worth their salt would die to protect a student trying to articulate their honest conception of justice.”
Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Evan Mandery at Politico
Other Articles of Interest
You Could Not Pay Me Enough to Be a College President
Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education
What Universities Have Done to Themselves
Full op-ed by Peggy Noonan at Wall Street Journal
Education Department Is Investigating Six More Colleges Regarding Campus Discrimination, Including Stanford
Full article at NY Times
Finding Solutions to America’s Civics Crisis
Full article at Real Clear Education
Diversity Year in Review
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Cheering Hamas on Campus, Too Uneducated to Grasp How Grotesque That is
Full op-ed by George Will at Washington Post
The Coming Wave of Freshman Failure
Full article at James Martin Center
Nearly Half of Companies Say They Plan to Eliminate Bachelor’s Degree Requirements in 2024
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
“Faith-based calls for violence do not meaningfully contribute to the free exchange of ideas on campus. Categories of speech like threats, harassment and incitement to violence are not protected, and will not be tolerated at Stanford.” -- Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez
December 12, 2023
Stanford Condemns Calls for Genocide of Jews or Any Peoples
Excerpts:
“Stanford ‘unequivocally’ condemned ‘calls for the genocide of Jews or any peoples,’ in a statement released through social media posts on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) Thursday night [December 7, 2023].
“The University wrote that such statements ‘would clearly violate Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, the code of conduct for all students of the University.’” ...
Full article at Stanford Daily
Copy of this social media posting by Stanford is available here
See also former Stanford President Gerhard Casper’s statement regarding the decision in Corry v. Stanford (1995) after the court had concluded California’s Leonard Law prohibits private colleges and universities such as Stanford from disciplining students for speech and actions that are protected under the First Amendment – at least in our view, issues that will likely arise again if Stanford pursues overly legalistic methods as opposed to seeing this as an opportunity for campus-wide discussion and education.
From Bari Weiss: How to Really Fix American Higher Education (links in the original)
Excerpts:
“My view is that, above all else, we must focus on returning American higher education to its original purposes: to seek the truth; to teach young adults the things they need to flourish; and to pass on the knowledge that is the basis of our exceptional civilization.
“To do that, four things must be done.
"End DEI
"...The solution to present discrimination isn’t more discrimination. And it is certainly not for the Jews who have been discriminated against inside the current DEI regime to beg for better placement inside its corrupt hierarchy....
"...the only meaningful response starts with dismantling the DEI regime that has enforced an illiberal (and antisemitic) worldview at nearly every American university. That means stopping the hiring of DEI administrators and reallocating the budgets of DEI offices. It means banning the loyalty oaths professors must pledge to earn a job or tenure. It means dismantling the entire DEI bureaucracy, as some stateshave started doing.
"Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important virtues. But the DEI bureaucracy is none of those things. For more on this, please read my essay, End DEI.
"End double standards on speech
"...The point is that university administrators selectively and unevenly enforce codes of conduct depending entirely on the viewpoint being expressed and the identity of the person expressing it. It’s a nasty business and the congressional testimony the other day went a long way toward exposing it. We shouldn’t stop there.
"Hire professors committed to the pursuit of truth (and allergic to illiberal ideologies)
"To return academia to its mission, professors themselves must be committed to the pursuit of truth. Specifically, universities should hire without prejudice toward political affiliation. It’s not incidental that only 1.46 percent of Harvard’s faculty identifies as 'conservative,' while 82.46 percent of faculty describes themselves as 'liberal' or 'very liberal.' ...
"Eliminate the ideology that replaced truth as higher education’s North Star
"What is that ideology? And how did it come to supplant truth -- the very mission of higher education? Don’t ask me. Ask current Harvard president Claudine Gay, who laid out her vision for institutional transformation, now on full display, when she was dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. ..."
Full op-ed by Bari Weiss at The Public
Why University Presidents Are Under Fire
Excerpts:
“When one thinks of America’s greatest strengths, the kind of assets the world looks at with admiration and envy, America’s elite universities would have long been at the top of that list. But the American public has been losing faith in these universities – and with good reason.
“Three university presidents came under fire [last] week for their vague and indecisive answers when asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their institution’s code of conduct. But to understand their performance we have to understand the shift that has taken place at elite universities, which have gone from centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas. ...
“American universities have been neglecting excellence in order to pursue a variety of agendas -- many of them clustered around diversity and inclusion. It started with the best of intentions. Colleges wanted to make sure young people of all backgrounds had access to higher education and felt comfortable on campus. But those good intentions have morphed into a dogmatic ideology and turned these universities into places where the pervasive goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit. ...
“The ever-growing bureaucracy devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion naturally recommends that more time and energy be spent on these issues. The most obvious lack of diversity at universities, political diversity, which clearly affects their ability to analyze many issues, is not addressed, showing that these goals are not centrally related to achieving, building or sustaining excellence. ...
“What we saw in the House hearing [last] week was the inevitable result of decades of the politicization of universities. America’s top colleges are no longer seen as bastions of excellence but as partisan outfits, which means they will keep getting buffeted by these political storms as they emerge. They should abandon this long misadventure into politics, retrain their gaze on their core strengths and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning. ...”
Full op-ed by Fareed Zakaria at CNN
See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta which address all of these and related issues and that we again urge Stanford to adopt.
See also Stanford's ballooning administrative bureaucracy, including what was reported by a third party to be "12 DEI administrators for every 1,000 students -- a ratio that far exceeds every other American university, including Harvard and Yale.”
See also our prior postings about Stanford’s programs that have the result of censoring Stanford’s students and faculty through, among other things, its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (Stanford's home-grown version of Newspeak) and its Protected Identity Harm Reporting forms and procedures.
The Politics of Campus Free Speech Draw Scrutiny
Excerpts:
“The jurisprudence surrounding free speech and the First Amendment is complex and nuanced, having evolved over 230 years. Often the line between free speech on the one hand, and harassment and intimidation on the other, can be difficult to discern.
“Still, [Will Creely, legal director at FIRE] and others pointed to examples in recent years in which private college and university presidents seem to have embraced free-speech arguments in some contexts, but shrink from them when asked to defend politically unpopular ideas or scholarship. ...
“’The track record of these schools is terrible, absolutely terrible,’ said Nadine Strossen, professor of law emerita at New York Law School, [former president of the ACLU] and author of ‘Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know.’ She added: ‘The problem with all the deans and presidents who have not defended free speech is not that they are activists, it’s that they are spineless.’
“Meanwhile, many students are engaging in self-censorship to avoid being punished for views considered problematic on campus, according to numerous surveys. A 2023 survey by the Buckley Institute at Yale found that 61% of students said they often felt intimidated in sharing beliefs different from their professors in class. In the same survey, 46% of undergraduate students said they thought it was appropriate to shout down or disrupt a speaker on their campus.” ...
Full op-ed at Wall Street Journal
What Universities Should Punish and What They Shouldn't
“Talia Khan, an MIT graduate student, had a detailed and powerful statement about what she sees as anti-Semitism on campus (apparently written in response to an invitation from Reps. Fox and Stefanek).
“And I think it well reflects how many different things are being mixed together here. For instance, the statement refers to ‘a radical anti-Israel group at MIT called the CAA’ whose members have ‘stormed the offices of Jewish faculty and staff in the MIT Israel internship office. Staff reported fearing for their lives, as students went door to door trying to unlock the offices.’ If this is accurate, then it should certainly be punished. Likewise as to ‘Jewish students being physically blocked from moving through the anti-Israel crowd through the main MIT lobby.’
“Similarly, this allegation, if accurate, would show serious and improper viewpoint-discriminatory enforcement of MIT's rules: ‘I was forced to take down my Israeli flags and a poster that said "No Excuse for Hate" and "We Stand With Israel" in my office window after a new banner rule was created 6 days after I put my flags up. Other banners, such as those for "Black Lives Matter" are still hanging proudly in office windows today. A rule was created by the MIT administration to appease bigoted students who can't bear to see that Israel exists.' ...
“I appreciate that many universities have indeed tried to police a wide range of comments by their students. That was wrong in those cases, and it would be wrong in cases such as the one Khan describes. It's unpleasant when students hear offensive things from classmates, and to have to find a new study group with more decent classmates. It's much worse when students have to live in fear of university punishment for the views they express to each other.
"Again, there is plenty of misconduct that should be punished, whether because it breaks content-neutral rules preventing trespassing or blocking pathways, or because it involves unprotected speech such as threats. Universities shouldn't discriminate against pro-Israel messages. ..."
Full op-ed by UCLA Prof. Eugene Volokh at Reason Magazine
Stanford’s DEI Team Wants ‘Diversity of Opinions’ but Details Are Unclear
Excerpts:
“Stanford University officials want to see a ‘diversity of opinions’ on campus as part of their new ‘Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access’ plans.
“But they won’t answer questions on how they plan to do that, particularly as its DEI plan and other projects includes initiatives that appear to support cancel culture or could limit open debate. ...
“None of the five DEI leaders at Stanford contacted for comment responded. The Fix asked about specific ways Stanford would increase the diversity of opinions and how efforts to reduce bias (i.e. microaggressions) would possibly undermine the goal of open debate.
“The Fix did not receive a response after multiple media inquiries over the past two weeks.” ...
Full article at College Fix
See also Stanford's ballooning administrative bureaucracy
Other Articles of Interest
The Treason of the Intellectuals
Full op-ed by Stanford's Niall Ferguson
Higher Ed’s Hypocrisy Fully Exposed for Refusal to Condemn Calls to Eradicate Jews
Full article at College Fix
Pushback Against Lawmaker’s Calls for Antisemitism Inquiry
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Colleges Can Recommit to Free Speech or Double Down on Sensitivity
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Moral Controversies and Academic Public Health: Notes on Navigating and Surviving Academic Freedom Challenges
Full op-ed by Harvard's Public Health Prof. Tyler VanderWeele at Science Direct
Campus Safety Cameras
Full article at Campus Safety Magazine; see also articles at Stanford Daily and Stanford Review regarding Stanford's installation of hundreds of cameras where students congregate
Fitch Ratings Issues Deteriorating Outlook for Higher Ed in 2024
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
Pending Federal Legislation Would Require More Transparency for Gifts and Grants to U.S. Universities from Foreign Entities
Full article at James Martin Center
“. . . calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a Country.... Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting -- and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.” – White House Spokesperson Andrew Bates
December 7, 2023
Congressional Testimony re the Censorship of Stanford’s Prof. Jay Bhattacharya
and Others
Excerpts:
“Exactly one year ago today I had my first look at the documents that came to be known as the Twitter Files. One of the first things Michael [Shellenberger], Bari Weiss and I found was this image, showing that Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had been placed on a 'trends blacklist' [screenshot deleted but available in the testimony linked below].
“This was not because he was suspected of terrorism or incitement or of being a Russian spy or a bad citizen in any way. Dr. Bhattacharya’s crime was doing a peer-reviewed study that became the 55th-most read scientific paper of all time, which showed the WHO initially overstated Covid-19 infection fatality rates by a factor of 17. This was legitimate scientific opinion and should have been an important part of the public debate, but Bhattacharya and several of his colleagues instead became some of the most suppressed people in America in 2020 and 2021.
“That’s because by then, even true speech that undermined confidence in government policies had begun to be considered a form of disinformation, precisely the situation the First Amendment was designed to avoid. ...
"Former Executive Director of the ACLU Ira Glasser once explained to a group of students why he didn’t support hate speech codes on campuses. The problem, he said, was 'who gets to decide what’s hateful… who gets to decide what to ban,' because 'most of the time, it ain’t you.' ...
"This leads to the one inescapable question about new 'anti-disinformation' programs that is never discussed, but must be: who does this work? Stanford’s Election Integrity Project helpfully made a graphic showing the 'external stakeholders' in their content review operation. It showed four columns: government, civil society, platforms, media [graphic deleted but available in the testimony linked below].
"One group is conspicuously absent from that list: people. Ordinary people! Whether America continues the informal sub rosacensorship system seen in the Twitter Files or formally adopts something like Europe’s draconian new Digital Services Act, it’s already clear who won’t be involved. There’ll be no dockworkers doing content flagging, no poor people from inner city neighborhoods, no single moms pulling multiple waitressing jobs, no immigrant store owners or Uber drivers, etc. These programs will always feature a tiny, rarefied sliver of affluent professional-class America censoring a huge and ever-expanding pool of everyone else."
Full testimony by Matt Taibbi at Racket News, including the screenshot and graphic referenced above. See also our prior posting of Prof. Bhattacharya’s op-ed, “The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists. We Fought Back and Won”
See also Stanford's own programs that have the result of censoring its own students and faculty through its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative and its Protected Identity Harm Reporting forms and procedures
The Censorship Industrial Complex, Part 2
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Nine months ago, I testified and provided evidence to Congress about the existence of a Censorship Industrial Complex, a network of government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, government contractors, and Big Tech media platforms that conspired to censor ordinary Americans and elected officials alike for holding disfavored views.
“I regret to inform the Subcommittee that the scope, power, and law-breaking of the Censorship Industrial Complex are even worse than we had realized back in March.
“Two days ago, my colleagues and I published the first batch of internal files from 'The Cyber Threat Intelligence League,' which show US and UK military contractors working in 2019 and 2020 to both censor and turn sophisticated psychological operations and disinformation tactics, developed abroad, against the American people.
“Many insist that all we identified in the Twitter Files, the Facebook Files, and the CTIL Files were legal activities by social media platforms to take down content that violated their terms of service. Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and other Big Tech companies are privately owned and free to censor content. And government officials are free to point out wrong information, they argue.
“But the First Amendment prohibits the government from abridging freedom of speech, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government 'may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish,' and there is now a large body of evidence proving that the government did precisely that.
"What’s more, the whistleblower who delivered the CTIL Files to us says that its leader, a 'former' British intelligence analyst, was 'in the room' at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a 'repeat of 2016.'
“Emails from CISA’s NGO and social media partners show that CISA created the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) in 2020, which involved the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and other US government contractors. EIP and its successor, the Virality Project (VP) [also based at Stanford], urged Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms to censor social media posts by ordinary citizens and elected officials alike.
“But the abuses of power my colleagues and I have documented go well beyond censorship. They also include what appears to be an effort by government officials and contractors, including the FBI, to frame certain individuals as posing a threat of domestic terrorism for their political beliefs. …
“I encourage Congress to defund and dismantle the governmental organizations involved in censorship. …"
Full testimony by Michael Shellenberger at Public
FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff Fights Efforts to Silence Controversial Voices
Excerpts:
“With the war in Gaza dividing college campuses across the country, Greg Lukianoff [a Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE] believes this difficult moment reveals the depth of the free-speech crisis in higher education.... Lukianoff, 49, says that the job of civil libertarians is not to agree with what everyone says but defend the right to say it ‘You have to be consistent.’ ...
“Instead of muffling troubling ideas, Lukianoff argues that we should be debating them – especially in places that are meant to encourage critical thinking and a spirit of free inquiry....Universities across the country began introducing codes of conduct aimed at curbing potentially hurtful speech. By the mid-2010s, students armed with social media had become empowered censors themselves, demanding ‘trigger warnings’ and policing microaggressions while insisting that colleges disinvite speakers, ranging from Condoleezza Rice to James Franco.
“Ballooning campus bureaucracies merely reconfirmed student concerns that they needed protection from verbal ‘violence’ .... He hopes that colleges seize the chance to steer students with conflicting opinions toward a more constructive dialogue and that university presidents who struggled to appease both donors and students with their recent political statements rethink the impulse to weigh in on politics at all. ‘Institutional neutrality is the bedrock of a free and open campus culture’ he argues.”
Full profile at Wall Street Journal; Lukianoff's book “The Canceling of the American Mind” is available at Amazon
See also our compilation of the Kalvin report regarding a university’s role in political and social matters and our prior articles about “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy,” “Stanford’s Program for Reporting Bias” and “Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative”
The Latest Victims of the Free-Speech Crisis
Excerpts:
“Protecting free speech requires defending the rights of both sides of any conflict. That will only get harder if we ignore just how long colleges have been falling short. Today’s headlines can distract from the fact that campuses have been in crisis for the better part of a decade....
“Indeed, ideology plays an important role in how campus speech is treated. The specifics of each case vary significantly, but FIRE data show that pro-Palestinian speech has generally been more likely to trigger campaigns to get professors fired, investigated, or sanctioned than pro-Israel speech has. Campaigns targeting pro-Israel speech, however, have been more likely to succeed. Similarly, more attempts have been made to deplatform pro-Palestinian speeches on campus, but attempts against pro-Israel speakers have been more successful. In fact, all substantial and successful disruptions of campus speeches that FIRE has recorded on this issue have targeted pro-Israel advocacy. This might partly be explained by the fact that pro-Palestinian -- and even pro-Hamas -- sentiments are relatively common on campus and among college-aged Americans.
“If we want to defeat cancel culture and preserve free speech and academic freedom on campus, we need to recognize it regardless of its victims. Those decrying today’s so-called new McCarthyism will have to acknowledge just how long it’s been going on -- not only for the past 40 days, but for the past nine years.”
Full article at The Atlantic
Science Has a Censorship Problem
Excerpts:
“Censorship is widespread in academe and has grown worse in recent decades. Indeed, the expressive environment in higher ed seems less free than in society writ large, even though most other places of employment have basically no protections for freedom of expression, conscience, research, etc. ...
“Moral motives have long influenced scientific decision-making. What’s new is that journals are now explicitly endorsing moral concerns as legitimate reasons to suppress science. Following the publication (and retraction) of an article reporting that the mentees of male mentors, on average, had more scholarly success than did the mentees of female mentors, Nature Communications released an editorial promising increased attention to potential harms. A subsequent Nature editorial stated that authors, reviewers, and editors must consider the potentially harmful implications of research, and a Nature Human Behaviour editorial declared the publication might reject or retract articles that have the potential to undermine the dignity of particular groups of people. In effect, editors are granting themselves vast leeway to censor high-quality research that offends their own moral sensibilities, or those of their most sensitive readers.”
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Other Articles of Interest
National College Completion Rate Stagnates at 62.2%
Full articles at Diverse Issues in Higher Education and at Higher Ed Dive
Alternative Viewpoint: In Defense of DEI from UCLA’s Interim Vice Provost for DEI
Full op-ed and comments at Yahoo News/LA Times
Model Legislation Would Reform General Education Requirements at U.S. Colleges and Universities
Full article at College Fix
Campus Dysfunction Easy to Recognize, Difficult to Cure
Full article by Stanford's Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics
Jewish Groups Sue UC System Over Alleged ‘Unchecked Spread of Anti-Semitism’
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
"The vitality of civil and political institutions in our society depends on free discussion.... It is only through free debate and free exchange of ideas that government remains responsive to the will of the people and peaceful change is effected." -- Stanford Alum Sandra Day O’Connor, BA '50, JD '52
November 30, 2023
From American Association of University Professors: Polarizing Times Demand Robust Academic Freedom
Excerpts:
“Since its founding in 1915, the American Association of University Professors has been the most prominent guardian of academic freedom for faculty and students....
“The AAUP therefore calls on college and university administrations to:
-
“Recommit themselves to fully protecting the academic freedom of their faculties to teach, conduct research, and speak out about important issues both on and off campus, as called for in Academic Freedom in Times of War.
-
“Protect the freedom of students to express their positions on such issues on and off campus. Students should be free to organize and join associations to promote their common interests, and students and student organizations should be free to examine and discuss all questions of interest to them and to express opinions publicly and privately, in the words of the AAUP’s Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students.
-
“Safeguard the independence of colleges and universities by refusing to comply with demands from politicians, trustees, donors, faculty members, students and their parents, alumni, or other parties that would interfere with academic freedom....”
Full text at AAUP website
Whistleblower Highlights More Alleged Censorship Activities Based at Stanford
[Editor’s note: We have been regularly posting articles about alleged censorship activities being done directly at Stanford by people on Stanford's payroll (along with volunteer students), using campus buildings and even using Stanford’s name. The following is among the latest articles about these alleged activities.]
“A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the activities of an 'anti-disinformation' group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL....
“Emails from CISA’s NGO and social media partners show that CISA created the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) in 2020, which involved the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and other US government contractors. EIP and its successor, the Virality Project (VP), urged Twitter, Facebook and other platforms to censor social media posts by ordinary citizens and elected officials alike....
“The documents also show that Terp and her colleagues, through a group called MisinfoSec Working Group, which included [Renee] DiResta [on the Stanford payroll], created a censorship, influence, and anti-disinformation strategy called Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques (AMITT). They wrote AMITT by adapting a cybersecurity framework developed by MITRE, a major defense and intelligence contractor that has an annual budget of $1 to $2 billion in government funding....
“The AMITT framework calls for discrediting individuals as a necessary prerequisite of demanding censorship against them. It calls for training influencers to spread messages. And it calls for trying to get banks to cut off financial services to individuals who organize rallies or events....
“Breuer went on to describe how they thought they were getting around the First Amendment. His work with Terp, he explained, was a way to get ‘nontraditional partners into one room,’ including ‘maybe somebody from one of the social media companies, maybe a few special forces operators, and some folks from Department of Homeland Security… to talk in a non-attribution, open environment in an unclassified way so that we can collaborate better, more freely and really start to change the way that we address some of these issues.’... It is here that we see the idea for the EIP [Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership] and VP [Stanford’s Virality Project] . . . .
“Despite their confidence in the legality of their activities, some CTIL members may have taken extreme measures to keep their identities a secret. The group’s handbook recommends using burner phones, creating pseudonymous identities, and generating fake AI faces using the ‘This person does not exist’ website.'” . . . .
See also our prior article “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” and Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya's essay “The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists. We Fought Back and Won”
Where Free Speech Ends and Lawbreaking Begins
Excerpts:
“Those who care deeply about free speech are asking themselves many questions at this urgent moment: What should we make of the calls to punish Hamas apologists on campus? After all, this is America, where you have the right to say even the vilest things. Yes, many of the same students who on October 6 called for harsh punishment for ‘microaggressions’ are now chanting for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. But Americans are entitled to be hypocrites. ...
“I would put my free speech bona fides up against anyone. I’m also a lawyer and sometime law professor who recognizes that not all speech-related questions can be resolved by invoking the words First Amendment.
“Much of what we’ve witnessed on campuses over the past few weeks is not, in fact, speech, but conduct designed specifically to harass, intimidate, and terrorize Jews. Other examples involve disruptive speech that can properly be regulated by school rules. Opposing or taking action against such behavior in no way violates the core constitutional principle that the government can’t punish you for expressing your beliefs.
“The question, as always, is where to draw the line, and who’s doing the line-drawing....”
From Wall Street Journal: Inside Ohio State’s DEI Factory
[Editor’s note: Author John Sailer is the director of university policy at the National Association of Scholars. As a result of a public records request, Sailer obtained more than 800 pages of Ohio State’s Diversity Faculty Recruitment Reports that were required as part of the university’s hiring process. More recently, Ohio State’s Board of Trustees ordered the termination of these hiring practices.]
Excerpts:
“A search committee seeking a professor of military history rejected one applicant ‘because his diversity statement demonstrated poor understanding of diversity and inclusion issues.’ Another committee noted that an applicant to be a professor of nuclear physics could understand the plight of minorities in academia because he was married to ‘an immigrant in Texas in the Age of Trump.’
“These reports show what higher education’s outsize investment in ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ looks like in practice. Ohio State sacrificed both academic freedom and scholarly excellence for the sake of a narrowly construed vision of diversity....
“In some cases, committees evaluated diversity statements through an explicitly ideological lens. A committee searching for a professor of freshwater biology selected finalists ‘based upon a weighted rubric of 67% research and 33% contribution to DEI.’ To evaluate the statements, the committee used a rubric that cited several ‘problematic approaches’ for which a candidate can receive a zero score -- for example, if he ‘solely acknowledges that racism, classism, etc. are issues in the academy.’ It isn’t enough for a freshwater biologist to believe that racism pervades higher education."
Full op-ed at Wall Street Journal
See also our November 16, 2023 Newsletter excerpts of an article by Bari Weiss who starts her op-ed that “it is not about diversity, equity and inclusion” but rather the bloated and often anti-intellectual bureaucracies that have been created in the name of DEI.
See also our prior article "Stanford's Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy" that compares the number of fulltime DEI administrators at Stanford with schools that are twice and triple Stanford’s size.
From Stanford Daily: Installation of 240 More Cameras Raises More Privacy Concerns
Excerpts:
“As students returned to campus this fall, many noticed new infrastructure in their residences: security cameras.
“A $2.35 million project to bolster security at Stanford is driving 240 new security camera installations per year, including at select student residences and dining halls.... The cameras have been subject to intense scrutiny in light of privacy concerns on campus....
“Temporary covert cameras may be used when deemed necessary for a police investigation, according to the VSSS [Video Safety and Security at Stanford] website. The site further acknowledges that, although the University does not employ any facial recognition tools, other government agencies may use such tools upon retrieving footage.
“‘A thorough security vulnerability assessment [of an area] is performed by DPS,’ [Stanford spokesperson] Rapport wrote, in order to pinpoint any safety and property risks. Non-covert camera installations are accompanied by ‘conspicuous, standardized signage,’ she wrote, to alert passersby of the cameras’ presence....
“‘[Stanford undergraduate Kayla] Myers said she wished Stanford was more transparent about how the use of security camera footage: ‘If anything, knowing that security cameras are around dorms makes me feel a bit uneasy because it’s like a reminder that students’ regular daily behavior is being surveilled.’”
Full article at Stanford Daily. A copy of Stanford's 13 pages of video surveillance standards is here; see also our prior posting from Stanford Review, “Stanford’s Security Regime Takes Root”. We also note that the administrative group that is overseeing these student surveillance activities is the same group that oversaw the now-discredited "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative" and its lists of proscribed words and phrases.
Other Articles of Interest
Just Stop Making Official Statements About the News
Full article at New York Magazine Intelligencer
University of Southern California Relegates Professor to Remote Teaching for Expressing Anti-Hamas Sentiments
Press release from FIRE
College Leaders Refocus Attention on Their Students’ Top Priority: Jobs After Graduation
Full article at Hechinger Report
Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can Fight Back.
Full article at NY Times
Our Institutions of Higher Education Are Waging a War on Truth
Full article at The Hill
At MIT, Fear, Frustration, and Flailing Administrators
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Report Shows Blacks and Hispanics Lag in STEM PhDs
Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Student Data Lead Black, Hispanic Parents to Action
Full article at Gallup
We recognize that words can sometimes cause offence, but we reject the idea that hurt feelings and discomfort, even if acute, are grounds for censorship. Open discourse is the central pillar of a free society, and is essential for holding governments accountable, empowering vulnerable groups, and reducing the risk of tyranny.” -- From the Westminster Declaration
November 21, 2023
From Michael Bloomberg: College Presidents and Trustees Need to Take
More Responsibility
Excerpts:
“The barbaric attack by Hamas against Israel -- the intentional slaughter of defenseless civilians, including children and babies, and the taking of hostages -- should have been a unifying moment for America. Shamefully, it has become something else: a wake-up call about a crisis in higher education....
“For Americans, this isn’t a matter of defending Israel but of defending our nation’s most sacred values. One can support the Palestinian people and still denounce the intentional slaughter of civilians.
“Why have so many students failed to do so? The answer begins where the buck stops -- with college presidents. For years, they have allowed their campuses to become bastions of intolerance, by permitting students to shout down the voices of others. They have condoned ‘trigger warnings’ that shield students from difficult ideas. They have refused to defend faculty who run afoul of student sentiment. And they have created ‘safe spaces’ that discourage or exclude opposing views....
“As part of addressing this crisis in higher education, presidents and deans should make a priority of hiring faculty with greater viewpoint diversity to teach students how to engage in civil discourse, while challenging and expanding their minds. Professors may resist, but administrators must make clear that such diversity is a requirement of academic freedom.
“Trustees have a crucial role to play in holding presidents accountable for this work. Running a school and managing professors is difficult and complex, as administrators well know, but organizational complexity can’t be an excuse for faculty conformity.”
(Full op-ed at Wall Street Journal; see also our Back to Basics white paper)
From David Brooks: Universities Are Failing at Inclusion
Excerpts:
“. . . Eboo Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith America, which over the past 20 years has worked on about 1,200 campuses to narrow toxic divides and build bridges between people of all faiths or no faith. Over these decades, he has concluded that far from creating a healthier, more equitable campus, this ideology demonizes, demeans and divides students. It demeans white people by reducing them to a single category -- oppressor. Meanwhile, it demeans, for example, Muslim people of color, like Patel, by reducing them to victims.
“Patel doesn’t believe we should try to ‘end D.E.I.,’ as some have proposed. That’s not going to happen anyway. Besides, in a liberal society we beat bad ideas with better ideas. Patel does argue that we’re at a paradigm-shifting moment when we can replace a destructive form of diversity, equity and inclusion with a better form -- one that actually includes people, instead of excluding them.
“The right intellectual framework for effective diversity work is pluralism. Pluralism starts with a celebration of the fact that we live in one of the most diverse societies in history. The job of the university is to help young people from different backgrounds learn to work and live together. (Would you really want to hire someone who spent his college years learning how to demonize, demean and divide?)” ....
(Full op-ed at NY Times)
A Free-Speech Fix for Our Divided Campuses
Excerpts:
“The American university has been the envy of the world not just because of its excellence in research and scholarship but as an incubator of democratic citizenship -- a place where students learn to live with peers from vastly different settings, to forge friendships and professional networks that transcend social, economic and ideological divides, and to open their minds to new ideas and disciplines.
“Grappling with the current crisis on campus demands more than open letters to alumni or action plans to combat antisemitism or Islamophobia. It requires a comprehensive rethinking of how American universities can fulfill their role as a free market of ideas and a factory of pluralism, teaching students the values and skills they need to resist polarization and ensure the survival of our teetering democracy....
“At the same time, certain conceptions of diversity and equity have hardened into orthodoxy. Students who question the ideas of identity groups or the aims of social-justice movements can be stigmatized, and debates over topics like abortion, immigration and affirmative action may be effectively shut down because students fear offending someone or being publicly accused of racism or bias. A team at Stanford University was ridiculed earlier this year for promulgating a list of terms, like ‘chief’ and ‘manpower,’ that it considered potentially harmful because they might reinforce stereotypes.”
(Full op-ed at Wall Street Journal; see also "Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative" that includes a PDF copy of Stanford’s 17-page list of proscribed words and phrases)
Federal Judge Rules Against Mandatory DEI Policies at California Community Colleges
Excerpts
“Judge Christopher Baker recommended blocking California Community Colleges’ leaders and Kern Community College District trustees from enforcing mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion policies in a report issued this week in response to a lawsuit filed against the district by a professor....
“In his 44-page report, Baker rejected administrators’ arguments that the DEI regulations are just suggestions.” …
(Full article at College Fix; see also "California Community College Professors Sue Over Newly Imposed DEIA Hiring and Performance Standards," including a PDF copy of the California Community College official guide to words and phrases)
Other Articles of Interest
More Re Stanford’s Roles in the Censorship Industrial Complex
(Full article about the alleged bias at Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project at Public; full article about President Saller’s and Stanford’s responses in a separate article at Public; see also "Stanford's Roles in Censoring the Web")
Government Gives Billions Each Year to Elite Universities
(Full articles at Substack and at Reason)
College Presidents Debate When to Speak Out and When to Keep Quiet (Full articles at Diverse Issues in Higher Education and at Chronicle of Higher Education
“Freedom of speech is essential to autonomy, to artistic expression, to self-government, to holding power accountable. And it allows society to divert the energy that would once explode into violence instead into robust arguments. – From The Canceling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott
November 16, 2023
Speech Is Still Worth Fighting For
Excerpts:
"Freedom of expression is probably the most widely acknowledged human right in the world. Lip service is paid to it even in totalitarian states. Freedom of expression is not worth much in Russia or North Korea, but their constitutions guarantee it in very similar terms as the United Nations. And yet, it is today under greater threat than any other human right. This is happening even, perhaps especially, in liberal democracies. How are we to explain this paradox? ...
“Tolerance does not come naturally to human beings. For most of human history, what people believed about the natural world, about government and society and about the moral codes of humanity was laid down by authority, usually by people claiming to speak in the name of God. Pluralism and diversity of opinion have only been accepted as desirable for the last three or four centuries. They are essentially the legacy of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century and the European Enlightenment of the 18th....
“The basic principles of rational discourse on which all this depended are now under challenge. Reason is rejected as arrogant. Feeling and emotion are upheld as suitable substitutes. Freedom is treated as domineering, enlightenment as offensive to the unenlightened. Current campaigns to suppress certain opinions and eliminate debate are an attempt to create a new conformity, a situation in which people will not dare to contradict, for fear of provoking their outrage and abuse. These things are symptoms of the closing of the human mind and the narrowing of our intellectual world. Something in our civilisation has died.”
(Full article at Unherd)
From Bari Weiss: About DEI
Excerpts:
“It’s not about diversity, equity, or inclusion [boldface added]. It is about arrogating power to a movement that threatens not just Jews -- but America itself.
“Twenty years ago, when I was a college student, I started writing about a then-nameless, niche ideology that seemed to contradict everything I had been taught since I was a child....
“Of course, this new ideology doesn’t come right out and say all that. It doesn’t even like to be named. Some call it wokeness or anti-racism or progressivism or safetyism or Critical Social Justice or identity Marxism. But whatever term you use, what’s clear is that it has gained power in a conceptual instrument called “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI....
“In theory, all three of these words represent noble causes. They are, in fact, all causes to which American Jews in particular have long been devoted, both individually and collectively. But in reality, these words are now metaphors for an ideological movement bent on recategorizing every American not as an individual, but as an avatar of an identity group, his or her behavior prejudged accordingly, setting all of us up in a kind of zero-sum game....
"We have been seeing for several years now the damage this ideology has done: DEI, and its cadres of enforcers, undermine the central missions of the institutions that adopt it. But nothing has made the dangers of DEI clearer than what’s happening these days on our college campuses -- the places where our future leaders are nurtured....
“It is time to end DEI for good. No more standing by as people are encouraged to segregate themselves. No more forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence. No more compelled speech. No more going along with little lies for the sake of being polite.
“The Jewish people have outlived every single regime and ideology that has sought our elimination. We will persist, one way or another. But DEI is undermining America, and that for which it stands -- including the principles that have made it a place of unparalleled opportunity, safety, and freedom for so many. Fighting it is the least we owe this country.”
(Full article at Free Press)
From Former Provost John Etchemendy: Proper Discourse at Stanford
Excerpt:
“Our current president and provost have received a great deal of criticism from students and alumni who want them to take a stand, to come down clearly and unequivocally in favor of their own preferred stance. But President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez have done exactly what a president and provost should do. It is their responsibility, above all, to maintain the potential for rational, respectful debate, even about the most tragic and divisive circumstances facing the world. It is our responsibility as an academic community to engage in this debate with compassion and respect for those with whom we disagree, not to look to the university to assure us that our side is right.”
(Full op-ed at Stanford Daily; see also our compilations of the three parts of the Chicago Trifecta regarding freedom of expression, a university's involvement in political and social matters, and academic appointments)
From Stanford Review: Student Life at Stanford
Excerpts:
“When describing Stanford to others, I always compare it to one place: Disneyland. Just like the theme park, Stanford’s picturesque campus grounds are perfectly maintained at all times, from the height of its bushes to the impeccable lawn that spells out the famous 'S' logo on its Oval. A mix of Spanish-style architecture and modern science centers represents the best of both tradition and innovation to visitors....
“Stanford is indeed beautiful, but the veneer of blissful harmony is underlied by a system of excessive safety measures -- bordering on theater -- and synthetic attempts at community-building that hamper students’ ability to have rich social lives and the agency to fully explore and enjoy campus.... The neutering of campus life and traditions -- especially after the pandemic -- is motivated by an ideology of risk-aversion, and tramples the freedom Stanford used to be known for....
“Grouping the vegan Columbae with Sigma Nu and having the row houses as arbitrary exclaves of regular housing does little to foster community. When Crothers residents (like myself) want to access the intra-neighborhood Branner Dining Hall, we are forced either to beg Branner residents to let us through the front entrance, or to take a five-minute detour around the building’s backside....
“Instead of striving to maintain its fantasyland facade, Stanford should instead cease its war on social life and allow its students to engage in the freedom that it loves to promote. Stanford must not shrivel into an ‘educational resort,’ as one of my professors put it, run with the same soullessness and litigious spirit as a commercial Disney property.”
(Full article at Stanford Review; see also our Back to Basics white paper on ways to address these and related concerns)
Other Articles of Interest
Statement to Stanford Community from President Saller and Provost Martinez on Next Steps
(Full statement here)
An Open Letter to Jewish Students at Stanford University
(Op-ed by Stanford alumni at Stanford Daily)
Some Concerns and Possible Reforms re the Politicization of Higher Education
(Op-eds by Niall Fergusson at Newsweek and by Jonathan Turley at The Hill)
Math Class at MIT
(Short video at X, and you might need to turn on the sound)
More About the Censorship Activities of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Its Affiliates the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) and the Virality Project
(Full articles at Uncover DC, at Brownstone and at Real Clear Investigations)
The Ever-More-Corporate University
(Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education; see also our September 29 Newsletter posting about administrators nearly outnumbering Stanford undergraduates and concerns about the various centers, accelerators and incubators at Stanford that do little if any research and instead engage almost exclusively in implementation and advocacy activities on behalf of corporate and government sponsors and major donors)
"No matter who they are, the vast majority of people become more supportive of free speech the more they are asked to think about it. Context — historical, social — is everything. Triggering their gratitude for the freedom they have, and take for granted, helps. And, as always, it’s crucial for people to remind themselves that the only way we reduce intolerance and hate is through dialogue and debate, not censorship.” — Michael Shellenberger
November 10, 2023
NOTE: We are advised that over 200 persons on our mailing list inexplicably may not have received last week's Newsletter dated November 2, 2023. If you are in that group, a copy of the Newsletter is posted here.
From Stanford Daily: President Saller and Provost Martinez Discuss Israel-Gaza
Excerpts:
"President Richard Saller reiterated the University’s condemnation of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel during the meeting and assured the Senate of the administration’s continued priority to 'maintain the safety and wellbeing of the campus.'
"The administration intends to implement 'a new security review and … education of the community about the roots of antisemitism,' Saller said. He highlighted the University’s efforts to 'secure Palestinian and Muslim communities which have also been targeted with hate speech and are fearful.'
"He cautioned community members against 'drawing conclusions about things that may be reported on, with or without verification' and warned about 'the circulation of fake news,' which he said is an important issue for consideration in keeping the University safe....
"Provost Jenny Martinez expressed concern about rising antisemitism worldwide.
"She said she wanted to be 'unequivocally clear that Stanford stands against antisemitism and recognizes the deep historical roots of this form of hate, and the ways in which Jewish students, faculty … and staff are affected by this horrible legacy.'
"She also described an increase in violence against Muslims across the U.S., including the recent murder of a six-year-old Palestinian boy in Chicago.
“'Stanford stands against Islamophobia and all forms of hatred and discrimination on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin,' Martinez said....
"Martinez also addressed faculty concerns about free speech: 'Free expression of ideas necessarily includes protection for some forms of controversial and even offensive speech, both as a matter of Stanford’s policy on academic freedom adopted by the Faculty Senate in 1974 and California’s Leonard Law, which extends some First Amendment protections to students at private colleges.'"
(Full coverage of last week's Faculty Senate meeting at Stanford Daily)
From Stanford Daily: ASSU Leaders Discuss Student Life
Excerpts:
"ASSU President Sophia Danielpour ’24 and Vice President Kyle Haslett ’25 gave their inaugural address to the Senate about the state of student life and a vision for improvements.
"Based on perspectives from various constituents and surveys, Danielpour said undergraduates feel 'Stanford’s identity and systems of trust had eroded.' They highlighted tension and distrust among community members, the prioritization of risk management over student experience and over-regulation as the primary causes.
"Danielpour also said students are doing 'anything they can to avoid the [neighborhood] system,' which she said contributed to feelings of isolation and weaker housing culture. They proposed alternative systems including only having neighborhoods for frosh and different ways to approach clustered housing.
"They advocated for revisions to the University’s alcohol policy and expressed how even though the Stanford Hates Fun movement 'gets giggles, it is an outcry from students' who think that social life on campus is deteriorating. Danielpour and Haslett were elected on a 'Fun Strikes Back' slate....
"The executives criticized several aspects of the Office of Community Standards (OCS), which they said they saw as an overstep in bureaucracy. They advocated for ending mandatory reporting by resident assistants because it 'created a culture of fear' among students....
"ASSU executives also expressed complaints against surveillance efforts on campus, namely the '400 cameras' that have been installed in residential spaces. The ASSU executives said it was unclear how and when OCS accessed and used footage from these cameras."
(Full coverage of last week's Faculty Senate meeting at Stanford Daily)
(See also our prior articles about Stanford's ballooning administrative bureaucracy and our Back to Basics white paper on ways to address these concerns)
More on Stanford's Roles in Censoring the Web
Excerpts:
"In the runup to the 2020 election, cybersecurity experts at the Department of Homeland Security and Stanford University decided they had discovered a major problem....
"The issue was not compromised voter rolls or corrupted election tallies but a 'gap' in the government’s authority to clamp down on what it considered misinformation and disinformation – a gap identified by DHS officials and interns on loan to the agency from the Stanford Internet Observatory. Given what SIO research manager Renee DiResta described as the 'unclear legal authorities' and 'very real First Amendment questions' regarding this gap, the parties hatched a plan to form a public-private partnership that would provide DHS with an avenue to surreptitiously censor speech.
"The collaboration between DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency and the Stanford outfit would quickly expand into a robust operation whose full extent is only now becoming clear....
"EIP [Election Integrity Partnership] scoured hundreds of millions of social media posts for content disfavored by the government about election processes and outcomes, and collected it from the operation’s governmental and non-governmental partners to identify the offending speech....
(Full article at Real Clear Investigations)
(See also "Stanford Group Helped Censor Covid Dissidents and Then Lied About it" at Substack Public)
(See also "New Emails Show DHS Created Stanford 'Disinfo' Group That Censored Speech Before 2020 Election" at NY Post)
(See also "The Federal Government Had a Major Academic Partner in Its Censorship Regime" at Townhall)
(See also our prior articles about the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project)
From MSNBC: Are Campus Administrators Too Afraid to Confront Antisemitism?
Excerpts:
“How is it that schools -- so many schools over the last decade or so that have taken such great care for the safety in many cases just protecting them [students] from words or protecting them from arguments they don’t like to hear -- cannot take care of the physical safety of Jewish students? How can it be that a young student can walk across Harvard’s campus and . . . not just be yelled at but be physically assaulted and those students [perpetrators] not be expelled on the spot? What is happening with the leadership at these schools?
“ . . . unfortunately the administrations don’t seem to recognize what’s happening and in some ways they have aided and abetted it, maybe unknowingly, by perpetuating this racial stereotype on campuses through diversity, equity and inclusion and other racial doctrines."
(See MSNBC video on YouTube, including commentary by Joe Scarborough, here; see also "The Impossible Predicament of College Leaders" at Chronical of Higher Education; see also CNN "Why College Presidents Seem Flummoxed")
Concerns Expressed About Composition of the Stanford Law School Dean
Search Committee
Excerpts:
"Stanford Law School has tapped a student involved in the successful effort to shout down a federal judge to serve on a search committee for the law school’s next dean, raising questions about the school’s stated commitment to free speech.
"The only student on the law school’s search committee, Matthew Coffin, is the co-president of Stanford OutLaw, the LGBT student group that led efforts in March to disrupt a Federalist Society event featuring Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan. Along with nearly a dozen faculty members, Coffin will help identify candidates to replace former Stanford Law dean Jenny Martinez, who was named provost of the university in August....
"Students say Coffin’s appointment is a betrayal of the promise, made by Martinez in a 10-page memo about the Duncan brouhaha, that the law school would recommit itself to free expression. 'It’s really disappointing and seemingly rewards the behavior that the law school rightly rebuked last year,' one Stanford Law student said...."
(Full articles at Free Beacon and at College Fix)
Colleges Need an Overhaul
Excerpts:
“Higher education is not known for rapid change. This has been such a characteristic trait of the field that leadership guru Adrianna Kezar once called it ‘higher education’s immunity to change.’
“To remain foundational pillars of society and equip students to become good citizens of the world, higher education institutions must grapple with these forces of change and form coherent strategies about how they wish to move forward. The time to do this is now.
“Higher education must increasingly equip students with the skills and mindset to become lifelong learners — to learn how to learn, essentially — so that no matter what the future looks like, they will have the skills, mindset and wherewithal to learn whatever it is that they need and by whatever means. That spans from the commitment of a graduate program or something as quick as a microcredential."
(Full article by Stanford alum Dr. Lizbeth Martin, president of Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, at Higher Ed Dive)
Bill Ackman's Letter to Harvard's President
Excerpts:
"I am writing this letter to you regretfully. Never did I think I would have to write a letter to the president of my alma mater about the impact of her actions and inactions on the health and safety of its student body in order to help catalyze necessary change....
"I have heard from many members of the Harvard community that Harvard’s Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging ('OEDIB') is an important contributing factor to the problem. I was surprised to learn from students and faculty that the OEDIB does not support Jewish, Asian and non-LGBTQIA White students. I had never read the OEDIB DEI statement until today when I wrote this letter. The DEI statement makes clear that Harvard’s conception of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging does not include Jews (at least those that are not in one of the other welcomed DEI groups). According to Harvard’s DEI statement:
"'We actively seek and welcome people of color, women, persons with disabilities, people who identify as LGBTQIA, and those who are at the intersections of these identities, from across the spectrum of disciplines and methods to join us.'
"In other words, Jews and others who are not on the above list are not welcome to join. When antisemitism is widely prevalent on campus, and the DEI office – which 'views diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging as the pathway to achieving inclusive excellence and fostering a campus culture where everyone can thrive' – does not welcome Jewish students, we have a serious problem. It is abundantly clear that the campus culture that is being fostered at Harvard today is not one where everyone is included, feels a sense of belonging, welcomes diversity, or is a place where 'everyone can thrive.'”...
[Editor's note: Bill Ackman received his AB and MBA degrees at Harvard and is CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management Company. Forbes estimates his net worth to be approximately $3.5 billion.]
(Full text at X)
University of Washington Internal Review Concludes Race Improperly Used
in Faculty Hiring
Excerpts:
"The investigation, which the university posted online Tuesday, concludes that 'race was used as a substantial factor in the selection of the final candidate and the hiring process,' violating a university executive order that bans considering race in hiring....
"Before finalists were narrowed to three, five finalists were invited to virtual visits, with the schedules including meetings with the Women Faculty and Faculty of Color groups. But a member of the latter group expressed opposition to meeting the White candidates.
“'As a person who has been on both sides of the table for these meetings, I have really appreciated them,' the unnamed person wrote in an email. 'Buuut, when the candidate is White, it is just awkward. The last meeting was uncomfortable, and I would go as far as burdensome for me. Can we change the policy to not do these going forward with White faculty?'
"An unnamed person wrote in another email, in March, that they were inclined to hold the meetings just for faculty candidates of color.
'I’m also mindful that our Provost is now getting anxious about anything that’s directed to only some identity groups (i.e., they are getting worried about fallout from the pending Supreme Court affirmative action rulings),' this person wrote in an email. 'My read is that they’ll get fearful of litigation and overcorrect into colorblindness. Maybe our committee can preemptively think our way around this type of future directive.'”
(Full articles at Inside Higher Ed and at National Association of Scholars; see also our compilation of the University of Chicago's Shils Report re principles for academic appointments)
Other Articles of Interest
Prof. Alan Dershowitz on the Hamas-Israel Controversies and a University's Role in Political and Social Matters (Full video of this Stanford Classical Liberalism seminar posted at YouTube)
What Do Universities Owe Their Donors? (Full article at Inside Higher Ed)
How American Colleges Gave Birth to Cancel Culture (Full article at Free Press)
Where We Lost the Thread on Cancel Culture (Full article at Huffington Post)
Med School Accreditor Requires Commitment to DEI (Full article at College Fix)
“Rather than teaching students how to engage productively with challenging new ideas, far too many colleges and universities build cozy bubbles in which only comfortable orthodoxies are permitted. They foster large, expensive bureaucracies to police infractions of vague (and often extralegal, if not outright illegal) rules against expressing ideas that someone might find offensive.” -- American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA)
November 2, 2023
Stanford Daily Editorial: Keeping Stanford's Speech Free
Excerpts:
“Stanford is again in newspaper headlines. Most notably, The New York Times recently published a column titled ‘The War Comes to Stanford,’ highlighting students’ speech, banners and chalk messages around campus. Other universities have been under as much, if not more, scrutiny. This is not a new phenomenon; college students’ reactions to current events have long stoked heated debate....
“Vindictive retaliation to students’ political expression can dampen free speech on college campuses. To be clear, we do not believe that college students deserve any sort of special pass to speak without facing the associated consequences. However, students should not receive threats to their safety on the basis of their opinions. . . . Our country’s educational institutions should be incubators of ideas, which requires us to engage with a diversity of interpretations. Students should be free to challenge and contradict their peers’ views, and even their own. This is how we learn about the world with nuance, change our minds and reinforce our beliefs....
“Some may say that such a view is nice in theory, but dangerous when words hold so much power to stoke hatred. It is undeniable that the modern world exists in a continual war of information and the presentation of that information. We must each acknowledge the weight of that responsibility: that our words have the real ability to harm and misinform others. Incitement that is likely to produce violence is, of course, unacceptable.
“Despite these risks, the alternative of a quiet campus is far worse. As the Supreme Court has held over the ages, we must preserve a free market of ideas so that the best ones may prevail through trial and scrutiny. If we fail to do so, instead choosing to silence the voices of our opponents out of fear that their views will overwhelm ours, we will have lost all faith in our peers — and the future of our country.”
(Full editorial is now posted at our Stanford Speaks webpage)
University of Chicago Creates Permanent Entity for Free Inquiry and Expression
Excerpts:
“It’s no surprise that the University of Chicago has made by far the biggest, boldest and most serious move of any university in the country to confront the crisis of free speech and academic freedom at American universities.... On October 5-6, the University of Chicago launched a new permanent entity, the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, with a ground-breaking inaugural event bringing together the country’s leading lights on the state of free speech at American universities to examine what the problem is, how we got here, and what might be done.
“Elite universities across the country seem to be scrambling to stem the damage wrought by their abandonment of core principles. Major donors of University of Pennsylvania have withdrawn funds and called for the president to step down, dismayed by a university they ‘no longer recognize.’ Stanford Law School’s diversity dean is on permanent leave for encouraging a successful shout-down of an invited speaker. Yale Law School has hired Princeton’s professor Keith Whittington, a leading scholar on free speech and the law, and author of Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech to head up a new free speech and academic freedom center. Harvard’s nascent faculty group, the Council on Academic Freedom, lists over 140 members since its founding earlier this year.
“But can these and other leading American universities respond to the crisis in free inquiry and expression with the seriousness of purpose that University of Chicago has? In a September 28, 2023 letter to Princeton’s trustees, Princetonians for Free Speech called upon them to make Princeton a leader in the country on free speech and academic freedom. This month at the University of Chicago, the bar got a lot higher.”
(Full article at Princetonians for Free Speech; see also our compilations of the three parts of the Chicago Trifecta re free speech, a university’s involvement in political and social matters, and principles for the appointment and promotion of faculty)
Student Rights to University Transparency Under FERPA
University of Pennsylvania student Jack Lakis published a recent article that explains how and why students should exercise their FERPA rights, starting with their admissions files.
Excerpts:
“In 2015, Stanford University publicized a method for college students to access their admissions files by leveraging the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which legally requires universities to grant students access to their records. Since then, many institutions have adapted their processes of sharing information with students. At Penn, there is a page on the admissions website dedicated to FERPA requests.
“All Penn students should take five minutes and submit a FERPA request. So far, everyone else that I’ve introduced the process to have been excited to fill out the online form. For students, the process of applying to college was mentally and emotionally taxing. Many still care about the work that got them accepted into a prestigious college. Just being curious to understand college admission decisions motivates students to look into their records.
“Even if you have little interest in the admissions process, I still urge you to submit the form. At the very least, sending a FERPA request conveys a strong message to the admissions office: the information in an application is meaningful and tied to a real, living person.”
(Full article at The Daily Pennsylvanian)
(See also concerns about the computerized case management systems that Stanford and others are using, as noted at the bottom of our webpage Back to Basics. These systems have the downside of anonymous and secret records being maintained about individual students without the students even knowing it, but on the upside, the systems make full disclosure extremely easy, assuming the relevant university is willing to comply with FERPA.)
(See also WSJ April 6, 2023 op-ed by Stanford GSB Prof. Ivan Marinovic, DEI Meets East Germany, U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another for Bias)
Ways to Maintain Academic Standards While Emphasizing Student Growth
and Achievement
Excerpts:
“Debates over grading and standardized testing aren’t new, but they are colored today by two issues that were less prominent in the past. The first is equity—whether grading practices or standardized testing perpetuate or exacerbate inequalities. The second involves students’ self-image and mental health—whether grading and testing demoralize, dishearten, discourage, depress and deflate.
“. . . we might well ask, how can we best evaluate students if we are to rely less on tests and grades? Are there ways that we can fairly evaluate student performance and learning, while providing our undergraduates with the kinds of motivation and feedback that they need?
“The answer lies, first, in adopting a competency approach that makes demonstrated mastery of essential knowledge and skills central to course design . . . Second, we need to place a greater emphasis on the learning process and on growth than is the case in most existing courses . . . Third, our classes need to provide students with more formative and constructive feedback and greater opportunities for self-reflection.
“ . . . it is possible to hold high academic standards and make students responsible and accountable for their own learning. Instructional design is the key. Shifting to a competency-based model isn’t easy. But it’s well worth the effort.”
(Full article at Inside Higher Ed)
Harvard Creates Task Force for Doxxed Students Amid Backlash Over
Israel-Hamas Statements
Excerpt:
“Harvard will establish a task force to support students experiencing doxxing, harassment, and online security issues following backlash against students allegedly affiliated with a statement that held Israel “entirely responsible” for violence in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“The new task force will be in operation until Nov. 3, at which point the task force will reassess its efforts to ensure that its work meets student needs, according to an email obtained by The Crimson. The message, dated Tuesday, was sent to doxxed students by Dean of Students Thomas Dunne....”
(Full article at Harvard Crimson)
Other Articles of Interest
Is College a Cult? An essay by Patrick Gray, professor of religious studies at Rhodes College (Full article here)
Academic Conference to Focus on the Phenomenon of Taylor Swift (Full article at College Fix)
“ . . . time and time again, unpopular opinions and ideas have eventually become conventional wisdom. By labelling certain political or scientific positions as 'misinformation' or 'malinformation,' our societies risk getting stuck in false paradigms that will rob humanity of hard-earned knowledge and obliterate the possibility of gaining new knowledge.” -- Westminster Declaration
October 26, 2023
Supreme Court to Hear Case Re Government Coordination with Private Entities
to Monitor and Censor the Web
We have previously posted a series of articles about the roles the Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities have been playing in monitoring and censoring social media and other parts of the web. We also have been following decisions by lower federal courts in a case brought by several states and private parties, including Stanford’s Prof. Jay Bhattacharya, regarding the federal government’s involvement in these activities.
Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the lower court actions, and here are some articles about these developments that might be of interest:
-- From the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, "Comments on Supreme Court's Decision to Hear Murthy v. Missouri"
Excerpt: “This is an immensely important case. The First Amendment has long been understood to prohibit the government from coercing bookstores and other speech intermediaries to suppress speech, but the Supreme Court hasn’t had occasion to apply this rule in the context of social media. Even outside that context, it’s said very little about how lower courts should distinguish permissible persuasion from unconstitutional coercion. These are momentous, thorny issues, and how the Court resolves them will have broad implications for the digital public sphere.”
-- From Michael Shellenberger at Public, “Victory! Supreme Court to Hear Landmark Missouri v. Biden Censorship Case”
Excerpt: “For months, the mainstream news media have described the Censorship Industrial Complex as a conspiracy theory invented by the Twitter Files journalists and Republicans. The New York Times, Washington Post, PBS ‘Frontline,’ and most other news outlets have published story after story claiming that there is an orchestrated effort by people who don’t care about the truth to mischaracterize the work of well-intentioned ‘misinformation researchers.’
“But now, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear and rule upon the constitutionality of the Censorship Industrial Complex as denounced by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana in their lawsuit against the Biden administration for demanding censorship by social media platforms of disfavored views on Covid, elections, and other issues.”
-- From NY Post, “Supreme Court Will Hear Case Against Biden-Big Tech Censorship Scheme” [links were in the original article]
Excerpt: “The states of Missouri and Louisiana brought the lawsuit in response to then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki revealing in July 2021 that the White House was ‘flagging’ alleged misinformation, mainly about COVID-19 vaccines, for removal.
"‘We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,’ she said at the time.
“The government policing received further pushback last year, when it emerged that the Department of Homeland Security had a portal through which federal officials made social media moderation requests, including to squelch ‘parody accounts or accounts with virtually no followers or influence,’ according to The Intercept.”
-- From the Daily Legal Blog by Law Prof. Eugene Volokh, “Court Agrees to Hear Missouri v. Biden Federal Government / Social Media Case” and which includes excerpts from the filings by various parties.
A Discussion About Campus Speech, and What to Do Going Forward
A reader has brought to our attention this 16-minute PBS interview with Washington Post education reporter Jack Stripling about the current conflicts regarding speech on college campuses.
In response, we again note, at least in our view, that the three parts of the Chicago Trifecta handle these issues exactly right. And regarding the recent controversy that arose two weeks ago in a COLLEGE course at Stanford (see last week’s Newsletter), COLLEGE is supposed to be a series of courses intended to stimulate critical thinking and sometimes difficult discussion. Did the instructor act appropriately? We don’t know, but some student accounts in the Daily indicate he did, and some comments to that Daily article say he did not. In any event, if students expect to be challenged in class, what should be their and Stanford’s responses when they are in fact challenged? We also understand that all Stanford students, faculty and staff take mandatory training about harassment, including with respect to what are called bystander obligations. If students in that COLLEGE course believed the instructor was acting inappropriately, shouldn’t they have spoken up, or is their bystander training only theoretical and never something for which they must take personal responsibility?
And given how all of this has subsequently been portrayed in the media, what do students, faculty and administrators at Stanford, on all parts of the political and social spectrum, now think in retrospect? We hope this incident will be used as an important teaching opportunity and that this and related incidents might also cause Stanford to finally adopt the Chicago Trifecta – something we suggest that the President and Provost could unilaterally say will be their touchstone guidance for statements and decisions they make going forward even while the principles are considered by the faculty and/or trustees. See also our white paper, Back to Basics.
Stanford Prof. Stephen Haber on the Threat to Freedom of Expression
at American Universities
In this video, Prof. Haber discusses the critical relationships between faculty and students and how campus bureaucracies are undermining those relationships. Eager to protect students from discomfort, he argues, university administrators have prioritized ideological conformity and self-censorship over critical thinking and the pursuit of truth.
(Video at YouTube)
(See also our prior article on Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, including a download of the IT department's list of proscribed words and phrases, and our prior article on Stanford's Program for Reporting Bias)
Creating an Office for Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Related to Prof. Haber's video, above, not only might Stanford address the inappropriate involvement of non-teaching staff in the activities of faculty and students, this may also be a time for Stanford to create an Office for Free Speech and Academic Freedom. Members of this office could assist students and faculty who believe their activities are being improperly infringed upon. They likewise could participate in Cabinet and other high-level meetings and advocate for fundamental values that may otherwise be at risk. And in that regard, we bring to your attention this article about longtime Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington moving to Yale Law School to head such a center there.
Former Florida College Presidents to Legislators: ‘Enough is Enough’
Damage to campus free speech and academic freedom can come from all sides of the political spectrum. We thus bring to your attention this article where seven former heads of Florida colleges and universities urge that the Florida legislature stay out of academic matters.
(Full article at Inside Higher Ed)
No Credibility in Administrator Responses to Campus Controversies
Excerpts: “Universities are facing allegations of hypocrisy over their calls for a free exchange of ideas on campus amid the Israel-Gaza conflict, with some saying that how colleges have dealt with free speech controversies before puts them in a tough position to turn down the current tension....
“Now we come to a moment where there are two really entrenched sides, both with views that finally the university understands, ‘Gosh, there are points on both sides. We ought to be able to talk through this issue.’ Suddenly, no one on campus knows how to do that, because there’s been this growth of orthodoxy on campus,” [said Alex Morey of FIRE].”
(Full article at The Hill)
Update on Stanford Presidential Search
The Stanford Daily covered a discussion at the most recent Faculty Senate meeting regarding the search for a new president, including comments from members of the faculty on qualities they hope to see in the next president.
(Full article at Stanford Daily)
Other Articles of Interest
College Still Has Value, but Let’s Reassess the Price Tag (Full article at Martin Center for Academic Renewal)
Graduate Enrollment Is on the Decline (Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education)
Supreme Court’s Race Ruling Reaches Beyond Harvard’s Gates (Full article at Real Clear Education)
Two Princeton Undergraduates Discuss How Campus Politization Fed Today's Hatred (Full article at WSJ)
UCLA Students Offered Extra Credit to Attend Anti-Israel Teach-in (Full article at College Fix)
Podcast: 'Liberal Education Corrects Our Narrowness'
An interview with Jonathan Marks, professor and chair of politics and international relations at Ursinus College (Podcast at ACTA)
“Stanford University's central functions of teaching, learning, research, and scholarship depend upon an atmosphere in which freedom of inquiry, thought, expression, publication, and peaceable assembly are given the fullest protection. Expression of the widest range of viewpoints should be encouraged, free from institutional orthodoxy and from internal or external coercion.” -- From Stanford’s Statement on Academic Freedom
October 19, 2023
The Canceling of the American Mind
Earlier this week, a new book co-authored by Stanford alum Greg Lukianoff (JD '00) was published, The Canceling of the American Mind. Greg is also the president of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and co-author of the prior NY Times best seller, The Coddling of the American Mind. See also The Coddling.com.
Excerpts: “On March 18, 2022, a New York Times editorial ignited a firestorm on Twitter.... What opinion could possibly have inspired such outrage. An admission by the Times editorial board that Cancel Culture is real -- and a problem.
“’On college campuses and in many workplaces, speech that others find harmful or offensive can result not only in online shaming but also in the loss of livelihood,’ the Times asserted.
“The piece pointed a finger at both the right and left for perpetuating a culture of ideological intolerance. They called out liberals who’d lost touch with the ‘once liberal idea’ of a ‘full-throated defense of free speech’ as well as Republican lawmakers determined ‘to gag discussion of certain topics’ with bills preventing the mention of diverse issues in classrooms.
“’People should be able to put forward viewpoints, ask questions and make mistakes and take unpopular but good-faith positions on issues that society is still working through -- all without fearing cancellation,’ the Times editorial argued."
The remaining three parts of the book discuss in detail specific statements and actions that have occurred in recent years and the adverse impacts those statements and actions have had on free speech and academic freedom.
And these recommendations at the end of the book:
-
“Adopt an official, written recommitment to free speech and academic freedom, such as the 2015 Chicago Statement, which ninety-eight institutions or faculty bodies have already adopted. [See our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta here.]
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“Teach students about free speech and academic freedom in orientation.
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“Dump any speech codes and all bias response teams. [See our prior articles about Stanford's policies and procedures for students and even third parties to turn in other students for allegedly biased statements or actions, Stanford's list of proscribed words and phrases, and similar issues.]
-
"Survey students and faculty about the state of free speech on campus. [See actual quotes of Stanford students as part of FIRE's 2024 rankings of U.S. colleges and universities.]
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“And, finally, defend your students and professors from cancellation early and often.”
Campus Responses to Israel and Gaza
Much has been written in the past week about what alumni, donors, faculty, students, media and others believe should be campus responses to the horrific events in Israel and Gaza. In the process, many commentators have referred to the University of Chicago's long-existing Kalven Report regarding a university's role in political and social matters, a compilation of which is posted here.
For those interested, here is a small sampling of these recent discussions of the Kalven Report:
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Now Is the Time for Administrators to Embrace Neutrality".
Excerpts: "At one pole are the sentiments expressed in the 1967 Kalven Committee report of the University of Chicago, which argues for 'a heavy presumption against the university taking collective action or expressing opinions on the political or social issues of the day . . . not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity . . . but out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.' Exceptions should be made only for situations that 'threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry'.
"At the other pole, now more common, college leaders are expected to issue statements on behalf of the institution on a variety of current political issues, for instance those related to sex and gender, racism, abortion, global warming and its remedies, regional conflicts, and so on....
"For the many institutions that haven’t yet adopted institutional neutrality, doing so will require thoughtful consideration by leadership and boards similar to that of the Kalven Committee at the University of Chicago in 1967. A recent statement by the newly installed president of Stanford University suggests that this approach may soon be instituted there. I hope the events at Harvard might lead our new president to consider a similar path. This would reduce the focus on what presidents, provosts, and deans say on specific political and social issues, and leave it to the community of scholars and students to deal -- hopefully in a respectful way -- with the conflicts that will always be with us."
From Wall Street Journal, "Leaders at Stanford, Williams and Elsewhere Limit Their Statements, but Neutrality Proves a Challenge"
Excerpts: "Leaders of some of the nation’s most high-profile colleges and universities are re-evaluating their roles as moral arbiters and public commentators in response to the bloody conflict now unfolding in Israel and Gaza.
"Backlash against their declarations has forced many to stumble -- issuing updates to their statements, and then clarifications to their updates -- in a near impossible effort to appease irate activists on both sides of a seemingly intractable issue."
From FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), "The Wisdom of the University of Chicago's Kalven Report".
Excerpt: "As colleges are increasingly called upon to announce positions on social and political issues, the Kalven Report reminds us that colleges are not critics -- they are 'the home and sponsor of critics.'"
From The Hill, "Should Colleges and Universities Speak on Political Issues?"
Excerpt: "In their statements, college presidents use the political as an avenue to get to the pastoral in ways that the Kalven committee did not anticipate. The post-Oct. 7 statements are a reminder that American universities focus not just on 'the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.' They strive to offer education in a community of care."
Two Very Different News Accounts About the Stanford Classroom Incident
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Stanford Instructor Suspended for Making Jewish Students Stand in Corner (Full article at The Messenger)
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Here’s What Students in the Course Say Actually Happened (Full article at Stanford Daily)
The Westminster Declaration re Censorship
We bring to your attention the newly released Westminster Declaration regarding censorship, a copy of which is now also posted at our Commentary webpage. Please also note our prior postings at the Stanford Concerns webpage regarding the activities of entities such as the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Virality Project and the Election Integrity Project.
We also restate here questions we and others have been asking: Are these truly independent and not outcome-driven core research activities that are conducted by members of the Stanford faculty? Or are they advocacy and implementation activities that are conducted primarily by third parties, should not be using the Stanford name in their names, and should not be running allegedly tax-deductible donations through Stanford. And in any event, who owns the intellectual property being generated by these activities, and are the relevant staff meeting Stanford's conflict of interest requirements, especially to the extent they may also be consulting for and otherwise working with the very same entities they are studying?
See also this essay by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and others posted at Public.
Excerpts from the Declaration: "Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’...
"Censorship in the name of 'preserving democracy' inverts what should be a bottom-up system of representation into a top-down system of ideological control. This censorship is ultimately counter-productive: it sows mistrust, encourages radicalization, and de-legitimizes the democratic process.
"In the course of human history, attacks on free speech have been a precursor to attacks on all other liberties. Regimes that eroded free speech have always inevitably weakened and damaged other core democratic structures. In the same fashion, the elites that push for censorship today are also undermining democracy. What has changed though, is the broad scale and technological tools through which censorship can be enacted...."
From The Atlantic: A Uniquely Terrible New DEI Policy
We previously posted an article here about the newly imposed policies at California community colleges for the hiring and promotion of faculty . We thus appreciate that The Atlantic itself has now weighed in on the subject.
Excerpt: "Attacks on faculty rights are frequent in academia, where professors’ words are now policed by illiberal administrators, state legislators, and students. I’ve reported on related controversies in American higher education for more than 20 years. But I’ve never seen a policy that threatens academic freedom or First Amendment rights on a greater scale than what is now unfolding in this country’s largest system of higher education: California’s community colleges."
(Full article at The Atlantic)
Other Articles of Interest
UCSF Prof. Vinay Prasad: Why Was My Talk at a Medical Conference Canceled?
(Full article at The Free Press; see also our prior postings about similar treatment of Stanford's Prof. of Medicine Jay Bhattacharya here and here)
Exodus of the Wrongthinkers from American Universities
Colleges used to encourage the exchange of challenging ideas. Now faculty members who challenge students’ beliefs are being forced to leave the profession. (Full article at The Free Press)
“The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish diversity of viewpoints." -- From the Kalven Report; see also our compilation here.
October 13, 2023
From Stanford Daily: Faculty Senate Discusses Concerns with Student Life
at Stanford
At its first meeting of the academic year, the Faculty Senate discussed student unhappiness with various aspects of student life at Stanford, including the neighborhood system for undergraduate housing that was launched three years ago. We have long advocated at our Back to Basics webpage that the neighborhood system be disbanded, among other things due to the fact that the buildings that comprise an alleged neighborhood aren't even near one another, the imposition of the eight neighborhoods eliminated many of the previous choices students had for the diverse types of housing that students actually want, and a major reason for student unhappiness at Stanford can be traced to this type of micro-managing of student life by the student affairs staff (see also More About Stanford'sBallooning Administrative Bureaucracy).
Excerpts:
“According to [Vice Provost for Student Affairs] Brubaker-Cole, reoccurring feedback from students included the importance of opportunities to group with friends and the physical organization (or lack thereof) of neighborhoods.... Friend groups being split up is ‘a huge friction point for students'....
“Brubaker-Cole also acknowledged concerns that buildings within neighborhoods were too spread out. The organization was a result of the need to spread row houses across neighborhoods, she said.
“The Neighborhood Task Force is focused on the future of the neighborhood system, including housing assignments, how the neighborhoods are spread around campus and equity across neighborhoods. Brubaker-Cole said the task force includes students from ‘very diverse backgrounds, housing experiences and interests.’
“Computer science professor Mehran Sahami Ph.D. ’99, who is a former RA and RF, said several students shared negative experiences with him tied to the neighborhood system. ‘I worry we are trying to over-engineer [student life], Sahami said.’”
(Full article at Stanford Daily)
From Michael Shellenberger: The Ongoing Spread of Censorship
Excerpts:
. . . A significant amount of the demand for censorship is coming from the Censorship Industrial Complex and does not represent the will of the people. The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and CDC have been working hand-in-glove with government-funded NGOs, like the Stanford Internet Observatory, to demand Internet companies censor disfavored views and voices on climate change, Covid, and the war in Ukraine, and other issues. Big Brother Watch in Britain has documented an eerily identical operation there, and we have been documenting similar Censorship Industrial Complexes around the world.
"But the fact of the matter is that there is genuine grassroots support for censorship, too. The share of adults in the U.S. who say the federal government should work with tech companies to restrict false information rose from 39% to 55% between 2018 and 2023. Democrats who favor government censorship increased from 40% to 70% between 2018 to 2023. Republicans have been better but are also wavering. Their support for censorship went from 37% to 28% to 39% in 2018, 2021, and 2023, respectively....
"The Censorship Industrial Complex is trying to reduce our complex, lived reality, language, and speech into simplistic binaries, namely truth vs. falsity and good vs. evil. Such simplistic thinking is only possible with fast thinking. Because people are in a hurry and don’t and can’t pay attention to major issues, they will agree with people who say things like, 'We must protect vulnerable people from this harmful disinformation!' But when asked to reflect on what that really means, they tend to become more free speech, not less. The one weird trick to making people support free speech is simply inspiring them to engage in slow thinking...."
(Full article at Public)
From Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams: Students Are Afraid of Expressing Their Opinions
Excerpts:
"The landscape of higher education in the United States is marked by extraordinary diversity.... Having personally visited numerous institutions across the country, I've observed a disconcertingly common trend on most campuses, irrespective of their diverse educational experiences and cultures: students from all backgrounds are gripped by a pervasive fear of speaking out and expressing their opinions. They regularly engage in self-censorship, restraining themselves from asking questions, openly sharing their thoughts in front of professors and peers, and taking intellectual risks due to the dread of being labeled or ostracized.
"This unsettling observation finds robust support in the most recent data on free speech from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The FIRE survey, encompassing over fifty-five thousand students at 254 colleges and universities, starkly underscores the prevalence of self-censorship among students. The data reveals that a majority of students, regardless of their backgrounds, are choosing silence, an outcome antithetical to the principles of genuine liberal education....
"The marketplace of ideas can only thrive when a multitude of perspectives are shared, challenged, examined, and debated -- an environment currently lacking in our educational institutions. Progressive monocultures continue to impede the free exchange of ideas, prompting us to question the purpose of an academic enterprise built on inquiry and discussion when it appears to have already predetermined answers to life's most complex questions.
"It is imperative that we commit to substantial changes aimed at revitalizing the culture of debate and discourse."
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a Stanford alum Class of '02.
(Full article at Real Clear Education)
From The Atlantic: Nothing Defines America's Social Divide Like a College Education
Excerpts:
"Inequality is one of the great constants. But what sets those at the top of society apart from those at the bottom has varied greatly.
" . . . much of America’s transformation in recent decades -- including many of the country’s problems -- can be ascribed to the ascendancy of a different marker of distinction: education. Whether or not you have graduated from college is especially important. This single social marker now determines much more than it did in the past what sort of economic opportunities you are likely to have and even how likely you are to get married.
"The Founders of the American republic worried about education for another reason: They saw an educated populace as a prerequisite for political stability."
(Full article at The Atlantic)
From University of Chicago: Ongoing Forum re Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Excerpts:
"Amid a wave of book bans around the country and a surge in white supremacist propaganda in Illinois, the University of Chicago is launching a new forum to promote free speech and encourage open debate....
"'The big problem today is there's too much speech and not enough listening,' said Tom Ginsburg, inaugural faculty chair of the forum and a professor of international and comparative law at the university. 'The goal isn't to have some immediate solution between two opposing sides, but just to show that you can disagree respectfully and to hopefully have both sides at least understand where the other one's coming from,' he said."...
"The university’s current policy on free expression, known informally as the Chicago Principles, is a set of guidelines to uphold a commitment that 'debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.' Developed by several U. of C. academics at the behest of then-university president Richard J. Zimmer in 2014, the Chicago Principles have since been signed by more than 100 universities and colleges. Concerns have been raised by students and academics alike, however, that the statement of principles is too formal and legalistic, and misses students’ underlying critique of free speech policies."
(Full article at Hyde Park Herald. A more complete explanation of this ongoing program at the University of Chicago is here and our own compilation of the Chicago Trifecta re freedom of speech, the hiring and promotion of academic staff and a university's role in political and social matters is here)
From Cornell Alumni: The Problem of Balancing Freedom of Expression with DEI
Excerpts:
" . . . We are heartened that President Martha Pollack and university leaders have heard our calls and named this academic year 'The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell.' This follows Pollack’s excellent decision to reject the Student Assembly’s trigger-warning proposal and her earlier return of the Abraham Lincoln bust to the school library after it was removed for offending a student. We applaud these moves....
"Free expression enables genuine diversity. It recognizes that a person’s identity -- be it racial, ethnic, sexual or any other identity -- doesn’t just manifest in ways that we see but also in ways that we hear through dialogue and debate. Diversity comes with unique worldviews and belief systems, and we cannot celebrate a person’s diversity without hearing them out.
"DEI, on the other hand, directly suppresses free expression. It is a set of policies and practices that include requiring faculty applicants to pledge allegiance to a political creed and filtering out any who don’t. It demands that students take courses that teach that only a narrow set of viewpoints is correct and acceptable. It creates a reporting system that encourages students to tattle on those who offend them, thus chilling speech that upsets the dominant orthodoxy...."
(Full article at DC Journal)
From Stanford Classics Prof. Josiah Ober: The Future of Democracy Rests on the Civic Bargain
Excerpts:
“Democracy is messy, says Josiah Ober in his new book. ‘Democratic citizens must live among and negotiate the terms of their common lives with others who hold diverging interests. That means deliberating with people with whom we disagree.’
“’Instead of inquiring into the causes of democracy’s death, we looked to history’s long survivors for clues to democracy’s emergence, evolution, and strategies for persistence,’ Ober and his co-author Brook Manville write.
“. . . Ober discusses what he and Manville say is essential for democracy’s survival: the civic bargain. Without it, democracy is just a lofty goal, they argue. Democracy is about deal-making and compromises, and the civic bargain lays the groundwork for that cooperation and collective self-governance to take place."
(Full article at Stanford News; see also the Stanford Civics Initiative)
AFSA Webinars of Possible Interest
Jodi Shawn, Skin Deep and the Battle for the Soul of Smith College, October 16 at 11:30 AM Pacific Time, signup for YouTube notification here
Brown Prof. John Tomasi, Elevating Cornell from Within the Heterodox Way, October 23 at 2:30 PM Pacific Time, signup for YouTube notification here
Other Articles of Interest
The Ultimate in Parent Helicoptering. College Kids Don’t Need a Concierge. (Full article at CNN)
After Shunning One of Its Scientists, University of Pennsylvania Celebrates Her Nobel Prize. The university that once demoted Katalin Karikó and cut her pay has made millions of dollars from patenting her work. (Full article at Wall Street Journal)
"Learning to listen thoughtfully is as important a skill as any other you’ll learn here. I encourage you to embrace the opportunity to get comfortable with occasionally being uncomfortable. Because doing so will help you learn and grow immeasurably.” -- Sarah Church, Stanford Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at New Student Convocation, September 2023
October 6, 2023
New Data on Stanford's High Administrative Costs
Last week's Newsletter (September 29, 2023) had a link to a recent article in The College Fix about Stanford’s high number of administrators per student. We have subsequently updated our Stanford Concerns webpage to include additional charts of administrative costs per student at Stanford as compared to Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Northwestern, Cornell, UC Berkeley and UCLA. We suggest readers take a look at these stark numbers, including how out of line Stanford appears to be when compared with other major research universities.
Please also note again our Back to Basics white paper where we recommended months ago that Stanford's administrative costs be significantly reduced and that every dollar saved, dollar for dollar, be devoted instead solely to undergraduate scholarships and research grants and graduate student fellowships. It's time to make some tough but long-needed decisions.
There's Lots of Good News at Stanford, Too
In recent weeks, a number of us have been on campus and heard some outstanding panels as well as talked with numerous faculty, students, administrators and other alumni. There is no doubt, a lot of good things are happening at Stanford and we don't want readers to forget that. The reason for these Newsletters and our website is not to tear down Stanford but rather to express concerns that are widely held by people with longtime connections with the university. And since the administration and even the alumni association are limited in being openly critical, we believe our Newsletters and website can offer a channel of communication that otherwise hasn't existed in recent times. What we are pointing out can also help support faculty, students, administrators and others to retain the fundamental values of this great university while also implementing the needed reforms.
For those looking for updates on activities at Stanford, numerous publications and websites are available. This is but a tiny fraction of these resources:
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Stanford Report, circulated daily by the university
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STANFORD magazine, published five times a year by the Stanford Alumni Association
Alumni Around the Country Are Stepping Up to Defend Free Speech and Critical Thinking
“. . . higher education institutions have tended to view alumni solely as cheerleaders and walking checkbooks who can be entertained and solicited for financial support while their ideas and concerns can be managed or ignored. By treating alumni as branded cash cows, colleges and universities are snubbing the most enduring stakeholder group in the higher education ecosystem.
“Alumni, who retain their academic affiliation for a lifetime upon graduation, are also uniquely positioned to hold their alma maters accountable to their core missions. From skyrocketing costs to burgeoning free speech violations, it is clear the higher education system is in serious need of course correction.
“That’s why a growing number of alumni are no longer content to write blank checks and cheer from the sidelines. They have become alarmed by the erosion of civil discourse and the abysmal state of free expression on campus and are organizing to revive those essential values in a number of important ways.
“Having benefited from education grounded in the free exchange of ideas, alumni are living, breathing testaments to the importance of free and open inquiry in higher education and democratic society. Their positive experiences on campus now motivate them to ensure that future generations of students receive a solid grounding in the same values and develop the intellectual fortitude to grapple with ideas that challenge even their most closely held beliefs.
“’I think the future of the country depends on the educational system,’ said Stuart Taylor, Jr., co-founder of AFSA and president of Princetonians for Free Speech, in a recent video highlighting the national alumni movement. ‘You would hope that [students] would have a sense of our national heritage and they would have learned some history, but it’s college where they should really learn how free speech works in practice, how it helps you figure out what you think, how it helps you communicate with your fellow students and your professors and the people you go to work for after college.’”
(Full Article at Washington Examiner)
Stanford Has Installed Still More Surveillance Cameras, This Time Where Students Congregate
Excerpts from Stanford Review:
"Safetyism -- the ideal of safety being championed above all -- has trojan-horsed its way into the core of undergraduate life at Stanford....
"Stanford administrators and spokespeople have droned about the necessity of keeping students safe, whether from bike theft, imposter students, or, more solemnly, sexual assault. But this is a flimsy excuse for what the university is really doing....
"But we mustn't be surprised. This infringement on privacy is the next logical step after the honor code’s near-elimination last year. The university -- now the nanny university -- needs to oversee students take their exams and live their social lives. The university can't trust students to do either.
"Safetyism is at fault for many problems young people face, from indecision to the death of dating to the inability to take risks. By watching their every move, Stanford will paralyze its students further. We shouldn’t let the administration continue to strike us at our knees."
(Full article here; see also last year's Stanford Daily article Inside Stanford's War on Fun and Stanford's mind-numbing rules for holding a party)
To Improve Higher Education, Schools Must Return to a Strong Core Curriculum
“There are many issues that need to be addressed, including the cost of education and the rampant controversies related to campus free speech and intellectual diversity. One issue that is not discussed enough, however, is curriculum: What do students learn at college?
“Colleges could and should be offering more to their students in terms of education, and they should be expecting more of them, too. Returning to strong core curricula, which give students a strong sense of accomplishment and bring them together around shared ideas and concerns, would be an excellent way for higher education to win back the confidence of the public…At least then it would be clear why you should attend college: to learn.”
(Full article at Washington Examiner; see also Stanford's new COLLEGE requirement for freshmen)
Other Articles of Interest
What Qualities Do College Leaders Need to Lead Major Institutional Restructuring? (Full article at Higher Ed Dive)
New Survey Reveals Warning Signs for American Democracy – We Must Double Down on Youth Civic Readiness (Full article at Citizens and Scholars)
University of Nebraska’s New First Amendment Clinic to Train Law Students in Free Speech, Freedom of Press (Full article at College Fix)
Teachers Can Advance Educational Equity Through Clear, High Expectations. “More often than not, people perform up to what’s expected of them. It’s why goal setting is such an effective way to self-motivate as well as motivate others." (Full article at Ed Source)
“Universities are indispensable for a free and prosperous society. They are the engine that drives both scientific and social progress. They educate students for career and responsible citizenship and habituate them to self-discovery and the pursuit of truth.” -- American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA)
September 29, 2023
Alumni Groups Urge U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Case Regarding Campus Policies for Reporting Allegedly Biased Statements or Actions of Others
The Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) and other college and university groups around the country have submitted an amicus curiae brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case regarding the policies and procedures at Virginia Tech by which students and others can report another student, often anonymously, for something the targeted student allegedly said or did. The targeted student is then called in by administrators for counseling and other possible actions. We have previously posted an article here about Stanford's own policies and procedures for reporting allegedly biased speech and actions of others.
Excerpts:
“…the use of bias reporting systems has become pervasive across American college and university campuses and these systems create a climate of fear and intimidation that causes many students to self-censor and discourages constitutionally protected speech. These bias reporting systems have no place at a university whose defining purpose as a place of learning and human fulfillment can only be achieved through a steadfast commitment to free speech."
(Press release at Princetonians for Free Speech; list of AFSA members and links to their websites here; and excerpts and a link to Judge Harvie Wilkinson's dissenting opinion in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision is included with our prior article More About Campus Bias Response Teams and Programs)
From The College Fix: At Stanford, Administrators Nearly Outnumber the Undergrads
Editor's note: The following article about the high number of full-time administrators at Stanford was published last week in The College Fix. Other similar articles with similar numbers have been published by national news entities for over a year now. In that regard, we note the discrepancy between what some articles say is nearly 17,000 non-teaching personnel at Stanford (a number Stanford itself shows in its Facts 2023 book) and this article's number of over 7,100 full-time administrators, and where all of the numbers come from numbers Stanford itself has reported to federal data bases.
We believe a key reason for the differences is that some commenters count only staff who are purely administrative (over 7,100) whereas other commenters count the total number of non-teaching personnel (nearly 17,000) the latter of which apparently includes staff at the various special-purpose centers and similar non-teaching entities. In prior Newsletters, we have questioned why these centers and other entities are located on the campus if they are primarily engaged in advocacy and implementation activities versus cutting-edge and truly independent research that is initiated and supervised by the faculty themselves. We also have said that if these entities are primarily engaged in advocacy and implementation activities, they should be relocated to something comparable to the original Stanford Research Institute and/or facilities located in the Stanford Research Park, should stop using the Stanford name in their own names, and should stop running grants and allegedly tax-deducible donations through Stanford. There also needs to be confirmation that these entities and their personnel are complying with Stanford's rules for ownership of intellectual property, conflicts of interest and the like.
An explanation that has been provided by some Stanford administrators is that Stanford does internally what other schools outsource. But we have seen compilations that go back 15 to 20 years -- during which time we believe there was no substantial change in what was done internally versus outsourced -- and where the number of faculty rises slightly (to 2,304 of which 1,703 are members of the Academic Council), the number of secretaries and similar support personnel actually goes down by nearly 1,000, but the number of managerial and professional staff shoots up in steep hockey stick fashion (in one compilation, an increase of over 9,000 during the same 15- to 20-year period).
Another explanation provided by some administrators is that the high numbers include non-teaching staff at the Medical Center, but the instructions for the federal data bases are explicit NOT to include such staff in the numbers, plus Stanford's two hospitals and numerous medical clinics are in totally separate entities and not part of the university for these purposes.
One way to clear up these questions, as proposed by a reader's letter long posted on our home page, would be for Stanford to publish a master organizational chart showing the density of administrators and other staff in all specific areas of responsibility and an explanation of what these non-faculty people do.
Excerpts:
“Stanford University employs nearly the same number of administrators as undergrads enrolled at the school — even as the number of educators per student has decreased over the last decade, an analysis conducted by The College Fix found.
"During the 2021-22 school year, which are the most recent data available, Stanford had 7,121 full-time administrators and support staff on its payroll, according to information the university filed with the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
"In contrast, its reported undergraduate student enrollment came in at 7,645. In other words, there are about 931 full-time administrators per 1,000 undergrads at Stanford.
"This is a nearly 22 percent increase from the 2013-14 school year, when there were only 764 administrators per 1,000 students, IPEDS data show....
“Asked to weigh in on the findings, a Stanford University professor told The College Fix the problem with administrative bloat is ‘not so much how much they cost, but what they do all day, which is to gum up the works and make trouble for everyone.’
“’If they were accomplishing anything important it would be hard to object,’ the professor said, but he added that most of the negative press Stanford has received in recent years involves ‘busy body administrative staff making work for themselves.’”
(Full article at The College Fix. See also our own Back to Basics webpage and a prior article at our Stanford Concerns webpage regarding Stanford's Ballooning Administrative Costs)
Respectful Provocation: The University Skill for Our Times?
Excerpts:
“The UK university campus is not a happy place…. But the discontent we witness now is quite distinct, driven more by identity politics than party politics, directed at ideologies rather than governments, often more factional than unifying. Students are not bound together in pursuit of a common cause but engaged in a multitude of campaigns that appear to provoke perennial anxiety rather than the exuberant optimism of a new generation....
“Challenging students about their assumptions and values is strongly associated with their development of positive attitudes towards those who are different from themselves. It makes them more likely to reflect critically on their own assumptions, more open to learning from others and so better equipped to engage with the challenges of living in a diverse society. This process is, however, compromised when students perceive such diversity to be handled insensitively, underlining how provocative encounters need to be framed within a respectful approach to difference. It is respectful provocation that will capture the potential of this generation of students....
“We live in a very different context from that of 10 or even five years ago – new challenges demand new solutions. Many of these challenges are generated or complicated by social media and AI, and these require particular consideration. Fostering in students and staff a more critical awareness of how 21st century technologies both empower and marginalize will help us exercise more caution in our dependence on them – and more intelligence in their application.
“Get this right and not only will campus relations improve, but we might also be able to start speaking about degree outcomes in a broader sense than simple earning potential. Earning power is important, of course, but let’s not lose sight of the ways in which universities promote a more complex social good, one of undeniable value within the fractious society in which we live.”
(Full article at Times Higher Education/Inside Higher Ed)
CNN Podcast: The Free Speech Wars on Campus
CNN's Podcast Description:
“Between student protests, controversial speakers, and debates over 'safe spaces,' complaints about free speech on campus are louder than ever. How do school leaders respond to these gripes? And how do they balance freedom of expression – and the idea that speech can be violence?
“We have two college presidents from the front lines of this debate: Roslyn Clark Artis of Benedict College and Michael Roth of Wesleyan University. Both schools are part of the so-called ‘Campus Call for Free Expression.’”
(Listen to podcast here. Skip to 33-second mark to avoid ad.)
Other Articles of Interest
Who Should Shape What Colleges Teach? Not the government, most Americans say. (Full article at the Chronicle of Higher Education)
Gen Z Can't Work Alongside People of Different Views Because 'They Haven't Got the Skills to Disagree' Says a British TV Boss (Full article at Yahoo! Finance)
The Value of an Education That Never Ends op-ed by the president of Wesleyan University (Full article at NY Times)
"...we at Stanford insist that all faculty, students, and staff have the right to think and speak freely and that they have the right to offer analysis, opinion, and argument in a manner that is both free and responsible. These twin commitments -- to freedom and responsibility -- are the lifeblood of a university." -- Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper
September 22, 2023
Duke Professor Teaches Students How to Listen
Prof. John Rose has been teaching courses for several years at Duke University that aim to get students to be more comfortable expressing diverse viewpoints and to respect one another for doing so. The official Duke alumni magazine recently featured Prof. Rose in an article about his activities as well as the activities of an alumni group, Friends of Duke, that is similar to our Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking.
Excerpts:
“'We talk a lot about courage – finding the courage to speak, to dissent – and I’ve observed that courage is contagious. Students will follow upon a brave comment with another brave comment.' [says Prof. Rose]....
“He has received multiple teaching commendations but insists that the success of his class is due to his students. He makes himself real and earns their trust. Each semester, he invites them to his home and introduces them to his family.
"Rose taught students that listening with not only an open mind but a heart for goodwill grounded their learning and allowed them to share their thinking authentically.
“The alumni group [Friends for Duke] is also encouraging all faculty to include on their syllabi a statement saying they support intellectual diversity and freedom of speech in their classrooms.
“''We believe Duke’s long-standing commitment to free and open inquiry and the robust exchange of ideas positions the university particularly well to be a leader among institutions of higher education.... Without this, a university ceases to be a university' [said one of the leaders of Friends of Duke].”
(Full article at Duke Magazine. Note also that we have long had posted at our own website here Prof. Rose's WSJ op-ed from a year ago "How I Liberated My College Classroom.")
More About Stanford-Based Censorship Activities
For several months, we have periodically posted information from third parties about the alleged censorship activities tied to Stanford-based entities including the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Virality Project and the Election Integrity Project (EIP). For example, see "Stanford's Alleged Roles in Censoring the Web" and "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Won." In that light, we bring to your attention a posting last week by Michael Shellenberger entitled “Censorship Demands Behind Deep Fake Hype.” Whether or not one agrees with the advocacy and implementation activities in which these entities are primarily engaged, versus the types of independent research and teaching that are the purpose of a university, we again raise these questions: why are these entities being housed at Stanford, being allowed to use the Stanford name in their names, and having grants and allegedly tax-deductible contributions to them being run through Stanford?
Excerpts:
“... I view AI as a human, not a machine, problem, as well as dual-use technology with the potential for good and bad. My attitude toward AI is the same, fundamentally, as it is toward other powerful tools we have developed, from nuclear energy to biomedical research. With such powerful tools, democratic civilian control and transparent use of these technologies allow for their safe use, while secret, undemocratic, and military control increases the danger. The problem, in a nutshell, is not with the technology of computers attempting to emulate human thinking through algorithms, but rather how and who will control it....
“This Censorship Industrial Complex of government agencies and government contractors has its roots in the war on terrorism and the expansion of surveillance after 9/11.... The goal of Deep Trust appeared to be to advocate for policies aimed at criminalizing ‘digital harms,’ including forms of speech that hurt people.... It was also in 2020 that DHS’ CISA [Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency] created an ‘Election Integrity Partnership’ to censor election skepticism. It partnered with four groups: Graphika, the University of Washington, the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab, and the Stanford Internet Observatory.... In Deep Trust’s report, it names those four groups and progressive philanthropic donors, and other NGOs and government agencies. EIP claims it classified 21,897,364 individual posts.... EIP, the Election Integrity Project, was the precursor to the Virality Project, which successfully pressured social media platforms to censor ‘often true’ information about vaccines....
“I believe that the way CISA used AI to mass-flag so-called ‘Covid misinformation’ in 2021, through its partnership with The Virality Project, created by Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and others, was a government infringement on freedom of speech.... The threat to our civil liberties comes not from AI but from the people who want to control it and use it to censor, rather than let users control information. The obvious solution is for Congress to require that social media companies allow users to moderate their own content.... Users should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to use these filters and other tools, not Internet companies, the government, a nongovernmental organization, or anyone else.”
(Full article at our Commentary webpage here or at The Public website here.)
The Limits of Academic Freedom
Excerpt:
"The principle of academic freedom has long stood as the guarantor of the free and open inquiry requisite to the academic pursuit of truth and is widely understood to allow for no exceptions. But adherence to the principle does not preclude all limits on faculty conduct. Academic freedom does not require colleges and universities to tolerate bad teaching or incompetence. Nor should it protect professorial conduct that undermines open inquiry and pursuit of truth."
(Full article at National Association of Scholars)
DEI Statements Stir Debate on College Campuses
Excerpts:
“Yoel Inbar, a noted psychology professor at the University of Toronto, figured he might be teaching this fall at UCLA.... Last year, the university’s psychology department offered his female partner a faculty appointment. Now the department was interested in recruiting him as a so-called partner hire, a common practice in academia.
“The university asked him to fill out the requisite papers, including a statement that affirmed his belief and work in diversity, equity and inclusion.
“Dr. Inbar figured all had gone well, that his work and liberal politics fit well with the university.... But a few days later, the department chair emailed and told him that more than 50 graduate students had signed a letter strongly denouncing his candidacy. Why? In part, because on his podcast years earlier, he had opposed diversity statements — like the one he had just written.
“Candidates who did not ‘look outstanding’ on diversity, the vice provost at U.C. Davis instructed search committees, could not advance, no matter the quality of their academic research. Credentials and experience would be examined in a later round.
“At Berkeley, a faculty committee rejected 75 percent of applicants in life sciences and environmental sciences and management purely on diversity statements, according to a new academic paper by Steven Brint, a professor of public policy at U.C. Riverside, and Komi Frey, a researcher for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which has opposed diversity statements.
“If you write: ‘I believe that everyone should be treated equally,’ you will be branded as a right winger, Vinod Aggarwal, a political science professor at the university, said in an interview. ‘This is compelled speech, plain and simple.’”
(Full article at New York Times)
Other Articles of Interest
Gen Z Values College, but Affordability Concerns Remain
Only about half of K-12 students who want to pursue higher education believe they can pay for it, a Gallup and Walton Family Foundation poll found. (Full article at Higher Ed Dive)
College-Ranking Whiplash
Elite private universities maintain their dominance in traditional college rankings, but an assessment of free speech on campus tells a different story. (Full article at City Journal)
Survey Shows Many Top Universities are Seeing a Stifling of Free Speech (Full article at Just the News)
"The exchange of contending and supporting ideas generated by insightful and engaged minds makes the position of university president one of the most interesting jobs in the world." – Former Stanford President John Hennessy
September 15, 2023
Presidential Search Committee Announced
Stanford Board of Trustees Chair Jerry Yang announced yesterday the formation of a 20-member search committee to select Stanford’s 13th president. The full list of committee members can be found at this website. The search committee plans to hold a number of "listening sessions" in the fall, and there also is an email address for anyone who wishes to submit their thoughts including possible nominations. (See full letter here.)
In light of the issues the search committee will need to consider, we suggest a good starting point would be for them to view former Stanford President Gerhard Casper's video posted immediately below as well as what has long been posted at our Back to Basics and Stanford Concerns webpages.
Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper re the Role of the University in Modern Society
As Stanford and other colleges and universities nationwide and around the world discuss the role of the university in modern society, we highly recommend this 4-1/2-minute video of former Stanford President Gerhard Casper. It was recorded nine years ago but we believe it has even greater applicability to the issues being discussed today.
See also our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta here.
Federal Appeals Court Rules Federal Agencies Violated First Amendment Protections in Their Interactions with Big Tech
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld most elements of a lower federal court’s preliminary injunction regarding the actions by various federal agencies (the FBI, CDC, others) to have social media companies restrict and even remove articles, Tweets and other statements that government officials didn’t approve of. The Fifth Circuit opinion also specifically mentions the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliated Virality Project and Election Integrity Project but did not include them in the preliminary injunction on the basis that they have their own First Amendment rights but left open whether at some point the involvement of federal officials with such entities might also cross legitimate boundaries.
A PDF copy of the Fifth Circuit opinion is now posted at our website here. Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya is among the named plaintiffs in the case, and we have posted a recent essay by him about this judicial decision here in addition to a previous essay by him.
Excerpts from the opinion:
. . . “White House officials did not only flag content. Later that year, they started monitoring the platforms’ moderation activities, too. In that vein, the officials asked for -- and received -- frequent updates from the platforms.... From the beginning, the platforms cooperated with the White House. One company made an employee ‘available on a regular basis,’ and another gave the officials access to special tools like a ‘Partner Support Portal’ which ‘ensure[d]' that their requests were ‘prioritized automatically.’...
“The platforms apparently yielded. They not only continued to take down content the officials flagged, and provided requested data to the White House, but they also changed their moderation policies expressly in accordance with the officials’ wishes....
“It is true that the officials have an interest in engaging with social media companies, including on issues such as misinformation and election interference. But the government is not permitted to advance these interests to the extent that it engages in viewpoint suppression....
“Finally, the fifth prohibition -- which bars the officials from ‘collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group’ to engage in the same activities the officials are proscribed from doing on their own -- may implicate private, third-party actors that are not parties in this case and that may be entitled to their own First Amendment protections.... Plaintiffs have not shown that the inclusion of these third parties is necessary to remedy their injury. So, this provision cannot stand at this juncture...."
(See also this NY Times summary of the decision.)
(See also our prior webpage postings about the Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities here and where, in recent Newsletters, we have suggested that the activities by these and similar entities are mostly about advocacy and implementation versus core teaching and research and, as such, should be moved off the campus (it is the main reason the Stanford Research Institute and the Stanford Research Park originally were created), should stop using the Stanford name in their names, and should stop running their donations through Stanford.)
University of San Diego Allows Students to Invite Speakers, but Only if No
One Is Offended
FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) recently focused on a situation at the University of San Diego where administrators said they fully support free expression while at the same time prohibiting the appearance of a speaker who had been invited by an officially recognized student organization because the administrators had objections to the speaker and statements the speaker had made in the past.
Excerpts:
“A new semester brings the same free speech issues, this time at the University of San Diego, where administrators rejected a request by the College Republicans to host political commentator Matt Walsh because of the potential for students to feel ‘not comfortable.’...
“Then on Aug. 2, Vice President for Student Life Byron Howlett claimed USD ‘is in full support of freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry’ as ‘that’s the basis of a university’ -- but he still said the College Republicans can’t host Walsh because his views are ‘very disrespectful’ and ‘grossly offensive.’"
(Full article at The Fire)
Other Articles of Interest
New Center for Academic Pluralism to Produce Scholarship Promoting Open Inquiry and Viewpoint Diversity (full article at The College Fix)
What Students Have Said About ChatGPT (full article at Inside Higher Ed)
Two-Thirds of College Students Think Shouting Down a Public Speaker Can Be Acceptable (full article at Reason)
With Budget Battles Looming in Congress, Prospects for Higher Ed Reforms Don’t Look Bright (full article at Inside Higher Ed)
"In 1900 Jane Stanford had President Jordan fire a faculty member for his political views. Distinguished members of the faculty resigned. An indirect result was the founding of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), but the fight for academic freedom began here, at Stanford. We have a historic obligation not to let it die here." -- Stanford Prof. Russell Berman
September 8, 2023
Stanford Dean Debra Satz and Prof. Dan Edelstein: By Abandoning Civics, Colleges Helped Create the Culture Wars
This guest essay appeared in the September 3, 2023 edition of the NY Times. It is written by Debra Satz, dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, and Dan Edelstein, the faculty director of Stanford's Civic, Liberal and Global Education program.
Excerpts:
"Free speech is once again a flashpoint on college campuses. This year has seen at least 20 instances in which students or faculty members attempted to rescind invitations or to silence speakers. In March, law school students at our own institution made national news when they shouted down a conservative federal judge, Kyle Duncan. And by signing legislation that undermines academic freedom in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is carrying out what is effectively a broad assault against higher education....
"Left to the market, it [civic education] will always be undersupplied. It is rarely a priority for employers or for job seekers to promote the skills of active listening, mutual reasoning, respecting differences and open-mindedness. We need to reinvest in it.
"In the absence of civic education, it is not surprising that universities are at the epicenter of debates over free speech and its proper exercise. Free speech is hard work. The basic assumptions and attitudes necessary for cultivating free speech do not come to us naturally. Listening to people with whom you disagree can be unpleasant. But universities have a moral and civic duty to teach students how to consider and weigh contrary viewpoints, and how to accept differences of opinion as a healthy feature of a diverse society. Disagreement is in the nature of democracies.
"Universities and colleges must do a better job of explaining to our students the rationale for free speech, as well as cultivating in them the skills and mind-set necessary for its practice. The free-market curriculum model is simply not equipped for this task. We cannot leave this imperative up to student choice.
"At Stanford, since 2021, we once again have a single, common undergraduate requirement. By structuring its curriculum around important topics rather than canonical texts, and by focusing on the cultivation of democratic skills such as listening, reasonableness and humility, we have sought to steer clear of the cultural issues that doomed Western Civ. The new requirement was approved by our faculty senate in May 2020 without a single dissenting vote.
"Called Civic, Liberal and Global Education, it includes a course on citizenship in the 21st century. Delivered in a small discussion-seminar format, this course provides students with the skills, training and perspectives for engaging in meaningful ways with others, especially when they disagree. All students read the same texts, some canonical and others contemporary. Just as important, all students work on developing the same skills...."
(Full article at NY Times)
Stanford Has Significant Decline in FIRE’s Annual Free Speech Rankings
FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and College Pulse have just released their 2024 free speech rankings of U.S. colleges and universities and where Stanford has fallen by 101 positions in the list, possibly due in part to events last year at the law school but also reflecting responses to this year's student survey. Last year, Stanford was rated “average” at #106 out of 203 colleges and universities versus this year where it is rated "below average" at #207 out of 248. The areas where Stanford students scored the lowest were comfort expressing ideas (#155 out of 248) and approval of illiberal protest tactics (#237 out of 248).
(Full list here including detailed numbers and comments for each school; PDF copy of the full report here including discussion of the survey results, methodologies that were used, etc.)
The Current Model of Higher Education is Failing
Excerpts:
“In American higher education enrollments are down, tuition is up, and more schools are either shrinking their programs and their faculty or simply going out of business. Reforms are urgently needed in order to attract and retain students and to make postsecondary education more affordable....
“The cumulative inflation rate for the last twenty years in the U.S. is 66 percent. However, in-state tuition and fees for public national universities over the same period increased by 175 percent, according to U.S. News and World Report.
“Why the difference? If the schools’ basic expenses rose at roughly the rate of inflation, why did the cost rise even higher? One answer is the rise and rapidly rising cost of administrative and nonteaching positions. It is at least doubtful that they need so many....
“If higher education is going to be the engine of upward mobility as it has been in the past, then better financial management and some difficult reforms must move ahead.”
(Full article at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Costs” at our website.)
Over 4 in 5 College Seniors Report Burnout During Their Undergraduate Experience
Excerpts:
. . . “A May survey from College Pulse and Inside Higher Ed found 56% of college students experienced chronic stress. Students with disabilities and mental health conditions reported even higher levels of chronic stress.
“These issues can drive students to leave college. Around 2 in 5 students considered stopping out of college in 2022 within a six-month period, up from 37% the year before, according to a recent survey from the Lumina Foundation and Gallup. Students cited emotional stress and mental health as the top reasons for possibly leaving higher education.
“College debt is also weighing heavily on students’ minds, according to the new Handshake poll.
“More than half of college seniors expect to have student loan debt when they graduate next year, it found. And more than two-thirds of respondents, 69%, believe their debt will impact which jobs they consider after getting their diploma.”
(Full article at Higher Ed Dive)
Other Articles of Interest
Five Ways University Presidents Can Prove Their Commitment to Free Speech (full article from 2019 at The Fire)
I Left Out the Full Truth to Get Published in Nature (full article at The Free Press)
The Missed Opportunity of Office Hours (full article at Chronicle of Higher Education)
The First Three-Year Degree Programs Win Approval (full article at Inside Higher Ed)
Stanford Ranks Third in This Year's Forbes Ratings, Fourth in WSJ/College Pulse Ratings (full article at Forbes with the top ten being, in this order, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, Columbia, UCLA, Penn, Harvard and Williams; and full article and list at WSJ with the top ten being, in this order, Princeton, MIT, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Penn, Amherst, Claremont McKenna and Babson)
"The true strength of universities lies in their ability to be impartial, to pursue truth, and to challenge prevailing ideologies, regardless of political pressures. Independence from government ensures the freedom to explore and discover without fear of retribution or censorship." -- Mary Sue Coleman, President of the Association of American Universities
September 1, 2023
A Year to Reflect on Free Speech and Critical Thinking
One of our readers forwarded to us Cornell President Martha E. Pollack’s letter last week welcoming students and faculty back to campus. The letter focuses on the issues of freedom of expression and critical thinking in ways we would hope Stanford’s new leadership can similarly express and then implement this coming academic year. The text of the entire letter is posted at our website here.
All indications are that this coming academic year will see a robust discussion nationwide, both on and off campus, about the importance of free speech and academic freedom at our U.S. colleges and universities and, if any restrictions are to be imposed, who gets to decide and why? Our own view and which we have long advocated is that Stanford should adopt the Chicago Trifecta (compilations here) on the fundamental belief that this is what a university is supposed to be about.
Excerpts:
“Throughout this academic year, students, faculty, and staff from all our campuses will be invited to engage in activities designed to build understanding and foster discussion around the freedoms on which higher education, and democracy, depend.
“This will be the first themed year ever held at Cornell, and our reasons for engaging in it could not be more important. Free speech is under attack, and the assaults upon it have ranged in recent years from attempts to shut down campus speakers, all the way to laws that ban books from libraries and ideas from classrooms.
“Free expression and academic freedom are essential to our academic mission of discovering and disseminating new knowledge and educating the next generation of global citizens. They are key to our ability to equip our students with the skills needed for effective participation in democracy: from active listening and engaging across difference, to leading controversial discussions and pursuing effective advocacy.
“ . . . strong, thoughtful organizations can and must adopt core values, and Cornell, since its founding, has valued inclusion -- just as it values public engagement, and respect for the natural environment, and free expression itself.
“As a community of scholars, we need not shy away from the challenges of holding values that are sometimes in tension with one another: such tensions will exist in any sufficiently rich and mature value set.
“These are complex issues, and we must address them by doing what we do best as a university: engaging in discussion and debate, openly and with respect for each other. It is my hope that our theme year will foster exactly that kind of exploration and reflection; and that, through our efforts, Cornell will demonstrate leadership as a university, and become a role model of how a diverse society that prizes free expression can thrive.”
Stanford-Affiliated Project Liberty Is Lobbying for Passage of Federal Legislation
re Web Access
In our July 14 Newsletter, we posted a link to Stanford’s announcement that it has joined Project Liberty. At the time, we raised concerns whether a university like Stanford should be engaged in these sorts of implementation and advocacy activities versus core teaching and research, and where comments posted at subsequent news articles around the country were highly critical of these developments.
This past week, we have seen television ads by Project Liberty specifically telling viewers to write their U.S. Senators and demand passage of the Kids Online Safety Act. Whether we or others might agree or disagree with the concerns being expressed in the ad and in the proposed legislation, since when is lobbying like this an appropriate role for Stanford or its affiliates?
Stanford and others might respond, the advocacy group is a separately incorporated entity. And to which we respond, that entity is using the same name (Project Liberty) and in the end, it all comes back to the same core group of organizers and thus also to some of the same key people and activities at Stanford. At some point, the levels of coordination and "at behest" activities can cross the line of what is and isn't permissible under federal and state nonprofit and political laws, and in addition to legal issues, there also are issues of appearances.
Which is why we have previously suggested that this and similar entities and activities need to be moved off campus, need to remove Stanford from their names (as in the Stanford Internet Observatory) and need to stop indicating support from Stanford including running donations through Stanford.
Stanford Internet Observatory Criticized for Proposal to Rate Trustworthiness of
News Sources
Not only is the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates lobbying for specific federal legislation regarding access to the web (see above), but they also apparently are promoting the idea that they or others should be given authority to decide what are and are not trustworthy sources of news.
Excerpts:
“A proposal in a Stanford University journal [The Journal of Online Trust and Safety] for ‘news source trustworthiness ratings’ would, if it advances, be like a digital reboot of the CIA's psychedelic mind-control experiments from the Cold War era, says a former State Department cyber official who now leads an online free speech watchdog group....
"'The whole point' of the study ‘is you don't even need fact-checkers to fact-check the story,’ a labor-intensive endeavor across the internet, if social media platforms simply apply a ‘scarlet letter’ to disfavored news sources.... By creating ‘the appearance of having done a fact-check, it’s deliberately fraudulent.’...
"The journal was launched nearly two years ago by the Stanford Internet Observatory, a leader in the public-private Election Integrity Partnership that mass-reported alleged election misinformation to Big Tech and Virality Project that sought to throttle admittedly true COVID-19 content.
“Its stated purpose is to study ‘how people abuse the internet to cause real human harm, often using products the way they are designed to work,’ the editors wrote in the inaugural issue, which included a paper on the intersection of hate speech and misinformation about ‘the role of the Chinese government in the origin and spread of COVID-19.’
“The trustworthiness-ratings study was published in the most recent issue of the journal, in April, but appears to have drawn little attention....”
(Full article at Just The News; see also Stanford’s alleged roles in censoring the web here)
American Bar Association Considering Free Speech Requirements for U.S.
Law Schools
Excerpts:
“Law schools may soon be required to adopt written free speech policies under a proposal being considered by the American Bar Association.
“The policy proposal would give law schools clearer, more uniform guidelines for addressing free speech concerns that have played out -- especially over the past two years -- with student protesters shutting down talks by guest speakers, including at Yale Law School, the University of California Hastings College of the Law (now called the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco) and most recently at Stanford University.
“Josh Blackman, a law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston who is an expert on constitutional law, said the proposal is ‘very well-timed’ given the increased frequency of speaker disruptions at law schools. He noted that most institutions, including Stanford, already have free speech policies, but they aren’t always enforced.
“Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a First Amendment expert, agreed a policy was needed, but ‘a lot depends on how it’s implemented . . . Students need experience dealing with views they disagree with . . . If those views are banned from the classroom or public discussions by speakers brought in by student groups, or if those speakers are shouted down and as a result students don’t get to hear those views, that’s an interference with the quality of education students are getting -- and the quality of lawyering future clients are getting.’” (full article at Inside Higher Ed)
Update re Community College Faculty Lawsuits Challenging Mandatory DEI Requirements
We noted in our July 28 Newsletter and posted at our Commentary webpage the fact that a longtime faculty member at Bakersfield Community College was challenging his being subjected to newly adopted regulations imposing DEI requirements on his teaching and other activities. A reader has subsequently brought to our attention the pleadings in a similar case brought by FIRE and a number of faculty members at other California Community Colleges as well as this editorial from The Fresno Bee about the matter.
Other Articles of Interest
Let’s Stop Pretending College Degrees Don’t Matter (full article at the NY Times)
Colleges Now Including Free Speech and ChatGPT In New Student Orientation (full article at Inside Higher Ed)
How Colleges’ Decisions to Scrap Mandatory Admissions Tests is Hurting Low-Income Kids and Intensifying Inequality (full article at The Hechinger Report)
My University Might Cut Humanities. I’m Frustrated, Angry -- and Afraid (full article at the Washington Post)
"It would be ideal if efforts to revitalize free and vigorous inquiry would be led by faculty themselves, as faculty must bear the day-to-day responsibility for ensuring that this culture flourishes." -- From Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry
August 24, 2023
Law School Dean Jenny Martinez Named Stanford's Next Provost
Incoming President Richard Saller announced yesterday that Law School Dean Jenny Martinez would become Stanford's 14th provost, effective October 1.
Excerpt:
"Saller, who takes office as Stanford’s president on Sept. 1, said, 'Jenny is a highly respected scholar of international law and constitutional law who joined the faculty in 2003 and has served as dean of Stanford Law School since 2019. As dean, she has been a champion of inclusion, and a clear and reasoned voice for academic freedom. Jenny and I look forward to promoting the fundamental mission of a great university – that is, excellence in research and education with integrity.'” (See press release here.)
Campus Conversations on Speech (from Harvard Magazine)
Excerpts:
“At Harvard, there are research areas that can’t be investigated, subjects that can’t be broached in public, and ideas that can’t be discussed in a classroom. So says a group of more than 120 Harvard faculty members, who have formed a Council on Academic Freedom to respond to perceived assaults on free inquiry and a climate of eroded trust that they say stifle dissent.
“On campuses nationwide, the dynamic has led to numerous incidents in which professors have been ‘mobbed, cursed, heckled into silence, and sometimes assaulted,’ they continued (these events are allegedly mirrored by a less publicly visible silencing of students, who, fearing reprisal, are unwilling to discuss certain topics in class).
“It is also worth noting that Harvard has avoided the egregious violations of free speech suffered on other campuses—for example, at the Stanford and Yale law schools—where visiting speakers were prevented from making their remarks by protestors who considered their views controversial.
“Trumbull professor of American history and director of the Schlesinger library Jane Kamensky, another Council co-president, shares Hall’s hope that Harvard will think about what needs to be done to help students navigate difficult ideas across complex political landscapes and build coalitions with people with whom they might disagree—skills they will need for democratic self-governance.” (See full article here.)
Stanford Program Trains Teens in Research Methods, Using Their High Schools
As the Subject
Excerpts:
"Bay Area high school students took the lead on a study of district programs and policies that affect student well-being, with help from veteran researchers at Stanford.
"Students shared an array of school experiences that affected their well-being. They described ways that teachers, peers, and programs made them feel seen and included, and policies they found detrimental. They identified challenges to managing their emotions at school, such as barriers to using mental health services and even having grades released during school hours.
"Together the team produced a report that included simple, no-cost recommendations. For example: To support students who want to access mental health services during class time but feel uncomfortable asking permission from their teacher, they offered procedural workarounds to ease that pressure while still accounting for the student’s whereabouts.
“We can talk about best practices, participation data, federal guidelines, all of that,” she said. “But our own students saying, ‘Here is our experience, and we need this in our classroom or our school’ – that’s much more powerful when we’re making a case to our board.” (See full article here.)
Student Views on the College Experience
Excerpts:
"Three in 10 students spend zero hours per week on extracurriculars, clubs or groups such as student government. On the upside, half of students spend one to five hours weekly on these activities, and the rest spend more, according to the newest Student Voice survey on various aspects of the college experience.
"More than four in 10 students say timing and location of events, making this the No. 1 reported barrier to participation in extracurricular activities and events of 11 possible options. Off-campus work is a close second, with nearly four in 10 students citing this.
"Among the 2,104 respondents who spend one or more hours a week on these activities, the top selected benefit of nine listed options is meeting new people or making new friends, with seven in 10 students saying this. Distant second but clearly related benefits are building a sense of belonging or connectedness to campus life and, separately, activism or being involved in one’s community.
". . . the top feature of 15 options students would like to see in a campus app (whether their college or university has one or not) is a campus events calendar." (See full article here.)
Professors Going Back to Paper Exams and Handwritten Essays to Deal with ChatGPT
Excerpts:
"The growing number of students using the AI program ChatGPT as a shortcut in their coursework has led some college professors to reconsider their lesson plans for the upcoming fall semester.
"Since its launch, teachers, administrators, and students have questioned AI's role in education. While some schools chose to outright ban the use of ChatGPT, others are exploring ways it can be a tool for learning.
"I worried that my students would use it to cheat and plagiarize," Ahern said. "But then I remembered that students have always been cheating — whether that's copying a classmate's homework or getting a sibling to write an essay — and I don't think ChatGPT will change that." (See full article here.)
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford Law Review to Host Symposium on Campus Speech in February 2024 (announcement)
Ohio State Trustees Adopt Statement in Support of the Chicago Principles (full article; see also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta here)
Student Voices: United By Our Differences (podcast and transcript)
“Stanford University's central functions of teaching, learning, research, and scholarship depend upon an atmosphere in which freedom of inquiry, thought, expression, publication, and peaceable assembly are given the fullest protection. Expression of the widest range of viewpoints should be encouraged, free from institutional orthodoxy and from internal or external coercion.” -- From Stanford’s Statement on Academic Freedom
August 18, 2023
U.S. Supreme Court Asked to Review College and University Anti-Bias Response Teams
A petition was filed earlier this week before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of the First Amendment and other impacts of college and university anti-bias response teams and the related policies and procedures. We have posted a PDF copy of the petition here and which also includes our prior posting about Stanford's own program for reporting bias.
College Presidents Are Planning "Urgent Action" to Defend Free Speech
Excerpts:
"More than a dozen college presidents have signed on to a new campaign to bolster free speech on their campuses. [Editor's note: the list of participants does not include Stanford.]
"The campaign, which the presidents are calling the 'Campus Call for Free Expression,' is the most-recent indication of college presidents’ increasingly forceful defense of free-speech principles.
"The project started about 18 months ago, said Rajiv Vinnakota, president of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, a civic-education nonprofit that organized the campaign. At the time, he said a small number of 'highly charged campus incidents' were getting lots of attention. Then came high-profile free-speech controversies at places like Stanford, Hamline, and Cornell Universities."
(See full article here, and more about the initiative here.)
Cornell Alumni Offer Detailed Recommendations for Reform
Excerpts:
“In recent years, Cornell University has drifted away from its founding mission of discovering and disseminating 'knowledge and truth'....
“Make diversity of thought and viewpoint diversity a clearly stated and prominent objective of the University. Free speech and academic freedom have little meaning if they do not encompass the diverse viewpoints of persons of disparate economic, geographical, and cultural backgrounds.
“Freshman orientation should include a training module on the importance of free speech and academic freedom on campus as well as practical instruction on how to engage in civil debate and constructive disagreement.
“Students should not be encouraged or supported in spying and reporting on each other or any other member of the University community for any alleged infraction arising from any speech, expression, or the reporter’s interpretation thereof that is protected by the First Amendment, the Constitution of the State of New York, or any other state or federal law. [Editor's note: See our prior posting about "Stanford's Protected Identity Harm Program for Reporting Bias" here.]
“DEI (by any name) course requirements should be eliminated for all courses of study that do not directly implicate it.
"DEI statements (by any name), or other pledge of allegiance or statement of personal support or opposition to any political ideology or movement should not form any part of the evaluation of an individual’s fitness for a faculty position.
“Any faculty or staff accused of any infraction should have due process, including immediate dismissal of any complaint that involves protected speech or infringes on academic freedom....” (See full article here; also see our "Back to Basics at Stanford" proposals here.)
Other Articles of Interest
-
Why Classical Education is Making a Comeback (full article)
-
Are Administrators Hijacking the College Experience? (including discussions by nationwide panelists of examples at Stanford) (video)
-
What Trustees Need to Know About Defending Free Expression and Intellectual Diversity (video)
-
Colleges Spend Like There’s No Tomorrow - "These Places Are Just Devouring Money" (full article)
-
A Comparison of Harvard's and U North Carolina's Responses to Supreme Court Decision re Admissions (full article)
-
Diversity Statements Get the Ax at Arizona’s Public Universities (full article)
-
12% of managers say they've fired a Gen Z employee in their first week or month of work, often because the employees were too easily offended (full article)
"Free speech is the bedrock of our democracy. It's the foundation upon which all of our other rights and freedoms are built." -- Stanford Professor and Hoover Director Condoleezza Rice
August 11, 2023
Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry
Last week, a set of principles was published as a result of a conference of scholars from around the country held at Princeton in March of this year. We have posted a PDF copy of these principles at our website here (also available at Princeton’s website here).
Excerpt:
The American university is a historic achievement for many reasons, not least of which is that it provides a haven for free inquiry and the pursuit of truth. Its unique culture has made it a world leader in advancing the frontiers of practical and theoretical knowledge. . . . To do their work well, universities need a protected sphere of operation in which free speech and academic freedom flourish. Scholarship and teaching cannot achieve their full potential when constrained – externally or internally – by political, ideological, or economic agendas that impede or displace the disinterested process of pursuing truth and advancing knowledge.
Other Articles of Interest
-
What History Teaches Us About the Importance of Academic Freedom (full article)
-
A Tribute to Katie Meyer (full article)
-
Stanford Celebrates the Opening of a Mixed-use Development in Menlo Park, CA (full article)
-
The Three Attacks on Intellectual Freedom (full article)
-
Assuring a Successful College President Search (full article)
-
The Censors’ Henchmen (full article)
-
A Great School Rethink (Podcast)
-
An Equity-Based Defense of Legacy Admissions (full article)
-
A Racist Smear. A Tarnished Career. And the Suicide of Richard Bilkszto (full article)
"Universities must remain fiercely independent from government interference. Only by preserving academic freedom and autonomy can they fulfill their critical role as the bastions of knowledge, free inquiry, and intellectual progress." - Former Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust
August 4, 2023
College Campuses Could be the Key to Saving Our Democracy
According to Otterbein University President John Comerford, an engaged citizenry is crucial to an effective democracy.
Excerpts:
"Universities can be more intentional about how they prepare educated citizens to participate in and defend our democracy. There are two key ingredients for engaged citizenry: critical thinking and character.
"We lack spaces where people of different backgrounds, beliefs and ideologies can actually talk, learn and connect. College campuses must remain one of these spaces. Students, faculty, staff and community members should be able to hear different ideas and debate them, all without creating hostility, mistrust and tension.
"Ultimately, the aim of a college education is only partially about the course content. Yes, students should learn a lot in their major and be exposed to everything from physics to Plato. But, the wider design is to develop the critical thinking skills and character we will need in the future leaders of our cities, states, and nation. This gargantuan imperative is too important to allow the petty politics of the nation to infect our campuses."
(See full article here.)
Americans' Confidence in Higher Education Is Down Sharply
According to the most current Gallup poll, only 36% of Americans have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in American higher education.
Excerpts:
"Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%). In addition to the 17% of U.S. adults who have “a great deal” and 19% 'quite a lot' of confidence, 40% have 'some' and 22% 'very little' confidence.
"Americans’ confidence in higher education, which showed a marked decrease between 2015 and 2018, has declined further to a new low point. While Gallup did not probe for reasons behind the recent drop in confidence, the rising costs of postsecondary education likely play a significant role.
"There is a growing divide between Republicans’ and Democrats’ confidence in higher education. Previous Gallup polling found that Democrats expressed concern about the costs, while Republicans registered concern about politics in higher education."
(See full article here.)
Other Issues from Around the Country
-
The Tradition of Legacy College Admissions is Under Fire (see article here).
-
Three University of Kansas Professors Accused of Falsely Claiming Native American Ancestry (see article here).
Our Past Newsletters
We have recently learned that a fair number of readers have not been receiving our Newsletters, in many/most cases starting sometime in March or April of this year. If you are in this group, and this is the first Newsletter you are receiving in recent months, we suggest you check out our archive of Past Newsletters here.
Some of the more significant articles you might have missed include these:
"Critical thinking is not about being critical for the sake of criticism. It's about being discerning, curious, and open-minded. It's about asking the right questions and challenging our own beliefs and biases." - Dr. Tina Seelig, Executive Director, Stanford's Knight-Hennessy Scholars
July 28, 2023
California Community College Professor Challenges Recently Expanded DEI Requirements
Late last week, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial about a lawsuit filed by Bakersfield Community College Prof. Daymon Johnson who has been teaching since 1993 and has refused to comply with DEI requirements adopted three months ago by the California Community College System. Per the WSJ editorial, under the new regulations, California community colleges must "place significant emphasis on DEIA competencies in employee evaluation and tenure review.” See full article here.
According to the WSJ editorial, the California Community College leadership also has adopted a DEIA Glossary, a PDF copy of which we have posted at our Commentary webpage. Here are excerpts from the Glossary, some of which readers might agree with and some of which readers might disagree with. Per Prof. Daymon’s lawsuit, however, agreement and disagreement apparently is not an option for the community college faculty members:
"Deficit-Minded Language: Is language that blames students for their inequitable outcomes instead of examining the systemic factors that contribute to their challenges. It labels students as inadequate by focusing on qualities or knowledge they lack, such as the cognitive abilities and motivation needed to succeed in college, or shortcomings socially linked to the student, such as cultural deprivation, inadequate socialization, or family deficits or dysfunctions. This language emphasizes “fixing” these problems and inadequacies in students. Examples of this type of language include at-risk or high-need, underprepared or disadvantaged, non-traditional or untraditional, underprivileged, learning styles, and achievement gap.
"Diversity: The myriad of ways in which people differ, including the psychological, physical, cognitive, and social differences that occur among all individuals, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, religion, economic class, education, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, mental and physical ability, and learning styles. Diversity is all inclusive and supportive of the proposition that everyone and every group should be valued. It is about understanding these differences and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of our differences.
"Equity: The condition under which individuals are provided the resources they need to have access to the same opportunities, as the general population. Equity accounts for systematic inequalities, meaning the distribution of resources provides more for those who need it most. Conversely equality indicates uniformity where everything is evenly distributed among people.
"Inclusion: Authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power.
"Merit: A concept that at face value appears to be a neutral measure of academic achievement and qualifications; however, merit is embedded in the ideology of Whiteness and upholds race-based structural inequality. Merit protects White privilege under the guise of standards (i.e., the use of standardized tests that are biased against racial minorities) and as highlighted by anti-affirmative action forces. Merit implies that White people are deemed better qualified and more worthy but are denied opportunities due to race-conscious policies. However, this understanding of merit and worthiness fails to recognize systemic oppression, racism, and generational privilege afforded to Whites.
"Power: Is the ability to exercise one’s will over others. Power occurs when some individuals or groups wield a greater advantage over others, thereby allowing them greater access to and control over resources. There are six bases of power: reward power (i.e., the ability to mediate rewards), coercive power (i.e., the ability to mediate punishments), legitimate power (i.e., based on the perception that the person or group in power has the right to make demands and expects others to comply), referent power (i.e., the perceived attractiveness and worthiness of the individual or group in power), expert power (i.e., the level of skill and knowledge held by the person or group in power) and informational power (i.e., the ability to control information). Wealth, Whiteness, citizenship, patriarchy, heterosexism, and education are a few key social mechanisms through which power operates.
"White Privilege: Refers to the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are White. Generally White people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it."
Stanford Law School Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach Has Resigned
On July 20, 2023, law school dean Jenny Martinez issued a statement that former Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach had resigned. Two of many articles about the resignation can be found at the San Francisco Chronicle and The Post Millennial. A copy of Dean Martinez’s statement was posted here and which we are reproducing in its entirety as follows:
"Dear SLS Community: I write to share that Tirien Steinbach has decided that she will be leaving her role as Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Stanford Law School to pursue another opportunity.
“Associate Dean Steinbach and I both hope that SLS can move forward as a community from the divisions caused by the March 9 event. The event presented significant challenges for the administration, the students, and the entire law school community. As I previously noted, tempers flared along multiple dimensions. Although Associate Dean Steinbach intended to de-escalate the tense situation when she spoke at the March 9 event, she recognizes that the impact of her statements was not the as she hoped or intended. Both Dean Steinbach and Stanford recognize ways they could have done better in addressing the very challenging situation, including preparing for protests, ensuring university protocols are understood, and helping administrators navigate tensions when they arise. There are opportunities for growth and learning all around."
Other Issues from Around the Country
-
Recent poll shows a majority of Americans now support restricting speech (see article here).
-
Heterodox Academy has posted an essay by a faculty member at the Free University of Berlin that discusses the challenges of teaching how hate speech is treated in different countries (see article here).
-
DEI officers are questioning their career paths as demand falls (see article here).
-
Former Harvard president Larry Sommers has proposed banning legacy admissions, eliminating elite sports and reforming higher education in other ways (see article here).
-
Academic researchers were angered by joke responses from STEM students to the researchers’ gender survey and said the student responses indicated widespread fascism (see article here).
Other Featured Articles
-
Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) (see our prior posting here). We suggest readers may want to look at our prior posting, including a PDF copy of Stanford's list of discredited words and phrases, in light of the discussion of DEI glossaries, above, and that similarly seem to have been adopted by campus administrators around the country without input or approval of faculty and school governing bodies.
-
Former DEI Director at De Anza College Is Now Suing the College. We previously posted an article about the departure of Dr. Tabia Lee, De Anza College's former head of DEI. Dr. Lee is now suing the college with support from the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (see our prior posting here, now updated with a link to the lawsuit).
"It is our proud achievement to have demonstrated that unity and strength are best accomplished, not by enforced orthodoxy of views, but by diversity of opinion through the fullest possible measure of freedom of conscience and thought." – Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy
July 19, 2023
Marc Tessier-Lavigne to Step Down as Stanford’s President Effective August 31;
Richard Saller to Serve as Interim President
Most readers have probably already seen news stories that President Tessier-Lavigne will step down as Stanford’s president effective August 31. Here is a link to the Stanford Daily article that was released earlier today. Here is a link to President Tessier-Lavigne’s letter to the Stanford community. Here is a link to the statement from Trustee Chair Jerry Yang. And here is a link to a bio for Classics Prof. Richard Saller whom the Trustees have named as interim president, effective September 1.
Problems with the Current Campus Climate, Including at Stanford
Earlier this week, there was a panel in Washington D.C. about campus life and with Stanford often used as an example of specific concerns. Among other things, the panelists discussed the significant growth in campus administrative staffs, including at Stanford and which, in turn, they believe has had a major negative impact on much of the educational experience that is an essential part of college life.
The panelists also discussed how this dynamic, in turn, has led to increases in mental illness at campuses nationwide and widespread unhappiness by students regarding their time at their colleges and universities. The panelists also discussed how these developments have impacted free speech and critical thinking which they noted should be key components of a college education and which they argued needs to be restored. Panelists included Ginevra Davis, a Stanford alum and writer at Palladium Magazine, and Francesca Block, a Princeton alum who wrote an article published in March of this year, “Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students,” and that remains posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage. A YouTube recording of the panel is here.
[Editor's note: See also our Back to Basics white paper and our posting about Stanford's ballooning administrative costs including its 17,000 non-teaching staff.]
Faculty Panel on Viewpoint Diversity
Another video that might be of interest is of a panel discussion in recent weeks by Carleton College professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Snyder discussing viewpoint diversity, how to promote it, why viewpoint diversity matters and how viewpoint diversity is currently under threat. Some of their essays on the subject were posted several months ago at our website here.
Stanford Law Prof. Michael McConnell on Government Censorship of Social Media
In response to a recent federal district court decision on censorship by social media in coordination with government entities (subsequently put on hold by a federal appellate court), Stanford Law School Prof. Michael McConnell wrote an opinion piece suggesting that government social media censoring requests should be made public.
Excerpts:
The First Amendment does not limit the power of private media companies to refuse to disseminate speech they deem objectionable, even if that speech is constitutionally protected in the sense that it could not be prohibited or punished by the state. Nor does the Constitution prevent the government from identifying what it thinks is “disinformation,” and using noncoercive means to persuade private parties to restrict its spread.
The trouble is that the line between lawful government suasion and unlawful government coercion is paper-thin. In a world where government agencies wield significant discretionary regulatory authority, media companies might be fearful of government disfavor if they do not comply with government requests, even absent direct threats.
Regardless of how the judge’s order fares on appeal, a practical solution exists that might defuse the matter: Social media platforms should make government takedown requests public. That was the recommendation this spring by the Oversight Board of Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
[Editor's note: Prof. McConnell is one of the current co-chairs of the Meta Oversight Board. See full op-ed here. See also our prior postings about Stanford's alleged roles in censoring the web here.]
More About Stanford's Program for Reporting Bias
Our July 14 Newsletter again referred to Stanford’s’ Protected Identity Harm Program for Reporting Bias. As a followup, we suggest that readers take a look at the program’s description of the process and related webpages. And then think about how a student at Stanford would feel if they were to receive an email telling them that someone had reported them for having said or done something that offended someone else and that they should come to a designated administrator’s office to discuss the situation, to admit the harm they may have caused and to engage in various forms of restorative justice.
Also think about how you and your friends would have reacted if this program had been in place when you were a Stanford student and you or a friend had been targeted in this way, and with knowledge that all of this was going into your permanent student files.
Other Issues from Around the Country
-
Gallup Poll shows Americans' confidence in higher education is down sharply (see article here).
-
Blame Cancel Culture for Declining Trust in Universities (see article here).
-
Why I'll Never Be Able to Teach at USC Again (see article here).
Other Featured Articles
“Paradoxically, BRSs [Bias Reporting Systems] undermine the very diversity that the proponents of BRSs claim to seek. Diversity of all kinds, including diversity of thought, is central to educational excellence. As a result, BRSs present a formidable threat to educational excellence.” -- Speech First
July 14, 2023
The Impact of Language on Free Speech and Critical Thinking
We bring to your attention a recent essay by the French author Dupont Lajoie (penname) that compares recent cultural issues with concerns raised in George Orwell’s 1984, especially how restrictions on language are used to regulate and even eliminate free speech and critical thinking.
Excerpts:
On the road to creating the perfect post-revolutionary society in the name of progress, free speech is always perceived as reactionary. Most particularly, the individuals attempting to speak truths and facts over abstractions and ideologies are accused of being the cause for the doctrine’s failure or promoting hate speech. Consequently, nonconformist ideas need to be constrained and this takes the form of amending or simply banning imperfect words. ...
In addition to the suppression of words, Newspeak constantly redefines/reinvents languages to manipulate impressions, it modifies meanings and definitions into something completely different. ...
This brings us to doublethink, defined in the novel as the process of indoctrination by which the subject is supposed to simultaneously accept two contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention of their own memories or sense of reality. As an example, in 1984, the Ministry of love is torturing dissidents, thus making people believe two contrary truths at the same time: love is torture. Doublethink is internalized due to peer pressure and a desire to fit in. ...
Political correctness does not take into account intent or speaker but just demonizes words. It is an aggressive and puritanical culture of the generalized dumbing down and childish talk applied to adults. It is condescending, patronizing and strips the language of all nuances and ambiguity.
Political correctness is intolerance disguised as tolerance, a totalitarianism of good intention, a horizontal injunction from the postmodern authority imposed by so-called social convention. Worst, it is a weapon to publicly punish and shame dissidents who have failed the test of ideological purity by mastering the virtue signaling codes. Political correctness mandated language to such a ridiculous extent that it led to cancel culture, the censorship of books, movies and the death of free speech.
See full essay here. For those interested, here’s a link to the Substack publisher’s bio, Adam B. Coleman.
See also the links at the end of this Newsletter to discussions previously posted at our website regarding Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative and Stanford’s Protected Identify Harm Program for Reporting Bias.
More About the Pending Government Censorship Case
Our July 7 Newsletter included a link to the federal district court’s legal memorandum in a case where various Stanford people and entities are named throughout the memorandum. You can find our posting about the case here (Stanford’s Alleged Roles in Censoring the Web), and the court's legal memorandum can be found at this link.
We thought it might be useful, however, to repeat here some of what we said previously:
“Our own observation is that these are important topics to be studied. The more difficult questions are: Who then gets to decide what is and isn’t true and subsequently gets to enforce the answers? Can a democratic society trust such centralized activities, both short term and long term? Is it a proper role for Stanford not only to research the issues, but then to be the implementer of the solutions and the rejecter of alternative viewpoints? Is it appropriate that the Stanford name is seen as an endorsement of these activities? At what point does an independent researcher lose its independence and, in turn, its trustworthiness?
“We believe similar concerns arise with many if not most of the other centers, incubators and accelerators Stanford has been creating and hosting in recent years. We therefore suggest moving those implementation activities off the main campus and into the Stanford Research Park, which was why a valuable portion of Stanford's land was set aside for this purpose in the first place, and/or to an entity comparable to Stanford Research Institute, which was why SRI and entities like it throughout the country also were created years ago. The Redwood City administrative campus that currently houses nearly 3,000 of Stanford's 17,000 non-teaching staff (see our April 13, 2023 Newsletter here) might also be repurposed for the centers, incubators and accelerators.
"Among other things, these changes would free up land and buildings on the main campus for the university's core purposes of teaching and research and would help solve Stanford's problems with Santa Clara County for its land use permits. These changes also would allow a significantly reduced administrative staff to interact in person with Stanford's faculty and students and thus be focused again on the university's core purposes of teaching and research and not something else.”
We also remain concerned about Stanford’s press release a month ago about its participation in what is called Project Liberty. Any two or three of these words and phrases would have had meaning, but when you see them all strung together in a single press release, they start to come across as both eerie and a possible precursor for doublethink:
"liberty, responsible technology, foundations of democracy, working together to shape emerging technologies, designed and governed for the common good, shaping an ethical future for our digital society, create more enduring democracies worldwide, a more equitable and inclusive technology infrastructure, openness to collaboration, focus on solutions, shared sense of urgency, at this critical junction, informing emerging technologies, the internet of tomorrow, accelerate our mission, a better web for a better world, support democracy, build a digital society, benefits the many and not just the few, inject ethics, ensure a meaningful encounter, engage with ethics at critical junctions, placement of technologists into positions of influence, shape thinking and decision-making, bring about a culture shift, ensure a flourishing and inclusive democratic society, transform the training, usher in a new breed, ethical society, implications of their work, serves rather than subverts democracy, a new generation of global leaders, define how we govern the future, shape the global conversation, transform social media, for the betterment of society, convene leading experts, spark a global conversation, can support democracy, be a benefit to society, flow of truthful and thoughtful information, vast digital web of social connections, the well-being of society, promote truth, mitigating those that amplify misinformation, confusion and polarization, a broad collective of stakeholders, shape a new digital society for the world . . . ."
CULTURE and Civ – Now and Then
We note two recent articles from Stanford Report regarding the new COLLEGE (Civic, Liberal, and Global Education) program for undergraduates and a look back 100 years ago when Stanford introduced its first required course for incoming freshmen, the Problems of Citizenship:
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"Exploring Minds and Shaping Perspectives: How COLLEGE Took a Stanford Student on a Journey of Discovery" (see article here).
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"100 Years Ago, Stanford’s First General Education Requirement was a Course on Citizenship" (see article here).
Other Issues from Around the Country
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From The College Fix, ‘Forbidden Courses’ at the New University of Austin Tackled Questions Canceled at Other Schools (see article here).
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From FIRE, a federal appellate court holds that public universities can punish faculty for not being sufficiently collegial (see article here).
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From The College Fix, These Six Professors Didn’t Let Cancel Culture Stop Them (see article here).
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From Minding the Campus, Unmasking the DEI Paradox (see article here).
Other Featured Articles
In light of the first item at the top of this week’s Newsletter regarding the use of forbidden words and engaging in wrongful behaviors, we bring to your attention these two prior postings at our website:
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Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI), discussed previously at our website here, included a PDF copy of the approximately 100 words and phrases that were/are no longer to be used at Stanford (American, basket case, blind review, brown bag, freshman, gentlemen, grandfathered, he, immigrant, ladies, master list, prisoner, prostitute, sanity check, she, submit, survivor, tone deaf, trigger warning, walk-in, webmaster, etc.). In addition to this list looking a lot like Newspeak, where do non-teaching staff get the time, and over the course of many years, to do these sorts of things?
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Stanford’s Protected Identity Harm Program for Reporting Bias, discussed previously at our website here, and which even allows for anonymous reports to be filed by third parties and that then become part of a student’s permanent record. This, too, starts to look a lot like 1984, and of all things, on a campus like Stanford where students as well as faculty and staff supposedly are smart and mature enough to interact without the intervention of the nearly 17,000 non-teaching personnel who now occupy the campus and a fair percentage of whom write and enforce these sorts of policies and procedures.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people
what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell
July 7, 2023
Stanford People and Entities Discussed in This Week's Government Censorship Court Documents
Earlier this week, a federal District Court issued a preliminary injunction limiting federal agencies from coordinating with social media to limit and even ban specific content. One of the plaintiffs in the case is Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya whom we previously quoted here "How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test." The court also specifically discussed the roles of the Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities, as previously discussed here "Stanford's Alleged Roles in Censoring the Web" and here "Reader Comments About Stanford's Internet Observatory, Election Integrity and Virality Projects." The full text of the court's legal memorandum in support of its order can be found at this link.
The question does not concern whether speech is conservative, moderate, liberal, progressive, or somewhere in between. What matters is that Americans, despite their views, will not be censored or suppressed by the Government. Other than well-known exceptions to the Free Speech Clause, all political views and content are protected free speech. The issues presented to this Court are important and deeply intertwined in the daily lives of the citizens of this country.
From The Atlantic: The Hypocrisy of Mandatory Diversity Statements
An essay recently published by The Atlantic discusses how mandatory diversity statements are impacting competing interests of a university, what the author argues has a parallel history of loyalty oaths during the McCarthy era, and how these issues are highlighted in the pending lawsuit of John Haltigan v. University of California.
Excerpts:
According to the lawsuit, Haltigan believes in “colorblind inclusivity,” “viewpoint diversity,” and “merit-based evaluation” -- all ideas that could lead to a low-scoring statement based on the starting rubric UC Santa Cruz publishes online to help guide prospective applicants.
Perhaps the most extreme developments in the UC system’s use of DEI statements are taking place on the Davis, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and Riverside campuses, where pilot programs treat mandatory diversity statements not as one factor among many in an overall evaluation of candidates, but as a threshold test. In other words, if a group of academics applied for jobs, their DEI statements would be read and scored, and only applicants with the highest DEI statement scores would make it to the next round. The others would never be evaluated on their research, teaching, or service . ...
. . . mandatory DEI statements are profoundly anti-diversity. And that strikes me as an especially perilous hypocrisy for academics to indulge at a time of falling popular support for higher education. A society can afford its college professors radical freedom to dissent from social orthodoxies or it can demand conformity, but not both. Academic-freedom advocates can credibly argue that scholars must be free to criticize or even to denigrate God, the nuclear family, America, motherhood, capitalism, Christianity, John Wayne movies, Thanksgiving Day, the military, the police, beer, penetrative sex, and the internal combustion engine -- but not if academics are effectively prohibited from criticizing progressivism’s sacred values.
. . . in the name of diversity, the hiring process is being loaded in favor of professors who subscribe to the particular ideology of DEI partisans as if every good hire would see things as they do. I do not want California voters to strip the UC system of more of its ability to self-govern, but if this hypocrisy inspires a reformist ballot initiative, administrators will deserve it, regardless of what the judiciary decides about whether they are violating the First Amendment. (See full article here.)
Prof. John McWhorter: My Experience of Racial Preferences in Academia
John McWhorter, per his Wikipedia bio, is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects and Black English. He is currently an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University where he also teaches American studies and music history. He has authored a number of books on race relations and Africa-American culture. The following is from a NY Times subscriber-only Newsletter that was posted earlier this week (read the entire essay here).
Excerpts:
The Supreme Court last week outlawed the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions. That practice was understandable and even necessary 60 years ago. The question I have asked for some time was precisely how long it would be required to continue. I’d personally come to believe that preferences focused on socioeconomic factors -- wealth, income, even neighborhood -- would accomplish more good while requiring less straightforward unfairness. ...
Perhaps all of this can be seen as collateral damage in view of a larger goal of Black people being included, acknowledged, given a chance -- in academia and elsewhere. In the grand scheme of things, my feeling uncomfortable on a graduate admissions committee for a few years during the Clinton administration hardly qualifies as a national tragedy. But I will never shake the sentiment I felt on those committees, an unintended byproduct of what we could call academia’s racial preference culture: that it is somehow ungracious to expect as much of Black students -- and future teachers -- as we do of others.
That kind of assumption has been institutionalized within academic culture for a long time. It is, in my view, improper. It may have been a necessary compromise for a time, but it was never truly proper in terms of justice, stability or general social acceptance.
From The College Fix: Shortcomings with Stanford Law School’s "Free Speech" Training
Excerpts:
Stanford University administrators reacting to the outcry over students shouting down a federal judge failed to deliver the mandatory free speech training they promised, some students said. ...
Students were given six weeks [in spring quarter 2023] to watch five prerecorded videos, most about an hour long, then asked to sign a form attesting that they had done so. ...
"I watched none of the videos," one student told the Free Beacon. "I never even opened the links. On the day the training was due, I went to the attestation link provided by the university, checked a box confirming I watched the videos, and that was the end of the matter. Whole process took 10 seconds." (See full article here.)
Other Issues from Around the Country
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At High School Debates, Debate Is No Longer Allowed (see article here).
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Students Deserve Institutional Neutrality (see article here).
Other Featured Articles
We also call your attention to the following featured articles posted at our website:
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Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test
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Reader Comments Re Stanford's Internet Observatory, Election Integrity and Virality Projects
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"Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on." – Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
June 30, 2023
President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s Message to the Stanford Community re Race-Conscious Admissions
We have posted at our Stanford Speaks webpage Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s statement dated June 29, 2023 regarding the recent Supreme Court decision concerning race-conscious admissions.
Excerpt: We now find ourselves in a new legal environment. We will adjust to this new environment, in a manner that conforms with the law and that also preserves our commitment to an educational and research environment whose excellence is fostered by diversity in all forms.
Some Optimistic Views About the Current State of Higher Education
A faculty member at Stony Brook and senior fellow at Columbia, Musahas al-Gharbi, recently published an article at The Liberal Patriot presenting data and commentary supporting the view that recent problems and concerns at U.S. colleges and universities may be correcting themselves.
Excerpts: According to many right-aligned narratives, contemporary colleges and universities dedicate themselves primarily to converting normie students into aggressive social justice warriors. These narratives are false.
. . . a range of empirical data suggest that the post-2010 “Great Awokening” may be winding down. For instance, Heterodox Academy recently released the results of its 2022 Campus Expression Survey. It shows that students today feel more comfortable sharing their perspectives across a range of topics than they did in previous years. … Incident trackers compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) show marked declines in attempts to punish scholars for their speech or views across all measures. …
Colleges and universities are not just capable of reforming themselves; they are already reforming themselves. Positive trends should be recognized, and ongoing efforts should be encouraged and supported.
But doing so would require more in academia and on the left to explicitly admit that there are real problems of bias and parochialism in institutions of higher learning. It undermines our own credibility to dismiss concerns about the culture and operations of educational institutions as an empty moral panic. Ordinary people can see with their own eyes that that’s not the case, and no one will trust us to effectively fix a problem if we won’t even acknowledge it exists. We can’t talk about progress while insisting there’s nothing wrong.
Stanford Is Facing More Lawsuits About Its Internet Observatory, Election Integrity and Virality Programs
[Also see our Stanford Concerns and Reader Comments webpages.]
Inside Higher Ed recently published a story summarizing the issues being raised in new lawsuits against Stanford regarding activities of various Stanford-sponsored entities.
Excerpts: A [second] federal lawsuit filed last month alleges university disinformation and misinformation researchers colluded with the federal government and social media companies to “censor” Americans’ speech.
This case challenges probably the largest mass-surveillance and mass-censorship program in American history—the so-called ‘Election Integrity Partnership’ [EIP] and ‘Virality Project’ . . .
“Defendants are engaged in egregious violations of the First Amendment across numerous federal agencies—including the White House, the Office of the Surgeon General, the CDC, DHS and CISA—as well as massive government/private joint censorship enterprises, including the Stanford Internet Observatory’s ‘Virality Project,’ to target and suppress speech on the basis of content (i.e., COVID vaccine-related speech) and viewpoint (i.e., speech raising doubt or concern about COVID vaccines’ safety and efficacy and the extent and severity of side effects),” that third suit says.
Dee Mostofi, Stanford’s assistant vice president for external communications, wrote in an email that “We believe the cases are completely without merit and will be vigorously defending them.” See full article here
John Etchemendy Interview: Free Speech and Critical Thinking in America’s Universities
Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy was recently interviewed about his views on free speech and critical thinking in America's universities. See video here.
Other Issues from Around the Country
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Cal State Faculty Stand Up for Academic Freedom and Free Speech (see article here).
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Bill Would Mandate Free Speech Training on College Campuses (see article here).
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Cancel Culture Is Destroying Free Speech: UNC Is Fighting Back (see article here).
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Why An Experienced Writing Professor Is Suing Penn State (see article here)
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“Academic freedom really means freedom of inquiry. To be able to probe according to one's own interest, knowledge and conscience is the most important freedom the scholar has, and part of that process is to state its results.” Former Stanford President Donald Kennedy
June 23, 2023
Stanford’s Commencement
Below are some excerpts from speeches by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Commencement Speaker John McEnroe at last Sunday’s 132nd Commencement Ceremonies.
Remarks by President Marc Tessier-Lavigne (full text can be found here):
Excerpts: Your years here have been marked by transformation: your own personal transformation and growth, as well as great changes in the world around us. Many of you were in your first year on campus when the COVID shutdown happened. We all learned, that year, how drastically the world can change in an instant.
As you leave Stanford and go out into the world, I hope you continue to take your own unique blend of talents and passion and use them to make a difference. Your dedication to others, combined with your unique skills and knowledge, can make our world better.
Remarks by Commencement Speaker John McEnroe (full text can be found here):
Excerpts: Everyone wants a great career, but don’t miss your life on the way to work. Work/life balance may seem impossible, but it’s worth pursuing. It took me a long time to learn that lesson.
In sports, you often hear the phrase, “Winning is everything.” But in reality, it’s not. The questions you have to answer are: “Am I getting better as a person?” And, “Is what I’m doing bringing me and the ones around me happiness?” The answers will tell you whether or not you’re REALLY winning.
It’s Time for Colleges to Compete on Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Ed Yingling, who is a Stanford law school graduate, and his fellow Princeton undergraduate alum Stuart Taylor recently published an op-ed urging that colleges and universities should explain their positions on free speech and academic freedom in their recruiting materials and compete on these factors. See our Commentary webpage with a link to their op-ed here.
Excerpt: The lists of “top colleges” have varied little in many years. They always include the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, etc. But that could change. Colleges of all types can differentiate themselves on the core values of free speech and academic freedom, and those that do will increasingly attract more and better students, faculty, and employment opportunities for their graduates. ...
This is not about becoming a conservative oasis. It is about returning to the core mission of a university – advancing knowledge and learning through free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity. Colleges that state that mission clearly and follow through on it will have a competitive advantage.
From The Atlantic, Princeton’s Prof. Robert George Comments on the Risks of Colleges and Universities Taking Political Positions
The Atlantic recently published an op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert George concerning the risks of colleges and universities taking political positions, and even concerns if specific schools and departments were to do so. We have posted excerpts of Prof. George’s op-ed at our Commentary webpage; see also our compilations of the Chicago Principles/Chicago Trifecta here.
Other Issues from Around the Country
Minimum DEI Points Required for Faculty Hiring at Berkeley (see article here).
UC Davis Math Professor Under Fire for Opposing Required Diversity Statements (see article here).
Mayo Medical College Professor Suspended and Threatened with Firing After Discussing Physical Differences in Athletes (see article here).
This issue is also discussed in these articles here and here.
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"If universities and colleges do not provide safe spaces for controversial ideas, then the dangerous belief that censorship is the answer to discomforting speech will take root in our society." New York Law School Prof. Nadine Strossen; former president of the ACLU
June 16, 2023
First, congratulations to this year’s Stanford graduates and their families. Meantime, here are some articles that might be of interest:
About Campus Bias Response Teams and Programs
Two weeks ago, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision not to enjoin a bias reporting system that has been used at Virginia Tech. As a result, we have posted at our Commentary webpage a link to the full text of both the majority and dissenting opinions in the case along with excerpts from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson’s dissenting opinion.
We think readers may also find these articles of interest:
WSJ, June 11, 2023 Editorial, "Virginia Tech's Bias Response Team and the First Amendment."
The College Fix, June 7, 2023, “College Bias Response Teams Do More Harm Than Good.”
WSJ, April 6, 2023 Op-Ed by Stanford’s GSB Prof. Ivan Marinovic, “DEI Meets East Germany: U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another."
Inside Higher Ed, June 16, 2019, “Bias Response Teams: Fact versus Fiction.”
The New Republic, March 30, 2016, “The Rise of Bias Response Teams.”
Also see our posting several months ago, “Stanford's Protected Identity Harm Program.”
Also see Stanford Report, March 9, 2023, “Stanford’s Leadership Discusses Stanford’s Protected Identity Harm Program.”
Also see Stanford’s Prof. Russell Berman January 26, 2023 statement to the Faculty Senate, “Does Academic Freedom Have a Future at Stanford” with specific reference to a separate but similar program, Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, and President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s April 3, 2023 letter to the Stanford community regarding speech and academic freedom at Stanford, both posted here.
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"Overly broad or vague definitions of bias put all kinds of speech at risk of being reported - even unpopular speech which is protected by the First Amendment. Political speech and satireare particularly vulnerable because the system favors students who easily take offense." -- From freespeech.org
June 9, 2023
Earlier this week, Stanford issued a four-page press release about new projects to oversee the web and related activities, all of which raise still more questions about Stanford's role in these activities. As a result, we have moved material about the Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities from our Reader Comments webpage to our Stanford Concerns webpage here and have posted the new material there as well. Please take a look, and we welcome your comments.
We also bring to your attention some other recent articles that may be of interest, as follows.
“Go Forth and Argue” by Bret Stephens, NY Times Columnist, University of Chicago 2023 Class Day speaker
Excerpts: “. . . I completely respect your right to protest any speaker you dislike, including me, so long as you honor the Chicago Principles [also found at our website here]. It is one of the core liberties that all of us have a responsibility to uphold, protect and honor.
“. . . institutions become and remain great not because of the weight of their traditions or the perception of their prestige, but because they are places where the sharpest thinking is given the freest rein, and where strong arguments may meet stronger ones, and where ‘error of opinion may be tolerated’ because ‘reason is left free to combat it’ and where joy and delight are generally found at the point of contact — mental or otherwise.”
See full article here.
“Are The Kids at Princeton -- and Ohio State and UW Madison -- Really OK?” by Michael Poliakoff, President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni
Excerpts: “Students hesitate to disagree with the politics of their professors; many think that indoctrination is an institutional goal. A large number self-censor while also seeking to silence viewpoints that they judge to be hurtful or offensive. They feel pressure from institutional leadership, their professors, and their peers to conform both inside the classroom and on campus. Such findings should worry university leadership, and they should worry all who consider debate, dialogue, and civil disagreement essential for a free society.
“Those who won our independence . . . believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile . . . "
See full article here.
“Slaying the Censorship Leviathan” by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty
[Editor's note: Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, Harvard Prof. Martin Kulldorff and Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya have joined the states of Missouri and Louisiana in a lawsuit against the federal government claiming they were censored for content related to COVID and public health policy that the government disfavored. See also a discussion about the Stanford Internet Observatory and related Stanford entities at our webpage here.]
Excerpts: “. . . we intend to prove in court, the federal government has censored hundreds of thousands of Americans, violating the law on tens of millions of occasions in the last several years. This unprecedented breach was made possible by the wholly novel reach and breadth of the new digital social media landscape.
“Documents we have reviewed on discovery demonstrate that government censorship was far more wide-ranging than previously known, from election integrity and the Hunter Biden laptop story to gender ideology, abortion, monetary policy, the U.S. banking system, the war in Ukraine, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and more. There is hardly a topic of recent public discussion and debate that the U.S. government has not targeted for censorship.
“ . . . censorship is now a highly developed industry complete with career-training institutions in higher education (like Stanford’s Internet Observatory or the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public), full-time job opportunities in industry and government (from the Virality Project and the Election Integrity Partnership to any number of federal agencies engaged in censorship), and insider jargon and euphemisms (like disinformation, misinformation, and ‘malinformation’ which must be debunked and ‘prebunked’) to render the distasteful work of censorship more palatable to industry insiders.
“. . . our documents demonstrate how a relatively unknown agency within the Department of Homeland Security became the central clearinghouse of government-run information control -- an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. My fellow citizens, meet the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency -- better known as CISA -- a government acronym with the same word in it twice in case you wondered about its mission.
“We all have the right to hear both sides of debated issues to make informed judgments. Thus all Americans have been harmed by the government’s censorship leviathan.”
See full article here.
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“By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action.” -- Albert Einstein
June 2, 2023
More About Stanford Internet Observatory and Related Entities
Several readers have previously submitted concerns about the Stanford Internet Observatory, as posted here. We thus call your attention to a series of weekly webinars being offered by the Stanford Cyber Policy Center on a wide range of related issues such as “Partisan Conflict Over Content Moderation,” “Socially Responsible Natural Language Processing,” “Generative AI and the End of Trust,” and similar topics. A summary of webinars is here and webinar videos are also available here.
Our own observation is that these are important topics to be studied. The more difficult questions are: Who then gets to decide what is and isn’t true and subsequently gets to enforce the answers? Can a democratic society trust such centralized activities, both short term and long term? Is it a proper role for Stanford not only to research the issues, but then to be the implementer of the solutions and the rejecter of alternative viewpoints? Is it appropriate that the Stanford name is seen as an endorsement of these activities? At what point does an independent researcher lose its independence and, in turn, its trustworthiness?
We believe similar concerns arise with many if not most of the other centers, incubators and accelerators Stanford has been creating and hosting in recent years. We therefore suggest moving those implementation activities off the main campus and into the Stanford Research Park, which was why a valuable portion of Stanford's land was set aside for this purpose in the first place, and/or to an entity comparable to Stanford Research Institute, which was why SRI and entities like it throughout the country also were created years ago. The Redwood City administrative campus that currently houses nearly 3,000 of Stanford's 17,000 non-teaching staff (see our April 13 Newsletter here) might also be repurposed for the centers, incubators and accelerators. Among other things, these changes would free up land and buildings on the main campus for the university's core purposes of teaching and research and would help solve Stanford's problems with Santa Clara County for its land use permits. These changes also would allow a significantly reduced administrative staff to interact in person with Stanford's faculty and students and thus be focused again on the university's core purposes of teaching and research and not something else.
And for reasons that will become clearer over time, we believe these and similar reforms will also go to the heart of free speech and critical thinking at Stanford.
Controversial Political Issues at Stanford, Past and Present
Last week, the Stanford Daily ran a detailed and well-written article about past and current political controversies at Stanford, including the firing of Prof. Bruce Franklin during the Vietnam War era and the more recent issues re COVID, Judge Duncan’s appearance at Stanford Law School and the like. In light of these current issues, we also again urge that Stanford adopt the Chicago Trifecta available at our website here and including these provisions from the Kalven Report that is part of the Chicago Trifecta:
“A university has a great and unique role to play in fostering the development of social and political values in a society. The role is defined by the distinctive mission of the university and defined too by the distinctive characteristics of the university as a community. It is a role for the long term.. . .
“To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.
“A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.. . .
"The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.”
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“People who believe in freedom of expression have spent several centuries fighting against censorship, in whatever form. We have to be certain the ‘Net’ doesn’t become the site for technological book burning.” -- John Ralston Saul
May 26, 2023
Death of Former University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer, and Why We Support the Chicago Principles
Readers know we have long advocated Stanford’s adoption of the Chicago Trifecta re free speech, political positions by a university, and standards for the hiring and promotion of faculty found here. We therefore are reprinting, below, an editorial published earlier this week by the Wall Street Journal upon the death of former University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer.
We also would be remiss if we didn’t note that former Stanford President Gerhard Casper had long been a faculty member, law school dean and provost at the University of Chicago before he was recruited to become Stanford’s ninth president, and that President Casper largely reflected the Chicago Principles in his own leadership of Stanford. We believe a significant source of Stanford’s widely publicized problems in recent years stems from its deviation from these principles, which is why we again strongly urge Stanford’s faculty, administrators and trustees to formally adopt those principles and then to very visibly put them into effect.
From WSJ: Robert Zimmer, 1947-2023 -- The University of Chicago President Championed Free Speech
Robert Zimmer, a mathematician who served 15 years as president of the University of Chicago, died Tuesday at age 75. In announcing his death, the university said his presidency will be remembered as “one of the longest and most impactful in the University’s 133-year history.”
That’s an understatement. Zimmer kept Chicago as a leading school of higher education. But his largest contribution was his public support for free expression on campus in a disputatious era when too many schools are willing to cancel controversial speakers, especially on the political right. In 2014 Zimmer appointed a Committee on Freedom of Expression, which drafted what became known as the Chicago Principles expressing the university’s abiding commitment to free speech.
Chicago’s principles have since been adopted by dozens of other colleges and universities. The spirit of the Chicago Principles was perhaps most vividly expressed in a welcome letter sent to the incoming class of 2020 signed by the dean of students.
“Our commitment to academic freedom,” it read, “means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
A few months later, the Journal asked Zimmer about critics who said the letter was sent out to appease alumni donors. “I am not the first president to speak out in this way,” he said. “I view myself as simply continuing to reassert what has been a longstanding value of the University of Chicago that has defined the way we have behaved.”
We can think of a few current university presidents who could use a dose of Zimmer spinal fluid. The easiest path is to bow to the loudest student and faculty voices that want to stamp out other views. Robert Zimmer was clear, courageous and unwavering. His leadership at Chicago reminds us what a university is supposed to be all about.
Princeton Alumni Publish Survey Results re Student Attitudes on Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Excerpt: . . . The survey provides input from students on what steps the university should undertake. For example, 60% of students say they would like to see the university host debates on controversial topics, something the university has not done. Other suggestions receiving support from students include offering courses on free speech and hiring an administrative officer to act as an ombudsperson to protect free speech and address alleged breaches of the free speech rule on campus. Given that issues of free speech at Princeton now are apparently under the purview of DEI administrators, this new ombudsperson role is vital.
The survey also asked questions directly related to current issues at Princeton. Many universities, including Princeton, are using online reporting systems to allow bias incident complaints to be filed, often anonymously, against students and sometimes faculty. [See our article about Stanford’s own Bias Reporting/Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative here.] The public and, indeed, students knew little about these systems until very recently, and these systems have now become very controversial. . .. [See full survey article here.]
University of California Sued for Mandating DEI Statements from Applicants
Excerpt: A policy that requires scholars seeking a job at UC Santa Cruz to provide a diversity, equity and inclusion statement as part of the application process is unconstitutional, argues a recently filed lawsuit against the University of California system and [UC Santa Cruz] leaders. . ..
“I believe that the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements in evaluating candidates for positions in higher education and academia are anathema to the ideals and principles of rigorous scholarship, and the sound practice of science and teaching—all of which public universities were created to uphold,” [Prof. J.D. Haltigan] wrote.
“DEI statements have become a political litmus test for political orientation and activism that has created an untenable situation in higher academia where diversity of thought—the bedrock of liberal education—is neither promoted nor tolerated.”
[See full article here.]
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"You might understand your views on a contentious issue at a deeper level if you talk to someone who disagrees with you. It pushes you to understand your own ideas and positions better, and to learn to understand theirs." -- Prof. David Primo, University of Rochester
May 20, 2023
Stanford Daily Calls for Greater Accountability of Stanford's Administration
Earlier this week, the Stanford Daily published an editorial calling for greater accountability of Stanford's administration.
Excerpts:
At long last, it appears the wind of change is blowing on Stanford’s campus. After a disastrous year for Stanford’s reputation and amid a brewing storm of student, alumni, and faculty discontent, there are signs that the University may be changing course. . . .
First, we must take stock of the toll that Stanford’s unchecked administrative growth has taken on student life and consequently the university’s standing. The viral Palladium article and our previous editorial have detailed how the Stanford administration’s relentless campaign to absolve itself from liability has decimated student life and made campus less safe. But the problem of administrative malfeasance extends far beyond destroying the “esoteric whimsical nature” of Stanford culture. . . .
The rampant expansion in administration and regulation is actively hurting Stanford’s strategic interests. When students spend their days fighting administrative battles, they become reluctant to advocate for, or eventually donate to, an institution that seems to only want to expand the number of staff and administrators — currently 17,000 strong — who were in many cases detrimental to their experience. . . . Through increasing collective action and doing our part to hold the university administration to account, we can ensure that Stanford’s winds of freedom continue to blow.
[See also our Back to Basics webpage here.]
The Pitfalls of Equity in Education
In a recent article at Real Clear Education and republished by Minding the Campus, “Equity and the Race to the Bottom,” author Jack Miller has raised some fundamental questions about the concept of equity in education.
Excerpts:
. . . At the university level, DEI bureaucracies have grown to absurd sizes, and they dominate much of campus life. . . . Students are increasingly taught at the lowest common denominator rather than being challenged to do their best. . . .
Most Americans believe in equality. We want to make sure that everyone has, to the greatest extent possible, an equal place at the starting line. From there, each individual has the freedom to achieve what their desires, ability, and hard work make possible. . . . But the pursuit of the modern idea of “equity” rather than true equality is simply a race to the bottom.
Update re the Katie Meyer Lawsuit
The wrongful death lawsuit filed by Katie Meyer's parents against Stanford continues. In an order published on May 9 and found here, Judge Frederick Chung wrote in part:
"The initiation of disciplinary proceedings, and specifically the February 28, 2022 communications, cannot reasonably be regarded as 'extreme and outrageous' conduct by the defendants, even if, with the full benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the communications could arguably have been gentler in tone. Nevertheless, because this is the first pleading challenge, and because the court is already granting leave to amend as to the other causes of action, the court grants 30 days’ leave to amend as to eighth cause of action, as well."
A copy of the original complaint can be found at our Stanford Concerns webpage here. See also our concerns about the Maxient case management system found at our Back to Basics webpage here.
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“I am open-minded. I seek to understand opinions or behavior that I do not necessarily agree with. I pursue the objective truth through honest inquiry. I am tolerant and consider points of view that are in conflict with my convictions.” -- From the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism pro-human pledge.
May 12, 2023
Stanford’s Alleged Roles in the Censorship-Industrial Complex
A number of news organizations have been focusing in recent weeks on what allegedly are well financed and highly coordinated nationwide efforts to monitor and even control information regarding political matters, differing views about COVID and various other topics. One of the most complete summaries was produced earlier this week via a Substack publication at this link. Note that the Stanford Internet Observatory is #7 in the discussion and is cross-referenced in several of the other listings. Other Stanford-involved entities also are discussed, including the Election Integrity Partnership (regarding elections) and the Virality Project (regarding COVID and vaccines). See some related postings at our website's Reader Comments page, including Stanford's own explanation.
More About Stanford’s List of Proscribed Words and Phrases
Several months ago, Stanford came under attack for its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) and which consisted of a list of approximately 100 words and phrases that Stanford’s IT department said were to be avoided and which they had been monitoring and possibly even censoring. We posted a PDF copy of the list at our Stanford Concerns webpage (scroll down to the EHLI entry) and which Stanford a few days later said it had stopped using. A recently published article says that Stanford in fact has not given up on this effort.
Excerpt: Earlier this year, Stanford University shelved its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) in response to public scrutiny and faculty pressure. Professor Russell A. Berman said the initiative, which attempted to suppress the use of commonsense terms such as "American," "ladies," and "white paper," was a "catastrophe for the university." [A copy of Prof. Berman’s statement is posted here.] Stanford has apparently not yet fully absorbed that lesson, as it still maintains an internal “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) Content Style Guide" that is "intended to serve as a resource for campus communicators." . . . The willingness to decide these controversies by assertion is fundamentally at odds with the nature of a university, which should provide a forum for the free pursuit of truth. This guide demonstrates that the bureaucrats at Stanford still do not understand the purpose of the institution for which they work.
Current Issues in Higher Ed
In our last Newsletter, we had an item about a webinar regarding academic freedom, DEI and related topics and featuring Prof. Keith Whittington from Princeton and Christopher Ruffo from the Manhattan Institute. A recording of that panel is now available on YouTube.
Stanford Democracy Initiative
In a prior Newsletter, we called your attention to the Stanford Civics Initiative. We bring to your attention another new program, the Stanford Democracy Initiative. See also this Stanford Daily article.
Provost Drell Announces She Is Stepping Down in the Fall
For those who have not seen prior news reports, Prof. Persis Drell has announced that she will be stepping down as Stanford’s Provost in the fall. Here’s the news release from Stanford Report, an article from the Stanford Daily and an article from the Stanford Review.
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“If faculty are not free to ask questions — even questions that turn accepted orthodoxies on their head — there is no growth, and the purpose of the university ceases to exist.” -- Prof. Lynn Comerford, California State University, East Bay
April 29, 2023
May 3 Forum on Academic Freedom, DEI and Higher Ed Reforms
Stanford’s Classical Liberalism Initiative, the Cornell Free Speech Alliance and others are sponsoring a discussion/debate this coming Wednesday, May 3, “Academic Freedom, DEI and Higher Education Reform: Do Proposed Policies in Florida Make Sense?” Participants will include Prof. Keith Whittington from Princeton and Christopher Ruffo from the Manhattan Institute. Registration is available at this link.
UCLA Alumni Create Bruins for Free Speech
Alumni at UCLA have formed a group similar to ours and with the goal of “promoting free expression, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity" at UCLA. If interested, take a look at their Bruin Alumni in Defense of Free Speech website. If you know of others who might be interested, please pass this information along to them. See the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) article about the new group here.
Stanford Concerns
We again call on Stanford’s faculty and trustees to adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta set forth at our website on our Chicago Principles page. We also call your attention to our white paper Back to Basics at Stanford at our Back to Basics page. We believe these proposed actions and reforms can help address the many issues we have seen in recent years and fear may still be ahead at Stanford. We also welcome your comments on the subject at our website (scroll down to the “Contact Us” function) or feel free to write to us at stanfordalumnifreespeech@proton.me. ********** Quote “The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition . . . Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning. It carries with it duties correlative with rights." -- American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure
April 21, 2023
Student Life at Stanford
Three articles about student life at Stanford are worth reading or rereading. The first is Stanford freshman Theo Baker's article that appeared in the Stanford Daily last fall, "Stanford's War on Fun," and that is reprinted toward the end of our Stanford Concerns webpage.
The second is a Stanford Daily article from earlier this week confirming that a slate of ASSU candidates who ran on the platform "Fun Strikes Back" won by a wide margin.
The third article was written by Ginevra Davis who was a recent graduate at the time, and although the article was written a year ago, we believe it provides a good analysis of the issues that remain of concern to all of us who have a commitment to the quality of education at Stanford as well as Stanford's ongoing success: Excerpts: "Stanford’s new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat’s vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference . . .. It is a world largely without unencumbered joy; without the kind of cultural specificity that makes college, or the rest of life, particularly interesting. "Since 2013, Stanford’s administration has executed a top-to-bottom destruction of student social life. Driven by a fear of uncontrollable student spontaneity and a desire to enforce equity on campus, a growing administrative bureaucracy has destroyed almost all of Stanford’s distinctive student culture. . .. "The university sent a clear message with its treatment of the Band. Spontaneous organizations, particularly when they could become chaotic, controversial, or otherwise a space for breaking rules, were now something to be controlled. Rather than treating freedom and spontaneity as strengths, the dynamic became one where students had to justify their projects and ideas while under suspicion from administrators. Student life was becoming dominated by restrictive bureaucracy. . .. "An Office for Every Problem ". . . Stanford students live in brand new buildings with white walls. We have a $20 million dollar meditation center that nobody uses. But students didn’t ask for any of that. We just wanted a dirty house with friends. . .. An empty house is safe. A blank slate is fair. In the name of safety and fairness, Stanford destroyed everything that makes people enjoy college and life." https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/06/13/stanfords-war-on-social-life/ ********** Suggestions for New Student Orientation In light of the recent speaker disruptions and other concerns about the current climate for free speech and academic freedom at Stanford and elsewhere, we suggest that Stanford include in its Three Books program for this fall's incoming freshmen and transfer students Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington's book, Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Protect Free Speech, and that was required pre-reading at Princeton several years ago. A set of hypotheticals might also be included for discussion in small breakout groups and where each student must take more than one side for each issue presented. Excerpts: "Free speech on college campuses is perhaps under as great a threat today as it has been in quite some time. We are not, of course, on the verge of returning to the rigid conformity of a century ago, but we are in danger of giving up on hard-won freedoms of critical inquiry that have been wrested from figures of authority over the course of a century. The reasons for this more censorious environment are myriad. I will not try to detail those threats to free speech here. Although some still deny that there is a significant threat to speech on campuses, that position requires an almost willful blindness to what has been happening on college campuses big and small. ". . . Laying aside the question of whether courts might enforce some outside body of constitutional rules to limit the discretion of university administrators, how should members of the academic community itself understand their own interests in the free speech debate? What principles should the members of a university community -- administrators, faculty, and students -- strive to realize on campus? ". . . Universities [are] a place 'where ideas begin.' If we hope to sustain institutions that can play that role within American society, we need to act to preserve them as bastions of free thought and critical dialog." ********** Quote "The refusal to suppress offensive speech is one of the most difficult obligations the free speech principle imposes upon all of us; yet it is also one of the First Amendment’s greatest glories — indeed it is a central test of a community’s commitment to free speech.” -- Former Stanford Prof. Gerald Gunther
April 13, 2023
Distanced from Purpose
When discussing recent problems at Stanford, our attention was called again to the 35-acre satellite campus that Stanford has built, five miles away in Redwood City, for 2,700 of its over 16,000 support staff. The facility includes a full-service café, a rooftop six-lane swimming pool, a wellness center with an indoor basketball court, state-of-the-art fitness equipment, locker rooms including showers, and an outdoor fitness courtyard. Take a look here and here.
We understand the need to conserve space on the core campus given the county’s constant and often inappropriate limitations on Stanford’s educational, medical and research activities. We also understand the competitive pressures to recruit staff. But a concern is that this sort of environment signals to the staff that there is no limit on spending (how could there be when they themselves work in these sorts of surroundings?). Of even greater concern, our understanding is that these staff members, unlike in the past, have few if any face to face, personal interactions with students and faculty and which, per Ken Cuthbertson’s quote in our last Newsletter, is the only reason Stanford exists. We also featured in our last Newsletter the recent WSJ op-ed by GSB Prof. Ivan Marinovic about Stanford's bias reporting system. To what extent do the case management systems and form letters referenced in Prof. Marinovic’s essay emanate from this detached group in Redwood City? And was it this group or their counterparts on the main campus that was communicating with Katie Meyer, largely using a computerized case management system and form letters as provided by third-party vendors (for Stanford, a company called Maxient)? https://www.wsj.com/articles/snitches-get-sheepskins-as-colleges-train-student-informants-dei-east-germany-bias-protected-class-f941ee11?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s We again refer readers to our Back to Basics webpage including our call that Stanford significantly reduce its bloated bureaucracy (see the numbers and charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage) and that the savings be redirected solely to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and graduate student fellowships. *************** What Can be Done? Actionable Solutions to Regaining Academic Freedom We have posted at our Commentary webpage a recent essay by Leslie Spencer, one of the leaders of the Princeton alumni group that is comparable to ours and a former writer and associate editor at Forbes. We commend Ms. Spencer’s essay and proposed solutions to your attention. *************** Harvard Faculty Organize for the Protection of Academic Freedom Some leading Harvard faculty members have formed an organization for the protection of academic freedom at Harvard. We have posted a copy of their essay at our Commentary webpage. Excerpt: "Confidence in American higher education is sinking faster than for any other institution, with barely half of Americans believing it has a positive effect on the country. No small part in this disenchantment is the impression that universities are repressing differences of opinion, like the inquisitions and purges of centuries past." We also refer readers to our Chicago Principles webpage. Quote "Servants like me and the janitor can get our kicks out of providing the means and services which allow faculty and students to learn and teach under optimal circumstances" and after that, our job is to “stay the hell out of their way.” -- Stanford’s Former VP for Administration Ken Cuthbertson
April 7, 2023
WSJ Op-Ed on Campus Bias Reporting
Stanford GSB Prof. Ivan Marinovic co-authored an op-ed that appears in today's print edition of the Wall Street Journal and is titled “DEI Meets East Germany: U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another for ‘Bias’ - Snitches get sheepskins as colleges train student informants.” The gist of the article is that the computerized record-keeping systems in use at Stanford and campuses nationwide are encouraging students to report on other students, even anonymously, and are accumulating massive amounts of information and often without the targeted students' knowledge. We have long referenced these concerns in our Back to Basics webpage.
We believe the bias reporting function that is contained in these systems is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg and expect the issues will become of much greater concern in the months ahead.
Meantime, the NY Post recently ran an op-ed praising both Stanford and Cornell for taking some stronger stands in recent weeks for protecting free speech.
New Book On Critical Thinking
The College Fix recently published an article about a new book by Louis Newman, “Thinking Critically in College: The Essential Handbook for Student Success.” FYI, Newman is a former Stanford Dean of Academic Advising and Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. Per the College Fix, the book breaks down the four basic concepts of critical thinking as: “exploring context, considering alternatives, weighing evidence, and finding implication and new applications.” Perhaps excerpts from this book along with a short treatise on the First Amendment should be included this summer in Stanford’s annual “Three Books” reading for incoming freshmen and transfer students. https://www.thecollegefix.com/stanford-deans-new-book-helps-undergrads-learn-to-think-critically/
The Fundamental Standard of Ken Cuthbertson
As we reflect upon incidents in recent months, we are reminded of a statement from Stanford’s long-serving Vice President for Administration, Ken Cuthbertson, and in whose name a major award is given annually: "I resist the idea that learning and teaching should be 'administered' in a university," he wrote in 1967. "Servants like me and the janitor can get our kicks out of providing the means and services which allow faculty and students to learn and teach under optimal circumstances." See memorial article here: https://news.stanford.edu/2000/05/03/kenneth-cuthbertson-fund-raising-strategist-dies-81/
In other talks, Cuthbertson would compare his job with that of a groundskeeper and where the task was to maintain the field on which faculty and students would interact, which he said was the only reason the university exists in the first place; draw some boundary lines around the edges; and then “stay the hell out of their way.” We think this is a good philosophy for current leaders to keep in mind. See also our article, Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Costs on our Stanford Concerns page.
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"Learning thrives in an environment of discussion and experimentation, in which both new and old ideas encounter dissent and countervailing views. That environment is essential to preparing students for life after Stanford. The world is a place of disagreement, and we would not be preparing students adequately if we sheltered them from ideas they find difficult." -- Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne
April 4, 2023
President Tessier-Lavigne’s April 3 Letter to the Stanford Community Regarding Recent Events
We normally wouldn't send a Newsletter this soon after the one distributed over the weekend, but we thought it important to share with readers the text of President Marc Tessier-Lavigne's letter that was circulated yesterday to Stanford's faculty, students and staff regarding recent events. A copy of the president's letter is now posted at our Stanford Speaks webpage.
The DEI Debate at MIT
As noted in our last Newsletter, a debate of the pro's and con's of DEI was held at MIT earlier this evening and is now available for viewing here (until the video is edited, you may need to jump to the 36-minute mark). Both sides made very strong presentations of the issues and we encourage readers to view the video. Former Head of DEI at De Anza College Speaks Out There have been several recent news articles about Dr. Tabia Lee, who for two years was head of DEI at De Anza Community College and why she was forced out of this position. Dr. Lee has subsequently published her own summary of what happened and why she believes this should matter to anyone interested in higher education. We have posted Dr. Lee’s essay at our Commentary webpage along with a link to a video that she recorded for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). We are impressed with what FAIR itself is doing and thus have also added a link to it at our Resources webpage, and we would urge readers to take a look.
The Stanford Internet Observatory
There have been ongoing news reports about Stanford’s Internet Observatory project and its alleged role in nationwide censorship. We have added a link at our Reader Comments page to one of the more recent op-eds, this one from Michael Shellenberger.
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"Engaging in civil discourse and ensuring that multiple perspectives are presented are crucial if we want to preserve the components of education that ideologues are seeking to destroy."-- Tabia Lee, EdD, former DEI director, De Anza College
April 1, 2023
Two Webinars on April 4
For those who might be interested, here are two webinars this coming Tuesday, April 4:
At 1 p.m. Pacific Time, Law Schools and Free Speech, sponsored by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression); signup here.
At 4 p.m. Pacific Time, Pro’s and Con’s of Campus DEI, sponsored by alumni at MIT and Cornell; signup here.
Former Stanford Law School Prof. Gerald Gunther on the Importance of Campus Free Speech
We recently came upon a posting at FIRE’s website regarding remarks former Stanford Law School Prof. Gerald Gunther made in 1990 expressing his worries re campus free speech. We have posted the entire article at our Stanford Concerns page here.
Excerpt: “I am deeply troubled by current efforts — however well-intentioned — to place new limits on freedom of expression at this and other campuses. . . . I lived in a country where ideological orthodoxy reigned and where the opportunity for dissent was severely limited. . . . I feel compelled to speak out against the attempt by some members of the Stanford community to enlarge the area of forbidden speech.” -- Prof. Gerald Gunther (1990).
Heather Mac Donald re Campus Concerns
Well-known author and Stanford Law School graduate Heather Mac Donald has written about her concerns with recent events at the law school and how they may reflect more widely. We have posted a copy of her article at our Commentary webpage.
Excerpt: The most astonishing aspect of the Steinbach affair is that it occurred at a law school. The essence of lawyerly work is to represent someone other than oneself—a defendant, a business client, a plaintiff seeking redress. One’s own identity is not at stake. A lawyer is supposed to grapple with legal ideas—the principles behind a statute or constitutional provision, the implications of a contractual clause. Here, too, his identity should be irrelevant. Much of legal work is adversarial; a lawyer confronts strongly opposing viewpoints, the outcome of which may lead even to the loss of a client's liberty. A lawyer rebuts those arguments not by claiming to be emotionally wounded by them, but by posing a stronger set of arguments that better accord with reason. Here, yet again, a lawyer’s own identity should not come into play. A large portion of the Stanford law school student body seems to have no grasp of these truths. They weaponized their feelings against Duncan, and claimed that his mere presence somewhere on campus, even if they stayed away from him, was intolerable.
The World Through a Singular Viewpoint
Several sources have brought to our attention various Stanford courses that start with pre-determined and one-sided conclusions and seem designed solely to reconfirm those conclusions. Versus starting with questions designed to stimulate critical and independent thinking about the issues being presented. This is a sample:
From the Stanford Law School:
Representations of Criminal Lawyers in Popular Culture Through the Lens of Bias (Stanford Law School 240K, mandatory for first year law students): “This seminar will explore the portrayal of criminal lawyers in popular films and will engage in critical analysis of how misconceptions about the criminal justice system and biases against women, people of color and the poor are amplified on the big screen.” https://law.stanford.edu/courses/1l-discussion-representations-of-criminal-lawyers-in-popular-culture-through-the-lens-of-bias/
Race and Technology (Stanford Law School 240T, mandatory for first year law students): “People often tend to think of technology as value neutral, as essentially objective tools that can be used for good or evil, particularly when questions of race and racial justice are involved. But the technologies we develop and deploy are frequently shaped by historical prejudices, biases, and inequalities and thus may be no less biased and racist than the underlying society in which they exist.” https://law.stanford.edu/courses/discussion-1l-race-and-technology/
Violence, Resistance, and the Law (Stanford Law School 240Y, mandatory for first year law students): “This reading group will examine the force of law – the ways in which law both depends upon and abjures violence, the ways it suppresses and invites resistance, and the identity of subjects against whom legal violence is deployed. A central object of focus will be excessive force, the legal doctrines that insulate government officers from accountability, and the ways this specific form of violence is tied to racial subordination.” https://law.stanford.edu/courses/discussion-1l-violence-resistance-and-the-law/
Other law school courses:
•https://law.stanford.edu/courses/1l-discussion-dress-codes-law-status-sex-and-power/•https://law.stanford.edu/courses/discussion-1l-in-search-of-climate-justice/
From the School of Humanities and Sciences:
Workplace Inclusion Certificate: “Cultivating Belonging and Affirming Identities. Applying Anti-Oppression Interventions in the Workplace. Inequity in Higher Education and Strategies for Change. Taking the ‘I’ Out of Imposter Syndrome and Reclaiming Space.” https://hshr.stanford.edu/dei/inclusion
From the Graduate School of Business:
Leverage Diversity and Inclusion for Organizational Excellence (online for $1,500): “The relationships between diversity and innovation and diversity and performance have been documented extensively in the literature. . . However, without building a sense of inclusion and belonging, organizations will have a difficult time maximizing the potential of diversity.” https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/exec-ed/programs/leverage-diversity-inclusion-organizational-excellence
From the School of Medicine:
Stanford J.E.D.I. (Justice, Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion) Training; “. . . learners will gain knowledge and understanding of common unconscious biases and how they manifest as microaggressions. Learners will learn about the types of microaggressions, how they impact our professional interactions and how best to respond to them. Learners will learn through didactic materials, interactive case studies, quizzes, and assignments.” https://respect.stanford.edu/jedi-training/From the School of Medicine: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Healthcare (online for $2,300): “You’ll learn how to intentionally apply DEI strategies that help mitigate systemic racism and microaggressions in healthcare.” https://online.stanford.edu/courses/som-xche0029-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-healthcare
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“Of course, we want [Stanford] to be an inclusive community . . . But we can’t not have open debate simply because we think we’re going to hurt people’s feelings.” -- John Etchemendy, former Stanford Provost
March 24, 2023
More About Recent Events at Stanford Law School
We have posted here some links to articles regarding recent events at Stanford Law School.
More About the Ballooning Administrative Costs at Stanford
We have added to our Stanford Concerns webpage some additional charts and articles about the ballooning administrative costs at Stanford.
From The Free Press – Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students
We have also posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage a recent article that raises concerns about Stanford’s Office of Community Standards and related administrative units, including their involvement in cases involving residential education, student discipline, the Katie Meyer suicide and other items.
Some Other Comments and Opinions
As a reminder, we have received a number of other comments and opinions from law school and other alumni expressing their concerns about recent events at Stanford, and we have posted some of those comments and opinions on a new Reader Comments page.
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“Those who strike down free speech aren’t liberators; they’re oppressive (even when they silence powerful men). And when aspiring lawyers act oppressively, they don’t just undermine liberty; they undermine the very profession they seek to join.” -- David French in NY Times
March 19, 2023
Back to Basics at Stanford
We’ve updated our Back to Basics at Stanford white paper to recommend that every dollar that is saved by the suggested reductions in administrative staff and related overhead (salaries, benefits, other contract and overhead costs) should be devoted solely to scholarships, research grants and independent projects for undergraduates and to graduate student fellowships. We also have suggested that the administration should publish a monthly or quarterly summary of the reductions that have been made and the amounts thus redirected solely to these undergraduate and graduate student programs. See also our prior posting about Stanford's ballooning administrative costs at our Stanford Concerns page.
Commentary from Former Law School Dean Paul Brest
We have posted at our Reader Comments page a commentary received from former law school dean Paul Brest saying that Stanford’s 1974 statement on academic freedom covers the recent concerns and why adoption of the Chicago Principles is not necessary.
Stanford’s Role in Censoring Social Media and the Internet
Matt Taibbi’s most recent release about the Twitter files is entitled, “Stanford, the Virality Project, and the Censorship of True Stories.” (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1636729166631432195.html).
Some Other Comments and Opinions
We have received a number of other comments and opinions from law school and other alumni expressing their concerns about recent events at Stanford, and we have posted some of those comments and opinions on our new Reader Comments page.
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“The fastest way for a great research university to lapse into mediocrity is to curtail in any way the relentless debate and discussion that alone can bring about scientific and social progress. Unless Stanford wants to take up the retrograde role of the inquisitors who silenced Galileo, it needs a course correction. Now.” -- American Council of Trustees and Alumni
March 12, 2023
About Last Week’s Events at Stanford Law School
By now, most readers have heard about events last Thursday, March 9 whereby a student organization had invited federal Judge Stewart Kyle Duncan to talk about specific cases and how they relate to recent Supreme Court developments. Unfortunately, the judge was continually heckled by a group of protestors and then the law school’s Associate Dean for DEI read to attendees her previously prepared remarks largely attacking the judge. The judge eventually was escorted from the school by a security detail that intervened after there were mounting concerns. For those who haven’t kept up on the matter, here are some links:
A video of what happened
A letter to President Marc Tessier-Lavigne from FIRE about their concerns
A letter of apology from Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and law school dean Jenny Martinez
David Lat commentary
We again call your attention to the increasingly bloated bureaucracy at Stanford (see our Stanford Concerns page to see the numbers). And in our view, students and faculty of course can raise issues, although within the bounds of acceptable behavior that doesn’t inappropriately interfere with an event. But what concerns a growing number of alumni and others is that one or more administrators would decide on their own what is and isn’t acceptable speech, who is and isn’t an acceptable speaker (even where students had invited that speaker), and signal that the law school has an official position opposing that speaker, what the speaker allegedly stands for and what the speaker might allegedly say.
This is another example of why we think the Kalven Report, part of the Chicago Trifecta, should be adopted by Stanford (see our compilations on our Chicago Principles page), including these excerpts:
“A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions. By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.
“The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars.
“The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.”
Quote:
“Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.” Sir Winston Churchill
March 7, 2023
ACTA Issues a Challenge to Stanford Regarding Academic Freedom
ACTA (the American Council of Trustees and Alumni) has issued a challenge to Stanford’s faculty, students and alumni on issues of free speech and academic freedom. Their press release can be found here, and an ACTA webpage that was just posted and is devoted to the Stanford challenge is here. We have posted the related video at our Stanford Concerns page here (the video is also available at YouTube here).
According to ACTA’s website, the group is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting academic excellence, academic freedom, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities. Their challenge to Stanford, as they have done with other major colleges and universities: commit to a culture of free expression, foster civil discourse, cultivate intellectual diversity, break down barriers to free expression, and advance leadership accountability. And with specific action items listed at their website for each of these five goals.
While our Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking group was not involved in creating this challenge, we think the issues it raises are very important ones for all of Stanford’s faculty, students and alumni, and we thus hope the issues will receive appropriate discussion and resolution. We also note that the challenge makes reference to the Chicago Trifecta, something we have long endorsed and is posted at our Chicago Principles page.
Further information about ACTA and the initiatives it sponsors can be found here, and if you have any thoughts about the challenge or the issues it raises, please feel free to submit them at our Contact Us page.
Further information about ACTA and the initiatives it sponsors can be found here, and if you have any thoughts about the challenge or the issues it raises, please feel free to submit them at our Contact Us page.
Quote:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Prof. Margaret Mead (University of Rhode Island, 1901 - 1978)
March 5, 2023
Faculty Views on Campus Civil Liberties
A recent survey sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and administered by Social Science Research Services showed that when faculty members from close to 1,500 colleges and universities were asked about their views on civil liberties, most said they self-censor and were fearful of losing their jobs or reputations due to their speech. This is said to be more than what even was seen during the McCarthy era with 72% of today's conservative faculty, 56% of moderate faculty, and even 40% of liberal faculty afraid of losing their jobs or reputations due to their speech. See full article here: https://www.thefire.org/news/report-faculty-members-more-likely-self-censor-today-during-mccarthy-era
In that same survey, 50% of university professors said the requirement that job applicants submit a statement describing their commitment and experience advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is an “ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom.” The other 50% said DEI statements “are a justifiable requirement for a university job.” See full article here: https://www.thefire.org/news/report-faculty-members-more-likely-self-censor-today-during-mccarthy-era
Yale Faculty In Ongoing Discussions with Yale's President About the Status of Free Expression on Campus
Yale's University Council, the university's highest presidential advisory body, is in ongoing talks with University President Peter Salovey over the status of free expression on campus. See full article here: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/02/28/university-council-to-advise-salovey-on-status-of-free-expression-at-yale/
Linfield University Professor, Fired After Speaking Out Against Antisemitism and Sexual Misconduct, Wins $1M Settlement
In response to Linfield University President Miles Davis’ anti-Semitic comments including jokes about gas chambers and other insults against Jewish people, as well as concerns about alleged sexual misconduct by members of the school's board trustees, tenured Prof. Pollack-Pelzner filed a complaint against the university, over which Prof. Pollack-Pelzner was subsequently fired.
FIRE commented that “Linfield has the dubious honor of having done something that is pretty remarkable, which was to fire a tenured faculty member with no due process whatsoever, and to do so because the institution’s leadership objected to his speech.”
Prof. Pollack-Pelzer eventually won an approximate $1 million settlement against the university. FIRE analyst Aaron Corpora warned universities that “if [they’re] going to mess with the expressive or due process rights of students or faculty, [they] better be prepared to pay.” See full article here: https://www.thecollegefix.com/prof-fired-after-speaking-out-against-antisemitism-sexual-misconduct-wins-1m-settlement/
Quote:
“Faculty members complain that they can’t speak freely, but they’re also turning on each other . . . They can’t have it both ways. If faculty members want to feel safe to speak, they have to stop supporting the censorship of others.” Sean Stevens (FIRE)
February 24, 2023
Stanford Faculty Raise Concerns About Anonymous and Even Secret Reports Being Made About Students
Articles earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail and National Review outlined concerns being raised by members of Stanford’s faculty regarding systems that allow anonymous complaints to be filed by fellow students about something other students might have said or done. These filings then result in a targeted student being called in for various types of counseling and remedial action. The issue first surfaced with the filings that were made in December, many apparently anonymously, via Stanford’s “Protected Identity Harm” program about a student who was seen reading Mein Kampf (see our posting about the issue here).
But that led to a realization that an entire electronic record-keeping system is in place, is generally never disclosed to students, but that tracks what students may have said and done and that then is used against the students in current and future actions by Stanford’s student services staff, lawyers and others. Stanford’s system is provided by a company known as Maxient and which provides similar services, including a wide range of forms that Stanford also seems to be using, to over 1300 other colleges and universities around the country. The Maxient system also allows schools to share some of the student information among them.
This most recent revelation -- on top of the “Elimination of Harmful Language” word list that came to light a few months ago (see our Stanford Concerns page) -- only furthers the concerns about a vast and expensive bureaucracy that continually meddles in student affairs when the proper educational answer should be direct discussions among the affected students themselves, one to another. At least in our view, Stanford has recruited some of the most capable young adults in the country. Surely they should be entrusted with managing their own lives.
For these purposes, we again call your attention to our Back to Basics web page, and the presentation to Stanford’s Faculty Senate a few weeks ago by Prof. Russell Berman (see our Stanford Speaks page). Excerpt from the Wall Street Journal article: A group of Stanford University professors is pushing to end a system that allows students to anonymously report classmates for exhibiting discrimination or bias, saying it threatens free speech on campus (see https://www.wsj.com/articles/alumni-withhold-donations-demand-colleges-enforce-free-speech-11638280801?mod=article_inline).
The backlash began last month, when a student reading “Mein Kampf,” the autobiographical manifesto of Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, was reported through the school’s “Protected Identity Harm” system.
“I was stunned,” said Russell Berman, a professor of comparative literature who said he believes the reporting system could chill free speech on campus and is ripe for abuse. “It reminds me of McCarthyism.” . . . Stanford Business School professor Ivan Marinovic said the bias-reporting system reminded him of the way citizens were encouraged to inform on one another by governments in the Soviet Union, East Germany and China. “It ignores the whole history,” he said. “You’re basically going to be reporting people who you find offensive, right? According to your own ideology.”
Quote:
“Alumni have the ability and duty to demand that their schools maintain the reasons for which they were created. But to be effective, alumni need to organize.” Stuart Taylor Jr. and Edward Yingling
February 20, 2023
Stanford’s Faculty Senate Appoints an Ad Hoc Committee on Speech and Academic Freedom
See the Stanford Report's two articles about the ad hoc committee here and here.
In Other News
These are some articles and links about issues at other colleges and universities and that may be of interest:
Yet Another Campus Blasphemy Dispute in Minnesota:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reported that Macalester College covered up an Iranian-American feminist's art exhibit after student complaints. See article here.
Commentary, Keep the Classroom a Space for Weird Conversations:
The author states, "If teachers are unwilling to venture into alien territory and make the classroom safe for unfashionable thoughts despite the security they enjoy, we cannot expect students to take the risk." https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/keep-the-classroom-a-space-for-weird-conversations/ article here.
Commentary, Let’s Face It, Academic Freedom and Inclusion Aren’t Always Compatible:
In response to a faculty resolution at Hamline University, the article's authors assert, "In our view there will inevitably be tensions between these two values [academic freedom and inclusion]. And when those tensions arise, academic freedom must prevail — at least, if we want to ensure a college education worthy of its name." https://banished.substack.com/p/lets-face-it-academic-freedom-and
Quote:
“As a university, we deeply value free expression. The ability to express a broad diversity of ideas and viewpoints is fundamental to the university’s mission of seeking truth through research and education, and to preparing students for a world in which they will engage with diverse points of view every day.” Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne
February 1, 2023
Updates
We bring to your attention a number of developments that might be of interest.
First, here’s a link to a Stanford Daily article about recent discussions at Stanford’s Faculty Senate regarding faculty oversight of academic matters.
Second, here’s a link to a Stanford Review article with comments made by Prof. Russell Berman regarding these Faculty Senate discussions.
And finally, here are two links regarding the Stanford Civics Initiative (SCI) and the Initiative's courses now being taught in conjunction with Stanford’s political science department.
From SCI's "About" page: "We are united by our belief that U.S. universities have a responsibility to offer students an education that will promote their flourishing as human beings, their judgment as moral agents, and their participation in society as democratic citizens. . . .We believe that students’ own ethical judgment is improved and their deepest commitments are strengthened when they have the chance to make and to respond to reasoned arguments from all sides of morally challenging issues." Take a look: https://civics.stanford.edu/About
Quote:
"It is not the role of a university to protect students or anyone else from difficult ideas or words. On the contrary, we need the intellectual courage to confront them, and we faculty have to regain the assurance that the university supports us when we do so." Prof. Russell Berman
January 27, 2023
Controversy Regarding Mein Kampf
We bring to your attention an article from FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) regarding Stanford’s recent handling of a screenshot posted on social media and showing a Stanford student reading Mein Kampf. See FIRE's article here.
Here's how the Stanford Daily initially covered the story ("Protected Identity Harm Report Filed as Screenshot of Student Reading 'Mein Kampf' Circulates"). And here's how the Stanford Reviewsubsequently covered the story ("Nazis Banned Books. We Shouldn't"). And here’s a link to Stanford’s Protected Identity Harm Reporting website.
Note that our updated Back to Basics white paper has proposed the elimination of the Protected Identity Harm Reporting program (Item 2.i as well as the boldface paragraph at the bottom).
These latest developments raise numerous concerns. Among other things, is it appropriate that Stanford’s administrative staff decides, on their own, what might and might not be appropriate speech? Or worse, appropriate books for students to be seen reading? The issue becomes especially concerning since Stanford is prohibited from adopting speech codes pursuant to California’s Leonard Law and the Corry court decision (see former President Casper’s comments about the Corry case), and in many ways, this is worse with Stanford’s student services staff now imposing unwritten speech rules instead. Who authorized this?
When we read about the Protected Identity Harm Reporting program, we were also concerned about the pressures being placed on students to accept what the website describes as restorative justice, indigenous healing circles, mediation, etc. And shouldn’t matters like this be subject to the standards, procedures and protections that exist with the student disciplinary process? In many ways, this looks like an end run around those protections by the student services staff, and done solely on their own.
And finally, we believe there are serious concerns that these complaints can be filed anonymously and that, per the complaint form, they are then automatically entered into the Maxient student record-keeping system, often without even telling the targeted student that this is happening (again, see the boldface paragraph at the end of Back to Basics).
Quote:
"Undergraduates are now exposed to less viewpoint diversity than ever before . . . This has profound consequences for everything that happens at the university." Prof. Jonathan Haidt, New York University
January 21, 2023
Website Update
If you haven’t noticed already, we’ve made a few changes to our Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking website.
First, we’ve created a new webpage, Back to Basics, where we outline some key reforms we believe Stanford’s faculty, administrators, students and trustees should consider for the protection of speech, critical thinking and academic freedom at Stanford.
Second, we’ve posted at the Stanford Concerns page a recent article by longtime Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya who had come under ongoing and brutal attacks for his pursuing issues related to Covid. Among other things, Prof. Bhattacharya notes, “Top universities, like Stanford, where I have been both student and professor since 1986, are supposed to protect against such orthodoxies, creating a safe space for scientists to think and to test their ideas. Sadly, Stanford has failed in this crucial aspect of its mission, as I can attest from personal experience.”
And finally, we’ve posted PDF copies of each of the three compilations of the Chicago Trifecta as well as a copy of our Back to Basics proposal for anyone who would like to download and use copies of these documents (see Chicago Principles and Back to Basics pages).
January 16, 2023
The Chicago Trifecta
We, along with faculty and alumni from around the country, have been advocating that colleges and universities adopt what are known as the Chicago Principles for Free Speech. At present, something like 95 U.S. colleges and universities have endorsed or adopted them.
More recently, we and others have realized that an even more effective set of actions would be for schools to adopt all three parts of what is known as the Chicago Trifecta. As noted at our website, during earlier times of considerable campus turmoil, the University of Chicago’s faculty issued three reports dealing with (1) freedom of expression, (2) a university’s involvement in political and social matters, and (3) academic appointments. Together, these three documents have become known as the Chicago Trifecta.
All three documents are remarkable in their clarity of language and thinking, and they were produced by the faculty of one of the nation’s most prestigious and academically rigorous universities. We have therefore compiled the core principles of each of these three reports, using language taken directly from each report; and we urge Stanford’s faculty, administration and trustees to adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta as a way to guarantee the type of free speech and critical thinking we believe is essential for a leading university like Stanford.
All three compilations are now posted at our website (see Chicago Principles under More heading).
January 11, 2023
Stanford's IT Community Website, "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative"
Stanford's IT community created the website, "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative," which was reported on by the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets. The controversial website was subsequently made unavailable to those who didn't have a Stanford log-in account.
Examples of harmful words and phrases listed at the website included American, basket case, black box, blind review, brown bag, chief (even though the CIO’s official title is still Chief Information Officer), freshman, gentlemen, grandfathered, he, immigrant, ladies, master list, prisoner, prostitute, sanity check, she, submit, survivor, tone deaf, trigger warning, walk-in, webmaster. . . and nearly 100 more. A copy of the list is now posted at our website at our Stanford Concerns page.
In a letter to the Stanford community dated January 4, 2023, Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne wrote, "many have expressed concern that the work of this group could be used to censor or cancel speech at Stanford. I want to assure you this is not the case." Tessier-Lavigne continued, "At no point did the website represent university policy." Read our full article at our Stanford Concerns page, and to avoid problems like this going forward, we again urge that Stanford adopt the Chicago Trifecta (click on More and then on Chicago Principles).
Cornell Alumni Urge Emphasis on Free Speech and Critical Thinking During New Student Orientation
An alumni group at Cornell similar to ours has written two letters (one last May, one this week) to Cornell’s president, urging that a free speech instruction unit be included in new student orientation. The more recent letter states in part, “This is not a partisan issue and should not be treated as such. Every side of a debate must be open to intellectual challenge if we, as a society, and the university, as an engine of open inquiry, are to have any chance of surviving. . . . We propose training to assist students in recognizing the difference between speech and violence . . . [and that] through listening to reasoned challenge they may become wiser and more thoughtful adults.” See the most recent letter at our Commentary page.
MIT Faculty Adopts Free Expression Statement
In December 2022, the MIT faculty senate approved a Free Expression Statement that affirms, “Learning from a diversity of viewpoints, and from the deliberation, debate, and dissent that accompany them, are essential ingredients of academic excellence." The statement points out, “We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious.” (Kabbany, The College Fix.) (See our Commentary page.)
Quote: “Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for critical thinking.” Leo Tolstoy
December 15, 2022
Ballooning Administrative Costs at Colleges/Universities
In a recent conference call among alumni groups around the country, a link was posted to a website that compares the administrative costs per undergraduate student at over 1500 U.S. colleges and universities. That website – How Colleges Spend Money -- has very detailed data and interactive charts for the years 2012 through 2020 (see the website here).
In response, we have posted at our website a chart that shows the costs at Stanford as compared with a select group of other colleges and universities. Among other things, Stanford’s administrative costs per undergraduate student in 2020 were slightly below $40,000 compared with approximately $8,000 at Berkeley, $14,000 at Northwestern, $22,000 at Yale and $26,000 at Princeton. Note also that most schools had little change during these nine years, and one or two even reduced their costs, whereas Stanford, Caltech, MIT and Harvard had very significant increases during that same period. See our sample chart here.
Stanford Daily Op-Ed on Polarization
The Stanford Daily has published in recent months two op-eds by a Stanford undergraduate from New Zealand, YuQing Jiang, regarding what he calls “perceived polarization” at Stanford along with his thoughts about what causes it and its impact on campus life. You can find the two op-eds here and here.
Excerpts from the articles:
October: I do believe in the notion that universities are microcosms of society; thus, I think if left unattended, affective polarization will wreak greater havoc on the already precarious social and political spheres of American life in the coming years. This is why I want to draw attention to the precise nature of the problem confronting us. If we fall deeper into our ideological silos and the animosity between political groups grows, then our vision of a truly inclusive future will come under threat.
December: The ultimate takeaway here is to keep an open mind. We should view people we encounter as individuals with nuanced views and unique lived experiences, rather than avatars of their group identities. We should also examine whether the beliefs we hold about certain groups really apply to all of its members; there often exists greater differences within groups than between groups. But above all, we should seek to talk to people with identities different to our own: I believe we will find more in common than we think.
Quote:
"At its best, freedom of speech is transformative, elevating our caliber of discourse, giving voice to the marginalized, and inviting connection across difference." Stanford's Office of Community Standards
November 30, 2022
Katie Meyer Lawsuit
We alumni are obviously concerned about the allegations made in the complaint filed last week by the Meyer family against Stanford regarding the tragic suicide earlier this year by their daughter Katie Meyer. See the complaint at our Stanford Concerns page.
Back to Basics
Coincidentally, a proposal has been circulated in recent weeks about the need for major colleges and universities to get back to basics. In light of the Meyer lawsuit, we have decided to go ahead and post the draft, revised slightly to be specific to Stanford, since many of the concerns raised by the complaint overlap with many of the same concerns that alumni, students, faculty, parents and others have had in recent years. The “Back to Basics” discussion draft can be found at the Back to Basics page at our website
Let Others Know About Our Website
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to others who might be interested. Names and email addresses can be added to our mailing list by writing to stanfordalumnifreespeech@proton.me or by using the Subscribe function at this website.
Quote:
"A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
November 21, 2022
See our special edition newsletter posting here that contains links to videos and other information from the Academic Freedom Conference hosted in early November by Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
November 16, 2022
On The Need for Contrarian Thinking
Stanford Review’s editor-in-chief Mimi St. Johns, who is a junior studying Computer Science and German, wrote in a recent op-ed The Contrarian Ethos that “freedom of speech is more restricted than possibly any other time in the history of Stanford -- and more broadly America” and suggested there is currently a need for intellectual engagement that includes contrarian thinking. You can read Ms. St. Johns’ op-ed at the Stanford Concerns page of our website.
Stanford’s President Marc Tessier-Lavigne on the Campus Climate for Discussing Divergent Views
In light of Ms. St. Johns’ op-ed, we thought it useful to again bring to readers’ attention the remarks made a year ago by Stanford’s President Marc Tessier-Lavigne about his take regarding the campus climate for discussing divergent views. You can read President Tessier-Lavigne’s comments at the Stanford Speaks page of our website.
How I Liberated My College Classroom
At a two-day conference regarding academic freedom that was hosted earlier this month by Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, one of the panelists, Duke faculty member John Rose, spoke about techniques he uses at Duke to create a climate where students feel free to express divergent even if potentially unpopular viewpoints. We have reprinted an op-ed Prof. Rose wrote a year ago describing the approaches he uses. You can read his op-ed at the Commentary page of our website.
Quote: "Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically." Dr. Martin Luther King
November 3, 2022
Faculty Statement Regarding Academic Freedom
We have posted at our website a copy of a statement regarding academic freedom that was drafted by faculty members in various schools and departments at Stanford. The draft letter was then circulated to colleges and universities around the country and has already garnered over 600 signatures nationwide. Take a look.
Student Social Life . . . and Ongoing Evidence of an Overly Intrusive Bureaucracy
The Stanford Daily published a very well-researched and well-written article in late October about student unhappiness with current social life at Stanford. After reading the article, a number of us were struck with a secondary theme in the article about what comes across as an overly intrusive bureaucracy at Stanford. A copy of the Daily article is posted here: "Inside Stanford's 'War on Fun': Tensions Mount Over University's Handling of Social Life."
As if to prove the point, Stanford has suspended Stanford’s tree mascot for having displayed a “Stanford Hates Fun” banner at a home football game several weeks ago. Surely the irony of this action can’t be lost on third-party observers: "Stanford Student Suspended From Serving as Tree Mascot."
Quote: "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." James Madison, 1788 speech
October 21, 2022
As we indicated in prior mailings, in addition to updating the website Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking from time to time, we will periodically circulate links to articles from other colleges and universities. Here is a sampling of what we have recently received:
Yale Law School Dean, Heather K. Gerken, defends the law school after federal judges announce boycott: "Yale Law Dean Defends School After Federal Judges Announce Boycott."
According to a new YouGov survey, the majority of Americans oppose laws that restrict faculty speech: "Most Americans Oppose Laws That Restrict Faculty Speech, Poll Finds."
New survey finds that while 98% of college students believe in free speech, around two-thirds want to censor the other side's political views on campus: "Despite Strong Belief in Free Speech, College Students Want Political Views Censored on Campus."
Metropolitan State University of Denver President Janine Davidson has committed the school to respecting all student speech: "This University President is Taking a Stand for Free Speech."
The University of California at Berkeley is facing criticism after a music teacher at the school was not fired for a ten-year sardonic post: "UC Berkeley Bucks Mob Demands to Fire Music Teacher."
Jewish Berkeley Law Students discuss in a Daily Beast article how they feel excluded: “We’re Jewish Berkeley Law Students, Excluded in Many Areas on Campus.”
Thank you for your interest in our website and newsletter. If you know of other alumni, faculty, students, parents or others who might be interested in these issues, please forward this newsletter to them and suggest that they go to our website and subscribe.
Quote: “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” Benjamin Franklin, 1722
October 11, 2022
Janice Traflet, a business professor at Bucknell University, recently wrote about speaking fearlessly despite the threats of cancel culture: "Learning to Speak in the Midst of Cancel Culture."
Jillian Horton, a former associate dean and associate department chair of internal medicine at the University of Toronto, expressed concerns about the commodification of university education and whether it has become more important that faculty make students happy rather than challenge them: "Op-Ed: Listen Up, College Students. You don't 'Get' a Grade. You Have to Earn It."
Charles Lipson, a political science professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, wrote a recent commentary about restoring free speech at colleges and universities: "Restoring Free Speech at Our Universities."
Lauren Noble, a 2011 Yale graduate and currently head of the Buckley Program at Yale, wrote about the history of free speech at Yale, including its ground-breaking Woodward Report in 1974: "Yale is Abandoning Its Own Free Speech Codes."
December 23, 2024
Why Harvard Faculty Are Leaving the University to Pursue Their Work Elsewhere
Editor’s note: There are growing concerns that prominent faculty members nationwide, especially in engineering and the hard sciences, are finding that the bureaucracies at their universities as well as the bloated overhead have reached a point where they would prefer doing their research and other work elsewhere. Some have said they will continue teaching, but for free and as a contribution to the next generations, but that remaining at their universities was no longer worth the time and cost. We hope this trend will not take hold at Stanford. In that regard, see our long-existing webpages Back to Basics at Stanford and
Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy.
Excerpts:
“Not infrequently, companies lure professors to highly paid positions directing scientific research in pharmaceuticals, technology, and related fields. But the recent departures of some leading Harvard scientists deeply committed to improving human health point to a different phenomenon: challenges to conducting translational life-sciences research in academic settings. Given the University’s emphasis on and investment in the life sciences and biomedical discovery, these scientists’ differing decisions suggest emerging issues and concerns about current constraints and the future of such research.
“Applying for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants can take a substantial portion of an investigator’s time, and as much as a year can pass between a submission deadline and the point when funds are received and disbursed by the recipient’s home institution. With the NIH the dominant funding source for university biomedical research, what’s at stake is not only the ability of academic institutions to remain at the cutting edge of biomedical discovery, but also their ability to attract and train the next generation of scientific talent. The typical for-profit pharmaceutical or biotechnology company can move far more quickly and mobilize vastly greater resources -- from top-notch facilities to copious funding -- enabling the private sector to rapidly move basic science research discoveries to the point of clinical application. Increasingly, researchers committed to improving human health wonder whether working within the constraints of university research settings is really in the public interest....”
[Followed by interviews of specific Harvard faculty members and others]
Full article at Harvard Magazine
Federal Court in Louisiana Allows Case to Move Forward Against Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory
Editor’s note: We are posting this story not to embarrass Stanford but rather to again highlight the dangers of censorship activities, especially when funded by and coordinated with government agencies while using Stanford as a way to shield the activities and drawing upon the prestige of the Stanford name. These activities also again demonstrate the risks of Stanford's estimated 100 to 200 centers, accelerators and incubators that are not primarily engaged in the front-line teaching and cutting-edge, peer-review research of tenured members of the faculty but instead are largely run by third parties and who are engaged primarily or even exclusively in political and social advocacy and implementation activities. We would hope that Stanford can find a way to admit what took place here while limiting the university’s financial and reputational exposures and thereby bring closure to these matters once and for all.
Excerpts (link in the original):
“From Hines v. Stamos [Stanford, et al.], decided [December 18, 2024] by Judge Terry Doughty (W.D. La.):
“‘This case stems from Defendants' alleged participation in censoring Plaintiffs' speech on social media. Defendants are ‘nonprofits, academic institutions, and researchers alleged to have been involved in examining the issue of the viral spread of disinformation on social-media and the resulting harms to society.’ Plaintiffs are social media users, each with significant followings, who allege that the acts of Defendants caused Plaintiffs' disfavored viewpoints to be censored -- namely their speech concerning COVID-19 and elections. As a result of this alleged past and ongoing censorship, Plaintiffs filed this putative class action lawsuit on behalf of themselves and ‘others similarly situated,’ against Defendants….
“The court didn't agree with plaintiffs that they had conclusively established that the federal court in Louisiana had personal jurisdiction over defendants -- but it did conclude that plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged facts that would justify further discovery as to personal jurisdiction....
“'Plaintiffs have alleged -- to the point of ‘possible existence’-- that the Stanford Defendants effectuated censorship in Louisiana by ‘assigning analyst[s] specifically to Louisiana, determining whether speech originated in Louisiana, tracking the speech's spread from Louisiana, and communicating with state officials in Louisiana about supposed disinformation.’ And as such, Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that the Stanford Defendants' online activities may support personal jurisdiction. Limited jurisdictional discovery is thus necessary to show to what extent Defendants' online activities were ‘directed’ at the forum state....”
Full article by UCLA Prof. Emeritus and Hoover Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh at Reason, including a note that one of the attorneys representing the Plaintiffs in this case is expected to be nominated as Solicitor General of the United States.
And here's an additional excerpt taken directly from the court’s order, citations deleted: “... we find that Plaintiffs have provided sufficient allegations to put beyond mere conjecture or suggestion that Defendants [including Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory], through their participation in the Election Integrity Project and Virality Project, caused Plaintiffs to be censored on social media platforms. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Defendants were active participants, if not architects, of a vast censorship scheme, and -- in collaboration with government officials -- actively monitored, targeted, and ultimately induced social media platforms to censor Plaintiffs’ speech (among many others) ….”
See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, “Greater Control Must Be Exercised Over the Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford.”
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage and where, for convenience, we also have posted a PDF copy of this recent court order.
See also this prior analysis of Stanford Internet Observatory
Western Accreditor Reverses Course on DEI Requirement
Editor’s note: Last week’s Newsletter had a link to an article stating that the accrediting agency for California colleges and universities, including Stanford, had deleted its requirement that a school demonstrate its commitment to DEI. In the intervening week, the accreditor has reversed course, saying it will leave the language in place and will study the issue some more.
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Higher Education Is in Trouble
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Higher education in the U.S. faces a crisis: Its credibility is under attack. The public is increasingly skeptical of university-trained experts and the test-score-based meritocracy that dominates America’s upper middle class....
“Education level has become the great divider in contemporary American politics, eclipsing race and sex. Those with four-year college degrees tend to vote differently than those without....
“Measures reportedly under consideration include ending government loans for graduate students, capping the total amount a student can borrow, holding educational institutions at least partially responsible for student-loan defaults, and linking student aid to institutional policies on diversity, equity and inclusion. Colleges and universities will likely face increased congressional oversight of the political imbalance of their faculties. President-elect Trump has suggested he will use the college accreditation process to make higher education toe the line. And with deficit hawks in Congress hoping to offset a portion of Mr. Trump’s proposed tax cuts with increased revenue, Mr. Vance’s December 2023 proposal to raise the excise tax on elite universities’ endowment income from 1.4% to 35% is likely to resurface.
“Faced with these challenges, colleges and universities should adopt three strategies.
“First, they should get their houses in order. They should end mandatory DEI statements for faculty and staff candidates. They should adopt the principle of institutional neutrality spelled out in the University of Chicago’s seminal 1967 Kalven Report and should extend a similar policy to all academic divisions and departments, as Dartmouth College did last week....
“Second, four-year colleges and universities should broaden their support by expanding their alliances with local institutions, especially community colleges....
“Finally, these institutions should refocus on their civic mission: imparting basic knowledge about American history, political institutions and civic culture to every student; promoting social mobility by helping students who are the first in their families to attend college; and promoting civil discourse with campus wide programs such as College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, which gives students opportunities to engage in civil discourse and debate.
“By modeling the balance between social order and individual liberty, higher education can best promote the common good -- and its own long-term best interests.”
Full op-ed at WSJ
For convenience, we have posted a PDF copy of the Dartmouth policy, discussed above, at our Commentary from Others webpage
See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage
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“Principles of free speech are among those we most cherish, as Americans and as members of a university dedicated to the open, rigorous and serious search to know.” – Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper