STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

April 29, 2024

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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....

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“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....

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"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.

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"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:

 

• Adopting institutional neutrality.

• Eliminating political litmus tests.

• Cutting administrative bloat.

• Five ways university presidents can prove their commitment to free speech.

• How donors can help fix our broken campuses.

• 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."

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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.

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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

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How to Reboot Free Speech on Campus

Full op-ed by David French at NY Times

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College Protesters Want Amnesty; At Stake: Tuition, Legal Charges, Grades and Graduation

Full article at Associated Press

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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

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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