STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

September 8, 2025

​

Professors Should Actually Teach

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

. . . .

“If you want to argue that elite scholars at research universities should be focused on grant-funded research, I’m very sympathetic. I get the argument that teaching loads at the nation’s top 40 or 50 research universities might feature a lot of one-ones for pioneering scholars who are pushing the frontiers of knowledge. But this isn’t that.

 

“This is about the larger political economy of higher education. As Richard Keck and I documented a few months ago, the norm across much of higher education is for faculty to spend most of their time on activities other than teaching. Even at second- and third-tier institutions, faculty are mostly found shuffling papers, sitting in meetings, chasing grants, and publishing trivial, never-read papers in one of the 24,000 barely read journals. This is a story of warped expectations, incentives, and academic culture -- one with unfortunate implications for the quality and cost of undergraduate education.

 

“In his terrific book on college teaching, University of Pennsylvania historian Jonathan Zimmerman drily notes that faculty tend to characterize research as their ‘work’ and teaching as their ‘load’ -- a habit that, he observes, speaks 'volumes about academic priorities.' Generally, faculty aren’t hired, recognized, or promoted for their teaching. Instead, more and more instruction is off-loaded to an itinerant army of adjuncts and graduate students, few of whom have the incentive or opportunity to maintain rigorous standards or mentor their charges....

 

“We need to do better, and it starts by overhauling expectations for faculty. Some will inevitably read such talk as an attack on professors, given the ongoing tumult in higher education. But this isn’t about point-scoring or assigning individual culpability; it’s about misaligned priorities.... For any institution willing to realign its priorities, there’s a win-win lurking for students and scholars alike.”

 

Full op-ed at Education Next.

 

Stanford’s Graduate Student Union Tries to Stifle Dissent

 

Excerpts:

 

“I’m working as a teaching assistant while studying for a doctorate in economics at Stanford, but a campus union is trying to get me fired. The Stanford Graduate Workers Union wants my head on a plate because I refused to sign a membership form and pay dues. I won’t fund an organization whose values and tactics I don’t support.

 

“Similar unions across the country are using their bargaining power not to improve working conditions but to coerce ideological conformity. This isn’t solidarity; it’s suppression. Shame on Stanford for going along with it.... Freedom to dissent -- including from union politics -- is foundational to the academic enterprise. No student should face financial retaliation for exercising that freedom.”

 

Full op-ed by Stanford graduate student Jon Hartley at WSJ; see also Mr. Hartley’s op-ed at Stanford Review.

 

Editor's note: If teaching is to be given a stronger priority, per the article above; if Stanford's graduate students are the current and future teachers and frontline researchers at Stanford and elsewhere; and if viewpoint diversity is also a priority as seems to be a growing theme, how is it that Stanford entered into an agreement that works so contrary to these priorities? See also This Week's Quote at the end of today's Newsletter.

 

When Evidence Is Branded as Hate

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“On today’s campuses, evidence itself is too often branded as hostility. Research that once sparked debate now risks being dismissed as ‘harm.’ At Sarah Lawrence College, that reflex has escalated further: a faculty member joined students in a federal lawsuit, mischaracterizing scholarship as an “attack.” That isn’t mentoring or teaching. It is indoctrination in grievance tactics, and it represents a dangerous turning point for higher education.

 

“I know this firsthand. In a complaint just filed in the Southern District of New York (Case 1:25-cv-06442, filed August 5, 2025), a group of students and a faculty member sued Sarah Lawrence College and Congress over the potential release of material related to campus protests and violent building occupation. Though the case is not about me or my writing, the filing made use of well-known anti-Semitic tropes against me as a Jewish and Zionist professor -- the filing invoked the ‘myth of Jewish greed’ and posited that I am a ‘mouthpiece for…deep-pocketed benefactors’ -- and then made note of my co-authored article in Real Clear Investigations, The Rise of the Single Woke (and Young, Democratic) Female, mislabeling it as an ‘attack’ on ‘politically active women.’ ...

 

“Professors are stewards of intellectual life. Their task is not to amplify outrage but to cultivate argument. When they fail, they betray both their students and their profession. When professors trade evidence for indignation, they do not teach citizens; they train partisans. And parents, students, and citizens alike have no reason to trust them.”

 

Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education; see also “We Are Losing the Basis of Our Civic Discourse” by Prof. Abrams at The Hill.

 

Gen Z Students More Engaged in School and Ready for the Future

 

Excerpts:

 

“Gen Z students are feeling more prepared for their futures than at any point in the past three years, according to a new survey from the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup Voices of Gen Z study. Nearly six in 10 middle and high school students now agree they feel prepared for the future, an 11-percentage-point increase over 2024.

 

“The survey, conducted May 16-27, 2025, with 1,687 13- to 18-year-olds enrolled in grades six through 12, finds Gen Z boys and girls are equally confident in their readiness for the future (58%), while Black students (67%) are more confident than their White peers (54%). Asian (58%) and Hispanic (61%) students’ preparedness for the future is statistically similar to that of Black and White students....”

 

Full article at Gallup, and a copy of the full report is available for download here. 

​

College Students Show Declining Tolerance for Free Speech Despite Stated Support

 

Excerpts:

 

“College students express strong support for free speech in principle but demonstrate significant intolerance for viewpoints they disagree with in practice, according to the 2025 American College Student Freedom, Progress and Flourishing Survey released by the Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth.

 

“The fifth annual survey of 2,067 students at 472 four-year U.S. colleges and universities reveals a troubling disconnect between students' stated values and their actual attitudes toward diverse perspectives on campus.

 

“While 74% of students say protecting free speech is more important than ensuring no one feels uncomfortable, their responses to specific scenarios paint a different picture. Most concerning, 72% of students favor reporting professors to university administrators if they say something students deem offensive -- a figure that has remained consistently high since the survey began in 2021....

 

“The survey revealed stark differences across political ideologies and gender lines. Liberal students (79%) and independent students (74%) were significantly more likely than conservative students (56%) to support reporting professors for offensive comments. Similarly, 81% of female students and 84% of students identifying as unknown/other gender supported professor reporting, compared to 57% of male students....

 

“Perhaps most telling, among the 71% of students who say they feel comfortable sharing controversial opinions in class, nearly half cited alignment with their peers and professors as the reason for their comfort, suggesting the apparent openness may reflect ideological homogeneity rather than genuine tolerance for diversity....”

 

Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education.  

​

Concerns About Complaint-Driven Policing in the UK . . . and at U.S. Universities too

 

Excerpts (links in the original): 

 

“Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan was arrested at London’s Heathrow airport [a week ago] by armed officers. The arrest was over posts he made on social media in April while traveling in the United States....

 

“London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mark Rowley, seems to agree that Linehan’s arrest was contrary to the best aspirations of liberal society. He publicly called for a review of the speech laws his officers are obliged to enforce -- and enforce them they do. British police are making roughly thirty arrests a day for 'offensive' or otherwise unlawful online communications....

 

“Authoritarian governments keep their populations in check by visiting consequences on a small portion of their population and watching the effects reverberate; a single arrest might chill the speech of millions. By the end of 2023, based on the numbers in The Times [of London], the U.K. had accomplished nearly 66,000 arrests for speech....

 

“The U.K. has done exactly what FIRE has been trying to get universities to stop doing, and convince American states not to do: use complaint-driven policing to create shadow records that chill speakers and form the basis of eventual illiberal prosecutions....”

 

Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack.

 

See also “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage regarding Stanford’s own processes that do what this op-ed is concerned about and not solely about speech. Including where even false information and accusations can be entered into students' permanent files without students knowing that this is happening but where the cumulative information can later be used in disciplinary actions against students. Our webpage also includes proposed solutions such as removing all anonymously filed information and also advising students at least annually of their rights under federal law to review their files and allow them to correct or have removed any false or other incorrect information.

​

Other Articles of Interest

 

At Dartmouth, a Green Shoot in the Higher Ed Desert

Full op-ed by former Purdue President Mitch Daniels at Washington Post.

​​

How Stanford Has Escaped Trump’s War on Higher Ed

Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate George Porteous at Harvard Independent.

 

Rise of Paper Mills -- 32,700 Fake Scientific Papers Published in Real Journals

Full article at College Fix.

​

What To Do About Political Diversity on Campus

Full op-ed at Milken Institute Review.

​

As Financial Unpredictability Looms, Higher Ed Is Borrowing

Full article with specific numbers for specific schools including Stanford at Chronicle of Higher Education. 

​

A Trustee Guide to Ensuring a Discrimination-free Campus

Full PDF copy (18 pages, 52 with appendices and notes) available at American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). 

​​

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.

 

Respond to Employee Feedback, but Not Too Quickly

 

New Tool Helps Users Size Up the U.S. Economy

 

How the Rise of Plant Life Reshaped River Behavior After First Four Billion Years

 

Researchers Are Creating Artificial Synapses to Replicate the Brain’s Efficiency

 

A New Way to Image Brain Development

 

**********