STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

June 29, 2026

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Where Does Viewpoint Diversity Matter the Most?

 

Answer: Anywhere our identities are at stake.

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“It’s now widely (though not universally) conceded that improving viewpoint diversity on campus would improve university teaching and research. Faculty on American campuses are overwhelmingly cut from the same ideological cloth, and this homogeneity has harmful effects on all aspects of the professoriate, including teaching, research, and service. The research mission, in particular, is under threat as faculty political and religious homogeneity distort our knowledge of everything from gender and immigration to secularism and terrorism.

 

“The topical answer says that you should focus your efforts on the humanities and the social sciences. This is a common answer. Back in 2016, Gerard Alexander noted that it was no ‘coincidence that intolerance is radiating across universities from those subfields of the humanities and social sciences in which viewpoint diversity is most absent and rigorous scrutiny is most anemic.’ More recently, Michael W. Clune argued that professors in the humanities and social sciences are unable to articulate and respond to objections to controversial positions in their field, and so most likely to benefit from viewpoint diversity. And just last year, Jonathan Haidt and John Tomasi, both of Heterodox Academy, wrote that viewpoint diversity is especially important ‘in the social sciences, humanities and some of the professional schools.’

 

“This topical answer is plausible. The humanities and social sciences exhibit the least amount of political diversity and yet feature the most enduring controversial questions in politics, religion, and philosophy.Yet it’s also incomplete. The topical answer doesn’t offer a deeper explanation for why some disciplines are problematic in a way that others are not. It also misses some pretty important exceptions in the natural and life sciences like climate change, vaccines, or transgender health. The research in all of those fields would be improved with viewpoint diversity.

 

“Tyler VanderWeele of Harvard offers a different kind of answer. Instead of a topical boundary, he offers a principle: ‘Universities should…hire faculty who hold disfavored or controversial views when those views are held by a large portion of the population, have not been clearly refuted, and influence culture and policy.’ Anytime a viewpoint is popular, influential at the level of culture or policy, and unsettled by the discipline, we should ensure that we have viewpoint diversity in the faculty teaching and researching those topics.” ...

 

[Followed by discussion of pressures for conformity, group-marking beliefs, identity pressures, etc.]

 

“Research on partisan cue-taking consistently shows that messengers matter: people are more likely to trust members of their in-group first, mixed groups second, and out-groups least. Further, normal humans exhibit biased assimilation: we are more likely to trust experts and expert knowledge when they align with our moral commitments.

 

“In an era when trust in higher education is in freefall, universities should welcome the opportunity to restore trust with the broader public by improving viewpoint diversity in the right areas on campus.”

 

Full op-ed by Fort Lewis Prof. Justin McBrayer at Free the Inquiry. 

 

See also paragraph 1.d. at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage:  

 

“Viewpoint diversity is critical to the university’s academic mission in both teaching and research. Accordingly, all decisions regarding the hiring, retention and promotion of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff shall follow the principles of the Shils Report. In any recruitments and decisions to make offers, schools, departments and other academic units shall assure that the pools of candidates reflect viewpoint diversity. This does not mean partisan diversity but rather a diversity of thinking with respect to the substantive areas of the relevant academic unit. Among other things, academic units that consider societal issues shall make special efforts to recruit and retain faculty who may have different viewpoints than the majority of the faculty and have the academic skills to present their alternative viewpoints.”

 

A Reexamination of the University As We Know It

 

Excerpts (link in the original):

. . . .

“The arrival of large language models is acting as a catalytic solvent, titrating out the incoherence that was always there. When a student can produce a plausible term paper in twenty minutes using Claude Opus or Google Gemini, what is the point of assigning term papers? When an AI tutor can explain any concept at any level of sophistication with infinite patience, what is the value of a lecturer reading from notes? When AI can ace most standardized professional examinations, what is a credential certifying? These are old problems that AI has made it impossible to ignore.

 

“Beyond the pedagogic challenges posed by the arrival of LLMs, AI is also exposing that the [Clark Kerr] bundle held together for as long as it did because its components shared a common and venerable set of technologies of knowledge transmission: the book, the lecture, the problem set, the written examination....

 

“It is striking, then, that the most widely discussed recent attempt at university self-examination, the April 2026 Report of the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education, barely registered any of this reality....

 

“So how should the university respond to this crisis of purpose, identity, and even faith? The most popular present answer in certain administrative circles to this question is an emphasis on the ‘co-curricular,’ that is, on residential life and human connection as the university’s irreducible value in an age of AI tutors. Perhaps the most cited proposal is Molly Worthen’s New York Times piece from three years ago, ‘Why Universities Should Be More Like Monasteries,’ which argued that universities should offer radically low-tech, high-presence educational environments....

 

“But by itself, the co-curricular is an evasion. It leaves untouched the question that determines what students and families are paying for: what happens in the curriculum, in the classroom, in the formal educational encounter. That is where reform needs to be most radical, and where the response of universities so far has been most quavering....

 

“The replacement, as many education researchers are arguing, is live assessment and demonstration: real-time diagnosis of novel situations, design critique, structured adversarial debate, and Socratic examination. These formats test the ability to sense-make under pressure, defend a frame against live challenge, revise a model when evidence contradicts rather than confirms it, and recognize when uncertainty is too high to proceed. In practical terms: collaborative student projects will require documented decision logs tracing reasoning behind commitments, the canonical deliverable shifts from polished artifact to demonstrated live reasoning, and oral examinations and hand-written exams will become the primary assessment instruments. But despite this emerging consensus among education researchers, institutional practice has barely moved....

 

“This is something closer to the Oxbridge tutorial system, the clinical ward round, or the seminars of many small liberal arts colleges in the United States. These pedagogies were once defended on grounds of tradition or prestige. The post-AI argument is structural: they are the delivery mechanisms for exactly the cognitive capacities that the architecture of AI cannot replicate, because those capacities are developed only by being exercised, not described. Interestingly, this means that the coming of AI is going to mean there will be demand for more professors, rather than fewer....

 

“. . . Reconceiving the professoriate will mean altering tenure criteria and promotion incentives, and it will face fierce resistance from scholars whose professional identities are bound up in the research function. None of this is impossible, but none of it will be easy. No doubt some tenured faculty will pour boulders and boiling oil down the side of their ivory towers to prevent these changes from taking place.”...

 

Full op-ed by former UC Berkeley Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman at Persuasion.

 

See also our Ask AI webpage with topics including “In What Ways Is Stanford’s Residential Housing System Dysfunctional” (this first prompt and response were from an alum), “How Have Universities Changed from Their Original Purpose,” “What Are the Major Challenges Facing Universities Today” and “What Were the Original Concepts of an Undergraduate Education at Oxford and Cambridge?”

 

See also past postings at our Stanford Concerns webpage and our Reader Comments webpage about Stanford’s costly bureaucracy and about shortcomings in Stanford’s residential education program as compared, for example, to Harvard, Yale and Princeton and even though Stanford is increasing its undergraduate enrollment by 1,000 or more but without any announced plans for additional housing or increases in the number of faculty.

 

Auburn’s Board of Trustees Asserts Control Over Curriculum

 

Editor’s note: We present the following op-ed not because we believe similar actions are necessary or appropriate at Stanford. Rather, we offer this op-ed, as we do with other articles and op-eds now and in the past, to demonstrate the kinds of issues being discussed around the country and which might have impact on Stanford as well. 

 

Excerpts:

 

“Auburn University is known for its agricultural and STEM programs, its flight school and athletic programs. But the land-grant university recently became notable for another reason: The board of trustees is taking control of the school back from its faculty.

 

“The board began seizing the university’s academic programs -- including curriculum, course offerings, degree requirements and academic credentials -- at its June 5 meeting. The board also dissolved the faculty senate and replaced it with an advisory council to the president, which includes two faculty members from each of the university’s colleges and additional members appointed by the president….

 

“I’ve been a professor at a state university for almost 30 years, and I am sympathetic up to a point. But before becoming a professor I was a bankruptcy lawyer. And bankruptcy law teaches an important lesson for how academia can respond to this moment.

 

“Bankruptcy gives businesses an opportunity to admit mistakes, reform and emerge stronger. Successful enterprises don’t need bankruptcy lawyers. But when an enterprise loses its way, it goes into receivership. Most universities aren’t financially bankrupt but have lost their mission and direction.

 

“Society has long recognized certain institutions’ authority to manage their own affairs. Two notable examples are licensed professionals -- such as doctors and lawyers -- and universities. Universities, even state universities, have run their enterprises with minimal external oversight….

 

“Like companies I represented, universities have lost their way. And many have proved either unable or unwilling to self-correct. When that happens, it is appropriate to put institutions into receivership until they reform and rededicate themselves to their mission.

 

“At Auburn incoming students must now take certain required civics and history courses to master basic competency in U.S. history and government. To ensure the classes actually meet that objective, professors will have to make their syllabi publicly available. In the classroom, instructors will be expected to stick to the matter at hand and avoid free-ranging political punditry….

 

“Just as other companies can learn from the ones that go bankrupt, other institutions of higher education can learn something from Auburn: Fix what’s broken, or someone else might fix it for you.”

 

Full op-ed by George Mason Prof. Todd Zywicki at WSJ. 

 

See also “A Return to Teaching History” by University of Florida Prof. Allen C. Guelzo at Sapir: “By 2014, the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that only 18 percent of American middle schoolers could be considered ‘proficient’ in American history; by 2022, it had sunk to 13 percent.... If you want to measure how much is lost by the neglect of history, whether in teaching or writing, ask those who have suffered under persecution. For Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the erasure of history is the first strategy of tyrants, who know that wiping out the past gives the oppressed no means of comparison to a better time or place, no ground on which to resist in the present.”

 

See also our own proposed reforms at Back to Basics at Stanford.

 

How Speaking About My Experiences as a Woman Researcher Ended My Academic Career

 

Excerpts:

 

“After devoting half of my life to academia, I learned a career-destroying lesson in irony: In a workplace that celebrated diversity, equity, and inclusion, discussing my own experiences as a woman post-doctoral researcher was professionally dangerous.

 

“It started at lunch in a restaurant with my non-binary research supervisor and two graduate students. We were discussing short-term visiting professor positions in our field (chemistry). Often these positions lack a clear path to stability, and so position-hopping can continue indefinitely. I made an observation (backed by data from Stanford University): Men are less likely than women to relocate for their partner’s career. I admit I was hyperbolic: 'Men won’t follow women around for their careers,' I vented. At the time, I was struggling to find academic positions that would allow me to remain in contact with my friends, family, or partner. I worried that I would have to choose between human connection and employment.

 

“My supervisor (whose wife is fortunate enough to have a dual-hire arrangement -- the kind of institutional accommodation that, for some, solves the problem I was describing) became visibly angry and shouted: ‘You can’t say that!’ Even though I explained that I was referring to a possible statistical or cultural pattern, their response was to liken my observation to the racist misuse of crime statistics.

 

“I was stunned and shaken, too distressed to explain myself in a more nuanced way. My supervisor’s publicly posted policy was to immediately fire anyone who said anything they deem racist, sexist, or ‘-phobi’c: ‘The consequences will be swift and severe.’ That didn’t stop others in the group from routinely making sweeping generalizations about society and identities without consequence. Yet when I referenced a sex-based pattern I had noticed in my own life, I was loudly and publicly shut down….

 

“A few months later, while discussing my academic career plan with my supervisor, I opined, ‘Nobody wants to talk about it, but I think there are differences between men’s and women’s experiences in academia.’ …

 

“. . . I thought we had achieved mutual understanding. But a few days later, I received a formal email stating that my speech had made my supervisor feel ‘unsafe’ and ‘extremely uncomfortable. The department chair and Faculty Affairs were alerted. My supervisor planned to reduce mentorship and seek official guidance on ominous ‘next steps.’ My request for mediation through the ombuds office was declined. It seemed that I would imminently be fired –'swift and severe consequences.’ …

 

“They summoned me to their office to discuss my written concerns. That day, my attempt at self-advocacy culminated in a threat to withhold future recommendation letters. In academia, that is career-ending….

 

“A woman describing sex-based realities affecting her career makes no one ‘unsafe.’… I am not rejecting inclusivity or efforts to make all people feel welcome in science…. Instead of empowering the performatively self-righteous to demand ideological obedience, we should promote open communication and professional tolerance of different lived experiences -- for all people, not just select groups.”

 

Full op-ed at Fair for All (FAIR). ​

 

Other Articles of Interest

 

What's Actually Wrong with the University

Full transcript of interview of Harvard Prof. Cass Sunstein at Heterodox Academy (also full video, 55 minutes).

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Yale Seeks Trump Administration Deal as It Faces Sprawling Investigation

Full article at NY Times: “Although the federal government’s scrutiny of Yale’s undergraduate and law school admissions practices has been conducted in secret -- and has not yet resulted in formal, public findings -- the Justice Department said in May that it believed that Yale’s medical school had for years violated civil rights law by ‘discriminating on the basis of race’ in admissions.”

 

New Searchable Data Base of Grants to U.S. Universities Is Now Available

Discussion of free AI-enhanced database of 1.1 million foundation grants made since 2008 from 57,000 private foundations to America’s colleges and universities is available here (video, 1 hour) and with access to the data base itself available here. See also summary of key findings here: “Of the 5,270 institutions that received grants, 54, almost exactly 1%, received half the money, topped by Harvard, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins, each of which received over $2.5 billion.”

 

Roughly One-Third of UC Berkeley Law Students Claim Psychological Disabilities
Full article at College Fix: “By comparison, American community colleges have a disability rate of 3-4 percent, and U.S. senior citizens about 24 percent.... In addition, according to National Association for Law Placement data, only 2-3 percent of ‘firm lawyers’ and 3.75 percent of summer associates (law school students) claim a disability.”

Stanford Is Featured As One of USA Today’s 35 Beautiful College Campuses

Full slide show at USA Today.

With AI in the Classroom, Professors Are Walking a Tightrope

Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

MBA Pay Is Drifting Down, and So Is Demand for the Degree

Full article at WSJ. 

 

The University of California Caves to Activists

Full op-ed at City Journal.

 

The Latest in College Pricing -- Tuition at 10% of Your Income

Full article at NY Times.

 

Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities

at Stanford

 

Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.

 

Student and Faculty Leaders Share Their Stanford Experiences at Board of Trustees Meeting

 

Gene Therapy Cures Soccer-Loving Boy of Beta Thalassemia

 

Are You Getting Enough Fiber?

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