STANFORD ALUMNI
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CRITICAL THINKING

 

​January 20, 2025

 

Judge Rebukes Stanford Misinformation Expert for Using ChatGPT to Draft Testimony

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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

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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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