STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

April 18, 2025

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Editor’s note: Because of rapidly changing developments regarding recent demands on Harvard and other universities, we are distributing this Newsletter a few days earlier than normal. As always, we welcome reader comments and suggestions here. 

 

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President Levin and Provost Martinez Address Government Attacks on Harvard and Universities Generally (April 15, 2025)

 

Full Text of Statement:

 

“America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth. This strength has been built on government investment but not government control. The Supreme Court recognized this years ago when it articulated the essential freedoms of universities under the First Amendment as the ability to determine who gets to teach, what is taught, how it is taught, and who is admitted to study.

 

“Universities need to address legitimate criticisms with humility and openness. But the way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution. Harvard’s objections to the letter it received are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending.”

 

[Note: A copy of the government's letter to Harvard dated April 11, 2025 is posted at our Commentary webpage. See also April 18, 2025 op-ed at Stanford Review.]

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Statement from Our Colleagues at Harvard Alumni for Free Speech

 

Excerpts (link in the original):

 

"Harvard Alumni for Free Speech (HAFFS) believes deeply in the principles of academic freedom, free expression, and genuine viewpoint diversity. These values are not merely aspirational -- they are essential to the mission of any university, and to the health of a democratic society.

 

"We have reviewed the federal government’s letter to Harvard University dated April 11th. The letter goes far beyond ensuring that Harvard does not discriminate....

 

"We believe that further changes are needed to current Harvard policies and that the implementation of changes made at Harvard in the past year needs to be assessed to confirm that the core principles of academic freedom and free expression are being advanced. However, we do not think it appropriate for the federal government to be the party responsible to determine and monitor what values are acceptable for private universities to foster, and we are deeply troubled by the growing federal overreach into the intellectual life of universities.  

 

"Free expression cannot thrive under any orthodoxy -- whether imposed by university administrators or by federal agencies...."

  

Full text of statement here.

 

Reclaiming Academic Rigor and Intellectual Vitality

 

Excerpts:

 

“Roosevelt Montás is an outspoken advocate for a humanistic liberal arts education rooted in transformative texts, particularly the Great Books tradition. As director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum from 2008 to 2018, he did more than anyone else to safeguard and sustain a set of foundational courses and essential knowledge that all students are required to engage with and master.

 

“A Dominican immigrant who discovered the power of classical texts as a Columbia undergrad, Montás argues that exposure to foundational works of literature, philosophy and political thought is not an elitist pursuit, but a democratizing force -- one that offers students, regardless of background, the tools for intellectual and moral self-discovery....

 

“We often hear about the threats to education from political polarization, but the real crisis is more insidious: a broad cultural shift that has deprioritized deep learning, rigorous intellectual engagement and the foundational knowledge necessary for an informed citizenry.

 

“This is not a conspiracy of the right or the left -- it is a product of market forces, technological shifts and a culture that increasingly values efficiency, credentialing and convenience over substantive education....

 

“Here’s how higher education lost rigor and depth:

 

[Followed by discussion of:

 

1. The Decline of the Humanities and the Marginalization of the Serious Arts.

2. The Absence of a Serious Foundation in Science, Mathematics and Quantitative Methods.

3. The Shift to Asynchronous, Low-Engagement Online Learning.​​

4. The Weakening of General Education and the Fragmentation of Knowledge.

 

[As well as proposed corrective actions.]

 

“The strength of a nation is not measured merely by its economy or its military but by the depth of its ideas, the clarity of its discourse and the rigor of its thinking. In an era of misinformation, declining civic literacy and technological distractions, the need for an intellectually engaged citizenry has never been greater. If America is to lead in the 21st century -- not just in wealth or power but in wisdom -- it must first make America smart again.

 

“This is not about nostalgia for a past golden age but a recognition that serious learning, deep engagement and intellectual rigor are the foundations of a flourishing democracy. It is time to raise -- not lower -- the bar."

 

Full op-ed by U Texas Prof. Steven Mintz at Inside Higher Ed. 

 

There’s a Limit to Government Intrusion in Academic Matters

 

Excerpts (link in the original, endnotes deleted):

 

“On April 11, President Trump sent a letter to Harvard with various demands, threatening to cut off federal science grants if Harvard does not comply. Some demands related to ending racial discrimination in admissions and hiring, which is fine, since Harvard has blatantly discriminated against white and Asians in the past and continues to do so.

 

“Other demands are improper, even if they are things that we think the university should do. He asks Harvard to check faculty publications for plagiarism. Maybe Harvard should do that, but why should the federal government condition cancer research grants given to Professor Smith on whether the university has audited Professor Jones’s publications? This is an intrusion onto the university’s internal management....

 

“Even more dubious is the demand that Harvard require its departments to have diverse viewpoints. The letter says, 

 

"'Harvard must abolish all criteria, preferences, and practices, whether mandatory or optional, throughout its admissions and hiring practices, that function as ideological litmus tests. Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity’

 

“This sounds good, but it isn’t....

 

“Liberal faculty think that if 20% of a department voted for Trump, that department is hideously conservative; they have lost sight of their own biases. And Trump is not even asking for ‘the MAGA worldview’. He is just asking that biology departments not veto job candidates who say that a man cannot become a woman and that economics departments not veto candidates who favor tariffs.

 

“Even imposing a little balance on a politicized university department, though, is still not the business of the federal government....

 

“... If a department doesn’t hire an economist because of his views on sex change operations or climate change, that is a bad thing. Where universities have gone most wrong is in refusing to hire people because they have conservative views on topics unrelated to their field of study. That is what we should aim to end....

 

“If you were the university president, vested with full authority from the board of trustees, what would you do?”

 

Full op-ed by Indiana U. Prof. Eric Rasmusen at Substack. 

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See also “Only 39 U.S. Colleges Can Withstand Trump’s Freeze on Research Dollars” at Times of India.

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What Our Universities Need to Do Now

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“’Finally!’

 

“That was my first reaction to Harvard’s letter on Monday, which pledged to resist the Trump administration’s attacks on its autonomy. You can’t have a free university or a free society when the government is dictating what you can teach, think or write. Good on Harvard, for stating what most schools have been too scared to say.

 

“Yet we should also read the letter as a challenge to our universities, which haven’t always lived by their ideals of free expression and open inquiry. President Trump’s proposed restrictions and penalties pose a dire threat to these values, as the Harvard letter makes clear. But we shouldn’t pretend that we have made good on them ourselves.

 

“Consider the question of viewpoint diversity, which the Trump administration highlighted in its own letter to Harvard earlier this month. The university was instructed to abolish 'ideological litmus tests' and to 'hire a critical mass of new faculty' in departments where everyone thought the same way.

 

“I heartily endorse that goal, even if I detest Trump’s mechanism for achieving it. Surveys have repeatedly confirmed that faculty at elite schools like Harvard lean heavily and almost uniformly left in their politics. That’s a big problem if you think that education should expose us to a wide range of perspectives. And it also helps explain the rising public disdain for universities, especially -- but not only -- among conservatives.

 

“But I don’t want Trump or any other government official deciding which departments or schools are so ideologically lopsided that they will forsake their federal funding, as Trump has threatened. That’s a formula for corruption, not balance.

 

“And that’s why the universities have to step up, admit they have a problem, and commit to solving it. So I was pleased to see that Harvard’s letter pledged to ‘broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community,’ as Harvard president Alan M. Garber wrote.

 

“Message to the world: Harvard isn’t as intellectually diverse as it should be. Nor has it done enough to ‘nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry’ or to ‘develop the tools, skills, and practices needed to engage constructively with one another,’ as Garber also admitted...."

 

[Followed by discussion of additional concerns and possible actions.]

 

Full op-ed by Penn Prof. Jonathan Zimmerman at The Hill.

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This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, If They Dare

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Excerpt:

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“There is a way for universities to fight back. It requires more than refusing to bend to Trump’s will, and it requires more than forming a united front. They must abandon all the concerns -- rankings, donors, campus amenities -- that preoccupy and distract them, and focus on their core mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge." ...

 

Full op-ed at NY Times. See also our long-existing Back to Basics at Stanford webpage.   

 

Other Articles of Interest

 

Stanford Professor Discusses Harmful Impact of DEI

Full op-ed by Stanford Prof. Jonathan Berk at Stanford Daily. 

 

Without Self-Criticism, There Can be No Progressive Thought in the Academy

Full op-ed by Queen Mary U of London Prof. Eric Heinze at Education Next.

 

The Importance of Viewpoint Diversity and Free Expression, What Comes After DEI?

Full op-ed at New Yorker.

 

Higher Ed Digs In, Refuses Reform

Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars.

 

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: The Grit and Determination of Entrepreneurs

 

From Department of Biology: The Neuroscience and Physiology of Animal Relationships

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Multi-disciplinary Study Reveals How to Make Prescribed Forest Fires Burn Safer and Cleaner

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