STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

June 22, 2026

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Stanford Commencement 2026

 

President Levin Addresses the Class of 2026 (click here for full text).

 

Set Your Heart Ablaze, Google CEO Sundar Pichai Tells the New Graduates (click here for full video, 14:30 minutes).

 

See also photo gallery. 

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Vanderbilt/WashU Report’s Assessment of Scholarly Health Should Be the First

of Many

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“Imagine if, at a certain university, the Astronomy Department gradually morphed into the Astrology Department. Hard evidence was replaced by unfalsifiable speculation. Telescopes were traded for horoscopes. How, exactly, could the university’s leaders -- responsible for excellence but not themselves trained astronomers -- recognize the change? What signs could they have spotted earlier, before all trust was lost? 

 

“This is part of the provocative framing of the Vanderbilt-WashU 'State of Scholarship' report that has drawn intense debate…. All is not well, the report says. The pursuit of knowledge in humanistic fields is, not always but too often, distorted by politicization -- skewed by a priori commitments to certain results and muddled by selective skepticism about knowledge itself.... 

 

“At its essence, however, the report is a call for accountability in its most basic sense of giving an account. For any academic field to survive and thrive over time, a wide range of stakeholders must be allowed to ask questions about the rules of the game. Questions such as:

 

• What does this field claim to be doing? Does it claim to pursue some kind of verifiable truth or knowledge, however imperfectly?

 

• If the field is seeking knowledge, what are the field’s standards of evidence and methods for self-correction over time? (Is it making empirical or normative claims, or both? Does it follow Mertonian norms, or something else?) 

   

• If the field is not seeking verifiable knowledge, how does it evaluate different claims, and is that epistemic standard consistent? Is the field sensitive to positionality and power dynamics within its own work, or only those of its external critics? 

 

• Does the field also claim to be pursuing certain changes in the world, such as a progressive vision of social justice? If so, how does that aim interact with the truth-seeking process, and what are the trade-offs?

 . . . .

 

“The Vanderbilt-WashU report calls for more study, and for more department-level study, since a national committee cannot parse the scholarly health of a given campus or department. The report’s supporters and its critics, who also don’t want universities acting without local evidence, should take up this opportunity to give an account. In specific fields and in specific institutions, what is the state of scholarship? More reason-giving, more evidence, and more public explanation of principles would be a fitting way for scholarly fields to renew public trust in our universities.”

 

Full article at Free the Inquiry.

 

More Universities Are Disinviting Commencement Speakers Who Might Challenge Students’ Ideas

 

Excerpts (link in the original):

 

“Delivering a university commencement address used to simply be a unique kind of honor. Speakers stand before a podium, wearing a traditional graduation cap and robe, and offer graduates life lessons and inspirational words as they enter the next phase of life.

 

“But today, speaking at a university commencement ceremony carries considerable risk, as Morton Schapiro, former president of Northwestern University, recently found out. Schapiro was scheduled to speak at Georgetown University Law Center’s graduation on May 17, 2026, but announced on May 6 that he would no longer appear at the event.

 

“Some Georgetown law students had protested and petitioned to have Schapiro’s invitation rescinded, citing what they said were Schapiro’s ‘controversial, Zionist, and harmful opinions.’ The students pointed to an op-ed that Schapiro wrote expressing support for Israel and Jewish people a few days after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis.

 

[Followed by further examples of speaker disinvitations.]

 

"Over the past two decades, colleges and universities across the country have withdrawn invitations to various commencement speakers after students protested their scheduled appearance. Or, in some cases, invited speakers [that] have said they would no longer participate after students spoke out against their upcoming speeches.

 

"Some students only want people who hold similar views to address them at their graduation. They exercise what free-speech law experts call a ‘heckler’s veto,’ meaning when an audience’s reaction, or anticipated response, stops someone from speaking. Free speech then takes a back seat, and a graduation becomes just a performative moment of political correctness.

 

“FIRE estimates that between 2000 and 2024, there were 345 attempts to disinvite commencement speakers. Many of the scheduled speakers who faced pressure not to appear at the ceremonies backed out....

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“In 2017, Drew Gilpin Faust, then the president of Harvard University, seemed to understand this absence when she issued a free-speech message to graduates in her commencement address. 'Silencing ideas or basking in intellectual orthodoxy independent of facts and evidence impedes our access to new and better ideas, and it inhibits a full and considered rejection of bad ones,' Faust warned.

 

“Commencement season puts Faust’s admonitions to the test. 'Universities,' she said, 'must model a commitment to the notion that truth cannot simply be claimed, but must be established -- established through reasoned argument, assessment and even sometimes uncomfortable challenges that provide the foundation for truth.'”

 

Full op-ed by Amherst Prof. Austin Sarat at Free Speech Center.

 

See also “Stanford Graduates Stage Walkout During Google CEO’s Commencement Address” at Global News and “Google CEO Addresses Graduates Amid Student Walkout” at Stanford Daily.

 

This Academic Freedom Group Is Pushing for Campus Censorship

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“In February 2024, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which sets professional standards in higher education, launched the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF). The center, according to its mission statement, is ‘committed to preserving and expanding conditions that make it possible to work, teach, learn, create, and share knowledge in ways that promote the common good.’

 

“But new revelations from City Journal indicate that the CDAF is not living up to its name; instead, its membership has taken a rather narrow view of what knowledge and which methods 'promote the common good' -- especially at civics centers designed to bring viewpoint diversity to campus.

 

"’If we're thinking about a five-year research agenda,’ CDAF director and Trinity College professor Isaac Kamola said in a March 2025 meeting unveiled through City Journal's public records request, ‘I think unmasking, naming and shaming, and just increasing the political costs and decreasing the legitimacy of these centers is going to be really important.’

 

"Still, the legitimacy of civics centers -- which are often created or backed by right-leaning state legislatures or conservative donors -- may deserve questioning. When partisan politicians engage in the direct management of public institutions of higher education, bias and censorship are often the result.

 

"But it doesn't look like the CDAF is conducting an honest audit of the centers' efficacy. Instead, it has recognized them as a threat to higher education's progressive status quo -- a status quo whose protection seems to be the CDAF's true priority.

 

“. . . Eli Meyerhoff, a CDAF fellow and a visiting scholar at Duke University, outlined his vision for the AAUP over the next five years. He saw the organization 'becoming more like a union,' where 'the holder of academic freedom is more like a worker and less like a professional.' Under this system, limits on academic freedom would be determined by 'strong, democratically run unions' consisting of students, faculty, and staff at individual universities.

 

“. . . The CDAF -- backed by such an influential organization as the AAUP -- has devoted itself to defending a liberal orthodoxy which, in the name of community-sanctioned ‘process,’ has expelled dissidents and disciplined infidels with abandon. True academic freedom is in need of more principled defenders."

 

Full article at Reason.

 

Other Articles of Interest

 

Higher Ed Has Withstood Past Innovative Shocks; AI Is Hitting Different

Full podcast (34 minutes) as well as full transcript at Education Next:

 

"Fields that depend on data analysis are especially exposed to machine learning, and the academy isn’t adjusting well or quickly."

 

Missouri State Permanently Deletes Bias Response Team to Settle Free Speech Lawsuit

Full article at College Fix. 

 

See also “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” and “Stanford’s Program re Bias," both at our Stanford Concerns webpage.

 

22 Colleges That Admit the Most Students Off the Waitlist

Full article and list at U.S. News and including UC Irvine (6,259 out of 6,259 - 100%), Pepperdine (785 out of 790 - 99.4%), UC Santa Barbara (8,715 out of 10,641 - 81.9%), UC San Diego (1,441 out of 1,986 - 71.8%) and UC Riverside (2,789 out of 3,884 - 71.8%).

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The NCAA’s Failure Is Bringing Congress Into the Game

Full op-ed at Real Clear Politics. 

 

Yale Needs More Free Speech

Full podcast (65 minutes) at ACTA.

 

UC Berkeley Profs Lower Reading Standards

Full article at Real Clear Education.

 

Professors Ask Harvard to Re-Hire Scholar Canceled for Defending Biological Sex

Full article at College Fix.

 

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.

 

Dedicated Stanford Champion and Leader Peter Bing Dies at 91

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Editor’s note: Anyone who ever had contact with Peter and Helen Bing knows how extraordinary both have been. And even if you didn’t know them personally, their participation in everything that is Stanford has directly benefited the lives of thousands and thousands of students, faculty, alumni and others.

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Experts Explore AI’s Financial Impact Beyond the Soundbites

 

Stanford Medicine’s Bold Proposal to Accelerate Cancer Innovation

 

New Stanford Program Will Sic Bacteria-Killing Viruses on Drug-Resistant Bacteria

 

Drug Combo Shows Potential for Treating Cystic Fibrosis

 

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