STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

February 9, 2026

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Recent Reader Comments

 

We have added to our Reader Comments webpage some recent submissions regarding the high percent of Stanford students claiming disabilities in order get housing and other preferences (see also the new op-ed on this topic, directly below) as well as reader comments with differing viewpoints about diversity, equity and inclusion.

 

Nearly 40% of Stanford Undergraduates Claim They’re Disabled; I’m One of Them

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Editor’s note: We included a link to a similar article several weeks ago but believe the following first-person account presents the issues even more dramatically. We further note that students, faculty and staff are typically put through hours of mandatory training each year about various topics (sexual harassment, security, etc.), so how is it that students so freely engage in abuses like this and the student services staff and senior administration haven't addressed the problem? Including removing the main cause of this widespread fraud by building more and better undergraduate housing before, of all things, further increasing the undergraduate enrollment by an additional 1,000 or more but without addressing this long-existing lack of adequate housing?

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​We also respectfully note that, per Stanford’s Founding Grant, it is among the specifically enumerated obligations of the Trustees to determine “the time when buildings are needed, and of the time and manner of their construction, and of the time and manner of making additions thereto” and that, per Mrs. Stanford’s subsequent directives to the Trustees, “it is desirable so far as may be [possible] that the faculty and students should reside on the University grounds.” It likewise is a primary obligation of all directors and trustees to protect the reputations of the entities which they oversee. All of these obligations appear to be at stake here.

 

Excerpts:

 

“In 2023, one month into my freshman year at Stanford University, an upperclassman was showing me her dorm room -- a prized single in one of the nicest buildings on campus. As she took me around her space, which included a private bathroom, a walk-in shower and a great view of Hoover Tower, she casually mentioned that she had lived in a single all four years she had attended Stanford.

 

“I was surprised. Most people don’t get the privilege of a single room until they reach their senior year.

 

“That’s when my friend gave me a tip: Stanford had granted her ‘a disability accommodation’. She, of course, didn’t have a disability. She knew it. I knew it. But she had figured out early what most Stanford students eventually learn: the Office of Accessible Education will give students a single room, extra time on tests and even exemptions from academic requirements if they qualify as ‘disabled’.

 

“Everyone was doing it. I could do it, too, if I just knew how to ask.... I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant....

 

“That’s why I decided to claim my legitimate illness -- endometriosis -- as a disability at Stanford. It is a painful condition in which cells from the uterus grow outside the womb. I’m often doubled over in agony from the problem, for which there is no known cure, so I decided to ask for a single room in a campus dorm where I could endure those moments in private.

 

“The application process was very easy. I registered my condition on the Stanford Office of Accessible Education website and made an appointment to meet an adviser later that week. The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students.

 

“As I explained my diagnosis and symptoms over Zoom to one woman, she listened, nodded sympathetically, related my problems to her own life and asked a few basic questions. Within 30 minutes, I was registered as a student with a disability, entitled to more accommodations than I asked for.

 

“In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes. I was met with so little skepticism or questioning, I probably didn’t even need a doctor’s note to get these exemptions. Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for....

 

“Another student told me that special ‘accommodations are so prevalent that they effectively only punish the honest’. Academic accommodations, they added, help ‘students get ahead … which puts a huge proportion of the class on an unfair playing ground’.

 

“The gaming even extends to our meals. Stanford requires most undergraduates living on campus to purchase a meal plan, which costs $7,944 for the 2025-26 academic year. But students can get exempted if they claim a religious dietary restriction that the college kitchens cannot accommodate.

 

“And so, some students I know claim to be devout members of the Jain faith, which rejects any food that may cause harm to all living creatures -- including small insects and root vegetables. The students I know who claim to be Jain (but aren’t) spend their meal money at Whole Foods instead and enjoy freshly made salads and other yummy dishes, while the rest of us are stuck with college meals, like burgers made partly from 'mushroom mix'.”...

 

Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate Elsa Johnson at The Times of London. 

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See also “Stanford Students Fake Jain Beliefs to Dodge Mandatory Meal Plan” at India Today; “Getting Better Dorm Rooms and Meals at Stanford” at College Fix; “Gaming the System,” a 9-minute video at The Hill; and a followup op-ed at The Times of London by Ms. Johnson about reactions to her initial article.

 

See also an expansive comment from an alum about these issues at our Reader Comments webpage, including:

 

“Stanford is teaching its students how to game the system for their own personal betterment rather than teaching ethical behavior and instilling in students how to live by an ethical code of conduct.” This reader comment also identifies one of the core reasons for this widespread cheating: the long-existing lack of adequate undergraduate housing.

 

The Next Campus Battle After Free Speech -- Viewpoint Diversity at America’s Elite Universities

Excerpts (most links in the original):

 

“The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles. For example, in the last year, many university leaders, including the Presidents of Princeton, Stanford and Cornell, have given speeches and undertaken initiatives to promote open inquiry and academic freedom on their campuses. However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem -- the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities.

 

“Our Princeton alumni group, Princetonians for Free Speech, has as its mission the promotion of three core values -- free speech, open discourse, and viewpoint diversity. This is a typical mission statement for the more than thirty alumni free speech groups [including Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking]. With all such groups, most of the focus has been on the first two values. Until recently, this has also been true for leading national groups active in this area, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA), which have played critical roles in trying to reform our universities. An exception is Heterodox Academy (HxA), which is putting important focus on faculty viewpoint diversity.

 

“If universities are truly to live up to their purpose in society, the lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty must be addressed. (There is also a real problem with viewpoint diversity among university administrators, but this article will focus on faculty.) In a recent HxA article, President John Tomasi stated the situation succinctly: “In today’s changing campus climate, supporting free expression and respectful discussion have (thankfully) become fashionable, but viewpoint diversity remains a third rail of university life.”

 

“Indeed, without viewpoint diversity, the values of free speech and open discourse are of limited importance. If everybody on a campus believes pretty much the same thing, there is not much learning or advancement of knowledge through open inquiry and debate.” ...

 

[Followed by discussion of specific numbers, the role for universities in society, the growth of civics centers at some universities, reform from within the faculty, banning diversity statements, the need to recognize that there is a problem, the need for action by senior administrators, the need for support from trustees, how to measure progress, faculty should not be the sole gate keepers, alumni need to engage, and the importance of how prospective students and parents evaluate universities.]

 

Full op-ed by Princeton and Stanford alum Ed Yingling and Princeton alum Leslie Spencer at Princetonians for Free Speech.

 

See also paragraph 1.d. of 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. The President, Provost and Advisory Board shall take these principles into account in their own decision-making with respect to the hiring, retention and promotion of members of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff.”

 

Universities Need a New Defense

 

“We should cringe when we hear anyone, including those on the inside, speak about the university as a business.”

 

Excerpts:

 

“The American university remains the standard for the world. Some of the most talented individuals from around the globe spend their lives as professors on American campuses working to discover new knowledge and introduce the next generation to accomplishments of the human mind.

 

“But this moment has brought severe and unprecedented challenges to its continued viability -- indeed, to its very existence. The most immediate threats come, of course, from our own federal government....

 

“We need nothing less than a new conception of the role of the university in a free society. The traditional arguments for why we should value universities -- that they advance civilization, that they are an engine of economic and social growth, that they are a competitive advantage for the nation in the world, and that they educate our young and prepare our citizens and attempt to equalize the opportunities available to them -- are valid....

 

“The simple fact is that leaders at every level, from faculty members to deans to presidents to trustees and alumni, must focus now on building this sense of mission. We must express it over and over again, taking every opportunity to explain and affirm it in as much detail as possible. This idea cannot be treated as something that everyone will grasp on their own or will naturally intuit. Like the modern meaning of the First Amendment, the idea of the freedom of the university is not self-evident, and the latter is certainly not part of the general knowledge of the faculty, students, and the public. We must never be shy about characterizing the university as one of the key means of realizing the human need to know, to understand, and to search for truth. It must be repeated endlessly and with all the infinite variations that will come over time.” ...

 

Full op-ed by former president of Michigan and then of Columbia Lee Bollinger at Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

See also “Harvard Prof. Randall Kennedy Is Afraid and He Thinks You Should Be Too” at Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

See also our Stanford Concerns and our Back to Basics at Stanford webpages.

 

When Speech No Longer Seems Sufficient

 

Excerpt:

 

“I walked into my politics classroom at Sarah Lawrence last week, ready to teach a lesson about civic protest. The prompt was Minneapolis, where ICE’s Operation Metro Surge has sparked mass protests, a general strike, and violent confrontations between demonstrators and federal agents.

 

"I planned to cover basics: citizens can record police activity, protests must remain nonviolent, participants should comply with lawful orders. My students had other ideas.

 

“‘What are we supposed to do?’ one asked. ‘Hold up signs and chant while people are being shot in the street?’

 

“Another jumped in: ‘You’re asking us to play by rules that only we follow.’

 

“They cited the Black Panthers. They invoked Stonewall. They argued that throughout American history, violence (or the credible threat of it) has driven social change. Several insisted that armed citizens confronting ICE would accomplish what peaceful protest could not.

 

“These weren’t fringe voices. This was classroom consensus.

 

“I study campus culture and have watched these attitudes develop for years in the data. But data is abstract. Percentages don’t argue back. What shook me was hearing my own students, students I know and have taught for months, articulate these views with moral certainty. The numbers had names now.” ...

 

[Followed by discussion of data, in defense of fiery words, the partisan surprise, if free speech only matters when convenient it isn’t free at all, the historical debate, and what this means now and in the longer term.]

 

Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at FIRE.

 

Other Articles of Interest

 

What’s Missing on Campus? Men

Full op-ed at Real Clear Education as reproduced from Boston Globe. See also “The Missing Men of UNC” at James Martin Center.  

 

Why Your University Has So Many Administrators

Full op-ed by Vanderbilt Chancellor Emeritus Nicholas S. Zeppos at Chronicle of Higher Education: “Great teaching is expensive, but back-office functions should be getting cheaper. Why aren’t they?” See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.

 

What Keeps Higher Ed Up at Night

Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education: “A University of Wyoming professor says she used to walk into the classroom on the first day of the semester ‘and wonder, which one of these minds will I get to watch bloom?’ But after watching colleagues get pilloried for comments that were recorded in class and circulated online, ‘now my first thought is, which one of these students is going to get me fired?’”

 

Grading Is Hard, and Grade-Inflation Makes It Worthless

Full article at The Hill. See also “Professors Say Gen Z Students Can’t Read, Forcing Colleges to Lower Academic Standards” at Campus Reform.

  

The Activist Veto -- How Identity Politics Restricts Scientific Inquiry

Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars: “Scientific inquiry has suffered another blow amidst the ongoing science crisis and loss of public trust. The New York Times revealed that genetic data from over 20,000 U.S. children, gathered over the last decade, has been ‘misused’ for ‘race science’....”

 

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.

 

Light-Based Platform Sets the Stage for Quantum Supercomputers

 

Aging Brains Pile Up Damaged Proteins

 

New Chip-Sized Optical Amplifier Can Intensify Light 100 Times​

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