Past Newsletters
January 13, 2025
Reflections of a Stanford Alum
Excerpts (links in the original):
“I started at Stanford Law School in 1997. I don't say this to note how old I am, but rather to point out that my tenure there was just two years after the notorious Stanford Law School speech code was defeated, in a court case called Corry v. Stanford University (FIRE Executive Vice President Nico Perrino interviewed the case’s namesake, Rob Corry, for the So to Speak podcast back in 2017, which I encourage you to check out!).
“Stanford is a private university, which would normally mean that it isn’t beholden to First Amendment standards. However, after the passing of a 1992 California Education Code statute known as the Leonard Law, this was no longer the case. Named after its legislative sponsor Sen. William R. Leonard, the Leonard Law essentially extends some (but not all) First Amendment protections to students at non-religious, private institutions of higher education in California. It was passed to prevent universities like Stanford . . . from adopting a politically correct speech code -- which by then was increasingly seen as a relic of the excessively politically-correct 1980s and early 1990s, and which would infringe upon the free speech rights of students....
“It was only in 2001, when I began working as the first legal director for FIRE, that I started to understand the true nature of speech codes like these. Going back all the way to the 1960s, and accelerating through the 1970s and 80s, all attempts to regulate speech with what might be called ‘politically correct speech codes’ used anti-discrimination as their rationale....
“Unfortunately there are plenty of examples of precisely the kind of thing I’m talking about here. Carole Hooven, for instance, was forced out of Harvard for having the opinion that biological sex is real. Also at Harvard, Roland Fryer was targeted for publishing a study that found no racial differences in the frequency of officer-involved shootings. At Stanford, Jay Bhattacharya was targeted for questioning mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the University of Pittsburgh, Associate Professor of Cardiology Norman Wang’s teaching privileges were revoked because he published a research paper examining the potential harms of affirmative action policies. The list goes on.
“When the general public witnesses incidents like these, they are eventually going to come to the realization that dissent is not tolerated in higher education. It will be a clear sign to them that these institutions are holding ideological conformity above free inquiry, open debate, and intellectual diversity. As a result, the public will no longer trust any ‘truths’ or ‘information’ our institutions enshrine or disseminate. This is terrible -- not just for the institutions themselves, but also for our ability to rely on expertise and, most importantly, our ability to discover knowledge....”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack.
See also Greg Lukianoff “There’s Cause for Optimism on Campus Free Speech” at Dispatch.
See also former Stanford President Gerhard Casper, “Statement on Corry vs. Stanford University” at our Stanford Speaks webpage
How Trustees Can Bring Viewpoint Diversity Back to Their Universities
Editor’s note: We present the following op-ed because it raises some important issues about intellectual diversity at colleges and universities today. On the other hand, we question a fundamental concept that underlies much of what is discussed in the op-ed, which is that trustees and regents should play a more direct role in the academic activities of a given college or university.
We remind readers that most campuses operate with the concept of shared governance. That is, the trustees are fiduciaries for the facilities and the endowment, have a direct role in hiring and firing the president and sometimes other senior officers, and usually review and approve the budgets. Sitting inside that structure is a separate professional body that consists of the faculty, usually with its own rules of governance and operating in the form of an academic senate or similar body and which is usually in charge of the academic activities of the relevant college or university. We also have serious concerns about one of the author's proposals as a way to overcome the current situation, which is the creation of centers that are focused on the perspectives and desires of donors, and in fact, we think that is a large source of the problems at modern universities, including Stanford, NOT a solution. See Back to Basics at Stanford.
That said, we agree that trustees and regents need to be better informed about what the president and other senior administrators are doing with respect to the college or university. And like directors of all other nonprofit and for-profit entities, they should regularly sample the activities of the college or university and quiz senior administrators whether they agree or disagree with those activities. There also are obligations of trustees and regents, acting as fiduciaries, when approving budgets and allocating funds, looking at performance ratios such as the number of administrators as compared to the number of faculty and students, the costs of overhead imposed on research, the ranges of salaries of administrators and staff, the adequacy and costs of facilities and support systems and the like.
Trustees, regents and senior administrators also have obligations to interact with faculty when the school's teaching and research are losing the support of alumni, government and other funders, parents, students and other essential constituents. See, for example, last week's Newsletter dated January 6, 2025 that had links to a long list of articles showing the major cutbacks already taking place this year at elite and other colleges and universities, all of which are clear warning signs for what lies ahead.
Excerpt (endnotes deleted):
“There is no issue more important for higher education than ensuring the free exchange of ideas. Acquiring and teaching knowledge requires the ability to expose facts, theories, and beliefs to intense investigation without political pressure.
“Unfortunately, the American campus is in danger of lapsing into a rigidly partisan mentality. In many places, it has already done so; at times, it seems that the ideological bias of higher education is so great that its institutions are beyond reforming.
“This rigidity of mind did not appear overnight. Higher education, which depends on collegiality and consensus among faculty, seems especially prone to groupthink -- a gradual process in which ‘majoritarianism tends to produce ideological conformity in a department,’ according to former National Association of Scholars president Steve Balch. Since a large majority of faculty already lean to the left, groupthink puts constant pressure in that direction on all....”
[Followed by these topics: Subversive principles in higher education, ideological imbalance in practice, the public-private distinction, the board problem, a reform that would empower boards, board structure and control, direct board action, improving the intellectual environment, take control out of the wrong hands, employment, and conclusion.]
Full op-ed at Manhattan Institute website
From the Archives
Stanford’s War on Fun
Editor’s note: In this new feature, we will present from time-to-time past articles from our Newsletters and postings at our website. Today, we are taking excerpts from then-freshman Theo Baker’s October 24, 2022 Stanford Daily article, “Inside Stanford's War on Fun” along with this commentary that has long been posted at our website, combined with indications that Stanford's new leadership is already addressing these types of concerns.
Commentary at our website: In addition to the main theme of this October 2022 Daily article about student social life at Stanford, reprinted below, a number of us were struck with a secondary theme regarding what comes across as a climate of fear, stonewalling and retaliation. These words and phrases are in the order they appear in the Daily article, including the redundancies:
Has exerted pressure ~ Lack of communication ~ Adversarial approach ~ Broadly declined comment ~ Communication … broke down ~ There was no guidance ~ Lack of communication ~ Declined to comment ~ Bureaucratic nightmare ~ Requested anonymity because much of the group’s funding is supplied by the office they criticized ~ You feel like you're being audited by the IRS ~ Excessively bureaucratic ~ Burnt out ~ Did not respond ~ Requested anonymity after supervisors warned staff against communicating with reporters ~ Requested anonymity because of [office] policy ~ Requested anonymity in fear of retaliation from superiors ~ Declined to comment ~ Did not respond ~ Couldn’t speak to that ~ Declined to be interviewed fearing retribution for being associated with criticisms of the University ~ The perception would be terrible if I’m associated in any way ~ Were similarly skittish ~ Walked out of an interview after being told he couldn’t review the article in advance ~ Any conversations with the media ‘need to be cleared by me first’ ~ Declined to comment ~ Have to be hyper-cautious ~ They hired outside lawyers to investigate.
Excerpts (links added):
. . .
“Students interviewed said discontent about campus social life has been on the rise since last winter, but discourse was kicked into high gear in the spring when San Francisco magazine Palladium published an article called ‘Stanford’s War on Social Life’ written by then-senior Ginevra Davis. (A derivative of that article’s title, the ‘war on fun,’ was a term used by multiple students to refer to the University’s approach to social events.)
“Though the article drew some criticism for its portrayal of Greek life as an innocent actor in the University’s alleged ‘war on fun,’ the article also galvanized outrage over the steady decline of spontaneity. The piece was followed by other student articles in campus publications, including an op-ed earlier this month in The Stanford Review titled ‘Take Stanford Back: A Call to Revitalize Fun.’
“The Daily spoke with three employees of the Office of Substance Use Programs Education & Resources (SUPER) who requested anonymity after supervisors warned staff against communicating with reporters, according to emails provided to The Daily. One employee characterized the new alcohol policy as ‘hopelessly out of touch with reality’ and ‘absolute s**t.’ Students interviewed agreed, broadly characterizing it as an unhelpful, adversarial system.
“One Resident Assistant (RA), who requested anonymity because of an Office of Residential Education policy preventing RAs from speaking with reporters, explained that ‘a lot of [Resident Fellows] in the neighborhood have said, ‘This is the University’s policy on alcohol and drugs, let’s make our own policy.’ [They] are telling us, don’t worry about half of this stuff.’ When asked about RFs disavowing University alcohol policy, Harris declined to comment.
“Another RA vented that ‘people are still drinking, their doors are just closed. And that leads to people who are drinking for the first time who don’t know their limits,’ whom RAs can’t help...."
Full article at Stanford Daily (October 24, 2022)
See also Stanford’s current website that contains what apparently are still the policies and procedures for holding a party, and you wonder why students complain about a lack of spontaneity? Also consider, how many staff people, and at what cost, administer all of this? And how is it possible that contemporaries of Stanford students who attend non-residential colleges and universities somehow do just fine without this sort of micromanagement? As noted above, we trust that Stanford's new leadership is already addressing these concerns.
Other Articles of Interest
Recently Adopted Title IX Regs Blocked Nationwide; Here’s What That Might Mean
Full articles at Chronicle of Higher Education, at National Association of Scholars website and at Title IX for All website
AAUP Survey Shows Faculty Feel They Have Less Academic Freedom Than Six Years Ago
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education including a link to a PDF copy of the report. See also FIRE’s recent survey of faculty with similar findings.
Three Reasons to be Optimistic for 2025
Full op-ed at Campus Reform
Yale Free Speech Survey Suggests Change Is in the Air
Full article at Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) Substack website
Three-Year Medical Schools Are Coming
Full op-ed at James Martin Center
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
Five Books to Help You Disagree Productively in 2025
Report Outlines Stanford Principles for Use of AI
In Stanford’s Practical Ethics Club, Students Examine Life’s Moral Complexities
Hoover Initiative Addresses the Erosion of Trust in American Institutions
Economics Major Expanded to Better Suit Different Career Paths
Researchers Use AI to Help Predict and Identify Subtypes of Type 2 Diabetes
Blood Test Can Predict How Long Vaccine Immunity Will Last
A New Ultrathin Conductor for Nanoelectronics
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“We need to encourage real diversity of thought in the professoriate, and that will be even harder to achieve. It is hard for anyone to acknowledge high-quality work when that work is at odds, perhaps opposed, to one’s own deeply held beliefs. But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth. It is absolutely essential to the quality of our enterprise.” – Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy
January 6, 2025
College Faculty Are More Likely to Self-Censor Now Than at the Height
of McCarthyism
Excerpt (link in the original):
“For a number of faculty members, the threat of censorship is so pervasive on campuses across America that not even the cloak of anonymity is enough to make them feel safe expressing their ideas. This year, FIRE surveyed 6,269 faculty members at 55 major colleges and universities for “Silence in the Classroom: The 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey Report,” the largest faculty free speech survey ever performed.
“What we found shocked even us here at FIRE. A deeply entrenched atmosphere of silence and fear is endemic across higher education.
“We found that self-censorship on US campuses is currently four times worse than it was at the height of the McCarthy era. Today, 35% of faculty say they have toned down their written work for fear of causing controversy. In a major survey conducted in 1954, the height of McCarthyism, by the sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, only 9% of social scientists said the same.
“In fact, the problem is so bad that some academics were afraid even to respond to our already anonymous survey for fear of retaliation. Some asked us by email, or in their free response replies, to keep certain details they shared private. Some asked us to direct all correspondence to a private personal email. Others reached out beforehand just to confirm the results would truly be anonymous. Still others simply refused to speak at all....”
Executive summary at FIRE website
PDF copy of the full report available here including specific numbers for Stanford (page 61)
See also “Professors’ Self-Censoring Has Consequences” at Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) Substack website
Deficits and Cutbacks from Around the Country
Editor’s note: The following is a mere sample of articles appearing in recent months. We present them here not to say that Stanford itself may have financial challenges (it might or might not), but rather that all of higher education is facing a moment of truth and when political, social and now financial issues have come to the forefront. The winners will be those colleges and universities that address the issues with honesty that is backed by facts and effective, long-term actions. We also bring readers attention to “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and proposed corrective actions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. It would be tone deaf to say that Stanford is so wealthy that none of these issues are of concern.
USC Is Facing a $158 Million Deficit This Year
Full article at Campus Reform
Brown Is Facing a $46 Million Deficit This Year
Full articles at Inside Higher Ed and at Real Clear Education
Harvard Medical School Is Facing a $26 Million Deficit This Year
Full article at Harvard Crimson
Harvard Is Facing a $151 Million Decline in Donations This Year
Full article at Harvard Crimson
Boston University Is Suspending Admissions for Humanities and Social Sciences PhD Programs (American and New England studies, anthropology, classical studies, English, history, history of art and architecture, linguistics, philosophy, political science, religion, Romance studies and sociology)
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Colleges in Crisis - Had Prior Warning Signs
Full article at NBC News and Hechinger Report
Colleges Slash Majors - An Effort to Cut Costs
Full article at CBS News
Three More Major Universities Reveal Plans for Budget Cuts (Penn State, U Connecticut, U New Hampshire)
Full article at Forbes (January 2024)
U.S. Colleges Cut Programs Because of Budget Deficits, Fewer Students
Full article at Voice of America
More Academic Cuts - May 2024 Edition
Full article at Bryan Alexander website
Ohio State's Potential Budget Cuts in Athletics Could Be a Canary in the Coal Mine
Full article at Extra Points website (August 2024)
Watchlist of Schools in Trouble
Full article at Scholarship Foundation website
Other Articles of Interest
Is University Worth It? Yes, for Both Students and Society
Full op-ed by York President Rhonda Lenton at The Conversation
Association of American Medical Colleges Pushes for DEI ‘To Be Embedded in Everything’
Full article at Daily Wire
Do No Harm Releases Report Showing How Association of American Medical Colleges Has Been Politicizing Medical Education (MCAT, applications, admissions, curriculum, accreditation, licensing, lobbying and more)
Full article and link to PDF copy of the full report, "Activism Over Meritocracy," at Do No Harm website
What Today’s Economics Students Aren’t Learning About Economics
Full op-ed by Texas Tech Prof. Alexander William Salter
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
Predictions for AI in 2025 - Collaborative Agents, AI Skepticism and New Risks
Five Tips for Keeping Winter Bugs at Bay
How Cellular Neighbors Shape the Aging Brain
Students Help Archivists Preserve the Past
More Beans, Peas, Lentils - A Nutrition Expert’s Take on New Guidelines
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"Critical thinking is not something you do once with an issue and then drop it. It requires that we update our knowledge as new information comes in." - McGill Prof. Emeritus Daniel Levitin
December 23, 2024
Why Harvard Faculty Are Leaving the University to Pursue Their Work Elsewhere
Editor’s note: There are growing concerns that prominent faculty members nationwide, especially in engineering and the hard sciences, are finding that the bureaucracies at their universities as well as the bloated overhead have reached a point where they would prefer doing their research and other work elsewhere. Some have said they will continue teaching, but for free and as a contribution to the next generations, but that remaining at their universities was no longer worth the time and cost. We hope this trend will not take hold at Stanford. In that regard, see our long-existing webpages Back to Basics at Stanford and
Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy.
Excerpts:
“Not infrequently, companies lure professors to highly paid positions directing scientific research in pharmaceuticals, technology, and related fields. But the recent departures of some leading Harvard scientists deeply committed to improving human health point to a different phenomenon: challenges to conducting translational life-sciences research in academic settings. Given the University’s emphasis on and investment in the life sciences and biomedical discovery, these scientists’ differing decisions suggest emerging issues and concerns about current constraints and the future of such research.
“Applying for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants can take a substantial portion of an investigator’s time, and as much as a year can pass between a submission deadline and the point when funds are received and disbursed by the recipient’s home institution. With the NIH the dominant funding source for university biomedical research, what’s at stake is not only the ability of academic institutions to remain at the cutting edge of biomedical discovery, but also their ability to attract and train the next generation of scientific talent. The typical for-profit pharmaceutical or biotechnology company can move far more quickly and mobilize vastly greater resources -- from top-notch facilities to copious funding -- enabling the private sector to rapidly move basic science research discoveries to the point of clinical application. Increasingly, researchers committed to improving human health wonder whether working within the constraints of university research settings is really in the public interest....”
[Followed by interviews of specific Harvard faculty members and others]
Full article at Harvard Magazine
Federal Court in Louisiana Allows Case to Move Forward Against Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory
Editor’s note: We are posting this story not to embarrass Stanford but rather to again highlight the dangers of censorship activities, especially when funded by and coordinated with government agencies while using Stanford as a way to shield the activities and drawing upon the prestige of the Stanford name. These activities also again demonstrate the risks of Stanford's estimated 100 to 200 centers, accelerators and incubators that are not primarily engaged in the front-line teaching and cutting-edge, peer-review research of tenured members of the faculty but instead are largely run by third parties and who are engaged primarily or even exclusively in political and social advocacy and implementation activities. We would hope that Stanford can find a way to admit what took place here while limiting the university’s financial and reputational exposures and thereby bring closure to these matters once and for all.
Excerpts (link in the original):
“From Hines v. Stamos [Stanford, et al.], decided [December 18, 2024] by Judge Terry Doughty (W.D. La.):
“‘This case stems from Defendants' alleged participation in censoring Plaintiffs' speech on social media. Defendants are ‘nonprofits, academic institutions, and researchers alleged to have been involved in examining the issue of the viral spread of disinformation on social-media and the resulting harms to society.’ Plaintiffs are social media users, each with significant followings, who allege that the acts of Defendants caused Plaintiffs' disfavored viewpoints to be censored -- namely their speech concerning COVID-19 and elections. As a result of this alleged past and ongoing censorship, Plaintiffs filed this putative class action lawsuit on behalf of themselves and ‘others similarly situated,’ against Defendants….
“The court didn't agree with plaintiffs that they had conclusively established that the federal court in Louisiana had personal jurisdiction over defendants -- but it did conclude that plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged facts that would justify further discovery as to personal jurisdiction....
“'Plaintiffs have alleged -- to the point of ‘possible existence’-- that the Stanford Defendants effectuated censorship in Louisiana by ‘assigning analyst[s] specifically to Louisiana, determining whether speech originated in Louisiana, tracking the speech's spread from Louisiana, and communicating with state officials in Louisiana about supposed disinformation.’ And as such, Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that the Stanford Defendants' online activities may support personal jurisdiction. Limited jurisdictional discovery is thus necessary to show to what extent Defendants' online activities were ‘directed’ at the forum state....”
Full article by UCLA Prof. Emeritus and Hoover Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh at Reason, including a note that one of the attorneys representing the Plaintiffs in this case is expected to be nominated as Solicitor General of the United States.
And here's an additional excerpt taken directly from the court’s order, citations deleted: “... we find that Plaintiffs have provided sufficient allegations to put beyond mere conjecture or suggestion that Defendants [including Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory], through their participation in the Election Integrity Project and Virality Project, caused Plaintiffs to be censored on social media platforms. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Defendants were active participants, if not architects, of a vast censorship scheme, and -- in collaboration with government officials -- actively monitored, targeted, and ultimately induced social media platforms to censor Plaintiffs’ speech (among many others) ….”
See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, “Greater Control Must Be Exercised Over the Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford.”
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage and where, for convenience, we also have posted a PDF copy of this recent court order.
See also this prior analysis of Stanford Internet Observatory
Western Accreditor Reverses Course on DEI Requirement
Editor’s note: Last week’s Newsletter had a link to an article stating that the accrediting agency for California colleges and universities, including Stanford, had deleted its requirement that a school demonstrate its commitment to DEI. In the intervening week, the accreditor has reversed course, saying it will leave the language in place and will study the issue some more.
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Higher Education Is in Trouble
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Higher education in the U.S. faces a crisis: Its credibility is under attack. The public is increasingly skeptical of university-trained experts and the test-score-based meritocracy that dominates America’s upper middle class....
“Education level has become the great divider in contemporary American politics, eclipsing race and sex. Those with four-year college degrees tend to vote differently than those without....
“Measures reportedly under consideration include ending government loans for graduate students, capping the total amount a student can borrow, holding educational institutions at least partially responsible for student-loan defaults, and linking student aid to institutional policies on diversity, equity and inclusion. Colleges and universities will likely face increased congressional oversight of the political imbalance of their faculties. President-elect Trump has suggested he will use the college accreditation process to make higher education toe the line. And with deficit hawks in Congress hoping to offset a portion of Mr. Trump’s proposed tax cuts with increased revenue, Mr. Vance’s December 2023 proposal to raise the excise tax on elite universities’ endowment income from 1.4% to 35% is likely to resurface.
“Faced with these challenges, colleges and universities should adopt three strategies.
“First, they should get their houses in order. They should end mandatory DEI statements for faculty and staff candidates. They should adopt the principle of institutional neutrality spelled out in the University of Chicago’s seminal 1967 Kalven Report and should extend a similar policy to all academic divisions and departments, as Dartmouth College did last week....
“Second, four-year colleges and universities should broaden their support by expanding their alliances with local institutions, especially community colleges....
“Finally, these institutions should refocus on their civic mission: imparting basic knowledge about American history, political institutions and civic culture to every student; promoting social mobility by helping students who are the first in their families to attend college; and promoting civil discourse with campus wide programs such as College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, which gives students opportunities to engage in civil discourse and debate.
“By modeling the balance between social order and individual liberty, higher education can best promote the common good -- and its own long-term best interests.”
Full op-ed at WSJ
For convenience, we have posted a PDF copy of the Dartmouth policy, discussed above, at our Commentary from Others webpage
See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage
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“Principles of free speech are among those we most cherish, as Americans and as members of a university dedicated to the open, rigorous and serious search to know.” – Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper
December 16, 2024
Stanford Daily Interview of Jon Levin – Excerpts re Levin’s First Quarter as
Stanford’s President
Excerpts (links in the original):
“I started this year with a real sense of optimism, and also some uncertainty given all of the campus dynamics around the country last year. The first priority that Provost Martinez and I set for the year was to strengthen the culture of inquiry at Stanford and to foster constructive dialogue. I’m very happy about how that’s going.
“We’ve had seminars, discussions and conferences on the election, the Middle East, COVID policy. There have been forums for discussion even on contentious topics. We announced the new ePluribus initiative, and I love that the faculty are volunteering to host discussions in the dorms -- that’s part of the ‘Pizza, Politics and Polarization’ series. I really believe that Stanford can be a model for how students approach each other with curiosity and with open minds.
“We had two other main priorities for the year that we talked about in our first interview. The second is to advance Stanford’s leadership in AI and data-driven discovery. We opened the Stanford robotics center this quarter and it’s amazing to see the work that the faculty and the students from different departments are doing -- everything from autonomous drones to household robots. We opened the new high-performance shared computing facility, and that’s one of the leading academic facilities for research computing, and there [are] incredible opportunities there.
“The third priority we set was to help make Stanford work better for faculty, students and staff. We tasked John Etchemendy Ph.D. ’82, the former provost, Richard Saller, our former president and [vice president for university affairs] Megan Pierson to lead a simplification initiative to reduce frictions and help make it easier to get things done. Everyone at Stanford wants to see the administrative parts of the university, which play an essential role supporting research and teaching, be enabling forces for faculty and students.
“The last thing I’ll say is, it’s been a joy to get out around campus and meet students, faculty, staff and alumni. Every day I walk on campus, and I’m reminded how extraordinary this place is. The range of talent and ideas at Stanford [is] extraordinary. The fact that we can give students and faculty such freedom to be ambitious and to accomplish great things, it’s inspiring....
Full interview at Stanford Daily including re the incoming Trump administration, the roles of Stanford faculty and others in the incoming administration, special issues for international students, the pending University and criminal actions against Stanford Daily reporters, revised free speech guidelines, developments in intercollegiate athletics and other matters of interest.
Bari Weiss Interview of Marc Andreessen – Excerpts re Censorship and AI
[From Wikipedia: Marc Andreessen is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.]
Excerpts:
…
“[At a White House meeting,] they said, AI is a technology basically that the government is going to completely control. This is not going to be a start-up thing. They actually said flat out to us, ‘Don’t do AI start-ups. Don’t fund AI start-ups.’ ...
“The federal government didn’t let start-ups go out and build atomic bombs. You had the Manhattan Project and everything was classified. And at least according to them, they classified down to the level of actual mathematics.
“Part two is there’s the social control aspect to it.
“Which is where the censorship stuff comes right back and is the exact same dynamic we’ve had with social media censorship. That is happening at hyper speed in AI....
[After discussing a wide range of issues including re the election, Elon Musk, etc.:]
“At these big companies, there’s been absolute intentionality. That’s how you get black George Washington at Google. Because there’s an override in the system that basically says, everybody has to be black. Boom.
“There are large sets of people in these companies that determine these policies and write them down and encode them into these systems. So overwhelmingly, what people experience is intentional. There’s just no question about that. These companies were born woke. They were born as censorship machines.
“My concern is that the censorship and political control of AI is a thousand times more dangerous than censorship and political control of social media -- maybe a million times more dangerous. Social media censorship and political control is very dangerous, but at least it’s only people talking to each other and communicating.
“The thing with AI is I think AI is going to be the control layer for everything in the future -- how the healthcare system works, how the education system works, how the government works.
“So if that AI is woke, biased, censored, politically controlled, you are in a hyper-Orwellian, China-style, social credit system nightmare. This hasn’t rolled all the way out yet because AI is still new and it’s not in charge yet. But this is where things are headed....”
Full interview at The Free Press
See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage
The Hidden Cost of Academic Bloat
Excerpts:
“A Stanford Computer Science degree requires 180 units to graduate. However, only 58 of these units -- less than a third -- consist of actual computer science coursework....
“The reason why lies within the labyrinth of additional requirements Stanford has constructed under the guise of a ‘liberal arts education.’ Take the mandatory COLLEGE program for freshmen, for instance -- two-quarters of discussion-based courses, where it's an open secret that virtually nobody completes the readings, and assignments are graded on completion only. Without any reason to engage meaningfully with the content, COLLEGE just becomes a useless 6-unit obstacle for already overwhelmed freshmen.
“The WAYS requirements also illustrate this academic padding. For example, the Exploring Difference and Power (EDP) requirement, featuring classes like Intersectional Feminism, Black Feminist Theater, Introduction To Queer Theory, or Antiracism and Health Equity, generally translates to courses that seem more focused on ideological conformity than academic rigor. Similarly, the Creative Expression (CE) requirement compels software engineers and mathematicians to briefly dabble in theater, art, or dance -- enjoyable hobbies perhaps, but hardly relevant to their chosen disciplines.
“Even within the technical majors, there is no shortage of unnecessary padding. Computer Science students must fulfill science electives requirements, leading to the common spectacle of future developers memorizing rock formations in an introductory geology class. Extensive physics and mathematics requirements, though theoretically relevant, seldom connect practically in any way with computer science applications....”
Full op-ed at Stanford Review
U Michigan Ends Required DEI Statements in Hiring but Stops Short of Cutting Funds to DEI Programs
Excerpt (links in the original):
“The University of Michigan on Thursday [December 5] announced it will no longer require diversity statements in faculty hiring, promotion and tenure decisions -- but several members of its Board of Regents at their monthly meeting denied reports they plan to cut DEI spending at this time.
“In announcing the decision on diversity statements by Provost Laurie McCauley, campus leaders pointed out that most faculty surveyed ‘agreed that diversity statements put pressure on faculty to express specific positions on moral, political or social issues.’
“The top-down decision means different departments can no longer formulate their own rules on diversity statements, as had been the practice....”
Full article at College Fix
Other Articles of Interest
CSU's New 'Other Conduct of Concern' Rule Is Administrative Overreach
Full op-ed by San Diego State Prof. Peter Herman at Times of San Diego as republished at MSN News
UC Riverside's DEI Guardians Came After Me
Full op-ed by UC Riverside Prof. Perry Link at WSJ
Yale Event Explores Role of Merit in Higher Education and Hiring
Full article at College Fix
Students Think Faculty Should Be Mentors, but What Does That Look Like?
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
University Accreditor Proposes Cutting Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from Its Required Standards
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Editor’s note: This is the accreditor for colleges and universities in California, including Stanford. See also article on the same subject at College Fix
How Will Colleges Fare Financially in 2025? It Depends
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
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
Stanford Welcomes First GPU-Based Supercomputer
Decoding the Mysteries of the Universe
AI Could Help Reduce Injury Risk in Pianists
What Soccer Fans Can Teach Us About Irrationality
Making Robots Real Partners in Daily Life
Existing EV Batteries May Last Up to 40% Longer Than Expected
Portola Valley Approves New Housing for Stanford Faculty and Local Community
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"Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate." — Hubert H. Humphrey
December 9, 2024
An Exceptional Example at Stanford - From the Farm to The Farm, Elic Ayomanor Took an Unlikely Path to Stanford
Excerpts (link in original):
“Each week during the football season, Elic Ayomanor is introduced in some way -- to a television audience, in a game program, on a flipcard distributed in a press box.
“He is a redshirt sophomore wide receiver from Stanford, and one of the best in college football. His major is computer science. And he’s from Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada.
“But where is someone from exactly? Is it their birthplace? The town where they grew up? Or is it the place they feel they belong?
"Medicine Hat is Ayomanor’s point of origin. It’s where he grew up, where his mother raised him, where his dreams sprouted. But where does he belong? Maybe it’s a remote farm on a gravel road, a prep school in the countryside, or a green swath 100 yards long under bright lights.
“‘Medicine Hat’ is the simple answer. The long answer is not so simple....
“Pamela Weiterman split from Elic’s father when her son was an infant. A farm girl growing up, Weiterman settled in Medicine Hat, a small prairie city of 63,000 along the South Saskatchewan River. It’s known as the ‘The Gas City,’ for its natural gas reserves, and ‘The Sunniest City in Canada,’ belying the fact that temperatures dip to minus-40 Fahrenheit during the winter. And it’s a hockey town, home of the Medicine Hat Tigers, a major junior team in the Western Hockey League....
“The family brand was the Flying J and during branding season, Elic helped tag calves and hold them down while their ears were clipped.
“Elic witnessed the difficulties of calving season, when pregnant cows need to be checked frequently, including in the middle of the night in the coldest of winters. If a mother was in trouble, [Elic's grandfather Jack] would have to pull the calf out, sometimes even bottle feeding until they were strong enough to return to the mother, who sometimes would reject it.
“‘They were long days, but that was farm life,’ Pam said. ‘We grew up as strong kids because we worked. We really worked.’ …
“As a single working mom, Pam was conscious of outside influences and tried to keep Elic as busy as possible. That meant signing up for every sport imaginable.
“His middle school doubled as a hockey academy and each day Elic alternated between a day of classes and a day of hockey. There were camps, trips, and games in whatever the sport and because Medicine Hat was so remote, Elic and his friends spent much of their time in Pam’s car, traversing across the emptiness of the northern plains.
“This was where Pam felt like she really got to know her son. She could hear his conversations, learn his music....
“Early on, [scout Justin Dillon] put Stanford out there as the ultimate goal, the epitome of all that Elic and Pamela valued. Dillon had a Stanford connection through Wesley Annan, a 6-4, 275-pound defensive tackle from Whitby, Ontario, who Dillon steered through Lake Forest (Ill.) Academy to The Farm. Though Annan never played at Stanford because of injuries, he graduated with a human biology degree in 2019. That connection helped Dillon get the attention of Cardinal coaches, especially David Shaw’s receivers coach, Bobby Kennedy.
“After sending video to Kennedy, Dillon’s declaration was being put to the test. Dillon, his wife and mother-in-law were on the way to visit relatives when a call came to Dillon’s cell. It was Kennedy, who had just watched a compilation that Dillon provided the night before.
“‘I love this kid,’ Kennedy said. ‘This guy’s going to be special.’ …”
Full article at Go Stanford website
Another Exceptional Example at Stanford - Prof. Jay Bhattacharya
[Editor’s note: Ever since the launch three years ago of our website and weekly Newsletters, we have attempted to shine a light on what appeared, to us at least, as inappropriate censorship of scientific and social discourse, including by government involvement in Stanford’s own activities. This includes the external and internal attacks on Prof. Jay Bhattacharya who has spent his entire academic career at Stanford but received little if any support from Stanford’s own leaders and fellow faculty members for his speaking out on issues directly within his areas of expertise. We and many others also had serious concerns about the activities of the Stanford Internet Observatory and its involvement in deciding what was and wasn’t allowable speech regarding Presidential elections and then regarding COVID.
[With that in mind, we present here excerpts from one of hundreds of articles that have appeared this past week regarding the nomination of Prof. Bhattacharya to head the all-important National Institutes of Health. Link in the original.]
“Jayanta ‘Jay’ Bhattacharya’s Bengali first name means ‘one who is victorious in the end.’ That fits the past 4½ years of his life, in which Dr. Bhattacharya has gone from a pariah in the medical and scientific establishment to President-elect Trump’s nominee to direct the National Institutes of Health.
“Dr. Bhattacharya’s tale begins on these [WSJ] pages with a March 25, 2020, op-ed titled ‘Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?’ Co-authored by Eran Bendavid, a fellow professor of medicine at Stanford, the article argued that many asymptomatic cases of Covid were likely going undetected, making the disease far less dangerous than authorities were claiming.
“‘That is when the attacks started,’ Dr. Bhattacharya, 56, says in a Zoom interview from his office in Palo Alto, Calif. In April 2020 he and several colleagues published a study that confirmed his hypothesis. The prevalence of Covid antibodies in Santa Clara County, where Stanford is located, was 50 times the recorded infection rate. That, he says, ‘implied a lower infection mortality rate than public-health authorities were pushing at a time when they and the media thought it was a virtue to panic the population.’ His university opened a ‘fact finding’ investigation into him after BuzzFeed made baseless charges of conflict of interest. ‘This was the most anxiety-inducing event of my professional life,’ he says....
“To the limited extent that the NIH is a household name, it is sullied because of the pandemic. Dr. Bhattacharya wants Americans to understand what it does. ‘It is the single most important funder of biomedical research in the world,’ he says, dispensing grants of nearly $50 billion a year. ‘It has a track record of funding some of the most important biomedical projects in history,’ including the human genome project, and it is ‘the gold standard for institutional support for biomedical scientific research.’ …
“Dr. Bhattacharya says he will ‘rebalance the portfolio of the NIH so that it emphasizes newer ideas that have the potential for huge breakthroughs.’ …
“Another issue Dr. Bhattacharya intends to address is ‘the major problem of scientific fraud.’ We’ve had ‘scandal after scandal of biomedical scientists publishing papers where they Photoshopped key scientific data.’ Major scientists had to retract papers. Science depends on being able to trust results, so that fraud can produce ‘a whole tower of ideas built on a foundation of sand. And the ultimate consequence of that is that clinical advances that we think we have ended up not working to actually help people.’ ...
“Dr. Bhattacharya believes ‘very strongly that I have a purpose in life, and I’m supposed to use my gifts for this purpose.’ As a health economist and epidemiologist, his avowed purpose is ‘to use my knowledge so that I can make discoveries and suggest policies that would improve the health and well-being of the poor, the vulnerable, and the working-class.’ It wasn’t only the scientist in him but also the Christian that rose up in revolt during the pandemic when he ‘saw the widespread adoption of policies that were not grounded in science, that were harming the welfare of the vulnerable, particularly children.’ He felt he ‘had an obligation to speak. Because what’s the purpose of my career otherwise?’
“Any reform of America’s scientific institutions, Dr. Bhattacharya says, must ensure that they ‘work for the people again.’ Instead of ‘this haughty relationship, where the scientists sit above the public and say, ‘Look, you can’t think that,’ or ‘You’ll be censored if you say that,’ they need to remember that they are servants of the American people. The people are the ones paying the bills. They’re the ones giving the $50 billion a year. We scientists serve the people, not the other way around.’”
Full interview at WSJ
See also "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back" by Stanford Prof. Bhattacharya at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage
See also former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy “The Threat from Within”
How UNC and Others Are Restoring a Core Curriculum
Excerpt (links in the original):
“As the autumn sun warms the historic campus outside, a professor specializing in ancient and modern political philosophy guides undergraduate students through the seemingly ruthless nuances of Machiavelli’s 16th-century philosophy of morals.
“In another class, a professor specializing in political theory offers students a guided tour of the early American republic, as seen through the enlightened eyes of French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville.
“And a professor of rhetoric, who moonlights as a conservative political consultant in national races, diagrams the components of a bulletproof argument on a blackboard as he preps students for an upcoming class debate on the pros and cons of universal basic income.
“These vignettes may seem unexceptional, but they are at the center of an ambitious movement to reform.... The classes taught this fall in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s newly launched academic experiment, the School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL), revive approaches and values that were once accepted as essential to shaping informed and virtuous citizens in a liberal democracy, but are now regarded with deep suspicion by many academics: the classical liberal arts, the great books, Western Civilization, Socratic dialogue, civil discourse....”
[Followed by discussion of similar programs at other colleges and universities nationwide]
Full article at Real Clear Investigations
See also “University of Utah Creates Task Force for Intellectual Diversity” at Campus Reform
See also “University of Austin Fights College Censorship Culture” as broadcast on 60 Minutes and posted at YouTube (13 minutes)
See also the Stanford Civics Initiative website
Students Unable to Speak with Those Who Disagree with Them
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Students can no longer converse with people who disagree with them because of a rise in online ‘echo chambers,’ an Ivy League university president has warned.
“Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientist who took the reins at Dartmouth College last year, said social media has made it difficult for young people to interact with each other in person.
“‘We’re seeing that students aren’t practiced at having conversations with people who disagree with them, in part because social media puts you towards people who agree with you,’ Ms. Beilock told The Times.
“The Dartmouth College president said that ‘learning to talk to people who are different from you is a muscle that you build with training’ and that it is something her university encourages alongside counselling and wider support mechanisms....
“At the new Texas-based university [University of Austin], students are encouraged to disagree with each other and it is all but impossible for faculty members and undergraduates to get cancelled.
“UATX claims to be a place where students and faculty ‘have the right to pursue their academic interests and deliberate freely, without fear of censorship or retribution’.”
Full article at NY Times, as republished at MSN News
What I Would Fix at the National Science Foundation
Excerpt (link in the original):
“As outlined in a recent Senate report, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has become a swamp of identity politics. With a new Presidential Administration coming to power, it’s a good time to think about reform. I’d like to see NSF focused on funding excellent scientific research again, using fair and merit-based criteria to award grants....”
[Followed by seven specific recommendations]
Full op-ed by University of Chicago Prof. Dorian Abbot at Heterodox
Other Articles of Interest
Supreme Court Urged to Hear Cases re Campus Bias Response Teams
Full article at Speech First website
See also “Stanford’s Program re Title VI/Bias” at our Stanford Concerns webpage (updated 12/5/24)
Study Shows Fewer People Want to be Unique – a Warning re Free Speech
Full article at FIRE website
Two Cheers for Viewpoint Diversity
Full article at Law & Liberty
Higher Ed’s Staffing Concerns Eased by Technology
Full article at Ed Tech
How Universities Are Trying to Stop Another Year of Anti-War Activism
Full article at Intercept
Law Schools Have Created Two Legal Systems, Two Teaching Standards and Two Personalities
Full article at Minding the Campus
Why Colleges Are Turning to Institutional Neutrality
Full article at Higher Ed Dive
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
For Major U.S. Cities, the Donut Effect Persists
Legal Representation Is Out of Reach for Many – How to Remedy
Making AI Work for Health Care
FDA Approves Stanford Medicine-Developed Drug That Treats Rare Heart Disease
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“There is absolutely no data that shows better facilities and more administrators lead to better education outcomes; however, they are highly effective for branding and recruiting, and they create a lot of high-paying jobs for bureaucrats who don’t even teach students.” – Author Robert Glazer
December 2, 2024
More About Academic Freedom at Stanford
[Editor’s note: Last week's Newsletter (November 25, 2024) featured articles about the recent refusal of Stanford’s Faculty Senate to rescind their censure four years ago of Dr. Scott Atlas.
[Stanford’s President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez have been at the forefront of university leaders nationwide to emphasize the importance of free speech and academic freedom, which makes the recent actions of the Faculty Senate all the more disconcerting, especially when one would hope that such freedoms would be among the highest priorities of the faculty.
[Subsequent to last week’s Newsletter, the Stanford Review published an op-ed about these issues, excerpts below, and in this regard, we also think it appropriate to quote directly from the Chicago Principles:
[“Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.... Because the university is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the university community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.”]
Excerpts from Stanford Review op-ed "Atlas Censure Vote Reveals Academia's True Colors" (links in the original):
“Last Thursday [November 21], the Stanford University Faculty Senate voted against repealing the 2020 censure of Dr. Scott Atlas, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Trump administration advisor on the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
“Our faculty’s rejection of the motion to rescind Dr. Atlas's censure is a definitive blow to academic freedom at Stanford. Worse yet, it reveals a troubling reality within elite academic institutions: the hollow nature of their proclaimed commitment to free speech. Initially twice postponing the vote to avoid political interpretation, the Faculty Senate has now taken the dramatic step of refusing to rescind the censure, cementing its politically motivated decision.
“The Senate's outright rejection is particularly striking given the subsequent dismissal of several positions for which Atlas was initially censured. When Stanford faculty censured him in 2020 for questioning COVID-19 policies like lockdowns and mask mandates, they did so without even offering him an opportunity to defend his positions. Even as evidence has mounted supporting many of Atlas' positions, the institution has doubled down on its censure....
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the state- and academia-sanctioned suppression of alternative viewpoints prevented crucial debate about the effectiveness and consequences of lockdown policies. As Atlas notes, these policies resulted in significant harm, particularly to vulnerable populations and children, yet the academic community's unwillingness to engage with opposing views hindered proper scrutiny of these measures. Stanford itself played a massive role in the suppression of free speech, not only through the censure of Scott Atlas and the silencing of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, but it also engaged in the censorship of American citizens through the Stanford Internet Observatory....”
Full op-ed at Stanford Review
See also comments at end of Stanford Daily article (November 22)
See also video of Dr. Atlas discussing civil discourse and the free exchange of ideas at YouTube (28 minutes)
Universities Have a 2025 Rendezvous with Reality
[Editor’s note: In our minds at least, this isn’t a question of political beliefs. That’s personal. It’s a question of whether all of this demonstrates a longtime and systemic lack of intellectual diversity and inclusion.]
Excerpts:
“Universities have suffered a cataclysmic decline in public approval and support.
“A Gallup poll taken this year found that only 36 percent of Americans polled either expressed ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in higher education -- once the agreed-on touchstone to upward mobility.
“Gifting to most universities has been down for two consecutive years.
“There is zero intellectual diversity on most university campuses.
“Stanford University may be representative of these crises.
“In the 2020 election, 94% of Stanford faculty voted for the Biden-Harris ticket. Four years later, some 96% of all Stanford-affiliated donations went to Democrats during the 2024 election season.
“Former Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried -- parents of mega-Democratic donor and now imprisoned Sam Bankman-Fried, and recipients of millions in gifts from their felonious son -- were reportedly heavily involved in either bundling large left-wing campaign donations or offering legal advice to their son's bankrupt and Ponzi-like business.
“In 2023, a federal judge was shouted down at Stanford Law School, his lecture aborted and then hijacked -- by a Stanford DEI administrator!
“Former Trump health advisor and Hoover Institution scholar Scott Atlas in 2020 was censured by the Stanford faculty.
“Yet subsequent events supported Atlas's prescient warning that a complete lockdown of the country and the shutdown of K-12 schools would not only not retard the COVID epidemic, but would cause far greater economic, social, cultural, and health damage than the virus itself.
“Two recent attempts to lift that censure failed -- in part because some faculty claimed -- that to do so would empower the Trump reelection bid!
“In contrast, Stanford Professor Jeff Hancock, who founded the ‘Stanford Social Media Lab,’ boasts he researches ‘how people use deception with technology.’ Yet when liberal Minnesota officials wanted such ‘experts’ to support their new law banning ‘deep fake’ technology at election time, they called in the expert deception-detector Hancock.
“However, the references Hancock provided to prove his support for the law allegedly never existed.
“In fact, the lawyers who challenged his online expertise argued his sources apparently were invented by artificial intelligence software like ChatGPT.
“Who will police the deception police? …”
Full op-ed by Hoover Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson at Real Clear Education
See also former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy “The Threat from Within”
Study Finds DEI Initiatives Are Creating Hostile Attribution Bias
Excerpts from a report published by the Rutgers Social Perception Lab (citations deleted):
“DEI programs purport to cultivate inclusive environments for people from diverse backgrounds and encourage greater empathy in interpersonal interactions. A key component of DEI offerings lies in diversity pedagogy: Lectures, trainings and educational resources ostensibly designed to educate participants about their prejudice and bias in order to eliminate discrimination. As institutions across corporate and educational sectors increasingly embed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) into their foundational strategies, it is crucial to evaluate the effectiveness of common aspects of this pedagogy.
“A 2023 study by the Pew Research Center found that 52% of American workers have DEI meetings or training events at work, and according to Iris Bohnet, a professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, $8 billion is spent annually on such programs. Despite widespread investment in and adoption of diversity pedagogy through lectures, educational resources, and training, assessments of efficacy have produced mixed results....
“[Based on the studies that were undertaken and are discussed in detail in the report,] the evidence presented in these studies reveals that while purporting to combat bias, some anti-oppressive DEI narratives can engender a hostile attribution bias and heighten racial suspicion, prejudicial attitudes, authoritarian policing, and support for punitive behaviors in the absence of evidence for a transgression deserving punishment. Although not addressed in the studies reported herein, it is also possible that these factors are mutually reinforcing and spread through social contagion. Our findings raise this possibility which we offer here in the form of a post-hoc process model (to be investigated in future studies).” …
Full PDF copy of the report at Rutgers website
See also “Researchers Find People Are More Suspicious and Hostile after DEI Trainings” at College Fix
President Levin Interviewed by Stanford Review
Excerpts:
“I’ll just start by saying I'm 100 days into this role. So, of course, I’m still at a point where I’m learning a lot about everything. I came into this role knowing that it has been a very challenging period for universities nationally and the experience I've had so far has been really positive. It's been incredibly exciting to see just the breadth of excellence across the university, the feeling of openness and discussion on the campus this year, which has been particularly gratifying given the last couple of years, and just the overall sense of optimism at Stanford, something I really love and value. And that's what I talked about in my inauguration.
“You asked about the differences over time and in university leadership. I think that's a very good question. I think universities like Stanford have for many years played such an important role in the country as the source of ideas and new knowledge and discovery and innovation and the place that is the magnet for talent from all over the world. People have the chance to explore and learn and go off and make significant contributions. The most important part of university leadership is to try to sustain that crucial mission. So that hasn't changed, that's always there and always will be there in another 20 or 100 years.
“There are some distinctive challenges about today because of just everything that's going on in the world and on campuses and so that's part of current university leadership. But the part that's exciting about being university president is really all the people on the campus and all the things, ideas they come up with and things they're doing. And I think that is an enduring aspect of nursing leadership....”
Full interview at Stanford Review including Q&A re priorities, COLLEGE, political concentration of Stanford faculty and others, institutional neutrality, Stanford Internet Observatory, integrity of research, role of AI and much more
Other Articles of Interest
Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya to Head NIH
Full article at BBC
See also “Poetic Justice for Jay Bhattacharya” at Bari Weiss Free Press
See also "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back" by Stanford Prof. Bhattacharya at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage
How Scientific American's Departing Editor Helped Degrade Science
Full op-ed at Reason
See also “National Science Foundation Spent Over $2 Billion Imposing DEI on Scientific Research” at College Fix
Want to Find Highly Engaged Students at 4-Year Colleges? Look at Transfer Students
Full article and link to podcast at Ed Surge
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
Andrew Luck Named General Manager of Stanford Football
See also Stanford Daily
AI Tool ‘Sees’ Cancer Gene Signatures in Biopsy Images
Milky Way Is an Outlier Among Similar Galaxies
Exotic Quantum State of Matter Visualized for First Time
Combatting a Gravely Serious Clotting Condition
Dopamine and Serotonin Work in Opposition to Shape Learning
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“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Winston Churchill
November 25, 2024
University Liberalism and Independent Thinking, Versus the Push for Relevance
Excerpts:
....
“Visit most any university or college campus today, and the vision of the idyllic community -- the stately buildings, well-tended lawns, state-of-the-art athletic facilities, and lively local hangouts -- survives. So do broad fields of genuine excellence, particularly in STEM fields such as biomedical research, astrophysics, and computer science. And universities still play a vital role as educators of future doctors, attorneys, nurses, engineers, and other essential professions.
“But the broader argument for universities has become harder to make in recent years....
“How did universities fall off their pedestals? Many reasons, but one is central: the turn away from liberalism as the dominant mindset of the academy.
“By liberalism I do not mean the word in the usual ideological or political sense. I mean it as the habit of open-mindedness, a passion for truth, a disdain for dogma, an aloofness from politics, a fondness for skeptics and gadflies and iconoclasts, a belief in the importance of evidence, logic, and reason, a love of argument rooted in intelligent difference. Above all, a curious, probing, independent spirit....
“Except in a few surviving corners, that kind of university is fading, if not altogether gone. In its place is the model of the university as an agent of social change and ostensible betterment. It is the university that encourages students to dwell heavily on their experience of victimization, or their legacy as victimizers, rather than as accountable individuals responsible for their own fate. It is the university that carefully arranges the racial and ethnic composition of its student body in the hopes of shaping a different kind of future elite. It is the university that tries to stamp out ideas or inquiries it considers socially dangerous or morally pernicious, irrespective of considerations of truth. It is the university that ceaselessly valorizes identity, not least when it comes to who does, or doesn’t, get to make certain arguments. It is the university that substitutes the classics of philosophy and literature with mandatory reading lists that skew heavily to the contemporary ideological left. It is the university that makes official statements on some current events (but not on others), or tips its hand by prominently affiliating itself with political activism in scholarly garb. It is the university that attempts to rewrite the English language in search of more 'inclusive' vocabulary. It is the university that silently selects an ideologically homogeneous faculty, administration, and graduate-student body. It is the university that finds opportunistic ways to penalize or get rid of professors whose views it dislikes. It is the university that has allowed entire fields of inquiry -- gender studies, ethnic studies, critical studies, Middle Eastern studies -- to become thoroughly dogmatic and politicized.
“A charitable term for this kind of institution might be the relevant university -- relevant in the sense of playing a direct role in shaping public and political life. In fact, there are many less political and more productive ways in which universities can credibly establish their relevance to the world around them: by serving as centers for impartial expertise, making pathbreaking discoveries, and educating students with vital skills, not just academically but also with the skills of good citizenship and leadership....
“There’s a straightforward way out of this mess. It’s a return to the values of the liberal university.
“Already, there are academic leaders willing to go there. In his impressive inaugural speech, Jonathan Levin, Stanford’s new president, put the point clearly: ‘The university’s purpose is not political action or social justice,’ he said. ‘It is to create an environment in which learning thrives.’ Sian Leah Beilock, the president of Dartmouth, has been equally clear: ‘Universities must be places where different ideas and opinions lead to personal growth, scientific breakthroughs, and new knowledge,’ she recently wrote in The Atlantic....
“What will turn the system around? Leadership is essential, starting with boards of trustees who must refuse to serve as mere cheerleaders or rubber stamps for university administrators drawn from the usual academic ranks and in tune with their ways of thinking and acting. It’s also essential to change the value system on campus, not only by moving away from identity politics but also by finding ways to rekindle the dying art of disagreement....”
Full op-ed by editor-in-chief Bret Stephens at Sapir Journal
See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, including questions as to what extent the centers, incubators, accelerators and similar entities at Stanford are engaged primarily in advocacy and implementation activities (and run primarily by the thousands of non-teaching personnel now housed at Stanford), versus the front-line teaching and peer-reviewed research of Stanford’s faculty themselves.
In Praise of Institutional Neutrality
Excerpt:
“We are engaged today in a struggle for the future of the university. Do universities today want to preserve -- or restore -- their status as institutions of teaching and learning or do they see themselves as engines of social change? It is one thing to provide students with the tools they need to become agents of social change -- we all hope they will -- but quite another to say that the university should seek to determine the direction of that change. Let me explain why the position of institutional neutrality is best suited to achieve this end.
“Our basic values are not only contestable, they stand in deep tension with one another. The English philosopher Isaiah Berlin was profoundly correct when he said that everything is what it is and not something else. Freedom is not justice; equality is not liberty; and diversity is not excellence. To deny these basic facts is either to indulge in wishful thinking or Orwellian double-speak.
“However it might appear, issues of equality, freedom and social justice are inherently contestable. Can a university devoted to the cause of rectifying past injustices maintain its commitment to intellectual excellence? Can a university seeking to guarantee safe spaces for students maintain an atmosphere of free and open debate?
“It is our job as educators to bring out the complexity of moral and social issues, not to put our thumb on the scale in advance to determine what kind of change is deemed morally or politically acceptable. When this happens, education becomes indoctrination and teaching a form of ideology training....”
Full op-ed by Yale Prof. Steven B. Smith at Yale Daily News
Stanford's Faculty Senate Refuses to Rescind Its Censure Four Years
Ago of Dr. Scott Atlas
[Editor’s note: Compare the following with the two articles, above. And did it not occur to anyone on Stanford's faculty, especially the medical school's own leaders and faculty, that an open debate on the issues was in order, not motions of censure? Isn't that how an academic community is supposed to function?]
By a secret vote of 21-13, Stanford's Faculty Senate on Thursday, November 21 refused to rescind its censure four years ago of Dr. Scott Atlas. See summaries of the Faculty Senate's actions at Stanford Report and Stanford Daily.
See also Stanford Prof. Ivan Marinovic op-ed dated October 24, 2024 at Stanford Review on reasons to rescind the censure, including these excerpts:
"In November 2020, the Stanford Senate convened to deliberate disciplinary actions against Scott Atlas. His offense? Expressing views on COVID policy that challenged those of other faculty. Atlas was neither informed of the meeting nor given an opportunity to attend and respond to the accusations. In essence, he was denied the right to defend himself and was judged for his speech in absentia.
“Several months prior, in September 2020, ninety-eight professors from the Stanford School of Medicine had circulated a letter, addressed to the entire Stanford academic council, using the university's academic secretary, condemning Atlas in harsh terms: ‘To prevent harm to the public’s health, we also have both a moral and an ethical responsibility to call attention to the falsehoods and misrepresentations of science recently fostered by Dr. Scott Atlas…. Many of his opinions and statements run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy… Failure to follow the science -- or deliberately misrepresenting the science -- will lead to immense avoidable harm.’ …
“The censure of Atlas marks a low point in Stanford’s history. Never before had Stanford censured a professor without affording him the fundamental right to defend himself. And while the resolution condemned Atlas’s conduct with moral indignation, the Senate was blind to its own moral failure in passing this resolution.
"The censure also sent a chilling message to the Stanford community: Any faculty member who challenges orthodoxy risks public condemnation and institutional ostracism. The lesson is clear: those who dissent will face not just academic and online mobs targeting their reputations and careers, but also formal denunciation from the university itself.
“By censuring Atlas, the Senate revealed the fragility of Stanford’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom....”
There’s an Answer to College Diversity Right in Front of Us
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Several leading universities recently released enrollment data on the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision gutting affirmative action. As critics -- myself among them -- predicted, the reports show a dramatic decline in the enrollment of Black and Latino students in these institutions.
“A survey of 50 top-ranked schools concluded that, at three-quarters of them, fewer Black students were enrolled than before the court’s ruling. In some instances, the drop-off has been substantial. At Columbia University, for example, 12 percent of the class of 2028 is Black, compared to 20 percent in previous years. Black student enrollment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dropped from 20 percent to 12 percent, while at Amherst College, Black students, who make up 11 percent of the class of 2027, constitute only 3 percent of the class of 2028.
“How can elite universities maintain a diverse student body in a post-affirmative-action world? Here’s one promising approach: recruit community college graduates....
“The transfers in my 60-student undergraduate class, ethics in a cataclysmic era, are hungry to learn and eager to try out new ideas. I invite them to link their life stories -- being homeless or raising two children as a single parent, for instance -- to the topic we’re discussing. They introduce a reality check -- especially valuable in an applied ethics class -- during sessions that could otherwise become hyper-theoretical....”
Full op-ed by UC Berkeley Prof. Emeritus David Kirp at Washington Post
The Fall of the AAUP
Excerpt (links in the original):
“One of the great disappointments of my professional life has been watching the decline of the American Association of University Professors, formerly the gold standard for defense of academic freedom on campus. Of course, there have always been and still are good, principled AAUP members and chapters out there. But since the beginning of my career back in 2001, the national AAUP have gone from being principled (if slow and plodding) defenders of academic freedom to increasingly partisan critics of freedom of speech and the First Amendment -- taking institutional positions that directly threaten academic freedom.
“This week Joan W. Scott, a current AAUP member and former chair of the AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, published a piece in Inside Higher Education making a number of false accusations about my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. This is on the heels of a contentious exchange on X two weeks ago, where FIRE’s Vice President of Campus Advocacy Alex Morey called the AAUP out for their continuing fall from principle, and the AAUP replied with even more (mostly now-deleted) false accusations.
“FIRE’s principled, nonpartisan defense of free speech and academic freedom is not only on record, but baked into our very founding in 1999 by left-leaning libertarian Harvey Silverglate and right-leaning libertarian Alan Charles Kors. The AAUP are, sadly, a different story....”
Full op-ed by FIRE president and Stanford alum Greg Lukianoff at Substack
See also “AAUP’s New President Is Not Staying Neutral” at Inside Higher Ed
Stanford’s New Program for Student Civic Engagement and Constructive Dialogue
Excerpt (link in the original):
“Stanford University has announced a new, university-wide initiative, ePluribus Stanford, designed to empower students to think critically and empathetically, engage in meaningful conversations across their differences, and embrace active, life-long roles in civic life through whatever field or career path they pursue.
“The initiative, which builds on Stanford’s long commitment to civic purpose, comes at a critical time for democracy and freedom of expression in the country.
“‘Freedom of speech and academic freedom are critically important,’ said Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez. ‘To create an environment in which free ideas flourish, though, it’s not enough to just avoid official censorship. We hear a lot about self-censorship, and about people feeling like their ideas and voices aren’t being heard and valued in the conversation on campus. To address those concerns, we need to cultivate a culture of openness and curiosity in our community. What’s more, we need to help students develop the skills to think critically and to engage constructively. These are essential to the university’s mission of research and education, and also to sustaining democracy in the broader society.’ ...”
Full article at Stanford Report
See also “Civic Dialogues Program Helps Freshmen Tackle Tough Conversations”
Other Articles of Interest
Academe’s Divorce from Reality
Full op-ed by former Yale Prof. William Deresiewicz at Chronicle of Higher Education
Meet California’s Most Neglected Group of Students with Special Needs - the Gifted Ones
Full op-ed at LA Times
UC Berkeley to Offer New Course That Describes Hamas as a 'Revolutionary Resistance Force Fighting Settler Colonialism'
Full article at Campus Reform
ASU's Religious Studies Department Teaches Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Even Witchcraft - but rejects courses on Christianity
Full article at Alma Matters
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
The Unexpected Journey of Neural Networks in AI
More Accessible Yet Less Personal - The Two Sides of Digital Banking
Mysterious Brain Malformations in Children Linked to Protein Misfolding
How Ketosis Influences Metabolism
************
“When we truly understand another person’s perspective, it opens a door to compassion and can bridge the deepest divides between us.” – Stanford Prof. Geoffrey Cohen
November 18, 2024
AI May Ruin the University as We Know It
Excerpts (links in the original):
“A social-media post for a Google product known as NotebookLM outlines the following instructions to college students for ‘how to do school.’ First, close your laptops, use your phone to record lectures, and write down only the important bits. Next, upload the recording and scans of any handwritten notes to Google. Finally, process the material through an executive summary generated by NotebookLM. An added perk, or shortcut, as the case may be: At the end of the week, generate a summary of the summaries in the form of a synthetic podcast narrated by a pair of conversational agents. No more extracting concepts from long-form arguments, no more psychic struggle with complex ideas: just autosummary on demand, made possible by a vast undifferentiated pool of content that every successive use of the service helps to grow.
“Such is the ed-tech vision of higher education now. What the example of NotebookLM’s promotional campaign demonstrates is the emergence of a new model or template for education, if not for learning itself: a productivity schema ready to be laid across the full spectrum of the postindustrial knowledge economy. It is not difficult to see that in the next phase one can eliminate the lectures and discussions and simply start with the summaries (and eventually the summaries of the summaries), streamed on demand....
“In essence, the university itself has become a service. The idea of the University as a Service extends the model of Software as a Service to education. Software as a Service refers to the practice of businesses licensing software and paying to renew the license rather than owning and maintaining the software for themselves. For the University as a Service, traditional academic institutions provide the lecturers, content, and degrees (for now). In return, the technological infrastructure, instructional delivery, and support services are all outsourced to third-party vendors and digital platforms.
“Licensing and subscription agreements favor short-term budget planning; so too do they enable an administrative vision of universities as customizable, scalable, cost effective, and available on demand. Too often the decision-making about the IT systems that will shape the research and instructional environments is largely or even exclusively in the hands of CIOs, IT staff members, and instructional development, with academic affairs relegated to the position of managing the implementation of commercial ed-tech applications that promise continuous pedagogic improvement, which is now to be accelerated by new AI features, all of them generating revenue through the scraping of data. As with other industries like health care, the ‘service’ that the university now provides is the concentration of human capital and engagement for the magnitude of data collection necessary to the continued growth and financial viability of AI systems....”
Full op-ed by U Maryland Prof. Matthew Kirschenbaum and UC Santa Barbara Prof. Rita Raley at Chronicle of Higher Education
See also Stanford Prof. Russell Berman’s remarks to the Faculty Senate about the situation where Stanford’s IT department had developed a list of words and phrases that Stanford faculty, students and staff then were told they should no longer use, “Does Academic Freedom Have a Future at Stanford” at our Stanford Speaks webpage
How Department of Education’s Guidance re
Title VI May Conflict with the First Amendment
[Editor’s note: At the start of the current academic year, Stanford revised its controversial bias reporting policies and procedures with new policies and procedures that treat such matters as arising under Title VI of the Federal Civil Rights Act. See “Stanford’s Program re Title VI/Bias” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. We had noted at the time that this seemed to be a positive development but where we also had surmised, without confirmation, that the same automated emails and protocols that the student services staff had used in the past for handling alleged bias would still be used, but with a different name since the same templates are embedded in the computerized case management system that is used by Stanford and other colleges and universities nationwide.
[More recently, guidance from the U.S. Department of Education on these issues has become the focus of a lawsuit, as discussed below.]
Excerpts:
“The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed a lawsuit last week against the U.S. Department of Education, demanding the release of all guidance it has given to colleges on how to fight discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin.
“The free-speech advocacy group believes the federal agency has been privately instructing college administrators on how they should respond to campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
“‘Some universities seem to be under the impression that they are under an obligation to suppress speech protected under the First Amendment,’ said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute.
“The department, the institute alleges, has denied several requests to make public parts of its guidance to colleges since the start of the war.
“The Department of Education declined to comment on the pending litigation....”
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
See also our articles about “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” and “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System” at our Stanford Concerns webpage
The Decline and Fall of the University
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Since retiring from the university, several people have asked if I miss it. I tell them I miss what it was, but not what it has become. Higher education in America has gone from being the best in the world to one of the most pathetic. Why? It’s hard to describe what academia was to me and to millions in the past. It was not just a job, but a way of life, and of Western Civilization; and I’m so close to it, that it’s hard to describe -- like trying to describe one’s own mother (hence alma mater!).
“But let me try. University life at its best was both the most serious, difficult, challenging and maddening existence; and yet, it was also the most exciting, lively, rewarding, and fun experience.
“It was deadly serious because we constantly examined the most intense human issues: historical and personal tragedies; ethical dilemmas, philosophical complexities; theological mysteries; and scientific wonders. It was hard because it stretched you intellectually and emotionally, made you question everything and be changed by that knowledge. And it was difficult, because of the enormous workload and demands; assignments, exams, papers, presentations and seminars. I don’t know of another situation, except possibly the military during a war, where one could be tested so much....
“Academia was full of eccentric professors with various crazy ideas and habits (some brilliant), naïve students, and pompous administrators; but they all adhered to the same standard of knowledge. This led not just to scientific discovery and technological progress, but to every other kind of progress: economic, political, social, and ethical....
“Political correctness effectively replaces free, diverse debate and a positive collegial community with Nazi-like speech control. In place of a ‘free-marketplace of ideas’ examining all subjects and perspectives is one official ideology that eclipses all the other views. That PC doctrine, essentially, is that Western Civilization in general, and America in particular, is racist, sexist, imperialist and unjust. This means that nothing good can be said about certain figures or subjects (Jefferson, the founding, Christianity, etc.) and nothing bad or ‘offensive’ can be said about ‘protected groups’.... This ideology has pretty much captured the humanities and social sciences in American universities (as well as the most prominent academic associations and journals, and the most prestigious awards).
“This system of thought was codified and weaponized by the largely illegal and unconstitutional expansion of the Title IX Regulations in 2014. This was a provision of the Civil Rights Acts requiring equal expenditures on college sports along gender lines. It was deftly transformed into a PC blitz by equating ‘discrimination’ with ‘harassment.’ When ‘harassment’ was expanded to include ‘verbal’ harassment, it allowed censorship and punishment of any speech that was deemed offensive or 'unwanted' by anyone. Title IX offices at every American university (with names like: The Office of Conduct, Compliance, Control, Diversity, Inclusion and Demasculinization) run Gestapo-like operations of surveillance, mandatory reporting, investigations, interrogations (without due process) and reprimands, dismissals and expulsions....
“My guess is that in 10 years, half of America’s universities will be turned into vocational-technical schools or closed entirely (or possibly turned into minimum-security prisons or drug rehab centers). The remaining, I hope, will return to a model similar to the lively, rigorous and useful universities we once had. Combinations of online efficiency with onsite community may be the best solution. And if secondary schools returned to teaching the best of Western Civilization (literature, history, art, music, philosophy) it would prepare Americans who do not go to college to be well-informed, thoughtful citizens, Jefferson’s ideal for American democracy....”
Full op-ed by U Virginia Prof. Emeritus Garrett Sheldon at The Jefferson Council website and previously published at Brownstone Institute. Also republished at our Commentary from Others webpage.
The Economics of Political Correctness
Excerpts:
“One morning, chatting with Harvard undergraduates just before my class, I reminisced about my own college years in the late 1990s -- debating religion in our residence hall or arguing about the role of discrimination in America in common rooms.
“Those conversations were uncomfortable and even heated at times. But they were positive experiences for me and I’m pretty sure everyone else. Grappling with different views helped us understand one another, and that helped me understand, and sometimes change, my own outlook.
“I asked a student in the front row: With all this technology and social media, where do you have these types of conversations? She looked up from her turquoise notebook and replied: ‘We don’t.’ I looked around the amphitheater and asked, ‘Really?’ A hundred heads nodded in unison....
“Even if stone cold economists have fallen prey to self-censorship, economics can tell us why. A brilliant analysis by Stephen Morris -- a formalization of early ideas developed by Glenn Loury-- develops the basic economics of political correctness. Here is an example:
“Suppose there is an informed professor advising a less informed politician as to whether diversity, equity, and inclusion policies help minorities. If the professor says DEI is harmful, the politician might interpret the recommendation as the honest findings of an unbiased researcher. But he also might interpret it as the motivated reasoning of a racist, and might even stop asking the professor for advice.
“Mr. Morris demonstrates mathematically that if the professor is sufficiently concerned about being thought a racist, he will lie and recommend DEI even when he knows it’s a bad idea for minorities....
“The question is what can be done. First, we need to take a careful look at how we hire and promote faculty. Instead of having them sign statements swearing fealty to DEI, perhaps they should promise to tell the truth. Second, we need high-powered incentives for people who are correct regardless of politics. If someone scientifically demonstrates that systemic racism is the main factor in racial disparities in America, this should be celebrated. If someone finds that health disparities are driven by genetics rather than social factors -- that too should be celebrated. We need something like the MacArthur Fellowship or the X Prize for telling the truth about data.
“I am gravely concerned about the rise of political correctness on college campuses, its effect on the type of analysis that is being published and being taught, and how this will undermine, among many other things, efforts to help the marginalized in America. Such efforts will succeed only if they are rooted in the truth.”
Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Roland Fryer at WSJ
How to Save Free Speech on Campus
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Back in February, Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer was supposed to give a lecture on toxic polarization in American discourse at the University of Puget Sound. He didn’t. The event was canceled after pro-Palestinian protesters forced themselves into the lecture hall and stormed the stage.
“That same month, Israeli Defense Forces reservist and lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat was supposed to speak on the geopolitical dynamics of Israel’s war in Gaza at the University of California-Berkeley. He didn’t. The event was canceled after hundreds of angry protesters surrounded the venue, broke glass doors, obstructed entryways, and forced themselves into the building....
“In the last decade we have seen more than 1,000 campaigns to get professors punished for their First Amendment-protected speech. Nearly two-thirds of those campaigns succeeded, and almost 200 professors ended up being fired or forced out. For perspective, during McCarthyism, about 60 communist professors were fired, and about 100 professors were fired for political belief overall. We know this is a wild underestimate, given that about 1 in 6 professors say that they have been punished or threatened with punishment for their speech, teaching, or research. To give further perspective, if extrapolated nationally that would be about a hundred thousand professors targeted for speech. There is no parallel to that in American history....
“Our institutions of higher learning have done this to themselves. As Tyler Austin Harper put it in a piece for The Atlantic, higher education created this problem by favoring applicants who are interested only, or primarily, in engaging in activism. Indeed, they made activism a part of their marketing and recruitment materials....
“Right now, many students enroll with a predetermined moral and political certainty and an intolerance for dissent -- and schools largely encourage and reinforce it....
“Our institutions of higher education should protect their activists, but they should also prioritize recruiting scholars. The ideal student should think more like a field anthropologist, someone who is trying to figure out where the other side is coming from, rather than a strident warrior in a battle of good versus evil. That open, curious, intellectually humble, and receptive mindset is the foundation of actual learning, and is critical to fostering an educational environment that lives up to its intended purpose....
“However difficult it might be for universities to reestablish these norms after decades of encouraging the opposite, failing to do so will have dire consequences. Our institutions will be little more than dogma factories, churning out wave after wave of activists and leaving us with no scholars, no thinkers, and no higher learning at all.”
Full op-ed by FIRE President and Stanford alum Greg Lukianoff at Substack
Other Articles of Interest
A Frosh’s Reflection on Free Speech at Stanford
Full op-ed at Stanford Review
How Stanford Students Can Bring the Fun Back
Full op-ed at Stanford Daily
Universities Like Yale Need a Reckoning
Full op-ed by Yale Prof. David Blight at NY Times
The Department of Education’s Approach to Antisemitism Is Dangerous and Won’t Work
Full op-ed at The Hill
Is It Time to Regulate AI Use on Campus?
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Study Shows Most Workers Pay Back Student Loans on Time
Full article at College Fix
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
New Center Unites Stanford’s Robotics Expertise Under One Roof
Civil Dialogues Program Helps Freshmen Tackle Tough Conversations
Stanford Researchers Probe Consistency and Bias in AI
Historian Jonathan Gienapp Challenges Originalist Interpretations of the Constitution
New Specialty Spaces Coming to the Graduate School of Education
Scientists Find Novel Use for Ancient Malaria Remedy
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“An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life -- becoming a better person.” -- Leo Tolstoy
November 11, 2024
Cancel Culture, Administrative Bloat and the Misguided Concept
of Student Consumerism
Excerpts (links in the original):
. . . .
“Cancel culture has made it possible for students to amplify grievances or objections to give them a type of veto power over faculty. Recording of classes posted on social media can lead to intense and immediate backlash, often for things taken out of context or at the whim of an emotional reaction. In many cases, faculty who attempt to introduce controversial ideas, engage in difficult discussions, or simply express an unpopular opinion may find themselves targeted, with students mobilizing to demand their removal, disciplinary action, or public apology. This climate has forced many faculty members to censor their teaching, avoid contentious topics, and minimize challenging coursework, all to avoid the potential repercussions of offending students. The power students hold in this dynamic can be oppressive, leaving professors with limited control over their curriculum and pedagogical approach, weakening the educational value of open inquiry and debate....
“[Meantime,] administrative bloat has increased the number of non-academic staff in universities, often in roles designed to cater to student needs, experiences, and complaints. While some of these roles serve legitimate purposes -- such as ensuring student safety, compliance with regulations, and supporting diverse student populations -- this growth has created an extensive support network that can empower students to challenge faculty more directly and frequently.
“With more administrators available to field student grievances, students find it easier to report issues, file complaints, and demand change within university structures. Administrative staff often feel pressured to respond quickly and decisively to these complaints to maintain student satisfaction and prevent potential public relations issues. This can create an institutional bias in favor of student concerns, even when they conflict with faculty perspectives or academic freedom. Administrators may side with students in disputes to avoid controversy or backlash, reinforcing student authority over faculty. With administrative structures expanding in this way, students gain leverage to challenge faculty decisions on grading, content, or classroom management, effectively placing themselves above faculty judgment....
“Addressing this imbalance requires universities to reevaluate their approach to governance, student relations, and administrative structure. It must first start with reinforcing academic freedom and support for faculty. Universities must explicitly protect faculty members’ right to academic freedom and provide them with institutional support when they engage in challenging or controversial teaching. Clear policies that protect professors’ ability to engage in intellectual discourse are essential.
“A mindset shift is also important. Educational institutions should actively promote a culture where students see themselves as active participants in learning rather than as customers. This could involve orientation programs, campaigns, or statements from leadership that emphasize the role of education in personal growth and critical thinking, not simply as a commodity....”
Full op-ed by U San Diego Prof. Rebekah Wanic at Minding the Campus. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage
Upcoming USC Conference on Censorship in the Sciences (January 10 to 12, 2025)
Excerpt:
“Censorship in sciences entails suppression of the investigation of scientific questions, or the publication or dissemination of scientific research, on the grounds that such knowledge would be dangerous, undesirable, or contrary to moral, political, or religious beliefs, attitudes or values adhered to by some segment of the population.
“This conference brings together experts (both within and outside academia) to address a series of contentious issues about scientific censorship. When, if ever, does rejection of manuscripts for publication or grants for funding constitute censorship? How much of a role, if any, should ethical/moral issues play in deciding which scientific ideas to disseminate? What are the likely costs and benefits of institutionalized censorship, how do we decide, and who decides, when the benefits outweigh the costs?
“When and how do university administrations and funding agencies, through either action or inaction, mask censorship by finding ostensibly ‘other’ reasons to silence scientists? How does censorship of scientists or scientific ideas manifest? Is compelled speech a form of censorship, and, if so, how does it manifest in science? …"
PDF copy of schedule and full description and registration at USC website; speakers include Stanford professors Jay Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis, former Caltech provost and Hoover fellow Steven Koonin, FIRE CEO and Stanford alum Greg Lukianoff, and over 30 other prominent scientists and commentators
A More Practical Argument for Free Speech
Excerpts (links in the original):
“One of the most persistent pitfalls in political argumentation is a version of the fallacy of false equivalence. A friend dubs it the fallacy of ripe apples and rotten oranges. In a political context, it's when an advocate compares an idealized or best-case version of his preferred position with a realistic -- or perhaps even exaggeratedly negative -- version of his opponent’s....
“As the broad American consensus in favor of free speech erodes, we have seen a similar unsatisfactory form of disputation proliferate. Critics of ‘free speech absolutism,’ as it is condescendingly dubbed -- we don’t refer to ‘rule of law absolutists’ or ‘separations of powers absolutists,’ for example -- highlight all manner of alleged deficiencies with the status quo and trace them to an alleged excess of free speech. If we could just get rid of free speech, then the ills associated with this ‘unmitigated disaster,’ as one ... journalist calls it, would vanish, with apparently none of the good things we might wish to retain being threatened.
“These opponents of free speech typically provide little sense of what the new, non-free-speech dispensation would look like in practice. In this asymmetrical theoretical comparison, implicit in much of today’s fashionable attacks on free speech, the alternative is hardly laid out at all. Somehow, we are led to believe, falsehoods and hurtful talk will vanish without truths getting caught in the dragnet, and no one, it appears, will be left any the worse off....
“As the requirements of correct speech are not only essentially vague but also shifting and nebulous, systems of speech-restraint predictably take on the exclusionary dimensions of codes of etiquette and manners. Appeals to ‘decency’ and ‘civility’ then become pretexts for ignoring the voices of those, often from less polished or less privileged backgrounds, who have not had the opportunity to master these codes, and mistakes of phrasing or word choice are magnified into markers of ‘being a bad person.’ Caste loyalties are entrenched, and instead of approaching disagreeable remarks charitably, with an eye toward learning from the other person, a feeling of superiority at having stayed current with the latest shibboleths crowds out a shared sense of civic commonality. Snobbery based on petty linguistic gamesmanship spreads, and respect for real intellectual achievement is lost to an inegalitarianism founded on ‘not saying the wrong thing.’ ...
Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Gregory Conti at City Journal (free registration may be required)
See also our PDF download of the list of proscribed words and phrases that Stanford’s IT department somehow felt itself empowered to create and enforce until the entire matter became the subject of national embarrassment (scroll down to “Stanford’s Program re Speech” at our Stanford Concerns webpage)
In Time of Campus Turmoil, More Colleges Try Teaching Civil Discourse
Excerpts (links in the original):
“As Alexandra Delano prepared to moderate a civil discourse event for fellow students at Providence College in anticipation of the presidential election, some people quipped ‘good luck with that’ or ‘you’re brave for that.’
"They predicted that the event, whose blue and red flier read ‘There’s an election in two weeks? Let’s talk about it!,’ would be tense. It was sponsored by the college’s Dialogue, Inclusion and Democracy Lab, where Delano is a student fellow....
“Colleges have gradually increased their efforts to promote civic dialogue in the past several years, as partisanship has grown. But a new push has happened in higher ed after conflict erupted in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, along with campus protests -- college administrators have realized that they can’t provide a quality education in a chaotic environment, says Michael Murray, the president and chief executive officer of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, which has funded several campus dialogue projects. Students need stability and a way to handle tense situations in order to succeed in and outside of the classroom, he says.
“Many colleges have sought that help from nonprofit organizations, such as Interfaith America or Braver Angels, he says. They provide toolkits, strategies and training to help administrators grow their programs. They also offer colleges resources on the best practices in constructive dialogue or suggest specific types of events, such as the round table strategy at Providence.
“The Constructive Dialogue Institute, for instance, offers a series of videos and online lessons for students to work through at their own pace, training for faculty and staff and a yearly program to help campus administrators learn more about constructive dialogue. Last year, the organization worked with 30 colleges. This year, that number has grown to 122 campuses, says Mylien Duong, senior director of research at the institute....”
Full article at Ed Surge
Cheating Has Become Normal; Faculty Are Overwhelmed
and the Solutions Aren’t Clear
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Before she returned to teaching last spring after a leave of absence, Amy Clukey braced for the possibility that her students might cheat with ChatGPT. She’d heard complaints from her fellow professors and thought, sure, that’s not good. But plagiarism had never been much of a problem in her English classes.
“‘I was always, like, I’ll create unique assignments and they will be somewhat plagiarism-proof, and some students will get by me,’ said Clukey, an associate professor at the University of Louisville. ‘But that’s fine because most of them will be doing their own work, and it’ll be great.’
“It wasn’t great....
“Some institutions, including Middlebury College, in Vermont, and Stanford University, are reconsidering elements of their honor codes because they’re simply not working. At Middlebury, the percentage of students who admitted on an annual survey to violating the honor code rose from 35 percent in 2019 to 65 percent in 2024. The most common self-reported violations were using unauthorized aids, such as SparkNotes or a friend, cheating on a test, and misusing AI....
“But do more students cheat today than in the past? It’s hard to know. Data so far is limited, and studies often rely on students to self-report. Some research documented a spike in cheating in online courses during the pandemic. Another study, which surveyed high-school students before and after ChatGPT’s arrival, did not find an increase in cheating over time. Other studies done before 2020 suggest that cheating may have fallen since the 1990s or early 2000s....”
Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Other Articles of Interest
The Renaissance of Civic Education
Full op-ed by Michael Poliakoff, president of ACTA, and Jack Miller, founder and chairman emeritus of center devoted to these issues
See also “Reopening the American Mind” at City Journal
But see also “Why the Election Is Keeping Current Events Out of the Classroom This Fall” at WSJ
UCSF Med Professor Suspended for Post Asking if Israeli Student Participated in Genocide
Full article at College Fix
Columbia Needs to Stop Doing Politics and Start Doing Higher Education
Full op-ed at FIRE website
As Illiberal Anti-Israel Protests Continue, Let Dartmouth Serve as a Shining Example
Full op-ed at Real Clear Education
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
Cracking the Code of DNA Circles in Cancer, Stanford Medicine-Led Team Uncovers Potential Therapy
Stanford Launches Center Focused on Human and Planetary Health
Digital Health Symposium Highlights Trustworthy and Equitable Innovation
Stanford Experts Detail Democratic Decline, Authoritarian Trends in the Middle East
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“On Veterans Day, we are called to consider the meaning of their service and to reflect on the liberties we enjoy as a result of their sacrifices. I’m inspired by the courage and selflessness of our nation’s veterans. I am especially proud of Stanford’s veterans, who enrich our campus community with their talent, dedication and spirit of leadership.” – Former Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, November 11, 2021
November 4, 2024
Internal Emails Show University Leaders at Harvard and Elsewhere Debating Responses to Hamas Attack
[Editor’s note: Many of us learned long ago that email is a useful form of one-way communication, that is, for statements like "attached is the agenda" or “the meeting has been cancelled.” It is a very inefficient and often destructive method for problem-solving which is best accomplished via two-way communication in the form of face-to-face meetings or other simultaneous interactions. And, as described in the following article, email creates a potentially embarrassing record.
[This is also a reason we raised concerns over a year ago regarding Stanford's massive use of automated emails and other interactions with students in connection with disciplinary and similar matters, versus the student services staff actually meeting and talking with students and resolving issues in more humane and personalized ways. See "Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior" at our Stanford Concerns webpage.]
Excerpt (link in the original):
“Two days after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel last year, senior administrators at Harvard University wrestled with how to respond. Drafting a public statement, they edited out the word ‘violent’ to describe the attack, when a dean complained that it ‘sounded like assigning blame.’
"They debated whether to explicitly disown a declaration by some Harvard student groups that Israel was responsible for the violence, but ultimately decided not to.
“The internal debate among Harvard leaders including Claudine Gay, then the school’s president, played out furiously in emails and text messages that were released in a report on Thursday by the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
“The report, part of a nearly yearlong inquiry by House Republicans investigating antisemitism on university campuses, offers a rare window into the discussions at multiple universities and how difficult judgment calls made by a small handful of people were scrutinized around the world....
Full article at NY Times, including detailed examples at Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern and elsewhere
Students and Faculty Express Differing Views re Stanford’s Free Speech Policies
Excerpt:
“Some students have expressed concern that campus activism and free speech is experiencing a chilling effect following the University’s updated free speech guidelines that were announced early this school year.
“The University announced a series of free speech guidelines in September that detail the parameters of what’s allowed in campus demonstrations, following a tumultuous year of protests and counter-protests over the Israel-Gaza war.
“Several faculty members have expressed their support for the guideline, calling it a proactive measure. Introduced in September by Provost Jenny Martinez and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Michele Rasmussen, the new guidelines outlined several points include advance registration of major events, designated outdoor spaces for gatherings, identification and masking guidelines and an emphasis on the policy’s viewpoint neutrality....”
Full article at Stanford Daily. See also Stanford’s Freedom of Expression website
Civil Liberty on Campus (video)
SUMMARY (quoted from YouTube): “What is the proper relationship between free speech and civility in an academic context? How can students and faculty be afforded broad rights to free expression and academic freedom without sacrificing order and education on campus? Which forms of protest are permissible and which go too far for a university community to tolerate? This panel features world-renowned experts considering these topics and offering ideas for a positive path forward for American higher education during these challenging times.”
MODERATOR: Carleton College Prof. Amna Khalid
PANELISTS:
-
NY Law Prof. Emerita Nadine Strossen (and past president of the ACLU)
-
Yale Law Prof. Keith Whittington (and founding chair of the Academic Committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance)
-
George Mason Prof. JoAnn Koob
Full video of American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) panel at YouTube (1 hour, 13 minutes)
See also “Pursue Truth; Never Fear, Never Waver,” Harvard Prof. Roland G. Fryer, accepting ACTA award, at YouTube (21 minutes, core discussion starts at the 11-minute mark)
It’s Getting Still Harder to Get Admitted to America’s Top Colleges and Universities
Excerpt:
….
“In general, schools seeing increases in median SAT scores vastly outnumber those seeing decreases.
From 2016 to 2023:
-
median SAT scores for 4 percent of schools increased by 100 points or more.
-
median SAT scores for 38 percent of schools increased by 50 points or more.
-
median SAT scores for 9 percent of schools decreased.
[Followed by examples of specific schools and a link to a larger data base although not including Stanford]
Full article at Education Next
Law Student Faces Expulsion for Aggressive Pointing
[Editor’s note: While we don’t know firsthand whether Pace uses the same automated case management system that Stanford uses, these are the types of templates, emails and case management protocols, as also noted in an earlier article in this Newsletter, that are contained in the automated systems in use at Stanford and hundreds of other colleges and universities around the country and that are similar to the types of communications Katie Meyer reportedly was receiving.]
Excerpts (link in the original):
“When Houston Porter, a 28-year-old law student at Pace University, first walked into the college auditorium last month, he was surprised to see a packed house for the ‘Saving Women’s Sports’ panel he was co-moderating.
“’Our events normally don’t get that kind of turnout,’ says Porter, a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative advocacy group that sponsored the panel at Pace’s law school in White Plains, New York. ‘So it was exciting.’ ...
“But not long after, Porter’s world started ‘crumbling down’ -- with at least one professor shouting at panelists and another allegedly rushing the stage, followed by a Title IX investigation that accuses him of having ‘aggressively pointed’ at a transgender student and misgendering her. Now Porter faces the possibility of suspension, expulsion, and even being barred from practicing law....
“Nine days later, the situation became even stranger. Porter saw an email flash across his phone, titled ‘Notification Letter.’
“‘I felt scared, like time stopped. I was shocked,’ he told me.
“When he expanded the email, he saw a PDF attachment from Bernard Dufresne, the school’s Title IX coordinator, stating that Porter is being investigated for a potential act of ‘sex-based discrimination’ against a transgender student who attended the Federalist Society event along with about two dozen members of the school’s LBGTQ+ affinity group. The charge? That he ‘aggressively pointed’ at the transgender student and ‘purposefully referred to her as a man in front of classmates, law school faculty and administrators, and guests.’ He now faces a disciplinary hearing that could result in community service, suspension, or even expulsion....”
Full article at Free Press. See also “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.
Other Articles of Interest
Yale Adopts Institutional Neutrality
Full article at College Fix
Stanford-Affiliate Donations Lean Further Left Than Previous Election Cycles
Full article at Stanford Daily (nearly $800,000 to Harris versus $18,280 to Trump, along with comparisons with past years)
AI Tutors Are Reshaping Higher Education
Full article at Axios as reprinted at MSN
No U.S. History?
Full PDF report at ACTA website including detailed charts re history curricula at major U.S. colleges and universities including Stanford (page 58)
By Politicizing Health Care, Medical Schools Are Putting Lives on the Line
Full article at College Fix including link to Do No Harm full report
How to Help Students Debate Constructively
Full article at Inside Higher Ed
Should AI Be Allowed in the College Application Process?
Full article at Ed Scoop including link to survey results
Educating for Freedom
Full video of ACTA panel at YouTube (one hour, six minutes), including discussion of the benefits of a core curriculum for incoming students, the ongoing risks of self-censorship, etc.
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
Can AI Improve Medical Diagnostic Accuracy?
New Study Shows that Partisanship Trumps Truth
A New Technique Signals Cancer Cells to Self-Destruct
Innovative Techniques Shed Light on Hamstring Injury in Athletes
New Voltage Indicator Enables Ultra-Sensitive Synaptic Imaging
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"Gratitude encourages reciprocity, with all the social benefits it brings. Grateful people enjoy better physical and emotional health, increased happiness, decreased depression and decreased materialism.” – Former Stanford Pres. Richard Saller
October 28, 2024
A Bipartisan Vision for Higher Education Reform
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Higher education has taken a beating lately. The industry has been roiled by seemingly endless crises on topics ranging from affordability and student debt to free speech and antisemitism. It is hardly surprising that public confidence in higher education has plummeted, as over two-thirds of Americans now believe it is headed in the wrong direction. This broad, bipartisan malaise has yet to translate into any action at the federal level, as divisions between the House and Senate have forestalled all attempts at enacting meaningful reforms. This has been the case for the past decade, as political polarization has doomed multiple attempts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act -- a task that Congress is charged with performing every four years and yet has failed to accomplish since 2008.
“Though reform has been stymied at the federal level, America’s statehouses have continued to pursue new and innovative ways to strengthen public colleges and universities. In the past few sessions alone, Connecticut provided trainings for its trustees and regents, Ohio pledged $24 million to fund a number of institutes focused on improving civic education, and five states moved to ban legacy admissions. The states, while certainly not immune to partisan rancor, have continued their proud tradition of serving as laboratories of democracy.
“The strength of this tradition was in full display with the release of a new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) -- a bipartisan nonprofit that serves state lawmakers and their staff. After over two years of work by a task force representing legislators and their staffs from 32 states, NCSL published in October a wide-reaching new vision for public higher education entitled, A State-Led Strategy to Enhance the Value of Degrees....
“The task force directly addresses college trustees, suggesting that boards of public institutions should take greater pains to evaluate program-level student outcomes to ensure that degree offerings ‘lead to desirable life, career and earning outcomes.’ This push for program-level evaluation is long overdue, as too many colleges promote programs -- particularly graduate degrees -- that saddle students with life-altering debt without providing a path toward financial stability....”
Full article at American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) website
American Academy of Sciences and Letters Honors Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya with Its Highest Award for Intellectual Freedom
Excerpt (link in the original):
“Dr. Jay Bhattacharya received the American Academy of Sciences and Letters’ top intellectual freedom award on Wednesday [October 23] for resisting attempts to politically control his scientific work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The academy presents its annual Robert J. Zimmer Medal for Intellectual Freedom to a scholar ‘who displays extraordinary courage in the exercise of intellectual freedom,’ according to its website.
“Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, received the honor during the academy’s annual investiture ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Afterward, he joined Princeton University Professor Stephen Macedo for an interview on stage.
“Macedo began by asking about the first time Bhattacharya pushed back against the government’s handling of the pandemic.
“‘I wasn’t prepared for it,’ Bhattacharya said.
“‘I had never published an op-ed. I had never been on TV. I was a quiet scholar, and I had this idea regarding the pandemic that the disease was more widespread than people realized,’ he said.
“Then, after he wrote an op-ed about it, he ‘got death threats.’ Bhattacharya said attacks came from Stanford as well.
“‘The university, which I loved, … investigated me for false allegations … that they knew were false,’ he said. ‘I got sent a very clear signal that I needed to stay quiet.’
“‘I lost sleep, I couldn’t eat,’ he said. ‘But I decided that I didn’t care about my career anymore and I needed to say what I saw.’...”
Full article at College Fix
Over Half of Harvard Professors Are Too Afraid to Discuss Controversial Subjects
with Students
Excerpts (links in the original):
“Harvard professors are biting their tongues and dodging political issues out of fear of losing their jobs, being ‘cancelled’ or attracting heat online.
“Harvard is the nation’s premier university and produces a disproportionate number of our leaders. It’s expected to set an example and be a bastion of discourse and debate -- with its professors boldly leading the way.
“But a survey published by the university’s own Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group found a solid majority of profs now avoid touchy topics both inside and outside of the classroom, after things boiled over in the last year with campus protests related to the war in Gaza.
“The 1,411 surveyed faculty and staff were prompted to ‘think about teaching a controversial issue in a class at Harvard’ -- and their primary reaction seems to be fear.
“Just 18% said they would be very comfortable doing so, and 31% somewhat comfortable. But more than half said they would be somewhat (33%) or very (18%) reluctant.
“According to the report, professors said they fear for their reputations and their jobs: ‘They cited potential damage to their professional standing as the reason for their reluctance, in particular, the prospect of negative teaching evaluations, the possibility of contract nonrenewal or tenure denial, the potential for criticism on social media, and the possibility that difficult conversations might trigger complaints about bullying and harassment.’ ...”
Full op-ed at NY Post
The Ongoing Problems of Administrative Capture
Excerpts (links in the original):
“‘The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small,’ former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once restated Sayre’s law in this famous quip on competition in academia. That was the 1970’s when scholarly debates about communism and Marxism had little influence on government policies at the height of the Cold War. Times have changed....
“There is a more insidious and equally consequential battle taking place on college campuses: the battle of administrative capture, in which full-time, unelected bureaucrats actively usurp higher learning, academic freedom, and the marketplace of ideas. Once in position, agents of administrative capture work tirelessly to maintain the status quo for purposes of ideological proselytizing, self-aggrandizing, or both....
“Dr. Matthew Garrett was a tenured history professor at Bakersfield College, a two-year public community college and part of the Kern Community College District (KCCD). In April 2023, the school fired him on grounds of ‘immoral/unprofessional conduct,’ ‘dishonesty,’ ‘violation of COVID guidelines,’ ‘unsatisfactory performance’ and other politically charged offenses. In a 19-page report, Bakersfield College substantiated the litany of charges against the conservative academic, starting with Garrett’s 2019 op-ed, criticizing the school’s labeling of anti-Marxist stickers on campus as a ‘hate crime.’
“Bakersfield College’s troubles with Dr. Garrett escalated in 2022 when he co-founded the Renegade Institute for Liberty, a faculty free speech coalition. When the group posted a chart breaking down KCCD’s spending on segregated classes and programs in the 2021-22 academic year, the school disparaged the effort as ‘harmful,’ ‘divisive,’ and ‘inflammatory.’ Garrett was also removed from the school’s diversity committee after questioning the school’s use of grant money on social justice initiatives....”
[Followed by a detailed discussion of the Garrett case]
Full article at Minding the Campus
See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage, and recommendations for addressing these types of issues at our Back to Basics webpage
Professors in Trouble Over Protests Wonder if Academic Freedom Is Dying
Excerpts (link in the original):
“Universities have cracked down on professors for pro-Palestinian activism, saying they are protecting students and tamping down on hate speech. Faculty members say punishments have put a ‘chill in the air.’ ...
“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has intensified what many faculty members and their allies believe is part of a growing assault on the ideals of academic freedom, a principle that most American colleges and universities hold dear.
“Visiting scholars, adjuncts and lecturers without tenure have had their contracts terminated or not renewed. Some had their classes suddenly canceled. Faculty members say they have been publicly criticized in ways that have trampled on their reputations and hurt their careers....
“The disciplinary actions have followed a movement to ensure students feel safe on campus. In the last year, many Jewish students have said protests and classroom discussions about the war have threatened that feeling of safety, sometimes intimidating them from expressing their views and making them nervous about revealing their Jewish identity.
“Academic freedom is also not absolute. It does not protect ‘propagating wrongheaded ideas’ in teaching or research, said Nadine Strossen, a former head of the American Civil Liberties Union. And it does not put faculty members above the law or above campus rules meant to make sure protests, whatever their point of view, do not disrupt learning.
“But it means that academics are broadly allowed the First Amendment right to express opinions or to speak beyond their area of expertise outside the classroom, including on social media.
“Yet that is where many faculty members are getting into trouble, Ms. Strossen said.
“Professors have been criticized for creating hostile environments in classrooms and stifling the speech of students who might not agree with them, taking on the role of activists instead of teachers. And some say faculty members are professing views that could cross legal lines requiring universities to protect students from discrimination....”
[Followed by discussion of specific cases at various campuses]
Full article at NY Times
Institutional Neutrality Applies to Actions, Not Just Words
Excerpts:
“Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier has emerged as a strong advocate for institutional neutrality in recent years, arguing that institutions often go beyond their core mission when they strike stances on public issues. He expounded on those views in an interview with Inside Higher Ed in which he discussed the growing number of institutions that have adopted institutional neutrality and how tensions in the Middle East and related protests on campuses are driving university leaders to rethink how they engage on contentious issues at home and abroad....
[Followed by Q&A with Chancellor Diermeier, including the following]
“Q: What is your threshold for speaking out on an issue now for taking a position on something?
“A: Institutional neutrality means [asking], ‘Am I taking a position that goes beyond that core purpose of the university?’ … It’s not about being silent all the time. Of course, you can talk to your community, but you have to be careful that you restrict your comments and focus your comments on the values related to the core purpose of the university, like access for students, financial aid, research support for your faculty. These are all related to values, but they are related to the core purpose of the university.
“You can and you should talk about the important value that universities bring to society, forcefully. That’s not a problem with institutional neutrality, because it’s your core purpose.
“When you have a tragedy, for example, that affects the members of the community deeply, I think there is a need for the leader of the institution, a president or chancellor, to have a pastoral function, where you connect with the community emotionally, with empathy, with the suffering, with the concerns that they have. That can be a natural disaster or, as we had in Nashville, a school shooting that was only a few miles from campus, and that affected members of our community in the most horrendous way. When you do that, you need to comfort people and connect with them empathetically in an authentic fashion. But it’s not about decision-making. It’s not about position taking on policy issues. In the case of the school shooting, you can connect with people as a community that’s suffering. What you shouldn’t do is now come down with a position on gun control; that’s a policy issue.” ...
Full text of interview at Inside Finance
See also ACTA fireside chat with Chancellor Diermeier, "Leading a University in a Time of Turmoil," at YouTube
Other Articles of Interest
New College Protest Rules Spur an Outcry from College Faculty
Full article at Associated Press
America’s Schools Are Facing a Public Emergency
Full article at The 74 website including quotes from co-chair Condoleezza Rice
Zombie Psychology, Implicit Bias Theory and the Implicit Association Test
Full report at National Association of Scholars
Why Very Few Colleges Will Divest from Israel
Full op-ed at The Hill
Viewpoint - College Officials Must Condemn On-Campus Support for Hamas Violence
Full op-ed by UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky at NY Times
A Higher Ed Renaissance?
Full podcast at Law & Liberty (47 minutes)
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
Is the United States’ Borrowing Binge About to Burst?
Scientists Glue Two Proteins Together, Driving Cancer Cells to Self-Destruct
Ten Questions Predict Mental Health Risk After Emergency Hospitalizations
Ten Tips for Picking and Solving the Next Great Problem
The Transformative Power of Film
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"Universities are the great repositories of knowledge...yet they have become bastions of orthodoxy, where diversity is extolled in everything but thought." – Former University of Chicago Prof. Allan Bloom (1930-1992), author of The Closing of the American Mind
October 21, 2024
NY Times Analysis of Michigan’s DEI Experiment
Excerpts from NY Times summary article (links in the original):
“A decade ago, the University of Michigan intentionally placed itself in the vanguard of a revolution then beginning to reshape American higher education. Around the country, college administrators were rapidly expanding D.E.I. programs. They believed that vigorous D.E.I. efforts would allow traditionally underrepresented students to thrive on campus -- and improve learning for students from all backgrounds.
“In recent years, as D.E.I. programs came under withering attack, Michigan has only doubled down on D.E.I., holding itself out as a model for other schools. By one estimate, the university has built the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any big public university.
“But an examination by The Times found that Michigan’s expansive -- and expensive -- D.E.I. program has struggled to achieve its central goals even as it set off a cascade of unintended consequences....
“The percentage of Black students, currently around 5 percent, remained largely stagnant as Michigan’s overall enrollment rose -- and in a state where 14 percent of residents are Black. In a survey released in late 2022, students and faculty members across the board reported a less positive campus climate than at the program’s start and less of a sense of belonging....
“Instead of improving students’ ability to engage with one another across their differences, Michigan’s D.E.I. expansion has coincided with an explosion in campus conflict over race and gender. Everyday campus complaints and academic disagreements are now cast as crises of inclusion and harm....
“At Michigan, as at other schools, campus protests exploded after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza. So did complaints of harassment or discrimination based on national origin or ancestry. This June, civil rights officials at the federal Department of Education found that Michigan had systematically mishandled such complaints over the 18-month period ending in February. Out of 67 complaints of harassment or discrimination based on national origin or ancestry that the officials reviewed -- an overwhelming majority involving allegations of antisemitism, according to a tally I obtained -- Michigan had investigated and made findings in just one.”
AND FROM THE MORE DETAILED NY TIMES INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:
....
“These growing bureaucracies represented a major -- and profoundly left-leaning -- reshuffling of campus power. Administrators were even more politically liberal than faculty members, according to one survey, and far more likely to favor racial preferences in admissions and hiring. They promulgated what Lyell Asher, a professor of English at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, has called ‘an alternate curriculum,’ taught not in classrooms but in dorms, disciplinary hearings and orientation programs.
“Some administrators discovered that student activists could be a potent campus constituency. The former president of one top research institution recalled for me how students once came to his office with demands, presented in a kind of theatrical performance, to enhance the university’s D.E.I. program. The former president, who asked for anonymity for fear of risking his present job, later learned that some of the program’s senior staff members had worked with and encouraged the students to pressure the administration on their behalf. ‘That was the moment at which I understood that there was a whole part of the bureaucracy that I didn’t control,’ he said....
“On their private text-messaging group, deans across the university grumbled about the mountains of data they were required to submit each year. Their public progress reports and D.E.I. strategic plans were heavily vetted by the university counsel’s office and [former Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion Robert M.] Sellers’s team; the resulting public documents, though meant to ensure accountability, were often both lengthy and vague. ‘No one knew what they were supposed to be doing,’ the former dean said. ‘And no one would tell us. But we had to show that we were doing something.’
“At the same time, Sellers and his allies began building what amounted to a parallel hiring system, giving them a more direct role in reshaping Michigan’s faculty. [State initiative] Proposal 2 expressly prohibited racial or gender preferences in hiring. But in 2016, Michigan began a new program called the Collegiate Fellows, reserved for postdoctoral scholars ‘in all liberal-arts fields who are committed to diversity in the academy.’ Based at the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, Michigan’s largest division, the program provided additional budget dollars with each fellow hired, a further incentive to department chairs....
“Even within the academy, though, some long-accepted precepts of D.E.I. are coming under closer scrutiny. Some researchers argue that teaching students to view the world chiefly through the lens of identity and oppression can leave them vulnerable instead of empowered. Psychologists have questioned whether implicit bias can be accurately measured or reduced through training. The notion that microaggressions are not only real but ubiquitous in interracial encounters is widespread in D.E.I. programs; a 2021 review of the microaggressions literature, however, judged it ‘without adequate scientific basis.’ ..."
Summary article at NY Times
More complete investigative report at NY Times Magazine
See also “University of Michigan Spent $250 Million on DEI, Made Students Unhappier” at Reason Magazine
College Administrative Bloat Is Robbing Our Children of Their Futures
[Editor’s note: Last week’s Newsletter included an article from Minding the Campus, “Student Loans Are the Fudge Factor in University Costs.” Contained within that article was a link to an article from a few years earlier arguing that the continual increase in the nation's student loan programs is a major factor in the dramatic increase in the administrative staffs at U.S. colleges and universities, "College Administrative Bloat Is Robbing Our Children of Their Futures."
[While universities with large endowments, including Stanford, provide significant financial support to students, especially undergraduates, the point remains, a major reason for the huge growth in the number of managerial and other administrative personnel at Stanford and elsewhere has been the result of few if any pressures coming from the financial side of the university’s operations incuding as a result of student debt. We believe this is a key reason the nation’s public universities -- including major research universities like UCLA, UC Berkeley, Michigan, Ohio State, etc. -- are operating with a fraction of the administrative staff and a fraction of the costs as compared to our elite private universities since the public universities are under the continual scrutiny of taxpayers, elected officials and others.
[See, for example, the charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage, “