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Home: About Us STANFORD ALUMNI FOR FREE SPEECH AND CRITICAL THINKING “The first step is to remind our students and colleagues that those who hold views contrary to one’s own are rarely evil or stupid, and may know or understand things that we do not. It is only when we start with this assumption that rational discourse can begin, and that the winds of freedom can blow." – Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy FEATURED ITEMS The Fundamental Standard "Students at Stanford are expected to show both within and without the University such respect for order, morality, personal honor and the rights of others as is demanded of good citizens. Failure to do this will be sufficient cause for removal from the University." (1896 to the present) ​ April 26, 2024 Letter From President Saller and Provost Martinez re Campus Protests ​ Back to Basics at Stanford ​ ​​ ​ ​ The Chicago Trifecta From Our Latest Newsletter​ "To be true to the best you know" - Jane Stanford May 13, 2024 No One Knows What Universities Are For Excerpts (links in the original): “Last month, the Pomona College economist Gary N. Smith calculated that the number of tenured and tenure-track professors at his school declined from 1990 to 2022, while the number of administrators nearly sextupled in that period. ‘Happily, there is a simple solution,’ Smith wrote in a droll Washington Post column. In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, his modest proposal called to get rid of all faculty and students at Pomona so that the college could fulfill its destiny as an institution run by and for nonteaching bureaucrats. At the very least, he said, ‘the elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.’ “Administrative growth isn’t unique to Pomona. In 2014, the political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg published The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters, in which he bemoaned the multi-decade expansion of ‘administrative blight.’ From the early 1990s to 2009, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew 10 times faster than tenured-faculty positions, according to Department of Education data. Although administrative positions grew especially quickly at private universities and colleges, public institutions are not immune to the phenomenon . In the University of California system, the number of managers and senior professionals swelled by 60 percent from 2004 to 2014. “How and why did this happen? Some of this growth reflects benign, and perhaps positive, changes to U.S. higher education.... “But many of these jobs have a reputation for producing little outside of meeting invites. ‘I often ask myself, What do these people actually do?,’ Ginsberg told me last week. ‘I think they spend much of their day living in an alternate universe called Meeting World. I think if you took every third person with vice associate or assistant in their title, and they disappeared, nobody would notice.’ “In an email to me, Smith, the Pomona economist, said the biggest factor driving the growth of college admin was a phenomenon he called empire building.... As Tyler Austin Harper wrote in The Atlantic, university administrators have spent years ‘recruiting social-justice-minded students and faculty to their campuses under the implicit, and often explicit, promise that activism is not just welcome but encouraged.’ … “Complex organizations need to do a lot of different jobs to appease their various stakeholders, and they need to hire people to do those jobs. But there is a value to institutional focus, and the past few months have shown just how destabilizing it is for colleges and universities to not have a clear sense of their priorities or be able to make those priorities transparent to faculty, students, donors, and the broader world. The ultimate problem isn’t just that too many administrators can make college expensive. It’s that too many administrative functions can make college institutionally incoherent.” Full op-ed at The Atlantic and also republished at MSN See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also our “Back to Basics at Stanford ” webpage. Stanford Review Special Series: Censorship and Academic Freedom at Stanford Excerpts (links in the original): "'Die Luft der Freiheit weht,’ translated as ‘The Winds of Freedom Blow,’ sits boldly on Stanford University’s insignia as its guiding motto. Yet in the past several years, Stanford has become notoriously intertwined with academic censorship and the suppression of free speech. To adjust our sails correctly, we must first understand where and how we went wrong.... “In November of 1900, [Stanford Economics Professor Edward] Ross was forced out of the University at the demand of Jane Stanford, and his resignation initiated a stunning chain of events at Stanford and across the country. While seen as a villain by a few on campus, he quickly emerged as an American hero to the working class and supporters of academic freedom alike. As one op-ed in the Oakland Enquirer proclaimed , ‘When it is known that science in a university is under bonds to prejudice or dogmatism, the usefulness of that university is at an end and its further existence is without reason.’ … “Fast forward over sixty years to when Bruce Franklin, like Ross, was a young and outspoken Stanford professor in the 1960s and early 70s.... “A few years after Franklin’s dismissal, a Stanford PhD student of anthropology named Steven Mosher had an exclusive opportunity to travel to China. On his expedition to the Guangdong province, Mosher documented something striking: forced abortions and sterilizations thrust upon women living under the Chinese government and its now notorious one-child policy.... “The Chinese government leveraged Mosher’s case to pressure American institutions to comply with stringent demands when sending researchers to its country. Eventually, the committee of eleven Stanford anthropology faculty members, possibly as a result of this Chinese pressure, unanimously voted to expel Mosher, stating that he was guilty of ‘illegal and seriously unethical conduct.’ His research methods and style were deemed dubious and said to jeopardize the integrity of his research, but Mosher maintained that Stanford expelled him to placate China. “In 1992, Stanford President Gerhard Casper stated that ‘A university's freedom must be first of all the freedom that we take mostly for granted, though the humanists had to fight for it and others must still do battle for it even today: the pursuit of knowledge free from constraints as to sources and fields.’...” Full article at Stanford Review, first in the series See also second article in the series, “An Interview with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya,” and third article in the series, “An Interview with Dr. Scott Atlas.” See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also Gerhard Casper, “The Winds of Freedom -- Addressing Challenges to the University," read sample at Amazon. Stanford to Review U.S. Department of Education’s Revised Title IX Regulations Excerpts (link in the original): “The Biden Administration released revised Title IX regulations on Apr. 19, impacting policies across educational settings. The main changes include increased protections for LGBTQ+ students and sexual assault survivors. These changes, which Stanford and all universities are required to implement, will take effect on Aug. 1. “The Stanford Sexual Harassment/Assault Response & Education (SHARE) Title IX Office started its review process. SHARE is ‘just now beginning to review these new regulations, comparing them to what was originally proposed, and determining what is needed in order to comply,’ wrote Patrick Dunkley, vice provost for Institutional Equity, Access, and Community, and Stephen Chen, director of the SHARE Title IX Office, in a statement published in the Stanford Report....” Full article at Stanford Daily See also from our April 29 Newsletter: “The Civil Rights Rollback” at Free Press "Education Department’s Final Title IX Regulations Draw Mixed Reactions" at Higher Ed Dive "New Title IX Rules Erase Campus Due Process Protections" at Reason The Problem with America’s Protest Feedback Loop Excerpts (links in the original): “The country is stuck in a protest feedback loop. In recent months, students opposed to the Israel-Gaza war have occupied lawns and buildings at college campuses across the country. Emulating climate activists who have stopped traffic on crucial roadways , pro-Palestine demonstrators have blocked access to major airports. For months, the protests intensified as university, U.S., and Israeli policies seemed unmoved. Frustrated by their inefficacy, the protesters redoubled their efforts and escalated their tactics. “The lack of immediate outcomes from the Gaza protests is not at all unusual. In a new working paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Amory Gethin of the Paris School of Economics and Vincent Pons of Harvard Business School analyzed the effect of 14 social movements in the United States from 2017 to 2022. They varied in size: About 12,000 people marched against a potential war with Iran in January 2020; 4.2 million turned out for the first Women’s March. Pons told me that these large social movements succeeded in raising the general public’s awareness of their issues, something that he and Gethin measured through Google Trends and data from X. “Yet in nearly every case that the researchers examined in detail -- including the Women’s March and the pro-gun control March for Our Lives, which brought out more than 3 million demonstrators -- they could find no evidence that protesters changed minds or affected electoral behavior. “The Gethin and Pons study about the inefficacy of modern American mass movements identified one glaring exception: the protests over George Floyd’s murder [and Black Lives Matter]…. “Still, other stances taken by protesters -- such as pushing universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel or, in some cases, calling for an end to Israeli statehood -- have scant support among the general public. And the college protests themselves are widely frowned upon: In another poll from May 2, when asked whether college administrators had responded too harshly to college protesters, just 16 percent of respondents said administrators had responded too harshly; 33 percent thought they weren’t harsh enough....” Full op-ed at The Atlantic and also republished at MSN See also “I Was Once a Student Protester; the Old Hyperbole Is Now Reality” by Princeton Prof. Zeynet Tufecki at NY Times and also republished at DNYUZ . Other Articles of Interest See also our May 9, 2024 Special Edition Newsletter re National Campus Unrest. MIT Becomes First Elite University to Ban Diversity Statements Full article at College Fix, as republished from UnHerd DEI Ideological Litmus Tests Have No Place in Academia Full op-ed by Harvard Law School Prof. Randall L. Kennedy at Harvard Crimson as also previously excerpted at our April 8, 2024 Newsletter Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education Universities and Colleges Search for Ways to Reverse the Decline in the Ranks of Male Students Full article at Hechinger Report Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Why Exercise Is So Good for You Stanford Medicine Delivers First FDA-Approved Cell-Based Therapy for Solid Tumors Photos from Stanford’s Global Studies Photo Contest “The university has an obligation to protect all lawful speakers and to sanction those who violate the rights of others by materially disrupting speakers. The ‘heckler's veto’ is a form of denying ideas and opinions to those who choose to hear them, including those who disagree with the speaker but have chosen to listen to a speech.” -- From Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry Comments and Questions from Our Readers S ee more reader co mments on our Reader Comments webpage. Need Dialog, Not Prohibitions ​ I suggest the university produce forums in which ultimate concerns about war and peace presently unfolding be formally debated, subject to the rules of decorum. This is what the university is for, not prohibitions on argument or advocacy. Silence renders learning impossible. Hoping for Balanced Speech at Stanford ​ I am so in support of the opinions expressed here and hope Stanford will adopt a more balanced approach to free speech. I can only hope. Teaching Young People and Others How to Disagree Civilly ​ While I believe that supporting free speech is very important in and of itself, I also believe that there is a related component that is often ignored. That component is teaching people, especially young people, how to disagree civilly/how to constructively respond to free speech they might not agree with. Stanford Internet Observatory ​ If your leadership team has not looked into the Stanford Internet Observatory, and its link to the Election Integrity Partnership, funded through the Obama/Biden Department of Homeland Security, please take a look. This is a powerful online censorship weapon. The university has no business participating in the policing of election related free speech in our country. Question About Ties to the Alumni Association ​ Q. I notice that the SAA website contains no links to the Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking website. Why is that? A. Our website is not linked at the SAA website since we intentionally did not seek to become an affiliate of SAA. Among other things, we wanted to maintain independence, including since SAA became a subsidiary of the university in the mid-1990’s. That said, there are a number of current and former Stanford administrators and trustees who receive our Newsletters and read the materials that are posted at the website. About Us Member, Alumni Free Speech Alliance Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking is an independent, diverse, and nonpartisan group of Stanford alumni committed to promoting and safeguarding freedom of thought and expression, intellectual diversity and inclusion, and academic freedom at Stanford. We believe innovation and positive change for the co mmon good is achieved through free and active discourse from varying viewpoints, the freedom to question both popular and unpopular opinions, and the freedom to seek truth without fear of reprisal from those who disagree, within the confines of humanity and mutual respect. Our goal is to support students, faculty, administrators, and staff in efforts that assure the Stanford community is truly inclusive as to what can be said in and outside the classroom, the kinds of speakers that can be invited, and what should always be the core principles of a great university like Stanford. We also advocate that Stanford incorporates the Chicago Trifecta , the gold standard for freedom of speech and expression at college and university campuses, and that Stanford abides by these principles in both its policies and its actions. ​

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Test Page The best way to predict the future is to create it. -- Abraham Lincoln [Choose white or gray background] Quotes to choose from: Albert Einstein Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. Alfred Lord Tennyson Ring out the false, ring in the true. William Shakespeare It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. Abraham Lincoln The best way to predict the future is to create it. T.S. Eliot Last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow -- Albert Einstein Peace On Earth, Goodwill Toward All Peace On Earth, Goodwill Toward All Welcome to Stanford

Responses to Prior Reader Surveys Responses to Our Reader Survey Dated 4/1/24 The Question: What should be the two or three highest priorities for Stanford's current or next President? Responses: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Support free speech. Eliminate DEI. Reduce staff. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Restore a culture of civil debate and disagreement. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ End the DEI Programs NOW, and reassign the administrative staff in that area to other areas. ​ Strengthen programs and add faculty in the Humanities. Focus on broad education for all students, and correct the overemphasis on science and technology. Focus on educating students, not just preparing them to get jobs. Teach tolerance above all. ​ Downsize the administrative staff, and get administrators out of students' lives. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Restore the most critical diversity of an institution worthy of the title "University" - that is, thinking and speaking. Purge the institution of simple minded doctrinaires that make up most of the faculty. Hire people who advocate Socrates' "I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think." ​ Restore merit as the overarching criterion for all things: admissions, grades, faculty hiring, etc. ​ Eliminate all courses and majors that have the word "studies" in their description. By definition they lack range and depth of thought. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Stop policing fun. Stop policing words. Start policing violence, vandalism, and intimidation. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Focus the institution fiercely on its academic and scholarly mission. Cultivate a culture of inquiry, curiosity, and good faith. Deliver an excellent student experience. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ DEI: get rid of this racist concept. It really means Division, Entitlement, and Inequality. Slash the administrative bloat which has more administrators than students. Punish and expel anyone who shouts down or suppresses freedom of speech. No exceptions. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________ Chicago Trifecta. Restore ‘fun’ (no ‘neighborhoods,’ Greek and theme houses that match demand, sensible alcohol policy beer=no fear). Reduce administrators/increase faculty. The financial goal of the university should be to return to the founding charter’s requirement for no undergraduate tuition. [Comment re individual person omitted.] ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Critical thinking and the ability to civilly debate issues, based on factual information, has gradually eroded in our society and divided our country, families and friends, potentially to a point of no return. It is imperative for our universities/education system to be leaders in the promotion of free speech and debate that transcends today’s political climate. We are at a critical time in the history of our country where people must be united, not divided. ​ DEI should be abolished due to its hypocrisy. While it is disguised as inclusive, it does not address antisemitism and promotes animosity towards white people, including young children, for the sins of their ancestors towards people of color. ​ History repeats itself and today’s issues are not new; however, there are now sophisticated (AI) tools to promote nefarious objectives such as censorship, surveillance and controlling the peoples’ behavior. A thorough understanding of history is imperative in order to see the similarities of what previous generations endured in the fight for freedom of speech and constitutional protections. Stanford should not, in any way, be associated with the tech censorship programs which “appear” to be promoted by Stanford, in name or location. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ An increased focus on the humanities and a mandatory course, like the old Western Civ course, for all freshman. A reduction in the administrative staff. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Restore freedom of speech on campus, no censorship. Put a curb on genetic engineering and AI as leading focuses on campus. Remove the DEI etc. agenda. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Bring back mandatory Western Civ curriculum. Reorient instruction toward truth seeking and critical thinking. Begin by firing any instructor incapable of keeping their political views out of the classroom or unable to dispassionately impart competing viewpoints. Drastically reduce DEI administration and purge the campus of its inclusion in instruction. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The highest priority of any academic institution, particularly one at the level of Stanford, should be the encouragement and tolerance of divergent discourse. Suppression of free speech, whether it be from a conservative or liberal viewpoint, cannot and should not be tolerated. A secondary priority must be the cutting of the bloated administration. I have read articles pro and con about the "need" for administrators, and I absolutely do not believe the university needs anywhere near the number of administrators it presently has. Start the cuts with any and all DEI personnel. They are not needed. Students need to feel safe on campus, but not locked-down by administrative shackles. While Stanford will never likely be as free and fun a place as it was in the past, there needs to be a significant return to a place that is far more open and accepting than now. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I realize my opinions are 'dated' and 'old fashioned', but here goes: Get back 'to basics' by emphasizing a truly, TRADITIONAL, liberal education grounded in the fundamentals of the 'ill-named' "Western Canon"; RESTRUCTURE and make 'free standing affiliates' of Stanford, the professional Schools of Business, Law, & Medicine along the lines of the current [uneasy!] relationship between Hoover and Stanford; Require, to the extent lawful & practicable, full financial disclosure of ALL research undertakings of more than 2 years in duration and $5 million dollars of internal AND extramural financial support; & SHRINK the size of the Graduate School enrollment by 1/3 over a ten-year period of time, notwithstanding the suggestion above re: the Professional Schools. This change will have, IMO, a catalytic impact on the Undergraduate experience for which the Stanfords founded the University in the 19th century. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ End the Election Integrity, Virality, Internet Observatory projects and all other projects designed to censor citizens, sway public opinion, and essentially serve as the government’s mouthpiece. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Start with ending Stanford's destructive Bias Reporting program, move all programs not associated with teaching and research off campus, end DEI, stop funding frivolous SHARE games and similar silly programs, trim the excessive and out-of-control administrative bureaucracy, present freedom of speech training at every new student orientation. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A vibrant and creative undergraduate social life. Note Bene: Live-in selective social groups are critical. Die Luft der Freiheit Weit! Both speech and activities. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Turning out students who can become functional citizens and future leaders in a diverse country: people willing to listen to two sides of a topic, people who understand two sides of an argument, people who are taught two sides of an argument, people who don't demonize those who disagree with them. And while I am a proponent of free speech and academic freedom, it only works when there is some degree of viewpoint diversity, when the faculty and student body are not self-selected to primarily have one view. And while I am also a big proponent of STEM, students need a grounding in our history and values, with all its good and bad, taught by professors focused on education not indoctrination, to allow our society to function constructively, and to resolve how to best use the advances that STEM will bring. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Emphasize meritocracy and end DEI racism. End the policy of prohibiting alums from taking the initiative to contact students. End discrimination against women applicants (favoring male applicants who are less qualified). _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Adopt and enforce the Chicago principles. Over time, increase the population of faculty and staff who are more to the center and right politically. Reduce the number of administrators. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Reestablish civility on campus. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Restore student life to the students. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Archive -- Stanford Speaks ​​Click on any bulleted item for direct access: Marc Tessier-Lavigne: Statement re Race-Consciou s Admissions Marc Tessier Lavigne: Statement re Free Speech and Academic Fr eedom Gerhard Casper: 'Die Luft der Freiheit Weht ' -- On and Off Marc Tessier-Lavigne: Statement re Race-Conscious Admissions June 29, 2023 ​ Dear members of our Stanford community: Each year, Stanford welcomes a new class of accomplished and inspiring undergraduate and graduate students, from across the nation and around the world. Each brings to our community a unique set of insights and ideas. And, they represent remarkable diversity, in all dimensions. ​ Diversi ty of thought, background, identity, and experience is critical to the mission of our university, which is to generate and transmit knowledge with the goal of benefiting our world and its peop ​le. For that reason, I am deeply disappointed by today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upends the long-standing practice of race-conscious university admissions to help achieve a diverse student body. I know that many of you in our community are disheartened. Now, our task is to respond in ways that allow Stanford to continue expanding opportunity and fulfilling our mission in a diverse and changing world. ​ Stanford has long supported race-conscious admissions as a means of obtaining the educational benefits of a diverse student body. Over the years, the ability to consider race as one part of a holistic review of each applicant has helped to foster a campus environment at Stanford that is diverse in many ways, where people of varied backgrounds and experiences are able to learn from one another and contribute to the creation of knowledge. We articulated these views forcefully in the amicus brief that Stanford submitted supporting Harvard and the University of North Carolina. We now find ourselves in a new legal environment. We will adjust to this new environment, in a manner that conforms with the law and that also preserves our commitment to an educational and research environment whose excellence is fostered by diversity in all forms. It will take time for the university to thoroughly process the court’s ruling and its potential impacts. This means that we do not have answers today to all of the questions you may have. However, we can share the following, based on our preliminary assessment. One immediate area of focus in admissions will be an expansion of our existing outreach efforts to potential applicants. We want excellent students from all backgrounds, including those from historically underrepresented ones, to know about and consider Stanford. We also will continue to employ a holistic review of applicants. This holistic review will continue to evaluate each student as a whole and individual person, and in the context of their life experiences. I know there will be many questions about whether Stanford intends to make other kinds of adjustments to the selection criteria and practices used in its admissions processes, both in its centralized undergraduate admissions and in its decentralized graduate admissions. We don’t have those answers today. Faculty representatives, admissions offices, and legal counsel will be working to assess next steps under the ruling. Faculty who have purview over admissions policies will play a central role in this work. And, we welcome the voices of all in our community, including our students, as this work moves ahead. To our students and future prospective students, I want to say the following: Stanford will continue seeking, through legally permissible means, the broadly diverse student body that will benefit your educational experience and preparation for success in the world, and that will benefit our mission of generating knowledge. Stanford remains an institution passionately dedicated to advancing opportunity; to being a home for students from all backgrounds; and to doing the work of learning, researching, and partnering with others that will help make progress on the many pressing challenges in our world. Sincerely, Marc Tessier-Lavigne President Marc Tessier-Lavigne: Statement re Free Speech and Academic Freedom April 3, 2023 Takeaways ​ Reasoned discourse and vigorous inquiry of diverse ideas are central to the pursuit of learning that connects all of us at Stanford, President Marc Tessier-Lavigne shares as the Spring Quarter begins. This quarter, new efforts will be introduced to continue strengthening and safeguarding the values and expectations that support a robust learning community. Dear members of our Stanford community, ​ Welcome to Spring Quarter, and hopefully to warmer weather and a respite from the torrential rains that have visited us in recent months. ​ As spring is a time for renewal, I have been reflecting on what binds us together as a community, and the commitments and actions needed for that community to flourish i n an increasingly fractiou s world. I’d like to share some of those reflections here. ​ At the heart of what we do, and what unites us, is the pursuit of learning. We learn in the classroom; through our research activities; and from each other in countless interactions every day. ​ Learning thrives in an environment of discussion and experimentation, in which both new and old ideas encounter dissent and countervailing views. That environment is essential to preparing students for life after Stanford. The world is a place of disagreement, and we would not be preparing students adequately if we sheltered them from ideas they find difficult. Several conditions are required for us to be successful in our foundational mission of learning. First is a commitment to academic freedom and to the expression of diverse viewpoints. In the past few weeks, there has been an intense focus on these principles as a result of recent deeply disappointing events at the law school in which an invited speaker’s talk was disrupted. In response, Dean Martinez wrote to the law school community to address academic freedom, free speech, and those events. Her forceful message does a superb job in, among other things, explaining university policies and how they relate to the First Amendment and California law, and in reaffirming that the university must be a place that supports and encourages expression of a diversity of views. Those who disagree with a speaker are fully within their rights to express their views and even protest; what they may not do is disrupt the effective carrying out of the event. I encourage you to read the memo in full. ​ A commitment to academic freedom and free expression is paramount. But it is just one of the conditions needed for our learning community to prosper fully. Of importance, too, is how we navigate contentious issues. Out in the broader world, we see too often the impact of misinformation, oversimplification and, especially, demonization in public discussions. Social media, cable news, and political discourse can be home to taunts, personal invective, and even the rule of the mob. We must collectively reject such corrosive conduct at Stanford. It is the opposite of constructive engagement with diverse ideas. Universities are called on to be places of vigorous and thoughtful inquiry—not only of ideas palatable to the mainstream, but of a broad array of ideas, including challenges to mainstream views. Our role is to provide knowledge, nuance, and an approach based in truth-seeking and reasoned discussion. But we will only be able to achieve that goal, I believe, if we approach new ideas and perspectives with curiosity, and with respect for the dignity of each member of our community. This includes assuming good intent in the people one disagrees with and giving them grace. The work of creating an environment that both enshrines free expression and fosters such engagement is not easy. It requires intentional and sustained focus. An example of this, and one that is particularly exciting to me, is in the new COLLEGE program, where faculty members help first-year undergraduates build their skills in the constructive discussion of contentious issues. But we have much more work to do, especially as the pursuit of learning takes place not just in the classroom but also at an individual level in offices, in residences, in our daily interactions with one another. We all navigate disagreements and differences with the people that we live and work with every day. As members of a university community, we are called on to extend our empathy beyond our close personal relationships—to see one another as people with complexity, not as partisan types. In her message, Dean Martinez announced several next steps that will take place within the law school, including further clarifying policies and the consequences that result from not following them. Likewise, this quarter Provost Drell and I will announce new initiatives to safeguard and strengthen the norms and values that support a robust learning community at Stanford, including those I have touched on here. We must continue building understanding and active dialogue about both the opportunities and the expectations of being members of this community, including shared commitments to both free expression and to dignity and integrity in our interactions. These commitments must be reflected in our current community as we interact in classrooms, residences, and offices. They must also be shared with prospective faculty, staff, and students who are considering joining Stanford, and through orientations of new community members. The Provost and I look forward to working with faculty, staff, and students on initiatives to achieve those goals. As we enter the final quarter of this academic year, let us recommit ourselves to rising above the lowest-common-denominator discourse. Let us aspire to open, curious, and reasoned engagement with one another. Let us maximize our potential—as a learning community, and as individuals seeking to make contributions to our world. Sincerely, Marc Tessier-Lavigne Gerhard Casper: 'Die Luft der Freiheit Weht - On and Off' Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper, "The Origins and History of the Stanford Motto," October 5, 1995 ​​ Every so often, Stanford wonders how it came by the German motto "Die Luft der Freiheit weht."1 The basic outlines of the story are by now well established, including the fact that the "German" motto is actually the German translation of a Latin text. However, the accounts that I have seen are rather unsatisfactory concerning the question of how President Jordan came to embrace it. Jordan himself does not tell us. I should like to do two things today. First, I should like to shed some fresh light on the matter of David Starr Jordan and the motto. This effort will take us back to Indiana University. Second, I should like to begin an effort to trace the motto's fate at Stanford more fully than has been done so far. To set the stage, I begin by reminding you of what is known. Jordan has given us a couple of fairly meager reports on how the motto was introduced at Stanford. For instance, in 1917, in an extemporaneous Founders' Day address, then Chancellor Emeritus Jordan told how, "[I]n connection with one of my early speeches, I had occasion to quote what Ulrich von Hutten said when Luther was being persecuted. 'Don't you know that the air of freedom is blowing?' This pleased Mr. Stanford and it pleased the faculty, and somehow 'Die Luft d er Freiheit weht' got on the seal of the university of those days." 2 A year later, he gave a slightly different and slightly fuller version: "In the first year of the University I tried to tell the story of this martyr of democracy. Mr. Stanford was impressed with the winds of freedom - which we hoped would continue to blow over Stanford University. . . . And so on the temporary seal adopted by the professors for their convenience, we put these German words."3 What the second version suggests is that in 1891/92, Jordan gave a talk about Ulrich von Hutten, referred to the winds of freedom, and found Senator Stanford "impressed." An undefined "we" then placed the words on the "temporary seal of the faculty." "We" may refer to Jordan and Stanford, or to Jordan and the faculty, or to all three of them. No evidence has been found of the faculty formally adopting a seal, nor of any official embrace of the motto by the faculty. The University Archivist, Maggie Kimball, speculates that, given the small size of the faculty and Jordan's relationship to each member, the faculty could have accepted the Hutten motto informally.4 There is no existing evidence of a seal used by Jordan or the faculty that carries the motto.5 A few reminders about Hutten, a humanist who was associated with Johannes Reuchlin, Albrecht Durer's friend Willibald Pirkheimer, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Sir Thomas More. Hutten was born in 1488. He belonged to the lesser German nobility that at the time found itself severely squeezed by the princes of the Holy Roman Empire and by the Church. In 1521, when Martin Luther was called before the Diet of Worms to abjure his beliefs and teachings, Hutten, in support of Luther and the "cause of truth and freedom," published, in Latin, three so-called Invectives. In the third of the Invectives, he admonished his own and Luther's enemies among the clergy with the words videtis illam spirare libertatis auram.6 Literally translated this means: "See," or better, "Recognize that the wind of freedom blows." The Latin "aura" can be rendered various ways. The German term "Luft" means "air" rather than "wind," though "wind" is clearly appropriate. Indeed, one might argue that Der Wind der Freiheit weht would have been a better translation of the Latin into German.7 The words videtis illam spirare libertatis auram constitute the beginning of a sentence, the remainder of which tells the Catholic clergy that people are tired of the present state of affairs and want change. Now, why do we have Hutten's words in German? The answer to this question is rather more complex than one might expect and involves 19th- century intellectual history. I begin by discussing Jordan's source for the Hutten text. In 1885, only 13 years after graduating from college and 5 years after he had become professor of natural sciences at Indiana, Jordan, age 34, was made president of Indiana University. The following year, 1886, he published, in two parts, a long article about Ulrich von Hutten in a Chicago literary journal by the name of Current.8 A lightly edited version, under the new title A Knight of the Order of Poets, appeared in 1896, after Jordan's move to Stanford, in his book The Story of the Innumerable Company and Other Sketches.9 It was also published as a separate in 1910 and 1922.10 In short, throughout his life, Jordan publicized Hutten. Hutten had been poet laureate of the Holy Roman Empire. His German poetry resonated with Jordan. Jordan translated some of Hutten's poems in his sketch, just as he had previously, when still a student at Cornell, published translations of other German poetry.11 In the 1886 version, Jordan offers an explanation for his effort that, in this form, he eliminates from the 1896 edition. I quote: Almost four hundred years ago began the great struggle for freedom of thought, which has made our times what they are. Modern science, modern religion, modern freedom alike date from this great struggle which we call the Reformation. I wish to give in this paper something of the history of one who was not the least in this struggle, one who dared think and act for himself, when daring to think and act was costly, one to whom the German people, and we their English-speaking cousins, owe a debt not yet wholly paid or appreciated.12 It is later in this 1886 article about Hutten, "this lover of freedom," that "the wind of freedom" makes its first appearance, however, in English only. Jordan's source was not Hutten's writings themselves, but rather the German theological critic David Friedrich Strauss. Jordan's piece on Hutten begins with an asterisked footnote: "For many of the details of the life of Hutten, and for most of the quotations from Hutten's writings given in this paper, the writer is indebted to the charming memoir by David Frederick Strauss, entitled 'Ulrich von Hutten'. . . . No attempt has been made to give, in this brief paper, a full account of Hutten's writings, only a few of the most notable being referred to at all."13 I have not found any information on how and where Jordan came across Strauss' biography of Hutten. The book was first published in three parts in 1858-60. Jordan refers to the 1878 fourth edition. A one- volume English translation made its appearance in London in 1874. Among the protagonists of humanism, Ulrich von Hutten was a rather minor, and in some ways problematic figure.14 Outside Germany, 19th- century interest in him may have had more to do with the person of the biographer, Strauss, than the humanist himself. Strauss was a fairly famous, even notorious, author who, in the 1830s, had caused a considerable stir with the publication of two volumes entitled The Life of Jesus Critically Examined. The book treated the Gospels as "myths" rather than history. An English translation by no less a writer than George Eliot appeared in 1846. Later in life, Strauss received the honor of being singled out by Nietzsche in 1873, in the first of his Unfashionable Observations, as the foremost among "cultivated philistines" who, following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, engaged in a nationalistic glorification of German culture.15 Strauss died in 1874. There is no indication that Jordan's interest in Strauss went beyond his having been captivated by the liberal Protestantism of the Hutten biography and the questioning, critical spirit that characterized Hutten. At the end of his sketch, Jordan sums up what Hutten's life, as characterized by Strauss, meant to him. Hutten, Jordan said, was one of the first to realize that religion is individual, not collective: "It is concerned with life, not creeds or ceremonies. In the high sense no man can follow or share the religion of another. His religion, whatever it may be, is his own."16 Returning to the "The Wind of Freedom" phrase, I should like to quote, from Jordan's 1896 paper about Hutten, the entire paragraph in which the phrase makes its appearance. The 1896 version is identical to the 1886 one but for a starred footnote that gives the crucial sentence in German.17 Hutten, on his sick-bed at Ebernburg, not far away, was full of wrath at the trial of Luther. "Away!" he shouted, "away from the clear fountains, ye filthy swine! Out of the sanctuary, ye accursed peddlers! Touch no longer the altar with your desecrating hands. What have ye to do with the alms of our fathers, which were given for the poor and the Church, and you spend for splendor, pomp, and foolery, while the children suffer for bread? See you not that the wind of Freedom* is blowing? On two men not much depends. Know that there are many Luthers, many Huttens here. Should either of us be destroyed, still greater is the danger that awaits you; for then, with those battling for freedom, the avengers of innocence will make common cause." * "Sehet ihr nicht dasz die Luft der Freiheit weht?" If one compares the third Invective in its original Latin with Strauss' account of it, one notices that Strauss takes elements out of sequence, in short, rearranges the text. Furthermore, Strauss renders the Latin text from which the Stanford motto derives into German by transforming the affirmative statement ("Recognize that the wind of freedom blows") into a rhetorical question that Jordan translates into English as "See you not that the wind of freedom is blowing?"18 Indeed, one wonders whether Jordan was under the mistaken impression that Hutten's original text was in German. Jordan's starred footnote to his summary of the Invective in the 1896 version of the sketch supplies, and thereby emphasizes, the German text of the wind of freedom passage. Furthermore, in his 1918 article about the motto, Jordan quoted the German in a context in which he emphasized that Hutten was one of the first scholars in Europe to throw aside the Latin "and speak in a tongue the people could understand."19 A close reading of Strauss and his footnotes would seem to rule out the possibility that Jordan could have been mistaken about the language in which Hutten had written the Invectives. And yet he might have been. Occasionally, all of us may become neglectful of our sources as we become enamored of their contents. Can any light be shed on the question why, in 1886, while he was at Indiana University, Jordan makes so much of Hutten and freedom? In 1887, after he had become president of the College Association of Indiana, Jordan gave a substantial talk on "The Evolution of the College Curriculum" in which he lends forceful support to the elective system of course selection. "Freedom is as essential to scholarship as to manhood. Not long since I met a young German scholar, a graduate of a Prussian gymnasium, who has enrolled himself as a student of English in an American college. To him the free air of the American school was its one good thing" [emphasis added].20 Later in the same speech he says: "The ideas of 'Lehrfreiheit' and 'Lernfreiheit,' - freedom of teaching and freedom of study, - on which the German university is based, will become a central feature of the American college system."21 He meant these two sides of the academic freedom coin to be central features of Indiana University. Jordan was the first Indiana president not to be an ordained minister, a "Darwinian extrovert among Hoosier fundamentalists," as Thomas Clark has said.22 When he became president, chapel attendance every morning was still mandatory. The faculty was small and old and the curriculum was that of an "antebellum classical college."23 In Jordan's words: "The college course in those days led into no free air" [emphasis added].24 Jordan, on the other hand, was caught up in that vast transformation of American colleges and universities that took place during the last third of the 19th century and that was associated with such names as Charles Eliot of Harvard, Daniel Gilman of Johns Hopkins, Andrew White of Cornell, and William Rainey Harper of the University of Chicago. Jordan wanted science to invade the college and he wanted faculty to be as inspiring and open as had been his own teacher Louis Aggasiz, who "believed in the absolute freedom of science and that no authority whatever can answer beforehand the questions we endeavor to solve."25 On Charter Day 1893, at Berkeley, Jordan delivered a lengthy address in defense of public universities in which he denied denominational colleges any role in higher education and asserted that, about universities, one should ask only, "in the words of the old reformer, Ulrich von Hutten, if 'die Luft der Freiheit weht?' - whether 'the winds of freedom are blowing'.26 After my inauguration in 1992, I turned to the then president of Indiana University, Tom Ehrlich, who was also the former Dean of our Law School, to determine whether, at Indiana, they knew what had been the catalyst for Jordan's interest in Hutten. He wrote me back that there was nothing in the Jordan Papers at Indiana that gave a clue. But, Ehrlich said, he was persuaded that Jordan's interest in Hutten "was a result of Jordan's own struggle to obtain freedom - for Jordan, this meant academic freedom, but he well understood the term in all dimensions."27 I think this is the correct view of the matter. Hutten's appeal to Jordan had first of all to do with the most fundamental of Protestant tenets: the right of individual interpretation, the "priesthood of all Christians." Jordan appreciates Hutten primarily as an early example of Protestant individual daring - a point Jordan makes much of in a rather nonreligious, "general theory of life" sort of way that reflects Jordan's attenuated universalist religiosity. In his Hutten sketch he sums up: "The issue was that of the growth of man. The 'right of private interpretation' is the recognition of personal individuality."28 When David Starr Jordan decided to leave the Midwest to come to Stanford, he wrote to his mentor Andrew Dickson White, the president of Cornell, that he was prepared "to take whatever came." Jordan's nonreligious, secular use of Hutten is evidenced by the fact that even on this occasion, hardly a religious turning point, he quoted two lines from a very militant, "Protestant" poem by Hutten entitled "Hutten's Song": "With open eyes I have dared, and cherish no regret. . . ."29 However, in the context of university building at Indiana and Stanford, Hutten's significance for Jordan lies in his association with the fight for the freedom to challenge established orthodoxy and perhaps the most important freedom that the humanists battled for: the pursuit of knowledge free from constraints as to sources and fields. As to this, Jordan employs the Hutten motto in a secularized, somewhat attenuated way - as if Hutten had been a precursor of the scientific spirit that Jordan, along with many other American educators, found epitomized in the German university of the second half of the 19th century. Indeed, the point about science is made explicitly in the opening paragraphs to the 1886 version of the Hutten sketch when Jordan refers to the Reformation as the source of "modern science, modern religion, modern freedom."30 Once at Stanford, Jordan seemed to localize the motto and discover in it an expression of what we might call Stanford's "Western" spirit, a way to capture the spiritus loci of a campus, then without any ivy, stretching more or less from "the foothills to the Bay." The only mention of the motto in Jordan's 1922 autobiography occurs in a quote from an article by Ellen Elliott, wife of the registrar, about the experiences of the "Cornell Colony" in Stanford's early days. Jordan quotes: Perhaps it is the spirit of the West, perhaps it is the vital breath of the Pacific, coming in to us over the mountains, but whatever it may be, some enchantment has blinded us to the crudities, the drawbacks, the limitations of our state. The giants looming in the path of the pioneer appear but frivolous windmills in our eyes. Come not out to us, O doubting Cornellians, thinking to return untouched by the unreasonable enthusiasm. Christmas shall bring you, and the months of spring shall bring you, critical, skeptical, curious, speering after our library, questioning about our funds, and you shall return - if you return at all - chanting as fervently and irrelevantly as we, "Die Luft der Freiheit weht."31 The motto was certainly not irrelevant when Stanford University, nine years after its opening, had its first academic freedom controversy, resulting from Jane Stanford's displeasure with the political activities of Edward Ross, a professor of sociology.32 At the time, faculty contracts were renewed annually and Ross had been advised by Jordan that he would not be reappointed at the end of the academic year 1900/01. Whereupon Ross, in November of 1900, announced that he had been forced to resign. The "Stanford University scandal" led other faculty members to quit in protest and the Ross affair became "one of the most celebrated academic freedom cases in United States history."33 What I am concerned with is the fact that the affair was viewed as testing the motto's implications for academic freedom. The most interesting and telling comment is perhaps a well-known one by Ray Lyman Wilbur, then a first-year assistant professor of physiology at Stanford. In his memoirs he wrote: "Up to the time of our difficulty with Dr. Ross we had taken as a matter of course at Stanford the right of every man to express his opinion. We gave it no more thought than the air we breathed. We were all for Dr. Jordan's slogan which was popularly adopted as a Stanford motto, 'The winds of freedom are blowing'."34 As a result of the Ross affair, academic freedom at Stanford had a more precarious status. Among the faculty members who resigned was the economist Frank A. Fetter, who later would become President of the American Economic Association. He left Stanford not out of solidarity with Ross but because Jordan refused to accept his condition for returning from a leave at Cornell. Fetter, to whom Jordan had given the task of recruiting new faculty, demanded from Jordan formal statements, in writing and in public, that members of the economics department would be guaranteed "as large a measure of academic freedom as is enjoyed in any university." The members of the department were to be "free to teach and discuss any question within the range of their studies; that they shall not be called to account for any opinion on social questions which they may hold, or for the public expression of their views; that they shall not be limited by the university in the exercise of any political rights or the performance of any political duties pertaining to good citizenship."35 Jordan replied that he could not issue such a statement nor "pledge the University in any unusual manner." Instead, he insisted on the customary "unwritten contract": "Liberty of thought, speech and action, on the one hand; reasonable discretion, common sense and loyalty on the other."36 I did not have the time to examine papers related to the Ross case to see whether and how the motto was employed by the various parties to the issue. What does seem clear is that the aftermath of the turmoil did not substantially diminish the motto's overall popularity. B. Q. Morgan reports that, prior to World War I, all the seal stationery, all the shields and jewelry, and other mementos sold at the Stanford Bookstore showed the German phrase on the Stanford seal.37 So did the many plaques, cast in bronze, since the first decade of the century by generations and generations of engineering students learning the skills of foundrymen at the foundry of the engineering laboratories under James Bennett Liggett.38 To Wilbur, the Ross case seems not to have affected the fundamental situation at the university. He writes: "As we knew first-hand what remarkable freedom we had at Stanford that did not seem much of an issue to us."39 However, Wilbur notwithstanding, the motto's implications for academic freedom had become somewhat of an issue and the motto was seen, at least by some, with a certain ambivalence. One of the most intriguing episodes in the history of Stanford's motto came in the first decade of the century when the Board of Trustees adopted a seal for itself. Among the most influential early trustees was George E. Crothers who had concerned himself as a committee of one with designing a seal for the Board that, in 1903, had taken over Jane Stanford's role in the governance of the university. In 1908, the Board chose a seal with the Latin motto Semper Virens meaning "ever greening" or, staying forever young and vital. The Board's motto is a reference to the Sequoia sempervirens, the tall redwood for which Palo Alto is named, but also, in Judge Crothers' words, stands for "perpetuity of life, growth, and strength"; "a pledge and resolve that the University shall never become stagnant, unprogressive, self-glorifying, or petrified in its imperfections."40 According to Crothers, the Board acquiesced in his selection without ado. "I [had the seal] cast and adopted by the Board of Trustees without mentioning 'Semper Virens', lest the wisdom of the selection, not to mention its correctness or suitability, should result in a discussion sure to result in many other suggestions, perhaps better ones."41 The year before, in 1907, Crothers had, however, consulted Jordan concerning the matter of an official seal and motto. This led to a fascinating exchange of letters between the two men. Jordan suggested "that a motto if used should be short and in a foreign language." He refers to Die Luft der Freiheit weht, makes some other proposals, but expresses a preference for a Latin aphorism that was inscribed over the bedroom of the great Swedish botanist and taxonomist Linnaeus: innocue vivite, numen adest. Jordan renders this as "live blameless [sic!] in divine presence (divinity is here)." Bartlett's Familiar Quotations gives the text as "Live innocently; God is here."42 I am not sure about either translation. Another possibility would be: live righteously, God helps you. Be this as it may. What matters is the fact that Jordan concludes his letter to Crothers by indicating his preference for the Linnaeus motto, "with the German one as second choice."43 Jordan previously had invoked the Linnaeus maxim in his address at the opening of Stanford on October 1, 1891. I quote: "For the life of the most exalted as well as the humblest of men, there can be [no] nobler motto . . . . 'This', said Linnaeus, 'is the wisdom of my life'. Every advance which we make toward the realization of the truth of the permanence and immanence of law, brings us nearer to Him who is the great First Cause of all law and phenomena."44 It seems somewhat strange that Jordan would propose as his first choice for the Board of Trustees' motto a maxim of this complexity that pertains to bringing individuals nearer "to Him who is the great First Cause of all law and phenomena." Had the Ross affair, during which he had been widely and publicly attacked,45 left Jordan with reservations about whether the Hutten aphorism could be reconciled with "reasonable discretion, common sense and loyalty"? Crothers, responding to Jordan's suggestions, is explicit about his reservations concerning Die Luft der Freiheit. I quote: I personally prefer a motto in either English or Latin, preferably the former. The words "truth" and "service" come about as near to expressing the aim which the founders had in founding the University, and the ideals which the University should have in the execution of the founders' purpose, as any words which occur to me. I think that the word "truth" implies "freedom." The motto "Die Luft der Freiheit weht" is certainly a splendid motto, with splendid associations, but my recollection is that it includes a freedom both on the part of the student and the professor as to what is learned and the method of learning, and what is taught and the method of teaching which is not really recognized in any American college.... Would not its adoption imply the adoption of the German university system of instruction and teaching under quite different conditions? 46 In short, Crothers had come to understand Jordan's earlier "more idealistic professions"47 quite accurately. As I have pointed out, the wind of freedom, to Jordan, originally also meant Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit. The Republican lawyer from San Francisco was, however, worried whether these were alien, "un-American" concepts. Jordan himself obviously had reservations about professors who appeared to be using their position for political propaganda.48 Jane Stanford, following the Ross affair, in 1902, had amended the Founding Grant to stress the nonpolitical, nonpartisan nature of the university.49 It was as if an age of innocence about academic freedom had ended: What the wind of freedom actually meant had become problematic. Ironically, only a few years later, Jordan's own political activities as a pacifist became the target of others who thought the motto alien. In the years immediately preceding World War I and American entry into the war, the most controversial person at Stanford was easily its former president. Jordan would have retired from the presidency in the ordinary course of events in 1916 when reaching the age of 65. Jordan himself had been ambivalent about waiting that long, given his ever increasing efforts on behalf of world peace50 and his vision of a better world, one ruled by ideas, not by guns, bayonets, and poison gas. A new trustee by the name of Herbert Hoover, who had joined the Board in 1912, arranged matters. He saw to it that Jordan, in 1913, was "relieved of routine work for the remaining three years" of his administration by being given the title Chancellor. This freed Jordan to pursue his work for peace in Europe and what he called "my propaganda against the war system."51 Jordan's friend and colleague (and Hoover's former teacher) John Casper Branner became Stanford's second president, to be succeeded in January of 1916 by Ray Lyman Wilbur. In those years, Jordan gave hundreds of lectures, both here and abroad, for the cause of peace. As Edith Mirrielees puts it dryly: "Dr. Jordan had preached peace when peace had been everybody's good word. He went on preaching it now."52 But now he became viewed by some as an "unwitting," "deluded tool" in Germany's "plot against humanity,"53 by others "as actively Pro-German before the entrance of the United States into the war."54 After the United States declared war on Germany in April of 1917, Jordan issued a statement that began with the words "Our country is now at war and the only way out is forward."55 Nevertheless, Jordan remained a target of accusations and attacks. For instance, in May of 1918, members of the Cornell class of 1873 called on the Board of Trustees of Cornell University to revoke his degree.56 Jordan had to spend endless time and effort to defend himself against charges and distortions. In a letter to Senator Lee Slater Overman, of North Carolina, who chaired a special investigating committee of the United States Senate, Jordan wrote on December 23, 1918: "For myself, I wish to deny emphatically that I have ever been actively or otherwise 'pro- German'. For eight years I have openly and vigorously opposed the German emperor and the system he represented. In 1910, I spoke publicly in the German language in Berlin against German militarism, and later in the fall of 1913 in the cities of Southern Germany, from Frankfort to Munich. Among other things I said that the German war-system had 'perverted and poisoned all teaching of history, of patriotism and even of religion'. I believe that I am the only outsider who has thus spoken in Germany in open meetings in the German language."57 The Chancellor Emeritus was forced to worry about the impact of it all on the university and to bend over backward to distance it from himself. There is an almost pathetic letter from Jordan to President Wilbur, dated September 9, 1918, responding to some document attacking Jordan that had been addressed to Wilbur. I quote: I send you my answer, by which you will see that the charges are based on accident and misinterpretation. I have used great care not to entangle the University in any opinions of mine. But to avoid misapprehension, I shall send out no printed matter of any kind, and shall use only plain envelopes, posting my letters outside the campus. At the bottom of the letter is a note in Jordan's handwriting that reads: "Kindly show the document to Mr. Hoover. I regret the whole business very much on my own account but more especially on that of the University."58 In May of 1918, the university felt obliged to deny reports "apparently circulated" by "subtle German propagandists" that, "on the official seal of Stanford appears a phrase in the German language." The Daily Palo Alto wrote: "Unofficially, a motto in German has sometimes been used at Stanford, but Acting President C. D. Marx said . . . that it never was adopted by the trustees, that it appears nowhere on official University stationery or documents, and whatever use may have been made of it at any time has not received the sanction of the Board of Trustees or of the Academic Council of the faculty." I guess in order to make the point how unfamiliar they were with the motto, the editors of The Daily Palo Alto went on to quote the motto as "Die Luff [sic!] der Freiheit Weht."59 At the same time, The Stanford Illustrated Review published an article by Jordan entitled "The Wind of Freedom." The article is prefaced by the following editorial comment: "German propaganda made it necessary for the University to issue recently a statement explaining that the University has no German motto on its seal. This history of the phrase by Chancellor Emeritus Jordan is timely as well as interesting." And interesting, if somewhat disingenuous, it is. I should like to quote the first three paragraphs. Some one in a spirit of illiterate intolerance has lately ventured to criticise Stanford University for its alleged German motto "Die Luft der Freiheit weht" (the wind of Freedom is blowing). As a matter of fact this is not the motto of the University, as it has never been officially adopted and does not appear on the University official seal. It is not the policy of the trustees to use a living language for this purpose, and the only motto I know to have been actually considered is "Semper virens" (ever green, or practically, ever growing), the scientific name of the redwood tree (Sequoia sempervirens) which is the central figure of the University seal. But the German phrase has a noble history in which Stanford is in a degree concerned. Then follows an account of Hutten and the previously cited mention of Jordan's exchange with Senator Stanford about Hutten and the winds of freedom back in 1891/92. The article concludes with the sentence: "Meanwhile it is still true that 'the wind of freedom is blowing', and it will in due time sweep over the whole earth."60 It appears that the "alleged" motto that, at best, had been adopted by custom, though never "officially," returned to ordinary use no later than 1923.61 Just before the beginning of World War II, when the Stanford Alumni Association commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone for the university with a 250-page "pictorial record," the seal with the motto in German decorated the cover.62 Of course, contrary to the hopes of Jordan who had died in 1931, the wind of freedom was not sweeping over the earth. Nazi Germany had started a second world war. Among the devastations of World War II and in the wake of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, Stanford invoked its motto in defense of the values the motto represented, especially and poignantly Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit. American universities now stood for the very values that Wilhelm von Humboldt's University of Berlin had symbolized since the 19th century, but, in 1933, abandoned. Two months before Pearl Harbor, on October 1, 1941, the university celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its opening. At a dinner in San Francisco, attended by more than a thousand alumni, faculty, and friends, the Stanford Associates invited their guests to dedicate themselves once more to the ideals upon which the university was founded and "to perpetuate," as the program said, "for all time Stanford University as a place where indeed the winds of freedom blow."63 In the spring of 1941, the University of Leyden in Holland had been closed by the Nazis. This event prompted, at the anniversary dinner, a "mask," a presentation by the Department of Speech and Drama, under the title "The Winds of Freedom Blow." The only speaker at the dinner was the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Raymond B. Fosdick. His subject, likewise, was "Let the Winds of Freedom Blow." Fosdick began by talking about Leyden. Three hundred and sixty-six years ago, in one of the darkest hours that Holland ever knew, William the Silent founded the University of Leyden. He needed it in his struggle against Spain. He needed it as a weapon against tyranny. He realized that a university could be a mighty bulwark of liberty, a citadel of ideas which no physical force could permanently overthrow. For 366 years Leyden has stood for political and scholastic freedom; it has been the determined foe of absolutism in every form. It has welcomed scholars like Grotius, Arminius and Descartes - heretics in their day. It has been a center of intellectual ferment. For over three centuries and a half the cultural life, not only of Holland but of all of Europe, has borne witness to the influence of Leyden. Today Leyden is silent and isolated. When the Germans over-ran Holland, all Jewish professors were dismissed from the faculty, and three prominent Nazis were appointed to the chairs of political economy, history, and what is called "new philosophy." An outstanding member of the faculty who objected to these German measures was imprisoned; and when the student body held a meeting of protest and sang the Dutch national anthem, the institution was closed "until further notice." Judged by outward appearances the University of Leyden has ceased to exist as an effective force in the extension of knowledge and in the development of a free society. Fosdick went on to detail other instances, elsewhere in Europe, including Germany. He then reminded his audience that "the Nazi mentality is not necessarily confined to Germany" and that it "has a way of coming to life even in localities in the United States." I quote again: It may seem superfluous, especially before a Stanford audience, to underscore this matter of academic freedom, but in days like these when intolerance and public suspicion are so easily fanned into flame, there is an occupational hazard connected with some branches of teaching and research; and a university as an institution must be prepared to stand unfalteringly behind the isolated and perhaps dangerously exposed individual scholar.... Let the winds of freedom blow.64 I am coming to a close. The limited time available to me in my "off- hours" has not allowed me to go beyond World War II and what role, if any, the motto played during the periods of McCarthyism and of student protest against the Vietnam War. Since my Inaugural Address, where I spoke about what the motto might entail for a university's freedom, Die Luft der Freiheit weht has seen some modest revival. I say "revival" because it is my impression that it had somewhat fallen into desuetude. As its legitimacy is based on custom rather than formal adoption, we need to remind ourselves that custom is undone by nonuse. The seal with the motto now appears (apparently for the first time) on the President's stationery - and that is as far as my influence reaches. In my Inaugural Address, I spoke about nine aspects of a university's freedom. And most likely there are more than that. My nine are not easily reconciled with one another nor is it easy to arrive at syllogistic conclusions about their application to the demands of the hour. But then, contrary to the truly obnoxious habits of contemporary television and politics, few issues can be reduced to two opposing, sloganeering sound bites. May Die Luft der Freiheit always be understood as a guiding principle that - instead of being a slogan itself - blows away the slogans that stifle academic debate and freedom. * For research assistance, I am much indebted to Margaret Kimball, Head of Special Collections and University Archivist, and to Steven Martinez. The paper also reflects help I received in the summer of 1992 from two then graduate students at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, Ed Callahan and Jonathan Strom. 1 Cf. David Starr Jordan, The Wind of Freedom, The Stanford Illustrated Review, May 1918, 297; B. Q. Morgan, How Stanford Selected That "Winds of Freedom" Slogan, The Stanford Illustrated Review, November 1937, 22-23; Gunther W. Nagel, M.D., The Legacy of Ulrich von Hutten, Stanford Review, March 1962, 12-15; Gerhard Casper, Inaugural Address, Stanford University Campus Report vol. XXV, 12-13, October 7, 1992. 2 David Starr Jordan, Founders' Day Address, The Stanford Alumnus, March 1917, 224. 3 David Starr Jordan, The Wind of Freedom, note 1 supra. 4 Memo from Margaret Kimball to Gerhard Casper, August 7, 1995. Nineteen men were in attendance at the first faculty meeting on October 3, 1891; Edith R. Mirrielees, Stanford: The Story of a University, New York 1959, 58. 5 Memo from Margaret Kimball to Gerhard Casper, August 25, 1995. 6 Ulrich von Hutten (Eduard Bocking, ed.), Opera vol. 2, Leipzig 1859, 34. 7 On the matter of translation, also see letter to the editor from Ronald Bracewell, Stanford University Campus Report vol. XXV, 3, October 14, 1992. 8 David Starr Jordan, Ulrich von Hutten, Current vol. 6, 357-59, December 4, 1866; 375-76, December 11, 1866. Cf. Alice N. Hays, David Starr Jordan: A Bibliography of His Writings 1871-1931, Stanford, Calif. 1952, 4. 9 David Starr Jordan, A Knight of the Order of Poets, in The Story of the Innumerable Company and Other Sketches, San Francisco 1896, 205- 44. 10 Alice N. Hays, note 8 supra, 4. 11 Id. at 3. 12 David Starr Jordan, note 8 supra, 357. In 1896, Jordan substitutes "modern civilization" for "modern science, modern religion, modern freedom" and deletes the reference to the German people and their English-speaking cousins; Jordan, note 9 supra, 207. 13 David Starr Jordan, note 8 supra, 357. 14 See Gerhard Casper, Inaugural Address, note 1 supra; also Gerhard Casper, Invectives, Stanford University Campus Report vol. XXV, 14, March 10, 1993. 15 See Friedrich Nietzsche, Unfashionable Observations, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche vol. 2, translated, with an Afterword, by Richard T. Gray, Stanford, Calif. 1995. 16 David Starr Jordan, note 9 supra, 244. 17 David Starr Jordan id. at 235. Cf. Jordan, note 8 supra, 376. 18 Ulrich von Hutten, note 6 supra; David Friedrich Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten 2. Teil, Leipzig 1858, 176. 19 David Starr Jordan, note 1 supra. 20 David Starr Jordan, The Care and Culture of Men, A Series of Addresses on the Higher Education, San Francisco 1896, 41. 21 Id. at 53. 22 Thomas D. Clark, Indiana University: Midwestern Pioneer, Bloomington, Indiana 1970-77, 211. I was referred to this account of Jordan's Indiana days by Myles Brand, President of Indiana University. 23 Id. 24 David Starr Jordan, note 20 supra, 184. 25 David Starr Jordan, The Days of a Man, Volume One 1851-1899, Yonkers-on-Hudson 1922, 113. 26 David Starr Jordan, note 21 supra, 111. 27 Letter from Thomas Ehrlich to Gerhard Casper, November 6, 1992. 28 David Starr Jordan, note 9 supra, 242. 29 David Starr Jordan, note 25 supra, 362. 30 David Starr Jordan, note 8 supra, 357. Hutten himself did display a bit of "modern" scientific spirit in his book about syphilis; see Gerhard Casper, Invectives, note 14 supra. He addressed the theory that syphilis was God's punishment for moral depravity. Hutten displayed his impatience with theologians who pretend to know God's will and firmly came down on the side of natural causes. I am indebted to Carlos A. Camargo, M.D., for having referred me to Hutten's text from 1519, an English translation of which appeared in 1540. 31 David Starr Jordan, note 25 supra, 420. 32 For Jane Stanford's views, see Gunther W. Nagel, Jane Stanford, Stanford, Calif. 1975, 134-44. 33 Warren J. Samuels, The Resignation of Frank A. Fetter from Stanford University, The History of Economics Society Bulletin vol. VI, issue 2, 16 (1985). 34 Edgar Eugene Robinson and Paul Carroll Edwards (eds.), The Memoirs of Ray Lyman Wilbur, 1875-1949, Stanford, Calif. 1960, 99. 35 Quoted in Warren J. Samuels, note 33 supra, 20. 36 Id. at 21. 37 B. Q. Morgan, note 1 supra, 23. 38 The Stanford Illustrated Review, June 1932, 395. 39 Edgar Eugene Robinson and Paul Carroll Edwards (eds.), note 34 supra, 100. 40 Letter from George E. Crothers, Stanford Alumni Review, February 1947. 41 Id. 42 John Bartlett (Justin Kaplan, general ed.), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Sixteenth Edition, Boston, Toronto, London 1992, 312. 43 Letter from David Starr Jordan to George E. Crothers, August 10, 1907 (Stanford University Archives). 44 David Starr Jordan, note 21 supra, 263. 45 Edith R. Mirrielees, note 4 supra, 105. 46 Letter from George E. Crothers to David Starr Jordan, August 27, 1907 (Stanford University Archives). 47 Edward McNall Burns, David Starr Jordan: Prophet of Freedom, Stanford, Calif. 1953, 168. 48 Id. 49 Stanford University: The Founding Grant with Amendments, Legislation, and Court Decrees, Stanford, Calif. 1987, 22. 50 Edith R. Mirrielees, note 4 supra, 159 51 David Starr Jordan, The Days of a Man, Volume Two 1900-1921, Yonkers- on-Hudson 1922, 455. 52 Edith R. Mirrielees, note 4 supra, 183-84. 53 Letter from Bernard Bienenfeld to David Starr Jordan, March 29, 1917 (Stanford University Archives). 54 Letter from David Starr Jordan to Lee Slater Overman, December 23, 1918 (Stanford University Archives). 55 David Starr Jordan, note 51 supra, 735. 56 See Dorothy Driscoll, An Unjust Attack on Dr. Jordan, The Stanford Illustrated Review, June 1918, 331, 354. 57 Letter from David Starr Jordan to Lee Slater Overman, note 54 supra. 58 Letter from David Starr Jordan to Ray Lyman Wilbur, September 9, 1918 (Stanford University Archives). 59 The Daily Palo Alto, May 7, 1918 (Stanford University Archives). 60 David Starr Jordan, note 1 supra. 61 Memo from Margaret Kimball to Gerhard Casper, August 7, 1995. 62 Norris E. James (ed.), Fifty Years on the Quad, Stanford, Calif. 1938. 63 Program of the Stanford Associates dinner commemorating the university's fiftieth anniversary, October 1, 1941 (Stanford University Archives). 64 Raymond B. Fosdick, Let the Winds of Freedom Blow, Talk given at the Stanford Associates dinner commemorating the university's fiftieth anniversary, October 1, 1941 (Stanford University Archives).

Archive -- Past Newsletter s May 9, 2024 ​ Special Edition - National Campus Unrest Editor’s note: Because there are so many issues to cover, we are circulating this Special Edition a few days earlier than normal and will circulate a regular Newsletter next Monday afternoon with other items. ********** Universities Face Misinformation Amid Pro-Palestinian Protests Excerpts (links in the original): “False reports about a raised Palestinian flag at Harvard University. A misinterpretation of Muslim students gathering at the University of California, Los Angeles. Conflicting stories about a bike lock used during an occupation at Columbia University. "As the pro-Palestinian protests continue, universities are contending with fake, conflicting and confusing reports about events on and off campus. Videos and photos of the protests have flooded social media sites, and some are altered or given misleading labels or headlines.... “Experts are torn on whether a university should address misinformation about events on their campuses. [Darren Linvill, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University] said universities, at the very least, need to put correct information on their websites to dispel false reports. “‘They want this to go away and want no one to talk about it, but that ship has sailed,’ Linvill said. ‘You always want to be putting out the truth. I think sitting there and letting others tell your story often goes wrong.’" … Full article at Inside Higher Ed How Trustees Can Save Their Schools Excerpts: “In an unprecedented display of leadership, the president, flanked by the provost and the chairman of the board of trustees, announced to the chanting and drumming students encamped in the South Quad: [followed by made-up text of a speech not given]…. “Colleges now reap the grim fruit of years of tolerating intolerable behavior. How many Middlebury College students were suspended for shouting down Charles Murray and violence that left a distinguished Middlebury professor seriously injured? Zero. How many Stanford Law School students were suspended for shouting down Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan? Zero again. Washington College students who shouted down invited speaker and Princeton University Professor Robert George? … “The 1967 Kalven Report, which articulates the principle of institutional neutrality, offers a powerful preventative to the blackmail tactics of the protests. Institutional neutrality, as Chancellor Diermeier explained, means that politics do not enter into decisions about the institution’s investments and portfolio. Divestment is off the table. Student and faculty demands regarding the portfolio must be, to use a favorite phrase of protesters, ‘non-negotiable.’ “With a commitment to the rule of law, the campus will enjoy robust debate and academic freedom, unfettered by the mob rule that now substitutes for freedom. This is a time for firmness, not demoralizing compromise that invites more such protests and signals that the adults are no longer in charge.” Full op-ed by Michael Poliakoff and Paul S. Levy for American Council of Trustees and Alumni at Real Clear Education See also our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta , including the Kalven Report. Age of Unreason Excerpts: “Last week, a disruptive ‘Free Palestine’ protest broke out on my campus, the University of Southern California. As a philosophy major, I’m often curious to talk with people and ask them why they believe the things they do. So, I spoke with one of the protesters. He was outfitted in black jeans and a black shirt bearing the phrase ‘Free Palestine.’ He wore sunglasses and a mask emblazoned with the flag of Palestine. He carried a large Palestinian flag. I suspect that he was a student, but I could not confirm this.... “Continuing in attempted Socratic fashion, I asked: ‘So the morality of something depends on individual intuition? There is, as the saying goes, ‘no right or wrong, but thinking makes it so?’ “‘Yeah, morality is, like, just what people believe, and what people believe changes over time and across cultures,’ he said. “‘If that is the case, then I don’t see why you are marching,’ I responded. ‘One person thinks genocide is bad, and the other thinks it is fine. In your view, both are equally correct because there is no correct answer. What right do you have, then, to march up and down this campus telling others to change their opinion to match yours, if yours is no more right or wrong than theirs?’ “At this point, the protestor offered several incoherent sentences before shouting wildly at me. This drew the attention of his fellow marchers, who accosted me similarly. I left to avoid a scene.... “In part, today’s campus protests are the fruit of our educational institutions’ failure to impart an appreciation of the humanities. They point to a troubled future: one where slogans replace arguments, contradiction is accepted as fact, and public disorder is mistaken for private virtue. “We need to reverse course. Students shouldn’t be able to graduate from college without studying the Federalist Papers or Aristotle’s Ethics or having read Shakespeare and Tolstoy. Universities must once again transmit the best of the Western tradition, the ideas that have guided countless young people throughout the ages and taught them how to interrogate our world in search of truth. Only folly and arrogance prevent us from doing so once again.” Full op-ed by USC undergraduate Chad Beauchamp at City Journal Universities Consider Divestment Demands Excerpts (links in the original): “As pro-Palestinian protests have spread across college campuses nationwide two key demands have emerged: that colleges disclose how endowment funds are invested, and that they divest from weapons manufacturers and other businesses profiting off of the war in Gaza. “Student stipulations vary by campus, often going beyond disclosure and divestment, but those two themes are universal. And while national news coverage focuses on the use of force to clear encampments, violent clashes with police and protester arrests, it belies the fact that some colleges are making negotiations on these demands.... “Brown University has arguably taken the biggest step in striking a deal with protesters who folded up their tents in exchange for face time with board members to make a pitch for divesting from companies profiting off the war. A divestment vote is scheduled for October.... “Elsewhere, Northwestern University has agreed to reestablish an Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility , which will include student, faculty and staff representatives, and provide funding for both Palestinian students and visiting faculty members, among other moves.... “Mary Papazian, executive vice president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, identifies the two responses -- meeting directly with protesters or arresting them -- as two points at opposite ends of a response spectrum. But she believes presidents can operate in the middle, engaging protesters indirectly and keeping order without mass arrests, depending on the situation.... “And regardless of what decision a president makes on encampment protests, they should be able to explain what led to their decision and discuss their positions clearly and transparently, Papazian argues. “’There has to be clarity about whatever action it is that the president takes. There may be good reasons for it but it has to be articulated and explained clearly and consistently,' she said." Full article at Inside Higher Ed See also “What Does Divestment from Israel Really Mean?” at Vox Articles of General Interest The Consequences of Capitulation Full article at Simple Justice Why the Campus Protests Are So Troubling Full op-ed by Thomas Friedman at NY Times Stanford Has ‘No Plans’ to Cancel Commencement Full article at Stanford Daily Berkeley Law School Dean Edwin Chemerinsky re Campus Speech Full interview (one hour) at YouTube and also at Reason Listen to What They’re Chanting Full op-ed at The Atlantic Specific Issues at Other Colleges and Universities Pro-Palestinian GWU Student Tribunal Calls for Campus Leaders to be Beheaded Full article at College Fix Some UNC Faculty to Withhold Final Grades for All Students Until Suspended Protesters Are Re-Instated Full articl e at Carolina Journal Harvard Threatens to Place Its Occupiers on Involuntary Leave, Citing Indefensible Behavior Full article at Campus Reform Protesters March to Harvard President Garber’s Home and Demand Start of Negotiations Full article at Harvard Crimson Why I Ended the University of Chicago Protest Encampment Full statement by University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos at WSJ U Chicago Says Free Speech Is Sacred, but Some Students See Hypocrisy Full article at NY Times Columbia Law School Students Send Menacing Email to Jewish Classmates: ‘You Threaten Everyone's Safety’ Full article at Free Beacon A Message from Jewish Students at Columbia University Full letter at Google Docs Behind the Ivy Intifada Full op-ed by Columbia Prof. Musa al-Gharbi at Compact Columbia Custodian Trapped by Angry Mob Speaks Out Full article at Free Press Why I’m Not Calling the Police on My Students’ Encampment Full statement by Wesleyan University President Michael S. Roth at New Republic Activist Groups Trained Students for Months Before Campus Protests Full article at WSJ UCLA, Yale and Michigan Up Next on Congressional Hot Seat Full article at Inside Higher Ed ACTA Survey Finds Texans Support Strong Actions at University of Texas in Response to Protests Full article at ACTA website “Though a university should not punish a student for holding up a placard, it has a legitimate interest in preventing a group from permanently repurposing its walls as political billboards or from forcing students to walk through a gauntlet of intimidating slogan-chanters on their way to class every day.” – Harvard Prof. Steve Pinker May 6, 2024 ​ Colleges Can Safeguard Both Free Speech and a Safe Campus Environment Excerpts (links in the original): “The First Amendment protects even subjectively harmful, hateful, and offensive speech -- and for good reason. When people face punishment for their words just because someone, somewhere, finds them distasteful, the window of public discussion becomes stultifyingly narrow. ​ "University leaders must not let this happen on campus. “If leaders at both public and private institutions want to preserve an environment where teaching, research, and learning flourish, they should staunchly protect even the most objectionable speech. “Critically, as FIRE says in its “10 common-sense reforms for colleges and universities ,” they should do so in policy and in practice, making the scope of speech rights abundantly clear.... “[On the other hand,] universities should be battlegrounds for ideas -- not literal battlegrounds. A campus where unprotected conduct and expression -- such as violence, true threats and intimidation, incitement, and discriminatory harassment -- go unaddressed is a campus where faculty and students will be afraid to speak.... “When people feel physically safe, they’re willing to express themselves. And when people express themselves, their peers feel comfortable doing the same. The resulting sense of comfort is not merely psychological: Knowing what those around us really believe , especially if it’s ugly, can help us take intelligent and informed action. “When either freedom or physical safety is compromised, it undermines the other. When both break down -- well, then we have a crisis on our hands....” Full article at FIRE The Continuing Growth of DEI at Stanford Excerpts (links in the original): “Stanford University, its campus lined with redwoods and eucalyptus trees, has long been known as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship. But in recent years, another ideological force has taken root: ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ … “I have obtained exclusive analysis from inside Stanford outlining the incredible size and scope of the university’s DEI bureaucracy. According to this analysis, Stanford employs at least 177 full-time DEI bureaucrats, spread throughout the university’s various divisions and departments.... “Stanford’s DEI initiatives are not limited to humanities departments or race and gender studies. The highest concentration is in Stanford’s medical school, which has at least 46 diversity officials. A central DEI administration is led by chief DEI officer . . . with sub-departments throughout the medical school. Pediatrics, biosciences, and other specialties all have their own commissars embedded in the structure. “In the sciences, DEI policies have advocated explicit race and sex discrimination in pursuit of ‘diversity.’ The physics department, for example, has committed to a DEI plan with a mandate to ‘increase the diversity of the physics faculty,’ which, in practice, means reducing the number of white and Asian men. Administrators are told to boost the representation of ‘underrepresented groups,’ or ‘URGs,’ through a variety of discriminatory programs and filters. “Ivan Marinovic, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that DEI programs have had a disastrous impact on campus. He describes DEI as a ‘Trojan horse ideology’ that undermines ‘equality before the law, freedom of expression, and due process.’” … Full op-ed by Christopher Rufo at City Journal and also republished at Substack ********** See also "The Path to Hell Is a Sign That Says Diversity, Equity, Inclusion " by Niall Ferguson at YouTube Excerpts: “I know these words sound nice and nobody wants to be against them, but I have to tell you that in George Orwell’s 1984, words mean the opposite of what they appear to mean. “What diversity, equity, inclusion turned out to mean at Harvard was uniformity of thought, no equity, no due process for anybody who fell foul of the Inquisition, and exclusion of conservatives .… "I feel passionately about this because I was a lucky young person. I got to think freely, speak freely, take risks in classrooms, say dumb stuff in tutorials, write stupid stuff in student magazines without the thought police, without the social media, without that sense that there would be terrible, irreparable consequences for my entire life. "Today’s 18, 19, 20, 21-year-olds who are in undergraduate programs in the U.S. live in a climate that’s almost like a totalitarian life, fearful of what their comrades may say to the high authorities. Worrying if the Dean for Student Affairs or the Vice Provost for this or that, or the Diversity-Equity-Inclusion officers will send them the dread email saying would you please report, there’s going to be an investigation into the party that you held in which somebody wore an inappropriate costume. That stuff is like something out of Stalin’s Soviet Union. The secret letter of denunciation. I had one read to me once. It’s sick and we’ve allowed it to happen in the greatest universities in North America." … See also: Stanford's War on Fun by Stanford undergraduate Theo Baker at Stanford Daily. DEI Meets East Germany - U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another for Bias by Stanford Prof. Ivan Marinovic at WSJ. Stanford's Protected Identity Harm Reporting System at Stanford website. Stanford's Computerized Student Case Management System , Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy and Stanford’s Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Not in Our Name -- Politicians Are Using the Rise in Antisemitism as an Excuse to Curtail Free Speech; Jews Must Not Let Them Excerpts (links in the original): “Free speech is not a divisible concept. Either everyone is free to say what they want, no matter how noxious others find it, in order to create and sustain the free market of ideas -- or else speech isn’t free. “Institutions that curtail speech -- that make people’s social media postings grounds for expulsion, that ban or suppress speakers they disagree with, that penalize dissenting opinions in classrooms and workplaces with bad grades and HR reports -- should not be allowed to then turn around and invoke the principles of free speech to defend problematic speech with which they happen to agree, let alone disruptive or illegal behavior. “And yet, recent years have seen the emergence of two different speech regimes, one for alleged oppressors and one for the allegedly oppressed. Huge swaths of often innocent speech by the former is deemed out of bounds, even criminal, whereas any speech coming out of the mouth of someone with a claim to victim status -- including speech that actively incites violence -- is considered sacrosanct. “As a result, there is now a great deal of confusion about freedom of speech, which is a very basic -- and very central -- principle of American history and society. For those interested in being de-confused, which we humbly submit should be all thinking American citizens, herewith: a primer.… “What this looks like in practice is something that every American should be alarmed and repelled by: A small group of powerful people are now using public-private partnerships to silence the Constitution, censor ideas they don’t like, deny their opponents access to banking, credit, the Internet, and other public accommodations. (Here , for the skeptics, is a link to ten examples of times when Facebook, YouTube and Amazon passed censorship policies because the government told them to do so.) “When a platform like Facebook, which currently accounts for a staggering third of all traffic to news sources, colludes with the federal government to suppress reporting on COVID-19, say, or when Twitter, a major digital reincarnation of the public square, kicks out an American political candidate for being too extreme while allowing users like the genocidal leader of Iran to remain, the rules have changed. 'Bad speech,' an old adage goes, 'is best corrected by good speech.' That was true until these public-private fingers hit the scales, making sure that fight couldn’t ever be fair.… “The freedom and successes that Jews have enjoyed in America have been due to the protections afforded by our Constitution, and the respect for individual rights that became part of our culture. The most legitimate tax we owe -- to each other, to our fellow citizens, and to those who fought for our right as Americans to say whatever the f***we want -- is the work we are asked to put in, day in and day out, to protect that freedom. “That’s where our strength lies. Don’t lose sight of it.” Full statement by the editors of Tablet Magazine See also “There Are Two Sets of Rules for Speech – Frat parties with offensive themes are swiftly punished. But publicly contemplate murdering Zionists? That’s a different story.” by Abigail Shrier at Free Press ​ See also “You’re Only for Free Speech if You Defend It for People You Hate” by Alex Gutentag and Michael Shellenberger at Public See also "Some Jewish Students at Stanford Are Learning to Hide Their Identities” at Jewish News of Northern California and “Discriminatory Harassment at UVA” at Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ,” “Stanford’s Program for Reporting Bias ” and “Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage U.S. Has Long History of College Protests; Here's What Happened in the Past Excerpt: “USA TODAY revisited four monumental campus protests to explain how college protests have become a staple of American life and often influence the outcomes of political strife. Here's a look at how previous campus protests unfolded -- and whether they were successful in their causes.” Full article at USA Today Other Articles of Interest What Makes a Protest Antisemitic? Full op-ed at NY Times Can the Current Universities Be Saved? Full op-ed by Victor Davis Hanson at Real Clear Politics America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed Full article by Prof. Tyler A. Harper at The Atlantic Drawing Comparisons Between Current Protests and Those of the Past Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education New Princeton Faculty Group Brings a Common-Sense Approach to Restoring Academic Freedom Full article at Princetonians for Free Speech Samples of Current Activities at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Women’s Sailing Team Wins Fourth National Title About Those Seasonal Allergies Stanford and Bay Area Schools Launch National AI Literacy Day “Surveys suggest that the principal reason students keep controversial ideas to themselves is to avoid the disdain not of their professors but of their peers.” -- Stanford alum and Yale Law School Prof. Stephen Carter April 29, 2024 ​ The Pedagogy That Broke Higher Education Excerpts: “. . . A university isn’t a state -- it can’t simply impose its rules with force. It’s a special kind of community whose legitimacy depends on mutual recognition in a spirit of reason, openness, and tolerance. At the heart of this spirit is free speech, which means more than just chanting, but free speech can’t thrive in an atmosphere of constant harassment. When one faction or another violates this spirit, the whole university is weakened as if stricken with an illness.... “A long, intricate, but essentially unbroken line connects that rejection of the liberal university in 1968 to the orthodoxy on elite campuses today. The students of the ’68 revolt became professors -- the German activist Rudi Dutschke called this strategy the ‘long march through the institutions’ -- bringing their revisionist thinking back to the universities they’d tried to upend. One leader of the Columbia takeover [in the '60's] returned to chair the School of the Arts film program. ‘The ideas of one generation become the instincts of the next,’ D. H. Lawrence wrote. Ideas born in the ’60s, subsequently refined and complicated by critical theory, postcolonial studies, and identity politics, are now so pervasive and unquestioned that they’ve become the instincts of students who are occupying their campuses today. Group identity assigns your place in a hierarchy of oppression. Between oppressor and oppressed, no room exists for complexity or ambiguity. Universal values such as free speech and individual equality only privilege the powerful. Words are violence. There’s nothing to debate.... “Elite universities are caught in a trap of their own making, one that has been a long time coming. They’ve trained pro-Palestinian students to believe that, on the oppressor-oppressed axis, Jews are white and therefore dominant, not 'marginalized,' while Israel is a settler-colonialist state and therefore illegitimate. They’ve trained pro-Israel students to believe that unwelcome and even offensive speech makes them so unsafe that they should stay away from campus. What the universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another.” Full op-ed by George Packer in The Atlantic. Editor’s note: Mr. Packer is the son of Stanford Professor Emeritus Nancy Packer and the late Stanford Professor Herb Packer. About the Cacophony on Campus Excerpts (links in the original): “As campuses continue to be plagued with protests and unrest in response to the October 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed, there’s a ton of hypocrisy projection going on.... ​ “FIRE’s recent survey at Stanford shows that three-quarters of Stanford students believe shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is acceptable, three-fifths believe blocking other students from attending a campus speech is acceptable, and more than a third believe using physical violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable to at least some degree.... ​ "Universities need to take a long hard look at the 'anti-debate' certainty culture they’ve created, in which issues are dealt with by students locking arms, shouting others down, and sometimes even resorting to violence rather than talking to one another. ​ "That’s a terrible sign for the search for truth and cultivating habits people need in a democratic society. It’s also a terrible look for an institution whose primary purpose is cultivating precisely those values and habits in its student body.... "We’ve made a lot of suggestions for how colleges and universities can change course, beginning with “FIRE’s 10 common-sense reforms for colleges and universities ,” and more: Adopting institutional neutrality . Eliminating political litmus tests . Cutting administrative bloat . Five ways university presidents can prove their commitment to free speech . How donors can help fix our broken campuses . More big ideas for reforming higher ed . "The solutions are right there. The only thing that’s missing is the collective will to act on the problem." ​ Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Eternally Radical Idea. See also "Protest and Civil Disobedience Are Two Different Things " by Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington at Chronicle of Higher Education and "The Unreality of Columbia's Liberated Zone " by Michael Powell at The Atlantic. ​ The Civil Rights Rollback Editor's note: The Title IX law, first enacted more than 50 years ago, bans sexual discrimination against individuals at schools that receive federal funding, including colleges and universities. In subsequent years, federal agencies have expanded the scope of Title IX through the issuance of "Dear Colleague" advisory letters and, under the Administrative Procedure Act, regulations. The Department of Education, after years of discussion and debate, has issued new regulations to take effect on August 1, 2024. This action, in turn, has stimulated numerous commentaries, including the following: Excerpts (links in the original): "One of the most concerning is the return of the 'single-investigator' model that was barred under [the prior administration]. This means 'one administrator can act as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury on a Title IX complaint.' "Justin Dillon , a D.C. attorney who has represented accused students for a decade, says of the rollback, 'You arrive at truth by asking hard questions. But single investigators have no incentive to do that, which is why they are the worst possible model if you want to get to the truth. This is going to lead to more erroneous outcomes, and more lawsuits.' ... “'The new regulations are a self-promoting piece of political theater that diminish the rights of all parties,' says Samantha Harris , an attorney who represents both accusers and accused. They 'allow universities,' she adds, 'to violate students’ rights to due process and fundamental fairness in ways that have already been held impermissible by courts around the country.'" ... Full op-ed by Prof. KC Johnson at Free Press. Among other things, Prof. Johnson co-authored the book "Until Proven Innocent" which exposed the hoax in the infamous Duke lacrosse case. See also "Education Department’s Final Title IX Regulations Draw Mixed Reactions" at Higher Ed Dive and "New Title IX Rules Erase Campus Due Process Protections" at Reason . In Praise of Institutional Neutrality in Academia Excerpts (links in the original): "The free-speech organization FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ) defines institutional neutrality as 'the idea that colleges and universities should not, as institutions, take positions on social and political issues unless those issues ‘threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry.’ Instead, these discussions should be left to students and faculty. "The propensity to take stances on every issue was reexamined by higher-ed leaders after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and the disastrous House hearings featuring the presidents of Harvard, UPenn, and MIT. Pushback from alumni, donors, and the public, combined with internal tensions on the left that fractured the usual ideological unity, led many college presidents and chancellors to reconsider the wisdom of continually making political statements. … "University leaders and governing bodies should formally adopt policies of neutrality to return our institutions to being bastions of diverse thought and debate and to restore trust among students, faculty, alumni, and the wider community. We can prioritize truth-seeking and intellectual freedom by adopting institutional neutrality today." Full op-ed by UNC Prof. Mark McNeilly at James Martin Center See also “Institutional Neutrality ” from this quarter’s Democracy and Disagreement Series at Stanford (video of April 16, 2024 lecture featuring Stanford professors Emily Levine and Diego Zambrano and Yale professor Robert Post ). Other Articles of Interest University Shares New Free Speech Policies with ASSU Full article at Stanford Daily Say 'Yes' to the First Amendment Full article at Minding the Campus In This Time of Chaos, Choose Stanford Full article at Stanford Review ​ How to Reboot Free Speech on Campus Full op-ed by David French at NY Times ​ College Protesters Want Amnesty; At Stake: Tuition, Legal Charges, Grades and Graduation Full article at Associated Press ​ UC Berkeley’s Campus Is in Turmoil; It’s Unlike Anything in Recent Memory Full article at Politico Reluctance to Discuss Controversial Issues on Campus: Raw Numbers from the 2023 Campus Expression Survey Full article at Heterodox Academy If AI Takes Over More Work of College Graduates, Where Does That Leave Higher Ed? Full article at Higher Ed Dive How to Fix College Finances? Eliminate Faculty, Then Students Full satire at Washington Post Samples of Current Activities at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. ChatGPT’s Latest Bot Behaves Like Humans, Only Better Stanford Medicine-Led Study Identifies Novel Target for Epilepsy Treatment A Greener Future Begins with Small Steps Stanford Wins Fifth Consecutive NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championship “Critical discourse was in critical condition on American campuses even before reactions to the war between Israel and Hamas left it with no discernible pulse.” – Stanford Prof. Paul Brest April 22, 2024 ​ Punishments Rise as Student Protests Escalate Excerpts (links in the original): “Six months after the Israel-Hamas war set off a new wave of campus activism in the United States, students are still protesting in full force. And at some institutions administrators are responding to student demonstrators -- especially supporters of Palestinians -- with increasingly harsh discipline . “In late March, Vanderbilt University police arrested four students and a local journalist after protesters took over the chancellor’s office, demanding the administration restore an Israeli divestment-related amendment removed from the student government ballot. Three students were subsequently expelled and others received suspensions or disciplinary probation. “Less than two weeks later in California, 20 students were arrested at Pomona College -- and some have since been suspended --after masked protesters from the Pomona Divest from Apartheid coalition stormed the president’s office and allegedly hurled a racial slur at an administrator.... “‘The outside pressures are real, larger than they’ve been in my memory and are going to continue to build,’ said Tom Ginsburg, a law professor at the University of Chicago and faculty director of the university’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. He noted that incidents of students shouting down campus speakers with whom they disagree in recent years is part of the larger context. “‘That’s been building and it’s changed the academic culture in a bad way,’ Ginsburg said. ‘We’re seeing some backlash against that and university leaders are caught in the middle.’ … Full article at Inside Higher Ed Universities Must Be Freed from the Safe Space Bureaucrats Excerpts: “Recent events have demonstrated the need to re-establish free inquiry, free speech and academic freedom at universities throughout North America. But current efforts by academic administrators to remedy the situation are often missing the point. You cannot restore free speech by creating further restrictions on what speech is appropriate, and by focusing on what sanctions may be appropriate and when. “The United States has a legal system that not only enshrines free speech, but creates a strong barrier against the success of false or misleading accusations. Due process and evidentiary hearings with the right to confront accusers are central features of legal proceedings, that, while they may make it difficult for alleged victims to bring suits to seek the justice they believe they deserve, also protect the innocent. As English jurist William Blackstone famously put it, ‘It is better that 10 guilty persons should escape than one innocent suffer.’ “University tribunals are famously not law courts, but that does not imply they shouldn’t uphold high legal bars when it comes to complaints about conduct. Rather, given that one of the purposes of higher education is to encourage intellectual discomfort as a means to motivate thinking and reflection, universities should be extremely hesitant to take any inhibitory actions at all. Even more so because of the recent pressure, in the skewed notion of what constitutes a safe environment, to adjudicate offenses that should never have required adjudication at all.... “There is no place for generic ‘safe spaces’ for students who, for one reason or another, feel victimized without them. Nor should students feel that they should control the educational direction of the institution they are attending. If they find the environment not conducive to what they are seeking in their education, they are free to work with faculty to try and improve it. But the final decisions on curricular issues should not be theirs, and if they are not satisfied, they are free to study elsewhere. Faculty should never be concerned about possible retribution for raising controversial issues within the classroom or while mentoring students. Moreover, and perhaps most important, human resources, DEI and Title IX offices (which monitor compliance with U.S. prohibitions on sex-based discrimination in federally-funded education programs) should have no place in governing what faculty say in the classroom or think outside of it....” Full op-ed by Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krauss at National Post ​ Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya’s Recent Lecture at MIT on How the Government, Silicon Valley and Even Stanford Had Censored Him Description of the Lecture: “Stanford University medical school professor and epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya, a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration on pandemic response, spoke at MIT on April 4, 2024. Dr. Bhattacharya spoke of, among other issues, the censorship his research and commentary faced under pressure from the U.S. government, which later became the subject of a case recently argued at the Supreme Court. Dr. Bhattacharya was hosted by the MIT Students for Open Inquiry, with additional support provided by the MIT Free Speech Alliance.” Full lecture including detailed slides now posted at YouTube See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and where we have asked, among other things, “How did it come about that Stanford has taken the legal position, in its own filings before the U.S. Supreme Court and elsewhere, that it is somehow ok for non-faculty members at Stanford, or anyone for that matter, to play a role in censoring Stanford's own faculty members and, still worse, in areas that are within the recognized expertise of those faculty members?” With State Bans on DEI, Some Universities Find a Workaround: Rebranding Excerpt (link in the original): “At the University of Tennessee, the campus D.E.I. program is now called the Division of Access and Engagement. “Louisiana State University also rebranded its diversity office after Jeff Landry, a Trump-backed Republican, was elected governor last fall. Its Division of Inclusion, Civil Rights and Title IX is now called the Division of Engagement, Civil Rights and Title IX. “And at the University of Oklahoma, the diversity office is now the Division of Access and Opportunity . “In what appears to be an effort to placate or, even head fake, opponents of diversity and equity programs, university officials are relaunching their D.E.I. offices under different names, changing the titles of officials, and rewriting requirements to eliminate words like “diversity” and “equity.” In some cases, only the words have changed....” Full article at NY Times Other Articles of Interest Stanford Daily Suggests Specific Priorities for Incoming President Jon Levin Full editorial at Stanford Daily USC Cancels Valedictorian’s Speech After Jewish Groups Object Full article at NY Times Quinnipiac Law Scholarship Excludes Heterosexual Males, Faces Title IX Complaint Full article at College Fix Two-Thirds of U.S. Colleges and Universities Require DEI Classes to Graduate Full article at NY Post A Tale of Two Protests: UVA v. Berkeley Law Full op-ed by David Lat at Substack. See also “No, the Berkeley Law Student Didn’t Have a First Amendment Right to Interrupt the Dean’s Backyard Party” at FIRE’s website Annual Provosts’ Survey Shows Need for AI Policies, Worries Over Campus Speech Full article at Inside Higher Ed Introducing Harvard’s Values Statement Full article at Harvard Crimson Why I’m Leaving Clark University Full article at WSJ Samples of Current Activities at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Gossiping Can Give You an Edge AI Improves Accuracy of Skin Cancer Diagnoses in Stanford Medicine-Led Study ‘Geoeconomics’ Explains How Countries Flex Their Financial Muscles Two Key Brain Systems Are Central to Psychosis, Stanford Medicine-led Study Finds "The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true." – Albert Einstein April 15, 2024 ​ Updated Responses to Reader Survey Click here to see updated responses to our Reader Survey: What should be the two or three highest priorities for Stanford's current or next president? For those still interested in responding, the survey form remains available here . Stifling University Free Speech: A Tale of Two Campuses Excerpts (links in the original): “Last week, student demonstrators at the University of Michigan drowned out the University president’s speech during an Honors Convocation and brought an end to the event. The protest was organized by the TAHRIR Coalition, a group of 80 University of Michigan student organizations advocating for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. Ironically, the Michigan student chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union , once associated with free speech, is part of the coalition and helped to organize the protest. “Also last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D) was at the University of Maryland to deliver the Irving and Renee Milchberg Endowed Lecture on the subject of ‘Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century.’ Here, too, student protestors shouted down and heckled Rep. Raskin. Here, too, the event ended abruptly. Raskin had only been able to deliver a few minutes of his intended lecture. “In Michigan and Maryland, we see two polar opposite responses to infringements on freedom of speech: one that endeavors to uphold free speech values and one, while using words that suggest otherwise, that fundamentally undermines campus speech. We can only hope that the Michigan model prevails. “Darryll Pines, president of the University of Maryland, seemed positive about the outcome of the Raskin lecture. ‘What you saw play out actually was democracy and free speech and academic freedom’ [said Pines]. Professor Howard Milchberg, a professor of physics at the university, reiterated the president’s sentiments: ‘It didn’t go as planned…it was an actual exercise of democracy rather than a story of about democracy.’ “Back at Michigan, the response of the university president was, at first, to release a fairly milquetoast statement on the right to protest but not to disrupt. This was followed, however, by three students who had been identified as part of the protest being issued citations for trespassing. These students are barred from entering four campus buildings and may now be unable, in a poetic turn of events, to attend their own graduation....” Full article at Real Clear Education Campus Censorship Set for Record-Breaking 2024 Excerpts (links in the original): . . . “2023 was the worst year ever for campus deplatforming attempts -- and 2024 is already on track to blow it out of the water. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has already recorded 45 deplatforming attempts as of 15 March, a pace of around 200 for the year, but I suspect that it will be even higher as shout-downs have become such a popular tactic among activists. Free speech on campus has been threatened for a long time, it’s not getting better, and anyone who can’t see that is being willfully blind. “FIRE noted a record-setting 155 deplatforming attempts in 2023. Almost half (70) of those succeeded -- also a new record. These included the Whitworth University disinvitation of Chinese dissident Xi Van Fleet ; the cancellation of multiple screenings of the film Israelism at Hunter College and the University of Pennsylvania; and the shout-down of 5th Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford Law School....” Full op-ed at UnHerd Stanford’s Faculty Senate Postpones Motion to Rescind Its Prior Condemnation of Dr. Scott Atlas Excerpts: “Stanford University’s Faculty Senate will weigh dueling motions [on Thursday, April 11] about whether to rescind its 2020 condemnation of Scott W. Atlas, a Hoover Institution senior fellow who was an adviser to former President Donald Trump about Covid-19. “At the height of the pandemic, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution criticizing Atlas for promoting ‘a view of Covid-19 that contradicts medical science.’ It cited his remarks that discouraged mask-wearing and that encouraged Michiganders to ‘rise up’ against their governor in response to public-health measures, among others. The November 2020 resolution, which was approved by 85 percent of the senate membership and drew national attention, characterized Atlas’s behavior as ‘anathema to our community, our values, and our belief that we should use knowledge for good.’ … “‘Our motion to rescind the censure of Atlas is not about relitigating the 2020 motion but about restoring due process, which everyone recognizes was not given to Atlas,’ John W. Etchemendy, a former Stanford provost and one of the faculty members behind the effort, said in an email. ‘I believe the great majority of senators acknowledges the flawed process and is in favor of correcting that mistake.’ “At the same time, the Faculty Senate committee that sets the agenda has proposed a competing motion: to table the call for a retraction until it undergoes further discussion....” Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. According to Stanford Daily , at last Thursday's Faculty Senate meeting, the motion to rescind the censure of Dr. Atlas was not adopted but instead was sent to committee. Colleges Are Supposed to Make Citizens , Which Is Why Protecting the Right to Protest Is Essential Excerpts (links in the original): “In the now infamous December 5th Congressional hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT and UPenn, Republican Congressman Brandon Williams told Claudine Gay that ‘your mission is to educate’ but all he sees is ‘hateful and threatening anti-Semitic demonstrations.’ ... “The shut-up-and-study crowd ignores the fact that virtually every college and university in the United States has a dual mission: the development of students’ critical thinking skills (via knowledge production and dissemination) and the preparation of students to be informed, engaged citizens.... “Appealing to safety concerns and community belonging, a number of universities, including Columbia, Cornell and Lehigh, have tightened their rules governing student demonstrations. At least three schools -- Columbia, Brandeis and George Washington University -- have suspended their chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman noted that the failure of these universities to offer detailed justifications for the suspensions has ‘left the impression that they may be engaging in viewpoint-based censorship, and attempting to deliberately silence pro-Palestinian voices critical of Israel.’ … “The administrative impulse to avoid controversy at all costs is making a mockery of higher education’s avowed commitment to preparing students for citizenship. When student free expression rights are trampled on, they are deprived of the opportunity to practice the hard work of living in community with people who hold diverse views. We are reminded here of Jacob Mchangama’s astute observation that ‘To impose silence and call it tolerance does not make it so.’ How will students learn to navigate the sometimes rough-and-tumble world of life in a pluralistic, multicultural democracy? When their future neighbors put up lawn signs with messages they oppose or find offensive, there will be no dean on call to remove them.... “To be clear, while colleges and universities should have a high level of tolerance for confrontational and disruptive student protests, there are some basic ground rules that must be followed. The targeted harassment of individual campus community members is, of course, verboten. So too is the heckler’s veto -- that is, shouting down campus events -- as happened last month at the University of Michigan when pro-Palestine student protesters derailed the university’s annual Honors Convocation. It’s also important for students to keep in mind that exercising their free expression rights does not extend to violating reasonable time, place and manner restrictions such as keeping clear of fire exits or prohibiting the use of megaphones in the library.” … Full op-ed by Carlton Professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder at “Banished” on Substack Other Articles of Interest Protestors Disrupt Dinner for Graduating UC Berkeley Law Students at Dean’s Home Full article at Yahoo as reprinted from Telegraph. See also copy of Dean Chemerinsky’s letter as well as NBC News video of the incident. Poll Shows Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Efforts to Roll Back Campus Due Process Rights Full article at FIRE website Legal Experts Say Pending Title IX Changes Threaten Free Speech and Due Process Full article at College Fix ​ Employers Find Gen Z Is Failing in the American Workplace Full article at Red Balloon. Compared to Washington Post Gen Z Needs to Be Treated Differently. Harvard DEI Office Plans Another Year of Segregated Graduation Ceremonies, Finally Adds One for Jewish Students. Full article at Campus Reform Harvard Students Form Academic Freedom Group Amid Debates Over Speech, Neutrality Full article at Harvard Crimson Tara VanDerveer Announces Retirement After 38 Seasons at Stanford Full article at Go Stanford. See also Stanford Daily . Samples of Current Activities at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Study Flags Unexpected Cells in Lung as Suspected Source of Severe COVID Stanford Doctors Develop First FDA-Approved Gene-Editing Treatment Generative AI Develops Potential New Drugs for Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Navigating the Nuance: The Art of Disagreeing Without Conflict I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts." - Abraham Lincoln April 8, 2024 ​ Results of Last Week’s Reader Survey Click here to see responses to last week’s Reader Survey: What should be the two or three highest priorities for Stanford's current or next president? For those still interested in responding, the survey form remains available here . More About Jonathan Levin, Stanford’s Next President [Editor’s note: Last Thursday, we circulated a special edition of our Newsletter with a link to Stanford Report regarding the selection of Jonanthan Levin as Stanford’s next president, effective August 1. We are adding below some excerpts and links from other news sources.] Excerpts from Stanford Daily , “Incoming University President Jonathan Levin ’94 Charts Optimistic Future” (links in the original): “Graduate School of Business (GSB) Dean Jonathan Levin ’94 is charting a new direction for the University.... [Richard] Saller will continue to serve as president on an interim basis until Levin assumes office on Aug. 1. “‘We want students to be comfortable with complexity and to hear many different views, and to think for themselves about complex events in the world,’ [Levin] told The Daily on Thursday. “His position aligns with Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez’s public commitment to neutrality over their tenure. Levin said he would work closely with Saller and Martinez during his leadership transition. “Over the past year, university presidents including Saller have contended with mounting political scrutiny over antisemitism, Islamophobia and free speech boundaries on campus amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. Lawmakers signaled at a congressional hearing last month that universities such as Stanford could face investigations.... “‘Universities should try to get out of the business of making statements on current events and focus on encouraging students to listen to different perspectives and engage in dialogue,’ Levin said. “However, ‘that doesn’t mean abdicating responsibility -- it means that the responsibility of University leaders is to foster a culture of dialogue,’ he continued. “Levin acknowledged that the challenges to higher education ‘are real and they’re going to need thoughtful attention, but the foundational strength that makes American universities the envy of the world endures.’” … Excerpts from Stanford Review , “A New Day at Stanford” (links in the original): “. . . We thank President Saller -- who recently sat down for a lengthy interview with the Review -- for his stability and sanity during a year of great upheaval. But as this tumult subsides, we are excited that 51-year-old Jonathan Levin, current dean of the Graduate School of Business has been named Stanford’s 13th president. “Among many faculty members, Hoover fellows, and us at the Review, Levin was a highly anticipated candidate for the Stanford presidency. He has demonstrated exceptional leadership capacity, support for free speech, and a keen ability to balance academic success with administrative responsibilities. Unlike recent administrative picks at top universities, Levin was clearly chosen on the merits of his experience and capabilities, not his racial or sexual identity. For the past eight years, Levin has led Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. And in each of the five most recent years, Stanford has ranked number one on Bloomberg’s list of the best business schools based on surveys of students, alumni, and employers. “Most importantly, Jonathan Levin has seen the inner workings of Stanford from every angle: as a student, a professor, and an administrator. He completed his undergraduate education at Stanford in 1994 with degrees in both English and Mathematics. Having a foot in both the humanities and quantitative subjects will ensure that Levin sees Stanford as more than a mere laboratory. He later taught in the Department of Economics, of which he became the chair in 2011. Then in 2016, Levin assumed his current role as head of the Graduate School of Business. He has experienced firsthand the frustrations of Stanford students, the bureaucracy dealt with by faculty, and the bloat that plagues our administration. Professor Jennifer Aaker, a member of the Presidential Search Committee, even claims that Levin is 'pro-fun.' “As an academic, Levin is no slouch.... [He] has excelled in his field without taking shortcuts, earning the John Bates Clark medal in 2011. The Clark medal is given to the most promising economist under the age of forty and is widely regarded as one of the field’s most prestigious awards, second only to the Nobel Prize in Economics. “He has also defended academic liberties in his leadership of the GSB. In November of 2022, Levin allowed the GSB’s Classical Liberalism Initiative to sponsor the controversial Academic Freedom Conference. On free speech, he stated , 'We’re trying to create a collision of ideas that gives rise to research and to learning, and we give faculty and students extraordinary freedom to that end to pursue that goal.' Based on his actions, Levin’s presidency promises a return to free expression and institutional neutrality in an era when the climate at universities is increasingly restrictive....” See also: “Renowned Economist to Take the Stanford Helm at a Time of Profound Upheaval at U.S. Universities” at WSJ , "Stanford Appoints Business School Dean As Its Next President” at Washington Post and “Dr. Levin Faces the Challenge of Guiding the University Through Politically Fraught Times” at NY Times . One-Sided Departmental Statements Are a Threat to Academic Freedom Excerpts: “In the post-October 7 world, many of the fiercest battles in the campus culture wars have taken a strangely Talmudic form: What is antisemitism? How should we demarcate the boundary between antisemitism and anti-Zionism? What is the meaning of ‘from the river to the sea’? All of these interpretive skirmishes are playing out on the shifting ground of the debate over free expression: What can be said? What is forbidden to be said? And what must be said? “Nowhere have those ritual collisions been more charged than at my own institutions, Barnard College and Columbia University. And nowhere is the power of those battles to illuminate the limitations of the left’s newfound embrace of free expression more evident than in the fight that emerged after the Barnard administration removed the ‘Statement of Palestinian Solidarity’ from the website of the department of women, gender, and sexuality studies (DWGSS) soon after October 7. “All of this underscores the problem with departmental political side-taking in the name of academic freedom.... “I absolutely support my colleagues’ right to hold, and to express as individuals, the views contained in the DWGSS statement, misguided though I think they are. But I do not support their right to impose those views on Barnard and Columbia students. Despite the sinister image of jackbooted administrators tearing down a website, the view of the statement’s removal as ‘censorship’ reflects a confusion about the varying speech rules and rights that should attach to speakers in different zones of the academic workplace. Properly understood, the prohibition on doctrinaire departmental statements doesn’t quash academic freedom -- it protects it.” … Full op-ed by Barnard and Columbia Prof. Jonathan Rieder at Chronicle of Higher Education Mandatory DEI Statements Are Ideological Pledges of Allegiance; Time to Abandon Them Excerpts: “On a posting for a position as an assistant professor in international and comparative education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, applicants are required to submit a CV, a cover letter, a research statement, three letters of reference, three or more writing samples, and a statement of teaching philosophy that includes a description of their ‘orientation toward diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.’ “At Harvard and elsewhere, hiring for academic jobs increasingly requires these so-called diversity statements, which Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning describes as being ‘about your commitment to furthering EDIB within the context of institutions of higher education.’ “By requiring academics to profess -- and flaunt -- faith in DEI, the proliferation of diversity statements poses a profound challenge to academic freedom. “A closer look at the Bok Center’s page on diversity statements illustrates how. “For the purpose of showcasing attentiveness to DEI, the Center suggests answering questions such as: ‘How does your research engage with and advance the well-being of socially marginalized communities?’; ‘Do you know how the following operate in the academy: implicit bias, different forms of privilege, (settler-)colonialism, systemic and interpersonal racism, homophobia, heteropatriarchy, and ableism?’; ‘How do you account for the power dynamics in the classroom, including your own positionality and authority?’; ‘How do you design course assessments with EDIB in mind?’; and ‘How have you engaged in or led EDIB campus initiatives or programming?’ “The Bok Center’s how-to page mirrors the expectation that DEI statements will essentially constitute pledges of allegiance that enlist academics into the DEI movement by dint of soft-spoken but real coercion: If you want the job or the promotion, play ball -- or else.... “It would be hard to overstate the degree to which many academics at Harvard and beyond feel intense and growing resentment against the DEI enterprise because of features that are perhaps most evident in the demand for DEI statements. I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice. The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince. The practice of demanding them ought to be abandoned, both at Harvard and beyond.” Full op-ed by Harvard Law School Prof. Randall L. Kennedy at Harvard Crimson Concerns Raised Over Universities Signing Over Students’ Private FERPA Data to Voter Data Companies Excerpts (link in the original): “A relatively new report outlines how universities nationwide have signed over students’ private FERPA data to a third-party vendor that reviews their personal information to help study college students’ voting trends. “The nine-page report describes how a national voting study run out of Tufts’ Institute for Democracy in Higher Education gets university administrators from across the country to agree to release students’ Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, where it's kept, to a voter data company.... “For a university to participate, its leaders sign a two-page contract that states administrators are allowing the National Student Clearinghouse to release their students’ FERPA data to a ‘third party vendor,’ a company not named in the contract, according to the 2022-2033 reauthorization form.... More than 1,200 campuses participate in the study.... “‘The third-party vendor of choice from inception until recently has been Catalist, the Democrat’s exclusive voter data provider. Tufts maintains a relationship with Catalist but also has an agreement with L2 Political for analysis of the NSC data,’ the report states.” … Full article at College Fix Colleges Use His Antisemitism Definition to Censor; the Author Calls It a Travesty Excerpts: “When Kenneth Stern drafted the working definition of antisemitism 20 years ago as director of the antisemitism division for the American Jewish Committee, he wanted to help researchers better understand the frequency of violence targeted at Jewish communities. “Antisemitism, he determined, should include any rhetorical and physical manifestations of hatred toward Jews, their community institutions, and their religious facilities. He exempted criticism of Israel, ‘similar to that leveled against any other country,’ but said that ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor’ and ‘holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ should count as antisemitism.... “Stern, who is now the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, is alarmed by its use on college campuses. He believes colleges and politicians who adopt his definition into antidiscrimination policies could then censor anyone who criticizes or says something controversial about Israel. While the definition itself should help people identify clear harassment, using it in legislation allows colleges and lawmakers to clamp down on any protected speech, no matter if it’s harmful or offensive, Stern says.” … Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also "The Problem with Defining Antisemitism " at New Yorker. Other Articles of Interest Stanford Department of Athletics Approves Name Image Likeness Collective for Stanford Athletes Full article at Stanford Daily While Other Elite Universities See Applications Spike, Harvard’s Applications Drop Full article at College Fix. See also Just the News . Protecting a Regime of Robust Speech on the Campus Without Falling into Relativism Full op-ed by Amherst Prof. Emeritus Hadley Arkes at Public Discourse The Fall of Critical Thinking Full op-ed by Prof. Bruce W. Davidson at Brownstone The Triumph of ‘Equity’ Over ‘Equality’ Full op-ed by Dartmouth Prof. Darren M. McMahon at Chronicle of Higher Education Samples of Current Activities at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. SLAC Completes Construction of the Largest Digital Camera Ever Built for Astronomy Stanford Prof. Michael Genesereth Is on a Mission to Bring Logic Education to High Schools Are Long COVID Sufferers Falling Through the Cracks? Old Immune Systems Revitalized in Stanford Medicine Mouse Study, Improving Vaccine Response A four-minute spectacle will not repair the fabric of our country rent by years of mutual distrust, yet if enough of us stand in the path of the moon’s shadow on April 8, the eclipse may remind us of the unity we long to restore.” — David Baron, former NPR science correspondent April 1, 2024 Editor's notes: We have included with this Newsletter an optional survey function, immediately below, and which is something we might periodically include in the future as well. Second, for the past 18 months we have culled through as many as 80 articles a week to select a much smaller number that might be of interest to readers. This past week, we came upon two articles that are especially well written and very much on point regarding issues specifically at Stanford as well as nationally. We thus are posting only these two articles, with the additional suggestion that readers click on the links at the end of each article to read them in their entirety. ​ ********** ​ Reader Survey: Tell Us What You Think If interested, please click here to answer the question, "What should be the two or three highest priorities for Stanford's current or next president?" Responses are anonymous. ********** From Stanford Student Theo Baker at The Atlantic: The War at Stanford Excerpts: “. . . For four months, two rival groups of protesters, separated by a narrow bike path, faced off on Stanford’s palm-covered grounds. The ‘Sit-In to Stop Genocide’ encampment was erected by students in mid-October, even before Israeli troops had crossed into Gaza, to demand that the university divest from Israel and condemn its behavior. Posters were hung equating Hamas with Ukraine and Nelson Mandela. Across from the sit-in, a rival group of pro-Israel students eventually set up the ‘Blue and White Tent’ to provide, as one activist put it, a ‘safe space’ to ‘be a proud Jew on campus.’ Soon it became the center of its own cluster of tents, with photos of Hamas’s victims sitting opposite the rubble-ridden images of Gaza and a long (and incomplete) list of the names of slain Palestinians displayed by the students at the sit-in.... “‘We’ve had protests in the past,’ Richard Saller, the university’s interim president, told me in November -- about the environment, and apartheid, and Vietnam. But they didn’t pit ‘students against each other’ the way that this conflict has. “I’ve spoken with Saller, a scholar of Roman history, a few times over the past six months in my capacity as a student journalist.... “When we first met, a week before October 7, I asked Saller about this. Did Stanford have a moral duty to denounce the war in Ukraine, for example, or the ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims in China? ‘On international political issues, no,’ he said. ‘That’s not a responsibility for the university as a whole, as an institution.’ … “In making such decisions, Saller works closely with [Jenny] Martinez, Stanford’s provost. I happened to interview her, too, a few days before October 7, not long after she’d been appointed. When I asked about her hopes for the job, she said that a ‘priority is ensuring an environment in which free speech and academic freedom are preserved.’ “We talked about the so-called Leonard Law -- a provision unique to California that requires private universities to be governed by the same First Amendment protections as public ones. This restricts what Stanford can do in terms of penalizing speech, putting it in a stricter bind than Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, or any of the other elite private institutions that have more latitude to set the standards for their campus (whether or not they have done so)…. “By March, it seemed that [Saller’s] views had solidified. He said he knew he was ‘a target,’ but he was not going to be pushed into issuing any more statements. The continuing crisis seems to have granted him new insight. ‘I am certain that whatever I say will not have any material effect on the war in Gaza.’ It’s hard to argue with that. “People tend to blame the campus wars on two villains: dithering administrators and radical student activists. But colleges have always had dithering administrators and radical student activists. To my mind, it’s the average students who have changed.... “The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong. You don’t have to understand what you’re arguing for in order to argue for it. You don’t have to be able to name the river or the sea under discussion to chant 'From the river to the sea.' This kind of obliviousness explains how one of my friends, a gay activist, can justify Hamas’s actions, even though it would have the two of us -- an outspoken queer person and a Jewish reporter -- killed in a heartbeat. A similar mentality can exist on the other side: I have heard students insist on the absolute righteousness of Israel yet seem uninterested in learning anything about what life is like in Gaza. “I’m familiar with the pull of achievement culture -- after all, I’m a product of the same system. I fell in love with Stanford as a 7-year-old, lying on the floor of an East Coast library and picturing all the cool technology those West Coast geniuses were dreaming up. I cried when I was accepted; I spent the next few months scrolling through the course catalog, giddy with anticipation. I wanted to learn everything. “I learned more than I expected. Within my first week here, someone asked me: ‘Why are all Jews so rich?’ In 2016, when Stanford’s undergraduate senate had debated a resolution against anti-Semitism, one of its members argued that the idea of ‘Jews controlling the media, economy, government, and other societal institutions’ represented ‘a very valid discussion.’ (He apologized, and the resolution passed.) In my dorm last year, a student discussed being Jewish and awoke the next day to swastikas and a portrait of Hitler affixed to his door.... “As a friend emailed me not long ago: ‘A place that was supposed to be a sanctuary from such unreason has become a factory for it.’ “Readers may be tempted to discount the conduct displayed at Stanford. After all, the thinking goes, these are privileged kids doing what they always do: embracing faux-radicalism in college before taking jobs in fintech or consulting. These students, some might say, aren’t representative of America. “And yet they are representative of something: of the conduct many of the most accomplished students in my generation have accepted as tolerable, and what that means for the future of our country. I admire activism. We need people willing to protest what they see as wrong and take on entrenched systems of repression. But we also need to read, learn, discuss, accept the existence of nuance, embrace diversity of thought, and hold our own allies to high standards. More than ever, we need universities to teach young people how to do all of this." … Full op-ed by Stanford sophomore Theo Baker at The Atlantic. As noted above, we have presented here only a small portion of Theo’s article and we again urge readers to read it in its entirety. The Coddling of the American Undergraduate Excerpts: “. . . Today, the ‘college experience’ centered on a residential life that promises to envelope students in a warm, intimate community has hardened into something more totalizing than even the blundering late-20th-century project of enforcing political correctness. An expansive definition of ‘harm’ has fueled the prioritization of an equally expansive definition of ‘safety’ as the aim of student life. The newest iteration of campus paternalism, or perhaps its terminal acceleration, was precipitated in 2011 by a wave of campus activism in response to concerns about sexual assault.... “The ‘hostile environment’ was a repurposing of a concept from labor law to the new goal of measuring student perceptions of their safety and comfort.... To enforce a nonhostile environment, the new policies encouraged (and in many instances required) a campus culture of reporting on private interactions in which sexual misconduct was revealed or just suggested -- overheard conversations, social-media posts, rumors, confidential confessions -- even if the information was unverified or the alleged victims declined to make a report. The Title IX model was easily extrapolated to race-related offenses, with the creation of mechanisms that permitted anonymous ‘bias reporting’ of slights based on race and other group identities. Campus climate surveys, which regularly solicit anonymous student reports of real or perceived threats to one’s sense of safety on campus, all but ensure a regular stream of complaints that could be evidence of a hostile environment, and thereby license ongoing intervention into students’ interpersonal relationships. “As colleges have increasingly come to view student life as an arena to be policed for hostility, their behavior-monitoring paternalism has given way to the behavior-prohibiting paternalism it was meant to replace. After information-technology groups at Stanford University launched an Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative discouraging the use of such offensive terms as ‘walk-in’ and ‘you guys’ in 2020, and the university imposed draconian restrictions on student gatherings, many complained, even forming a group called ‘Stanford Hates Fun.’ (After much criticism and even ridicule, Stanford removed the language-initiative document from the university website in January 2023.) “Stanford has perhaps gone further than its peer institutions in its heavy-handedness.... The new imperative to avert hostile environments is different from the old paternalism. Like the old paternalism, it directs students’ personal interactions with faculty and each other, it surveils their speech, and it restricts their freedom of association. But under the old in loco parentis dispensation, such restraint was temporary, intended to prepare students for a future independence in which they could freely do what was prohibited on campus. The new paternalism holds out no such future independence. Instead, students are being prepared for a life of continued monitoring and restriction in professional and social life, a lifetime of dependence on the adult analogs of student-life administrators and grievance officers, located in human-resource departments and even in Facebook group-moderation policies.... “If genuine education is to remain possible at institutions that seem increasingly intent on strangling every spontaneous interaction within them, becoming a little more ungovernable might unfortunately become the means of attaining it.” Full op-ed by University of Houston Prof. Rita Koganzon at Chronicle of Higher Education as republished from Hedgehog Review. ********** We also refer readers to these articles long posted at our website: Back to Basics at Stanford , where we outline detailed proposed reforms to address the types of issues discussed in the articles above. Theo Baker’s “Inside Stanford’s War on Fun ” at Stanford Daily and Francesca Block’s “Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students ” at Free Press. Stanford’s Computerized Student Case Management System which has all too often replaced human counseling and judgment with a highly bureaucratized and even dangerous automated system and which we believe may be a significant cause in recent years for student disaffection as well as several highly publicized student crises. Stanford’s Program for Reporting Bias , even anonymously, and which largely uses the same forms and automated case management software as are used on campuses nationwide and, in the process, have further contributed to the divisive cultures now found on campuses nationwide. Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative and where we have been advised that, although the list (a PDF copy of which is posted at our website) is no longer available to the public, various departments may be using the list anyway. What also is of concern is that this and many of the other programs described above are largely if not exclusively the result of decisions by Stanford's non-teaching administrative staff, apparently now in excess of 13,000 in number. Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy and its Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy , all of which are not only very costly but we believe are a fundamental source of the problems discussed above. “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” – Socrates March 25, 2024 Competing Perspectives of College Presidents - Their Campus Versus Everywhere Else Excerpts: “The past five months have shown the world just how toxic speech is on college campuses. The climate for open inquiry and dialogue is under attack nationwide, and students are scared to speak, question, and express themselves freely. Using disparaging rhetoric, even violence, to prevent speech is now commonplace on campus, and thus, many students are turning inward, and genuine liberal learning is being interrupted. Yet, most college presidents believe their campuses are perfect examples of viewpoint diversity. “The 2024 edition of Inside Higher Ed’s survey of college and university presidents sadly reveals that many higher education leaders are oblivious to the issues of free speech on their own campuses. This should give anyone interested in the state of our colleges and universities pause. The 2024 survey captured the voices of 380 presidents, 206 from public and 174 from private institutions. While presidents remain hopeful for the future of their schools, they clearly are unaware of what is happening outside their very offices.... ​ "Nearly 82 percent of college and university presidents rate the climate for open inquiry and dialogue on their campus as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ 92 percent of presidents who have been in charge of their institutions for 10 or more years rate their campus’s dialogue as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ … “Oddly enough, when these leaders were asked about open inquiry in higher education generally, just 30 percent of collegiate presidents believed that the climate for open inquiry and dialogue in higher education generally is good or excellent. And . . . presidents with 10 or more years at their current institution . . . rate the overall collegiate speech climate poorly -- just 21 percent agree that it’s ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ …” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sara Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. A copy of the survey itself is available for downloading at Inside Higher Ed. The Censorship Activities of Stanford Internet Observatory and Its Virality Project [Editor's note: The issues discussed in the following article were heard in oral arguments last week before the U.S. Supreme Court and are summarized, among many places, at Tech Policy , NY Times and Reason . Copies of the amicus briefs from the Twitter Files journalists and from Stanford as well as a transcript of the oral arguments are now posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage , and a recording of the oral arguments is available at C-SPAN . Note also two Supreme Court decisions a week before that, both of which concluded unanimously that officials who block critics on social media could conceivably be violating the First Amendment, although the pending Murthy case raises numerous other issues that could affect the court’s decision.] ​ Excerpts (links in the original): “Initiated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and led by the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the Virality Project sought to censor those who questioned government Covid-19 policies. The Virality Project primarily focused on so-called ‘anti-vaccine’ ‘misinformation;’ however, my Twitter Files investigations with Matt Taibbi revealed this included ‘true stories of vaccine side effects .’ … “Led by former CIA fellow Renee DiResta, the Virality Project functioned as an intermediary for government censorship. Ties between the US government and the academic research center were extremely close. DHS had 'fellows' embedded at the Stanford Internet Observatory, while SIO had interns embedded at CISA, and former DHS staff contributed to the Virality Project’s final report.... “The Virality Project hosted a launch with the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as part of the Surgeon General’s campaign against ‘misinformation.’ In the presentation, Renee DiResta also introduced Matt Masterson, former senior adviser at DHS, and now a ‘non-resident policy fellow’ at SIO. “Murthy ends the presentation by telling Renee, ‘I just want to say thank you to you, for everything you have done, for being such a great partner.’" … Full op-ed at Brownstone and also at Substack . See also our updated article “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web . ” ​ See also Matt Taibbi’s op-ed, “Why State Lies Are the Most Dangerous ,” including his detailed discussion of the research done by, and screenshots of the efforts to censor, Stanford Medical School Prof. Jay Bhattacharya. See also Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists and We Fought Back " as well as our proposed reforms in Part 4 of Back to Basics at Stanford including (at paragraph 4.d.) that Stanford must never again play a role in censoring members of its own faculty. UC Regents Delay Vote That Would Ban Political Positions at Department Websites Excerpts: “The University of California’s board of regents has delayed voting until May on a controversial policy proposal that would restrict faculty from using some university websites to make opinionated and political statements, such as opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza. “The proposal would ban faculty departments and other academic units from using the homepages of their department websites to make ‘discretionary statements,’ which the proposal defines as comments on ‘local, regional, global or national’ events or issues and not related to daily departmental operations.” … Full article at EdSource. See also op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education arguing that the Kalven Principles should not apply to departments. See also our compilation of the Kalven Principles . The Cost of DEI at University of Virginia Excerpts (link in the original): “Recently, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that the University of Virginia (UVA) employed 235 people in roles related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) costing taxpayers some $20 million for salaries and benefits last year.... UVA’s stunning headcount includes 82 student interns with many paid the equivalent of half to full tuition waivers.... “In April 2023, UVA told the New York Times it had only 40 DEI positions. In June 2023, the university told its governing body, the Board of Visitors, it has 55 DEI staffers....The administration is deliberately misleading its governing board, the public, Virginia’s taxpayers, and the media.... Again, all of our information comes from the university payroll produced to us by UVA itself and you can review it for yourself ." … Full article including detailed salaries and a link to the data base at Open the Books. See also our own prior article about “Stanford’s Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy .” Other Articles of Interest Is Running a Top University America’s Hardest Job? Full article at The Economist A Vision for a New Future of the University of Pennsylvania Full statement at U Penn Forward The New Campus Fanaticism Full op-ed by NYU Prof. Robert S. Huddleston at Chronicle of Higher Education Why Intellectual Diversity Requirements on Campus Won’t Work Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington at The Dispatch The Affair of Yale and Rural China Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars It’s Harder to Hate the Other Side When You Come Face to Face Full op-ed at Free Press How This Ivy Tech Program Is Giving Formerly Incarcerated Students a Second Chance Full article at Open Campus Alternative Viewpoint: Evidence-Based Discourse on DEI Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Selected Trivia from Stanford's Tour Guides Sustainability Accelerator Announces First Greenhouse Gas Removal Grants What Makes a Super Communicator How Low Humidity Could be a Boon for Viruses “Our purpose in life is to help others along the way. May you each try to do the same.” -- Sandra Day O’Connor, from a letter to her sons as quoted in STANFORD Magazine March 18, 2024 ​ Concerns re Stanford’s Computerized Student Case Management System Last week’s Newsletter included an article about the bias reporting programs at colleges and universities nationwide. As previously reported, Stanford itself has such a system in place that, among other functions, allows students, faculty and staff to report others for allegedly biased statements and actions, euphemistically called Protected Identity Harm Reporting . Stanford's program largely uses the same bias complaint forms, standardized emails, timelines and procedures that are part of the same automated case management system used not only by Stanford, but by over 1,300 other colleges and universities around the country. This computer-based system has functions covering virtually every aspect of student life, not just bias reporting. For example, it has functions for student disciplinary matters (alleged cheating, alleged sexual misconduct, etc.), residence staff observations about a student seen drinking or using drugs, etc., all of which are then cross-referenced in the system’s data base, including with all other students who might be named in any given report. It should also be noted that in most cases, the student records are maintained on the vendor’s own servers or cloud-storage and, unless a school has opted out, participating schools are allowed to make electronic inquiries as to whether any of the other schools have records about a specifically named student. Late last summer, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni distributed a press kit to over 100 student newspapers about the serious impact these automated systems can have on campus cultures, student rights and free speech. Given the timeliness of the issues, we have posted a copy of the ACTA cover letter, press kit and FERPA request form in a new article at our Stanford Concerns webpage . We think everyone -- students, faculty, trustees, parents, alumni and others -- will benefit by reading how these systems work, the types of records that are permanently kept on file and without most students knowing that this is taking place, and how even anonymous reports can be used against students in current and future actions in which they might be involved. This is why we again suggest that students at Stanford (former students, too) should exercise their legal rights under FERPA (the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) as well as applicable state laws to see what is contained in their files, to correct any wrong information and/or to demand that any erroneous and all anonymous information be deleted. PDF copies are posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also our proposed remedial actions in paragraphs 2.h, i and j at our Back to Basics webpage. From Stanford Review: Interview with President Richard Saller Excerpts (please note that both the questions and answers are significantly abbreviated here and we urge readers to go instead to Stanford Review for the full interview): Q: Why haven’t you adopted the Chicago Trifecta at Stanford? Saller: I don’t have the power to adopt it. The President doesn't dictate that. Right now, the Faculty Senate has a committee that’s working on it. Particularly in my position as an interim, if any principles are going to have any long-term effect, they need to have broader support among the community. Not a President who has maybe another six months to serve. Q: The physics department is just one of many that requires a DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] statement for prospective candidates. And DEI statements are, to some extent, inherently political. How is this requirement not an affront to institutional neutrality? Saller: We have left it to departments, and this was in place before I started as interim president. We have left it to departments to make their own decision about that, but we’ve made it clear that after the Supreme Court decision [against affirmative action], the statement cannot include a direct statement about race. So you’re right to identify this as an area that has ambiguity. And I think that’s why it’s been left to the departments. Q: I've heard from many Jewish students that days after October 7th was not the right time to say that the University will not take a firm position on institutional neutrality. Why do you disagree? Saller: I disagree because I think the following weeks have shown that this war in Gaza is an issue that sharply divides the campus, and having an official pronouncement about taking sides would be counterproductive. Q: I think in some ways meritocracy has become a dirty word: ‘You are standing up for the establishment; meritocracy has been a tool of the establishment.’ How do you respond to that? Saller: I’m a historian who goes back two thousand years and I can see the progress in knowledge that’s come through recognition of excellence. That’s fundamental to my values. Q: Many students blame Stanford’s current climate on its administrative bloat. As of Fall 2023, Stanford has 18,369 staff members, and 17,529 students. Do you think administrative bloat is a problem? Saller: There's actually an article in this morning’s Stanford Daily about the increase in staff.... In the area of clinical care, that’s where most of the growth is, and it brings in more revenue than it costs.... And, in research, our research funding is up substantially.... It’s also true that there's been an increase in staff for student services.... I’ve asked that we get better data and the Provost has to get better data on where the growth is and what the justification is.... ​ ********** ​ We again urge readers to read the full interview at Stanford Review . See also our own charts contained in “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy .” And quoting again from one of our readers: “Does a master organizational chart exist to show the density of administrators in all specific areas of responsibility? Would love to see it, if it exists.” To which we again say, the time is long overdue for Stanford to produce the type of chart this reader has suggested so that faculty, students, alumni and donors can better understand who these people are and what they do. A related but very important question to the trustees and others: Is this saying that the income and potentially significant liabilities of the Medical Center's clinical activities are now coming onto the University's budget and not the separately incorporated entities at the Medical Center, something that was scrupulously avoided for decades? If so, who did this and why? See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta . Colleges Are Putting Their Futures at Risk Excerpts (links in the original): “‘Academic freedom allows us to choose which areas of knowledge we seek and pursue them,’ said Anna Grzymala-Busse, a professor of international studies at Stanford. ‘Politically, what society expects of us is to train citizens and provide economic mobility, and that has been the bedrock of political and economic support for universities. But if universities are not fulfilling these missions, and are seen as prioritizing other missions instead, that political bargain becomes very fragile.’ “Her remarks came during a recent conference on civil discourse at Stanford, ranging from free expression on campus to diversity, equity and inclusion hiring statements, which I wrote about last week. But underlying all the discussions was a real fear that universities had strayed from their essential duties, imperiling the kind of academic freedom they had enjoyed for decades.... “At last month’s conference, Diego Zambrano , a professor at Stanford Law School, made the downsides of [universities making statements re political and social matters] clear. What, he asked, are the benefits of a university taking a position? If it’s to make the students feel good, he said, those feelings are fleeting, and perhaps not even the university’s job. If it’s to change the outcome of political events, even the most self-regarding institutions don’t imagine they will have any impact on a war halfway across the planet. The benefits, he argued, were nonexistent. “As for the cons, Zambrano continued, issuing statements tends to fuel the most intemperate speech while chilling moderate and dissenting voices. In a world constantly riled up over politics, the task of formally opining on issues would be endless. Moreover, such statements force a university to simplify complex issues. They ask university administrators, who are not hired for their moral compasses, to address in a single email thorny subjects that scholars at their own institutions spend years studying. (Some university presidents, such as Michael Schill of Northwestern, have rightly balked .) Inevitably, staking any position weakens the public’s perception of the university as independent.” … Full op-ed at NY Times. See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta , including the Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social matters. Behind Stanford’s Doubled Staff-to-Student Ratio [Editor’s note: We are reprinting below excerpts from a Stanford Daily article published last week re the growth of the non-teaching staff at Stanford in the past two decades. Readers might also want to compare these charts and explanations with the charts and explanations at “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” long posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also Back to Basics at Stanford .] Excerpts: ​ “The number of staff at Stanford has more than doubled since 2000, drawing some criticism of administrative bloat.... “Between 1996 and 2023, the number of staff, or non-teaching employees, grew at an average rate of 382 new staff per year -- 950 per year since 2019. The University’s staff-to-student ratio concurrently increased from 0.42 to 0.94 staff per student, higher than 46 out of the 50 top universities as ranked by the U.S. News and World report. “This expansion is largely at the School of Medicine, where the yearly staff growth rate of 5.6% is significantly higher than the 1.7% rate across the rest of the University. New staff are also being hired at the Doerr School of Sustainability and other incipient programs, and for research support across departments.... “Some professors said increasing compliance requirements on universities is partially responsible for staff increases. Between 1997 and 2012, the number of government compliance requirements on universities increased by 56%, with a 2015 study finding that compliance with these requirements consumes 3-11% of a university’s non-hospital expenses.... “Universities have also hired more staff to support students, such as for mental health, diversity and inclusion and career preparation. Stanford’s spending on student services accounts for 5.2% of the University’s overall expenses, an increase from 2.7% in 2000. Student service salary data, which is only available for 2019 and subsequent years, has remained relatively constant at 2.9% of the University’s total expenses....” Full article at Stanford Daily The Impact of DEI on College Campuses Excerpts (link in the original): “Thank you for giving me a platform to speak on the issue of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education. I have been faculty, I have been a writing program director, and I’ve even been a diversity officer. “DEI is built upon a foundation whose very mission is to perpetuate racism.... The primary tenet of Critical Social Justice is this: ‘The question is not ‘did racism take place?’ but rather ‘how did racism manifest in that situation?’ So, according to Critical Social Justice, racism is always already taking place. There is no need to think for oneself; the narrative -- one of perpetual oppression -- does the thinking for you.... “I don’t know if you’ve all noticed yet, but I’m black and I’m against DEI. Why? Because I really like being black. And this ideology is infantilizing, it is anti-intellectual, and since I am a mature intellectual person, it doesn’t align with me. I am too good for contemporary DEI, and so are many others.” Full Congressional testimony by York College Prof. Erec Smith at Journal of Free Black Thought Campus Free Speech Was in Trouble in 2018, and the Data Show It Has Gotten Much Worse Excerpts (links in the original): “Six years ago, in a three -part series for Heterodox Academy, Sean [Stevens] and Jonathan Haidt proposed that a ‘new dynamic’ was emerging on American college campuses and that current college students were more hostile toward freedom of speech than their older counterparts. Sean and Haidt proposed that this ‘new dynamic’ represented a set of ‘politically correct’ viewpoints that made it harder for students and faculty who dissented from these viewpoints to express themselves.... “At the time, Sean and Haidt’s ‘new dynamic’ hypothesis was met with skepticism. Jeffery Sachs declared, ‘There is no campus free speech crisis, the kids are alright, those that say otherwise have lost all perspective, and the real crisis may be elsewhere ,’ and ‘The campus free speech crisis is a myth and here are the facts .’ Rich Smith let everyone know, ‘There’s No Free Speech Crisis on Campus, So Please Shut Up About It. ’ And Matt Yglesias claimed in Vox, ​‘Everything we think about the political correctness debate is wrong .’ … “The crux of the ‘new dynamic’ hypothesis is this: Do we have data supporting the claim that a significant portion of college students have become more hostile toward free speech than previous generations? ... According to FIRE’s new Campus Deplatforming Database (last updated Feb. 29, 2024), the answer is yes.... “We hope the wealth of data supporting the ‘new dynamic’ hypothesis will continue to persuade skeptics that there is really a problem on campus worth reckoning with....” Full op-ed by Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE Greg Lukianoff and FIRE's chief research advisor Sean Stevens at Substack Other Articles of Interest Interrupting University Events Is Not Free Speech Full op-ed at Stanford Review Stanford Athletes to Deliberate Employment Status Post Dartmouth Unionization Full article at Stanford Daily College Students Love Sidechat; Colleges, Not So Much Full article at USA Today We’ve Seen This Hate Before Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education Johns Hopkins Medicine Chief Diversity Officer Resigns After 'Poorly Worded' Email About Men, ‘White People’ and 'Christians' Full article at Campus Reform. See also Diverse Issues in Higher Education . Alternative Viewpoint: Diversity Proponents Respond to Divisive Narrative Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education Received a Low Grade? Arizona Bill Would Let Students Allege Political Bias Full article at Inside Higher Ed University of Georgia Moves to Active Learning Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also University of Georgia website. On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. How Humans Learn to Read AI Makes a Rendezvous in Space Stanford Researchers Dial In on Genetic Culprit of Disease Give It Some Thought; Brain-Computer Interfaces “Free expression of ideas necessarily includes protection for some forms of controversial and even offensive speech, both as a matter of Stanford’s policy on academic freedom adopted by the Faculty Senate in 1974 and California’s Leonard Law.” – Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez March 11, 2024 Update re Bias Reporting Systems [Editor’s note: We have previously posted at our website and in prior Newsletters concerns about Stanford’s bias reporting policies and procedures . We therefore bring to your attention an editorial that appeared in last week’s WSJ, all of which raise these additional questions and concerns: [Since Stanford is prohibited, pursuant to the Leonard Law and the 1995 decision in Corry v Stanford, from adopting limitations on speech that would not be permitted under the First Amendment, isn’t it worse when Stanford administrators flag students (and possibly faculty and others) for counseling and other actions for something the students or others might have said or done (bias reporting) based solely on what a Stanford staff member thinks, case by case and without any written standards, is wrongful speech or conduct? [It may also be useful to remember that, under the computerized case management system that Stanford uses, every report is automatically cross-referenced to any other named students, and all of the reports and cross-references are then automatically pulled up in any new and totally unrelated disciplinary actions about any of the named students -- often where students don’t even know that these types of permanent files are being kept about them and used against them.] Excerpts: “The Supreme Court said Monday it won’t hear a challenge to Virginia Tech’s old system of soliciting anonymous speech complaints via an official bias response team. Instead the Justices declared the case moot, after the college’s president told them the policy had been discontinued, while also promising -- he swears -- not to revive it. “Good for Hokies, but as a dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas says, failing to answer the legal question leaves the First Amendment up for grabs at other schools. Speech First, which brought the Virginia Tech case, ‘estimates that over 450 universities have similar bias-reporting schemes,’ Justice Thomas writes.... “His opinion includes some examples of what happens when all of a campus is urged to submit anonymous tips about ‘bias.’ One report was on male students who were privately ‘talking crap’ about the women playing in a snowball fight, ‘calling them not athletic.’ Another report concerned a room white board on which someone ‘observed the words Saudi Arabia.’ “No context? No problem. Virginia Tech advertised the BIRT [Bias Intervention and Response Team] with a chirpy slogan: ‘If you see something, say something!’ … Full editorial at Wall Street Journal See also Stanford Prof. Ivan Marinovic's op-ed, "DEI Meets East Germany; U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another for Bias " at WSJ, April 2023: "The snitches will be people who don’t understand the damage Stasi-like behavior will do to our universities." See also paragraphs 2.h. i. and j. at our Back to Basics webpage where we propose that all Stanford students should be notified in writing at least annually of their FERPA rights to inspect all files created or maintained about them, that they should have a right to request that any inaccurate including intentionally false information be removed or alternatively that they be allowed to submit corrective information, and that a website should be available explaining the policies and procedures for students to inspect these files, including a single office to process the student requests. We also suggest that the Protected Identity Harm Reporting system and all similar systems should be ended and all anonymous reports should be removed immediately and permanently. ​ Stanford to Offer Spring Quarter Course on Constructive Disagreement Excerpts: “‘In a pluralistic society, people are going to have disagreements about issues of policy based on their own backgrounds and their own interests -- that’s simply the nature of pluralism,’ said [Interim Law School Dean Paul Brest]. ‘The goal of democracy is to manage disagreements in a way that, ideally, improves the welfare of the overall society while respecting people’s differences.’ “Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez sees this course as one of many opportunities at Stanford for students to learn with experts about some of the most urgent issues of today and prepare themselves as citizens in a democracy. “‘One of the skills of citizenship is engaging in civil discourse,’ Martinez said.... “Throughout the course, students will also learn how disagreement can help them be curious -- about each other, but also about themselves and their own beliefs and values. “‘Confronting an opposing opinion forces you to think, ‘OK, why don’t I agree? Am I missing something? Is there a different way of framing this?’ said [H&S Dean Debra Satz, who will be co-teaching the course with Brest].” ... Full article including samples from the syllabus at Stanford Report ​ In Defense of Free Speech and the Mission of the University Excerpts (link in the original): “My friend and former student Yoram Hazony has argued in Public Discourse that it’s time for universities to abandon any commitment to ‘absolute free speech.’ In light of rampant expressions of anti-Semitism on university campuses since the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, Yoram thinks universities should forbid and punish the expression or advocacy of certain ideas or positions by students and faculty, and ‘suspend’ or ‘terminate’ those who, for example, advocate genocide. “Yoram suggests that I and others -- especially my friend Jonathan Haidt -- have been ‘reduced’ to defending a ‘fundamentally wrongheaded’ pro-free speech view. Here I will explain why I persist in believing that the research and teaching missions of nonsectarian colleges and universities, such as the one at which Yoram was a student and at which I teach, are best served by the most robust commitment to freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression -- that is, the right to examine and defend or criticize any idea, including ideas we judge to be extreme and even evil. … “Pursuing truth is often a difficult and uncomfortable process. It can even be terrifying -- since it could be the case that certain things we desperately want to be true are in fact false, and things that we desperately want to be false are in fact true. And, of course, our wanting things to be true (or false) doesn’t make them so. The temptation is to abandon truth; to favor comfort over it; to allow our emotional investment in our beliefs to cause us to prefer persisting in them to discovering that they are in fact not true (or in some way deficient or defective). “So, one way university administrators, professors, and students can fail in their duties and even undermine the university’s mission is by thwarting the very process of truth-seeking by forbidding the expression of certain ideas and lines of inquiry and argument.... “If we were to adopt Yoram’s call for censorship in areas where I am calling for freedom of speech, I invite him -- and you, gentle reader -- to consider the following question: Would the result be anything other than the further entrenchment of current campus orthodoxies, and the further weakening of protection for dissent and dissenters?” … Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert George at Public Discourse. See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta . 2023 Was the Worst Year on Record for Deplatforming Attempts; 2024 Is on Track to Beat It Excerpts (link in the original): “Whenever people argue that we’re exaggerating or overemphasizing the free speech crisis on campus, we have to take a deep breath and count to 50 -- sometimes 100.... As we will show below, 2023 was the worst year on record for deplatforming attempts and successes, and 2024 is unfortunately already looking like it can top it. “Last month, FIRE released its Campus Deplatforming Database , an expansion and evolution of its previous Campus Disinvitation Database. In addition to tracking attempts to disinvite speakers from campus, this enhanced database now includes attempts to cancel performances, take down art exhibits, and prevent the screening of films. It spans the past two and half decades, with recorded attempts going all the way back to the heyday of the Backstreet Boys, 1998.” … Full op-ed by Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE Greg Lukianoff at Substack. Among other things, note the number of times Stanford is reported in the database linked above. From The Economist: America’s Elite Universities are Bloated, Complacent and Illiberal Excerpts: “The struggle over America’s elite universities -- who controls them and how they are run -- continues to rage, with lasting consequences for them and the country. Harvard faces a congressional investigation into antisemitism; Columbia has just been hit with a new lawsuit alleging 'endemic' hostility towards Jews.... Behind these struggles lies a big question. Can American universities, flabby with cash and blighted by groupthink, keep their competitive edge? … “As challenges from abroad multiply, America’s elite universities are squandering their support at home. Two trends in particular are widening rifts between town and gown. One is a decades-long expansion in the managers and other non-academic staff that universities employ. America’s best 50 colleges now have three times as many administrative and professional staff as faculty, according to a report by Paul Weinstein of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank. Some of the increase responds to genuine need, such as extra work created by growing government regulation. A lot of it looks like bloat. These extra hands may be tying researchers in red tape and have doubtless inflated fees. … “A second trend is the gradual evaporation of conservatives from the academy. Surveys carried out by researchers at UCLA suggest that the share of faculty who place themselves on the political left rose from 40% in 1990 to about 60% in 2017 -- a period during which party affiliation among the general public barely changed. The ratios are vastly more skewed at many of America’s most elite colleges. A survey carried out last May by the Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper, found that less than 3% of faculty there would describe themselves as conservative. Three-quarters called themselves liberal.” … Full article at The Economist. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and proposed solutions at our Back to Basics webpage. Other Articles of Interest Two-Day Stanford Conference Takes Up Issues re Civil Discourse Full article at NY Times ​ University of Virginia Spends $20 Million on 235 DEI Employees, With Some Making $587,340 Per Year Full article at the Jefferson Council website: “It takes tuition payments from nearly 1,000 undergraduates just to pay their base salaries.” See also Stanford’s ballooning administrative and DEI bureaucracies . Ph.D. Student Testifies Before Congress on Antisemitism at Stanford Full article at Stanford Daily. Copy of testimony at Congressional website. See also press release and Times of Israel . UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Letter to Alumni re Antisemitism and Responses to Protests at Berkeley Full text at UC Berkeley website. See also Jerusalem Post . George Mason’s Orwellian ‘Just Societies’ Requirement Full op-ed by George Mason Prof. Bryan Caplan at James Martin Center DEI Initiatives Not Supported by the Empirical Evidence, Canadian Researcher Says Full op-ed by Canadian journalist Ari Blaff at National Post UC Santa Barbara Multicultural Faculty Plan ‘Day of Interruption’ to Protest Protections for Jews Full article at College Fix AI Will Shake Up Higher Ed; Are Colleges Ready? Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education Protecting Free Speech on Campus from Attacks from Both Sides Full article at The Hill On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. ​ Stanford Medicine Uses Augmented Reality for Real-Time Data Visualization During Surgery New Research Consortium Seeks to Help Optimize Future of a De-Carbonized Grid Stanford Study Finds That Short Bursts of Tutoring Improves Young Readers’ Skills in Only Minutes a Day “We tend to think of censorship as a violation of the rights of the censored. And it is that, of course. But censorship creates other victims we give less consideration to: the millions who are denied the chance to hear the perspectives of those who are silenced.” – Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya and journalist Leighton Woodhouse March 4, 2024 Larry Summers: What Went Wrong on Campus ​ Excerpts: ​ “I think, unfortunately, with considerable validity -- that many of our leading universities have lost their way; that values that one associated as central to universities -- excellence, truth, integrity, opportunity -- have come to seem like secondary values relative to the pursuit of certain concepts of social justice, the veneration of certain concepts of identity, the primacy of feeling over analysis, and the elevation of subjective perspective. And that has led to clashes within universities and, more importantly, an enormous estrangement between universities and the broader society.... “I don't think any reasonable person can fail to recognize a massive double standard between the response to other forms of prejudice and the response to anti-Semitism. And yes, you could have debates about when anti-Zionism or the demonization of Israel is and is not anti-Semitism. But on any reasonable conception of what's going on, there has been a double standard. And I think those of us who are concerned about the double standard come to a view about how we want it remedied. And I think for the most part, the right way of remedying it is with a de-emphasis rather than a re-emphasis on identity. “Everyone needs to be enabled to feel safe. That doesn't mean that they have a right to avoid being triggered by speech they don't like, or to be spared exposure to ideas they find noxious. That doesn't mean they have a right to bean-counting exercises where the share of members of their group is evaluated against a share of its population. It does mean that they're entitled to the maintenance of an open and tolerant community where no one is allowed to shut down any set of ideas, that they have the right to be protected from discrimination, and that they have the right for there not to be indoctrination. I think in many ways what would be most problematic would be an indoctrination arms race in which a larger and larger fraction of an education is consumed by a recitation of the grievances of various groups....” Full interview of former Harvard President Larry Summers at Persuasion ​ US Government and Stanford Pioneered the Censorship Scheme That Europe May Impose on Us Excerpts: “Europeans are free to speak their mind as they wish, most of them believe. They can express their views on controversial political and social issues on social media platforms from Facebook to X. “But all of that may soon change. Europe is implementing the Digital Services Act, which is using the exact same censorship system we exposed as part of the Twitter Files, notes Michigan State University legal scholar Adam Candeub. … “As we saw with the Twitter Files, the EU is demanding that supposedly independent fact-checkers do the censorship. ‘How do the flaggers get trusted?’ asked Candeub. ‘Well, they get certified by the government. So essentially, Google and Facebook will have to hire government-certified flaggers to give them content, which they then must remove.’ … “'What's disturbing is that now the platforms will have two choices,’ he explained. ‘They'll be able to have one EU-compliant platform worldwide. Or they'll have an EU and American Facebook. It seems like the cheaper version is the former version.’ “The EU is putting in place the very same system that the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Stanford Internet Observatory put in place to engage in mass censorship in 2020 and 2021. … “The First Amendment is important because it protects Americans from abuses of power by the government, like the censorship DHS and Stanford did. ‘Unless we have a strong doctrine on First Amendment protection,’ Candeub said, ‘it's very difficult for the expansive administrative state to exist with these sorts of freedoms.’” Full article at Public. For convenience, we have posted a copy of Prof. Candeub’s U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief (see especially pages 18 to 24 regarding Stanford's actions and responses) in an update to the prior article “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also “Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists -- We Fought Back and Won” at our Stanford Concerns archived webpage. ​ And here is what we said in our June 2, 2023 Newsletter: ​Our own observation is that these are important topics to be studied. The more difficult questions are: Who then gets to decide what is and isn’t true and subsequently gets to enforce the answers? Can a democratic society trust such centralized activities, both short term and long term? Is it a proper role for Stanford not only to research the issues, but then to be the implementer of the solutions and the rejecter of alternative viewpoints? Is it appropriate that the Stanford name is seen as an endorsement of these activities? At what point does an independent researcher lose its independence and, in turn, its trustworthiness? ​ To which we add this question: Is it appropriate that Stanford’s administration and lawyers are arguing that it somehow is ok to censor members of Stanford’s own faculty? ​ Universities Are Making Us Dumber Excerpts (links in the original): “As direct forms of discrimination are now virtually nonexistent in academia, discrimination has been redefined as an invisible, structural form of bigotry that is suddenly everywhere. Like witchcraft, this form of prejudice cannot be observed directly. Rather, it manifests instead through unequal outcomes. Once justice was reformulated in terms of equality of results, it became untenable to insist on merit and the pursuit of truth; these values had to be abandoned or redefined, whenever they came into conflict with the new orthodoxy.... “Elite research universities have been the hardest hit by these developments. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), among 248 universities ranked in 2023, Brown is the only Ivy which is listed in the top 70. My own institution, Princeton University, ranks a dismal 189. All the others are below 200, with Penn (247) and Harvard (248) coming in dead last. Top non-Ivies like MIT, Caltech, or Berkeley do slightly better, while Stanford (207) is as bad as the Ivies. If one regards the absence of free speech as a likely indicator of future academic prowess, then America’s top universities are headed for greatness. If not, their futures look dismal. And so does the future of the U.S. by virtue of being run by elites educated at these very ‘elite’ universities.... “So can universities be reformed? Many reform-oriented academics insist that this can be achieved, at least in part, by demanding that universities commit to the Chicago principles of academic freedom , the Kalven report on institutional neutrality and the Shils report on merit-based hiring . It is doubtful, however, that they will be all adopted or, if adopted, if they will be implemented by the current university administrations. Princeton, for example, boasts of its strong commitment to academic freedom, but in practice has no difficulty ignoring its own regulations. Calls for abolishing the DEI bureaucracy, an integral part of our ever-expanding managerial class, seem equally futile in the present circumstances, as DEI could simply change its name without changing its habits.” … Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Sergiu Klainerman, with historic photo of Stanford at the top, at Tablet. See also our own compilations of the Chicago Principles, the Kalven Report and the Shils Report. See also the charts showing Stanford's ballooning administrative bureaucracy at our Stanford Concerns webpage. 69% of Americans Believe Country on Wrong Track re Free Speech Excerpts (link in the original): “More than two-thirds of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track when it comes to freedom of speech, according to new survey results from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the Polarization Research Lab at Dartmouth College. “When asked about 'whether people are able to freely express their views,' 69% of respondents said things in America are heading in the wrong direction, compared to only 31% who believe that things are heading in the right direction....” Full article including detailed charts and poll results at FIRE's website ​ Stanford Undergraduate and Graduate Student Legislative Bodies Consider Resolution re Free Speech Excerpts (link in the original): “The Graduate Student Council (GSC) was joined by Samuel Santos, Vice Provost of Inclusion, Community and Integrative Learning, who provided an administrative perspective on a free speech resolution , during its Tuesday meeting. “Santos shared the administration’s perspective on the proposed free speech policies. He emphasized the student gatherings with overnight displays or electricity, such as the recently removed sit-in, must seek permission in advance. “The resolution, developed in partnership with the Undergraduate Senate (UGS), calls for ‘clearer policies regulating the speech of University students,’ in response to ‘increasing campus tensions and hate-based violence, Protected Identity Harm (PIH) Reports, and student protests.’” Full article at Stanford Daily. See also former Stanford President Gerhard Casper's statement re the Leonard Law, the Corry court decision and issues of campus free speech generally at our Stanford Speaks webpage. See also “Stanford’s Prof. Gerald Gunther Warned About Limits on Campus Free Speech Three Decades Ago” at our Stanford Concerns archived webpage. Other Articles of Interest The Disinformation Playbook Full op-ed by Union of Concerned Scientists in 2017-2018, including the use of academic institutions for both cover and credibility. See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Barnard College Students Required to Remove Door Decorations in Order Not to Isolate Those with Different Views Full article at College Fix Repressive Legalism – College Top Lawyers Have Never Been More Powerful Full article at Chronical of Higher Education DEI Rebranded Full article at Minding the Campus Looking at a Service Animal Could be a Micro-Assault per Syracuse U. Workshop Full article at College Fix University of California Lifts Ban on Online Degree Programs Full article at Inside Higher Ed College Transfers Are On The Increase Again Full article at Forbes More Than Half of Job Postings Don’t Have an Education Requirement Full article at The Hill Why Study Abroad is Essential to Our Future Full op-ed at The Hill ​ On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford ​ Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. A New Avenue for Treating Neurodegeneration How Stanford Professor Flipped Traditional Genomics Analysis on Its Head Steering and Accelerating Electrons at the Microchip Scale “Speech protections are not just for views we agree with; we must strenuously protect speech for the views that we most strongly oppose. Only in the public square can these views be heard and properly challenged.” – From the Westminster Declaration February 26, 2024 ​ ​ [Editor’s note: We have long had posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage some charts and numbers about Stanford’s ballooning administrative bureaucracy, but even we could never have imagined this type of increase this past year, per the university’s official publication, Stanford Facts 2024 and as recently brought to light by Stanford Review. As a result, we have also updated our charts and we suggest that you likewise take a look at our Stanford Concerns webpage. [Also, when we first posted last year’s numbers, one of our readers wrote: “Wow! 17K Stanford administrators is absurd. Does a master organizational chart exist to show the density of administrators in all specific areas of responsibility? Would love to see it, if it exists.” We think the time is long overdue for Stanford to produce the type of chart this reader has suggested so that faculty, students, alumni and donors can better understand who these people are and what they do.] Excerpts (links in the original): “While we mock the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, and Stanford distances itself from the list, its guiding principles are ascendant at Stanford.... “While we denounce Stanford stifling social life through overbearing rules and excessive administration, Stanford responds by creating a ‘Social Life Accelerator Task Force’ and ‘action plans’ to purportedly solve the issue. But in the last year, Stanford hired an additional 1,406 administrators, bringing the total number to an eye-popping 18,369 people. Meanwhile, social life on campus has remained largely unchanged. ​ “Actions speak louder than words. So where do we go from here? … ​ “It is understandable that alumni feel grateful for what Stanford has done for their lives, and hope to keep it strong for their children and their children’s children. But the proper response to that gratitude isn’t to fund the sprawling, unaccountable bureaucracy that Stanford has become.... Nothing happens unless people step up and make things happen.” … Full op-ed by former editor-in-chief Walker Stewart at Stanford Review See also Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students at Free Press and which describes the extraordinarily destructive campus environment that has been created in recent years by the bureaucracy described in this op-ed. In that regard, see also the first item under Other Articles of Interest, below, where the student services staff have written new kissing and related regulations for Full Moon on the Quad and instructed the RA's to demonstrate these kissing rules to current freshmen. See also our Back to Basics webpage with specific recommendations to, as stated in the op-ed, "make things happen." Yale Faculty Group Says Teaching Must Be Kept Distinct from Activism Excerpts (links in the original): “Over 100 faculty members now have their signatures displayed on a website for a new faculty group, Faculty for Yale, which 'insist[s] on the primacy of teaching, learning and research as distinct from advocacy and activism.' “Among other measures, the group calls for ‘a thorough reassessment of administrative encroachment’ and the promotion of diverse viewpoints. The group also calls for a more thorough description of free expression guidelines in the Faculty Handbook; Yale’s current guidelines are based on its 1974 Woodward Report . The group also wants Yale to implement a set of guidelines regarding donor influence, which were first put forth by the Gift Policy Review Committee in 2022....” Full article at Yale Daily News. See also NY Post . See also our compilation of the Shils Report re academic appointments and our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. We have now also posted the entire "Faculty for Yale" statement at our Commentary webpage . From NY Times: The Fight Over Academic Freedom Excerpts (links in the original): “Academic freedom is a bedrock of the modern American university. And lately, it seems to be coming under fire from all directions.... “Over the past year, faculty groups dedicated to academic freedom have sprung up at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, where even some liberal scholars argue that a prevailing progressive orthodoxy has created a climate of self-censorship and fear that stifles open inquiry. “The fallout from the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel has upended many campuses, as college presidents have been ousted, campus protest has been restricted and alumni , donors and politicians have pushed for greater control. And it has also scrambled the politics of academic freedom itself.... “The roiling debates have even opened up rifts among champions of academic freedom. Jeannie Suk Gersen, a professor at Harvard Law School and a leader of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, said that the cause stands ‘at a crossroads.’ “‘Do we think about academic freedom as something that protects everyone, regardless of content and ideology and politics?’ she said. Or do we ‘carve out an exception,’ as some advocates seem to argue, and forbid speech that is considered anti-Israel or antisemitic? … “‘The mission of a university is to sponsor truth-seeking scholarship and provide non-indoctrinating teaching,’ said Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton and a founder of the Academic Freedom Alliance , a multi-campus group created in 2021. “And for that to happen, George said, ‘we must be free to challenge any view or belief.’ …” Full article at NY Times. See also The Threat from Within by former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy. Stanford and Others Crack Down on Student Protests Excerpts (links in the original): “As college and university presidents face growing backlash from state and federal lawmakers for their responses to student protests against the war between Israel and Hamas, higher education leaders are cracking down on student demonstrations -- particularly those that support Palestinian people. “In the last week, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became one of several institutions that have suspended student groups for violations of campus protest rules, and Stanford University threatened to take disciplinary action against students who occupied a campus plaza for nearly four months." … Full article at Inside Higher Ed See also "Undergraduate Student Senate Debates Free Speech" at Stanford Daily , "Graduate Student Council Debates Free Speech" at Stanford Daily , “Stanford Removes Pro-Palestine Sit-In Following Negotiations” at Stanford Daily , “Stanford Warned About Its Negotiations” at Campus Reform , "Stanford Agrees to Four Demands" at Campus Reform and “Harvard Shouldn’t Silence Protest, but It’s Their Right to Regulate It” at Harvard Crimson . See also “Cornell Professor Backs Unruly Protests -- Democracy Needs Disruption” at College Fix Other Articles of Interest Stanford RA's Told to Demo Kissing for Freshmen in Bizarre Consent Lesson Full article at Stanford Review, also including a copy of the newly required Full Moon on the Quad Participation Agreement ​ Harvard Set to Consider Institutional Neutrality Full article at Harvard Crimson Department of Justice Funds Research on Disinformation and Misinformation Full article at College Fix NCAA Leader Resigns Over Transgender Policy – Calls it Authorized Cheating Full article at College Fix Top 10 Changes Colleges and Universities Need to Implement Full op-ed by U Texas Prof. Steven Mintz at Inside Higher Ed On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. A New RNA Editing Tool Could Enhance Cancer Treatment Bridging the Opportunity Gap in Social Sector Artificial Intelligence Emerging Issues That Could Trouble Teens How Cyclic Breathing Can Relieve Stress (Video) “Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.” -- Mark Twain February 19, 2024 ​ Artificial Intelligence Will Censor Speech at Scale, Bias Included Excerpts (links in the original): “Until recently, many efforts to censor and suppress speech have required manual labor; human beings have been tasked to put their eyeballs on the page and then decide what stuff gets to remain. In the good old days, books were banned this way. Now, those eyeballs are turned toward the virtual spaces online, an environment that is much more unwieldy to monitor and control.... “With the advent of machine learning, the government will now be able to control speech using Artificial Intelligence (AI). The House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have obtained ‘non-public documents’ proving the NSF [National Science Foundation] is issuing grant money to ‘university and non-profit research teams’ to develop automated speech intervention at scale using AI. The Judiciary Committee believes the move to use automation to censor speech will violate civil liberties in ways previously unseen.... “According to Monday's Judiciary Report, the NSF has embraced the idea of machine-generated censorship. This activity will occur in ways people will never fully comprehend or notice. The process will be both reactive and proactive, curating information at the behest of ‘a small and isolated coterie of partisan social engineers’ programming machines to do it.... According to the report, Marc Andreessen, co-creator of Mosaic, a graphical browser and co-founder of Netscape, ‘warned that the level of censorship pressure that's coming for AI and the resulting backlash will define the next century of civilization.’ … “We already know about Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) , which was created at the request of the DHS and CISA . That partnership worked to flag onli ne speech related to the 2020 election. We have already found evidence of the Biden White House 'directly coercing large social media companies, such as Facebook, to censor true information, memes, and satire, eventually leading Facebook to change its content moderation policies,' as reported by the Judiciary. And we now know the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has harassed Elon Musk's Twitter (now X) because of Musk's commitment to free speech, even going so far as to target certain journalists by name,' according to the report. To be honest, the partnerships are too numerous to list. “However, this Feb. 5, 2024, report focuses on how the NSF has funded ‘AI-powered censorship and propaganda tools’ and attempted to ‘hide its actions to avoid political and media scrutiny.’ NSF has been issuing millions in federal grants to its partners to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech. The aim is to ‘shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others,’ according to the Judiciary report. These are taxpayer-funded projects that are allegedly already being weaponized in one way or another to limit our free speech. The partners include the University of Michigan's AI-powered WiseDex tool , Meedan with its Co-Insights tool, The University of Wisconsin's CourseCorrect , and MIT's Search Lit . These censorship tools represent state-of-the-art software that would instantaneously identify the types of speech biased humans program the software to eliminate....” Full article at Uncover DC. See also our prior postings about “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” and Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists; We Fought Back and Won ” as well as our proposals for addressing these issues as set forth in Part 4 of “Back to Basics at Stanford ." ​ We're Losing Our Privacy to Surveillance Devices Which Don't Even Protect Us Excerpts: “Civil libertarians are celebrating the recent announcement by Amazon that law enforcement agencies will no longer be able to obtain Ring doorbell camera videos just by asking. Henceforth, the company will require a subpoena or a search warrant. “That’s great news. One needn’t be anti-cop (I’m certainly not) to agree that government should jump through a hoop or two before seizing images people reasonably believe to be private. Yet we’re dealing here only with the tip of the proverbial iceberg.... “In the words of criminologist Eric Piza, ‘While lay persons (and even some ‘experts’) may assume conspicuous camera presence alone sufficiently communicates heightened risk, such causal mechanisms can be difficult to generate in practice.’ “According to his data, actively monitored video systems do have a small crime-reducing effect; passively monitored systems have none. But until AI brings Orwell’s ‘telescreens’ to life, no government on earth has the resources to monitor every camera in real time.... “Maybe my attitude about privacy is old-fashioned. We live at a time, after all, when some 3 out of 10 young people support the installation of surveillance cameras in private homes. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of the novel ‘1984’ and maybe those always-on telescreens are a lot closer than we think. “So by all means let’s celebrate Amazon’s decision to make it a little bit harder for government to get its hands on doorbell videos. But with respect to the rest of the banality of security, let’s bear in mind that we’re giving up an awful lot of privacy for a questionable improvement in safety.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Yale Law School Prof. Stephen Carter at Bloomberg and other sources. See also Stanford Review “Stanford’s Security Regime Takes Root” and Stanford Daily article from a year ago about Stanford installing 250 cameras a year for the next four years. ​ See also Stanford student Theo Baker, "Inside Stanford’s War on Fun ." ​ From The Atlantic: The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism from Silicon Valley Excerpts (links in the original): “To worship at the altar of mega-scale and to convince yourself that you should be the one making world-historic decisions on behalf of a global citizenry that did not elect you and may not share your values or lack thereof, you have to dispense with numerous inconveniences -- humility and nuance among them. Many titans of Silicon Valley have made these trade-offs repeatedly. YouTube (owned by Google), Instagram (owned by Meta), and Twitter (which Elon Musk insists on calling X) have been as damaging to individual rights, civil society, and global democracy as Facebook was and is. Considering the way that generative AI is now being developed throughout Silicon Valley, we should brace for that damage to be multiplied many times over in the years ahead. “The behavior of these companies and the people who run them is often hypocritical, greedy, and status-obsessed. But underlying these venalities is something more dangerous, a clear and coherent ideology that is seldom called out for what it is: authoritarian technocracy . As the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley have matured, this ideology has only grown stronger, more self-righteous, more delusional, and -- in the face of rising criticism -- more aggrieved.... “In October, the venture capitalist and technocrat Marc Andreessen published on his firm’s website a stream-of-consciousness document he called ‘The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.’ … “‘Our enemy,’ Andreessen writes, is ‘the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable -- playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.’ … “We do not have to live in the world the new technocrats are designing for us. We do not have to acquiesce to their growing project of dehumanization and data mining. Each of us has agency. “No more ‘build it because we can.’ No more algorithmic feedbags. No more infrastructure designed to make the people less powerful and the powerful more controlling. Every day we vote with our attention ; it is precious, and desperately wanted by those who will use it against us for their own profit and political goals. Don’t let them.” Full article at The Atlantic. See also our prior posting “The Current Student Climate at Stanford ." See also “Government Funds AI Tools for Whole-of-Internet Surveillance and Censorship ” at Brownstone, “How AI Has Begun Changing University Roles and Responsibilities ” at Inside Higher Ed and “How Will AI Disrupt Higher Education in 2024? ” also at Inside Higher Ed. Higher Education Reform, Civic Thought and Liberal Education Excerpts: “For decades, American colleges and universities have desperately needed reform. The urgency of the moment may create openings to mitigate the damage and restore the basic elements of liberal education. “Over the last few months, turmoil on campus has provoked outrage among wealthy donors, members of Congress, parents of college and college-bound students, and no small number of ordinary citizens. The sympathy exhibited by students and faculty for Hamas’ barbaric Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis, mostly civilians, along with the vacillating and mealy-mouthed response of many elite university administrators to students’ championing jihadist genocide threw into sharp relief how badly higher education has lost its way.... “Our colleges and universities have been policing speech. They have been curtailing due process, particularly concerning allegations of sexual misconduct. They have been relaxing to the point of eliminating core curriculum requirements. And they have been packing course offerings, particularly in the humanities.... “The extent of the disrepair of U.S. colleges and universities and the urgency of the moment necessitate the recovery of the traditional principles of liberal education to guide the long, arduous work of higher education reform.” Full op-ed by Hoover Fellow Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics and also at MSN On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. At the Intersection of Science and Humanity, He Found a Sweet Spot Stanford Business Students Get Up-Close Look at Faculty Research Projects Vibrating Glove Helps Stroke Patients Recover from Muscle Spasms Reintroducing “Good Fire” to Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve Other Articles of I nterest University Budget Cuts Were Overdue Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. See also our prior postings “ Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” and “Back to Basics at Stanford .” Harvard Is Accused of Obstructing House Antisemitism Inquiry Full article at New York Times. See also WSJ and Washington Post . ​ Northwestern Launches Center for Enlightened Disagreement Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education Only 16% of Faculty Members Are Ready for GenAI in Higher Education Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education Why Give Money to a College That Only Wants to Mock Your Values? Full op-ed at Giving Review ​ Almost Half of Stopped-Out Community College Students Cite Work as Major Reason for Leaving Full article at Higher Ed Dive ​ University Rankings Are Unscientific and Bad for Education Full op-ed at The Conservation “Impediments to free speech are impediments to free thought and can only interfere with that search. That’s why academic freedom is so precious.” -- Stanford alum and Yale Law School Prof. Stephen Carter February 12, 2024 Medical Schools Should Combat Racism, but Not Like This Excer pts (links in the original) : “Throughout my career, I have been aware of the disturbing history of racism and bias in medicine. Though much has improved in this regard, important problems remain. As dean at Harvard, I worked with colleagues to combat those problems. And so, when I saw a 2020 paper in the journal Academic Medicine authored by my alma mater’s educational leaders about their efforts in ‘addressing and undoing racism and bias’ in medicine, I was eager to read about the work. “I was soon disappointed. Instead of a scrupulous analysis of an important problem, the paper consisted of dramatic, if unsupported, generalizations about the inherent racism in medical education and practice, and promises of sweeping but vague changes to come.... “Mount Sinai has positioned itself as a leader in the field when it comes to combating racism at medical school. Eleven other medical schools have joined them as ‘partners’ in their Racism and Bias Initiative program. And yet what they have actually accomplished is not clear. “There are some parallels to this story at Harvard Medical School. In spring 2021, the school announced a task force to review racism in medical education and devise responses to counter it. Last spring, the school announced that the review and recommendations were completed in the form of a 72-page report. To my surprise, this report has never been made public.... “The goal should not be performative discussions and empty virtue signaling; it should be better healthcare outcomes for all. Medical education, when done correctly, should give future physicians the tools they need to treat patients effectively, without racism or bias. But as the focus drifts from evidence-based practices to ideological dogma, we risk graduating doctors who excel in social justice jargon while faltering in the expert delivery of care. “The Hippocratic Oath tells us to ‘do no harm.’ This oath extends beyond surgical theaters and clinical wards into medical education, where the principles of science and the virtues of care combine to forge the next generation of doctors, and they’re the inspiring goals that motivated me to serve as dean of a great medical school. Sadly, I fear that diluting rigor and precision with ideological agendas will degrade the quality of medical education. In a rush to embed vague, contestable, and potentially harmful versions of social justice into medical education, we risk compromising the very foundation of medical training, and ultimately, patient care.” Full op-ed by former Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier at Free Press ​ When Are Appeals to Campus Safety an Excuse to Suppress Speech? ​ Excerpts: “On November 15, the president of Indiana University at Bloomington received a letter from Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican. Banks expressed shock at ‘pro-terrorist protests’ occurring ‘on numerous U.S. college campuses’ and warned that IU could lose access to federal funding if administrators there tolerated any antisemitism.... “The next day, the administration denied permission for a talk by a former Israeli soldier critical of Israel that the Palestine Solidarity Committee had organized. A month later, the university imposed sweeping sanctions on the faculty adviser for the student group, Abdulkader Sinno, and canceled an exhibit of abstract art by Samia Halaby, a Palestinian artist and refugee.... “University leaders say the decisions had nothing to do with beliefs; rather, each situation posed a serious security risk to the campus community. They have not explained exactly what those risks were.... “While colleges need to ensure the safety of the campus community, going as far as to cancel an event imposes a dangerous, undue burden on speech, says Jonathan Friedman, director of free-expression and education programs at PEN America. If an event could cause public disagreement, colleges need to adjust for that, not eliminate the situation altogether, Friedman says.” … Full article at Inside Higher Education. See also Stanford Shuts Down Overnight Sit-ins “based on concerns for the physical safety of [the] community” at Stanford Daily and Save the Tents at Stanford Review. And a copy of last week's original notice from Stanford is posted here . More About Princeton Libraries’ Trigger Warnings [Editor’s note: Last week we posted an article about Princeton Libraries having their staff cull though text and photos in order to warn faculty, students and others if they might come upon items that might be offensive or otherwise alarming -- and remember, this is taking place at a major U.S. research university to protect what supposedly are highly educated users. The following more recent article provides additional information about what is involved in this process.] Excerpts (links in the original): “In late January, library archivists hosted a focus group study about ‘harmful content’ within the Princeton University Library’s online archives, according to a Jan. 16 post on the university’s Special Collections blog.... “‘In particular, we are interested in hearing from those who identify as member(s) of marginalized communities as well as those who are interested in archives, archival research, and social justice,’ the post states. The researchers said they hope the study will help the library be more effective in moderating its archives for content that may hurt or offend people.... “Trigger warnings have become commonplace at many universities in recent years. Advisories about potentially troubling content have appeared on everything from course descriptions and campus crime alerts to popular novels like ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone ’ and classic literature such as ‘1984 ’ and ‘The Old Man and the Sea .’ “In 2021, Brandeis University’s Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center even considered the term ‘trigger warning’ to be problematic because ‘the word ‘trigger’ has connections to guns,’ The College Fix reported. The center suggested the phrase ‘content note’ be used in its place.” … Full article at College Fix. See also “Study Finds Trigger Warnings May Cause More Harm Than Good” at Medical Express and “A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Trigger Warnings” at Sage Journals . See also our prior posting of Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative including a PDF copy of Stanford's own list of proscribed words and phrases. Alternative Viewpoint From AAUP: Landscapes of Power and Academic Freedom Excerpts: “The landscape of higher education in the United States is now radically changed: academic freedom is no longer guaranteed across the entire country. Professors self-censor their lectures and publications; students cannot engage with key explanations and discussions about the history of their very institution, state, and country; and books have been banned from local libraries. In multiple US states, concepts such as ‘structural racism,’ ‘environmental racism,’ ‘intersectionality’ and the open study of the ‘relationship among race, racism, and power’ (Delgado, Stefancic, and Harris 2017, 3) have been terminated after being characterized as ‘divisive’ and ‘controversial’ by a cascade of gag laws and executive orders. The impact of these political encroachments into the autonomy of institutions of higher education to produce knowledge and to freely understand the workings of settler colonialism, of the lasting impacts of slavery and of racial segregation, will haunt the United States for decades to come. These overt forms of censorship will have long-lasting effects on the ability of US citizens to understand the racial legacies of this postplantation, postcolonial society.... “Within the United States and internationally, we have witnessed the deleterious effects that authoritarian governments, unchecked corporate interests, reactionary movements, and partisan politics have on academic freedom. We could cite a wide range of impacts, from tenure denial, dismissal, and (self-)censorship to imprisonment, political exile, and ‘brain drain.’ By observing the real threats autocracy and authoritarianism pose to academic freedom we can better grasp the contemporary precarity of both democracy and academic freedom....” Full article at AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom Congressional Hearing on Free Speech, AI and Regulatory Capture Excerpts (links in the original): “Earlier today, I served as a witness at the House Judiciary Committee’s Special Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government , which discussed (among other things) whether it’s a good idea for the government to regulate artificial intelligence and LLMs [large language models]. For my part, I was determined to warn everyone not only about the threat AI poses to free speech, but also the threats regulatory capture and a government oligopoly on AI pose to the creation of knowledge itself.... “It was profoundly frustrating for me to see the Democrats appreciate that the governmental powers I was warning against are those they would be terrified to grant to a future Trump administration -- but not be similarly alarmed by that same potential for overreach on our [Democrat] side.... “[Part of my testimony:] We have good reason to be concerned. FIRE regularly fights government attempts to stifle speech on the internet. FIRE is in federal court challenging a New York law that forces websites to 'address' online speech that someone, somewhere finds humiliating or vilifying. We’re challenging a new Utah law that requires age verification of all social media users. We’ve raised concerns about the federal government funding development of AI tools to target speech including microaggressions. And later this week, FIRE will file a brief with the Supreme Court explaining the danger of 'jawboning' -- the use of government pressure to force social media platforms to censor protected speech. “But the most chilling threat that the government poses in the context of emerging AI is regulatory overreach that limits its potential as a tool for contributing to human knowledge. A regulatory panic could result in a small number of Americans deciding for everyone else what speech, ideas, and even questions are permitted in the name of ‘safety’ or ‘alignment.’" … Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE’s president Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also testimony of investigative journalist Lee Fang at Real Clear Politics. See also our prior postings of Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web . Learning About How to Think Excerpts: “If you’ve taken a college tour lately, either as an applicant or as the parent of an applicant, you may have noticed that at some point -- usually as you’re on the death march from the aquatic center to the natural-sciences complex -- the tour guide will spin smartly on her heel, do the college-tour-guide thing of performatively walking backwards, and let you in on something very important. ‘What’s different about College X,’ she’ll say confidently, ‘is that our professors don’t teach you what to think. They teach you how to think.’ “Whether or not you’ve heard the phrase before, it gets your attention. Can anyone teach you how to think? Aren’t we all thinking all the time; isn’t the proof of our existence found in our think-think-thinking, one banal thought at a time? ... “To the extent that I have learned how to think for myself, it’s because my father taught me. Usually by asking me a single question. For the love of God, I hated that question. And for some reason I always, always forgot to see it coming. My father was an academic and a writer who cared a great deal about teaching, and he was never off the clock.... There would be a moment of silence. And then my father would say -- gently, because there was zero need to say it any other way: ‘And what is the best argument of the other side?’" … Full op-ed at The Atlantic On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. The Business Case for Sustainability Stanford Study Reveals Significant Discrepancies in Measurements of Poverty Precision Medicine Helps Address Premature Births Advocating for Individuals with Disabilities Is Personal for This Stanford Med Student Other Articles of Interest Too Much Corporate-ness for Members of the Harvard Corporation? Full editorial at Harvard Crimson. See also list of current members of Stanford’s Board of Trustees. From Stanford Daily: Picking a President for Stanford, What Really Matters Full editorial at Stanford Daily Convinced by the Data, Dartmouth College Reinstates SAT Requirement Full article at College Fix Federal Judge Issues Warning Over the Role of DEI, Allows Professor’s Lawsuit Against Penn State to Move Forward Full article at Campus Reform Sage Journals Adds DEI to Its Own Peer-Review Process Full article at Campus Reform Law Schools Must Adopt Free Speech Policies to Maintain ABA Accreditation Full article at The Hill. See also ABA Journal . NLRB Rules That Dartmouth Basketball Players Are Employees Full article at Inside Higher Ed Lists of Top Producers of Minority STEM Bachelor’s Degrees Full lists at Diverse Issues in Higher Education (note that Stanford ranks 56th in computer and information sciences, 78th in engineering and 33rd in math and statistics) Fake Scientific Papers Push Research Credibility to Crisis Point Full article at The Guardian Why Campus Antisemitism Matters Full article at Tablet The Meltdown of the Universities and Ideas for Rebuilding Them (Video) Jonathan Haidt presentation at YouTube “Unless teachers, students, and researchers can inquire and speak freely and fearlessly, innovation will stall, questions will be left unasked and unanswered, and students will be ill-prepared for life, career, community, and citizenship.” -- American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) February 5, 2024 ​ Political Solidarity Statements Threaten Academic Freedom Exce rpts (links in t he original) : ​ “Barnard College has become the site of the latest flare-up in an ongoing struggle between faculty and university leaders for the control of university communication platforms. On October 23, the department of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies posted a statement of solidarity : ‘We support the Palestinian people who have resisted settler colonial war, occupation, and apartheid for over 75 years, while deploring Hamas’s recent killing of Israeli civilians.’ The statement was to be followed by links to resources for understanding the ‘genocidal violence and ethnic cleansing that we are now witnessing.’ ​ “Shortly afterward, the university removed the statement from the departmental website. The move was in pursuit of the university’s ‘website governance policy ’ (established in November, after the department’s initial statement), which specifies that all subdomains of barnard.edu Internet domain are property of the college and all of its content ‘constitutes speech made by the College as an institution.’ Barnard resources such as ‘College letterhead, College website, College-sponsored campus communication tools or systems’ may not be used to ‘post political statements .’ “Members of the department created a private website where they republished their statement of solidarity and protested the ‘increasing curtailment of free speech and academic freedom at colleges and universities across the U.S.' They and their supporters issued a public letter decrying the 'overt act of censorship' by the university in removing the statement from the departmental website. The New York Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Barnard’s president characterizing the website policy as a form of 'prior restraint' inconsistent with academic freedom.... “It is a fundamental tenet of American principles of academic freedom that individual scholars must be afforded the fullest freedom to engage in research and publish scholarship and to introduce controversial but germane material into their classes without fear of university reprisal or censorship. Likewise, members of the faculty are not to suffer institutional consequences for their private political expression or activities. “Given these longstanding principles, Barnard College unsurprisingly exempts from its restrictions on 'political activity' the creation and publication of faculty research or 'academic materials' and allows the posting of research and 'academic resources' on its website. It likewise protects political activity 'in a personal capacity' that is 'not attributable, in reality or perception, to the College.' There are no doubt some gray areas in such policies, and it is essential that universities apply them in a consistent and content-neutral fashion.... “[In the end,] universities protect a realm of academic freedom and free expression by limiting the domain of institutional speech. The institution as such does not weigh in on either scholarly or political controversies. Individual members of the faculty should be left free to develop and express their own views -- because the university does not elevate orthodoxies. [However,] when universities [themselves] cross that line and expand the realm of institutional speech, they threaten to shrink the freedom of the scholars who work within those universities.” Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education by Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington, who next year is moving to become a professor at Yale Law School and also director of a new free speech and academic freedom center there. Bracketed text added. See also our compilation of the Kalven Report regarding a university's involvement in political and social matters. ​ Some Stark N umbers Re garding Political Contributions by University Professors, Employees and Trustees ​ [Editor’s note: We pre sent the follo wing excerpts and links not to favor one political party or another but because these numbers raise still more concerns about the apparent lack of diversity of thinking in higher education in recent times and as compared to 20 or more years ago.] Excerpts f rom Yale Daily News : ​ “Nearly 100 percent of the money Yale professors donated to political campaigns went to Democrats in 2023. ​ “The News analyzed over 5,000 Federal Elections Committee filings from 2023 with Yale University listed as an employer, 3,041 of which were professors. Professors donated a tot al of roughly $127,000, of which 98.4 percent went to Democratic candidates and groups.... ​ “’Yale is nearly fully disconnected from much of US society,’ Edward A Snyder, a School of Management professor wrote, referring to the contributions made by professors. ‘The data speak for themselves.’ … ​ “Carlos Eire, a professor of history and self-described conservative, said that he was ‘not surprised at all’ by the 98.35 percent figure. ‘Right now, it is extremely difficult for Yale or any other institution of higher learning to create greater political diversity,’ he said. ‘American academia is an echo chamber when it comes to politics.’ …” ​ Excerpts from Harvard Crimson : “Members of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, contributed more than $1.5 million in political donations to federal candidates and political action committees in 2021 and 2022. Of that number, just $12,900 went to Republican political causes....” See also the chart at The Conversation showing political contributions by all higher education employees between 1985 and 2023 as compared to the U.S. population as a whole. Loo king Back on a Dec ade of Cancel Culture Exc erpts (links in the original): “In January 2015, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait called attention to the reemergence of political correctness and speech-policing in an article entitled Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say . Shortly thereafter, British-American journalist Jon Ronson published his book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed , compiling stories of early internet cancellations. “In September 2015, Jonathan Haidt and one of us (Greg Lukianoff) co-authored an article for the Atlantic, The Coddling of the American Mind , arguing that the same habits of mind making campuses unfriendly to free speech were also making people depressed and anxious. Professors and public intellectuals, from essayist Meghan Daum to bioethicist Alice Dreger were ringing alarm bells...." Full op-ed at Quillette. See also Greg Lukianoff, “Yes, the Last 10 Years Really Have Been Worse for Free Speech ” at Substack. Princeto n A dds Trigg er Warnings for Library Researchers Exce rpts (link in th e original): “Princeton University is in the practice of adding warnings to its library documents to protect researchers’ sensitivities. “The Ivy League institution in New Jersey has reportedly been adding ‘trigger warnings’ to library archive documents over the course of several years. “National Review reports that Princeton has been adding such warnings to these documents since at least 2022. “An email obtained by National Review reveals the existence of a recruitment effort for a focus group on ‘mitigating harm in archival research.’ The email describes 'recent efforts at Princeton University Library to protect researchers from accidentally stumbling on archival materials that are offensive or harmful,' which is done primarily through ‘the use of content mediation, warnings, and descriptive notes in the Finding Aids website.’ “The email, written by a student advertising the focus group, reportedly suggests that this practice is not unique to Princeton, and is an accepted practice at many universities in order to protect researchers from viewing potentially upsetting content." … Full article at Campus Reform. See also Princeton Library's Statement on Harmful Content and our prior posting of Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative including a PDF copy of Stanford's list of proscribed words and phrases. Why Ca mpus Life F ell Apart Exce rpt (link in t he original): “Three years after the pandemic’s peak, its lingering effects contin ue to impede the full revival of student organizations -- a vital factor underpinning retention, graduation, and belonging. “When Covid-19 shut down campuses in March 2020 and clubs moved online, colleges reported sharp drops in participation as institutions and students went into survival mode. Even as public-health restrictions receded and students returned to campuses, however, the fabric that kept the clubs operating and smoothly passing the torch from year to year remained frayed. “Faced with the challenge of rebuilding what was once the beating heart of campus involvement, some colleges are rethinking their approaches to engagement in big ways. The cost of student disconnection is too high to ignore. “Based on conversations with over a dozen experts in student affairs and engagement, here’s an overview of how clubs fell apart during the pandemic, why it matters, and what some colleges are doing about it." … Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education On the Positi ve Side -- Samp les of Current Activities at Stanford Click on eac h a rticle for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Update from Stanford’s Presidential Search Committee Stanford’s Leadership Clarifies Free Speech Boundaries Sixth Year MD-PhD Student Working on New Cell Therapies for Blood Cancers (Video) Solar Power Data Software Can Increase Clean Energy Generation Ten Years of Team Science in Brain Research Tradeoffs in Aquaculture DNA Helps Map Migration During the Roman Empire Other Art icles of Int erest The Impact of “Name Image Likeness” on Stanford Sports Stanfor d Daily, Perspectives from Six Incoming Student Athletes Stanford Daily, Prior Administrative Decisions Chronicle of Higher Education, Issues with NIL Donor Collectives College Presidents Are Quietly Organizing to Support DEI Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education There’s Always Been Trouble in ‘The Groves of Academe’ Full op-ed at NY Times FIRE and Anti-Defamation League Weigh-In on No-Contact Orders Against Student Journalists Full article at Daily Princetonian. See also FIRE’s update that Princeton has subsequently amended its rules for no-contact orders. The Real Problem with American Universities Full op-ed at The Atlantic and also at MSN DC’s American University Bans Indoor Protests Full article at Inside Higher Ed American Miseducation (Video) Full video at Free Press and also at YouTube Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: Free Expre ssion and Unsettled Science (Podcast) Full podcast at Higher Ed Now “I think that future generations are going to look back on the recent past and compare it to the McCarthy era as a period when campuses which should be the bastion of robust and civil discourse and viewpoint diversity, unfortunately, have not been living up to that mission." – Nadine Strossen, former President of ACLU and currently professor emeritus at NYU Law School January 29, 2024 ​ College Is All About Curiosity, and That Requires Free Speech Excerpts: ​ “True learning can only happen on campuses where academic freedom is paramount -- within and outside the classroom. “I have served happily as a professor at Yale for most of my adult life, but in my four-plus decades at the mast, I have never seen campuses roiled as they’re roiling today.... “The classroom is, first and foremost, a place to train young minds toward a yearning for knowledge and a taste for argument -- to be intellectually curious -- even if what they wind up discovering challenges their most cherished convictions. If the behavioral economist George Loewenstein is right that curiosity is a result of an ‘information gap’ -- a desire to know more than we do -- then the most vital tasks of higher education are to help students realize that the gap always exists and to stoke their desire to bridge it.... “This process of testing ideas should be encouraged, particularly among the young. But it carries risks, not least because of what we might call influencers, who wind up dictating which ideas it’s fashionable to wear and which should be tossed out. When large majorities of college students report pressure to self-censor, this is what they’re talking about. Surveys suggest that the principal reason students keep controversial ideas to themselves is to avoid the disdain not of their professors but of their peers. “That is unfortunate, not least because it tells us how badly the educational process has failed.... ​ “My undergraduate education at Stanford in the 1970s was full of serious argument over controversial propositions. Little was out of bounds. In my history courses, we eagerly debated such subjects as whether slavery was more efficient than wage labor, or whether the influence of Christian missionaries on Asia and Africa and Latin America had been a net negative or net positive. When the great Carl Degler solemnly told a lecture class that slavery in Brazil had been harsher than slavery in the United States, nobody got mad, nobody circulated an outraged petition; instead, a group of Black students, myself among them, went to the lectern afterward to question, argue and learn.... “This, I thought then and think now -- this is how one lives the life of the mind! No, not everyone on campus need see things this way; but no one should interfere with those who do.... If telling students and faculty what they must not say is bad, telling them what they must say is often worse." … ​ Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Yale Law School Prof. Stephen L. Carter at NY Times Magazine How Universities Use DEI Statements to Enforce Groupthink Excerpts (links in the original): “Yoel Inbar must not be allowed to teach psychology at UCLA -- or so a student petition informed the California university's administration this past July. “Inbar is an eminent, influential, and highly cited researcher with a Ph.D. in social psychology from Cornell University. There is no question that he is qualified. Anyone worth their salt doing work on political polarization knows Inbar's name. Inbar also jumped through all the hoops UCLA put up for the job, including submitting a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statement, which is currently all the rage in colleges and universities. He even shares the politics of the majority of the psychology department. But on his podcast, Inbar had expressed relatively mild concerns over the ideological pressures that DEI statements impose and wondered aloud whether they do harm to diversity of thought. “As a result of this petition -- signed by only 66 students -- UCLA did not hire Inbar. And he's not the only academic this has happened to. Far from it.... “Here's something you probably don't know unless you've learned it the hard way: There are secret hearings at universities all over the country, and too often they are focused on investigating and/or punishing professors for protected speech. “The Kafkaesque nature of these hearings has been highlighted by authors such as The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum and Northwestern University media studies professor Laura Kipnis, in her 2017 book Unwanted Advances. Readers may recall that Kipnis was herself subjected to a secret hearing after she published an article saying Title IX was being used to squelch speech on campus. Ironically, she was subsequently investigated by Northwestern's office of Title IX. “With that ever-present threat, it shouldn't be a surprise, then, that faculty reported enormous concerns over academic freedom in FIRE's most recent faculty survey....” Full article by Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE Greg Lukianoff and his co-author Rikki Schott at Reason. See also Laura Kipnis' book "Unwanted Advances " and Anne Applebaum's article at The Atlantic (August 31, 2021) "The New Puritans ". The Future of Academic Freedom Excerpts (links in the original): “On January 2nd, after months of turmoil around Harvard’s response to Hamas’s attack on Israel, and weeks of turmoil around accusations of plagiarism, Claudine Gay resigned as the university’s president. Any hope that this might relieve the outsized attention on Harvard proved to be illusory.... “Over the years, I learned that students had repeatedly attempted to file complaints about my classes, saying that my requiring students to articulate, or to hear classmates make, arguments they might abhor -- for example, Justice Antonin Scalia saying there is no constitutional right to same-sex intimacy -- was unacceptable. The administration at my law school would not allow such complaints to move forward to investigations because of its firm view that academic freedom protects reasonable pedagogical choices. But colleagues at other schools within Harvard and elsewhere feared that their administrators were using concepts of discrimination or harassment to cover classroom discussions that make someone uncomfortable. These colleagues become more and more unwilling to facilitate conversations on controversial topics, believing that university administrators might not distinguish between challenging discussions and discrimination or harassment. Even an investigation that ended with no finding of wrongdoing could eat up a year of one’s professional life and cost thousands of dollars in legal bills. (A spokesperson for Harvard University declined to comment for this story.) “The seeping of D.E.I. programs into many aspects of university life in the past decade would seem a ready-made explanation for how we got to such a point. Danielle Allen, a political philosopher and my Harvard colleague, co-chaired the university’s Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, which produced a report, in 2018, that aimed to counter the idea that principles of D.E.I. and of academic freedom are in opposition, and put forward a vision in which both are ‘necessary to the pursuit of truth.’ Like Allen, I consider the diversity of thought that derives from the inclusion of people of different experiences, backgrounds, and identities to be vital to an intellectual community and to democracy. But, as she observed last month in the Washington Post , ‘across the country, DEI bureaucracies have been responsible for numerous assaults on common sense.’ Allen continued, ‘Somehow the racial reckoning of 2020 lost sight of that core goal of a culture of mutual respect with human dignity at the center. A shaming culture was embraced instead.’ … “The post-Gay crisis has created a crossroads, where universities will be tempted to discipline objectionable speech in order to demonstrate that they are dedicated to rooting out antisemitism and Islamophobia, too. Unless we conscientiously and mindfully pull away from that path, academic freedom -- which is essential to fulfilling a university’s purpose -- will meet its destruction....” Full op-ed by Harvard Law School Prof. Jeannie Suk Gersen at New Yorker Obstacles to Adopting Institutional Neutrality Excerpts: “University leaders are responsible for advancing their institutions’ interests. Adopting the Kalven principles [regarding a university’s role in political and social matters] has various potential benefits: It frees university leaders from taking a stand on divisive topics; it may help slow the decline of institutional trust; and it better aligns the university with the mission of promoting diversity of thought. But . . . there are significant obstacles to sincerely adopting the Kalven principles. A history of following the norm of consistently issuing political statements creates expectations of what university leaders can and will do. Adopting the Kalven principles requires recalibrating these expectations...." Full op-ed at Heterodox. See also our compilation of the Kalven principles, part of the Chicago Trifecta that has long been posted at our website and which we have long advocated that Stanford adopt. Third-Rate Governance of First-Rate Universities Excerpts: "Governance at elite universities is insular, unaccountable, and marred by conflicts of interest that prevent it from being focused on the historic mission of the university, encapsulated on Harvard’s coat of arms: seeking truth. Many nonprofits face similar structural difficulties that create a gap between the performance of their leadership and the fulfillment of their mission, but elite universities face added difficulties. They are so wealthy and market forces in elite higher education are so weak that there is no continuous pressure disciplining their behavior. Moreover, the returns in prestige and other benefits from being on an elite board of trustees are so substantial that members pull their punches to stay in the good graces of their fellows. "Only when some cataclysmic event like the Hamas massacre prompts campus upheaval, and only when a group of activists like Christopher Rufo, Aaron Sibarium, and Bill Ackman take advantage of it will the boards of these universities be called to account. And a reckoning is in order. Better governance structures would help improve universities without the dangers created by direct intervention by the state or periodic, short-lived populist eruptions." Full op-ed by Northwestern Law Prof. John O. McGinnis at Law & Liberty DEI Is an Ideology for the Privileged Excerpts: “My community is so far behind that I no longer look at the data showing how we’re on the bottom of every education and socioeconomic chart. I see the evidence every day. That’s why it sickens me whenever I read news of our culture war over DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), most recently during the public trial of Claudine Gay. What struck me was that several DEI advocates, in their defense of Gay, claimed to be fighting for communities like mine. They talked of how not everybody is born equal, how systemic racism is in the DNA of America, how white supremacy keeps us down at every turn, and the absurd oppressor-oppressed binary that leaves no gray area for nuance. “This experience was disembodying. It was like listening to people who don’t know you talk about you as if they knew you from way back when. Sometimes this disconnect between this DEI ideology and the realities of my community was so deep that it was laughable. "For instance, while DEI ideologues and beneficiaries like Gay may share the same skin color with us, there is very little, if anything, that my community had in common with a woman born to a wealthy Haitian family and schooled at the best of America’s schools. These DEI advocates were exploiting the pain of my community to gaslight their opponents and this troubled me the most because it hurts and hinders our efforts to truly make lasting progress. “The reality is that DEI is an ideology for the privileged. It helps people like Claudine Gay who exploit race for power and prestige and it hurts communities like mine by exploiting them for poverty-porn. “Let me give you an example of what my life as a pastor to my struggling community is actually like....” [followed by detailed discussion of social actions and outreach] Full op-ed by Chicago South Side Pastor Corey Brooks at Tablet More About Stanford’s Alleged Roles in Election Censorship Excerpt s: “A series of internal documents obtained via open records request by America First Legal (AFL) show that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, was aware of the risks associated with unsupervised mail-in voting in the months leading up to the 2020 election.... “CISA’s use of Deloitte to flag so-called ‘disinformation’ online further confirms the findings unearthed in an interim report released by House Republicans in November. According to that analysis, CISA -- along with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) -- colluded with Stanford University to pressure Big Tech companies into censoring what they claimed was ‘disinformation’ during the 2020 election. At the heart of this operation was the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), ‘a consortium of disinformation academics’ spearheaded by the Stanford Internet Observatory that coordinated with DHS and GEC ‘to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech’ ahead of the 2020 contest. “Created ‘at the request’ of CISA, EIP [at Stanford] allowed federal officials to ‘launder [their] censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny.’ As documented in the interim report, this operation aimed to censor ‘true information, jokes and satire, and political opinions’ and submitted flagged posts from prominent conservative figures to Big Tech companies for censorship....” Full article at Federalist as also posted at Real Clear Politics See also Part 4 of Back to Basics at Stanford regarding the need for better oversight of these sorts of activities at Stanford. Two Faculty Friends -- One Jewish, One Muslim -- Have an Answer to Campus Conflict Excerpts: “On Oct. 26, we organized our first event together, called Pitt Community United in Compassion. Faculty, staff, students, and community leaders -- including religious leaders -- gathered from across the region. We yearned to create a supportive environment where people could gather, focus, meditate, foster meaningful connections, care for each other, and find solace amid the chaos of our lives. “We asked participants simple questions: What does compassion mean to you? How do you define compassion? Is there something from your own personal background -- religion, upbringing, experiences -- that has taught you compassion? Finally, we asked: How can our community at Pitt be more compassionate? “Our motivation in organizing this event stemmed from seeing so many campuses torn apart by hatred and an inability to find common ground. Our antidote was to create a kind of prophylactic that would guide our community to celebrate our shared humanity and to prevent us from falling into the same vicious cycle.... “Universities are wracked with debates over the role of freedom of expression. But what is missing from these conversations is any discussion about civil discourse. Universities will never be able to solve the world’s problems unless we see those with divergent perspectives as human first and worthy of respect and care. …We do not want people to walk away with one worldview, but instead we seek that they have the confidence and compassion to deal with those who disagree.” Full op-ed by University of Pittsburg Professors Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili and Abdesalam Soudi at Tablet How Civics Can Counter Antisemitism on Campus Excerpts: “The shocking scenes of college students, faculty, and staff defending Hamas’s October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians as a ‘legitimate act of resistance’ have rightly been called antisemitism. “Our father’s antisemitism was the centuries-old hatred of Jews just because they were Jews, different in their beliefs and customs. But this new form of antisemitism is different, and there are reasons why we’re seeing it revealed on our college campuses today. It’s an antisemitism based on an ideology of the oppressed versus the oppressors, which is also being used against people of other races and ethnicities. Because Israel is seen as strong it is viewed as the oppressor, and Hamas, because it is weaker, is seen as the oppressed.... “Civics education rightly understood counters this new form of antisemitism, and all identitarian philosophies, as it promotes an American “unum” through a non-ideological (yet still critical) teaching of the American project....” Full op-ed by Pepperdine Professor and Dean Pete Peterson and non-profit leader Jack Miller at Real Clear Education On the Positive Side -- Samples of Current Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. The Incredible Journey of Stanford's Transfer Student Cameron Black The Impact of Atmospheric Rivers Stanford Medicine’s First Health Equity Symposium Focuses on Improving the Health of Marginalized Populations Possible Major Enhancements in Computer Memory Stanford Football’s First Year Schedule in the ACC Other Articles of Interest Text of Letter fro m Former Cornell Trustee Demanding Major Changes at Cornell Full letter by former Cornell trustee Jon A. Lindseth at Ivy Excellence Initiative website Harvard’s Recent Statement on Rights and Responsibilities Full statement at Harvard website AAUP’s Recent Statement on Eliminating Discrimination and Achieving Equality in Higher Education Full statement at AAUP website DEI Boomerang Full op-ed at New Criterion Nebraska Legislation Proposes an End to Tenure Full article at Higher Ed Dive Microcredentials Are on the Rise, but Not at Colleges Full article at Inside Higher Ed Georgia Universities Rebrand Diversity in Response to Anti-DEI Regulations Full article at College Fix "Professors should not be carrying their ideologies into the classroom. Our job as teachers of 'citizens and citizen-leaders' is not to indoctrinate students, but to prepare them to grapple with all of the ideas they will encounter in the societies they will serve.” -- Harvard Professor and former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis January 22, 2024 Why I Left Harvard Excerpts (links in the original): “Since early December, the end of my 20-year career teaching at Harvard has been the subject of articles , op-eds , tweets from a billionaire, and even a congressional hearing. I have become a poster child for how the growing campus DEI -- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion -- bureaucracies strangle free speech. My ordeal has been used to illustrate the hypocrisy of the assertions by Harvard’s leaders that they honor the robust exchange of challenging ideas. “What happened to me, and others , strongly suggests that these assertions aren’t true -- at least, if those ideas oppose campus orthodoxy. “To be a central example of what has gone wrong in higher education feels surreal. If there is any silver lining to losing the career that I found so fulfilling, perhaps it’s that my story will help explain the fear that stalks campuses, a fear that spreads every time someone is punished for their speech....” [followed by a detailed summary of events that transpired] Full op-ed by former Harvard Prof. Carole Hooven at Free Press Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts Excerpts: “Sometimes in this job I have a kernel of a column idea that doesn’t pan out. But other times I begin looking into a topic and find a problem so massive that I can’t believe I’ve ever written about anything else. This latter experience happened as I looked into the growing bureaucratization of American life.... “Once you start poking around, the statistics are staggering. Over a third of all health care costs go to administration.... The growth of bureaucracy costs America over $3 trillion in lost economic output every year, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini estimated in 2016 in The Harvard Business Review. That was about 17 percent of G.D.P.... “This situation is especially grave in higher education. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology now has almost eight times as many nonfaculty employees as faculty employees. In the University of California system, the number of managers and senior professionals swelled by 60 percent between 2004 and 2014. The number of tenure-track faculty members grew by just 8 percent.... “I’ve found the administrators’ code of safety first is now prevalent at the colleges where I’ve taught and visited. Aside from being a great school, Stanford used to be a weird school, where students set up idiosyncratic arrangements like an anarchist house or built their own islands in the middle of the lake. This was great preparation for life as a creative entrepreneur. But Stanford is apparently now tamed. I invite you to read Ginevra Davis’s essay 'Stanford’s War on Social Life ' in Palladium, which won a vaunted Sidney Award in 2022 and details how university administrators cracked down on student initiatives to make everything boring, supervised and safe....” Full op-ed by David Brooks at NY Times See also our prior articles “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” and where Stanford now has nearly 17,000 non-teaching personnel, considerably worse than the numbers cited above for MIT, University of California and others; “Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students ”; and “Back to Basics at Stanford ” where we have long proposed a major reduction in Stanford’s counter-productive bureaucracy and that the savings, dollar for dollar, be devoted solely to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and graduate student fellowships. From Stanford Law School Dean Paul Brest: Reviving Campus Belonging and Community Excerpts (links in the original): “Critical discourse was in critical condition on American campuses even before reactions to the war between Israel and Hamas left it with no discernible pulse. “At Stanford Law School, where I have taught for many years, students across the spectrum of beliefs and identities have become increasingly reluctant to engage each other productively on controversial issues. As the College Pulse/FIRE 2024 College Free Speech Rankings and the 2021 Stanford IDEAL survey reveal, many students feel excluded from classroom discussions and fear ostracism should they say the wrong thing. Far from being unique, Stanford sadly turns out to be typical.... “If the choice were only between toughing it out and comforting the afflicted, inclusive discourse would create a paradox: One can either promote open discourse among the willing at the cost of other students’ exclusion, or remove barriers to inclusion at the cost of drastically narrowing the range of permissible discourse. “Fortunately, there’s a third option available, which I’ll call everyone belongs. The idea is to facilitate critical discourse while creating the conditions for inclusive participation. This approach promotes interactive discussions designed to make students with many different identities and viewpoints grapple with difficult issues, even when the process makes them uncomfortable. For this to succeed, however, students must feel that they are genuinely included in those discussions -- that they belong at the table. “Belonging, in this context, does not imply the cozy feeling of being with like-minded people. Rather, as the social psychologist Geoffrey Cohen defines the term in his 2022 book Belonging , it refers to ‘the feeling that we’re part of a larger group that values, respects, and cares for us -- and to which we have something to contribute.’” … Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education Lessons to Learn from University Presidents Excerpts: “What will come of the presidents of three of America’s most prestigious universities being called on the congressional carpet to explain their responses to Hamas’ brutal assault on innocent Israelis? … “The core questions posed by the congressional inquisitors were two: (1) Why did your university not condemn Hamas’ brutal October 7 assault on innocent Israelis? (2) Does your institution’s code of conduct permit the pro-Hamas demonstrations that occurred? “Implicit in the first question is that there is no acceptable explanation for not condemning Hamas’ actions -- that the presidents failed their responsibilities in not doing so. The second question implies that the schools’ codes of conduct should prohibit such demonstrations with severe consequences for violators. If those conclusions were drawn from this unfortunate saga, we would have missed an opportunity for essential reform.... “Two deeply embedded developments that have distracted higher education from the pursuit of truth and the conveyance of knowledge are institutional advocacy for favored public policies and the suppression of free expression in the name of student comfort.... “Silence is not violence, nor is it indifference. Failure to regulate offensive speech does not endorse the speaker’s message. On the contrary, both are essential to the pursuit of truth. Had the three presidents been able to say that they did not condemn Hamas because, when speaking for the institution, they remain neutral on matters of public concern and that they did not constrain the demonstrators because they embrace untrammeled freedom of expression, they would have been no less condemned but would have stood on two foundational principles that once made American higher education the envy of the world.” Full op-ed by Lewis & Clark Law School Dean Emeritus James Huffman at DC Journal See also our compilation of the Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social matters and part of the Chicago Trifecta Amid National Backlash, Coll eges Brace for Fresh Wave of Anti-DEI Legislation Excerpt: “At least 14 states this year will consider legislation that could dismantle the ways college administrators attempt to correct historical and structural gender and racial disparities and make campus climates more inclusive, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education analysis. “The Chronicle has identified at least 19 bills that will be considered in the coming months that seek to ban the employment and funding of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices; the use of pledges by faculty and staff to commit to creating a more inclusive environment on campus, commonly known as diversity statements; mandatory diversity training; and identity-based preferences for hiring and admissions. “While college administrators argue that they have a legal, moral, and financial obligation to more aggressively tackle forms of discrimination on campus and provide extra resources to historically marginalized employees and students -- who will soon make up more than half of the nation’s population -- opponents say those efforts are ineffective, illegal, and, in fact, discriminatory....” Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education ​ Pop Goes the DEI Bubble Excerpts: “Have we reached peak DEI? The unraveling of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ initiatives had already begun -- five states banning DEI programs; Google, Facebook and others cutting DEI staff; Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard -- well before Harvard President Claudine Gay was demoted. “Author Christopher Rufo, echoing 1960s student activists, called the rise of DEI a ‘long march through the institutions’ -- a 50-plus-year ideology infiltration into universities, K-12 schools, government, media and corporations with the goal of telling us all how to live. That’s why I enjoy that the word ‘rot’ is back in style to describe what is happening inside the walls of academia.... “The new societal design, embedded in DEI and ESG, envisioned idyllic communal progress. History shows this never works because power corrupts. Diversity meant ideological conformity. Equity meant discrimination. Inclusion meant blurring the sexes. Men winning women’s athletic events would be considered normal. It was all theatrics, like the tampons I’ve seen in men’s bathrooms on Ivy League campuses. Somewhere George Orwell is rolling on the floor laughing.... “I, like most Americans, am for diversity, but not when it’s forced or mandated.... “Preferred pronouns are fading. College admissions, and maybe hiring, based on race is illegal. DEI departments are being deconstructed. But while the DEI movement may have peaked, like that Monty Python character, it’s not dead yet. The feverish whining of those grasping for the last reins of power will probably get worse before DEI eventually dies with a whimper.” Full op-ed at WSJ ​ Reasons for the DEI Rollback Excerpt: “When he took office in 2021, Utah governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, made advancing ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ a key priority. He appointed a high-level diversity officer to his administration. His senior leadership was put through a ‘21-Day Equity Challenge,’ which instructed them in microaggressions and antiracism. “The universities were on board. Utah State’s annual diversity symposium featured talks such as ‘Decentering Whiteness.’ The university also required DEI statements from applicants to the faculty, explaining how they infused diversity and equity -- a focus on race, gender, sexual orientation, and other categories of ‘marginalization’-- into their work. Even for positions in fields such as insect ecology and lithospheric evolution. “Then, in December, Cox announced a different priority: reversing the excesses of DEI. At a press conference he said, ‘We’re using identitarianism to force people into boxes, and into victimhood, and I just don’t think that’s helpful at all. In fact, I think it’s harmful.’ So harmful that he announced his intention to bar the use of diversity statements in faculty hiring, condemning the practice as ‘bordering on evil.’ … Full article by National Association of Scholars Senior Fellow J ohn Sailer at Free Press Alternative Viewpoint: Excellence Isn’t Colorblind or Gender Neutral, In Either Direction, Nor Should It Be Excerpts (citations deleted): “As debate rages on about the forced resignation of Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay, a familiar trope has surfaced yet again. As if to echo Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision in the Harvard affirmative action case, many have asserted that Gay got her job because of race and gender, contrasting that with a ‘pure’ merit-based selection of leaders. Aside from the insulting nature of this assumption, there is a stark irony to be considered here -- white men have similarly gotten their positions because of race and gender for centuries, originally by law and ultimately by tradition, precedent, and, one might add, the in-group tendency to choose familiar faces. If, after all, our norms were to choose leaders based on some (more fictional than real) colorblind or gender-neutral metric, would the statistics on CEOs, presidents, and other leaders look as one-sided as they do today? … “Clearly, there are multiple dimensions that contribute to the excellence of a leader and a scholar -- and in this instance, multiple issues on the table beyond the focus of my comments here -- but it is absurd to suggest that white men never benefit from the ease with which they fit the prototype and thus can be taken ‘at face value’ as appropriate candidates for leadership to be judged on other dimensions. Even more important, it is fundamentally shortsighted to restrict our evaluations of quality and excellence to so-called colorblind and gender-neutral framings that miss the richness of intelligence honed by the lived experiences of identity, and of course, identity comes in many other forms also to be embraced as valuable to our collective power and leadership. Why don’t we test our own powers of perception and judgment to include the valuable nuances that diversity encompasses? Are we just too lazy to learn new ways of seeing merit before our very eyes? …” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Rutgers Chancellor Nancy Cantor at Diverse Issues in Higher Education Higher Education Needs to Reform Itself; It Also Needs to Defend Itself Excerpt s (links in the original): “These are turbulent times for universities. Rising incidents of antisemitism on campuses across the country -- highlighted in a disastrous hearing in Congress that contributed to the resignations of two Ivy League presidents -- have led to widespread calls to reform higher education, refocusing it on principles of pluralism and free expression . “It’s true that higher education needs to reform itself. But more than ever, it also needs to defend itself.... [followed by detailed recommendations] …. “The last three months have set higher education back on its heels, perhaps deservedly so. But these challenges also present an unprecedented opportunity. Universities must seize the initiative on two fronts: Reform the censorial culture that threatens free expression on campus, and defend themselves vigorously against the official government suppression of speech.” Full op-ed at The Hill On the Positive Side - Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report an d other Stanford websites. The Hunt for a Vaccine That Fends Off Multiple Strains of Infect ion ​ If/Then: Business, Leadership, Society (podcasts from Stanford Graduate School of Business) ​ Study of Twins Indicates That a Vegan Diet Improves Cardiovascular Health ​ Stanford Scientists Reveal Why We Value Things More Wh en They Cost Us More ​ Other Articles of Interest Dartmouth Launches Campus-Wide Prog ram Encouraging Dialog ue on Controversial Topics Full article at Inside Higher Ed To Revitalize Higher Education, Colleges Need to Refocus on Character and Why They Exist Full op-ed by Pepperdine President Jim Gash at Newsweek DEI Squelches Student Reporting at Yale, Penn Full op-ed by current Yale undergraduate at Tablet. See also Stanford student op-ed from October at Jewish News Syndicate. Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus Full op-ed at After Babel How Private Colleges Are Grappling with Growing Partisan Divides Full article at Higher Ed Dive DEI Goes Quiet in Business and Elsewhere Full article at NY Times G r owing Numbers Question Whether a College Degree Is Worth the Debt Full article at NY Times Large Percent of Graduate Students Question Whether It Was Worth It Full article at USA Today and also republished at Yahoo After Harvard and Penn Resignations, Who Wants to be a College President? Full article at Washington Post and also republished at MSN I n Battles Over Offensive Speech, the Cure Is Usually Worse Than the Disease Full op-ed by U Wisconsin Prof. Franciska Coleman at The Hill Harvard Tries to Smooth Things Over with Silicon Valley Full article at WSJ Foreign Funding of U.S. Academia Full PDF copy of report here Can ChatGPT Get Into Harvard? Full article at Washington Post and also republished at MSN The U.S. Prevailed in the Space Race; With STEM, We Can Win the Earth Race Too Full op-ed at The Hill and also republished at MSN “My view is that, above all else, we must focus on returning American higher education to its original purposes: to seek the truth; to teach young adults the things they need to flourish; and to pass on the knowledge that is the basis of our exceptional civilization.” -- Bari Weiss, Journalist January 15, 2024 [Editor's note: Because of the timeliness and relevance of articles in this week's Newsletter, we are again issuing it slightly earlier than is our normal practice and might move to an earlier publication date in the future as well.] From Stanford Daily: Petition Seeks Reinstatement of Suspended COLLEGE Lecturer Excerpts: “A petition circulated by students demands the reinstatement of COLLEGE 101 lecturer Ameer Loggins, who was suspended after reports of identity-based targeting last fall. “Stanford opened an investigation following reports that Loggins targeted Jewish students based on their identity during two Oct. 10 class sections, following the Hamas attack on Israel three days prior. University president Richard Saller said at a Graduate Student Council (GSC) meeting last December that Stanford has hired external counsel for the investigation. “Over 1,700 people have signed the petition as of Jan. 10, according to Jaeden Clark ’26, one of the students leading the effort.... “Kelly Danielpour ’25, a co-president of the Jewish Student Association who spoke with several Jewish students from the class and was involved in reporting the incident, wrote that the ‘only students who can speak to whether Loggins created an environment where they felt singled out, targeted, and pressured based on a power dynamic are the Jewish students in his class.’ ... “Like Clark, Milo Golding ’26 is involved in the petition effort and previously sat in on Loggins’s lectures. He described Loggins as someone who created space for students to exchange different views on important societal issues.... “'I sympathize with the students who felt uncomfortable,’ Golding said. However, Golding argued, Loggins tried to help students understand the people and communities impacted by issues raised in the classroom. Golding said Loggins’s teaching style reflects his experiences growing up with a marginalized, low-income background and going ‘unheard.’” … Full article at Stanford Daily The Root Cause of Academic Groupthink Excerpts: “The shroud is coming off elite academia and America is not pleased with what it’s seeing. Its leaders have told us that genocidal antisemitism is too complex to recognize and that plagiarism is a problem for students, perhaps for junior faculty, but not for the president of Harvard. DEI policies elevated demographic considerations far above merit at our most prestigious institutions. “How did this happen? What can be done to fix it? “Those are tough questions. Major institutions don’t become corrupt overnight. The process is long, slow, and methodical. The solutions go far beyond the removal of a few high-profile officials.... "[T]he safest, surest, most common path to success in academia involves telling those already designated experts precisely what they most want to hear....The net result is a reinforcement of orthodox thinking and a field committed to moving further along whatever path it was already taking. I’ve termed this phenomenon ‘incremental outrageousness.’ It defines the basic incentive structure of academia....” Full op-ed at Real Clear Education. See also former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy’s “The Threat from Within .” Harvard’s Faculty Speak Up Excerpts: “[Law Professor J. Mark Ramseyer] criticized the growing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion bureaucracy at Harvard, noting in an email to The College Fix that ‘the DEI statements required of job applicants are a straightforward political loyalty oath.’ … “Ramseyer described the current intolerance as a product of ‘an increasingly large fraction of our colleagues’ spreading their political ideologies across campus. He also placed blame on himself and other professors who were ‘scared to speak up’ and let it happen, while praising some alumni for ‘trying to rescue Harvard from what we let it become.’ “Similarly, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker published an op-ed last month in the Boston Globe in which he denounced Harvard’s ‘notorious incidents of cancelation and censorship’ over the past year and cited a ranking that placed Harvard last in free speech out of 248 universities....” Full article at College Fix ​ This Is the Actual Danger Posed by DEI Excerpts (links in the original): “There are few national conversations more frustrating than the fight over D.E.I.... “Outside the reactionary right, there is a cohort of Americans, on both right and left, who want to eradicate illegal discrimination and remedy the effects of centuries of American injustice yet also have grave concerns about the way in which some D.E.I. efforts are undermining American constitutional values, especially on college campuses. “For instance, when a Harvard scholar such as Steven Pinker speaks of ‘disempowering D.E.I. ’ as a necessary reform in American higher education, he’s not opposing diversity itself. Pinker is liberal , donates substantially to the Democratic Party and ‘loathes’ Donald Trump. The objections he raises are shared by a substantial number of Americans across the political spectrum. “To put it simply, the problem with D.E.I. isn’t with diversity, equity, or inclusion -- all vital values. The danger posed by D.E.I. resides primarily not in these virtuous ends, but in the unconstitutional means chosen to advance them.... “There is a better way to achieve greater diversity, equity, inclusion and related goals. Universities can welcome students from all walks of life without unlawfully censoring speech. They can respond to campus sexual violence without violating students’ rights to due process. They can diversify the student body without discriminating on the basis of race. Virtuous goals should not be accomplished by illiberal means.” Full op-ed at NY Times. See also our Back to Basics at Stanford . ​ About Campus Activism Excerpt (links in the original): “In a thought-provoking essay , Len Gutkin, a senior editor of The Chronicle Review, digs into the evolution of campus activism this past decade. Citing several confrontations between administrators and students (including this infamous one involving the Yale professor Nicholas Christakis, who, along with his wife, Erika, oversaw student activities in one of the university’s residential colleges), Gutkin points out how DEI administrators came to be seen as prioritizing minority students’ feelings of belonging at the risk of censoring controversial speakers...." Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education About Preference Falsification, and Why Merit Is No Longer Evil Excerpts (link in the original): “Years ago, Harvard University Press published a book called ‘Private Truths, Public Lies' and explained the work and its author: "'Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures… “''A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change. In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge.' “This week on X, Mr. Kuran, a Duke University economist [and Stanford alum], writes: ‘Preference falsification has been central to the trajectory of DEI. People who abhor DEI principles and methods came to favor these publicly through a preference cascade. Every instance of preference falsification induced others to pretend they consider DEI just, efficient, beneficial to marginalized groups, etc. In time, a false consensus effectively displaced the search for truth as the university’s core mission.... Since October 7, the moral high ground has shifted. DEI has been exposed as a sham. Merit is no longer evil.' "On X, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen suggests some homework: ‘Make a list of all the things you believe, but can’t say. Then a list of things you don’t believe, but must say.’ …" Full op-ed at WSJ Should DEI Be Expanded to Cover Jews? Excerpts: “Facing blowback for campus antisemitism, universities have proposed expanding their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs to encompass Jews. Not only does past (and present) persecution justify such expansion, they argue, but it seems politically advantageous. A recent survey showed 79 percent of college-age respondents support the ‘ideology’ categorizing whites as ‘oppressors’ and others as ‘oppressed’ (and deserving of special favor); furthermore, 67 percent concluded Jews ‘should be treated as oppressors.’ “Reconfiguring DEI programs to shift Jews into the ‘oppressed’ category seems highly desirable, but it is a Faustian bargain. DEI is not the solution. It is the problem.... “It is as if jurors decided a case based not on evidence but the litigants’ clothing. No wonder two-thirds of college students consider it acceptable to shout down a speaker; they do not need to hear speech to decide who is right,,,. Unlike Hammurabi’s Code, which based punishments on a matrix comparing the status of offender and victim, the Torah emphasizes conduct over status: ‘Thou shalt not favor the poor, nor honor the rich, but in righteousness shall you judge.’ [Lev. 19:15.] ,,, “The diversity-industrial complex now decides which speech is ‘worth the squeeze’ and which is not.... “Viewpoint bias among faculty is no surprise; it is why they are chosen. Candidates must submit ‘diversity statements’ demonstrating how they will treat students differently based on their status. It is the most important part of the application; Berkeley rejected 76 percent of applicants based on their diversity statement alone, without even considering their academic record. And faculty must repeat this ‘loyalty oath’ to the DEI regime throughout their careers, in annual reviews. Ideological conformity is not a bug of this system but a feature.... “Universities should not expand the DEI infrastructure but dismantle it. Fundamental justice -- and their academic reputations -- require nothing less.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum Mitchell Keiter at Jewish Journal Enforced DEI in Faculty Hiring at the University of California Excerpts (links in the original): “From 2016 to 2022, most University of California campuses participated in an experimental program , funded by the state Legislature, to use diversity, equity, and inclusion statements as the first cut in faculty-applicant pools. According to UC’s guidelines , the purpose of diversity statements is for applicants to explain what they have done and plan to do to serve underrepresented-minority people on campus -- specifically, African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics/Latinos. “Such policies are informed by a series of politically charged assumptions. The first assumption is that such groups have been more oppressed than other racial or ethnic groups in California; the second is that oppression has caused the groups to be represented in numbers lower than their proportions of the California population; the third is that increasing their representation is central to UC’s mission; the fourth is that proactive, race-conscious policies are necessary to hire members of the groups. Each of these assumptions should be open to debate. Instead, the university has assumed that all have been proved and then jumped to a fifth and final assumption: that UC can and should refuse to hire otherwise-competitive applicants for insufficiently endorsing the preceding assumptions. “By making political values the sole criterion at the initial hiring stage, UC-faculty searches strayed from the American Association of University Professors’ bedrock 1915 “Declaration of Principles ,” which states that scholars have a duty to remain neutral and not act in the interests of any particular segment of the population....” Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education See also our prior posting "California Community College Professors Sue Over Newly Imposed DEIA Hiring and Performance Standards " including a PDF copy of the California Community Colleges' DEI glossary. See also the Shils Report regarding the hiring and promotion of faculty and part of the Chicago Trifecta posted at our website. What’s Bad for Harvard Is Good for America Excerpts: “Regardless of your perspective, Harvard looks bad right now -- and that’s good for America. “Like all of America’s top universities, Harvard has taken on an unhealthy role in the US economy and society. America’s best universities need to return to their original mission: producing academic excellence, not just signaling it. “These schools have used their reputations for excellence to form an oligopoly with outsized power. An Ivy League degree, or even just attendance at an Ivy League school, conveys a powerful signal that this person is among the smartest and best-connected this nation has to offer.... “This power to signal elitism also proved toxic for the universities themselves. A concentration of market power tends to result in less innovation, more waste and greater distortions. So it was with the Ivy League: Intoxicated by the idea that they were shaping the elite of America, these schools increasingly saw themselves not as educational institutions but as organizers of a vast social project. They were not completely wrong -- but it was a social project with little accountability.... “Reducing market power is never easy, but the U.S. has to find some way to make its elite schools less important....” Full op-ed at Bloomberg. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” and “Back to Basics at Stanford .” Harvard’s Board Is Guilty of Five Key Failures; Here’s How to Avoid Repeating Them Excerpt: “Harvard’s board implosion will become a classic case study of failed succession planning for colleges and universities everywhere, as well as for failed board governance across sectors. The profound damage to the venerable Harvard brand in terms of its reputation for academic integrity, with its school motto being 'Veritas' (Latin for truth), could have long-lasting consequences: a decline in student applications, diminished employer enthusiasm for Harvard graduates, discouraged fundraising, and a demoralized, fractured campus culture. But it can be corrected if the university acknowledges five classic corporate governance failures -- and then implements key needed remedies quickly....” [The author then discusses in detail each of these five alleged failures: Failed diligence Poor responsiveness to key stakeholders worried about rising campus antisemitism Failures of duty of care and premature denials of misconduct allegations Failures to address the serious erosion of Harvard’s brand and institutional mission Unexplained violations of collegial shared governance and presumptions of racial bias.] Full analysis by Yale Management Professor and Senior Associate Dean Jeffrey Sonnenfeld at Fortune Why the Shocking Campus Behavior Is Only the Beginning Excerpts: “I’ve been part of so many conversations over the past few months about the same weighty topic. People are struggling to understand why so many individuals and institutions have openly embraced antisemitic viewpoints, permitting hateful rhetoric they’d never permit against another identity group.... The truth lies in the development of a new and increasingly radical progressive orthodoxy, which has come to dominate many campuses, institutions, workplaces, and online spaces. “Under this belief set, extreme words and actions, including acts of violence, are considered righteous if employed by the ‘oppressed’. In contrast, words and actions that are far less damaging are rebuked if they come from those who are deemed ‘oppressors’. What’s fine for one group to say or do is completely unacceptable when it comes from another, and double standards are openly applied.... “History is complex, containing not only tales of oppression and injustice that should not be overlooked, but also stories of resilience, innovation, and triumph over adversity. These narratives include many individuals who defied challenges or societal norms and are remembered for their remarkable achievements and contributions.... “These universities’ incessant tuition increases predominantly fund sprawling layers of bureaucracy in their administrations as well as the construction of bigger and better facilities as part of an arms race against other schools. “For example, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Stanford University had more administrative staff and faculty than it did students. Specifically, there were 15,750 administrators, 2,288 faculty members, and 16,937 students. 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.... “Through the lens of the radical progressive orthodoxy, Jews are labeled as oppressors. This labeling is based on American Jews’ disproportionate wealth and perceived access to power, but it conveniently overlooks the constant, systematic oppression Jews faced for thousands of years. This same oppression culminated in the Holocaust, but that was just one horror in millennia of calamities.... “The path forward should not prioritize tearing down the structures of self-determination, success, and achievement; rather, it should attempt to make the starting line more equitable for everyone. This involves addressing systemic issues and biases while preserving the principles of freedom and merit that have been pivotal in fostering innovation, progress, and prosperity. By focusing on enhancing opportunities for all, rather than imposing uniformity of outcomes, we can create a society that is both fairer and freer, where merit and hard work are recognized and rewarded, and where everyone has a chance to succeed based on their abilities and efforts.” Full op-ed at Friday Forward Moral Outrage Is Consuming Our Universities; Moral Resilience Can Save the Day Excerpts: “As a therapist, clinical ethicist and trauma researcher specializing in moral injury and moral distress, I know well the damaging effects of when a person’s core moral foundations are violated in high-stakes situations. I also recognize when their integrity is compromised due to forces beyond their control or from repeatedly not having their deeply held values respected individually, collectively or institutionally. “As a vice president of university relations and chief communications officer at California Institute of Integral Studies, I also know well the emotional minefield that college campuses have become. Every day, I survey the precarious landscape of moral offenses, complaints and activations, carefully assessing which ones might explode, sending the community into an uproar, and tiptoe through the harrowing task of crafting the appropriate ‘safe’ language, praying one of the chosen words won’t detonate some hidden trigger.... “Essentially, our rational, meaning-making mind shuts down, giving way to the older areas of the brain that are wired for protection. This shutdown not only diminishes the capacity for empathy, collaboration and clear thinking but also fuels destruction rather than solutions.... “Enter moral resilience. “Moral resilience, still a nascent concept, focuses on the moral aspects of human experience, the complexity of decisions, obligations and relationships and the inevitable challenges that ignite conscience, confusion and distress.... “For colleges and universities struggling to manage gripping moral outrage, it would be a bold and courageous step forward to abandon the typical ‘contain and restrain’ or ‘damp and stamp’ responses, which require administrators, faculty and staff to tread with trepidation through today’s moral minefields. “Instead, institutions should embrace a proactive and sustainable model of moral resilience. Here’s what that could look like: [followed by summary of steps to take] ….” Full essay at The Hill ​ On the Positive Side - Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. A Salute to Longtime Women’s Basketball Coach Tara VanDerveer See also Go Stanford New Research on Microbes Expands the Known Limits for Life on Earth and Beyond Seven Economic Trends to Watch in 2024 How Psychoactive Drug Ibogaine Effectively Treats Traumatic Brain Injury in Special Ops Military Vets Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya re Government Censorship of Social Media (debate on YouTube) ​ Other Articles of Interest Stanford’s Welcome Back Message to Students Full letter at Stanford Report Stanford’s Undergraduate Neighborhood Housing System Revised Once Again Full article at Stanford Daily. See also our Back to Basics webpage that has long called for an end to the neighborhood system. UCLA’s Medical School Divides Students by Race to Teach Antiracism Full op-ed at WSJ Johns Hopkins Medical School Rescinds DEI Memo Calling Whites, Christians, Males, Middle-Aged and Other People Privileged Full article at College Fix Jewish Students Sue Harvard, Claim Severe Campus Antisemitism Full article at Harvard Crimson Citing Campus Antisemitism, Popular Jewish Computer Scientist Resigns from MIT Full article at College Fix Group Prepares to Sue MIT Re Admissions Standards Full article at College Fix. See also Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act The Flawed Test Behind DEI Full op-ed by Ohio State Prof. Emeritus Hal Arkes at WSJ Today’s Universities Are Incubators of Competing Visions Full interview of Princeton Prof. Robert George at National Catholic Register Dishonesty in University Research Is Undermining Americans’ Trust in Higher Education Full op-ed at Josh Barro Very Serious With Higher Education on Trial, Policy Changes May Be the Only Solution Full op-ed at Real Clear Education Promises and Pitfalls of AI Tool Usage Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education “In an age of information overload and easy access to superficial knowledge, critical thinking becomes even more vital. We must learn to navigate through the noise, separate fact from fiction, and think critically to make informed decisions." -- Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy January 8, 2024 From Former Dean of Harvard College: Reaping What We Have Taught ​ Excerpts: ​ "Let’s go back to how Harvard’s current crisis began: charges of antisemitism.... "Unapologetic antisemitism -- whether the incidents are few or numerous -- is a college phenomenon because of what we teach, and how our teachings are exploited by malign actors. "The Harvard online course catalog has a search box. Type in 'decolonize.' That word -- though surely not the only lens through which to view the current relationship between Europe and the rest of the world -- is in the titles of seven courses and the descriptions of 18 more. "Try 'oppression' and 'liberation.' Each is in the descriptions of more than 80 courses. 'Social justice' is in over 100. 'White supremacy' and 'Enlightenment' are neck and neck, both ahead of 'scientific revolution' but behind 'intersectionality.' … “When complex social and political histories are oversimplified in our teachings as Manichaean struggles -- between oppressed people and their oppressors, the powerless and the powerful, the just and the wicked -- a veneer of academic respectability is applied to the ugly old stereotype of Jews as evil but deviously successful people. "While Harvard cannot stop the abuse of our teaching, we, the Harvard faculty, can recognize and work to mitigate these impacts.... "Professors should not be carrying their ideologies into the classroom. Our job as teachers of 'citizens and citizen-leaders' is not to indoctrinate students, but to prepare them to grapple with all of the ideas they will encounter in the societies they will serve.... "The goal is not to give students a choice between courses reflecting different ideologies. Harvard should instead expect instructors to leave their politics at the classroom door and touch both sides of controversial questions, leaving students uncertain where their sympathies lie. Professors should have no more right to exclude from their teaching ideas with which they disagree than students should expect to be shielded from ideas they find disagreeable. "All that is required is for faculty to exhibit some humility about the limits of their own wisdom and embrace the formula for educational improvement voiced by Le Baron R. Briggs, a Harvard dean, more than a century ago: 'increased stress on offering what should be taught rather than what the teachers wish to teach.'” Full op-ed by Harvard Professor and former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis at our Commentary webpage and as initially published at Harvard Crimson From Bill Ackman: How to Fix Harvard Excerpts: “I have always believed that diversity is an important feature of a successful organization, but by diversity I mean diversity in its broadest form: diversity of viewpoints, politics, ethnicity, race, age, religion, experience, socioeconomic background, sexual identity, gender, one’s upbringing, and more. “What I learned, however, was that DEI was not about diversity in its purest form. Rather, DEI was a political advocacy movement on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under DEI’s own methodology. “Under DEI, one’s degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so-called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews, and Asians are deemed oppressors, and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people, and/or women are deemed to be oppressed. Under this ideology which is the philosophical underpinning of DEI as advanced by Ibram X. Kendi and others, one is either an anti-racist or a racist. There is no such thing as being “not racist.” … “The DEI movement has also taken control of speech. Certain speech is no longer permitted. So-called ‘microaggressions’ are treated like hate speech. ‘Trigger warnings’ are required to protect students. ‘Safe spaces’ are necessary to protect students from the trauma inflicted by words that are challenging to the students’ newly acquired worldviews. Campus speakers and faculty with unapproved views are shouted down, shunned, and canceled.... “So what should happen? The [Harvard] corporation board should not remain in their seats protected by the unusual governance structure that enabled them to obtain their seats.... The ODEIB [Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging] should be shut down, and the staff should be terminated. The ODEIB has already taken down much of the ideology and strategies that were on its website when I and others raised concerns about how the office operates and who it does and does not represent. Taking down portions of the website does not address the fundamentally flawed and racist ideology of this office, and calls into further question the ODEIB’s legitimacy.... “Harvard must once again become a meritocratic institution that does not discriminate for or against faculty or students based on their skin color, and where diversity is understood in its broadest form so that students can learn in an environment that welcomes diverse viewpoints from faculty and students from truly diverse backgrounds and experiences. “Harvard must create an academic environment with real academic freedom and free speech, where self-censoring, speech codes, and cancel culture are forever banished from campus....” Full op-ed by Bill Ackman at our Commentary webpage . See also our prior article "Stanford's Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy " From Derek Bok: Why Americans Love to Hate Harvard Excerpts: “The public shaming and subsequent resignations of the leaders of some of America’s top universities may shock some observers.... Yet these same institutions are under intense attack from both ends of the political spectrum. Liberals berate them for not doing more to enroll low-income students, pressure them to divest from companies that pollute the environment, and urge them to pay reparations for their complicity with slavery centuries ago. Meanwhile, conservatives -- chiefly governors, legislators, and right-wing pundits -- accuse them of indoctrinating students with liberal beliefs and paying excessive attention to the welfare of minority and LGBTQ students.... “All of these trends have been aggravated by the growing discontent within the public over the state of the nation.... “So how can elite universities better protect themselves? … Universities with predominantly liberal faculties also need to take particular care not to indoctrinate their students or appear to be doing so.... [O]ne of the most effective ways to build the confidence of the public would be to embark on a visible effort to improve the education of students. Two such improvements seem particularly appropriate for elite universities, whose graduates are especially likely to eventually occupy positions of importance in government and the professions. One of these possibilities would be to devise a truly successful model of civic education, and the other is to develop an effective way to help all students acquire a knowledge of practical ethics and a proficiency in moral reasoning....” Full op-ed by Derek Bok at Chronicle of Higher Education. Prof. Bok is an alum of both Stanford and Harvard and is a former president of Harvard. From Claudine Gay: What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me Excerpts: “On Tuesday, I made the wrenching but necessary decision to resign as Harvard’s president. For weeks, both I and the institution to which I’ve devoted my professional life have been under attack. My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count. “My hope is that by stepping down I will deny demagogues the opportunity to further weaponize my presidency in their campaign to undermine the ideals animating Harvard since its founding: excellence, openness, independence, truth. “As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning. The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader.... "I have never misrepresented my research findings, nor have I ever claimed credit for the research of others. Moreover, the citation errors should not obscure a fundamental truth: I proudly stand by my work and its impact on the field.... “College campuses in our country must remain places where students can learn, share and grow together, not spaces where proxy battles and political grandstanding take root. Universities must remain independent venues where courage and reason unite to advance truth, no matter what forces set against them.” Full guest essay by Claudine Gay at NY Times. Prof. Gay is an alum of both Stanford and Harvard and was Harvard's most recent president. ​ How Not to Defend Claudine Gay Excerpts: ​ “The resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University in the midst of a growing plagiarism scandal has invited predictably partisan reactions. On the right, figures like Christopher Rufo and Elise Stefanik have been taking a victory lap, claiming credit for Gay’s departure. On the left and in academic circles, others have — almost as a reflex — bemoaned Gay’s withdrawal as an act of capitulation to a right-wing mob and power-hungry donors. In a country in which everything is a matter of partisan polarization, a knee-jerk defense of Gay is perhaps understandable, but it is nonetheless misguided. First, the arguments mounted in her defense are demonstrably weak. And second, those arguments will do nothing to restore the American public’s confidence in academe, and will do even less to avert political interference in higher education.... “As others have observed, Harvard’s reaction to the plagiarism allegations was both heavy-handed (with its legal threats against the New York Post) and not transparent (with the public’s being informed about the university’s investigation only after it was already complete). The unsatisfactory arguments in defense of Gay are more consistent with a desire to cover up the allegations than with an attempt to honestly address them.... “Academics, of all people, should be able to hold two thoughts in their heads at the same time. It is entirely possible for Professor Gay to be a target of a right-wing smear campaign and to be guilty of plagiarism. By choosing to ignore the latter because of the former, we are succumbing to a kind of us-vs.-them mentality, and, worse, we risk being accused of a willingness to cover up and minimize the mistakes of our peers when it suits us. I can understand concerns about political interference in higher education, but we cannot possibly defend against such interference by calling plagiarism ‘duplicative language.’ When one is faced with politically motivated allegations of plagiarism, the best one can do is to not be guilty of plagiarism. And when allegations turn out to be true, the best that academic institutions can do is to admit it and move on. It seems as if Harvard has yet to learn that lesson.” Full op-ed by Prof. Aleksandar Stević at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also National Association of Scholars Statement on Plagiarism ​ The Joke Is On Us Excerpts: “When I taught physics at Yale in the 1980s and ’90s, my colleagues and I took pride in our position on ‘science hill,’ looking down on the humanities scholars in the intellectual valleys below as they were inundated in postmodernism and deconstructionism. “This same attitude motivated the mathematician Alan Sokal to publish his famous 1996 article, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity , in the cultural-studies journal Social Text.... “Mr. Sokal’s paper was a hoax, designed to demonstrate that postmodernism was nonsense. But today postmodern cultural theory is being infused into the very institutions one might expect to be scientific gatekeepers. Hard-science journals publish the same sort of bunk with no hint of irony: ​In November 2022 the Journal of Chemical Education published A Special Topics Class in Chemistry on Feminism and Science as a Tool to Disrupt the Dysconscious Racism in STEM .… In March 2022 Physical Review Physics Education Research published Observing whiteness in introductory physics: A case study. … A January 2023 paper presented at the Joint Mathematics Meeting, the world’s biggest gathering of mathematicians, was titled Undergraduate Mathematics Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Structural Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice . … “Such ideas haven’t totally colonized scientific journals and pedagogy, but they are beginning to appear almost everywhere and are getting support and encouragement from the scientific establishment.... “The joke turns out to be on all of us -- and it isn’t funny.” Full op-ed by ASU Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krauss at WSJ The Rise of the Sectarian University Excerpts : “But what really is the peril that these elite universities confront? Unlike lesser-resourced institutions, they face no real prospect of financial catastrophe, even if they lose some big donors.... However much right-wing actors might wish to remake these institutions in their own image, that eventuality also has little chance of coming to fruition.... “The real peril to elite higher education, then, isn’t that these places will be financially ruined, nor that they will be effectively interfered with in their internal operations by hostile conservatives. It is, instead, that their position in American society will come to resemble that of The New York Times or of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Which is to say that they will remain rich and powerful, and they will continue to have many bright and competent people working within their ambit. And yet their authority will grow more brittle and their appeal more sectarian....” Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Greg Conti at Compact Magazine The Limits of Social Engineering at Harvard “Where there used to be a pinnacle, there’s now a crater. It was created when the social-justice model of higher education, currently centered on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts -- and heavily invested in the administrative side of the university -- blew up the excellence model, centered on the ideal of intellectual merit and chiefly concerned with knowledge, discovery and the free and vigorous contest of ideas. “Why did that change happen? I’ve seen arguments that it goes back to the 1978 Bakke decision, when the Supreme Court effectively greenlit affirmative action in the name of diversity. “But the problem with Bakke isn’t that it allowed diversity to be a consideration in admissions decisions. It’s that university administrators turned an allowance into a requirement, so a kind of racial gerrymander now permeates nearly every aspect of academic life, from admissions decisions to faculty appointments to the racial makeup of contributors to essay collections.... “One of the secrets of America’s postwar success wasn’t simply the caliber of U.S. universities. It was the respect they engendered among ordinary people who aspired to send their children to them. “Nobody should doubt that there is still a lot of excellence in today’s academia and plenty of good reasons to send your kids to college. But nobody should doubt, either, that the intellectual rot is pervasive and won’t stop spreading until universities return to the idea that their central purpose is to identify and nurture and liberate the best minds, not to engineer social utopias.” Full op-ed by Bret Stephens at NY Times See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” and “Back to Basics at Stanford ” all of which argue for a very significant reduction in Stanford’s bloated administrative staff and the counter-productive work that they do and a reallocation of the savings, dollar for dollar, to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and to graduate student fellowships. On the Positive Side - Current Research and Teaching at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford M edicine’s Top Scie ntific Advancements of 2023 Martin Luther King Project at Stanford Scientists Use High-Tech Brain Stimulation to Make People More Hypnotizable Fungi and the Future of Forest Health Other Articles of Interest How Harvard’s Board Broke Up with Claudine Gay Full article at NY Times Wanted: New College Presidents. Mission: Impossible . Full article at WSJ Alternative Viewpoint - The Need for More DEI Efforts on College Campuses, Not Less Full article and report at Education Trust; similar article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education FIRE’s 10 Common-Sense Reforms for Colleges and Universities Full list at FIRE’s website. See also “How Harvard Can Reform Itself ” What Universities Have Done to Themselves Full op-ed by Peggy Noonan at WSJ; also available at drive.google.co m U.S. Universities Are Pushing Political Agendas Instead of Excellence Full video by Fareed Zakaria at CNN The Dehumanizing Anti-Civilization Dogma Behind DEI’s Destruction of Universities Full video and transcript by Michael Shellenberger at Public October 7: A Turning Point for Free Speech? Full op-ed at Reason Magazine Policy Experts, Right-to-Left, Weigh In on Taxing University Endowments Full article at College Fix The Epitome of a Problematic Higher Education System Full op-ed by Suffolk Community College Prof. Nicholas Giordano at Campus Reform University of Michigan Creates a New Research Institute to Combat Antisemitism Full article at College Fix UMass Boston Removes DEI Requirements from Job Listings Full article at College Fix The Profession of Journalism Has Lost Its Way Full op-ed by DePauw University Prof. Jeffrey McCall at The Hill "America’s universities are no longer seen as bastions of excellence but as partisan outposts. American universities have been neglecting a core focus on excellence in order to pursue agendas clustered around Diversity and Inclusion…. They should abandon their long misadventure into politics...and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning." – Fareed Zakaria, global news and policy analyst, CNN commentator January 2, 2024 [Editor's note: We publish these weekly Newsletters to help inform readers of issues that universities around the country are facing and, very imp ortantly, to help assure that university leaders, including at Stanford, continue to protect free speech and critical thinking, both of which are essential elements for why schools like Stanford exist. This is not meant to detract from the extraordinary teaching, research and patient care that is taking place at Stanford, and we therefore call your attention to a new section, below, that includes examples of these activities. ​ [Also, this issue of the Newsletter was ready for distribution when we learned earlier today of the resignation of Harvard's President Claudine Gay. We have retained the two articles that had already been excerpted, each of which had been written prior to President Gay's resignation since, as those authors made clear a week ago, the concerns are less with President Gay’s alleged plagiarism and much more about the campus climate that she and other campus leaders nationwide have facilitated in recent years. Take a look and decide for yourself.] ​ It's a Pattern of Behavior at Harvard Excerpts: ​ “Although she is my fellow political scientist, I cannot support the Harvard President’s behavior, as a card-carrying member of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). In Gay’s time as an academic administrator at Harvard, that university has plunged to dead last (238th) on FIRE’s free speech rankings of U.S. universities. Surveys show that many Harvard students fear to say what they think, perhaps because of what they see happening to their professors. FIRE reports that in recent years, Harvard sanctioned four scholars for their views and terminated three of them. Rumors suggest that many more have been fired or had their careers damaged.... “In recent years, I have noticed a disturbing pattern of behavior which seemingly started in elite institutions. Leaders weaponize their vast bureaucracies to selectively enforce rules against those whose ideas they oppose. As one Ivy League professor groused: ‘Many professors are punished for their findings, and this is kept under the radar. It’s common for deans to tell professors they are fired, the professor says they will go public, so then the university pays them to go away.’ … “With more than its share of Ivy League alumni, the mainstream press has under-reported and even misreported the free speech recession. Now is the time for reporters to stop dismissing the critics of higher education and instead engage in real investigative journalism to see if we are right.” Full op-ed by University of Arkansas Prof. Robert Maranto at The Hill See also Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya’s personal account of "How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test " and Stanford Prof. Russell Berman "Does Academic Freedom Have a Future at Stanford? " ​ What Should Be the Priorities of a University? Excerpts: “Harvard faces a historic choice: Is its main mission advocacy for, advancement of, and indoctrination in a particular political and ideological cause, going by names such as ‘woke,’ ‘social justice,’ ‘critical theory’ and ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ (a chillingly Orwellian name since it is exactly the opposite)? Or is its main mission the search for objective truth, via excellence, meritocracy, free inquiry, free speech, and critical discussion, bounded by classical norms of argument by logic and evidence; and to advance and pass on that way of thinking? Even though yes, most of those ideas originated from dead white men whose societies had, in retrospect, some unpleasant characteristics? And to get there, given the BS spreading like cancer and the political and ideological monoculture that pervades the university, it needs a top to bottom cleanup.... “Stanford recently unseated its president, ostensibly over research conduct in his pre-presidential career. He was cleared by the official investigation, but ousted nonetheless. As with Gay, I sense that his enemies really didn't care a whit about just how photoshopped photographs appeared in 20 year old articles. A lot of Stanford didn’t like him because he wasn’t left-wing enough. Stanford has plenty of academic freedom horror stories, from censuring Scott Atlas and Jay Bhattacharya for actually following science on covid policy, to the [Stanford] Internet Observatory, specifically named in the Missouri v. Biden decision for politicized internet censorship, a DEI office every bit as pernicious as the one Harvard just scrubbed from its website, the Stanford Hates Fun outbreak and more. We were very lucky that our new interim president had only been in office a few months when Congress called and couldn’t be dragged in for interrogation! Stanford faces the same historic choice....” [Followed by detailed passages from the Congressional hearing transcripts and comments about parallel concerns at Stanford.] Full op-ed by Stanford Prof. John H. Cochrane Example of DEI Training at Another University Excerpts: “University representatives told students that they could under no circumstances miss the session and would be reprimanded if absent. The training was completed in small groups. Each group consisted of a residence hall along with the hall’s Resident Advisor (RA) and Peer Counselors. The session lasted around 2.5 hours.... “Students participated in an ‘Identity Compass’ activity, which involved signs placed around a room, each sign representing aspects of identity such as age, health, nationality, ethnicity, sex, gender, religion, and socioeconomic status. “The facilitator asked questions including ‘Which part of your identity are you most open to exploring?’ or ‘Which part of your identity gives you the most privilege?’ Then, facilitators instructed students to stand by the sign that signified their answers.... “Presenters defined intersectionality as ‘the complex of reciprocal attachments and sometimes polarizing conflicts that confront individuals and movements as they seek to ‘navigate’ among the raced, gendered, and class-based dimensions of social and political life.’ … “The presenters noted that women of color, in particular, manifest intersectionality, as their ‘layers of oppressed identities … that are not present in white women create a unique perspective on the actions and events surrounding various feminist movements.’ … “Presenters asked students to volunteer to read portions of the slides. For one slide, the facilitator forced a student to read after no one had volunteered. When asked to read, the student replied: ‘I’d rather not.’ The presenter stated, ‘I’m going to make you.’ The student sighed and reluctantly read the slide out loud.” … Full article by a freshman reporter at Washington & Lee Spectator. See also our prior article "Stanford's Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy " Co-Chair of Stanford’s Committee to Address Antisemitism Steps Down Excerpts: “Stanford is one of several elite schools that have aimed to address hostility toward Jewish students by forming an advisory committee on antisemitism. But now the committees themselves, and their members, have come under increasing scrutiny from activists who fear they will succumb to the same university culture that allowed antisemitism to fester on campuses in the first place. “’I was experiencing panic attacks trying to represent a community that did not want me to represent them,’ [Ari Kelman one of the original co-chairs of the committee] told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. ‘So I stepped down.’.... “The committee -- created alongside one for Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities on campus -- has already planned out around 30 listening sessions with Jewish and Israeli members of campus. There are currently no Israelis on the committee, though the school says it is working to recruit them.” Full article at Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Similar article at The Jewish Voice. See also Stanford’s original announcement of these two new committees Americans Need to Be on FIRE for Free Speech Excerpts: “There’s a reason I call freedom of speech ‘the eternally radical idea.’ “After all, what do you call an idea that has a clear track record of promoting innovation, human flourishing, prosperity, and progress -- but is nonetheless rejected by partisans and authoritarians in every generation throughout history? … “The fact is that free speech will always be opposed by the forces of conformity and the will of those with authority, because human beings are natural-born censors. It is simply too easy and too tempting to punish speech we disagree with and dislike, and to silence those who hold views contrary to our own.... “Campuses, in particular, have been trying it for decades now, and we know the result: a climate of chilled speech, cancel culture, and an abdication of the most fundamental principle undergirding American society. “This holds just as true off campus. Without freedom of speech, America as we know it ceases to exist.” … Full op-ed by Greg Lukianoff, a Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE Why Campus Leaders Cannot Confront Antisemitism Excerpts: “On Oct. 7, we witnessed the most deadly pogrom, excepting the Holocaust, against Jews in modern history, and thousands of people danced in the streets, not only in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Tehran, but also on campuses in Philadelphia, New York, Cambridge, Ithaca, and Berkeley. At the time, no university official on a major U.S. campus that I know of unequivocally denounced this action as a pogrom against Jews and excoriated their students and faculty for celebrating the occasion.... “Two months later, on Dec. 5, presidents of three major universities at which celebrations of the pogroms took place -- Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania -- were questioned at a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee. Their collective responses were even feebler than those issued immediately after the pogrom.... "This is not because they are anti-Semites or embrace the cause of Hamas. Rather, I think it is because they face the FDR dilemma: If they single out, and in no uncertain terms condemn, anti-Semites on their campuses, they run the risk of alienating a significant portion of the social justice constituency that they have helped to create and in part to whom they owe their positions.... “Caught in this dilemma, university officials obfuscate. Department chairs plead for civility. Deans issue insipid statements. University presidents remind Jewish students about free and robust speech, even as they muzzle their own powers of expression. All appoint task forces.” … Full op-ed by UC Berkeley law school Prof. Emeritus Malcolm Feeley at The Hill How ‘Antiracism’ Becomes Antisemitism Excerpts: “For decades America’s credentialed liberal elite thought of itself as uniquely immune to the appeal of racial bigotry. The rest of the country -- the right-leaning suburbs, the rural places, the Archie Bunkers -- were constantly prone, in the minds of America’s intellectuals and enlightened academics, to indulge in racial grievances. But not the university-educated, well-heeled elite. Not the exponents of mainstream-press conventional wisdom. Not the readers of the New Yorker and the Washington Post. “Yet here we are. Over the past 2½ months, Jew-hatred has rocked elite college campuses. Tony neighborhoods in blue cities have witnessed marches calling for the elimination of the Jewish state and protests outside Jewish-owned businesses -- this in response not to the accidental killing of a Palestinian by an Israeli soldier, but to the systematic butchering and kidnapping of Israeli Jews by terrorists. "To these expressions of bigotry, high-ranking public officials and university administrators have issued bland disavowals of ‘violence’ and ‘hatred in all its forms.’ The heads of three top universities, testifying before a congressional committee, couldn’t explain why their institutions prosecute every perceived offense against other minorities but can’t condemn calls for genocide against Jews." … Full op-ed by Barton Swaim at Wall Street Journal Declining Faith in Hig her Education Excerpt (links in the original): “Students and their families are asking tough questions about the value of pursuing higher education. Research shows that the majority of college students say getting a good job is their primary motivation for pursuing a degree. Unfortunately, far too many institutions are struggling to deliver on those expectations. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York , 40 percent of recent graduates are underemployed and working in jobs that do not require their degrees. It’s no surprise that the public’s faith in higher education is on a steep declin e.” Full article at Real Clear Education Universities Can Do More to Prepare Students for the Workforce Excerpt: “One of the main goals of colleges and universities is to prepare students to enter the workforce, ideally in a manner connected to their fields of study. Likewise, a college degree has largely become the gold standard of baseline qualification for a majority of entry-level positions. While a degree continues to hold value, however, the ability of colleges to prepare students for workplace success may be on the decline.” Full article at James Martin Center ​ More re USC’s Banning of Prof. John Strauss Excerpts: “Strauss is a tenured Professor of Economics, a specialist in development economics, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Economic Development and Cultural Change. He is an internationalist who rejects large-scale ambush massacres, gang rapes, and hostage takings as tools of statecraft. “The protesters used smartphones to record their exchange with Strauss, who is Jewish. Strauss’s anti-Hamas remarks angered the protesters, so they worked to cancel him.... “Over the next three weeks, the administration walked back its response. An official statement to USC’s student newspaper reports that Strauss is not technically on administrative leave even though required to teach remotely. The Los Angeles Times viewed a letter to Strauss from USC Provost Andrew Guzman stating that the university was barring Strauss from campus during their investigation of the protesters’ complaints to the EEO and TIX office. The administration subsequently allowed Strauss to proceed with delivering his undergraduate course remotely. He was allowed to return to campus as of Dec 2." … Full op-ed by USC Prof. Emeritus James Moore at Minding the Campus On the Positive Side - Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford (click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites) Stanford Educational Events About Israel-Hamas War Researchers Uncover On/off Switch for Breast Cancer Metastasis Generative AI Can Boost Productivity Without Replacing Workers The Future of Computational Imaging (podcast) Other Articles of Interest NAS Outlines Detailed Elements of What Constitutes Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty (Full article at National Association of Scholars) Chronicle of Higher Education Discusses the New Pushback on College Wokeness (Full op-ed by University of Chicago Prof. Emeritus Jerry Coyne) And again see our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta regarding freedom of expression, a university's involvement in political and social matters, and academic appointments and which could help put to rest all of these issues, now and going forward. "When a university takes a public stand, it either puts words in the mouths of faculty and students who can speak for themselves or unfairly pits them against their own employer. It’s even worse when individual departments take positions, because it sets up a conflict of interest with any dissenting students and faculty whose fates they control." -- Harvard Prof. Steven Pinker December 27, 2023 As we reflect upon this past year, Stanford continue s to produce remarkable teaching, research and patient care: Stanford Moments from 2023 Stanford-produced video at YouTube (two minutes, and more visual than substantive) Ten Stanford Articles from 2023 Full articles at Stanford Report (as selected by University Communications staff) ​ ************ Even as difficult issues continue to be debated, at Stanford and at colleges and universities nationwide: The Hypocrisy Underlying the Campus-Speech Controversy Excerpt: “Despite these similarities [of the three Ivy League presidents being quizzed by a Congressional committee versus the ongoing White House attacks against the operators of social media], the two pressure campaigns have been received very differently. The Biden administration’s effort to influence social-media platforms’ content policies sparked a vociferous outcry from Republican officials, culminating in a First Amendment lawsuit that is now before the Supreme Court. The pressure campaign over university speech policies, by contrast, has generated very little alarm about the First Amendment interests of either the schools or their students. This is a problem, because the threat of government interference with free speech is very real in both contexts.” Full op-ed by Stanford law school Prof. Evelyn Douek and University of Chicago law school Prof. Genevieve Lakier at The Atlantic; also posted at MSN News See also "How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test " by Stanford medical school Prof. Jay Bhattacharya and “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” The Future of Speech on Campus Excerpts: “Let’s start by clarifying what we are talking about. There are many settings on campus where no one has particularly robust speech rights. Even in public universities, which are bound by the highly speech-protective First Amendment, students are not permitted to plagiarize, repeatedly demand to discuss politics in physics class or physics in politics class, or shout down invited speakers. Any campus has restrictions on the time, place, and manner of expression meant to safeguard the fundamental research and teaching mission. What we are talking about, here, is speech undertaken consistent with such restrictions, within a university’s broad public spaces.... “I’m a Jew on campus. According to First Amendment jurisprudence, a member of my university community is not allowed to follow me around, pointing and yelling ‘kill all the Jews.’ But in a public university -- or any private university whose rules are broadly congruent with the First Amendment -- that same person is typically within their rights if they proclaim from a soapbox on the quad, without intent to produce imminent action and directed at no individual in particular, ‘Religion is the scourge of humanity. We will never be free until we break the shackles of superstition. Kill all the Jews. Kill all the Christians. Kill all the Muslims. Kill them all!’ That speech, by my lights, is offensive and vile. But absent harassment, threat, or imminent incitement, offense and even vileness are not sufficient to merit sanction. The First Amendment does not permit the punishment of advocacy, even of vile ideas. This is why context matters.... “Wherever one comes down on context dependence, it is hard not to conclude that the presidents failed to communicate their point of view effectively. I think they would have done better by focusing on principle, rather than context. They might have said: “‘I deeply regret that members of my university community have caused pain and fear through their speech. I believe that we should speak civilly and respectfully to one another, especially when we strongly disagree, and that we should teach our students to do likewise. That said, universities are the social institutions in which the free exchange of ideas is most important. As such, we aim to minimize restrictions on speech -- it is not our job to tell our students what to say or think, it is our job to help them learn to think and speak for themselves. For that reason, if a statement is legal under the First Amendment, it is allowed on campus. I am no more of an expert than you, congresswoman, about when calls for genocide are protected by the First Amendment. But the yes or no answer to your question is: if it is allowed by the Constitution, it is allowed on my campus.’” … Full op-ed by University of Chicago Prof. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita at Boston Review The Battle for Higher Education Excerpt: “The incumbents have spread a gloriously self-serving myth system. In their telling, their institutions are bastions of liberal values, civil discourse, and the free exchange of ideas. They’re open to the finest representatives of every community, perspective, and viewpoint. They’re engaged in educating a new generation in the fine art of critical thinking. “The truth, however, is almost the polar opposite of that myth. America’s universities are country clubs for insiders who have dispensed with independent thought as the price of belonging....” Full op-ed at Real Clear Education. See also former Stanford provost John Etchemendy "The Threat from Within " The Silencing of Student Voices Excerpt: “For this series, five young journalists responded to our calls for articles detailing critical issues that impacted young people this year. The group of high school and young college writers pitched and reported on urgent topics like lack of access to mental health support for homeschooled students, student voices being silenced in schools, book bans, attacks on LGBTQ+ students, and school shootings. Of course, these are just a fraction of the issues that shape the lives, conditions, and experiences of young people -- not to mention how these issues intersect with each other. We received more important pitches than we could publish this round. As we close out the year, this package centers the work of young journalists reporting on what affected their schools, communities, and peers in 2023.” Full article at The Nation Other Articles of Interest Elite U.S. Universities Face a Political Crisis They Can’t Control (Full op-ed at CNN) Donors and Alumni Take Action; Is This a Moment or a Movement? (Full op-ed at WSJ) Fewer Young Men Are in College, Especially at Four-Year Schools (Full article at Pew Research Center) Censorship Leaders Play the Victim (Full op-ed by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag at Public. See also our prior posting “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ”) Harvard Early Applications Take a Dive (Full article at Insider Higher Ed; similar article at NY Post) Attacks on Tenure Leave College Professors Eyeing the Exits (Full article at Center for Public Integrity) An Open Letter from a Tufts Alum/Former Faculty Member (Full letter at Algemeiner) ‘From the River to the Sea,' but Students Don’t Even Know Which Ones (Full op-ed at College Fix) Why October 7 May Mark a Turning Point for Universities (Full op-ed at New York Magazine Intelligencer; also posted at MSN News . See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta regarding freedom of expression, a university's involvement in political and social matters, and academic appointments.) Policymakers Must Strengthen, Not Dismantle, the College Accreditation System (Full op-ed at Higher Ed Dive) No, Campuses Are Not in Chaos Over Gaza (Full podcast at NY Times, 8 minutes in length) “There can be order without freedom, but no freedom without some measure of order.” ― John W. Gardner, Stanford alum, former Stanford trustee, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and founder of Common Cause December 19, 2023 A Note to Our Readers: When we launched our website and these weekly Newsletters over 14 months ago, many current and past Stanford administrators and Trustees were questioning the value of these efforts. How times have changed, both locally and nationwide, and we hope Stanford will finally take the actions that have long been needed. See, for example, our Back to Basics at Stanford white paper and our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta which we believe would largely address the issues now in front of university leaders. From the President of Heterodox Academy: Campus Hypocrisy Excerpts: “As many have noted, there was profound hypocrisy in the spectacle of prominent university presidents claiming to be staunchly committed to free expression, when their own institutions have been anything but. For years, a practice of silencing offensive ideas has run rampant on college campuses -- including at Harvard, MIT, and Penn. Just ask Carole Hooven, Tyler VanderWeele, Amy Wax, or the admitted Harvard students who were disinvited for sharing the wrong memes online. Any credible change in principles should start by acknowledging and rectifying such mistakes, not brazenly pretending they never happened. “We have seen this same pattern of hypocrisy in universities’ enforcement of various speech-adjacent rules. Rules about putting up posters, or taking them down, about bullying and harassment -- such as obstructing the passage of students into and out of classes and events -- have been enforced selectively, if at all. At one Ivy League university, whose handbook explicitly forbids the shouting down of speakers, the university president was recently shouted down -- without disciplinary response. “But the opposite hypocrisy is also visible. Some advocates of free expression have failed to distinguish between true threats and harassment (which are rightly banned), and debatable slogans or offensive ideas about geopolitics and war. As others have argued, asking university administrators to decide which slogans and arguments count as a ‘call for genocide’ – in the absence of a true threat or harassment – is ill-advised. For example, consider the opinions and slogans that could easily be cast as calls for ‘Gazan genocide,’ ‘trans genocide,’ or “genocide of the unborn.’ History shows that speech codes have a way of coming around to bite their advocates. “Yet this moment is about more than free speech, because free speech is a low bar for a university. Excellence in research and education also requires a positive set of ideals, habits, and cultural norms. It is these norms that distinguish the academy from an ordinary place for clashing opinions. Without open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement, an institution of higher education can easily degrade into just another outpost for this or that constituency, worldview or monoculture.…” Full letter from Brown University Prof. John Tomasi, who also is president of the Heterodox Academy, at Heterodox website including list of actions for college and university leaders to consider taking. Colleges and Universities at a Crossroads Excerpts: “The Penn rebels have now upped the ante. They have drafted a new constitution for the school that makes merit the sole criterion for student admissions and faculty hiring. The new charter requires the university to embrace institutional neutrality with regard to politics and faculty research. The rebels want candidates for Penn’s presidency to embrace the new charter as a precondition for employment.... “The donor revolt could have broken out at any number of campuses, all of which featured ignorant students cheering on the deliberate massacre of civilians, those students’ faculty enablers and bureaucratic fellow travelers, and feckless presidents. But it first erupted at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, perhaps because of the organization and self-confidence of their alumni.…” Full op-ed by Stanford law school alum Heather MacDonald at City Journal. See also Part Two of Ms. MacDonald's essay and a similar article at FIRE [Editor’s note: Rather than reinventing the wheel, as some Penn faculty seem to be doing, we suggest that Penn and other universities, including Stanford, simply adopt the Chicago Trifecta as long posted at our website.] A Five-Point Plan to Save Harvard from Itself Excerpts: ​ “For almost four centuries, Harvard University, my employer, has amassed a reputation as one of the country’s most eminent universities. But it has spent the past year divesting itself of tranches of this endowment. Notorious incidents of cancellation and censorship have contributed to a plunge in confidence in institutions of higher education, prompting me and more than 100 colleagues to found a new Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. That was before Harvard came in at last place in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s Free Speech ranking of 248 colleges, with a score of 0 out of 100 — originally less than zero, but Harvard benefited from a bit of grade inflation. (I’m a FIRE adviser but had no role in the rankings.) … “Harvard is now the place where using the wrong pronoun is a hanging offense but calling for another Holocaust depends on context. “So for the president of Harvard to suddenly come out as a born-again free-speech absolutist, disapproving of what genocidaires say but defending to the death their right to say it, struck onlookers as disingenuous or worse.” Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Steven Pinker at Boston Globe and republished at MSN , including Prof. Pinker’s five-point plan re free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering DEI. DEI Bureaucracy Fails the Stress Test at MIT Excerpts: ​ “The recent outbreak of antisemitism at MIT and other campuses puts into stark relief the limits of administrative bureaucracies’ ability to solve the problems of human relationships and tribalism. “. . . the [MIT] administration announced its massive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative which by some counts added up to about a hundred professional administrators with some variation of DEI in their titles. “The employment site Glassdoor reports that the low end for salaries of Assistant Deans at MIT is about $100K. Add up salaries of over a hundred people at this level, their support staff, benefits for all, and ordinary office overhead at average Institute burden rates, and a $20 million annual price tag for all this feel-good bureaucracy (on top of existing student support such as counseling, psychiatric services, etc.) seems like a very fair rough estimate of the total cost.… “If current trends do not change, there is no apparent end to the creation of administrative bloat with ever more offices perceived to be responsive to discrete identities, denoted by ever multiplying acronyms. In the long run, I can only hope that we move back toward a culture that seeks to attract talent without discrimination from wherever it may come, and that counsels us all to respect each another simply as individuals who, in Dr. King’s words, ‘will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’ And, along the way, let us reduce administrative costs so they are no more than those at peer institutions and add $30,000 or so in annual per student savings back into student aid!” Full op-ed by MIT AFSA alumni leader Steve Carhart at The Tech See also Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy , including ten DEI administrators for every 1,000 students at Stanford. From Four Harvard Undergraduates: Harvard's Double Standard Excerpt: “On Tuesday, we started our day by reading an email from the Harvard Corporation saying that President Claudine Gay's decision to copy-and-paste another author’s paragraph into her own work without citation did not violate Harvard’s plagiarism standards. Thirty minutes later, we signed an academic integrity pledge on an exam stating that it was against the Harvard Honor Code to misrepresent another’s work as your own. The whiplash was incredible.” Full op-ed by four Harvard undergraduates at Heterodox STEM Harvard’s President Gay Copied Entire Paragraphs Excerpts: “The Free Beacon worked with nearly a dozen scholars to analyze 29 potential cases of plagiarism. Most of them said that Gay had violated a core principle of academic integrity as well as Harvard’s own anti-plagiarism policies, which state that 'it's not enough to change a few words here and there.' “Rather, scholars are expected to cite the sources of their work, including when paraphrasing, and to use quotation marks when quoting directly from others. But in at least 10 instances, Gay lifted full sentences -- even entire paragraphs -- with just a word or two tweaked....” Full article at Washington Free Beacon Progressive Education Isn't What You Think It Is Excerpt: ​ “Educating students in progressive pedagogy involves learning how to establish truth, teaching resilience when mistakes are made, and demonstrating how to grow from errors and misfires. Current thinking involving the promotion of self-esteem and avoiding correcting or questioning students is regressive and harms their intellectual and personal development. This happens too often in too many schools. It has nothing to do with the classic model of progressive education. “Indoctrination in classrooms is a pervasive problem nationwide and it damages our students and their authentic learning, and obfuscates their moral compasses. But that is a function of bad teaching and administrative oversight, not progressive education.” Full op-ed by Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education University Presidents and Trustees Flunk Out Excerpt: … “First came the speech codes. No, those came second. What began the long downhill roll in the 1970s was grade inflation. Students whose work deserved a C demanded an A or B. Professors who resisted this threat to standards gave up. “That was an early inkling that traditional college norms could be pushed around and politicized. Speech codes emerged at many schools, not least Harvard, arguing that certain words were—another new vocabulary addition – ‘hurtful.’ “After establishing that words alone could bring reprimand by the university, the speech coders expanded the prohibitions to include something new called microaggressions, or inadvertent slights. Microaggressions had a fraternal twin, trigger warnings, which required profs to warn students that a text or even a thought might distress them. “It sounds like a joke now, but we know it was no joke. This was the moment when the adults in the room -- presumably the universities’ presidents -- should have intervened to protect free speech and inquiry from being diminished. They did not. Virtually without exception, they were pusillanimous. Fellow ostriches included hundreds of spineless boards of trustees.…” Full op-ed at Wall Street Journal See also our article from many months ago about Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative including a PDF copy of the over 100 words and phrases that Stanford’s IT department somehow felt empowered to start censoring. University Boards of Trustees in the Spotlight Excerpts: “University boards of trustees hold immense power over budgets, presidential picks and campus policies. They are also beset with longstanding challenges, including an often-unwieldy size, confusion over their responsibilities and limited relevant expertise.… “Board members are volunteers, meet only occasionally, and often are asked to vote on complex issues with limited information. That can leave them heavily reliant on the management they are supposed to be overseeing.… “But just as disengaged boards can cause problems at a school, there is also danger in trustees being too involved, noted some observers. Citing a common rule of corporate governance, [Morton Schapiro, former president of Northwestern,] said, ‘Not-for-profit boards are supposed to have noses in, fingers out.’” Full article at Wall Street Journal Why Top Colleges’ Professors Are Giving Up and Just Giving Everybody an A Excerpt: “Professors hand out A’s right and left. This is not because it gives their students a leg up in the job market or because our bosses at big universities require it, but because it is just so much safer. “Grade inflation has been in the discussion at America’s top colleges for a long time, but even seasoned veterans were shocked by a recent study showing that nearly 80 percent of all the grades given to undergraduates at Yale University last year were in the A range. “We started giving out trophies for participation in school sports, and now we are giving out A’s at top colleges -- heck, for even less than participation. (‘My mental health and social anxiety was too bad to ever attend class.’) The fight to give fair grades is just too much of a pain in the neck, and way too risky, for a mere lone professor to face.…” Full article at The Hill More About Stanford’s Alleged Roles in Nationwide Censorship Excerpts: “. . . records in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that show a close collaboration between DHS’s Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) and the leftist Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) [based at Stanford] to engage in ‘real-time narrative tracking’ on all major social media platforms in the days leading up to the 2020 election. “The records discuss ‘takedowns’ of social media posts and the avoidance of creating public records subject to FOIA [the federal laws that require disclosure of documents if created by, sent by or received by federal agencies].… “The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika. It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State’s Global Engagement Center to file ‘tickets’ requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech. “Three liberal groups -- the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause and the NAACP -- were also empowered like the federal agencies to file tickets seeking censorship of content. A Homeland-funded collaboration, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also had access.... “Setup: [Stanford Internet Observatory] will have dedicated Slack, something like Jira or Salesforce (will ask for donation), separate from Stanford and destroyed once over....” Full article at Judicial Watch Still More About Stanford’s Alleged Roles in Nationwide Censorship Excerpts: ​ “According to the leaders of the Stanford Internet Observatory and the other groups, they simply alerted social media platforms to potential violations of their Terms of Service. What the platforms chose to do after that was up to them. “But during the two years that these DHS-empowered researchers were asking social media platforms to take down, throttle, or otherwise censor social media posts, the President of the United States was accusing Big Tech of ‘killing people,’ his then-press secretary said publicly that the administration was ‘flagging violative posts for Facebook,’ members of Congress threatened to strip social media platforms of their legal right to operate because, they said, the platforms weren’t censoring enough , and many supposedly disinterested researchers were aggressively demanding that the platforms change their Terms of Service. “It's true that social media platforms are private companies technically free to censor content as they see fit and are under no clearly stated obligation to obey demands by the US government or its authorized ‘researchers’ at Stanford or anywhere else. “... In the case of the [Election Integrity Partnership] and [the Virality Project, both based at Stanford], four think tanks led by Stanford Internet Observatory, or SIO, and reporting to CISA, demanded and achieved mass censorship of the American people in direct violation of the First Amendment and the prohibition on government agencies from interfering in an election. “AMITT [Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques] was a disinformation framework that included many offensive actions, including working to influence government policy, discrediting alternative media, using bots and sock puppets, pre-bunking, and pushing counter-messaging.... “I believe this dramatic situation requires the abolition of CISA. If it is doing good cybersecurity work, then it should be placed under the supervision of different leadership at a different agency free from the awful and unlawful behaviors of the last three years. “The turning against the American people of counterterrorism tactics once reserved for foreign enemies should terrify all of us and inspire a clear statement that never again shall our military, intelligence, and law enforcement guardians engage in such a recklessly ideological and partisan ‘warfare against civilians.’” Full testimony by Michael Shellenberger at Public I Teach a Class on Free Speech. My Students Can Show Us the Way Forward Excerpts: “Free speech is very hard to get right, especially on campus -- as has been evident all fall at the University of Pennsylvania, where I teach a course on the history of free speech and censorship. If colleges and universities are best understood as microcosms of the larger world, they should be governed by the First Amendment alone. This would mean restricting only speech that directly incites violence, threatens specific individuals or constitutes targeted harassment. “But if colleges and universities -- public or private -- are better understood as special spaces with missions distinct from the world at large, they need some special rules of operation, tailored to the classroom, the student club and the college green. “One problem is that neither the left nor the right knows which model fits, making it difficult to determine any fair boundaries for campus speech. The politics around free speech have also shifted. And norms about what counts as dangerous speech, and what ought to be done about its articulation, have been changing faster than any of us can keep up with them. “No wonder students are confused when it comes to speech on campus right now. Frankly, so are faculties, administrators and, yes, donors and trustees.... “Students go to college largely to gain knowledge that will be useful in the here and now: the workplace, the democratic public sphere and private life. Importantly, that includes how to think about all sides of a given problem. It also includes how to get along with others across differences. But neither of these tasks is done without some informal rules. In my classroom, when we are conversing about the history of speech, we are also following a series of speech protocols that we’ve worked out in practice. No one, for example, can speak on top of anyone else, and no one can personalize the conversation in ways that draw attention to individuals rather than arguments. Free speech was never imagined, even by its earliest advocates, as a free-for-all. This is something that needs to be instilled.…” Full op-ed by Penn Prof. Sophia Rosenfeld at NY Times Don’t Create More Safe Spaces on Campus Excerpts: “I’m a Jew and, heaven knows, no one has been more critical of elite colleges than I’ve been, but the greatest intellectual threat of these times is neither antisemitism nor Ivy League schools -- it’s to academic freedom and the First Amendment’s protection of speech. Without a rapid course correction, [former Penn president Liz] Magill’s ouster will undermine the values of the American academy and the essence of what it means to be a college student.... “[At the Congressional hearings,] it would have been worth noting that even the advocacy of genocide -- however abhorrent -- would be protected speech. The touchstone here should be the University of Chicago’s free speech principles, which were created following a series of disputes over controversial commencement speakers and have been adopted by over 100 universities and endorsed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the nation’s leading defender of campus speech. Neither Harvard, Penn, nor MIT, have adopted what’s known as the Chicago Statement, though the free speech code at Harvard contains several similar elements and a petition at MIT to adopt the Chicago Statement has 163 faculty signatories.... “Our job is not to promote intellectually safe spaces but rather to challenge students with controversial ideas and views. As the Chicago Statement puts it, ‘education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.’ It is from engaging with people and ideas with which they disagree that people learn and evolve. This is the essence of the value of college. “No professor would protect a student who expressed a hateful view with the aim of disrupting a class or making a fellow student uncomfortable. But any teacher worth their salt would die to protect a student trying to articulate their honest conception of justice.” Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Evan Mandery at Politico Other Articles of Interest You Could Not Pay Me Enough to Be a College President Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education What Universities Have Done to Themselves Full op-ed by Peggy Noonan at Wall Street Journal Education Department Is Investigating Six More Colleges Regarding Campus Discrimination, Including Stanford Full article at NY Times Finding Solutions to America’s Civics Crisis Full article at Real Clear Education Diversity Year in Review Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education Cheering Hamas on Campus, Too Uneducated to Grasp How Grotesque That is Full op-ed by George Will at Washington Post The Coming Wave of Freshman Failure Full article at James Martin Center Nearly Half of Companies Say They Plan to Eliminate Bachelor’s Degree Requirements in 2024 Full article at Higher Ed Dive “Faith-based calls for violence do not meaningfully contribute to the free exchange of ideas on campus. Categories of speech like threats, harassment and incitement to violence are not protected, and will not be tolerated at Stanford.” -- Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez December 12, 2023 Stanford Condemns Calls for Genocide of Jews or Any Peoples Excerpts: “Stanford ‘unequivocally’ condemned ‘calls for the genocide of Jews or any peoples,’ in a statement released through social media posts on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) Thursday night [December 7, 2023]. “The University wrote that such statements ‘would clearly violate Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, the code of conduct for all students of the University.’” ... Full article at Stanford Daily Copy of this social media posting by Stanford is available here See also former Stanford President Gerhard Casper’s statement regarding the decision in Corry v. Stanford (1995) after the court had concluded California’s Leonard Law prohibits private colleges and universities such as Stanford from disciplining students for speech and actions that are protected under the First Amendment – at least in our view, issues that will likely arise again if Stanford pursues overly legalistic methods as opposed to seeing this as an opportunity for campus-wide discussion and education. From Bari Weiss: How to Really Fix American Higher Education (links in the original) Excerpts: “My view is that, above all else, we must focus on returning American higher education to its original purposes: to seek the truth; to teach young adults the things they need to flourish; and to pass on the knowledge that is the basis of our exceptional civilization. “To do that, four things must be done. "End DEI "...The solution to present discrimination isn’t more discrimination. And it is certainly not for the Jews who have been discriminated against inside the current DEI regime to beg for better placement inside its corrupt hierarchy.... "...the only meaningful response starts with dismantling the DEI regime that has enforced an illiberal (and antisemitic) worldview at nearly every American university. That means stopping the hiring of DEI administrators and reallocating the budgets of DEI offices. It means banning the loyalty oaths professors must pledge to earn a job or tenure. It means dismantling the entire DEI bureaucracy, as some states have started doing. "Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important virtues. But the DEI bureaucracy is none of those things. For more on this, please read my essay, End DEI . "End double standards on speech "...The point is that university administrators selectively and unevenly enforce codes of conduct depending entirely on the viewpoint being expressed and the identity of the person expressing it. It’s a nasty business and the congressional testimony the other day went a long way toward exposing it. We shouldn’t stop there. "Hire professors committed to the pursuit of truth (and allergic to illiberal ideologies) "To return academia to its mission, professors themselves must be committed to the pursuit of truth. Specifically, universities should hire without prejudice toward political affiliation. It’s not incidental that only 1.46 percent of Harvard’s faculty identifies as 'conservative,' while 82.46 percent of faculty describes themselves as 'liberal' or 'very liberal.' ... "Eliminate the ideology that replaced truth as higher education’s North Star "What is that ideology? And how did it come to supplant truth -- the very mission of higher education? Don’t ask me. Ask current Harvard president Claudine Gay, who laid out her vision for institutional transformation , now on full display, when she was dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. ..." Fu ll op-ed by Bari Weiss at The Public Why University Presidents Are Under Fire Excerpt s: “When one thinks of America’s greatest strengths, the kind of assets the world looks at with admiration and envy, America’s elite universities would have long been at the top of that list. But the American public has been losing faith in these universities – and with good reason. “Three university presidents came under fire [last] week for their vague and indecisive answers when asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their institution’s code of conduct. But to understand their performance we have to understand the shift that has taken place at elite universities, which have gone from centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas. ... “American universities have been neglecting excellence in order to pursue a variety of agendas -- many of them clustered around diversity and inclusion. It started with the best of intentions. Colleges wanted to make sure young people of all backgrounds had access to higher education and felt comfortable on campus. But those good intentions have morphed into a dogmatic ideology and turned these universities into places where the pervasive goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit. ... “The ever-growing bureaucracy devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion naturally recommends that more time and energy be spent on these issues. The most obvious lack of diversity at universities, political diversity, which clearly affects their ability to analyze many issues, is not addressed, showing that these goals are not centrally related to achieving, building or sustaining excellence. ... “What we saw in the House hearing [last] week was the inevitable result of decades of the politicization of universities. America’s top colleges are no longer seen as bastions of excellence but as partisan outfits, which means they will keep getting buffeted by these political storms as they emerge. They should abandon this long misadventure into politics, retrain their gaze on their core strengths and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning. ...” Full op-ed by Fareed Zakaria at CNN See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta which address all of these and related issues and that we again urge Stanford to adopt. See also Stanford's ballooning administrative bureaucracy , including what was reported by a third party to be "12 DEI administrators for every 1,000 students -- a ratio that far exceeds every other American university, including Harvard and Yale.” See also our prior postings about Stanford’s programs that have the result of censoring Stanford’s students and faculty through, among other things, its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (Stanford's home-grown version of Newspeak) and its Protected Identity Harm Reporting forms and procedures. The Politics of Campus Free Speech Draw Scrutiny Exce rpts: “The jurisprudence surrounding free speech and the First Amendment is complex and nuanced, having evolved over 230 years. Often the line between free speech on the one hand, and harassment and intimidation on the other, can be difficult to discern. “Still, [Will Creely, legal director at FIRE] and others pointed to examples in recent years in which private college and university presidents seem to have embraced free-speech arguments in some contexts, but shrink from them when asked to defend politically unpopular ideas or scholarship. ... “’The track record of these schools is terrible, absolutely terrible,’ said Nadine Strossen, professor of law emerita at New York Law School, [former president of the ACLU] and author of ‘Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know.’ She added: ‘The problem with all the deans and presidents who have not defended free speech is not that they are activists, it’s that they are spineless.’ “Meanwhile, many students are engaging in self-censorship to avoid being punished for views considered problematic on campus, according to numerous surveys. A 2023 survey by the Buckley Institute at Yale found that 61% of students said they often felt intimidated in sharing beliefs different from their professors in class. In the same survey, 46% of undergraduate students said they thought it was appropriate to shout down or disrupt a speaker on their campus.” ... Full op-ed at Wall Street Journal What Universities Should Punish and What They Shouldn't “Talia Khan, an MIT graduate student, had a detailed and powerful statement about what she sees as anti-Semitism on campus (apparently written in response to an invitation from Reps. Fox and Stefanek). “And I think it well reflects how many different things are being mixed together here. For instance, the statement refers to ‘a radical anti-Israel group at MIT called the CAA’ whose members have ‘stormed the offices of Jewish faculty and staff in the MIT Israel internship office. Staff reported fearing for their lives, as students went door to door trying to unlock the offices.’ If this is accurate, then it should certainly be punished. Likewise as to ‘Jewish students being physically blocked from moving through the anti-Israel crowd through the main MIT lobby.’ “Similarly, this allegation, if accurate, would show serious and improper viewpoint-discriminatory enforcement of MIT's rules: ‘I was forced to take down my Israeli flags and a poster that said "No Excuse for Hate" and "We Stand With Israel" in my office window after a new banner rule was created 6 days after I put my flags up. Other banners, such as those for "Black Lives Matter" are still hanging proudly in office windows today. A rule was created by the MIT administration to appease bigoted students who can't bear to see that Israel exists.' ... “I appreciate that many universities have indeed tried to police a wide range of comments by their students. That was wrong in those cases, and it would be wrong in cases such as the one Khan describes. It's unpleasant when students hear offensive things from classmates, and to have to find a new study group with more decent classmates. It's much worse when students have to live in fear of university punishment for the views they express to each other. "Again, there is plenty of misconduct that should be punished, whether because it breaks content-neutral rules preventing trespassing or blocking pathways, or because it involves unprotected speech such as threats. Universities shouldn't discriminate against pro-Israel messages. ..." Full op-ed by UCLA Prof. Eugene Volokh at Reason Magazine Stanford’s DEI Team Wants ‘Diversity of Opinions’ but Details Are Unclear Excerpts: “Stanford University officials want to see a ‘diversity of opinions’ on campus as part of their new ‘Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access’ plans. “But they won’t answer questions on how they plan to do that, particularly as its DEI plan and other projects includes initiatives that appear to support cancel culture or could limit open debate. ... “None of the five DEI leaders at Stanford contacted for comment responded. The Fix asked about specific ways Stanford would increase the diversity of opinions and how efforts to reduce bias (i.e. microaggressions) would possibly undermine the goal of open debate. “The Fix did not receive a response after multiple media inquiries over the past two weeks.” ... Full article at College Fix See also Stanford's ballooning administrative bureaucracy Other Articles of Interest The Treason of the Intellectuals Full op-ed by Stanford's Niall Ferguson Higher Ed’s Hypocrisy Fully Exposed for Refusal to Condemn Calls to Eradicate Jews Full article at College Fix Pushback Against Lawmaker’s Calls for Antisemitism Inquiry Full article at Inside Higher Ed Colleges Can Recommit to Free Speech or Double Down on Sensitivity Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education Moral Controversies and Academic Public Health: Notes on Navigating and Surviving Academic Freedom Challenges Full op-ed by Harvard's Public Health Prof. Tyler VanderWeele at Science Direct Campus Safety Cameras Full article at Campus Safety Magazine; see also articles at Stanford Daily and Stanford Review regarding Stanford's installation of hundreds of cameras where students congregate Fitch Ratings Issues Deteriorating Outlook for Higher Ed in 2024 Full article at Higher Ed Dive Pending Federal Legislation Would Require More Transparency for Gifts and Grants to U.S. Universities from Foreign Entities Full article at James Martin Center “. . . calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a Country.... Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting -- and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.” – White House Spokesperson Andrew Bates December 7, 2023 ​ Congressional Testimony re the Censorship of Stanford’s Prof. Jay Bhattacharya and Others Excerpts: “Exactly one year ago today I had my first look at the documents that came to be known as the Twitter Files. One of the first things Michael [Shellenberger], Bari Weiss and I found was this image, showing that Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had been placed on a 'trends blacklist' [screenshot deleted but available in the testimony linked below]. “This was not because he was suspected of terrorism or incitement or of being a Russian spy or a bad citizen in any way. Dr. Bhattacharya’s crime was doing a peer-reviewed study that became the 55th-most read scientific paper of all time, which showed the WHO initially overstated Covid-19 infection fatality rates by a factor of 17. This was legitimate scientific opinion and should have been an important part of the public debate, but Bhattacharya and several of his colleagues instead became some of the most suppressed people in America in 2020 and 2021. “That’s because by then, even true speech that undermined confidence in government policies had begun to be considered a form of disinformation, precisely the situation the First Amendment was designed to avoid. ... "Former Executive Director of the ACLU Ira Glasser once explained to a group of students why he didn’t support hate speech codes on campuses. The problem, he said, was 'who gets to decide what’s hateful… who gets to decide what to ban,' because 'most of the time, it ain’t you.' ... "This leads to the one inescapable question about new 'anti-disinformation' programs that is never discussed, but must be: who does this work? Stanford’s Election Integrity Project helpfully made a graphic showing the 'external stakeholders' in their content review operation. It showed four columns: government, civil society, platforms, media [graphic deleted but available in the testimony linked below]. "One group is conspicuously absent from that list: people. Ordinary people! Whether America continues the informal sub rosacensorship system seen in the Twitter Files or formally adopts something like Europe’s draconian new Digital Services Act, it’s already clear who won’t be involved. There’ll be no dockworkers doing content flagging, no poor people from inner city neighborhoods, no single moms pulling multiple waitressing jobs, no immigrant store owners or Uber drivers, etc. These programs will always feature a tiny, rarefied sliver of affluent professional-class America censoring a huge and ever-expanding pool of everyone else." Full testimony by Matt Taibbi at Racket News, including the screenshot and graphic referenced above. See also our prior posting of Prof. Bhattacharya’s op-ed, “The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists. We Fought Back and Won ” See also Stanford's own programs that have the result of censoring its own students and faculty through its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative and its Protected Identity Harm Reporting forms and procedures The Censorship Industrial Complex, Part 2 Excerpts (links in the original): “Nine months ago, I testified and provided evidence to Congress about the existence of a Censorship Industrial Complex, a network of government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, government contractors, and Big Tech media platforms that conspired to censor ordinary Americans and elected officials alike for holding disfavored views. “I regret to inform the Subcommittee that the scope, power, and law-breaking of the Censorship Industrial Complex are even worse than we had realized back in March. “Two days ago, my colleagues and I published the first batch of internal files from 'The Cyber Threat Intelligence League,' which show US and UK military contractors working in 2019 and 2020 to both censor and turn sophisticated psychological operations and disinformation tactics, developed abroad, against the American people. “Many insist that all we identified in the Twitter Files, the Facebook Files, and the CTIL Files were legal activities by social media platforms to take down content that violated their terms of service. Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and other Big Tech companies are privately owned and free to censor content. And government officials are free to point out wrong information, they argue. “But the First Amendment prohibits the government from abridging freedom of speech, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government 'may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish,' and there is now a large body of evidence proving that the government did precisely that. "What’s more, the whistleblower who delivered the CTIL Files to us says that its leader, a 'former' British intelligence analyst, was 'in the room' at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a 'repeat of 2016.' “Emails from CISA’s NGO and social media partners show that CISA created the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) in 2020, which involved the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and other US government contractors. EIP and its successor, the Virality Project (VP) [also based at Stanford], urged Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms to censor social media posts by ordinary citizens and elected officials alike. “But the abuses of power my colleagues and I have documented go well beyond censorship. They also include what appears to be an effort by government officials and contractors, including the FBI , to frame certain individuals as posing a threat of domestic terrorism for their political beliefs. … “I encourage Congress to defund and dismantle the governmental organizations involved in censorship. …" Full testimony by Michael Shellenberger at Public FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff Fights Efforts to Silence Controversial Voices Excerpts: “With the war in Gaza dividing college campuses across the country, Greg Lukianoff [a Stanford law school alum and president of FIRE ] believes this difficult moment reveals the depth of the free-speech crisis in higher education.... Lukianoff, 49, says that the job of civil libertarians is not to agree with what everyone says but defend the right to say it ‘You have to be consistent.’ ... “Instead of muffling troubling ideas, Lukianoff argues that we should be debating them – especially in places that are meant to encourage critical thinking and a spirit of free inquiry....Universities across the country began introducing codes of conduct aimed at curbing potentially hurtful speech. By the mid-2010s, students armed with social media had become empowered censors themselves, demanding ‘trigger warnings’ and policing microaggressions while insisting that colleges disinvite speakers, ranging from Condoleezza Rice to James Franco. “Ballooning campus bureaucracies merely reconfirmed student concerns that they needed protection from verbal ‘violence’ .... He hopes that colleges seize the chance to steer students with conflicting opinions toward a more constructive dialogue and that university presidents who struggled to appease both donors and students with their recent political statements rethink the impulse to weigh in on politics at all. ‘Institutional neutrality is the bedrock of a free and open campus culture’ he argues.” Full profile at Wall Street Journal; Lukianoff's book “The Canceling of the American Mind ” is available at Amazon See also our compilation of the Kalvin report regarding a university’s role in political and social matters and our prior articles about “ Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy, ” “Stanford’s Program for Reporting Bias ” and “Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative ” The Latest Victims of the Free-Speech Crisis Excerp ts: “Protecting free speech requires defending the rights of both sides of any conflict. That will only get harder if we ignore just how long colleges have been falling short. Today’s headlines can distract from the fact that campuses have been in crisis for the better part of a decade.... “Indeed, ideology plays an important role in how campus speech is treated. The specifics of each case vary significantly, but FIRE data show that pro-Palestinian speech has generally been more likely to trigger campaigns to get professors fired, investigated, or sanctioned than pro-Israel speech has. Campaigns targeting pro-Israel speech, however, have been more likely to succeed. Similarly, more attempts have been made to deplatform pro-Palestinian speeches on campus, but attempts against pro-Israel speakers have been more successful. In fact, all substantial and successful disruptions of campus speeches that FIRE has recorded on this issue have targeted pro-Israel advocacy. This might partly be explained by the fact that pro-Palestinian -- and even pro-Hamas -- sentiments are relatively common on campus and among college-aged Americans. “If we want to defeat cancel culture and preserve free speech and academic freedom on campus, we need to recognize it regardless of its victims. Those decrying today’s so-called new McCarthyism will have to acknowledge just how long it’s been going on -- not only for the past 40 days, but for the past nine years.” Full article at The Atlantic Science Has a Censorship Problem Excerpts: “Censorship is widespread in academe and has grown worse in recent decades. Indeed, the expressive environment in higher ed seems less free than in society writ large, even though most other places of employment have basically no protections for freedom of expression, conscience, research, etc. ... “Moral motives have long influenced scientific decision-making. What’s new is that journals are now explicitly endorsing moral concerns as legitimate reasons to suppress science. Following the publication (and retraction) of an article reporting that the mentees of male mentors, on average, had more scholarly success than did the mentees of female mentors, Nature Communications released an editorial promising increased attention to potential harms. A subsequent Nature editorial stated that authors, reviewers, and editors must consider the potentially harmful implications of research, and a Nature Human Behaviour editorial declared the publication might reject or retract articles that have the potential to undermine the dignity of particular groups of people. In effect, editors are granting themselves vast leeway to censor high-quality research that offends their own moral sensibilities, or those of their most sensitive readers.” Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education Other Articles of Interest National College Completion Rate Stagnates at 62.2% Full articles at Diverse Issues in Higher Education and at Higher Ed Dive Alternative Viewpoint: In Defense of DEI from UCLA’s Interim Vice Provost for DEI Full op-ed and comments at Yahoo News/LA Times Model Legislation Would Reform General Education Requirements at U.S. Colleges and Universities Full article at College Fix Campus Dysfunction Easy to Recognize, Difficult to Cure Full article by Stanford's Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics Jewish Groups Sue UC System Over Alleged ‘Unchecked Spread of Anti-Semitism’ Full article at Higher Ed Dive "The vitality of civil and political institutions in our society depends on free discussion.... It is only through free debate and free exchange of ideas that government remains responsive to the will of the people and peaceful change is effected." -- Stanford Alum Sandra Day O’Connor, BA '50, JD '52 ​ November 30, 2023 From American Association of University Professors: Polarizing Times Demand Robust Academic Freedom Excerpts: “Since its founding in 1915, the American Association of University Professors has been the most prominent guardian of academic freedom for faculty and students.... “The AAUP therefore calls on college and university administrations to: “Recommit themselves to fully protecting the academic freedom of their faculties to teach, conduct research, and speak out about important issues both on and off campus, as called for in Academic Freedom in Times of War . “Protect the freedom of students to express their positions on such issues on and off campus. Students should be free to organize and join associations to promote their common interests, and students and student organizations should be free to examine and discuss all questions of interest to them and to express opinions publicly and privately, in the words of the AAUP’s Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students. “Safeguard the independence of colleges and universities by refusing to comply with demands from politicians, trustees, donors, faculty members, students and their parents, alumni, or other parties that would interfere with academic freedom....” Full text at AAUP website ​ Whistleblower Highlights More Alleged Censorship Activities Based at Stanford [Editor’s note: We have been regularly posting articles about alleged censorship activities being done directly at Stanford by people on Stanford's payroll (along with volunteer students), using campus buildings and even using Stanford’s name. The following is among the latest articles about these alleged activities.] “A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the activities of an 'anti-disinformation' group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL.... “Emails from CISA’s NGO and social media partners show that CISA created the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) in 2020, which involved the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and other US government contractors. EIP and its successor, the Virality Project (VP), urged Twitter, Facebook and other platforms to censor social media posts by ordinary citizens and elected officials alike.... “The documents also show that Terp and her colleagues, through a group called MisinfoSec Working Group, which included [Renee] DiResta [on the Stanford payroll], created a censorship, influence, and anti-disinformation strategy called Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques (AMITT). They wrote AMITT by adapting a cybersecurity framework developed by MITRE, a major defense and intelligence contractor that has an annual budget of $1 to $2 billion in government funding.... “The AMITT framework calls for discrediting individuals as a necessary prerequisite of demanding censorship against them. It calls for training influencers to spread messages. And it calls for trying to get banks to cut off financial services to individuals who organize rallies or events.... “Breuer went on to describe how they thought they were getting around the First Amendment. His work with Terp, he explained, was a way to get ‘nontraditional partners into one room,’ including ‘maybe somebody from one of the social media companies, maybe a few special forces operators, and some folks from Department of Homeland Security… to talk in a non-attribution, open environment in an unclassified way so that we can collaborate better, more freely and really start to change the way that we address some of these issues.’... It is here that we see the idea for the EIP [Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership] and VP [Stanford’s Virality Project] . . . . “Despite their confidence in the legality of their activities, some CTIL members may have taken extreme measures to keep their identities a secret. The group’s handbook recommends using burner phones, creating pseudonymous identities, and generating fake AI faces using the ‘This person does not exist’ website.'” . . . . Full ar ticle at Public See also our prior article “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” and Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya's essay “The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists. We Fought Back and Won ” Where Free Speech Ends and Lawbreaking Begins Excerpts: “Those who care deeply about free speech are asking themselves many questions at this urgent moment: What should we make of the calls to punish Hamas apologists on campus? After all, this is America, where you have the right to say even the vilest things. Yes, many of the same students who on October 6 called for harsh punishment for ‘microaggressions’ are now chanting for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. But Americans are entitled to be hypocrites. ... “I would put my free speech bona fide s up against anyone. I’m also a lawyer and sometime law professor who recognizes that not all speech-related questions can be resolved by invoking the words First Amendment. “Much of what we’ve witnessed on campuses over the past few weeks is not, in fact, speech, but conduct designed specifically to harass, intimidate, and terrorize Jews. Other examples involve disruptive speech that can properly be regulated by school rules. Opposing or taking action against such behavior in no way violates the core constitutional principle that the government can’t punish you for expressing your beliefs. “The question, as always, is where to draw the line, and who’s doing the line-drawing....” Full o p-ed at The Free Press ​ From Wall Street Journal: Inside Ohio State’s DEI Factory [Editor’s note: Author John Sailer is the director of university policy at the National Association of Scholars. As a result of a public records request, Sailer obtained more than 800 pages of Ohio State’s Diversity Faculty Recruitment Reports that were required as part of the university’s hiring process. More recently, Ohio State’s Board of Trustees ordered the termination of these hiring practices.] Excerpts: “A search committee seeking a professor of military history rejected one applicant ‘because his diversity statement demonstrated poor understanding of diversity and inclusion issues.’ Another committee noted that an applicant to be a professor of nuclear physics could understand the plight of minorities in academia because he was married to ‘an immigrant in Texas in the Age of Trump.’ “These reports show what higher education’s outsize investment in ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ looks like in practice. Ohio State sacrificed both academic freedom and scholarly excellence for the sake of a narrowly construed vision of diversity.... “In some cases, committees evaluated diversity statements through an explicitly ideological lens. A committee searching for a professor of freshwater biology selected finalists ‘based upon a weighted rubric of 67% research and 33% contribution to DEI.’ To evaluate the statements, the committee used a rubric that cited several ‘problematic approaches’ for which a candidate can receive a zero score -- for example, if he ‘solely acknowledges that racism, classism, etc. are issues in the academy.’ It isn’t enough for a freshwater biologist to believe that racism pervades higher education." Full op- ed at Wall Street Journal See also our November 16, 2023 Newsletter excerpts of an article by Bari Weiss who starts her op-ed that “it is not about diversity, equity and inclusion” but rather the bloated and often anti-intellectual bureaucracies that have been created in the name of DEI. See also our prior article "Stanford's Ballooning DEI Bureaucracy " that compares the number of fulltime DEI administrators at Stanford with schools that are twice and triple Stanford’s size. From Stanford Daily: Installation of 240 More Cameras Raises More Privacy Concerns Excerpts: “As students returned to campus this fall, many noticed new infrastructure in their residences: security cameras. “A $2.35 million project to bolster security at Stanford is driving 240 new security camera installations per year, including at select student residences and dining halls.... The cameras have been subject to intense scrutiny in light of privacy concerns on campus.... “Temporary covert cameras may be used when deemed necessary for a police investigation, according to the VSSS [Video Safety and Security at Stanford] website. The site further acknowledges that, although the University does not employ any facial recognition tools, other government agencies may use such tools upon retrieving footage. “‘A thorough security vulnerability assessment [of an area] is performed by DPS,’ [Stanford spokesperson] Rapport wrote, in order to pinpoint any safety and property risks. Non-covert camera installations are accompanied by ‘conspicuous, standardized signage,’ she wrote, to alert passersby of the cameras’ presence.... “‘[Stanford undergraduate Kayla] Myers said she wished Stanford was more transparent about how the use of security camera footage: ‘If anything, knowing that security cameras are around dorms makes me feel a bit uneasy because it’s like a reminder that students’ regular daily behavior is being surveilled.’” Full article at Stanford Daily. A copy of Stanford's 13 pages of video surveillance standards is here ; see also our prior posting from Stanford Review, “Stanford’s Security Regime Takes Roo t”. We also note that the administrative group that is overseeing these student surveillance activities is the same group that oversaw the now-discredited "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative " and its lists of proscribed words and phrases. Other Articles of Interest Just Stop Making Official Statements About the News Full article at New York Magazine Intelligencer University of Southern California Relegates Professor to Remote Teaching for Expressing Anti-Hamas Sentiments Press release from FIRE College Leaders Refocus Attention on Their Students’ Top Priority: Jobs After Graduation Full article at Hechinger Report Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can Fight Back. Full article at NY Times Our Institutions of Higher Education Are Waging a War on Truth Full article at The Hill At MIT, Fear, Frustration, and Flailing Administrators Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education Report Shows Blacks and Hispanics Lag in STEM PhDs Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education Student Data Lead Black, Hispanic Parents to Action Full article at Gallup We recognize that words can sometimes cause offence, but we reject the idea that hurt feelings and discomfort, even if acute, are grounds for censorship. Open discourse is the central pillar of a free society, and is essential for holding governments accountable, empowering vulnerable groups, and reducing the risk of tyranny.” -- From the Westminster Declaration November 21, 2023 From Michael Bloomberg: College Presidents and Trustees Need to Take More Responsibility Excerpts: “The barbaric attack by Hamas against Israel -- the intentional slaughter of defenseless civilians, including children and babies, and the taking of hostages -- should have been a unifying moment for America. Shamefully, it has become something else: a wake-up call about a crisis in higher education.... “For Americans, this isn’t a matter of defending Israel but of defending our nation’s most sacred values. One can support the Palestinian people and still denounce the intentional slaughter of civilians. “Why have so many students failed to do so? The answer begins where the buck stops -- with college presidents. For years, they have allowed their campuses to become bastions of intolerance, by permitting students to shout down the voices of others. They have condoned ‘trigger warnings’ that shield students from difficult ideas. They have refused to defend faculty who run afoul of student sentiment. And they have created ‘safe spaces’ that discourage or exclude opposing views.... “As part of addressing this crisis in higher education, presidents and deans should make a priority of hiring faculty with greater viewpoint diversity to teach students how to engage in civil discourse, while challenging and expanding their minds. Professors may resist, but administrators must make clear that such diversity is a requirement of academic freedom. “Trustees have a crucial role to play in holding presidents accountable for this work. Running a school and managing professors is difficult and complex, as administrators well know, but organizational complexity can’t be an excuse for faculty conformity.” (Full op-ed at Wall Street Journal; see also our Back to Basics white paper) From David Brooks: Universities Are Failing at Inclusion Excerpts: “. . . Eboo Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith America, which over the past 20 years has worked on about 1,200 campuses to narrow toxic divides and build bridges between people of all faiths or no faith. Over these decades, he has concluded that far from creating a healthier, more equitable campus, this ideology demonizes, demeans and divides students. It demeans white people by reducing them to a single category -- oppressor. Meanwhile, it demeans, for example, Muslim people of color, like Patel, by reducing them to victims. “Patel doesn’t believe we should try to ‘end D.E.I.,’ as some have proposed. That’s not going to happen anyway. Besides, in a liberal society we beat bad ideas with better ideas. Patel does argue that we’re at a paradigm-shifting moment when we can replace a destructive form of diversity, equity and inclusion with a better form -- one that actually includes people, instead of excluding them. “The right intellectual framework for effective diversity work is pluralism. Pluralism starts with a celebration of the fact that we live in one of the most diverse societies in history. The job of the university is to help young people from different backgrounds learn to work and live together. (Would you really want to hire someone who spent his college years learning how to demonize, demean and divide?)” .... (Full op-ed at NY Times) A Free-Speech Fix for Our Divided Campuses Excerpts: “The American university has been the envy of the world not just because of its excellence in research and scholarship but as an incubator of democratic citizenship -- a place where students learn to live with peers from vastly different settings, to forge friendships and professional networks that transcend social, economic and ideological divides, and to open their minds to new ideas and disciplines. “Grappling with the current crisis on campus demands more than open letters to alumni or action plans to combat antisemitism or Islamophobia. It requires a comprehensive rethinking of how American universities can fulfill their role as a free market of ideas and a factory of pluralism, teaching students the values and skills they need to resist polarization and ensure the survival of our teetering democracy.... “At the same time, certain conceptions of diversity and equity have hardened into orthodoxy. Students who question the ideas of identity groups or the aims of social-justice movements can be stigmatized, and debates over topics like abortion, immigration and affirmative action may be effectively shut down because students fear offending someone or being publicly accused of racism or bias. A team at Stanford University was ridiculed earlier this year for promulgating a list of terms, like ‘chief’ and ‘manpower,’ that it considered potentially harmful because they might reinforce stereotypes.” (Full op-ed at Wall Street Journal; see also " Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative " that includes a PDF copy of Stanford’s 17-page list of proscribed words and phrases) Federal Judge Rules Against Mandatory DEI Policies at California Community Colleges Excerpts “Judge Christopher Baker recommended blocking California Community Colleges’ leaders and Kern Community College District trustees from enforcing mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion policies in a report issued this week in response to a lawsuit filed against the district by a professor.... “In his 44-page report , Baker rejected administrators’ arguments that the DEI regulations are just suggestions.” … (Full article at College Fix; see also "California Community College Professors Sue Over Newly Imposed DEIA Hiring and Performance Standards ," including a PDF copy of the California Community College official guide to words and phrases) Other Articles of Interest More Re Stanford’s Roles in the Censorship Industrial Complex (Full article about the alleged bias at Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project at Public ; full article about President Saller’s and Stanford’s responses in a separate article at Public ; see also "Stanford's Roles in Censoring the Web ") Government Gives Billions Each Year to Elite Universities (Full articles at Substack and at Reason ) College Presidents Debate When to Speak Out and When to Keep Quiet (Full articles at Diverse Issues in Higher Education and at Chronicle of Higher Education “Freedom of speech is essential to autonomy, to artistic expression, to self-government, to holding power accountable. And it allows society to divert the energy that would once explode into violence instead into robust arguments. – From The Canceling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott November 16, 2023 Speech Is Still Worth Fighting For Excerpts: "Freedom of expression is probably the most widely acknowledged human right in the world. Lip service is paid to it even in totalitarian states. Freedom of expression is not worth much in Russia or North Korea, but their constitutions guarantee it in very similar terms as the United Nations. And yet, it is today under greater threat than any other human right. This is happening even, perhaps especially, in liberal democracies. How are we to explain this paradox? ... “Tolerance does not come naturally to human beings. For most of human history, what people believed about the natural world, about government and society and about the moral codes of humanity was laid down by authority, usually by people claiming to speak in the name of God. Pluralism and diversity of opinion have only been accepted as desirable for the last three or four centuries. They are essentially the legacy of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century and the European Enlightenment of the 18th.... “The basic principles of rational discourse on which all this depended are now under challenge. Reason is rejected as arrogant. Feeling and emotion are upheld as suitable substitutes. Freedom is treated as domineering, enlightenment as offensive to the unenlightened. Current campaigns to suppress certain opinions and eliminate debate are an attempt to create a new conformity, a situation in which people will not dare to contradict, for fear of provoking their outrage and abuse. These things are symptoms of the closing of the human mind and the narrowing of our intellectual world. Something in our civilisation has died.” (Full article at Unherd) From Bari Weiss: About DEI Excerpts: “It’s not about diversity, equity, or inclusion [boldface added]. It is about arrogating power to a movement that threatens not just Jews -- but America itself. “Twenty years ago, when I was a college student, I started writing about a then-nameless, niche ideology that seemed to contradict everything I had been taught since I was a child.... “Of course, this new ideology doesn’t come right out and say all that. It doesn’t even like to be named. Some call it wokeness or anti-racism or progressivism or safetyism or Critical Social Justice or identity Marxism. But whatever term you use, what’s clear is that it has gained power in a conceptual instrument called “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI.... “In theory, all three of these words represent noble causes. They are, in fact, all causes to which American Jews in particular have long been devoted, both individually and collectively. But in reality, these words are now metaphors for an ideological movement bent on recategorizing every American not as an individual, but as an avatar of an identity group, his or her behavior prejudged accordingly, setting all of us up in a kind of zero-sum game.... ​ "We have been seeing for several years now the damage this ideology has done: DEI, and its cadres of enforcers, undermine the central missions of the institutions that adopt it. But nothing has made the dangers of DEI clearer than what’s happening these days on our college campuses -- the places where our future leaders are nurtured.... “It is time to end DEI for good. No more standing by as people are encouraged to segregate themselves. No more forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence. No more compelled speech. No more going along with little lies for the sake of being polite. “The Jewish people have outlived every single regime and ideology that has sought our elimination. We will persist, one way or another. But DEI is undermining America, and that for which it stands -- including the principles that have made it a place of unparalleled opportunity, safety, and freedom for so many. Fighting it is the least we owe this country.” (Full article at Free Press) From Former Provost John Etchemendy: Proper Discourse at Stanford Excerpt: “Our current president and provost have received a great deal of criticism from students and alumni who want them to take a stand, to come down clearly and unequivocally in favor of their own preferred stance. But President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez have done exactly what a president and provost should do. It is their responsibility, above all, to maintain the potential for rational, respectful debate, even about the most tragic and divisive circumstances facing the world. It is our responsibility as an academic community to engage in this debate with compassion and respect for those with whom we disagree, not to look to the university to assure us that our side is right.” (Full op-ed at Stanford Daily; see also our compilations of the three parts of the Chicago Trifecta regarding freedom of expression, a university's involvement in political and social matters, and academic appointments) From Stanford Review: Student Life at Stanford Excerpts: ​ “When describing Stanford to others, I always compare it to one place: Disneyland. Just like the theme park, Stanford’s picturesque campus grounds are perfectly maintained at all times, from the height of its bushes to the impeccable lawn that spells out the famous 'S' logo on its Oval. A mix of Spanish-style architecture and modern science centers represents the best of both tradition and innovation to visitors.... “Stanford is indeed beautiful, but the veneer of blissful harmony is underlied by a system of excessive safety measures -- bordering on theater -- and synthetic attempts at community-building that hamper students’ ability to have rich social lives and the agency to fully explore and enjoy campus.... The neutering of campus life and traditions -- especially after the pandemic -- is motivated by an ideology of risk-aversion, and tramples the freedom Stanford used to be known for.... “Grouping the vegan Columbae with Sigma Nu and having the row houses as arbitrary exclaves of regular housing does little to foster community. When Crothers residents (like myself) want to access the intra-neighborhood Branner Dining Hall, we are forced either to beg Branner residents to let us through the front entrance, or to take a five-minute detour around the building’s backside.... “Instead of striving to maintain its fantasyland facade, Stanford should instead cease its war on social life and allow its students to engage in the freedom that it loves to promote. Stanford must not shrivel into an ‘educational resort,’ as one of my professors put it, run with the same soullessness and litigious spirit as a commercial Disney property.” (Full article at Stanford Review; see also our Back to Basics white paper on ways to address these and related concerns) Other Articles of Interest Statement to Stanford Community from President Saller and Provost Martinez on Next Steps (Full statement here ) An Open Letter to Jewish Students at Stanford University (Op-ed by Stanford alumni at Stanford Daily) Some Concerns and Possible Reforms re the Politicization of Higher Education (Op-eds by Niall Fergusson at Newsweek and by Jonathan Turley at The Hill ) Math Class at MIT (Short video at X, and you might need to turn on the sound) More About the Censorship Activities of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Its Affiliates the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) and the Virality Project (Full articles at Uncover DC, at Brownstone and at Real Clear Investigation s) The Ever-More-Corporate University (Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education; see also our September 29 Newsletter posting about administrators nearly outnumbering Stanford undergraduates and concerns about the various centers, accelerators and incubators at Stanford that do little if any research and instead engage almost exclusively in implementation and advocacy activities on behalf of corporate and government sponsors and major donors) "No matter who they are, the vast majority of people become more supportive of free speech the more they are asked to think about it. Context — historical, social — is everything. Triggering their gratitude for the freedom they have, and take for granted, helps. And, as always, it’s crucial for people to remind themselves that the only way we reduce intolerance and hate is through dialogue and debate, not censorship.” — Michael Shellenberger November 10, 2023 NOTE: We are advised that over 200 persons on our mailing list inexplicably may not have received last week's Newsletter dated November 2, 2023. If you are in that group, a copy of the Newsletter is posted here . From Stanford Daily: President Saller and Provost Martinez Discuss Israel-Gaza Excerpts: "President Richard Saller reiterated the University’s condemnation of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel during the meeting and assured the Senate of the administration’s continued priority to 'maintain the safety and wellbeing of the campus.' "The administration intends to implement 'a new security review and … education of the community about the roots of antisemitism,' Saller said. He highlighted the University’s efforts to 'secure Palestinian and Muslim communities which have also been targeted with hate speech and are fearful.' "He cautioned community members against 'drawing conclusions about things that may be reported on, with or without verification' and warned about 'the circulation of fake news,' which he said is an important issue for consideration in keeping the University safe.... "Provost Jenny Martinez expressed concern about rising antisemitism worldwide. "She said she wanted to be 'unequivocally clear that Stanford stands against antisemitism and recognizes the deep historical roots of this form of hate, and the ways in which Jewish students, faculty … and staff are affected by this horrible legacy.' "She also described an increase in violence against Muslims across the U.S., including the recent murder of a six-year-old Palestinian boy in Chicago. “'Stanford stands against Islamophobia and all forms of hatred and discrimination on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin,' Martinez said.... "Martinez also addressed faculty concerns about free speech: 'Free expression of ideas necessarily includes protection for some forms of controversial and even offensive speech, both as a matter of Stanford’s policy on academic freedom adopted by the Faculty Senate in 1974 and California’s Leonard Law, which extends some First Amendment protections to students at private colleges.'" (Full coverage of last week's Faculty Senate meeting at Stanford Daily) From Stanford Daily: ASSU Leaders Discuss Student Life Excerpts: "ASSU President Sophia Danielpour ’24 and Vice President Kyle Haslett ’25 gave their inaugural address to the Senate about the state of student life and a vision for improvements. "Based on perspectives from various constituents and surveys, Danielpour said undergraduates feel 'Stanford’s identity and systems of trust had eroded.' They highlighted tension and distrust among community members, the prioritization of risk management over student experience and over-regulation as the primary causes. "Danielpour also said students are doing 'anything they can to avoid the [neighborhood] system,' which she said contributed to feelings of isolation and weaker housing culture. They proposed alternative systems including only having neighborhoods for frosh and different ways to approach clustered housing. "They advocated for revisions to the University’s alcohol policy and expressed how even though the Stanford Hates Fun movement 'gets giggles, it is an outcry from students' who think that social life on campus is deteriorating. Danielpour and Haslett were elected on a 'Fun Strikes Back' slate.... "The executives criticized several aspects of the Office of Community Standards (OCS), which they said they saw as an overstep in bureaucracy. They advocated for ending mandatory reporting by resident assistants because it 'created a culture of fear' among students.... "ASSU executives also expressed complaints against surveillance efforts on campus, namely the '400 cameras' that have been installed in residential spaces. The ASSU executives said it was unclear how and when OCS accessed and used footage from these cameras." (Full coverage of last week's Faculty Senate meeting at Stanford Daily) (See also our prior articles about Stanford's ballooning administrative bureaucracy and our Back to Basics white paper on ways to address these concerns) More on Stanford's Roles in Censoring the Web Excerpts: "In the runup to the 2020 election, cybersecurity experts at the Department of Homeland Security and Stanford University decided they had discovered a major problem.... "The issue was not compromised voter rolls or corrupted election tallies but a 'gap' in the government’s authority to clamp down on what it considered misinformation and disinformation – a gap identified by DHS officials and interns on loan to the agency from the Stanford Internet Observatory. Given what SIO research manager Renee DiResta described as the 'unclear legal authorities' and 'very real First Amendment questions' regarding this gap, the parties hatched a plan to form a public-private partnership that would provide DHS with an avenue to surreptitiously censor speech. "The collaboration between DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency and the Stanford outfit would quickly expand into a robust operation whose full extent is only now becoming clear.... "EIP [Election Integrity Partnership] scoured hundreds of millions of social media posts for content disfavored by the government about election processes and outcomes, and collected it from the operation’s governmental and non-governmental partners to identify the offending speech.... (Full article at Real Clear Investigations) ​ (See also "Stanford Group Helped Censor Covid Dissidents and Then Lied About it" at Substack Public) ​ (See also " New Emails Show DHS Created Stanford 'Disinfo' Group That Censored Speech Before 2020 Election " at NY Post) (See also " The Federal Government Had a Major Academic Partner in Its Censorship Regime " at Townhall) (See also our prior articles about the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project) From MSNBC: Are Campus Administrators Too Afraid to Confront Antisemitism? Excerpts: “How is it that schools -- so many schools over the last decade or so that have taken such great care for the safety in many cases just protecting them [students] from words or protecting them from arguments they don’t like to hear -- cannot take care of the physical safety of Jewish students? How can it be that a young student can walk across Harvard’s campus and . . . not just be yelled at but be physically assaulted and those students [perpetrators] not be expelled on the spot? What is happening with the leadership at these schools? “ . . . unfortunately the administrations don’t seem to recognize what’s happening and in some ways they have aided and abetted it, maybe unknowingly, by perpetuating this racial stereotype on campuses through diversity, equity and inclusion and other racial doctrines." (See MSNBC video on YouTube, including commentary by Joe Scarborough, here ; see also " The Impossible Predicament of College Leaders " at Chronical of Higher Education; see also CNN " Why College Presidents Seem Flummoxed " ) Concerns Expressed About Composition of the Stanford Law School Dean Search Committee Excerpts: "Stanford Law School has tapped a student involved in the successful effort to shout down a federal judge to serve on a search committee for the law school’s next dean, raising questions about the school’s stated commitment to free speech. "The only student on the law school’s search committee, Matthew Coffin, is the co-president of Stanford OutLaw, the LGBT student group that led efforts in March to disrupt a Federalist Society event featuring Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan. Along with nearly a dozen faculty members, Coffin will help identify candidates to replace former Stanford Law dean Jenny Martinez, who was named provost of the university in August.... "Students say Coffin’s appointment is a betrayal of the promise, made by Martinez in a 10-page memo about the Duncan brouhaha, that the law school would recommit itself to free expression. 'It’s really disappointing and seemingly rewards the behavior that the law school rightly rebuked last year,' one Stanford Law student said...." (Full articles at Free Beacon and at College Fix ) Colleges Need an Overhaul Excerpt s : “Higher education is not known for rapid change. This has been such a characteristic trait of the field that leadership guru Adrianna Kezar once called it ‘higher education’s immunity to change.’ “To remain foundational pillars of society and equip students to become good citizens of the world, higher education institutions must grapple with these forces of change and form coherent strategies about how they wish to move forward. The time to do this is now. “Higher education must increasingly equip students with the skills and mindset to become lifelong learners — to learn how to learn, essentially — so that no matter what the future looks like, they will have the skills, mindset and wherewithal to learn whatever it is that they need and by whatever means. That spans from the commitment of a graduate program or something as quick as a microcredential." (Full article by Stanford alum Dr. Lizbeth Martin, president of Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, at Higher Ed Dive) Bill Ackman's Letter to Harvard's President Excerpts: "I am writing this letter to you regretfully. Never did I think I would have to write a letter to the president of my alma mater about the impact of her actions and inactions on the health and safety of its student body in order to help catalyze necessary change.... "I have heard from many members of the Harvard community that Harvard’s Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging ('OEDIB') is an important contributing factor to the problem. I was surprised to learn from students and faculty that the OEDIB does not support Jewish, Asian and non-LGBTQIA White students. I had never read the OEDIB DEI statement until today when I wrote this letter. The DEI statement makes clear that Harvard’s conception of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging does not include Jews (at least those that are not in one of the other welcomed DEI groups). According to Harvard’s DEI statement: "'We actively seek and welcome people of color, women, persons with disabilities, people who identify as LGBTQIA, and those who are at the intersections of these identities, from across the spectrum of disciplines and methods to join us.' "In other words, Jews and others who are not on the above list are not welcome to join. When antisemitism is widely prevalent on campus, and the DEI office – which 'views diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging as the pathway to achieving inclusive excellence and fostering a campus culture where everyone can thrive' – does not welcome Jewish students, we have a serious problem. It is abundantly clear that the campus culture that is being fostered at Harvard today is not one where everyone is included, feels a sense of belonging, welcomes diversity, or is a place where 'everyone can thrive.'”... ​ [Editor's note: Bill Ackman received his AB and MBA degrees at Harvard and is CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management Company. Forbes estimates his net worth to be approximately $3.5 billion.] ​ (Full text at X) University of Washington Internal Review Concludes Race Improperly Used in Faculty Hiring Excerpts: "The investigation, which the university posted online Tuesday, concludes that 'race was used as a substantial factor in the selection of the final candidate and the hiring process,' violating a university executive order that bans considering race in hiring.... "Before finalists were narrowed to three, five finalists were invited to virtual visits, with the schedules including meetings with the Women Faculty and Faculty of Color groups. But a member of the latter group expressed opposition to meeting the White candidates. “'As a person who has been on both sides of the table for these meetings, I have really appreciated them,' the unnamed person wrote in an email. 'Buuut, when the candidate is White, it is just awkward. The last meeting was uncomfortable, and I would go as far as burdensome for me. Can we change the policy to not do these going forward with White faculty?' "An unnamed person wrote in another email, in March, that they were inclined to hold the meetings just for faculty candidates of color. 'I’m also mindful that our Provost is now getting anxious about anything that’s directed to only some identity groups (i.e., they are getting worried about fallout from the pending Supreme Court affirmative action rulings),' this person wrote in an email. 'My read is that they’ll get fearful of litigation and overcorrect into colorblindness. Maybe our committee can preemptively think our way around this type of future directive.'” (Full articles at Inside Higher Ed and at National Association of Scholars ; see also our compilation of the University of Chicago's Shils Report re principles for academic appointments ) Other Articles of Interest Prof. Alan Dershowitz on the Hamas-Israel Controversies and a University's Role in Political and Social Matters (Full video of this Stanford Classical Liberalism seminar posted at YouTube) What Do Universities Owe Their Donors? (Full article at Inside Higher Ed) How American Colleges Gave Birth to Cancel Culture (Full article at Free Press) Where We Lost the Thread on Cancel Culture (Full article at Huffington Post) Med School Accreditor Requires Commitment to DEI (Full article at College Fix) “Rather than teaching students how to engage productively with challenging new ideas, far too many colleges and universities build cozy bubbles in which only comfortable orthodoxies are permitted. They foster large, expensive bureaucracies to police infractions of vague (and often extralegal, if not outright illegal) rules against expressing ideas that someone might find offensive.” -- American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) November 2, 2023 ​ Stanford Daily Editorial: Keeping Stanford's Speech Free Excerpts: “Stanford is again in newspaper headlines. Most notably, The New York Times recently published a column titled ‘The War Comes to Stanford,’ highlighting students’ speech, banners and chalk messages around campus. Other universities have been under as much, if not more, scrutiny. This is not a new phenomenon; college students’ reactions to current events have long stoked heated debate.... “Vindictive retaliation to students’ political expression can dampen free speech on college campuses. To be clear, we do not believe that college students deserve any sort of special pass to speak without facing the associated consequences. However, students should not receive threats to their safety on the basis of their opinions. . . . Our country’s educational institutions should be incubators of ideas, which requires us to engage with a diversity of interpretations. Students should be free to challenge and contradict their peers’ views, and even their own. This is how we learn about the world with nuance, change our minds and reinforce our beliefs.... “Some may say that such a view is nice in theory, but dangerous when words hold so much power to stoke hatred. It is undeniable that the modern world exists in a continual war of information and the presentation of that information. We must each acknowledge the weight of that responsibility: that our words have the real ability to harm and misinform others. Incitement that is likely to produce violence is, of course, unacceptable. “Despite these risks, the alternative of a quiet campus is far worse. As the Supreme Court has held over the ages, we must preserve a free market of ideas so that the best ones may prevail through trial and scrutiny. If we fail to do so, instead choosing to silence the voices of our opponents out of fear that their views will overwhelm ours, we will have lost all faith in our peers — and the future of our country.” (Full editorial is now posted at our Stanford Speaks webpage) University of Chicago Creates Permanent Entity for Free Inquiry and Expression Excerpts: “It’s no surprise that the University of Chicago has made by far the biggest, boldest and most serious move of any university in the country to confront the crisis of free speech and academic freedom at American universities.... On October 5-6, the University of Chicago launched a new permanent entity, the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression , with a ground-breaking inaugural event bringing together the country’s leading lights on the state of free speech at American universities to examine what the problem is, how we got here, and what might be done. “Elite universities across the country seem to be scrambling to stem the damage wrought by their abandonment of core principles. Major donors of University of Pennsylvania have withdrawn funds and called for the president to step down, dismayed by a university they ‘no longer recognize.’ Stanford Law School’s diversity dean is on permanent leave for encouraging a successful shout-down of an invited speaker. Yale Law School has hired Princeton’s professor Keith Whittington, a leading scholar on free speech and the law, and author of Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech to head up a new free speech and academic freedom center. Harvard’s nascent faculty group, the Council on Academic Freedom , lists over 140 members since its founding earlier this year. “But can these and other leading American universities respond to the crisis in free inquiry and expression with the seriousness of purpose that University of Chicago has? In a September 28, 2023 letter to Princeton’s trustees , Princetonians for Free Speech called upon them to make Princeton a leader in the country on free speech and academic freedom. This month at the University of Chicago, the bar got a lot higher.” (Full article at Princetonians for Free Speech; see also our compilations of the three parts of the Chicago Trifecta re free speech, a university’s involvement in political and social matters, and principles for the appointment and promotion of faculty) Student Rights to University Transparency Under FERPA University of Pennsylvania student Jack Lakis published a recent article that explains how and why students should exercise their FERPA rights, starting with their admissions files. Excerpts: “In 2015, Stanford University publicized a method for college students to access their admissions files by leveraging the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act , which legally requires universities to grant students access to their records. Since then, many institutions have adapted their processes of sharing information with students. At Penn, there is a page on the admissions website dedicated to FERPA requests. “All Penn students should take five minutes and submit a FERPA request. So far, everyone else that I’ve introduced the process to have been excited to fill out the online form . For students, the process of applying to college was mentally and emotionally taxing. Many still care about the work that got them accepted into a prestigious college. Just being curious to understand college admission decisions motivates students to look into their records. “Even if you have little interest in the admissions process, I still urge you to submit the form. At the very least, sending a FERPA request conveys a strong message to the admissions office: the information in an application is meaningful and tied to a real, living person.” (Full article at The Daily Pennsylvanian) (See also concerns about the computerized case management systems that Stanford and others are using, as noted at the bottom of our webpage Back to Basics . These systems have the downside of anonymous and secret records being maintained about individual students without the students even knowing it, but on the upside, the systems make full disclosure extremely easy, assuming the relevant university is willing to comply with FERPA.) (See also WSJ April 6, 2023 op-ed by Stanford GSB Prof. Ivan Marinovic, DEI Meets East Germany, U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another for Bias ) Ways to Maintain Academic Standards While Emphasizing Student Growth and Achievement Excerpts: “Debates over grading and standardized testing aren’t new, but they are colored today by two issues that were less prominent in the past. The first is equity—whether grading practices or standardized testing perpetuate or exacerbate inequalities. The second involves students’ self-image and mental health—whether grading and testing demoralize, dishearten, discourage, depress and deflate. “. . . we might well ask, how can we best evaluate students if we are to rely less on tests and grades? Are there ways that we can fairly evaluate student performance and learning, while providing our undergraduates with the kinds of motivation and feedback that they need? “The answer lies, first, in adopting a competency approach that makes demonstrated mastery of essential knowledge and skills central to course design . . . Second, we need to place a greater emphasis on the learning process and on growth than is the case in most existing courses . . . Third, our classes need to provide students with more formative and constructive feedback and greater opportunities for self-reflection. “ . . . it is possible to hold high academic standards and make students responsible and accountable for their own learning. Instructional design is the key. Shifting to a competency-based model isn’t easy. But it’s well worth the effort.” (Full article at Inside Higher Ed) Harvard Creates Task Force for Doxxed Students Amid Backlash Over Israel-Hamas State ments Excerpt: “Harvard will establish a task force to support students experiencing doxxing, harassment, and online security issues following backlash against students allegedly affiliated with a statement that held Israel “entirely responsible” for violence in the Israel-Hamas conflict. “The new task force will be in operation until Nov. 3, at which point the task force will reassess its efforts to ensure that its work meets student needs, according to an email obtained by The Crimson. The message, dated Tuesday, was sent to doxxed students by Dean of Students Thomas Dunne....” (Full article at Harvard Crimson) Other Articles of Interest Is College a Cult? An essay by Patrick Gray, professor of religious studies at Rhodes College (Full article here ) ​ Academic Conference to Focus on the Phenomenon of Taylor Swift (Full article at College Fix) “ . . . time and time again, unpopular opinions and ideas have eventually become conventional wisdom. By labelling certain political or scientific positions as 'misinformation' or 'malinformation,' our societies risk getting stuck in false paradigms that will rob humanity of hard-earned knowledge and obliterate the possibility of gaining new knowledge.” -- Westminster Declaration October 26, 2023 Supreme Court to Hear Case Re Government Coordination with Private Entities to Monito r and Censor the Web We have p reviously posted a ser ies of articles about the r oles the Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities have been p laying in monitoring and censoring social media and other parts of the web. We also have been following decisions by lower federal courts in a case brought by several states and private parties, including Stanford’s Prof. Jay Bhattacharya, regarding the federal government’s involvement in these activities. Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the lower court actions, and here are some articles about these developments that might be of interest: -- From the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, " Comments on Supreme Court's Decision to Hear Murthy v. Missouri " Excerpt: “This is an immensely important case. The First Amendment has long been understood to prohibit the government from coercing bookstores and other speech intermediaries to suppress speech, but the Supreme Court hasn’t had occasion to apply this rule in the context of social media. Even outside that context, it’s said very little about how lower courts should distinguish permissible persuasion from unconstitutional coercion. These are momentous, thorny issues, and how the Court resolves them will have broad implications for the digital public sphere.” -- From Michael Shellenberger at Public, “ Victory! Supreme Court to Hear Landmark Missouri v. Biden Censorship Case ” Excerpt: “For months, the mainstream news media have described the Censorship Industrial Complex as a conspiracy theory invented by the Twitter Files journalists and Republicans. The New York Times, Washington Post, PBS ‘Frontline,’ and most other news outlets have published story after story claiming that there is an orchestrated effort by people who don’t care about the truth to mischaracterize the work of well-intentioned ‘misinformation researchers.’ “But now, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear and rule upon the constitutionality of the Censorship Industrial Complex as denounced by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana in their lawsuit against the Biden administration for demanding censorship by social media platforms of disfavored views on Covid, elections, and other issues.” -- From NY Post, “ Supreme Court Will Hear Case Against Biden-Big Tech Censorship Scheme ” [links were in the original article] Excerpt: “The states of Missouri and Louisiana brought the lawsuit in response to then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki revealing in July 2021 that the White House was ‘flagging’ alleged misinformation , mainly about COVID-19 vaccines, for removal. "‘We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,’ she said at the time. “The government policing received further pushback last year, when it emerged that the Department of Homeland Security had a portal through which federal officials made social media moderation requests, including to squelch ‘parody accounts or accounts with virtually no followers or influence,’ according to The Intercept.” -- From the Daily Legal Blog by Law Prof. Eugene Volokh, “Court Agrees to Hear Missouri v. Biden Federal Government / Social Media Case ” and which includes excerpts from the filings by various parties. A Discussion About Campus Speech, and What to Do Going Forward A reader has brought to our attention this 16-minute PBS interview with Washington Post education reporter Jack Stripling about the current conflicts regarding speech on college campuses. In response, we again note, at least in our view, that the three parts of the Chicago Trifecta handle these issues exactly right. And regarding the recent controversy that arose two weeks ago in a COLLEGE course at Stanford (see last week’s Newsletter ), COLLEGE is supposed to be a series of courses intended to stimulate critical thinking and sometimes difficult discussion. Did the instructor act appropriately? We don’t know, but some student accounts in the Daily indicate he did, and some comments to that Daily article say he did not. In any event, if students expect to be challenged in class, what should be their and Stanford’s responses when they are in fact challenged? We also understand that all Stanford students, faculty and staff take mandatory training about harassment, including with respect to what are called bystander obligations. If students in that COLLEGE course believed the instructor was acting inappropriately, shouldn’t they have spoken up, or is their bystander training only theoretical and never something for which they must take personal responsibility? And given how all of this has subsequently been portrayed in the media, what do students, faculty and administrators at Stanford, on all parts of the political and social spectrum, now think in retrospect? We hope this incident will be used as an important teaching opportunity and that this and related incidents might also cause Stanford to finally adopt the Chicago Trifecta – something we suggest that the President and Provost could unilaterally say will be their touchstone guidance for statements and decisions they make going forward even while the principles are considered by the faculty and/or trustees. See also our white paper, Back to Basics . Stanford Prof. Stephen Haber on the Threat to Freedom of Expression at American Universities In this video, Prof. Haber discusses the critical relationships between faculty and students and how campus bureaucracies are undermining those relationships. Eager to protect students from discomfort, he argues, university administrators have prioritized ideological conformity and self-censorship over critical thinking and the pursuit of truth. (Video at YouTube) (See also our prior article on Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative , including a download of the IT department's list of proscribed words and phrases, and our prior article on Stanford's Program for Reporting Bias ) Creating an Office for Free Speech and Academic Freedom ​ Related to Prof. Haber's video, above, not only might Stanford address the inappropriate involvement of non-teaching staff in the activities of faculty and students, this may also be a time for Stanford to create an Office for Free Speech and Academic Freedom. Members of this office could assist students and faculty who believe their activities are being improperly infringed upon. They likewise could participate in Cabinet and other high-level meetings and advocate for fundamental values that may otherwise be at risk. And in that regard, we bring to your attention this article about longtime Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington moving to Yale Law School to head such a center there. ​ Former Florida College Presidents to Legislators: ‘Enough is Enough’ Damage to campus free speech and academic freedom can come from all sides of the political spectrum. We thus bring to your attention this article where seven former heads of Florida colleges and universities urge that the Florida legislature stay out of academic matters. (Full article at Inside Higher Ed) No Credibility in Administrator Responses to Campus Controversies Excerpts: “Universities are facing allegations of hypocrisy over their calls for a free exchange of ideas on campus amid the Israel-Gaza conflict, with some saying that how colleges have dealt with free speech controversies before puts them in a tough position to turn down the current tension.... “Now we come to a moment where there are two really entrenched sides, both with views that finally the university understands, ‘Gosh, there are points on both sides. We ought to be able to talk through this issue.’ Suddenly, no one on campus knows how to do that, because there’s been this growth of orthodoxy on campus,” [said Alex Morey of FIRE].” (Full article at The Hill) Update on Stanford Presidential Search The Stanford Daily covered a discussion at the most recent Faculty Senate meeting regarding the search for a new president, including comments from members of the faculty on qualities they hope to see in the next president. (Full article at Stanford Daily) Other Articles of Interest College Still Has Value, but Let’s Reassess the Price Tag (Full article at Martin Center for Academic Renewal) Graduate Enrollment Is on the Decline (Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education) Supreme Court’s Race Ruling Reaches Beyond Harvard’s Gates (Full article at Real Clear Education) Two Princeton Undergraduates Discuss How Campus Politization Fed Today's Hatred (Full article at WSJ) UCLA Students Offered Extra Credit to Attend Anti-Israel Teach-in (Full article at College Fix) Podcast: 'Liberal Education Corrects Our Narrowness' An interview with Jonathan Marks, professor and chair of politics and international relations at Ursinus College (Podcast at ACTA) “Stanford University's central functions of teaching, learning, research, and scholarship depend upon an atmosphere in which freedom of inquiry, thought, expression, publication, and peaceable assembly are given the fullest protection. Expression of the widest range of viewpoints should be encouraged, free from institutional orthodoxy and from internal or external coercion.” -- From Stanford’s Statement on Academic Freedom October 19, 2023 The Canceling of the American Mind Earlier this week, a new book co-authored by Stanford alum Greg Lukianoff (JD '00) was published, The Canceling of the American Mind . Greg is also the president of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and co-author of the prior NY Times best seller, The Coddling of the American Mind . See also The Coddling.com . Excerpts: “On March 18, 2022, a New York Times editorial ignited a firestorm on Twitter.... What opinion could possibly have inspired such outrage. An admission by the Times editorial board that Cancel Culture is real -- and a problem. “’On college campuses and in many workplaces, speech that others find harmful or offensive can result not only in online shaming but also in the loss of livelihood,’ the Times asserted. “The piece pointed a finger at both the right and left for perpetuating a culture of ideological intolerance. They called out liberals who’d lost touch with the ‘once liberal idea’ of a ‘full-throated defense of free speech’ as well as Republican lawmakers determined ‘to gag discussion of certain topics’ with bills preventing the mention of diverse issues in classrooms. “’People should be able to put forward viewpoints, ask questions and make mistakes and take unpopular but good-faith positions on issues that society is still working through -- all without fearing cancellation,’ the Times editorial argued." The remaining three parts of the book discuss in detail specific statements and actions that have occurred in recent years and the adverse impacts those statements and actions have had on free speech and academic freedom. And these recommendations at the end of the book: “Adopt an official, written recommitment to free speech and academic freedom, such as the 2015 Chicago Statement, which ninety-eight institutions or faculty bodies have already adopted. [See our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta here .] “Teach students about free speech and academic freedom in orientation. “Dump any speech codes and all bias response teams. [See our prior articles about Stanford's policies and procedures for students and even third parties to turn in other students for allegedly biased statements or actions , Stanford's list of proscribed words and phrases , and similar issues.] "Survey students and faculty about the state of free speech on campus. [See actual quotes of Stanford students as part of FIRE's 2024 rankings of U.S. colleges and universities.] “And, finally, defend your students and professors from cancellation early and often.” ​ Campus Responses to Israel and Gaza Much has been written in the past week about what alumni, donors, faculty, students, media and others believe should be campus responses to the horrific events in Israel and Gaza. In the process, many commentators have referred to the University of Chicago's long-existing Kalven Report regarding a university's role in political and social matters, a compilation of which is posted here . For those interested, here is a small sampling of these recent discussions of the Kalven Report: From the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Now Is the Time for Administrators to Embrace Neutrality ". Excerpts: "At one pole are the sentiments expressed in the 1967 Kalven Committee report of the University of Chicago, which argues for 'a heavy presumption against the university taking collective action or expressing opinions on the political or social issues of the day . . . not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity . . . but out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.' Exceptions should be made only for situations that 'threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry'. "At the other pole, now more common, college leaders are expected to issue statements on behalf of the institution on a variety of current political issues, for instance those related to sex and gender, racism, abortion, global warming and its remedies, regional conflicts, and so on.... "For the many institutions that haven’t yet adopted institutional neutrality, doing so will require thoughtful consideration by leadership and boards similar to that of the Kalven Committee at the University of Chicago in 1967. A recent statement by the newly installed president of Stanford University suggests that this approach may soon be instituted there. I hope the events at Harvard might lead our new president to consider a similar path. This would reduce the focus on what presidents, provosts, and deans say on specific political and social issues, and leave it to the community of scholars and students to deal -- hopefully in a respectful way -- with the conflicts that will always be with us." ​ From Wall Street Journal, " Leaders at Stanford, Williams and Elsewhere Limit Their Statements, but Neutrality Proves a Challenge" Excerpts: "Leaders of some of the nation’s most high-profile colleges and universities are re-evaluating their roles as moral arbiters and public commentators in response to the bloody conflict now unfolding in Israel and Gaza. "Backlash against their declarations has forced many to stumble -- issuing updates to their statements, and then clarifications to their updates -- in a near impossible effort to appease irate activists on both sides of a seemingly intractable issue." From FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), "The Wisdom of the University of Chicago's Kalven Report ". Excerpt: "As colleges are increasingly called upon to announce positions on social and political issues, the Kalven Report reminds us that colleges are not critics -- they are 'the home and sponsor of critics.'" From The Hill, " Should Colleges and Universities Speak on Political Issues? " Excerpt: "In their statements, college presidents use the political as an avenue to get to the pastoral in ways that the Kalven committee did not anticipate. The post-Oct. 7 statements are a reminder that American universities focus not just on 'the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.' They strive to offer education in a community of care." Two Very Different News Accounts About the Stanford Classroom Incident ​ ​Stanford Instructor Suspended for Making Jewish Students Stand in Corner (Full article at The Messenger) Here’s What Students in the Course Say Actually Happened (Full article at Stanford Daily) The Westminster Declaration re Censorship We bring to your attention the newly released Westminster Declaration regarding censorship, a copy of which is now also posted at our Commentary webpage. Please also note our prior postings at the Stanford Concerns webpage regarding the activities of entities such as the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Virality Project and the Election Integrity Project. We also restate here questions we and others have been asking: Are these truly independent and not outcome-driven core research activities that are conducted by members of the Stanford faculty? Or are they advocacy and implementation activities that are conducted primarily by third parties, should not be using the Stanford name in their names, and should not be running allegedly tax-deductible donations through Stanford. And in any event, who owns the intellectual property being generated by these activities, and are the relevant staff meeting Stanford's conflict of interest requirements, especially to the extent they may also be consulting for and otherwise working with the very same entities they are studying? See also this essay by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and others posted at Public. Excerpts from the Declaration: "Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’... "Censorship in the name of 'preserving democracy' inverts what should be a bottom-up system of representation into a top-down system of ideological control. This censorship is ultimately counter-productive: it sows mistrust, encourages radicalization, and de-legitimizes the democratic process. "In the course of human history, attacks on free speech have been a precursor to attacks on all other liberties. Regimes that eroded free speech have always inevitably weakened and damaged other core democratic structures. In the same fashion, the elites that push for censorship today are also undermining democracy. What has changed though, is the broad scale and technological tools through which censorship can be enacted...." ​ From The Atlantic: A Uniquely Terrible New DEI Policy We previously posted an article here about the newly imposed policies at California community colleges for the hiring and promotion of faculty . We thus appreciate that The Atlantic itself has now weighed in on the subject. Excerpt: "Attacks on faculty rights are frequent in academia, where professors’ words are now policed by illiberal administrators, state legislators, and students. I’ve reported on related controversies in American higher education for more than 20 years. But I’ve never seen a policy that threatens academic freedom or First Amendment rights on a greater scale than what is now unfolding in this country’s largest system of higher education: California’s community colleges." (Full article at The Atlantic) Other Articles of Interest UCSF Prof. Vinay Prasad: Why Was My Talk at a Medical Conference Canceled? (Full article at The Free Press; see also our prior postings about similar treatment of Stanford's Prof. of Medicine Jay Bhattacharya here and here ) Exodus of the Wrongthinkers from American Universities Colleges used to encourage the exchange of challenging ideas. Now faculty members who challenge students’ beliefs are being forced to leave the profession. (Full article at The Free Press) ​ “The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish diversity of viewpoints." -- From the Kalven Report; see also our compilation here . October 13, 2023 ​ ​ From Stanford Daily: Faculty Senate Discusses Concerns with Student Life at Stanford At its first meeting of the academic year, the Faculty Senate discussed student unhappiness with various aspects of student life at Stanford, including the neighborhood system for undergraduate housing that was launched three years ago. We have long advocated at our Back to Basics webpage that the neig hborhood system be disbanded, among other things due to the fact that the buildings that comprise an alleged neighborhood aren't even near one another, the imposition of the eight neighborhoods eliminated many of the previous choices students had for the diverse types of housing that students actually want, and a major reason for student unhappiness at Stanford can be traced to this type of micro-managing of student life by the student affairs staff (see also More About Stanford's Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ). Excerpts: “According to [Vice Provost for Student Affairs] Brubaker-Cole, reoccurring feedback from students included the importance of opportunities to group with friends and the physical organization (or lack thereof) of neighborhoods.... Friend groups being split up is ‘a huge friction point for students'.... “Brubaker-Cole also acknowledged concerns that buildings within neighborhoods were too spread out. The organization was a result of the need to spread row houses across neighborhoods, she said. “The Neighborhood Task Force is focused on the future of the neighborhood system, including housing assignments, how the neighborhoods are spread around campus and equity across neighborhoods. Brubaker-Cole said the task force includes students from ‘very diverse backgrounds, housing experiences and interests.’ “Computer science professor Mehran Sahami Ph.D. ’99, who is a former RA and RF, said several students shared negative experiences with him tied to the neighborhood system. ‘I worry we are trying to over-engineer [student life], Sahami said.’” (Full article at Stanford Daily) From Michael Shellenberger: The Ongoing Spread of Censorship Excerpts: . . . A significant amount of the demand for censorship is coming from the Censorship Industrial Complex and does not represent the will of the people. The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and CDC have been working hand-in-glove with government-funded NGOs, like the Stanford Internet Observatory, to demand Internet companies censor disfavored views and voices on climate change, Covid, and the war in Ukraine, and other issues. Big Brother Watch in Britain has documented an eerily identical operation there, and we have been documenting similar Censorship Industrial Complexes around the world. "But the fact of the matter is that there is genuine grassroots support for censorship, too. The share of adults in the U.S. who say the federal government should work with tech companies to restrict false information rose from 39% to 55% between 2018 and 2023. Democrats who favor government censorship increased from 40% to 70% between 2018 to 2023. Republicans have been better but are also wavering. Their support for censorship went from 37% to 28% to 39% in 2018, 2021, and 2023, respectively.... "The Censorship Industrial Complex is trying to reduce our complex, lived reality, language, and speech into simplistic binaries, namely truth vs. falsity and good vs. evil. Such simplistic thinking is only possible with fast thinking. Because people are in a hurry and don’t and can’t pay attention to major issues, they will agree with people who say things like, 'We must protect vulnerable people from this harmful disinformation!' But when asked to reflect on what that really means, they tend to become more free speech, not less. The one weird trick to making people support free speech is simply inspiring them to engage in slow thinking...." (Full article at Public) From Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams: Students Are Afraid of Expressing Their Opinions Excerpts: "The landscape of higher education in the United States is marked by extraordinary diversity.... Having personally visited numerous institutions across the country, I've observed a disconcertingly common trend on most campuses, irrespective of their diverse educational experiences and cultures: students from all backgrounds are gripped by a pervasive fear of speaking out and expressing their opinions. They regularly engage in self-censorship, restraining themselves from asking questions, openly sharing their thoughts in front of professors and peers, and taking intellectual risks due to the dread of being labeled or ostracized. "This unsettling observation finds robust support in the most recent data on free speech from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The FIRE survey, encompassing over fifty-five thousand students at 254 colleges and universities, starkly underscores the prevalence of self-censorship among students. The data reveals that a majority of students, regardless of their backgrounds, are choosing silence, an outcome antithetical to the principles of genuine liberal education.... "The marketplace of ideas can only thrive when a multitude of perspectives are shared, challenged, examined, and debated -- an environment currently lacking in our educational institutions. Progressive monocultures continue to impede the free exchange of ideas, prompting us to question the purpose of an academic enterprise built on inquiry and discussion when it appears to have already predetermined answers to life's most complex questions. "It is imperative that we commit to substantial changes aimed at revitalizing the culture of debate and discourse." Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a Stanford alum Class of '02. (Full article at Real Clear Education) From The Atlantic: Nothing Defines America's Social Divide Like a College Education ​ Excerpts: ​ "Inequality is one of the great constants. But what sets those at the top of society apart from those at the bottom has varied greatly. " . . . much of America’s transformation in recent decades -- including many of the country’s problems -- can be ascribed to the ascendancy of a different marker of distinction: education. Whether or not you have graduated from college is especially important. This single social marker now determines much more than it did in the past what sort of economic opportunities you are likely to have and even how likely you are to get married. "The Founders of the American republic worried about education for another reason: They saw an educated populace as a prerequisite for political stability." (Full article at The Atlantic) From University of Chicago: Ongoing Forum re Free Speech and Academic Freedom Excerpts: "Amid a wave of book bans around the country and a surge in white supremacist propaganda in Illinois, the University of Chicago is launching a new forum to promote free speech and encourage open debate.... "'The big problem today is there's too much speech and not enough listening,' said Tom Ginsburg, inaugural faculty chair of the forum and a professor of international and comparative law at the university. 'The goal isn't to have some immediate solution between two opposing sides, but just to show that you can disagree respectfully and to hopefully have both sides at least understand where the other one's coming from,' he said."... "The university’s current policy on free expression, known informally as the Chicago Principles , is a set of guidelines to uphold a commitment that 'debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.' Developed by several U. of C. academics at the behest of then-university president Richard J. Zimmer in 2014, the Chicago Principles have since been signed by more than 100 universities and colleges. Concerns have been raised by students and academics alike, however, that the statement of principles is too formal and legalistic, and misses students’ underlying critique of free speech policies." (Full article at Hyde Park Herald . A more complete explanation of this ongoing program at the University of Chicago is here and our own compilation of the Chicago Trifecta re freedom of speech, the hiring and promotion of academic staff and a university's role in political and social matters is here ) From Cornell Alumni: The Problem of Balancing Freedom of Expression with DEI Excerpts: " . . . We are heartened that President Martha Pollack and university leaders have heard our calls and named this academic year 'The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell.' This follows Pollack’s excellent decision to reject the Student Assembly’s trigger-warning proposal and her earlier return of the Abraham Lincoln bust to the school library after it was removed for offending a student. We applaud these moves.... "Free expression enables genuine diversity. It recognizes that a person’s identity -- be it racial, ethnic, sexual or any other identity -- doesn’t just manifest in ways that we see but also in ways that we hear through dialogue and debate. Diversity comes with unique worldviews and belief systems, and we cannot celebrate a person’s diversity without hearing them out. "DEI, on the other hand, directly suppresses free expression. It is a set of policies and practices that include requiring faculty applicants to pledge allegiance to a political creed and filtering out any who don’t. It demands that students take courses that teach that only a narrow set of viewpoints is correct and acceptable. It creates a reporting system that encourages students to tattle on those who offend them, thus chilling speech that upsets the dominant orthodoxy...." (Full article at DC Journal) From Stanford Classics Prof. Josiah Ober: The Future of Democracy Rests on the Civic Bargain Excerp t s : “Democracy is messy, says Josiah Ober in his new book. ‘Democratic citizens must live among and negotiate the terms of their common lives with others who hold diverging interests. That means deliberating with people with whom we disagree.’ “’Instead of inquiring into the causes of democracy’s death, we looked to history’s long survivors for clues to democracy’s emergence, evolution, and strategies for persistence,’ Ober and his co-author Brook Manville write. “. . . Ober discusses what he and Manville say is essential for democracy’s survival: the civic bargain. Without it, democracy is just a lofty goal, they argue. Democracy is about deal-making and compromises, and the civic bargain lays the groundwork for that cooperation and collective self-governance to take place." (Full article at Stanford News; see also the Stanford Civics Initiative ) AFSA Webinars of Possible Interest Jodi Shawn, Skin Deep and the Battle for the Soul of Smith College, October 16 at 11:30 AM Pacific Time, signup for YouTube notification here Brown Prof. John Tomasi, Elevating Cornell from Within the Heterodox Way, October 23 at 2:30 PM Pacific Time, signup for YouTube notification here Other Articles of Interest The Ultimate in Parent Helicoptering. College Kids Don’t Need a Concierge. (Full article at CNN) After Shunning One of Its Scientists, University of Pennsylvania Celebrates Her Nobel Prize. The university that once demoted Katalin Karikó and cut her pay has made millions of dollars from patenting her work. (Full article at Wall Street Journal ) "Learning to listen thoughtfully is as important a skill as any other you’ll learn here. I encourage you to embrace the opportunity to get comfortable with occasionally being uncomfortable. Because doing so will help you learn and grow immeasurably.” -- Sarah Church, Stanford Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at New Student Convocation, September 2023 October 6, 2023 ​ New Data on Stanford's High Administrative Costs Last week's N ewsletter (September 29, 2023) had a link to a recent article in The College Fix about Stanford’s high number of administrators per student. We have subsequently updated our Stanford Concerns webpage to include additional charts of administrative costs per student at Stanford as compared to Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Northwestern, Cornell, UC Berkeley and UCLA. We suggest readers take a look at these stark numbers, including how out of line Stanford appears to be when compared with other major research universities. Please also note again our Back to Basics white paper where we recommended months ago that Stanford's administrative costs be significantly reduced and that every dollar saved, dollar for dollar, be devoted instead solely to undergraduate scholarships and research grants and graduate student fellowships. It's time to make some tough but long-needed decisions. There's Lots of Good News at Stanford, Too In recent weeks, a number of us have been on campus and heard some outstanding panels as well as talked with numerous faculty, students, administrators and other alumni. There is no doubt, a lot of good things are happening at Stanford and we don't want readers to forget that. The reason for these Newsletters and our website is not to tear down Stanford but rather to express concerns that are widely held by people with longtime connections with the university. And since the administration and even the alumni association are limited in being openly critical, we believe our Newsletters and website can offer a channel of communication that otherwise hasn't existed in recent times. What we are pointing out can also help support faculty, students, administrators and others to retain the fundamental values of this great university while also implementing the needed reforms. For those looking for updates on activities at Stanford, numerous publications and websites are available. This is but a tiny fraction of these resources: Stanford Report , circulated daily by the university STANFORD magazine, published five times a year by the Stanford Alumni Association Stanford Alumni Association Stanford Daily Stanford Review Alumni Around the Country Are Stepping Up to Defend Free Speech and Critical Thi nking “. . . higher education institutions have tended to view alumni solely as cheerleaders and walking checkbooks who can be entertained and solicited for financial support while their ideas and concerns can be managed or ignored. By treating alumni as branded cash cows, colleges and universities are snubbing the most enduring stakeholder group in the higher education ecosystem. “Alumni, who retain their academic affiliation for a lifetime upon graduation, are also uniquely positioned to hold their alma maters accountable to their core missions. From skyrocketing costs to burgeoning free speech violations, it is clear the higher education system is in serious need of course correction. “That’s why a growing number of alumni are no longer content to write blank checks and cheer from the sidelines. They have become alarmed by the erosion of civil discourse and the abysmal state of free expression on campus and are organizing to revive those essential values in a number of important ways. “Having benefited from education grounded in the free exchange of ideas, alumni are living, breathing testaments to the importance of free and open inquiry in higher education and democratic society. Their positive experiences on campus now motivate them to ensure that future generations of students receive a solid grounding in the same values and develop the intellectual fortitude to grapple with ideas that challenge even their most closely held beliefs. “’I think the future of the country depends on the educational system,’ said Stuart Taylor, Jr., co-founder of AFSA and president of Princetonians for Free Speech, in a recent video highlighting the national alumni movement. ‘You would hope that [students] would have a sense of our national heritage and they would have learned some history, but it’s college where they should really learn how free speech works in practice, how it helps you figure out what you think, how it helps you communicate with your fellow students and your professors and the people you go to work for after college.’” (Full Article at Washington Examiner) Stanford Has Installed Still More Surveillance Cameras, This Time Where Students Congregate Excerpts from Stanford Review: "Safetyism -- the ideal of safety being championed above all -- has trojan-horsed its way into the core of undergraduate life at Stanford.... "Stanford administrators and spokespeople have droned about the necessity of keeping students safe, whether from bike theft, imposter students, or, more solemnly, sexual assault. But this is a flimsy excuse for what the university is really doing.... "But we mustn't be surprised. This infringement on privacy is the next logical step after the honor code’s near-elimination last year. The university -- now the nanny university -- needs to oversee students take their exams and live their social lives. The university can't trust students to do either. "Safetyism is at fault for many problems young people face, from indecision to the death of dating to the inability to take risks. By watching their every move, Stanford will paralyze its students further. We shouldn’t let the administration continue to strike us at our knees." (Full article here ; see also last year's Stanford Daily article Inside Stanford's War on Fun and Stanford's mind-numbing rules for holding a party ) To Improve Higher Education, Schools Must Return to a Strong Core Curriculum “There are many issues that need to be addressed, including the cost of education and the rampant controversies related to campus free speech and intellectual diversity. One issue that is not discussed enough, however, is curriculum: What do students learn at college? “Colleges could and should be offering more to their students in terms of education, and they should be expecting more of them, too. Returning to strong core curricula, which give students a strong sense of accomplishment and bring them together around shared ideas and concerns, would be an excellent way for higher education to win back the confidence of the public…At least then it would be clear why you should attend college: to learn.” (Full article at Washington Examiner; see also Stanford's new COLLEGE requirement for freshmen) Other Articles of Interest What Qualities Do College Leaders Need to Lead Major Institutional Restructuring? (Full article at Higher Ed Dive) New Survey Reveals Warning Signs for American Democracy – We Must Double Down on Youth Civic Readiness (Full article at Citizens and Scholars) University of Nebraska’s New First Amendment Clinic to Train Law Students in Free Speech, Freedom of Press (Full article at College Fix) Teachers Can Advance Educational Equity Through Clear, High Expectations. “More often than not, people perform up to what’s expected of them. It’s why goal setting is such an effective way to self-motivate as well as motivate others." (Full article at Ed Source) “ Universities are indispensable for a free and prosperous society. They are the engine that drives both scientific and social progress. They educate students for career and responsible citizenship and habituate them to self-discovery and the pursuit of truth.” -- American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) September 29, 2023 Alumni Groups Urge U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Case Regarding Campus Policies for Reporting Allegedly Biased Statements or Actions of Others The Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) and other college and university groups around the country have submitted an amicus curiae brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case regarding the policies and procedures at Virginia Tech by which students and others can report another student, often anonymously, for something the targeted student allegedly said or did. The targeted student is then called in by administrators for counseling and other possible actions. We have previously posted an article here about Stanford's own policies and procedures for reporting allegedly biased speech and actions of others. Excerpts: “…the use of bias reporting systems has become pervasive across American college and university campuses and these systems create a climate of fear and intimidation that causes many students to self-censor and discourages constitutionally protected speech. These bias reporting systems have no place at a university whose defining purpose as a place of learning and human fulfillment can only be achieved through a steadfast commitment to free speech." (Press release at Princetonians for Free Speech; list of AFSA members and links to their websites here ; and excerpts and a link to Judge Harvie Wilkinson's dissenting opinion in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision is included with our prior article More About Campus Bias Response Teams and Programs ) From The College Fix: At Stanford, Administrators Nearly Outnumber the Undergrads Editor's note : The following article about the high number of full-time administrators at Stanford was published last week in The College Fix. Other similar articles with similar numbers have been published by national news entities for over a year now. In that regard, we note the discre pancy between what some articles say is nearly 17,000 non-teaching personnel at Stanford (a number Stanford itself shows in its Facts 2023 book) and this article's number of over 7,100 full-time administrators, and where all of the numbers come from numbers Stanford itself has reported to federal data bases. We believe a key reason for the differences is that some commenters count only staff who are purely administrative (over 7,100) whereas other commenters count the total number of non-teaching personnel (nearly 17,000) the latter of which apparently includes staff at the various special-purpose centers and similar non-teaching entities. In prior Newsletters, we have questioned why these centers and other entities are located on the campus if they are primarily engaged in advocacy and implementation activities versus cutting-edge and truly independent research that is initiated and supervised by the faculty themselves. We also have said that if these entities are primarily engaged in advocacy and implementation activities, they should be relocated to something comparable to the original Stanford Research Institute and/or facilities located in the Stanford Research Park, should stop using the Stanford name in their own names, and should stop running grants and allegedly tax-deducible donations through Stanford. There also needs to be confirmation that these entities and their personnel are complying with Stanford's rules for ownership of intellectual property, conflicts of interest and the like. An explanation that has been provided by some Stanford administrators is that Stanford does internally what other schools outsource. But we have seen compilations that go back 15 to 20 years -- during which time we believe there was no substantial change in what was done internally versus outsourced -- and where the number of faculty rises slightly (to 2,304 of which 1,703 are members of the Academic Council), the number of secretaries and similar support personnel actually goes down by nearly 1,000, but the number of managerial and professional staff shoots up in steep hockey stick fashion (in one compilation, an increase of over 9,000 during the same 15- to 20-year period). Another explanation provided by some administrators is that the high numbers include non-teaching staff at the Medical Center, but the instructions for the federal data bases are explicit NOT to include such staff in the numbers, plus Stanford's two hospitals and numerous medical clinics are in totally separate entities and not part of the university for these purposes. One way to clear up these questions, as proposed by a reader's letter long posted on our home page, would be for Stanford to publish a master organizational chart showing the density of administrators and other staff in all specific areas of responsibility and an explanation of what these non-faculty people do. Excerpts: “Stanford University employs nearly the same number of administrators as undergrads enrolled at the school — even as the number of educators per student has decreased over the last decade, an analysis conducted by The College Fix found. "During the 2021-22 school year, which are the most recent data available, Stanford had 7,121 full-time administrators and support staff on its payroll, according to information the university filed with the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. "In contrast, its reported undergraduate student enrollment came in at 7,645. In other words, there are about 931 full-time administrators per 1,000 undergrads at Stanford. "This is a nearly 22 percent increase from the 2013-14 school year, when there were only 764 administrators per 1,000 students, IPEDS data show.... “Asked to weigh in on the findings, a Stanford University professor told The College Fix the problem with administrative bloat is ‘not so much how much they cost, but what they do all day, which is to gum up the works and make trouble for everyone.’ “’If they were accomplishing anything important it would be hard to object,’ the professor said, but he added that most of the negative press Stanford has received in recent years involves ‘busy body administrative staff making work for themselves.’” (Full article at The College Fix. See also our own Back to Basics webpage and a prior article at our Stanford Concerns webpage regarding Stanford's Ballooning Administrative Costs ) Respectful Provocation: The University Skill for Our Times? ​ Excerpts: “The UK university campus is not a happy place…. But the discontent we witness now is quite distinct, driven more by identity politics than party politics, directed at ideologies rather than governments, often more factional than unifying. Students are not bound together in pursuit of a common cause but engaged in a multitude of campaigns that appear to provoke perennial anxiety rather than the exuberant optimism of a new generation.... “Challenging students about their assumptions and values is strongly associated with their development of positive attitudes towards those who are different from themselves. It makes them more likely to reflect critically on their own assumptions, more open to learning from others and so better equipped to engage with the challenges of living in a diverse society. This process is, however, compromised when students perceive such diversity to be handled insensitively, underlining how provocative encounters need to be framed within a respectful approach to difference. It is respectful provocation that will capture the potential of this generation of students.... “We live in a very different context from that of 10 or even five years ago – new challenges demand new solutions. Many of these challenges are generated or complicated by social media and AI, and these require particular consideration. Fostering in students and staff a more critical awareness of how 21st century technologies both empower and marginalize will help us exercise more caution in our dependence on them – and more intelligence in their application. “Get this right and not only will campus relations improve, but we might also be able to start speaking about degree outcomes in a broader sense than simple earning potential. Earning power is important, of course, but let’s not lose sight of the ways in which universities promote a more complex social good, one of undeniable value within the fractious society in which we live.” (Full article at Times Higher Education/Inside Higher Ed) CNN Podcast: The Free Speech Wars on Campus CNN's Podcast Description: “Between student protests, controversial speakers, and debates over 'safe spaces,' complaints about free speech on campus are louder than ever. How do school leaders respond to these gripes? And how do they balance freedom of expression – and the idea that speech can be violence? “We have two college presidents from the front lines of this debate: Roslyn Clark Artis of Benedict College and Michael Roth of Wesleyan University. Both schools are part of the so-called ‘Campus Call for Free Expression.’” (Listen to podcast here . Skip to 33-second mark to avoid ad.) Other Articles of Interest Who Should Shape What Colleges Teach? Not the government, most Americans say. (Full article at the Chronicle of Higher Education) Gen Z Can't Work Alongside People of Different Views Because 'They Haven't Got the Skills to Disagree' Says a British TV Boss (Full article at Yahoo! Finance) The Value of an Education That Never Ends op-ed by the president of Wesleyan University (Full article at NY Times) "...we at Stanford insist that all faculty, students, and staff have the right to think and speak freely and that they have the right to offer analysis, opinion, and argument in a manner that is both free and responsible. These twin commitments -- to freedom and responsibility -- are the lifeblood of a university." -- Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper September 22, 2023 ​ Duke Professor Teaches Students How to Listen Prof. John Rose has been teaching course s for several years at Duke University that aim to get students to be more comfortable expressing diverse viewpoints and to respect one another for doing so. The official Duke alumni magazine recently featured Prof. Rose in an article about his activities as well as the activities of an alumni group, Friends of Duke, that is similar to our Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking. Excerpts: “'We talk a lot about courage – finding the courage to speak, to dissent – and I’ve observed that courage is contagious. Students will follow upon a brave comment with another brave comment.' [says Prof. Rose].... “He has received multiple teaching commendations but insists that the success of his class is due to his students. He makes himself real and earns their trust. Each semester, he invites them to his home and introduces them to his family. "Rose taught students that listening with not only an open mind but a heart for goodwill grounded their learning and allowed them to share their thinking authentically. “The alumni group [Friends for Duke] is also encouraging all faculty to include on their syllabi a statement saying they support intellectual diversity and freedom of speech in their classrooms. “''We believe Duke’s long-standing commitment to free and open inquiry and the robust exchange of ideas positions the university particularly well to be a leader among institutions of higher education.... Without this, a university ceases to be a university' [said one of the leaders of Friends of Duke].” (Full article at Duke Magazine. Note also that we have long had posted at our own website here Prof. Rose's WSJ op-ed from a year ago "How I Liberated My College Classroom.") ​ More About Stanford-Based Censorship Activities For several months, we have periodically posted information from third parties about the alleged censorship activities tied to Stanford-based entities including the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Virality Project and the Election Integrity Project (EIP). For example, see " Stanford's Alleged Roles in Censoring the Web " and " The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Won. " In that light, we bring to your attention a posting last week by Michael Shellenberger entitled “Censorship Demands Behind Deep Fake Hype.” Whether or not one agrees with the advocacy and implementation activities in which these entities are primarily engaged, versus the types of independent research and teaching that are the purpose of a university, we again raise these questions: why are these entities being housed at Stanford, being allowed to use the Stanford name in their names, and having grants and allegedly tax-deductible contributions to them being run through Stanford? ​ Excerpts: “... I view AI as a human, not a machine, problem, as well as dual-use technology with the potential for good and bad. My attitude toward AI is the same, fundamentally, as it is toward other powerful tools we have developed, from nuclear energy to biomedical research. With such powerful tools, democratic civilian control and transparent use of these technologies allow for their safe use, while secret, undemocratic, and military control increases the danger. The problem, in a nutshell, is not with the technology of computers attempting to emulate human thinking through algorithms, but rather how and who will control it.... “This Censorship Industrial Complex of government agencies and government contractors has its roots in the war on terrorism and the expansion of surveillance after 9/11.... The goal of Deep Trust appeared to be to advocate for policies aimed at criminalizing ‘digital harms,’ including forms of speech that hurt people.... It was also in 2020 that DHS’ CISA [Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency] created an ‘Election Integrity Partnership’ to censor election skepticism. It partnered with four groups: Graphika, the University of Washington, the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab, and the Stanford Internet Observatory.... In Deep Trust’s report, it names those four groups and progressive philanthropic donors, and other NGOs and government agencies. EIP claims it classified 21,897,364 individual posts.... EIP, the Election Integrity Project, was the precursor to the Virality Project, which successfully pressured social media platforms to censor ‘often true’ information about vaccines.... “I believe that the way CISA used AI to mass-flag so-called ‘Covid misinformation’ in 2021, through its partnership with The Virality Project, created by Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and others, was a government infringement on freedom of speech.... The threat to our civil liberties comes not from AI but from the people who want to control it and use it to censor, rather than let users control information. The obvious solution is for Congress to require that social media companies allow users to moderate their own content.... Users should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to use these filters and other tools, not Internet companies, the government, a nongovernmental organization, or anyone else.” (Full article at our Commentary webpage here or at The Public website here .) The Limits of Academic Freedom Excerpt: "The principle of academic freedom has long stood as the guarantor of the free and open inquiry requisite to the academic pursuit of truth and is widely understood to allow for no exceptions. But adherence to the principle does not preclude all limits on faculty conduct. Academic freedom does not require colleges and universities to tolerate bad teaching or incompetence. Nor should it protect professorial conduct that undermines open inquiry and pursuit of truth." (Full article at National Association of Scholars) DEI Statements Stir Debate on College Campuses Excerpts: “Yoel Inbar, a noted psychology professor at the University of Toronto, figured he might be teaching this fall at UCLA.... Last year, the university’s psychology department offered his female partner a faculty appointment. Now the department was interested in recruiting him as a so-called partner hire, a common practice in academia. “The university asked him to fill out the requisite papers, including a statement that affirmed his belief and work in diversity, equity and inclusion. “Dr. Inbar figured all had gone well, that his work and liberal politics fit well with the university.... But a few days later, the department chair emailed and told him that more than 50 graduate students had signed a letter strongly denouncing his candidacy. Why? In part, because on his podcast years earlier, he had opposed diversity statements — like the one he had just written. “Candidates who did not ‘look outstanding’ on diversity, the vice provost at U.C. Davis instructed search committees, could not advance, no matter the quality of their academic research. Credentials and experience would be examined in a later round. “At Berkeley, a faculty committee rejected 75 percent of applicants in life sciences and environmental sciences and management purely on diversity statements, according to a new academic paper by Steven Brint, a professor of public policy at U.C. Riverside, and Komi Frey, a researcher for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which has opposed diversity statements. “If you write: ‘I believe that everyone should be treated equally,’ you will be branded as a right winger, Vinod Aggarwal, a political science professor at the university, said in an interview. ‘This is compelled speech, plain and simple.’” (Full article at New York Times) Other Articles of Interest Gen Z Values College, but Affordability Concerns Remain Only about half of K-12 students who want to pursue higher education believe they can pay for it, a Gallup and Walton Family Foundation poll found. (Full article at Higher Ed Dive) College-Ranking Whiplash Elite private universities maintain their dominance in traditional college rankings, but an assessment of free speech on campus tells a different story. (Full article at City Journal) Survey Shows Many Top Universities are Seeing a Stifling of Free Speech (Full article at Just the News) "The exchange of contending and supporting ideas generated by insightful and engaged minds makes the position of university president one of the most interesting jobs in the world." – Former Stanford President John Hennessy September 15, 2023 ​ Presidential Search Committee Anno unced Stanford Board of Trustees Chair Jerry Yang announced yesterday the formation of a 20-member search committee to select Stanford’s 13th president. The full list of committee members can be found at this website . The search committee plans to hold a number of "listening sessions" in the fall, and there also is an email address for anyone who wishes to submit their thoughts including possible nominations. (See full letter here .) In light of the issues the search committee will need to consider, we suggest a good starting point would be for them to view former Stanford President Gerhard Casper's video posted immediately below as well as what has long been posted at our Back to Basics and Stanford Concerns webpages. ​ Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper re the Role of the University in Modern Society ​ As Stanford and other colleges and universities nationwide and around the world discuss the role of the university in modern society, we highly recommend this 4-1/2-minute video of former Stanford President Gerhard Casper. It was recorded nine years ago but we believe it has even greater applicability to the issues being discussed today. See also our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta here . Federal Appeals Court Rules Federal Agencies Violated First Amendment Protections in Their Interactions with Big Tech The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld most elements of a lower federal court’s preliminary injunction regarding the actions by various federal agencies (the FBI, CDC, others) to have social media companies restrict and even remove articles, Tweets and other statements that government officials didn’t approve of. The Fifth Circuit opinion also specifically mentions the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliated Virality Project and Election Integrity Project but did not include them in the preliminary injunction on the basis that they have their own First Amendment rights but left open whether at some point the involvement of federal officials with such entities might also cross legitimate boundaries. A PDF copy of the Fifth Circuit opinion is now posted at our website here . Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya is among the named plaintiffs in the case, and we have posted a recent essay by him about this judicial decision here in addition to a previous essay by him. Excerpts from the opinion: . . . “White House officials did not only flag content. Later that year, they started monitoring the platforms’ moderation activities, too. In that vein, the officials asked for -- and received -- frequent updates from the platforms.... From the beginning, the platforms cooperated with the White House. One company made an employee ‘available on a regular basis,’ and another gave the officials access to special tools like a ‘Partner Support Portal’ which ‘ensure[d]' that their requests were ‘prioritized automatically.’... “The platforms apparently yielded. They not only continued to take down content the officials flagged, and provided requested data to the White House, but they also changed their moderation policies expressly in accordance with the officials’ wishes.... “It is true that the officials have an interest in engaging with social media companies, including on issues such as misinformation and election interference. But the government is not permitted to advance these interests to the extent that it engages in viewpoint suppression.... “Finally, the fifth prohibition -- which bars the officials from ‘collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group’ to engage in the same activities the officials are proscribed from doing on their own -- may implicate private, third-party actors that are not parties in this case and that may be entitled to their own First Amendment protections.... Plaintiffs have not shown that the inclusion of these third parties is necessary to remedy their injury. So, this provision cannot stand at this juncture...." (See also this NY Times summary of the decision .) (See also our prior webpage postings about the Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities here and where, in recent Newsletters , we have suggested that the activities by these and similar entities are mostly about advocacy and implementation versus core teaching and research and, as such, should be moved off the campus (it is the main reason the Stanford Research Institute and the Stanford Research Park originally were created), should stop using the Stanford name in their names, and should stop running their donations through Stanford.) University of San Diego Allows Students to Invite Speakers, but Only if No One Is Offended FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) recently focused on a situation at the University of San Diego where administrators said they fully support free expression while at the same time prohibiting the appearance of a speaker who had been invited by an officially recognized student organization because the administrators had objections to the speaker and statements the speaker had made in the past. Excerpts: “A new semester brings the same free speech issues, this time at the University of San Diego, where administrators rejected a request by the College Republicans to host political commentator Matt Walsh because of the potential for students to feel ‘not comfortable.’... “Then on Aug. 2, Vice President for Student Life Byron Howlett claimed USD ‘is in full support of freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry’ as ‘that’s the basis of a university’ -- but he still said the College Republicans can’t host Walsh because his views are ‘very disrespectful’ and ‘grossly offensive.’" (Full article at The Fire) Other Articles of Interest New Center for Academic Pluralism to Produce Scholarship Promoting Open Inquiry and Viewpoint Diversity (full article at The College Fix) What Students Have Said About ChatGPT (full article at Inside Higher Ed ) Two-Thirds of College Students Think Shouting Down a Public Speaker Can Be Acceptable (full article at Reason) ​ With Budget Battles Looming in Congress, Prospects for Higher Ed Reforms Don’t Look Bright (full article at Inside Higher Ed) "In 1900 Jane Stanford had President Jordan fire a faculty member for his political views. Distinguished members of the faculty resigned. An indirect result was the founding of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), but the fight for academic freedom began here, at Stanford. We have a historic obligation not to let it die here." -- Stanford Prof. Russell Berman September 8, 2023 Stanford Dean Debra Satz and Prof. Dan Edelstein: By Abandoning Civics, Colleges Helped Create the Culture Wars This guest essay appeared in the September 3, 2023 edition of the NY Times. It is written by Debra Satz, dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Science s, and Dan Edelstein, the faculty director of Stanford's Civic, Liberal and Global Education program. Excerpts: "Free speech is once again a flashpoint on college campuses. This year has seen at least 20 instances in which students or faculty members attempted to rescind invitations or to silence speakers. In March, law school students at our own institution made national news when they shouted down a conservative federal judge, Kyle Duncan. And by signing legislation that undermines academic freedom in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is carrying out what is effectively a broad assault against higher education.... "Left to the market, it [civic education] will always be undersupplied. It is rarely a priority for employers or for job seekers to promote the skills of active listening, mutual reasoning, respecting differences and open-mindedness. We need to reinvest in it. ​ "In the absence of civic education, it is not surprising that universities are at the epicenter of debates over free speech and its proper exercise. Free speech is hard work. The basic assumptions and attitudes necessary for cultivating free speech do not come to us naturally. Listening to people with whom you disagree can be unpleasant. But universities have a moral and civic duty to teach students how to consider and weigh contrary viewpoints, and how to accept differences of opinion as a healthy feature of a diverse society. Disagreement is in the nature of democracies. "Universities and colleges must do a better job of explaining to our students the rationale for free speech, as well as cultivating in them the skills and mind-set necessary for its practice. The free-market curriculum model is simply not equipped for this task. We cannot leave this imperative up to student choice. "At Stanford, since 2021, we once again have a single, common undergraduate requirement. By structuring its curriculum around important topics rather than canonical texts, and by focusing on the cultivation of democratic skills such as listening, reasonableness and humility, we have sought to steer clear of the cultural issues that doomed Western Civ. The new requirement was approved by our faculty senate in May 2020 without a single dissenting vote. "Called Civic, Liberal and Global Education , it includes a course on citizenship in the 21st century . Delivered in a small discussion-seminar format, this course provides students with the skills, training and perspectives for engaging in meaningful ways with others, especially when they disagree. All students read the same texts , some canonical and others contemporary. Just as important, all students work on developing the same skills...." (Full article at NY Times) Stanford Has Significant Decline in FIRE’s Annual Free Speech Rankings FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and College Pulse have just released their 2024 free speech rankings of U.S. colleges and universities and where Stanford has fallen by 101 positions in the list, possibly due in part to events last year at the law school but also reflecting responses to this year's student survey. Last year, Stanford was rated “average” at #106 out of 203 colleges and universities versus this year where it is rated "below average" at #207 out of 248. The areas where Stanford students scored the lowest were comfort expressing ideas (#155 out of 248) and approval of illiberal protest tactics (#237 out of 248). (Full list here including detailed numbers and comments for each school; PDF copy of the full report here including discussion of the survey results, methodologies that were used, etc.) The Current Model of Higher Education is Failing Excerpts: “In American higher education enrollments are down, tuition is up, and more schools are either shrinking their programs and their faculty or simply going out of business. Reforms are urgently needed in order to attract and retain students and to make postsecondary education more affordable.... “The cumulative inflation rate for the last twenty years in the U.S. is 66 percent. However, in-state tuition and fees for public national universities over the same period increased by 175 percent, according to U.S. News and World Report. “Why the difference? If the schools’ basic expenses rose at roughly the rate of inflation, why did the cost rise even higher? One answer is the rise and rapidly rising cost of administrative and nonteaching positions. It is at least doubtful that they need so many.... “If higher education is going to be the engine of upward mobility as it has been in the past, then better financial management and some difficult reforms must move ahead.” (Full article at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Costs ” at our website.) Over 4 in 5 College Seniors Report Burnout During Their Undergraduate Experience Excerpts: . . . “A May survey from College Pulse and Inside Higher Ed found 56% of college students experienced chronic stress. Students with disabilities and mental health conditions reported even higher levels of chronic stress. “These issues can drive students to leave college. Around 2 in 5 students considered stopping out of college in 2022 within a six-month period, up from 37% the year before, according to a recent survey from the Lumina Foundation and Gallup. Students cited emotional stress and mental health as the top reasons for possibly leaving higher education. “College debt is also weighing heavily on students’ minds, according to the new Handshake poll. “More than half of college seniors expect to have student loan debt when they graduate next year, it found. And more than two-thirds of respondents, 69%, believe their debt will impact which jobs they consider after getting their diploma.” (Full article at Higher Ed Dive) Other Articles of Interest Five Ways University Presidents Can Prove Their Commitment to Free Speech (full article from 2019 at The Fire) I Left Out the Full Truth to Get Published in Nature (full article at The Free Press) The Missed Opportunity of Office Hours (full article at Chronicle of Higher Education) The First Three-Year Degree Programs Win Approval (full article at Inside Higher Ed) Stanford Ranks Third in This Year's Forbes Ratings, Fourth in WSJ/College Pulse Ratings (full article at Forbes with the top ten being, in this order, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, Columbia, UCLA, Penn, Harvard and Williams; and full article and list at WSJ with the top ten being, in this order, Princeton, MIT, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Penn, Amherst, Claremont McKenna and Babson) "The true strength of universities lies in their ability to be impartial, to pursue truth, and to challenge prevailing ideologies, regardless of political pressures. Independence from government ensures the freedom to explore and discover without fear of retribution or censorship." -- Mary Sue Coleman, President of the Association of American Universities September 1, 2023 ​ A Year to Reflect on Free Speec h and Critical Thinking One of our readers for warded to us Cornell President Martha E. Pollack’s letter last week welcoming students and faculty back to campus. The letter focuses on the issues of freedom of expression and critical thinking in ways we would hope Stanford’s new leadership can similarly express and then implement this coming academic year. The t ext of the entire letter is posted at our website here . All indications are that this coming academic year will see a robust discussion nationwide, both on and off campus, about the importance of free speech and academic freedom at our U.S. colleges and universities and, if any restrictions are to be imposed, who gets to decide and why? Our own view and which we have long advocated is that Stanford should adopt the Chicago Trifecta (compilations here ) on the fundamental belief that this is what a university is supposed to be about. Excerpts: “Throughout this academic year, students, faculty, and staff from all our campuses will be invited to engage in activities designed to build understanding and foster discussion around the freedoms on which higher education, and democracy, depend. “This will be the first themed year ever held at Cornell, and our reasons for engaging in it could not be more important. Free speech is under attack, and the assaults upon it have ranged in recent years from attempts to shut down campus speakers, all the way to laws that ban books from libraries and ideas from classrooms. “Free expression and academic freedom are essential to our academic mission of discovering and disseminating new knowledge and educating the next generation of global citizens. They are key to our ability to equip our students with the skills needed for effective participation in democracy: from active listening and engaging across difference, to leading controversial discussions and pursuing effective advocacy. “ . . . strong, thoughtful organizations can and must adopt core values, and Cornell, since its founding, has valued inclusion -- just as it values public engagement, and respect for the natural environment, and free expression itself. “As a community of scholars, we need not shy away from the challenges of holding values that are sometimes in tension with one another: such tensions will exist in any sufficiently rich and mature value set. “These are complex issues, and we must address them by doing what we do best as a university: engaging in discussion and debate, openly and with respect for each other. It is my hope that our theme year will foster exactly that kind of exploration and reflection; and that, through our efforts, Cornell will demonstrate leadership as a university, and become a role model of how a diverse society that prizes free expression can thrive.” Stanford-Affiliated Project Liberty Is Lobbying for Passage of Federal Legislation re Web Access In our July 14 Newsletter , we posted a link to Stanford’s announcement that it has joined Project Liberty. At the time, we raised concerns whether a university like Stanford should be engaged in these sorts of implementation and advocacy activities versus core teaching and research, and where comments posted at subsequent news articles around the country were highly critical of these developments. This past week, we have seen television ads by Project Liberty specifically telling viewers to write their U.S. Senators and demand passage of the Kids Online Safety Act. Whether we or others might agree or disagree with the concerns being expressed in the ad and in the proposed legislation, since when is lobbying like this an appropriate role for Stanford or its affiliates? Stanford and others might respond, the advocacy group is a separately incorporated entity. And to which we respond, that entity is using the same name (Project Liberty) and in the end, it all comes back to the same core group of organizers and thus also to some of the same key people and activities at Stanford. At some point, the levels of coordination and "at behest" activities can cross the line of what is and isn't permissible under federal and state nonprofit and political laws, and in addition to legal issues, there also are issues of appearances. Which is why we have previously suggested that this and similar entities and activities need to be moved off campus, need to remove Stanford from their names (as in the Stanford Internet Observatory) and need to stop indicating support from Stanford including running donations through Stanford. Stanford Internet Observatory Criticized for Proposal to Rate Trustworthiness of News Sources Not only is the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates lobbying for specific federal legislation regarding access to the web (see above), but they also apparently are promoting the idea that they or others should be given authority to decide what are and are not trustworthy sources of news. Excerpts: “A proposal in a Stanford University journal [The Journal of Online Trust and Safety] for ‘news source trustworthiness ratings’ would, if it advances, be like a digital reboot of the CIA's psychedelic mind-control experiments from the Cold War era, says a former State Department cyber official who now leads an online free speech watchdog group.... "'The whole point' of the study ‘is you don't even need fact-checkers to fact-check the story,’ a labor-intensive endeavor across the internet, if social media platforms simply apply a ‘scarlet letter’ to disfavored news sources.... By creating ‘the appearance of having done a fact-check, it’s deliberately fraudulent.’... "The journal was launched nearly two years ago by the Stanford Internet Observatory, a leader in the public-private Election Integrity Partnership that mass-reported alleged election misinformation to Big Tech and Virality Project that sought to throttle admittedly true COVID-19 content . ​ “Its stated purpose is to study ‘how people abuse the internet to cause real human harm, often using products the way they are designed to work,’ the editors wrote in the inaugural issue, which included a paper on the intersection of hate speech and misinformation about ‘the role of the Chinese government in the origin and spread of COVID-19.’ “The trustworthiness-ratings study was published in the most recent issue of the journal, in April, but appears to have drawn little attention....” (Full article at Just The News; see also Stanford’s alleged roles in censoring the web here ) American Bar Association Considering Free Speech Requirements for U.S. Law Schools Excerpts: “Law schools may soon be required to adopt written free speech policies under a proposal being considered by the American Bar Association. “The policy proposal would give law schools clearer, more uniform guidelines for addressing free speech concerns that have played out -- especially over the past two years -- with student protesters shutting down talks by guest speakers, including at Yale Law School, the University of California Hastings College of the Law (now called the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco) and most recently at Stanford University. “Josh Blackman, a law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston who is an expert on constitutional law, said the proposal is ‘very well-timed’ given the increased frequency of speaker disruptions at law schools. He noted that most institutions, including Stanford , already have free speech policies, but they aren’t always enforced. “Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a First Amendment expert, agreed a policy was needed, but ‘a lot depends on how it’s implemented . . . Students need experience dealing with views they disagree with . . . If those views are banned from the classroom or public discussions by speakers brought in by student groups, or if those speakers are shouted down and as a result students don’t get to hear those views, that’s an interference with the quality of education students are getting -- and the quality of lawyering future clients are getting.’” (full article at Inside Higher Ed) Update re Community College Faculty Lawsuits Challenging Mandatory DEI Requirements We noted in our July 28 Newsletter and posted at our Commentary webpage the fact that a longtime faculty member at Bakersfield Community College was challenging his being subjected to newly adopted regulations imposing DEI requirements on his teaching and other activities. A reader has subsequently brought to our attention the pleadings in a similar case brought by FIRE and a number of faculty members at other California Community Colleges as we ll as this editorial from The Fresno Bee about the matter. Other Articles of Interest Let’s Stop Pretending College Degrees Don’t Matter (full article at the NY Times) Colleges Now Including Free Speech and ChatGPT In New Student Orientation (full article at Inside Higher Ed) How Colleges’ Decisions to Scrap Mandatory Admissions Tests is Hurting Low-Income Kids and Intensifying Inequality (full article at The Hechinger Report) My University Might Cut Humanities. I’m Frustrated, Angry -- and Afraid (full a rticle at the Washington Post) "It would be ideal if efforts to revitalize free and vigorous inquiry would be led by faculty themselves, as faculty must bear the day-to-day responsibility for ensuring that this culture flourishes." -- From Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry August 24, 2023 ​ Law School Dean Jenny Martinez Named Stanford's Next Provost Incoming President Richard Saller announced yesterday that Law School Dean Jenny Martinez would become Stanford's 14th provost, effective October 1. Excerpt: "Saller, who takes office as Stanford’s president on Sept. 1, said, 'Jenny is a highly respected scholar of international law and constitutional law who joined the faculty in 2003 a nd has served as dean of Stanford Law School since 2019. As dean, she has been a champion of inclusion, and a clear and reasoned voice for academic freedom. Jenny and I look forward to promoting the fundamental mission of a great university – that is, excellence in research and education with integrity.'” (See press release here .) ​ Campus Conversations on Speech (from Harvard Magazine) Excerpts: “At Harvard, there are research areas that can’t be investigated, subjects that can’t be broached in public, and ideas that can’t be discussed in a classroom. So says a group of more than 120 Harvard faculty members, who have formed a Council on Academic Freedom to respond to perceived assaults on free inquiry and a climate of eroded trust that they say stifle dissent. “On campuses nationwide, the dynamic has led to numerous incidents in which professors have been ‘mobbed, cursed, heckled into silence, and sometimes assaulted,’ they continued (these events are allegedly mirrored by a less publicly visible silencing of students, who, fearing reprisal, are unwilling to discuss certain topics in class). “It is also worth noting that Harvard has avoided the egregious violations of free speech suffered on other campuses—for example, at the Stanford and Yale law schools—where visiting speakers were prevented from making their remarks by protestors who considered their views controversial. “Trumbull professor of American history and director of the Schlesinger library Jane Kamensky, another Council co-president, shares Hall’s hope that Harvard will think about what needs to be done to help students navigate difficult ideas across complex political landscapes and build coalitions with people with whom they might disagree—skills they will need for democratic self-governance.” (See full article here .) Stanford Program Trains Teens in Research Methods, Using Their High Schools As the Subject Excerpts: "Bay Area high school students took the lead on a study of district programs and policies that affect student well-being, with help from veteran researchers at Stanford. "Students shared an array of school experiences that affected their well-being. They described ways that teachers, peers, and programs made them feel seen and included, and policies they found detrimental. They identified challenges to managing their emotions at school, such as barriers to using mental health services and even having grades released during school hours. "Together the team produced a report that included simple, no-cost recommendations. For example: To support students who want to access mental health services during class time but feel uncomfortable asking permission from their teacher, they offered procedural workarounds to ease that pressure while still accounting for the student’s whereabouts. “We can talk about best practices, participation data, federal guidelines, all of that,” she said. “But our own students saying, ‘Here is our experience, and we need this in our classroom or our school’ – that’s much more powerful when we’re making a case to our board.” (See full article here .) Student Views on the College Experience Excerpts: "Three in 10 students spend zero hours per week on extracurriculars, clubs or groups such as student government. On the upside, half of students spend one to five hours weekly on these activities, and the rest spend more, according to the newest Student Voice survey on various aspects of the college experience. "More than four in 10 students say timing and location of events, making this the No. 1 reported barrier to participation in extracurricular activities and events of 11 possible options. Off-campus work is a close second, with nearly four in 10 students citing this. "Among the 2,104 respondents who spend one or more hours a week on these activities, the top selected benefit of nine listed options is meeting new people or making new friends, with seven in 10 students saying this. Distant second but clearly related benefits are building a sense of belonging or connectedness to campus life and, separately, activism or being involved in one’s community. ". . . the top feature of 15 options students would like to see in a campus app (whether their college or university has one or not) is a campus events calendar." (See full article here .) Professors Going Back to Paper Exams and Handwritten Essays to Deal with ChatGPT Excerpts: "The growing number of students using the AI program ChatGPT as a shortcut in their coursework has led some college professors to reconsider their lesson plans for the upcoming fall semester. "Since its launch, teachers, administrators, and students have questioned AI's role in education. While some schools chose to outright ban the use of ChatGPT, others are exploring ways it can be a tool for learning . "I worried that my students would use it to cheat and plagiarize," Ahern said. "But then I remembered that students have always been cheating — whether that's copying a classmate's homework or getting a sibling to write an essay — and I don't think ChatGPT will change that." (See full article here .) Other Articles of Interest Stanford Law Review to Host Symposium on Campus Speech in February 2024 (announcement ) Ohio State Trustees Adopt Statement in Support of the Chicago Principles (full article ; see also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta here ) Student Voices: United By Our Differences (podcast and transcript ) “Stanford University's central functions of teaching, learning, research, and scholarship depend upon an atmosphere in which freedom of inquiry, thought, expression, publication, and peaceable assembly are given the fullest protection. Expression of the widest range of viewpoints should be encouraged, free from institutional orthodoxy and from internal or external coercion.” -- From Stanford’s Statement on Academic Freedom ​ August 18, 2023 ​ U.S. Supreme Court Asked to Review College and University Anti-Bias Response Teams ​ A petition was filed earlier this week before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of the First Amendment and other impacts of college and university anti-bias response teams and the related policies and procedures. We have posted a PDF copy of the petition here and which also includes our prior posting about Stanford's own program for reporting bias. College Presidents Are Planning "Urgent Action" to Defend Free Speech Excerpts: ​ "More than a dozen college presidents have signed on to a new campaign to bolster free speech on their campuses. [Editor's note: the list of participants does not include Stanford.] ​ "The campaign, which the presidents are calling the 'Campus Call for Free Expression,' is the most-recent indication of college presidents’ increasingly forceful defense of free-speech principles. ​ "The project started about 18 months ago, said Rajiv Vinnakota, president of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, a civic-education nonprofit that organized the campaign. At the time, he said a small number of 'highly charged campus incidents' were getting lots of attention. Then came high-profile free-speech controversies at places like Stanford , Hamline , and Cornell Universities." ​ (See full article here , and more about the initiative here .) ​ Cornell Alumni Offer Detailed Recommendations for Reform Excerpts: ​ “In recent years, Cornell University has drifted away from its founding mission of discovering and disseminating 'knowledge and truth'.... “Make diversity of thought and viewpoint diversity a clearly stated and prominent objective of the University. Free speech and academic freedom have little meaning if they do not encompass the diverse viewpoints of persons of disparate economic, geographical, and cultural backgrounds. ​ “Freshman orientation should include a training module on the importance of free speech and academic freedom on campus as well as practical instruction on how to engage in civil debate and constructive disagreement. “Students should not be encouraged or supported in spying and reporting on each other or any other member of the University community for any alleged infraction arising from any speech, expression, or the reporter’s interpretation thereof that is protected by the First Amendment, the Constitution of the State of New York, or any other state or federal law. [Editor's note: See our prior posting about "Stanford's Protected Identity Harm Program for Reporting Bias" here .] “DEI (by any name) course requirements should be eliminated for all courses of study that do not directly implicate it. "DEI statements (by any name), or other pledge of allegiance or statement of personal support or opposition to any political ideology or movement should not form any part of the evaluation of an individual’s fitness for a faculty position. “Any faculty or staff accused of any infraction should have due process, including immediate dismissal of any complaint that involves protected speech or infringes on academic freedom....” (See full article here ; also see our "Back to Basics at Stanford" proposals here .) Other Articles of Interest Why Classical Education is Making a Comeback (full article ) ​ Are Administrators Hijacking the College Experience? (including discussions by nationwide panelists of examples at Stanford) (video ) ​ What Trustees Need to Know About Defending Free Expression and Intellectual Diversity (video ) Colleges Spend Like There’s No Tomorrow - "These Places Are Just Devouring Money" (full article ) A Comparison of Harvard's and U North Carolina's Responses to Supreme Court Decision re Admiss ions (full article ) ​ Diversity Statements Get the Ax at Arizona’s Public Universities (full article ) ​ 12% of managers say they've fired a Gen Z employee in their first week or month of work, often because the employees were too easily offended (full article ) "Free speech is the bedrock of our democracy. It's the foundation upon which all of our other rights and freedoms are built." -- Stanford Professor and Hoover Director Condoleezza Rice August 11, 2023 Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry Last week, a set of principles was published as a result of a conference of scholars from around the country held at Princeton in March of this year. We have posted a PDF copy of these principles at our website here (also available at Princeton’s website here ). Excerpt: The American university is a historic achievement for many reasons, not least of which is that it provides a haven for free inquiry and the pursuit of truth. Its unique culture has made it a world leader in advancing the frontiers of practical and theoretical knowledge. . . . To do their work well, universities need a protected sphere of operation in which free speech and academic freedom flourish. Scholarship and teaching cannot achieve their full potential when constrained – externally or internally – by political, ideological, or economic agendas that impede or displace the disinterested process of pursuing truth and advancing knowledge. Other Articles of Interest ​ What History Teaches Us About the Importance of Academic Freedom (full article ) ​ A Tribute to Katie Meyer (full article ) ​ Stanford Celebrates the Opening of a Mixed-use Development in Menlo Park, CA (full article ) The Three Attacks on Intellectual Freedom (full article ) Assuring a Successful College President Search (full article ) The Censors’ Henchmen (full article ) A Great School Rethink (Podcast ) An Equity-Based Defense of Legacy Admissions (full article ) A Racist Smear. A Tarnished Career. And the Suicide of Richard Bilkszto (full article ) "Universities must remain fiercely independent from government interference. Only by preserving academic freedom and autonomy can they fulfill their critical role as the bastions of knowledge, free inquiry, and intellectual progress." - Former Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust August 4, 2023 ​ College Campuses Could be the Key to Saving Our Democracy According to Otte rbein University President John Comerford, an engaged citizenry is crucial to an effec tive democracy. Excerpts: "Universities can be more intentional about how they prepare educated citizens to participate in and defend our democracy. There are two key ingredients for engaged citizenry: critical thinking and character. "We lack spaces where people of different backgrounds, beliefs and ideologies can actually talk, learn and connect. College campuses must remain one of these spaces. Students, faculty, staff and community members should be able to hear different ideas and debate them, all without creating hostility, mistrust and tension. "Ultimately, the aim of a college education is only partially about the course content. Yes, students should learn a lot in their major and be exposed to everything from physics to Plato. But, the wider design is to develop the critical thinking skills and character we will need in the future leaders of our cities, states, and nation. This gargantuan imperative is too important to allow the petty politics of the nation to infect our campuses." (See full article here .) Americans' Confidence in Higher Education Is Down Sharply According to the most current Gallup poll, only 36% of Americans have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in American higher education. Excerpts: "Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%). In addition to the 17% of U.S. adults who hav e “a great deal” and 19% 'quite a lot' of confidence, 40% have 'some' and 22% 'very little' confidence. "Americans’ confidence in higher education, which showed a marked decrease between 2015 and 2018, has declined further to a new low point. While Gallup did not probe for reasons behind the recent drop in confidence, the rising costs of postsecondary education likely play a significant role. "There is a growing divide between Republicans’ and Democrats’ confidence in higher education. Previous Gallup polling found that Democrats expressed concern about the costs, while Republicans registered concern about politics in higher education." (See full article here .) Other Issues from Around the Country The Tradition of Legacy College Admissions is Under Fire (see article here ). Three University of Kansas P rofessors Accused of Falsely Claiming Native American Ancestry (see article here ). Our Past Newsletters We have recently learned that a fair number of readers have not been receiving our Newsletters, in many/most cases starting sometime in March or April of this year. If you are in this group, and this is the first Newsletter you are receiving in recent months, we suggest you check out our archive of Past Newsletters here . Some of the more significant articles you might have missed include these: Stanford’s program for reporting bias, h ere and here . Stanford’s alleged roles in censoring the web, here . President Tessier-Lavigne’s statement to the community about race-conscious admissions, here . "Critical thinking is not about being critical for the sake of criticism. It's about being discerning, curious, and open-minded. It's about asking the right questions and challenging our own beliefs and biases." - Dr. Tina Seelig, Executive Director, Stanford's Knight-Hennessy Scholars July 28, 2023 ​ California Community College Professor Challenges Recently Expanded DEI Requirements Late last week, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial about a lawsuit filed by Bakersfield Community College Prof. Daymon Johnson who has been teaching since 1993 and has refused to comply with DEI requirements adopted three months ago by the California Community College System. Per the WSJ editorial, under the new regulations, California community colleges must "place significant emphasis on DEIA competencies in employee evaluation and tenure review.” See full article here . According to the WSJ editorial, the California Community College leadership also has adopted a DEIA Glossary, a PDF copy of which we have posted at our Commentary webpage . Here are excerpts from the Glossary, some of which readers might agree with and some of which readers might disagree with. Per Prof. Daymon’s lawsuit, however, agreement and disagreement apparently is not an option for the community college faculty members: "Deficit-Minded Language : Is language that blames students for their inequitable outcomes instead of examining the systemic factors that contribute to their challenges. It labels students as inadequate by focusing on qualities or knowledge they lack, such as the cognitive abilities and motivation needed to succeed in college, or shortcomings socially linked to the student, such as cultural deprivation, inadequate socialization, or family deficits or dysfunctions. This language emphasizes “fixing” these problems and inadequacies in students. Examples of this type of language include at-risk or high-need, underprepared or disadvantaged, non-traditional or untraditional, underprivileged, learning styles, and achievement gap. "Diversity : The myriad of ways in which people differ, including the psychological, physical, cognitive, and social differences that occur among all individuals, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, religion, economic class, education, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, mental and physical ability, and learning styles. Diversity is all inclusive and supportive of the proposition that everyone and every group should be valued. It is about understanding these differences and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of our differences. "Equity : The condition under which individuals are provided the resources they need to have access to the same opportunities, as the general population. Equity accounts for systematic inequalities, meaning the distribution of resources provides more for those who need it most. Conversely equality indicates uniformity where everything is evenly distributed among people. "Inclusion : Authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power. "Merit : A concept that at face value appears to be a neutral measure of academic achievement and qualifications; however, merit is embedded in the ideology of Whiteness and upholds race-based structural inequality. Merit protects White privilege under the guise of standards (i.e., the use of standardized tests that are biased against racial minorities) and as highlighted by anti-affirmative action forces. Merit implies that White people are deemed better qualified and more worthy but are denied opportunities due to race-conscious policies. However, this understanding of merit and worthiness fails to recognize systemic oppression, racism, and generational privilege afforded to Whites. "Power : Is the ability to exercise one’s will over others. Power occurs when some individuals or groups wield a greater advantage over others, thereby allowing them greater access to and control over resources. There are six bases of power: reward power (i.e., the ability to mediate rewards), coercive power (i.e., the ability to mediate punishments), legitimate power (i.e., based on the perception that the person or group in power has the right to make demands and expects others to comply), referent power (i.e., the perceived attractiveness and worthiness of the individual or group in power), expert power (i.e., the level of skill and knowledge held by the person or group in power) and informational power (i.e., the ability to control information). Wealth, Whiteness, citizenship, patriarchy, heterosexism, and education are a few key social mechanisms through which power operates. "White Privilege : Refers to the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are White. Generally White people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it." Stanford Law School Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach Has Resigned On July 20, 2023, law school dean Jenny Martinez issued a statement that former Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach had resigned. Two of many articles a bout the resignation can be found at the San Francisco Chronicle and The Post Millennial . A copy of Dean Martinez’s statement was posted here and which we are reproducing in its entirety as follows: "Dear SLS Community: I write to share that Tirien Steinbach has decided that she will be leaving her role as Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Stanford Law School to pursue another opportunity. “Associate Dean Steinbach and I both hope that SLS can move forward as a community from the divisions caused by the March 9 event. The event presented significant challenges for the administration, the students, and the entire law school community. As I previously noted, tempers flared along multiple dimensions. Although Associate Dean Steinbach intended to de-escalate the tense situation when she spoke at the March 9 event, she recognizes that the impact of her statements was not the as she hoped or intended. Both Dean Steinbach and Stanford recognize ways they could have done better in addressing the very challenging situation, including preparing for protests, ensuring university protocols are understood, and helping administrators navigate tensions when they arise. There are opportunities for growth and learning all around." Other Issues from Ar ound the Country Recent poll shows a m ajority of Americans now support restricting speech (see article here ) . Heterodox Academy has posted an essay by a faculty member at the Free University of Berlin that discusses the challenges of teaching how hate speech is treated in different countries (see article here ) . DEI officers are questioning their career paths as demand falls (see article here ) . Former Harvard president Larry Sommers has proposed banning legacy admissions, eliminating elite sports and reforming higher education in other ways (see article here ) . Academic researchers were angered by joke responses from STEM students to the researchers’ gender survey and said the student responses indicated widespread fascism (see article here ) . Other Featured Articles Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiati ve (EHLI) (see our prior posting here ). We suggest readers may want to look at our prior posting, including a PDF copy of Stanford's list of discredited words and phrases, in light of the discussion of DEI glossaries, above, and that similarly seem to have been adopted by campus administrators around the country without input or approval of faculty and school governing bodies. Former DEI Director at De Anza College Is Now Suing the College . We previously posted an article about the departure of Dr. Tabia Lee, De Anza College's former head of DEI. Dr. Lee is now suing the college with support from the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (see our prior posting here , now updated with a link to the lawsuit). "It is our proud achievement to have demonstrated that unity and strength are best accomplished, not by enforced orthodoxy of views, but by diversity of opinion through the fullest possible measure of freedom of conscience and thought." – Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy Ju ly 19 , 20 23 ​ Marc Tessi er- Lavigne to Step D ow n as Stanford’s President Effective August 31; Richard Sa ller to Serve as Interim President ​ Most readers have probably already seen news stories that President Tessier-Lavigne will step down as Stanford’s president effective August 31. Here is a link to the Stanford Daily article that was released earlier today. Here is a link to President Tessier-Lavigne’s letter to the Stanford community. Here is a link to the statement from Trustee Chair Jerry Yang. And here is a link to a bio for Classics Prof. Richard Saller whom the Trustees have named as interim president, effective September 1. ​ Problems with the Current Campus Climate, Including at Stanford Earlier this week, there was a panel in Washington D.C. about campus life and with Stanford often used as an example of specific concerns. Among other things, the panelists discussed the significant growth in campus administrative staffs, including at Stanford and which, in turn, they believe has had a major negative impact on much of the educational experience that is an essential part of college life. The panelists also discussed how this dynamic, in turn, has led to increases in mental illness at campuses nationwide and widespread unhappiness by students regarding their time at their colleges and universities. The panelists also discussed how these developments have impacted free speech and critical thinking which they noted should be key components of a college education and which they argued needs to be restored. Panelists included Ginevra Davis, a Stanford alum and writer at Palladium Magazine, and Francesca Block, a Princeton alum who wrote an article published in March of this year, “Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students,” and that remains posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage . A YouTube recording of the panel is here . [Editor's note: See also our Back to Basics white paper and our posting about Stanford's ballooning administrative costs including its 17,000 non-teaching staff.] Faculty Panel on Viewpoint Diversity Another video that might be of interest is of a panel discussion in recent weeks by Carleton College professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Snyder discussing viewpoint diversity, how to pro mote it, why viewpoint diversity matters and how viewpoint diversity is currently under threat. Some of their essays on the subject were posted several months ago at our website here . Stanford Law Prof. Michael McConn ell on Government Censorship of Social Media In response to a recent federal district court decision on censorship by social media in coordination with government entities (subsequently put on hold by a federal appellate court), Stanford Law School Prof. Michael McConnell wrote an opinion piece suggesting that government social media censoring requests should be made public. Excerpts: The First Amendment does not limit the power of private media companies to refuse to disseminate speech they deem objectionable, even if that speech is constitutionally protected in the sense that it could not be prohibited or punished by the state. Nor does the Constitution prevent the government from identifying what it thinks is “disinformation,” and using noncoercive means to persuade private parties to restrict its spread. The trouble is that the line between lawful government suasion and unlawful government coercion is paper-thin. In a world where government agencies wield significant discretionary regulatory authority, media companies might be fearful of government disfavor if they do not comply with government requests, even absent direct threats. Regardless of how the judge’s order fares on appeal, a practical solution exists that might defuse the matter: Social media platforms should make government takedown requests public. That was the recommendation this spring by the Oversight Board of Meta, Facebook’s parent company. [Editor's note: Prof. McConnell is one of the current co-chairs of the Meta Oversight Board. See full op-ed here . See also our prior postings about Stanford's alleged roles in censoring the web here .] More About Stanford's Program for Reporting Bias Our July 14 Newsletter again referred to Stanford’s’ Protected Identity Harm Program for Reporting Bias. As a followup, we suggest that readers take a look at the program’s description of the process and related webpages. And then think about how a student at Stanford would feel if they were to receive an email telling them that someone had reported them for having said or done something that offended someone else and that they should come to a designated administrator’s office to discuss the situation, to admit the harm they may have caused and to engage in various forms of restorative justice. Also think about how you and your friends would have reacted if this program had been in place when you were a Stanford student and you or a friend had been targeted in this way, and with knowledge that all of this was going into your permanent student files. Other Issues from Around the Country Gallup Poll shows Americans' confidence in higher education is down sharply (see article here ) . Blame Cancel Culture for Declining Trust in Universities (see article here ) . Why I'll Never Be Able to Teach at USC Again (see article here ) . Other Featured Articles A Cancel Cultur e Database compiled by The C ollege F ix staff is now posted at our website's Resources page (see database here ) . From our Website: Back to Basics at Stanford (see article here ) . ​ “Paradoxically, BRSs [Bias Reporting Systems] undermine the very diversity that the proponents of BRSs claim to seek. Diversity of all kinds, including diversity of thought, is central to educational excellence. As a result, BRSs present a formidable threat to educational excellence.” -- Speech First July 14, 2023 The Impact of Language on Free Speech and Critical Thinking​​​​ ​ We bring to your attention a recent essay by the French author Dupont Lajoie (penname) that compares recent cultural issues with concerns raised in George Orwell’s 1984, especially how restrictions on language are used to regulate and even eliminate free speech and critical thinking. Excerpts: On the road to creating the perfect post-revolutionary society in the name of progress, free speech is always perceived as reactionary. Most particularly, the individuals attempting to speak truths and facts over abstractions and ideologies are accused of being the cause for the doctrine’s failure or promoting hate speech. Consequently, nonconformist ideas need to be constrained and this takes the form of amending or simply banning imperfect words. ... In addition to the suppression of words, Newspeak constantly redefines/reinvents languages to manipulate impressions, it modifies meanings and definitions into something completely different. ... This brings us to doublethink, defined in the novel as the process of indoctrination by which the subject is supposed to simultaneously accept two contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention of their own memories or sense of reality. As an example, in 1984, the Ministry o f love is torturing dissidents, thus making people believe two contrary truths at the same time: love is torture. Doublethink is internalized due to peer pressure and a desire to fit in. ... Political correctness does not take into account intent or speaker but just demonizes words. It is an aggressive and puritanical culture of the generalized dumbing down and childish talk applied to adults. It is condescending, patronizing and strips the language of all nuances and ambiguity. Political correctness is intolerance disguised as tolerance, a totalitarianism of good intention, a horizontal injunction from the postmodern authority imposed by so-called social convention. Worst, it is a weapon to publicly punish and shame dissidents who have failed the test of ideological purity by mastering the virtue signaling codes. Political correctness mandated language to such a ridiculous extent that it led to cancel culture, the censorship of books, movies and the death of free speech. See full essay here . For those interested, here’s a link to the Substack publisher’s bio, Adam B. Coleman . See also the links at the end of this Newsletter to discussions previously posted at our website regarding Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative and Stanford’s Protected Identify Harm Program for Reporting Bias. More About the Pending Government Censorship Case Our July 7 Newsletter included a link to the federal district court’s legal memorandum in a case where various Stanford people and entities are named throughout the memorandum. You can find our posting about the case here (Stanford’s Alleged Roles in Censoring the Web), and the court's legal memorandum can be found at this link . We thought it might be useful, however, to repeat here some of what we said previously: “Our own observation is that these are important topics to be studied. The more difficult questions are: Who then gets to decide what is and isn’t true and subsequently gets to enforce the answers? Can a democratic society trust such centralized activities, both short term and long term? Is it a proper role for Stanford not only to research the issues, but then to be the implementer of the solutions and the rejecter of alternative viewpoints? Is it appropriate that the Stanford name is seen as an endorsement of these activities? At what point does an independent researcher lose its independence and, in turn, its trustworthiness? ​ “We believe similar concerns arise with many if not most of the other centers, incubators and accelerators Stanford has been creating and hosting in recent years. We therefore suggest moving those implementation activities off the main campus and into the Stanford Research Park, which was why a valuable portion of Stanford's land was set aside for this purpose in the first place, and/or to an entity comparable to Stanford Research Institute, which was why SRI and entities like it throughout the country also were created years ago. The Redwood City administrative campus that currently houses nearly 3,000 of Stanford's 17,000 non-teaching staff (see our April 13, 2023 Newsletter here ) might also be repurposed for the centers, incubators and accelerators. "Among other things, these changes would free up land and buildings on the main campus for the university's core purposes of teaching and research and would help solve Stanford's problems with Santa Clara County for its land use permits. These changes also would allow a significantly reduced administrative staff to interact in person with Stanford's faculty and students and thus be focused again on the university's core purposes of teaching and research and not something else.” We also remain c oncerned about Stanford’s press release a month ago about its participation in what is called Project Liberty. Any two or three of these words and phrases would have had meaning, but when you see them all strung together in a single press release, they start to come across as both eerie and a possible precursor for doublethink: ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ "liberty, r esponsible technology, foundations of democracy, working together to shape emerging technologies, designed and governed for the common good, shaping an ethical future for our digital society, create more enduring democracies worldwide, a more equitable and inclusive technology infrastructure, openness to collaboration, focus on solutions, shared sense of urgency, at this critical junction, informing emerging technologies, the internet of tomorrow, accelerate our mission, a better web for a better world, support democracy, build a digital society, benefits the many and not just the few, inject ethics, ensure a meaningful encounter, engage with ethics at critical junctions, placement of technologists into positions of influence, shape thinking and decision-making, bring about a culture shift, ensure a flourishing and inclusive democratic society, transform the training, usher in a new breed, ethical society, implications of their work, serves rather than subverts democracy, a new generation of global leaders, define how we govern the future, shape the global conversation, transform social media, for the betterment of society, convene leading experts, spark a global conversation, can support democracy, be a benefit to society, flow of truthful and thoughtful information, vast digital web of social connections, the well-being of society, promote truth, mitigating those that amplify misinformation, confusion and polarization, a broad collective of stakeholders, shape a new digital society for the world . . . ." CULTURE and Civ – Now and Then We note two recent articles from Stanford Report regarding the new COLLEGE (Civic, Liberal, and Global Education) program for undergraduates and a look back 100 years ago when Stanford introduced its first required course for incoming freshmen, the Problems of Citizenship: "Exploring Minds and Shaping Perspectives: How COLLEGE Took a Stanford Student on a Journey of Discovery" (see article here) . "100 Years Ago, Stanford’s First General Education Requirement was a Course on Citizenship" (see article here ). Other Issues from Around the Country From The College Fix, ‘Forbidden Courses’ at the New University of Austin Tackled Questions Canceled at Other Schools (see article here ). From FIRE, a federal appellate court holds that public universities can punish faculty for not being sufficiently collegial (see article here ). From The College Fix, These Six Professors Didn’t Let Cancel Culture Stop Them (see article here ). From Minding the Campus, Unmasking the DEI Paradox (see article here ). Other Featured Articles In light of the first item at the top of this week’s Newsletter regarding the use of forbidden words and engaging in wrongful behaviors, we bring to your attention these two prior postings at our website: Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI), discussed previously at our website here , included a PDF copy of the approximately 100 words and phrases that were/are no longer to be used at Stanford (American, basket case, blind review, brown bag, freshman, gentlemen, grandfathered, he, immigrant, ladies, master list, prisoner, prostitute, sanity check, she, submit, survivor, tone deaf, trigger warning, walk-in, webmaster, etc.). In addition to this list looking a lot like Newspeak, where do non-teaching staff get the time, and over the course of many years, to do these sorts of things? Stanford’s Protected Identity Harm Program for Reporting Bias, discussed previously at our website here , and which even allows for anonymous reports to be filed by third parties and that then become part of a student’s permanent record. This, too, starts to look a lot like 1984, and of all things, on a campus like Stanford where students as well as faculty and staff supposedly are smart and mature enough to interact without the intervention of the nearly 17,000 non-teaching personnel who now occupy the campus and a fair percentage of whom write and enforce these sorts of policies and procedures. ​​ ​ “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell July 7, 2023 Stanford People and Entities Discusse d in This Week's Government Censorship Court Documents ​ Earlier this week, a federal District Court issued a preliminary injunction limiting federal agencies from coordinating with social media to limit and even ban specific co ntent. One of the plaintiffs in the case is Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya whom we previously quoted here "How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test." The court also specifically discussed the roles of the Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities, as previously discussed here "Stanford's Alleged Roles in Censoring the Web" and here "Reader Comments About Stanford's Internet Observatory, Election Integrity and Virality Projects." The full text of the court's legal memorandum in support of its order can be found at this link . ​ The question does not concern whether speech is conservative, moderate, liberal, progressive, or somewhere in between. What matters is that Americans, despite their views, will not be censored or suppressed by the Government. Other than well-known exceptions to the Free Speech Clause, all political views and content are protected free speech. The issues presented to this Court are important and deeply intertwined in the daily lives of the citizens of this country. ​ From The Atlantic: The Hypocrisy of Mandatory Diversity Statements An essay recently published by The Atlantic discusses how mandatory diversity statements are impacting competing interests of a university, what the author argues has a parallel history of loyal ty oaths during the McCarthy era, and how these issues are highlighted in the pending lawsuit of John Haltigan v. University of California. Excerpts: According to the lawsuit, Haltigan believes in “colorblind inclusivity,” “viewpoint diversity,” and “merit-based evaluation” -- all ideas that could lead to a low-scoring statement based on the starting rubric UC Santa Cruz publishes online to help guide prospective applicants. Perhaps the most extreme developments in the UC system’s use of DEI statements are taking place on the Davis, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and Riverside campuses, where pilot programs treat mandatory diversity statements not as one factor among many in an overall evaluation of candidates, but as a threshold test. In other words, if a group of academics applied for jobs, their DEI statements would be read and scored, and only applicants with the highest DEI statement scores would make it to the next round. The others would never be evaluated on their research, teaching, or service . ... . . . mandatory DEI statements are profoundly anti-diversity. And that strikes me as an especially perilous hypocrisy for academics to indulge at a time of falling popular support for higher education. A society can afford its college professors radical freedom to dissent from social orthodoxies or it can demand conformity, but not both. Academic-freedom advocates can credibly argue that scholars must be free to criticize or even to denigrate God, the nu clear family, America, motherhood, capitalism, Christianity, John Wayne movies, Thanksgiving Day, the military, the police, beer, penetrative sex, and the internal combustion engine -- but not if academics are effectively prohibited from criticizing progressivism’s sacred values. . . . in the name of diversity, the hiring process is being loaded in favor of professors who subscribe to the particular ideology of DEI partisans as if every good hire would see things as they do. I do not want California voters to strip the UC system of more of its ability to self-govern, but if this hypocrisy inspires a reformist ballot initiative, administrators will deserve it, regardless of what the judiciary decides about whether they are violating the First Amendment. (See full article here .) ​ Prof. John McWhorter: My Experience of Racial Preferences in Academia John McWhorter, per his Wikipedia bio, is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects and Black English. He is currently an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University where he also teaches American studies and music history. He has authored a number of books on race relations and Africa-American culture. The following is from a NY Times subscriber-only Newsletter that was posted earlier this week (read the entire essay here ). Excerpts: The Supreme Court last week outlawed the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions. That practice was understandable and even necessary 60 years ago. The question I have asked for some time was precisely how long it would be required to continue. I’d personally come to believe that preferences focused on socioeconomic factors -- wealth, income, even neighborhood -- would accomplish more good while requiring less straightforward unfairness. ... Perhaps all of this can be seen as collateral damage in view of a larger goal of Black people being included, acknowledged, given a chance -- in academia and elsewhere. In the grand scheme of things, my feeling uncomfortable on a graduate admissions committee for a few years during the Clinton administration hardly qualifies as a national tragedy. But I will never shake the sentiment I felt on those committees, an unintended byproduct of what we could call academia’s racial preference culture: that it is somehow ungracious to expect as much of Black students -- and future teachers -- as we do of others. That kind of assumption has been institutionalized within academic culture for a long time. It is, in my view, improper. It may have been a necessary compromise for a time, but it was never truly proper in terms of justice, stability or general social acceptance. ​ From The College Fix: Shortcomings with Stanford Law School’s "Free Speech" Training Excerpts: Stanford University administrators reacting to the outcry over students shouting down a federal judge failed to deliver the mandatory free speech training they promised, some students said. ... Students were given six weeks [in spring quarter 2023] to watch five prerecorded videos, most about an hour long, then asked to sign a form attesting that they had done so. ... "I watched none of the videos," one student told the Free Beacon. "I never even opened the links. On the day the training was due, I went to the attestation link provided by the university, checked a box confirming I watched the videos, and that was the end of the matter. Whole process took 10 seconds." (See full article here .) ​ Other Issues from Around the Country At High School Debates, Debate Is No Longer Allowed (see article here ). Students Deserve Institutional Neutrality (see article here ). ​ Other Featured Articles We also call your attention to the following featured articles posted at our website: Stanford's Alleged Roles in Censoring the Web Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test Reader Comments Re Stanford's Internet Observatory, Election Integrity and Virality Projects ​ ********** "Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on." – Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall June 30, 2023 President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s Message to the Stanford Community re Race-Conscious Admissions We have posted at our Stanford Speaks webpage Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s statement dated June 29, 2023 regarding the recent Supreme Court decision concerning race-conscious admissions. Excerpt: We now find ourselves in a new legal environment. We will adjust to this new env ironment, in a manner that conforms with the law and that also preserves our commitment to an educational and research environment whose excellence is fostered by diversity in all forms. ​ Some Optimistic Views About the Current State of Higher Education A faculty member at Stony Brook and senior fellow at Columbia, Musahas al-Gharbi, recently published an article at The Liberal Patriot presenting data and commentary supporting the view that recent problems and concerns at U.S. colleges and universities may be correcting themselves. Excerpts: According to many right-aligned narratives, contemporary colleges and universities dedicate themselves primarily to converting normie students into aggressive social justice warriors. These narratives are false. . . . a range of empirical data suggest that the post-2010 “Great Awokening” may be winding down. For instance, Heterodox Academy recently released the results of its 2022 Campus Expression Survey. It shows that students today feel more comfortable sharing their perspectives across a range of topics than they did in previous years. … Incident trackers compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) show marked declines in attempts to punish scholars for their speech or views across all measures. … Colleges and universities are not just capable of reforming themselves; they are already reforming themselves. Positive trends should be recognized, and ongoing efforts should be encouraged and supported. But doing so would require more in academia and on the left to explicitly admit that there are real problems of bias and parochialism in institutions of higher learning. It undermines our own credibility to dismiss concerns about the culture and operations of educational institutions as an empty moral panic. Ordinary people can see with their own eyes that that’s not the case, and no one will trust us to effectively fix a problem if we won’t even acknowledge it exists. We can’t talk about progress while insisting there’s nothing wrong. ​ Stanford Is Facing More Lawsuits About Its Internet Observatory, Election Integrity and Virality Programs ​ [Also see our Stanford Concerns and Reader Comments webpages.] ​ Inside Higher Ed recently published a story summarizing the issues being raised in new lawsuits against Stanford regarding activities of various Stanford-sponsored entities. Excerpts: A [second] federal lawsuit filed last month alleges university disinformation and misinformation researchers colluded with the federal government and social media companies to “censor” Americans’ speech. This case challenges probably the largest mass-surveillance and mass-censorship program in American history—the so-called ‘Election Integrity Partnership’ [EIP] and ‘Virality Project’ . . . “Defendants are engaged in egregious violations of the First Amendment across numerous federal agencies—including the White House, the Office of the Surgeon General, the CDC, DHS and CISA—as well as massive government/private joint censorship enterprises, including the Stanford Internet Observatory’s ‘Virality Project,’ to target and suppress speech on the basis of content (i.e., COVID vaccine-related speech) and viewpoint (i.e., speech raising doubt or concern about COVID vaccines’ safety and efficacy and the extent and severity of side effects),” that third suit says. Dee Mostofi, Stanford’s assistant vice president for external communications, wrote in an email that “We believe the cases are completely without merit and will be vigorously defending them.” See full article here ​ John Etchemendy Interview: Free Speech and Critical Thinking in America’s Universities Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy was r ecently interviewed about his views on free speech and critical thinking in America's universities. See video here. ​ Other Issues from Around the Country Cal State Faculty Stand Up for Academic Freedom and Free Speech (see article here). Bill Would Mandate Free Speech Training on College Campuses (see article here). Cancel Culture Is Destroying Free Speech: UNC Is Fighting Back ( see article here). Why An Experienced Writing Professor Is Suing Penn State (see article here) ​ ********** ​ ​“Academic freedom really means freedom of inquiry. To be able to probe according to one's own interest, knowledge and conscience is the most important freedom the scholar has, and part of that process is to state its results.” Former Stanford President Donald Kennedy June 23, 2023 ​Stanford’s Commencement Below are some excerpts from spe eches by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Commencement Speaker John McEnroe at last Sunday’s 132nd Commencement Ceremo nies. Remarks by President Marc Tessier-Lavigne (full text can be found here ): Excerpts: Your years here have been marked by transformation: your own personal transformation and growth, as well as great changes in the world around us. Many of you were in your first year on campus when the COVID shutdown happened. We all learned, that year, how drastically the world can change in an instant. As you leave Stanford and go out into the world, I hope you continue to take your own unique blend of talents and passion and use them to make a difference. Your dedication to others, combined with your unique skills and knowledge, can make our world better. Remarks by Commencement Speaker John McEnroe (full text can be found here ): ​ Excerpts: Everyone wants a great career, but don’t miss your life on the way to work. Work/life balance may seem impossible, but it’s worth pursuing. It took me a long time to learn that lesson. In sports, you often hear the phrase, “Winning is everything.” But in reality, it’s not. The questions you have to answer are: “Am I getting better as a person?” And, “Is what I’m doing bringing me and the ones around me happiness?” The answers will tell you whether or not you’re REALLY winning. ​ It’s Time for Colleges to Compete on Free Speech and Academic Freedom Ed Yingling, who is a Stanford l aw school graduate, and his fellow Princeton undergraduate alum Stuart Taylor recently published an op-ed urging that colleges and universities should explain their positions on free speech and academic freedom in their recruiting materials and compete on these factors. See our Commentary webpage with a link to their op-ed here . ​ Excerpt : The lists of “top colleges” have varied little in many years. They always include the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, etc. But that could change. Colleges of all types can differentiate themselves on the core values of free speech and academic freedom, and those that do will increasingly attract more and better students, faculty, and employment opportunities for their graduates. ... This is not about becoming a conservative oasis. It is about returning to the core mission of a university – advancing knowledge and learning through free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity. Colleges that state that mission clearly and follow through on it will have a competitive advantage. From The Atlantic, Princeton’s Prof. Robert George Comments on the Risks of Colleges and Universities Taking Political Positions The Atlantic recently published an op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert George concerning the risks of colleges and universities taking political positions, and even concerns if specific schools and departments were to do so. We have posted excerpts of Prof. George’s op-ed at our Commentary webpage; see also our compilations of the Chicago Principles/Chicago Trifecta here . Other Issues from Around the Country Minimum DEI Points Required for Faculty Hiring at Berkeley (see article here ). UC Davis Math Professor Under Fire for Opposing Required Diversity Statements (see article here ). Mayo Medical College Professor Suspended and Threatened with Firing After Discussing Physical Differences in Athletes (see article here ). This issue is also discussed in these articles here and here . ******** "If universities and colleges do not provide safe spaces for controversial ideas, then the dangerous belief that censorship is the answer to discomforting speech will take root in our society." New York Law School Prof. Nadine Strossen; former president of the ACLU June 16, 2023 First, congratulations to this year’s Stanford graduates and their families. Meantime, here are some articles that might be of interest: About Campus Bias Response Teams and Programs Two weeks ago, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision not to enjoin a bias reporting system that has been used at Virginia Tech. As a result, we have posted at our Commentary webpage a link to the full text of both the majority and dissenting opinions in the case along with excerpts from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson’s dissenting opinion. We think readers may also find these articles of interest: WSJ, June 11, 2023 Editorial, " Virginia Tech's Bias Response Team and the First Amendment ." ​ The College Fix, June 7, 2023, “ College Bias Response Teams Do More Harm Than Good .” WSJ, April 6, 2023 Op-Ed by Stanford’s GSB Prof. Ivan Marinovic, “ DEI Meets East Germany: U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another ." Inside Higher Ed, June 16, 2019, “ Bias Response Teams: Fact versus Fiction .” The New Republic, March 30, 2016, “ T he Rise of Bias Response Teams .” Also see our posting several months ago, “ Stanford's Protected Identity Harm Program .” Also see Stanford Report, March 9, 2023, “ Stanford’s Leadership Discusses Stanford’s Protected Identity Harm Program .” ​ Also see Stanford’s Prof. Russell Berman January 26, 2023 statement to the Faculty Senate, “Does Academic Freedom Have a Future at Stanford” with specific reference to a separate but similar program, Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, and President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s April 3, 2023 letter to the Stanford community regarding speech and academic freedom at Stanford, both posted here . ​ ********** ​ "Overly broad or vague de finitions of bias put all kinds of speech at risk of being reported - even unpopular speech which is protected by the First Amendment. Political speech and satireare particularly vulnerable because the system favors students who easily take offense." -- From freespeech.org June 9, 2023 ​ Earlier this week, Stanford issued a four-page press release about new projects to oversee the web and related activities, all of which raise still more questions about Stanford's role in these activities. As a result, we have moved material about the Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities from our Reader Comments webpage to our Stanford Concerns webpage here and have posted the new material there as well. Please take a look, and we welcome your comments. We also bring to your attention some other recent articles that may be of interest, as follows. “Go Forth and Argue” by Bret Stephens, NY Times Columnist, University of Chicago 2023 Class Day speaker Excerpts: “. . . I completely respect your right to protest any speaker you dislike, including me, so long as you honor the Chicago Principles [also found at our website here ]. It is one of the core liberties that all of us have a responsibility to uphold, protect and honor. “. . . institutions become and remain great not because of the weight of their traditions or the perception of their prestige, but because they are places where the sharpest thinking is given the freest rein, and where strong arguments may meet stronger ones, and where ‘error of opinion may be tolerated’ because ‘reason is left free to combat it’ and where joy and delight are generally found at the point of contact — mental or otherwise.” See full article here . ​ “Are The Kids at Princeton -- and Ohio State and UW Madison -- Really OK?” by Michael Poliakoff, President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni ​ Excerpts: “Students hesitate to disagree with the politics of their professors; many think that indoctrination is an institutional goal. A large number self-censor while also seeking to silence viewpoints that they judge to be hurtful or offensive. They feel pressure from institutional leadership, their professors, and their peers to conform both inside the classroom and on campus. Such findings should worry university leadership, and they should worry all who consider debate, dialogue, and civil disagreement essential for a free society. “Those who won our independence . . . believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile . . . " See full article here . “Slaying the Censorship Leviathan” by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty [Editor's note: Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, Harvard Prof. Martin Kulldorff and Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya have joined the states of Missouri and Louisiana in a lawsuit against the federal government claiming they were censored for content related to COVID and public health policy that the government disfavored. See also a discussion about the Stanford Internet Observatory and related Stanford entities at our webpage here .] Excerpts: “. . . we intend to prove in court, the federal government has censored hundreds of thousands of Americans, violating the law on tens of millions of occasions in the last several years. This unprecedented breach was made possible by the wholly novel reach and breadth of the new digital social media landscape. “Documents we have reviewed on discovery demonstrate that government censorship was far more wide-ranging than previously known, from election integrity and the Hunter Biden laptop story to gender ideology, abortion, monetary policy, the U.S. banking system, the war in Ukraine, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and more. There is hardly a topic of recent public discussion and debate that the U.S. government has not targeted for censorship. “ . . . censorship is now a highly developed industry complete with career-training institutions in higher education (like Stanford’s Internet Observatory or the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public ), full-time job opportunities in industry and government (from the Virality Project and the Election Integrity Partnership to any number of federal agencies engaged in censorship), and insider jargon and euphemisms (like disinformation, misinformation, and ‘malinformation’ which must be debunked and ‘prebunked’) to render the distasteful work of censorship more palatable to industry insiders. “. . . our documents demonstrate how a relatively unknown agency within the Department of Homeland Security became the central clearinghouse of government-run information control -- an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. My fellow citizens, meet the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency -- better known as CISA -- a government acronym with the same word in it twice in case you wondered about its mission. “We all have the right to hear both sides of debated issues to make informed judgments. Thus all Americans have been harmed by the government’s censorship leviathan.” See full article here . ******** “B y academic freedom I understand the right to search for t ruth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action.” -- Albert Einstein June 2, 2023 ​ More About Stanford Internet Observatory and Related Entities ​ Several readers have previously submitted concerns about the Stanford Internet Observatory, as posted here . We thus call your attention to a series of weekly webinars being offered by the Stanford Cyber Policy Center on a wide range of related issues such as “Partisan Conflict Over Content Moderation,” “Socially Responsible Natural Language Processing,” “Generative AI and the End of Trust,” and similar topics. A summary of webinars is here and webinar videos are also available here . Our own observation is that these are important topics to be studied. The more difficult questions are: Who then gets to decide what is and isn’t true and subsequently gets to enforce the answers? Can a democratic society trust such centralized activities, both short term and long term? Is it a proper role for Stanford not only to research the issues, but then to be the implementer of the solutions and the rejecter of alternative viewpoints? Is it appropriate that the Stanford name is seen as an endorsement of these activities? At what point does an independent researcher lose its independence and, in turn, its trustworthiness?​ ​ We believe similar concerns arise with many if not most of the other centers, incubators and accelerators Stanford has been creating and hosting in recent years. We therefore suggest moving those implementation activities off the main campus and into the Stanford Research Park, which was why a valuable portion of Stanford's land was set aside for this purpose in the first place, and/or to an entity comparable to Stanford Research Institute, which was why SRI and entities like it throughout the country also were created years ago. The Redwood City administrative campus that currently houses nearly 3,000 of Stanford's 17,000 non-teaching staff (see our April 13 Newsletter here ) might also be repurposed for the centers, incubators and accelerators. Among other things, these changes would free up land and buildings on the main campus for the university's core purposes of teaching and research and would help solve Stanford's problems with Santa Clara County for its land use permits. These changes also would allow a significantly reduced administrative staff to interact in person with Stanford's faculty and students and thus be focused again on the university's core purposes of teaching and research and not something else. And for reasons that will become clearer over time, we believe these and similar reforms will also go to the heart of free speech and critical thinking at Stanford. Controversial Political Issues at Stanford, Past and Present Last week, the Stanford Daily ran a detailed and well-written article about past and current political controversies at Stanford, including the firing of Prof. Bruce Franklin during the Vietnam War era and the more recent issues re COVID, Judge Duncan’s appearance at Stanford Law School and the like. In light of these current issues, we also again urge that Stanford adopt the Chicago Trifecta available at our website here and including these provisions from the Kalven Report that is part of the Chicago Trifecta: “A university has a great and unique role to play in fostering the development of social and political values in a society. The role is defined by the distinctive mission of the university and defined too by the distinctive characteristics of the university as a community. It is a role for the long term.. . . “To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. “A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.. . . "The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.” ​ ********** ​ “People who believe in freedom of expression have spent several centuries fighting against censorship, in whatever form. We have to be certain the ‘Net’ doesn’t become the site for technological book burning.” -- John Ralston Saul May 26, 2023 Death of Former Univer sity of Chicago Preside nt Robert Zimmer, and Why We Support the Chicago Principles Readers know we have long advocated Stanford’s adoption of the Chicago Trifecta re free speech, political positions by a university, and standards for the hiring and promotion of faculty found here . We therefore are reprinting, below, an editorial published earlier this week by the Wall Street Journal upon the death of former University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer. We also would be remiss if we didn’t note that former Stanford President Gerhard Casper had long been a faculty member, law school dean and provost at the University of Chicago before he was recruited to become Stanford’s ninth president, and that President Casper largely reflected the Chicago Principles in his own leadership of Stanford. We believe a significant source of Stanford’s widely publicized problems in recent years stems from its deviation from these principles, which is why we again strongly urge Stanford’s faculty, administrators and trustees to formally adopt those principles and then to very visibly put them into effect. From WSJ: Robert Zimmer, 1947-2023 -- The University of Chicago President Championed Free Speech Robert Zimmer, a mathematician who served 15 years as president of the University of Chicago, died Tuesday at age 75. In announcing his death, the university said his presidency will be remembered as “one of the longest and most impactful in the University’s 133-year history.” That’s an understatement. Zimmer kept Chicago as a leading school of higher education. But his largest contribution was his public support for free expression on campus in a disputatious era when too many schools are willing to cancel controversial speakers, especially on the political right. In 2014 Zimmer appointed a Committee on Freedom of Expression, which drafted what became known as the Chicago Principles expressing the university’s abiding commitment to free speech. Chicago’s principles have since been adopted by dozens of other colleges and universities. The spirit of the Chicago Principles was perhaps most vividly expressed in a welcome letter sent to the incoming class of 2020 signed by the dean of students. “Our commitment to academic freedom,” it read, “means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” A few months later, the Journal asked Zimmer about critics who said the letter was sent out to appease alumni donors. “I am not the first president to speak out in this way,” he said. “I view myself as simply continuing to reassert what has been a longstanding value of the University of Chicago that has defined the way we have behaved.” We can think of a few current university presidents who could use a dose of Zimmer spinal fluid. The easiest path is to bow to the loudest student and faculty voices that want to stamp out other views. Robert Zimmer was clear, courageous and unwavering. His leadership at Chicago reminds us what a university is supposed to be all about. Princeton Alumni Publish Survey Results re Student Attitudes on Free Speech and Academic Freedom Excerpt: . . . The survey provides input from students on what steps the university should undertake. For example, 60% of students say they would like to see the university host debates on controversial topics, something the university has not done. Other suggestions receiving support from students include offering courses on free speech and hiring an administrative officer to act as an ombudsperson to protect free speech and address alleged breaches of the free speech rule on campus. Given that issues of free speech at Princeton now are apparently under the purview of DEI administrators, this new ombudsperson role is vital. The survey also asked questions directly related to current issues at Princeton. Many universities, including Princeton, are using online reporting systems to allow bias incident complaints to be filed, often anonymously, against students and sometimes faculty. [See our article about Stanford’s own Bias Reporting/Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative her e.] The public and, indeed, students knew little about these systems until very recently, and these systems have now become very controversial. . .. [See full survey article here .] University of California Sued for Mandating DEI Statements from Applicants Excerpt: A policy that requires scholars seeking a job at UC Santa Cruz to provide a diversity, equity and inclusion statement as part of the application process is unconstitutional, argues a recently filed lawsuit against the University of California system and [UC Santa Cruz] leaders. . .. “I believe that the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements in evaluating candidates for positions in higher education and academia are anathema to the ideals and principles of rigorous scholarship, and the sound practice of science and teaching—all of which public universities were created to uphold,” [Prof. J.D. Haltigan] wrote. “DEI statements have become a political litmus test for political orientation and activism that has created an untenable situation in higher academia where diversity of thought—the bedrock of liberal education—is neither promoted nor tolerated.” [See full article here .] ********** "You might understand your views on a contentious issue at a deeper level if you talk to someone who disagrees with you. It pushes you to understand your own ideas and positions better, and to learn to understand theirs." -- Prof. David Primo, University of Rochester May 20, 2023 ​ Stanford Daily Calls for Greater Accountability of Stanford's Administratio n Earlier this week, the Stanford Daily published an editoria l calling for greater accountability of Stanford's administration. Excerpts : At long last, it appears the wind of change is blowing on Stanford’s campus. After a disastrous year for Stanford’s reputation and amid a brewing storm of student, alumni, and faculty discontent, there are signs that the University may be changing course. . . . First, we must take stock of the toll that Stanford’s unchecked administrative growth has taken on student life and consequently the university’s standing. The viral Palladium article and our previous editorial have detailed how the Stanford administration’s relentless campaign to absolve itself from liability has decimated student life and made campus less safe. But the problem of administrative malfeasance extends far beyond destroying the “esoteric whimsical nature” of Stanford culture. . . . ​ The rampant expansion in administration and regulation is actively hurting Stanford’s strategic interests. When students spend their days fighting administrative battles, they become reluctant to advocate for, or eventually donate to, an institution that seems to only want to expand the number of staff and administrators — currently 17,000 strong — who were in many cases detrimental to their experience. . . . Through increasing collective action and doing our part to hold the university administration to account, we can ensure that Stanford’s winds of freedom continue to blow. [See also our Back to Basics webpage here .] The Pitfalls of Equity in Education In a recent article at Real Clear Education and republished by Minding the Campus, “Equity and the Race to the Bottom ,” author Jack Miller has raised some fundamental questions about the concept of equity in education. Excerpts: . . . At the university level, DEI bureaucracies have grown to absurd sizes, and they dominate much of campus life. . . . Students are increasingly taught at the lowest common denominator rather than being challenged to do their best. . . . Most Americans believe in equality. We want to make sure that everyone has, to the greatest extent possible, an equal place at the starting line. From there, each individual has the freedom to achieve what their desires, ability, and hard work make possible. . . . But the pursuit of the modern idea of “equity” rather than true equality is simply a race to the bottom. Update re the Katie Meyer Lawsuit The wrongful death lawsuit filed by Katie Meyer's parents against Stanford continues. In an order published on May 9 and found here , Judge Frederick Chung wrote in part: "The initiation of disciplinary proceedings, and specifically the February 28, 2022 communications, cannot reasonably be regarded as 'extreme and outrageous' conduct by the defendants, even if, with the full benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the communications could arguably have been gentler in tone. Nevertheless, because this is the first pleading challenge, and because the court is already granting leave to amend as to the other causes of action, the court grants 30 days’ leave to amend as to eighth cause of action, as well." A copy of the original complaint can be found at our Stanford Concerns webpage here . See also our concerns about the Maxient case management system found at our Back to Basics webpage here . ********** “I am open-minded. I seek to understand opinions or behavior that I do not necessarily agree with. I pursue the objective truth through honest inquiry. I am tolerant and consider points of view that are in conflict with my convictions.” -- From the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism pro-human pledge. May 12, 2023 ​ Stanford’s Alleged Roles in the Censorship-Industrial Complex A number of news organizations have been focusing in recent weeks on what allegedly are well financed and highly coordinated nationwide efforts to monitor and even control information regarding political matters, differing views about COVID and various other topics. One of the most complete summaries was produced earlier this week via a Substack publication at this link . Note that the Stanford Internet Observatory is #7 in the discussion and is cross-referenced in several of the other listings. Other Stanford-involved entities also are discussed, including the Election Integrity Partnership (regarding elections) and the Virality Project (regarding COVID and vaccines). See some related postings at our website's Reader Comments page, including Stanford's own explanation. ​ More About Stanford’s List of Proscribed Words and Phrases Several months ago, Stanford came under attack for its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) and which consisted of a list of approximately 100 words and phrases that Stanford’s IT department said were to be avoided and which they had been monitoring and possibly even censoring. We posted a PDF copy of the list at our Stanford Concerns webpage (scroll down to the EHLI entry) and which Stanford a few days later said it had stopped using. A recently published article says that Stanford in fact has not given up on this effort. ​ Excerpt: Earlier this year, Stanford University shelved its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) in response to public scrutiny and faculty pressure. Professor Russell A. Berman said the initiative, which attempted to suppress the use of commonsense terms such as "American," "ladies," and "white paper," was a "catastrophe for the university." [A copy of Prof. Berman’s statement is posted here .] Stanford has apparently not yet fully absorbed that lesson, as it still maintains an internal “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) Content Style Guide" that is "intended to serve as a resource for campus communicators." . . . The willingness to decide these controversies by assertion is fundamentally at odds with the nature of a university, which should provide a forum for the free pursuit of truth. This guide demonstrates that the bureaucrats at Stanford still do not understand the purpose of the institution for which they work. Current Issues in Higher Ed In our last Newsletter, we had an item about a webinar regarding academic freedom, DEI and related topics and featuring Prof. Keith Whittington from Princeton and Christopher Ruffo from the Manhattan Institute. A recording of that panel is now available on YouTube . Stanford Democracy Initiative In a prior Newsletter, we called your attention to the Stanford Civics Initiative . We bring to your attention another new program, the Stanford Democracy Initiative . See also this Stanford Daily article. Provost Drell Announces She Is Stepping Down in the Fall For those who have not seen prior news reports, Prof. Persis Drell has announced that she will be stepping down as Stanford’s Provost in the fall. Here’s the news release from Stanford Report , an article from the Stanford Dail y and an article from the Stanford Review . ******** “If faculty are not free to ask questions — even questions that turn accepted orthodoxies on their head — there is no growth, and the purpose of the university ceases to exist.” -- Prof. Lynn Comerford, California State University, East Bay April 29, 2023 ​ May 3 Forum on Academic Freedom, DEI and Higher Ed Reforms Stanford’s Classical Liberalism Initiative, the Cornell Free Speech Alliance and others are sponsoring a discussion/debate this coming Wednesday, May 3, “Academic Freedom, DEI and Higher Education Reform: Do Proposed Policies in Florida Make Sense?” Participants will include Prof. Keith Whittington from Princeton and Christopher Ruffo from the Manhattan Institute. Registration is available at this link . ​ UCLA Alumni Create Bruins for Free Speech Alumni at UCLA have formed a group similar to ours and with the goal of “promoting free expression, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity" at UCLA . If interested, take a look at their Bruin Alumni in Defense of Free Speech website . If you know of others who might be interested, please pass thi s information along to them. See the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) article about the new group here . ​ Stanford Concerns We again call on Stanford’s faculty and trustees to adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta set forth at our website on our Chicago Principles page. We also call your attention to our white paper Back to Basics at Stanford at our Back to Basics page. We believe these proposed actions and reforms can help address the many issues we have seen in recent years and fear may still be ahead at Stanford. We also welcome your comments on the subject at our website (scroll down to the “Contact Us” function) or feel free to write to us at stanfordalumnifreespeech@proton.me. ********** Quote “The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition . . . Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning. It carries with it duties correlative with rights." -- American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure April 21, 2023 Student Life at Stanford ​ Three articles about student life at Stanford are worth reading or rereading. The first is Stanford freshman Theo Baker's article that appeared in the Stanford Daily last fall, "Stanford's War on Fun," and that is reprinted toward the end of our Stanford Concerns webpage. ​ The second is a Stanford Daily article from earlier this week confirming that a slate of ASSU candidates who ran on the platform "Fun Strikes Back" won by a wide margin.​ The third article was written by Ginevra Davis who was a recent graduate at the time, and although the article was written a year ago, we believe it provides a good analysis of the issues that remain of concern to all of us who have a commitment to the quality of education at Stanford as well as Stanford's ongoing success: Excerpts: "Stanford’s new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat’s vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference . . .. It is a world largely without unencumbered joy; without the kind of cultural specificity that makes college, or the rest of life, particularly interesting. "Since 2013, Stanford’s administration has executed a top-to-bottom destruction of student social life. Driven by a fear of uncontrollable student spontaneity and a desire to enforce equity on campus, a growing administrative bureaucracy has destroyed almost all of Stanford’s distinctive student culture. . .. "The university sent a clear message with its treatment of the Band. Spontaneous organizations, particularly when they could become chaotic, controversial, or otherwise a space for breaking rules, were now something to be controlled. Rather than treating freedom and spontaneity as strengths, the dynamic became one where students had to justify their projects and ideas while under suspicion from administrators. Student life was becoming dominated by restrictive bureaucracy. . .. "An Office for Every Problem ". . . Stanford students live in brand new buildings with white walls. We have a $20 million dollar meditation center that nobody uses. But students didn’t ask for any of that. We just wanted a dirty house with friends. . .. An empty house is safe. A blank slate is fair. In the name of safety and fairness, Stanford destroyed everything that makes people enjoy college and life." https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/06/13/stanfords-war-on-social-life/ ********** Suggestions for New Student Orientation In light of the recent speaker disruptions and other concerns about the current climate for free speech and academic freedom at Stanford and elsewhere, we suggest that Stanford include in its Three Books program for this fall's incoming freshmen and transfer students Princeton Prof. Keith Whittington's book, Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Protect Free Speech, and that was required pre-reading at Princeton several years ago. A set of hypotheticals might also be included for discussion in small breakout groups and where each student must take more than one side for each issue presented. Excerpts: "Free speech on college campuses is perhaps under as great a threat today as it has been in quite some time. We are not, of course, on the verge of returning to the rigid conformity of a century ago, but we are in danger of giving up on hard-won freedoms of critical inquiry that have been wrested from figures of authority over the course of a century. The reasons for this more censorious environment are myriad. I will not try to detail those threats to free speech here. Although some still deny that there is a significant threat to speech on campuses, that position requires an almost willful blindness to what has been happening on college campuses big and small. ". . . Laying aside the question of whether courts might enforce some outside body of constitutional rules to limit the discretion of university administrators, how should members of the academic community itself understand their own interests in the free speech debate? What principles should the members of a university community -- administrators, faculty, and students -- strive to realize on campus? ". . . Universities [are] a place 'where ideas begin.' If we hope to sustain institutions that can play that role within American society, we need to act to preserve them as bastions of free thought and critical dialog." ********** Quote "The refusal to suppress offensive speech is one of the most difficult obligations the free speech principle imposes upon all of us; yet it is also one of the First Amendment’s greatest glories — indeed it is a central test of a community’s commitment to free speech.” -- Former Stanford Prof. Gerald Gunther April 13, 2023 Distanced from Purpose When discussing rece nt problems at Stanford, our attention was called again to the 35-acre satellite campus that Stanford has built, five miles away in Redwood City, for 2,700 of its over 16,000 support staff . The facility includes a full-service café, a rooftop six-lane swimming pool, a wellness center with an indoor basketball court, state-of-the-art fitness equipment, locker rooms including showers, and an outdoor fitness courtyard. Take a look here and here . We understand the need to conserve space on the core campus given the county’s constant and often inappropriate limitations on Stanford’s educational, medical and research activities. We also understand the competitive pressures to recruit staff. But a concern is that this sort of environment signals to the staff that there is no limit on spending (how could there be when they themselves work in these sorts of surroundings?). Of even greater concern, our understanding is that these staff members, unlike in the past, have few if any face to face, personal interactions with students and faculty and which, per Ken Cuthbertson’s quote in our last Newsletter, is the only reason Stanford exists. We also featured in our last Newsletter the recent WSJ op-ed by GSB Prof. Ivan Marinovic about Stanford's bias reporting system. To what extent do the case management systems and form letters referenced in Prof. Marinovic’s essay emanate from this detached group in Redwood City? And was it this group or their counterparts on the main campus that was communicating with Katie Meyer, largely using a computerized case management system and form letters as provided by third-party vendors (for Stanford, a company called Maxient)? https://www.wsj.com/articles/snitches-get-sheepskins-as-colleges-train-student-informants-dei-east-germany-bias-protected-class-f941ee11?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s We again refer readers to our Back to Basics webpage including our call that Stanford significantly reduce its bloated bureaucracy (see the numbers and charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage) and that the savings be redirected solely to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and graduate student fellowships. *************** What Can be Done? Actionable Solutions to Regaining Academic Freedom We have posted at our Commentary webpage a recent essay by Leslie Spencer, one of the leaders of the Princeton alumni group that is comparable to ours and a former writer and associate editor at Forbes. We commend Ms. Spencer’s essay and proposed solutions to your attention. *************** Harvard Faculty Organize for the Protection of Academic Freedom Some leading Harvard faculty members have formed an organization for the protection of academic freedom at Harvard. We have posted a copy of their essay at our Commentary webpage. Excerpt: "Confidence in American higher education is sinking faster than for any other institution, with barely half of Americans believing it has a positive effect on the country. No small part in this disenchantment is the impression that universities are repressing differences of opinion, like the inquisitions and purges of centuries past." We also refer readers to our Chicago Principles webpage. Quote "Servants like me and the janitor can get our kicks out of providing the means and services which allow faculty and students to learn and teach under optimal circumstances" and after that, our job is to “stay the hell out of their way.” -- Stanford’s Former VP for Administration Ken Cuthbertson April 7, 2023 WSJ Op-Ed on Campus Bias Reporting Stanford GSB Prof. Ivan Marinovic co-authored an op-ed that appears in today's print edition of the Wall Street Journal and is titled “DEI Meets East Germany : U.S. Universities Urge Students to Report One Another for ‘Bias’ - Snitches get sheepskins as colleges train student informants.” The gist of the article is that the computerized record-keeping systems in use at Stanford and campuses nationwid e are encouraging students to report on other students, even anonymously, and are accumulating massive amounts of information and often without the targeted students' knowledge. We have long referenced these concerns in our Back to Basics webpage. We believe the bias reporting function that is contained in these systems is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg and expect the issues will become of much greater concern in the months ahead. Meantime, the NY Post recently ran an op-ed praising both Stanford and Cornell for taking some stronger stands in recent weeks for protecting free speech. ​ ​ New Book On Critical Thinking The College Fix recently published an article about a new book by Louis Newman, “Thinking Critically in College: The Essential Handbook for Student Success.” FYI, Newman is a former Stanford Dean of Academic Advising and Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. Per the College Fix, the book breaks down the four basic concepts of critical thinking as: “exploring context, considering alternatives, weighing evidence, and finding implication and new applications.” Perhaps excerpts from this book along with a short treatise on the First Amendment should be included this summer in Stanford’s annual “Three Books” reading for incoming freshmen and transfer students. https://www.thecollegefix.com/stanford-deans-new-book-helps-undergrads-learn-to-think-critically/ The Fundamental Standard of Ken Cuthbertson As we reflect upon incidents in recent months, we are reminded of a statement from Stanford’s long-serving Vice President for Administration, Ken Cuthbertson, and in whose name a major award is given annually: "I resist the idea that learning and teaching should be 'administered' in a university," he wrote in 1967. "Servants like me and the janitor can get our kicks out of providing the means and services which allow faculty and students to learn and teach under optimal circumstances." See memorial article here: https://news.stanford.edu/2000/05/03/kenneth-cuthbertson-fund-raising-strategist-dies-81/ In other talks, Cuthbertson would compare his job with that of a groundskeeper and where the task was to maintain the field on which faculty and students would interact, which he said was the only reason the university exists in the first place; draw some boundary lines around the edges; and then “stay the hell out of their way.” We think this is a good philosophy for current leaders to keep in mind. See also our article, Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Costs on our Stanford Concerns page. Quote "Learning thrives in an environment of discussion and experimentation, in which both new and old ideas encounter dissent and countervailing views. That environment is essential to preparing students for life after Stanford. The world is a place of disagreement, and we would not be preparing students adequately if we sheltered them from ideas they find difficult." -- Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne April 4, 2023 President Tessier-Lavigne’s April 3 Letter to the Stanford Community Regarding Recent Events We normally wouldn't send a Newsletter this soon after the one distributed over the weekend, but we thought it important to share with readers the text of President Marc Tessier-Lavigne's letter that was circulated yesterday to Stanford's faculty, students and staff regarding recent events. A copy of the president's letter is now posted at our Stanford Speaks webpage. The DEI Debate at MIT As noted in our last Newsletter, a debate of the pro's and con's of DEI was held at MIT earlier this evening and is now available for viewing here (until the video is edited, you may need to jump to the 36-minute mark). Both sides made very strong presentations of the issues and we encourage readers to view the video. Former Head of DEI at De Anza College Speaks Out There have been several recent news articles about Dr. Tabia Lee, who for two years was head of DEI at De Anza Community College and why she was forced out of this position. Dr. Lee has subsequently published her own summary of what happened and why she believes this should matter to anyone interested in higher education. We have posted Dr. Lee’s essay at our Commentary webpage along with a link to a video that she recorded for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). We are impressed with what FAIR itself is doing and thus have also added a link to it at our Resources webpage, and we would urge readers to take a look. The Stanford Internet Observatory There have been ongoing news reports about Stanford’s Internet Observatory project and its alleged role in nationwide censorship. We have added a link at our Reader Comments page to one of the more recent op-eds, this one from Michael Shellenberger. Quote "Engaging in civil discourse and ensuring that multiple perspectives are presented are crucial if we want to preserve the components of education that ideologues are seeking to destroy."-- Tabia Lee, EdD, former DEI director, De Anza College April 1, 2023 Two Webinars on April 4 ​ For those who might be interested, here are two webinars this coming Tuesday, April 4: At 1 p.m. Pacific Time, Law Schools and Free Speech, sponsored by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression); signup here . At 4 p.m. Pacific Time, Pro’s and Con’s of Campus DEI, sponsored by alumni at MIT and Cornell; signup here. Former Stanford Law School Prof. Gerald Gunther on the Importance of Campus Free Speech We recently came upon a posting at FIRE’s website regarding remarks former Stanford Law School Prof. Gerald Gunther made in 1990 expressing his worries re campus free speech. We have posted the entire article at our Stanford Concerns page here. Excerpt: “I am deeply troubled by current efforts — however well-intentioned — to place new limits on freedom of expression at this and other campuses. . . . I lived in a country where ideological orthodoxy reigned and where the opportunity for dissent was severely limited. . . . I feel compelled to speak out against the attempt by some members of the Stanford community to enlarge the area of forbidden speech.” -- Prof. Gerald Gunther (1990). Heather Mac Donald re Campus Concerns Well-known author and Stanford Law School graduate Heather Mac Donald has written about her concerns with recent events at the law school and how they may reflect more widely. We have posted a copy of her article at our Commentary webpage. Excerpt: The most astonishing aspect of the Steinbach affair is that it occurred at a law school. The essence of lawyerly work is to represent someone other than oneself—a defendant, a business client, a plaintiff seeking redress. One’s own identity is not at stake. A lawyer is supposed to grapple with legal ideas—the principles behind a statute or constitutional provision, the implications of a contractual clause. Here, too, his identity should be irrelevant. Much of legal work is adversarial; a lawyer confronts strongly opposing viewpoints, the outcome of which may lead even to the loss of a client's liberty. A lawyer rebuts those arguments not by claiming to be emotionally wounded by them, but by posing a stronger set of arguments that better accord with reason. Here, yet again, a lawyer’s own identity should not come into play. A large portion of the Stanford law school student body seems to have no grasp of these truths. They weaponized their feelings against Duncan, and claimed that his mere presence somewhere on campus, even if they stayed away from him, was intolerable. The World Through a Singular Viewpoint Several sources have brought to our attention various Stanford courses that start with pre-determined and one-sided conclusions and seem designed solely to reconfirm those conclusions. Versus starting with questions designed to stimulate critical and independent thinking about the issues being presented. This is a sample: From the Stanford Law School: Representations of Criminal Lawyers in Popular Culture Through the Lens of Bias (Stanford Law School 240K, mandatory for first year law students): “This seminar will explore the portrayal of criminal lawyers in popular films and will engage in critical analysis of how misconceptions about the criminal justice system and biases against women, people of color and the poor are amplified on the big screen.” https://law.stanford.edu/courses/1l-discussion-representations-of-criminal-lawyers-in-popular-culture-through-the-lens-of-bias/ Race and Technology (Stanford Law School 240T, mandatory for first year law students): “People often tend to think of technology as value neutral, as essentially objective tools that can be used for good or evil, particularly when questions of race and racial justice are involved. But the technologies we develop and deploy are frequently shaped by historical prejudices, biases, and inequalities and thus may be no less biased and racist than the underlying society in which they exist.” https://law.stanford.edu/courses/discussion-1l-race-and-technology/ Violence, Resistance, and the Law (Stanford Law School 240Y, mandatory for first year law students): “This reading group will examine the force of law – the ways in which law both depends upon and abjures violence, the ways it suppresses and invites resistance, and the identity of subjects against whom legal violence is deployed. A central object of focus will be excessive force, the legal doctrines that insulate government officers from accountability, and the ways this specific form of violence is tied to racial subordination.” https://law.stanford.edu/courses/discussion-1l-violence-resistance-and-the-law/ Other law school courses: •https://law.stanford.edu/courses/1l-discussion-dress-codes-law-status-sex-and-power/ •https://law.stanford.edu/courses/discussion-1l-in-search-of-climate-justice/ •https://law.stanford.edu/courses/discussion-1l-rationalism-contrarianism-and-bayesian-thinking-in-politics-how-to-think-better/ From the School of Humanities and Sciences: Workplace Inclusion Certificate: “Cultivating Belonging and Affirming Identities. Applying Anti-Oppression Interventions in the Workplace. Inequity in Higher Education and Strategies for Change. Taking the ‘I’ Out of Imposter Syndrome and Reclaiming Space.” https://hshr.stanford.edu/dei/inclusion From the Graduate School of Business: Leverage Diversity and Inclusion for Organizational Excellence (online for $1,500): “The relationships between diversity and innovation and diversity and performance have been documented extensively in the literature. . . However, without building a sense of inclusion and belonging, organizations will have a difficult time maximizing the potential of diversity.” https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/exec-ed/programs/leverage-diversity-inclusion-organizational-excellence From the School of Medicine: Stanford J.E.D.I. (Justice, Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion) Training; “. . . learners will gain knowledge and understanding of common unconscious biases and how they manifest as microaggressions. Learners will learn about the types of microaggressions, how they impact our professional interactions and how best to respond to them. Learners will learn through didactic materials, interactive case studies, quizzes, and assignments.” https://respect.stanford.edu/jedi-training/ From the School of Medicine: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Healthcare (online for $2,300): “You’ll learn how to intentionally apply DEI strategies that help mitigate systemic racism and microaggressions in healthcare.” https://online.stanford.edu/courses/som-xche0029-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-healthcare Quote “Of course, we want [Stanford] to be an inclusive community . . . But we can’t not have open debate simply because we think we’re going to hurt people’s feelings.” -- John Etchemendy, former Stanford Provost March 24, 2023 More About Recent Events at Stanford Law School We have posted here some links to articles regarding recent events at Stanford Law School. More About the Ballooning Administrative Costs at Stanford We have added to our Stanford Concerns webpage some additional charts and articles about the ballooning administrative costs at Stanford. ​From The Free Press – Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students We have also posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage a recent article that raises concerns about Stanford’s Office of Community Standards and related administrative units, including their involvement in cases involving residential education, student discipline, the Katie Meyer suicide and other items. Some Other Comments and Opinions As a reminder, we have received a number of other comments and opinions from law school and other alumni expressing their concerns about recent events at Stanford, and we have posted some of those comments and opinions on a new Reader Comments page. Quote “Those who strike down free speech aren’t liberators; they’re oppressive (even when they silence powerful men). And when aspiring lawyers act oppressively, they don’t just undermine liberty; they undermine the very profession they seek to join.” -- David French in NY Times March 19, 2023 Back to Basics at Stanford We’ve updated our Back to Basics at Stanford white paper to recommend that every dollar that is saved by the suggested reductions in administrative staff and related overhead (salaries, benefits, other contract and overhead costs) should be devoted solely to scholarships, research grants and independent projects for undergraduates and to graduate student fellowships. We also have suggested that the administration should publish a monthly or quarterly summary of the reductions that have been made and the amounts thus redirected solely to these undergraduate and graduate student programs. See also our prior posting about Stanford's ballooning administrative costs at our Stanford Concerns page. Commentary from Former Law School Dean Paul Brest We have posted at our Reader Comments page a commentary received from former law school dean Paul Brest saying that Stanford’s 1974 statement on academic freedom covers the recent concerns and why adoption of the Chicago Principles is not necessary. Stanford’s Role in Censoring Social Media and the Internet Matt Taibbi’s most recent release about the Twitter files is entitled, “Stanford, the Virality Project, and the Censorship of True Stories.” (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1636729166631432195.html). Some Other Comments and Opinions We have received a number of other comments and opinions from law school and other alumni expressing their concerns about recent events at Stanford, and we have posted some of those comments and opinions on our new Reader Comments page. Quote “The fastest way for a great research university to lapse into mediocrity is to curtail in any way the relentless debate and discussion that alone can bring about scientific and social progress. Unless Stanford wants to take up the retrograde role of the inquisitors who silenced Galileo, it needs a course correction. Now.” -- American Council of Trustees and Alumni March 12, 2023 About Last Week’s Events at Stanford Law School ​ By now, most readers have heard about events last Thursday, March 9 whereby a student organization had invited federal Judge Stewart Kyle Duncan to talk about specific cases and how they relate to recent Supreme Court developments. Unfortunately, the judge was continually heckled by a group of protestors and then the law school’s Associate Dean for DEI read to attendees her previously prepared remarks largely attacking the judge. The judge eventually was escorted from the school by a security detail that intervened after there were mounting concerns. For those who haven’t kept up on the matter, here are some links: A video of what happened A letter to President Marc Tessier-Lavigne from FIRE about their concerns A letter of apology from Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and law school dean Jenny Martinez ​ David Lat commentary We again call your attention to the increasingly bloated bureaucracy at Stanford (see our Stanford Concerns page to see the numbers). And in our view, students and faculty of course can raise issues, although within the bounds of acceptable behavior that doesn’t inappropriately interfere with an event. But what concerns a growing number of alumni and others is that one or more administrators would decide on their own what is and isn’t acceptable speech, who is and isn’t an acceptable speaker (even where students had invited that speaker), and signal that the law school has an official position opposing that speaker, what the speaker allegedly stands for and what the speaker might allegedly say. This is another example of why we think the Kalven Report, part of the Chicago Trifecta, should be adopted by Stanford (see our compilations on our Chicago Principles page), including these excerpts: “A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions. By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. In brief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting. “The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars. “The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.” Quote: “Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.” Sir Winston Churchill March 7, 2023 ​ ACTA Issues a Challenge to Stanford Regarding Academic Freedom ​ ACTA (the American Council of Trustees and Alumni) has issued a challenge to Stanford’s faculty, students and alumni on issues of free speech and academic freedom. Their press release can be found here, and an ACTA webpage that was just posted and is devoted to the Stanford challenge is here. We have posted the related video at our Stanford Concerns page here (the video is also available at YouTube here). ​ According to ACTA’s website, the group is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting academic excellence, academic freedom, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities. Their challenge to Stanford, as they have done with other major colleges and universities: commit to a culture of free expression, foster civil discourse, cultivate intellectual diversity, break down barriers to free expression, and advance leadership accountability. And with specific action items listed at their website for each of these five goals. ​ While our Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking group was not involved in creating this challenge, we think the issues it raises are very important ones for all of Stanford’s faculty, students and alumni, and we thus hope the issues will receive appropriate discussion and resolution. We also note that the challenge makes reference to the Chicago Trifecta, something we have long endorsed and is posted at our Chicago Principles page. Further information about ACTA and the initiatives it sponsors can be found here, and if you have any thoughts about the challenge or the issues it raises, please feel free to submit them at our Contact Us page. Further information about ACTA and the initiatives it sponsors can be found here, and if you have any thoughts about the challenge or the issues it raises, please feel free to submit them at our Contact Us page. ​ Quote: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Prof. Margaret Mead (University of Rhode Island, 1901 - 1978) March 5, 2023 ​ Faculty Views on Campus Civil Liberties A recent survey sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and administered by Social Science Research Services showed that when faculty members from close to 1,500 colleges and universities were asked about their views on civil liberties, most said they self-censor and were fearful of losing their jobs or reputations due to their speech. This is said to be more than what even was seen during the McCarthy era with 72% of today's conservative faculty, 56% of moderate faculty, and even 40% of liberal faculty afraid of losing their jobs or reputations due to their speech. See full article here: https://www.thefire.org/news/report-faculty-members-more-likely-self-censor-today-during-mccarthy-era In that same survey, 50% of university professors said the requirement that job applicants submit a statement describing their commitment and experience advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is an “ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom.” The other 50% said DEI statements “are a justifiable requirement for a university job.” See full article here: https://www.thefire.org/news/report-faculty-members-more-likely-self-censor-today-during-mccarthy-era ​Yale Faculty In Ongoing Discussions with Yale's President About the Status of Free Expression on Campus ​ Yale's University Council, the university's highest presidential advisory body, is in ongoing talks with University President Peter Salovey over the status of free expression on campus. See full article here: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/02/28/university-council-to-advise-salovey-on-status-of-free-expression-at-yale/ Linfield University Professor, Fired After Speaking Out Against Antisemitism and Sexual Misconduct, Wins $1M Settlement In response to Linfield University President Miles Davis’ anti-Semitic comments including jokes about gas chambers and other insults against Jewish people, as well as concerns about alleged sexual misconduct by members of the school's board trustees, tenured Prof. Pollack-Pelzner filed a complaint against the university, over which Prof. Pollack-Pelzner was subsequently fired. FIRE commented that “Linfield has the dubious honor of having done something that is pretty remarkable, which was to fire a tenured faculty member with no due process whatsoever, and to do so because the institution’s leadership objected to his speech.” Prof. Pollack-Pelzer eventually won an approximate $1 million settlement against the university. FIRE analyst Aaron Corpora warned universities that “if [they’re] going to mess with the expressive or due process rights of students or faculty, [they] better be prepared to pay.” See full article here: https://www.thecollegefix.com/prof-fired-after-speaking-out-against-antisemitism-sexual-misconduct-wins-1m-settlement/ Quote: “Faculty members complain that they can’t speak freely, but they’re also turning on each other . . . They can’t have it both ways. If faculty members want to feel safe to speak, they have to stop supporting the censorship of others.” Sean Stevens (FIRE) February 24, 2023 ​ Stanford Faculty Raise Concerns About Anonymous and Even Secret Reports Being Made About Students Articles earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail and National Review outlined concerns being raised by members of Stanford’s faculty regarding systems that allow anonymous complaints to be filed by fellow students about something other students might have said or done. These filings then result in a targeted student being called in for various types of counseling and remedial action. The issue first surfaced with the filings that were made in December, many apparently anonymously, via Stanford’s “Protected Identity Harm” program about a student who was seen reading Mein Kampf (see our posting about the issue here). But that led to a realization that an entire electronic record-keeping system is in place, is generally never disclosed to students, but that tracks what students may have said and done and that then is used against the students in current and future actions by Stanford’s student services staff, lawyers and others. Stanford’s system is provided by a company known as Maxient and which provides similar services, including a wide range of forms that Stanford also seems to be using, to over 1300 other colleges and universities around the country. The Maxient system also allows schools to share some of the student information among them. This most recent revelation -- on top of the “Elimination of Harmful Language” word list that came to light a few months ago (see our Stanford Concerns page) -- only furthers the concerns about a vast and expensive bureaucracy that continually meddles in student affairs when the proper educational answer should be direct discussions among the affected students themselves, one to another. At least in our view, Stanford has recruited some of the most capable young adults in the country. Surely they should be entrusted with managing their own lives. For these purposes, we again call your attention to our Back to Basics web page, and the presentation to Stanford’s Faculty Senate a few weeks ago by Prof. Russell Berman (see our Stanford Speaks page). Excerpt from the Wall Street Journal article: A group of Stanford University professors is pushing to end a system that allows students to anonymously report classmates for exhibiting discrimination or bias, saying it threatens free speech on campus (see https://www.wsj.com/articles/alumni-withhold-donations-demand-colleges-enforce-free-speech-11638280801?mod=article_inline). The backlash began last month, when a student reading “Mein Kampf,” the autobiographical manifesto of Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, was reported through the school’s “Protected Identity Harm” system. “I was stunned,” said Russell Berman, a professor of comparative literature who said he believes the reporting system could chill free speech on campus and is ripe for abuse. “It reminds me of McCarthyism.” . . . Stanford Business School professor Ivan Marinovic said the bias-reporting system reminded him of the way citizens were encouraged to inform on one another by governments in the Soviet Union, East Germany and China. “It ignores the whole history,” he said. “You’re basically going to be reporting people who you find offensive, right? According to your own ideology.” Quote: “Alumni have the ability and duty to demand that their schools maintain the reasons for which they were created. But to be effective, alumni need to organize.” Stuart Taylor Jr. and Edward Yingling February 20, 2023 ​ Stanford’s Faculty Senate Appoints an Ad Hoc Committee on Speech and Academic Freedom See the Stanford Report's two articles about the ad hoc committee here and here. In Other News These are some articles and links about issues at other colleges and universities and that may be of interest: Yet Another Campus Blasphemy Dispute in Minnesota: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reported that Macalester College covered up an Iranian-American feminist's art exhibit after student complaints. See article here. ​ Commentary, Keep the Classroom a Space for Weird Conversations: The author states, "If teachers are unwilling to venture into alien territory and make the classroom safe for unfashionable thoughts despite the security they enjoy, we cannot expect students to take the risk." https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/keep-the-classroom-a-space-for-weird-conversations/ article here. Commentary, Let’s Face It, Academic Freedom and Inclusion Aren’t Always Compatible: In response to a faculty resolution at Hamline University, the article's authors assert, "In our view there will inevitably be tensions between these two values [academic freedom and inclusion]. And when those tensions arise, academic freedom must prevail — at least, if we want to ensure a college education worthy of its name." https://banished.substack.com/p/lets-face-it-academic-freedom-and Quote: “As a university, we deeply value free expression. The ability to express a broad diversity of ideas and viewpoints is fundamental to the university’s mission of seeking truth through research and education, and to preparing students for a world in which they will engage with diverse points of view every day.” Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne February 1, 2023 ​ Updates ​ We bring to your attention a number of developments that might be of interest. First, here’s a link to a Stanford Daily article about recent discussions at Stanford’s Faculty Senate regarding faculty oversight of academic matters. Second, here’s a link to a Stanford Review article with comments made by Prof. Russell Berman regarding these Faculty Senate discussions. And finally, here are two links regarding the Stanford Civics Initiative (SCI) and the Initiative's courses now being taught in conjunction with Stanford’s political science department. From SCI's "About" page: "We are united by our belief that U.S. universities have a responsibility to offer students an education that will promote their flourishing as human beings, their judgment as moral agents, and their participation in society as democratic citizens. . . .We believe that students’ own ethical judgment is improved and their deepest commitments are strengthened when they have the chance to make and to respond to reasoned arguments from all sides of morally challenging issues." Take a look: https://civics.stanford.edu/About Quote: "It is not the role of a university to protect students or anyone else from difficult ideas or words. On the contrary, we need the intellectual courage to confront them, and we faculty have to regain the assurance that the university supports us when we do so." Prof. Russell Berman January 27, 2023 ​ Controversy Regarding Mein Kampf We bring to your attention an article from FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) regarding Stanford’s recent handling of a screenshot posted on social media and showing a Stanford student reading Mein Kampf. See FIRE's article here. Here's how the Stanford Daily initially covered the story ("Protected Identity Harm Report Filed as Screenshot of Student Reading 'Mein Kampf' Circulates"). And here's how the Stanford Reviewsubsequently covered the story ("Nazis Banned Books. We Shouldn't"). And here’s a link to Stanford’s Protected Identity Harm Reporting website. Note that our updated Back to Basics white paper has proposed the elimination of the Protected Identity Harm Reporting program (Item 2.i as well as the boldface paragraph at the bottom). These latest developments raise numerous concerns. Among other things, is it appropriate that Stanford’s administrative staff decides, on their own, what might and might not be appropriate speech? Or worse, appropriate books for students to be seen reading? The issue becomes especially concerning since Stanford is prohibited from adopting speech codes pursuant to California’s Leonard Law and the Corry court decision (see former President Casper’s comments about the Corry case), and in many ways, this is worse with Stanford’s student services staff now imposing unwritten speech rules instead. Who authorized this? When we read about the Protected Identity Harm Reporting program, we were also concerned about the pressures being placed on students to accept what the website describes as restorative justice, indigenous healing circles, mediation, etc. And shouldn’t matters like this be subject to the standards, procedures and protections that exist with the student disciplinary process? In many ways, this looks like an end run around those protections by the student services staff, and done solely on their own. And finally, we believe there are serious concerns that these complaints can be filed anonymously and that, per the complaint form, they are then automatically entered into the Maxient student record-keeping system, often without even telling the targeted student that this is happening (again, see the boldface paragraph at the end of Back to Basics). Quote: "Undergraduates are now exposed to less viewpoint diversity than ever before . . . This has profound consequences for everything that happens at the university." Prof. Jonathan Haidt, New York University January 21, 2023 ​ Website Update ​ If you haven’t noticed already, we’ve made a few changes to our Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking website. First, we’ve created a new webpage, Back to Basics, where we outline some key reforms we believe Stanford’s faculty, administrators, students and trustees should consider for the protection of speech, critical thinking and academic freedom at Stanford. Second, we’ve posted at the Stanford Concerns page a recent article by longtime Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya who had come under ongoing and brutal attacks for his pursuing issues related to Covid. Among other things, Prof. Bhattacharya notes, “Top universities, like Stanford, where I have been both student and professor since 1986, are supposed to protect against such orthodoxies, creating a safe space for scientists to think and to test their ideas. Sadly, Stanford has failed in this crucial aspect of its mission, as I can attest from personal experience.” And finally, we’ve posted PDF copies of each of the three compilations of the Chicago Trifecta as well as a copy of our Back to Basics proposal for anyone who would like to download and use copies of these documents (see Chicago Principles and Back to Basics pages). January 16, 2023 The Chicago Trifecta ​ We, along with faculty and alumni from around the country, have been advocating that colleges and universities adopt what are known as the Chicago Principles for Free Speech. At present, something like 95 U.S. colleges and universities have endorsed or adopted them. More recently, we and others have realized that an even more effective set of actions would be for schools to adopt all three parts of what is known as the Chicago Trifecta. As noted at our website, during earlier times of considerable campus turmoil, the University of Chicago’s faculty issued three reports dealing with (1) freedom of expression, (2) a university’s involvement in political and social matters, and (3) academic appointments. Together, these three documents have become known as the Chicago Trifecta. All three documents are remarkable in their clarity of language and thinking, and they were produced by the faculty of one of the nation’s most prestigious and academically rigorous universities. We have therefore compiled the core principles of each of these three reports, using language taken directly from each report; and we urge Stanford’s faculty, administration and trustees to adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta as a way to guarantee the type of free speech and critical thinking we believe is essential for a leading university like Stanford. All three compilations are now posted at our website (see Chicago Principles under More heading). January 11, 2023 ​ Stanford's IT Community Website, "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative" Stanford's IT community created the website, "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative," which was reported on by the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets. The controversial website was subsequently made unavailable to those who didn't have a Stanford log-in account. Examples of harmful words and phrases listed at the website included American, basket case, black box, blind review, brown bag, chief (even though the CIO’s official title is still Chief Information Officer), freshman, gentlemen, grandfathered, he, immigrant, ladies, master list, prisoner, prostitute, sanity check, she, submit, survivor, tone deaf, trigger warning, walk-in, webmaster. . . and nearly 100 more. A copy of the list is now posted at our website at our Stanford Concerns page. In a letter to the Stanford community dated January 4, 2023, Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne wrote, "many have expressed concern that the work of this group could be used to censor or cancel speech at Stanford. I want to assure you this is not the case." Tessier-Lavigne continued, "At no point did the website represent university policy." Read our full article at our Stanford Concerns page, and to avoid problems like this going forward, we again urge that Stanford adopt the Chicago Trifecta (click on More and then on Chicago Principles). Cornell Alumni Urge Emphasis on Free Speech and Critical Thinking During New Student Orientation An alumni group at Cornell similar to ours has written two letters (one last May, one this week) to Cornell’s president, urging that a free speech instruction unit be included in new student orientation. The more recent letter states in part, “This is not a partisan issue and should not be treated as such. Every side of a debate must be open to intellectual challenge if we, as a society, and the university, as an engine of open inquiry, are to have any chance of surviving. . . . We propose training to assist students in recognizing the difference between speech and violence . . . [and that] through listening to reasoned challenge they may become wiser and more thoughtful adults.” See the most recent letter at our Commentary page. MIT Faculty Adopts Free Expression Statement In December 2022, the MIT faculty senate approved a Free Expression Statement that affirms, “Learning from a diversity of viewpoints, and from the deliberation, debate, and dissent that accompany them, are essential ingredients of academic excellence." The statement points out, “We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious.” (Kabbany, The College Fix.) (See our Commentary page.) Quote: “Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for critical thinking.” Leo Tolstoy December 15, 2022 ​ Ballooning Administrative Costs at Colleges/Universities In a recent conference call among alumni groups around the country, a link was posted to a website that compares the administrative costs per undergraduate student at over 1 500 U.S. colleges and universities. That website – How Colleges Spend Money -- has very detailed data and interactive charts for the years 2012 through 2020 (see the website here). In response, we have posted at our website a chart that shows the costs at Stanford as compared with a select group of other colleges and universities. Among other things, Stanford’s administrative costs per undergraduate student in 2020 were slightly below $40,000 compared with approximately $8,000 at Berkeley, $14,000 at Northwestern, $22,000 at Yale and $26,000 at Princeton. Note also that most schools had little change during these nine years, and one or two even reduced their costs, whereas Stanford, Caltech, MIT and Harvard had very significant increases during that same period. See our sample chart here. Stanford Daily Op-Ed on Polarization The Stanford Daily has published in recent months two op-eds by a Stanford undergraduate from New Zealand, YuQing Jiang, regarding what he calls “perceived polarization” at Stanford along with his thoughts about what causes it and its impact on campus life. You can find the two op-eds here and here. Excerpts from the articles: October: I do believe in the notion that universities are microcosms of society; thus, I think if left unattended, affective polarization will wreak greater havoc on the already precarious social and political spheres of American life in the coming years. This is why I want to draw attention to the precise nature of the problem confronting us. If we fall deeper into our ideological silos and the animosity between political groups grows, then our vision of a truly inclusive future will come under threat. December: The ultimate takeaway here is to keep an open mind. We should view people we encounter as individuals with nuanced views and unique lived experiences, rather than avatars of their group identities. We should also examine whether the beliefs we hold about certain groups really apply to all of its members; there often exists greater differences within groups than between groups. But above all, we should seek to talk to people with identities different to our own: I believe we will find more in common than we think. Quote: "At its best, freedom of speech is transformative, elevating our caliber of discourse, giving voice to the marginalized, and inviting connection across difference." Stanford's Office of Community Standards November 30, 2022 ​ Katie Meye r Lawsuit ​ We alumni are obviously concerned about the allegations made in the complaint filed last week by the Meyer family against Stanford regarding the tragic suicide e arlier this year by their daughter Katie Meyer. See the complaint at our Stanford Concerns page. Back to Basics ​ Coincidentally, a proposal has been circulated in recent weeks about the need for major colleges and universities to get back to basics. In light of the Meyer lawsuit, we have decided to go ahead and post the draft, revised slightly to be specific to Stanford, since many of the concerns raised by the complaint overlap with many of the same concerns that alumni, students, faculty, parents and others have had in recent years. The “Back to Basics” discussion draft can be found at the Back to Basics page at our website Let Others Know About Our Website Please feel free to forward this newsletter to others who might be interested. Names and email addresses can be added to our mailing list by writing to stanfordalumnifreespeech@proton.me or by using the Subscribe function at this website. ​ Quote: "A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg November 21, 2022 ​ See our special edition newsletter posting here that contains links to videos and other information from the Academic Freedom Conference hosted in early November by Stanford's Graduate School of Business. https://www.stanfordalumnifreespeech.org/stanford-concerns ​ November 16, 2022 On The Need for Contrarian Thinking Stanford Review’s editor-in-chief Mimi St. Johns, who is a junior studying Computer Science and German, wrote in a recent op-ed The Contrarian Ethos that “freedom of speech is more restricted than possibly any other time in the history of Stanford -- and more broadly America” and suggested there is currently a need for intellectual engagement that includes contrarian thinking. You can read Ms. St. Johns’ op-ed at the Stanford Concerns page of our website. Stanford’s President Marc Tessier-Lavigne on the Campus Climate for Discussing Divergent Views In light of Ms. St. Johns’ op-ed, we thought it useful to again bring to readers’ attention the remarks made a year ago by Stanford’s President Marc Tessier-Lavigne about his take regarding the campus climate for discussing divergent views. You can read President Tessier-Lavigne’s comments at the Stanford Speaks page of our website. How I Liberated My College Classroom At a two-day conference regarding academic freedom that was hosted earlier this month by Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, one of the panelists, Duke faculty member John Rose, spoke about techniques he uses at Duke to create a climate where students feel free to express divergent even if potentially unpopular viewpoints. We have reprinted an op-ed Prof. Rose wrote a year ago describing the approaches he uses. You can read his op-ed at the Commentary page of our website. ​ Quote: "Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically." Dr. Martin Luther King November 3, 2022 Faculty Statement Regarding Academic Freedom We have posted at our website a copy of a statement regarding academic freedom that was drafted by faculty members in various schools and departments at Stanford. The draft letter was then circulated to colleges and universities around the country and has already garnered over 600 signatures nationwide. Take a look. Student Social Life . . . and Ongoing Evidence of an Overly Intrusive Bureaucracy The Stanford Daily published a very well-researched and well-written article in late October about student unhappiness with current social life at Stanford. After reading the article, a number of us were struck with a secondary theme in the article about what comes across as an overly intrusive bureaucracy at Stanford. A copy of the Daily article is posted here: "Inside Stanford's 'War on Fun': Tensions Mount Over University's Handling of Social Life." As if to prove the point, Stanford has suspended Stanford’s tree mascot for having displayed a “Stanford Hates Fun” banner at a home football game several weeks ago. Surely the irony of this action can’t be lost on third-party observers: "Stanford Student Suspended From Serving as Tree Mascot." ​ Quote: "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." James Madison, 1788 speech October 21, 2022 As we indicated in prior mailings, in addition to updating the website Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking from time to time, we will periodically circulate links to articles from other colleges and universities. Here is a sampling of what we have recently received: Yale Law School Dean, Heather K. Gerken, defends the law school after federal judges announce boycott: "Yale Law Dean Defends School After Federal Judges Announce Boycott." According to a new YouGov survey, the majority of Americans oppose laws that restrict faculty speech: "Most Americans Oppose Laws That Restrict Faculty Speech, Poll Finds." New survey finds that while 98% of college students believe in free speech, around two-thirds want to censor the other side's political views on campus: "Despite Strong Belief in Free Speech, College Students Want Political Views Censored on Campus." Metropolitan State University of Denver President Janine Davidson has committed the school to respecting all student speech: "This University President is Taking a Stand for Free Speech." The University of California at Berkeley is facing criticism after a music teacher at the school was not fired for a ten-year sardonic post: "UC Berkeley Bucks Mob Demands to Fire Music Teacher." Jewish Berkeley Law Students discuss in a Daily Beast article how they feel excluded: “We’re Jewish Berkeley Law Students, Excluded in Many Areas on Campus.” Thank you for your interest in our website and newsletter. If you know of other alumni, faculty, students, parents or others who might be interested in these issues, please forward this newsletter to them and suggest that they go to our website and subscribe. Quote: “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” Benjamin Franklin, 1722​ Oc tober 11, 2022 ​ Janice Traflet, a business professor at Bucknell University, recently wrote about speaking fearlessly despite the threats of cancel culture: "Learning to Speak in the Midst of Cancel Culture." ​ Jillian Horton, a former associate dean and associate department chair of internal medicine at the University of Toronto, expressed concerns about the commodification of university education and whether it has become more important that faculty make students happy rather than challenge them: "Op-Ed: Listen Up, College Students. You don't 'Get' a Grade. You Have to Earn It." Charles Lipson, a political science professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, wrote a recent commentary about restoring free speech at colleges and universities: "Restoring Free Speech at Our Universities." Lauren Noble, a 2011 Yale graduate and currently head of the Buckley Program at Yale, wrote about the history of free speech at Yale, including its ground-breaking Woodward Report in 1974: "Yale is Abandoning Its Own Free Speech Codes."

Reader Survey Results Responses to Our Reader Survey Dated 5/1/24 The Question: "What are two or three things you would suggest Stanford’s leaders should do or continue doing in order to protect free speech while assuring campus safety and operations?" ​ This survey is now closed. To see responses to prior Surveys, click here . Reader Responses In the order of most recently received, some with minor edits for style or to remain on topic. (Updated 5/10/24) _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Adopt a policy of complete institutional political neutrality. Exercise the power of this neutrality by sponsoring quality debate - insisting only that space must be given for all views. Put the learned faculty on center stage in their natural role of developing an evermore higher quality of the discourse. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Expel people who break the law. Protests are fine but breaking the law is unacceptable. Bring in a balanced set of speakers who can explain the history and the politics.... ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ University administrators need to: (1) Identify all non-student demonstrators, arrest them for trespassing at least, and have them removed from the campus; and (2) Suspend or expel students who flaunt university policies, depending on the severity of the infraction. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Be consistent. No camping means no camping. Take a consistent approach to punishing those who break the rules. To maintain institutional neutrality, you can’t let some violations slide without creating the impression that some points of view are more legitimate than others. Right now, no one believes that protests for an unfashionable cause would be treated with the same restraint that we’re seeing now. Tents should be forcibly removed at sundown. Outsiders should be arrested and prosecuted, and students subjected to the disciplinary process. Laws against covering your face - instituted to fight the Klan - should be enforced. Same goes for anyone - pro-this, anti-that. It should make no difference. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Stanford should do what it can to stop the incessant association linking pro-Palestinian rights and human rights issues, with claims and accusation of antisemitism.…. Protesting against genocide does not equal antisemitism.... __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ When I attended Stanford in the 1960s, I led the campus protest movement against the Vietnam War. I was focused on effective persuasion, not venting my anger and causing disruption. Let alone violence. Let me tell that story -- and how it governed my 40 years as a public policy advocate. It explains why the current protests against Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas have been so completely ineffective. (Full text at our Reader Comments webpage.) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Put fun back into Stanford's environs. Reduce the number of administrative staff. Increase counseling both for mental health as well as post graduation opportunities. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I believe the U of Chicago President perfectly explains the reason for his ultimate intervention re the campus protests at Chicago, as stated here . The Cliff Notes version: “There is no way I would ever compromise on institutional neutrality.” __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dissolve DEI. Hold students and faculty accountable for disruption of speeches and other events, particularly when the speakers are invited. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Immediately arrest and prosecute anyone who intimidates or attempts to intimidate a speaker on campus. Immediately arrest and prosecute anyone who attempts to block, impede, or otherwise detain a speaker on campus. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ They should continue to keep things quiet on campus and unless there is violence, they should not bring in police, which would just escalate matters. They are referring students participating in the tent camp to internal discipline and there should be significant consequences for these students. No matter what Stanford does, some people will be unhappy but it appears they are doing the best they can in a very difficult situation. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Adopt the Kalven Report's Principles. End political litmus tests in hiring; end DEI. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Follow your own rules. Allow speech but do not allow protests that block access to buildings or other public spaces. Do not hesitate to use campus or city policy to enforce rules. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Aggressively enforce school policies prohibiting disruptions, camping, etc. Students should be suspended/expelled for rules violations, and outsiders arrested and prosecuted. Commit to providing an environment that offers true diversity of ideas so that students are exposed to all sides of important issues -- in other words, commit to principles of free speech, not preferred speech. Immediately sign the Chicago Principles. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I agree with the [Saller/Martinez] letter. I would add that outside individuals who visit the campus are immediately subject to the rules and regulations of the campus. They will be immediately arrested if they are found to interfere with any function of the University or camping out. I think that all parents or guardians of Stanford students should receive the letter. Students need to be able to freely express their views and the University should hold open meetings in an appropriate venue to air the various sides of the issues. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Do not resort to violence.... ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Students over 18 years old are adults, and they want to be treated as adults. The rules are clearly spelled out -- they know what is allowed (and encouraged), and also what actions are against the Honor Code, [the Fundamental Standard] and [other] university rules. In an adult world, people live with the consequences of their decisions; it should be no different for these campus adults. Certain consequences for first and second violations, and civil or suspension penalties if these are called for. Civil disobedience has known risks, which certain individuals have decided to accept; amnesty shouldn't be an option. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Most important: A university leader must fully understand the essentials of university governance; i.e., a shared responsibility between and among the principal constituents -- the university administration and trustees, the faculty, and the students. Each has a defined and shared responsibility to ensure integrity of teaching, learning and research. Because they are so integrally intertwined throughout history (i.e., from Oxford University onwards), to fail one of these tasks is to jeopardize all. To wit, a university must be well and prudently managed; it must foster free interchange of ideas; and it must represent the best in extant research efforts. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Equal application of free speech rights, which includes clarifying how ambiguous statements are going to be interpreted by the administration, e.g. “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Explicit prioritization of competing rights. Free speech rights do not trump the rights to travel freely throughout campus, attend live classes, or enjoy lectures uninterrupted. Educational goals should supersede all other university "functions." ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Do the things that President Saller and Provost Martinez say they will do in their letter of April 26, 2024 . ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Extend the message contained in the Letter to Incoming Students [of April 3, 2024] to the entire community, and make it prominent, consistent, and repeated. Otherwise, Stanford could slip back into the practice of saying one thing once, and then ignoring it when later situations arise. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Unlimited free speech anywhere on campus. No camping, occupying buildings, or disrupting free speech of others by protesting on the site of the speaker. Protests outside of site should be permitted as long as free access to site is not disrupted. Blocking of access ways: streets, sidewalks, building entrances, etc. will be actionable. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Immediately sign the Chicago Principles . Aggressively enforce school policies prohibiting disruptions, camping, etc. Students should be suspended/expelled for rules violations, and outsiders arrested and prosecuted. Commit to providing an environment that offers true diversity of ideas so that students are exposed to all sides of important issues -- in other words, commit to principles of free speech, not preferred speech. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ End racism by terminating DEI and its 166 administrators. Suspend and/or expel all students or faculty who violate the right to free speech by others. Stop saying you oppose things, but never do anything to enforce the useless words, when not backed up by actions. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Arrest and identify individuals breaking the law when asked to disperse. ​ Immediately suspend any student or Stanford employee who is arrested. ​ Follow through with the suspensions, expulsions or terminations (no hollow threats). ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Allow students to say what they think and reduce (not increase) number of administrators. For exact boundaries refer to the Martinez memo. It already covers everything! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ It is clear that the pro-Palestine/pro-Hamas at this time are violating university policy around free speech and that they have been repeatedly warned to stop the encampment. As a sign of good will, what I would do is to offer a last chance to the protesters to stop the encampment if they accept to either bring speakers to campus to defend their ideas or organize a debate between qualified debaters on the issues discussed. And if they agree to this, forego any sanctions. If they insist on violating university policies, I think that the Stanford administration would be justified in doing what the Columbia administration did. What the pro-Hamas / pro-Palestine campers are doing is not free speech. It's intimidation of people who disagree with their point of view, whether it's Jewish students or any other students who don't support the pro-Palestinian cause. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Free speech is crucial, but it is of limited value if Stanford does not have viewpoint diversity in its faculty nor teach critical thinking skills or the ability to listen to the views of others with whom you disagree. The free speech part of the problem can be addressed with time, place and manner requirements that are enforced. But Stanford and other universities have failed to provide a viewpoint diverse faculty nor to teach the other skills mentioned above. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The April 26 letter from Saller and Martinez had it exactly right in both content and tone. They and Stanford should continue doing what was outlined in that letter. ​

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Back to Basics at Stanford We believe there are two basic actions Stanford’s faculty, trustees and administrators should take: (1) adopt the Chicago Trifecta regarding the freedom of expression, political and social matters, and academic appointments and which we have posted here , and (2) discuss and then implement, with whatever changes they think appropriate, the actions discussed in our Back to Basics paper, below, which is followed by a PDF version for readers who might want to download a copy. ​ Merely having a discussion of these issues may, in our view, go a long way toward addressing concerns about inappropriate restrictions that have arisen at Stanford in recent years regarding speech and academic freedom. _______________________________ ​ Back to Basics at Stanfo rd [1 2 /18 /23] 1. Control of Academic Matters Must Be Restored to Stanford’s Faculty a. What is taught in the classroom and covered in research must be dete rmined by the individual faculty members who are responsible for the relevant teaching and research, NOT administrators. b. General acade mic policies are within the purview of the Academic Council and Faculty Senate, and any policies with significant impact on teaching or research must be approved by at least one such body or a committee of one such body. Policies for specific schools or departments shall be subject to similar approval of the faculty in the relevant school or department. c. The following shall be immediately removed from all electronic and other files: All notations and other information in any faculty member’s, lecturer’s or post doc’s files for concerns or complaints that were made and where the complaining party and the nature of the concern or complaint were never officially disclosed to the targeted faculty member, lecturer or post doc and where the targeted faculty member, lecturer or post doc did not then have recourse to correct what the targeted person believes were incorrect and even false statements. 2. Control of Student Life Must Be Restored to Stanford’s Students a. Stanford has recruited some of the most capable students in the nation and even worldwide and thus should restore student life to the students themselves. In that regard, the primary rule at Stanford for proper student behavior shall be the Fundamental Standard and, for academic matters, the Honor Code. To give better meaning to these two foundational documents, and in lieu of the pages and pages of regulations adopted in recent years, the relevant student governance and administrative bodies shall publish a periodic set of hypotheticals regarding how a set of actions might be addressed under the Fundamental Standard or the Honor Code. b. Student social interactions must be primarily the decision of each individual student and who shall be expected to take personal responsibility for any decisions they make and actions they take. This is based on the concept that a student’s rights include acceptance of responsibility when exercising those rights. c. Social functions shall be within the primary purview of students affiliated with the relevant units sponsoring a social function, versus the administrative bureaucracies that attempt to micromanage every element of student life. Stanford has recruited highly intelligent and responsible students and it is time to reestablish systems that recognize their intelligence and their acceptance of responsibility. d. Disciplinary matters must be within the primary purview of student-run disciplinary panels, NOT paid investigators and administrator-run proceedings. e. All students facing potential disciplinary actions must be treated fairly, humanely and with a focus on protecting the individual’s constitutional and other rights. Students must also be offered emotional and other support from the outset of and throughout any disciplinary warnings, discussions and proceedings and thereafter. f. Members of student disciplinary panels must be selected randomly from the relevant student cohort (that is, of undergraduate students for undergraduate respondents, graduate students for student respondents in graduate degree programs) much in the way potential jurors are randomly selected in the U.S. g. ALTERNATIVE: Each undergraduate residence unit shall select a member who shall be in the pool of undergraduate students who may be randomly called upon to serve on a student disciplinary panel concerning an undergraduate respondent. A comparable system shall be developed for undergraduates living off campus. Graduate degree students in each of the eight schools shall select a designated number of students (the number to be based on the relative size of the graduate degree programs of each school) who shall be in the pool of graduate students who may be randomly called upon to serve on a student disciplinary panel concerning a graduate student respondent. h. All students must be notified in writing at least annually of their FERPA rights to inspect all files created or maintained at Stanford about them and a website must be available explaining the policies and procedures for students to inspect these files, including a single office to process the student requests. [New] i. Whether or not a student exercises her or his rights under FERPA, above, the following shall be immediately removed from all electronic and other files: All notations and other information in any undergraduate or graduate student’s files for concerns or complaints that were made and where the complaining party and the targeted student did not then have recourse to correct what the targeted student believes were incorrect and even false statements. j. The Protected Identity Harm Reporting system and all similar systems shall be ended, or alternatively any and all reports about a targeted student in these and similar systems shall be disclosed to the targeted students and they in turn shall have the right to file any contrary information and be advised if any future entries are made about them. See also the note at the end of this paper regarding electronic systems that are used to track student behavior. k. The neighborhood system for undergraduate housing shall be disbanded. 3. Stanfor d’s Administrative Bureaucracy Must Be Brought Under Control a. With the exception of the medical center and dining and housing services, within five years, the following reductions shall be achieved for control of Stanford’s administrative costs: ​ i. The ratio of the total costs for non-teaching personnel at Stanford, including personnel on contract, shall not exceed [55%] of the total costs for full and part-time faculty and post-docs primarily engaged in teaching and research. An annual report shall be made by the President or the Provost to the faculty and the community at large of this ratio and the administration’s efforts to control these costs. ii. The ratio of non-teaching personnel to personnel primarily involved in teaching and research shall not exceed [3 to 1], that is, [three] non-teaching staff, including personnel on contract, for each faculty member or post doc who is primarily involved in teaching or research. An annual report shall be made by the President or the Provost to the faculty and the community at large of this ratio and the administration’s efforts to control the costs of non-teaching personnel. iii. Stanford’s indirect cost rate for federally funded and similar organized research shall be reduced to no more than [54%] (for FY 2022, Stanford’s published indirect cost rate for organized research was 57.4%). ​ b. The costs of the undergraduate student affairs staffs (Community Standards, SHARE, DEI and related areas) shall be reduced so as not to exceed [$2,500] per undergraduate student per year (volunteer alumni have estimated that these costs currently range between $4,500 and $12,900 per Stanford undergraduate per year). c. All savings from these reductions shall be redirected SOLELY to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects https://undergradresearch.stanford.edu/fund-your-project and graduate student fellowships https://vpge.stanford.edu/fellowships-funding . d . The administration should publis h monthly or quarterly a summary of the reductions that have been made and the amounts thus redirected solely to these undergraduate and graduate student programs. ​ 4. Greater Control Must Be Exercised Over the Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford [New] ​ a. All centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities and activities must be supervised by tenured members of the faculty. Staff may be employed to help manage these activities but the tenured members of the faculty must be the ones responsible for all activities conducted at these entities and must file a written certification at least annually of their personal supervision of the activities of the entities and the compliance by these entities with all university policies and procedures. b. Any activities that are not directly related to front-line research and/or teaching must cease using the Stanford name. c. Any activities that are not directly related to front-line research and/or teaching should be moved off the core campus as soon as reasonably possible. If appropriate, Stanford may create one or more nonprofit entities to house these activities much as Stanford Research Institute and Stanford Research Park once were used for these purposes, and Stanford by contract may provide support services to the host entities. d. Under no circumstances may any of these entities, whether on or off the core campus, be engaged in censorship activities, either directly or in coordination with government entities, and especially regarding members of Stanford’s own faculty. e. Stanford’s policies and procedures regarding ownership of intellectual property and regarding conflicts of interest must be scrupulously followed by these centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities, and compliance should be expected not only by faculty and staff but also by students, fellows, post docs, trustees and others who may be affiliated with Stanford. ​​ Students, faculty and others might also take a look at these and similar student records systems as are linked below and that are now widely used by U.S. colleges and universities, including Stanford. These systems typically allow the filing and tracking of concerns and complaints submitted by other students, faculty, administrators and third parties - often anonymously - about a person’s statements or actions and even if not disclosed to the persons who are the subjects of the reports. These entries remain permanently on file and are often then used in subsequent disciplinary or other actions involving the people who were reported on. Some of the marketing materials even extol the virtue that the systems help schools “win” their cases against the students or others:​ ​ https://www.maxient.com/ https://www.bocavox.com/ https://www.capterra.com/p/66468/MAESTRO-SIS/ https://index.edsurge.com/product/ultid/P9C8-3BEE-74F8-E477-AA/ https://www.i-sight.com/solutions/title-ix-investigations/ https://www.vectorsolutions.com/resources/blogs/supporting-schools-in-managing-title-ix-tracking/ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Back to Basics at Stanford

Archive -- Stanford Concerns ​​Click on any bulleted item for direct access: Stanford is 106th in FIRE'S 2022 Free Speech Rankings The Contrarian Ethos, by Student Mimi Sr. Johns Prof. Gunther's Concerns Decades Ago re Free Speech Events at Stanford Law School Protesting Federal Judge Kyle Duncan Videos from the Academic Freedom Conference Held at Stanford November 2022 Letter Signed by Faculty Worldwide re Restoring Academic Freedom How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) Issues Stanford Academic Freedom Challenge Stanford's War Against Its Own Students The Current Student Climate at Stanford; Student Theo Baker's 'Stanford's War on Fun ' Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back Copy of the Meyer Complaint ​ Campus Speech ​ Stanford is 106th in FIRE's 2022 Free Speech Rankings ​ Overall Rank: 106th Overall Score: 45.94 Speech Climate: Average Executive Summary ​ The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonprofit organization committed to free and open inquiry at colleges and universities in the United States, in partnership with RealClearEducation, commissioned College Pulse to survey students at 208 colleges about students’ perceptions and experiences regarding free speech on their campuses. Fielded from January 13 to May 31, 2022, via the College Pulse mobile app and web portal, the survey included 44,847 student respondents who were currently enrolled in four-year degree programs. Stanford University was one of the 208 schools surveyed, between January 19, 2022 and March 29, 2022. Key findings from this school include: •Stanford ranks 106th overall with a score of 45.94. The speech climate on campus is average when compared to the other schools surveyed. •Stanford performed fairly well on the components of Tolerance for Controversial Liberal Speakers (22nd overall), Openness (38th), Administrative Support (41st), Tolerance for Controversial Conservative Speakers (65th). •In contrast, Stanford did not perform well on Comfort Expressing Ideas (141st overall) or Disruptive Conduct (128th). •Stanford experienced aa number of controversies over free expression over the past four years (2019 to July 1, 2022), they were rewarded for defending scholars during a controversy, but they were also penalized for sanctioning a scholar and for a disinvitation. The College Free Speech Rankings The College Free Speech Rankings are based on a composite score of ten sub-components. Six of these assess student perceptions of different aspects of the speech climate on their campus: •Comfort Expressing Ideas •Tolerance for Liberal Speakers •Tolerance for Conservative Speakers •Acceptability of Disruptive Conduct •Administrative Support for Free Expression •Openness to Discussion of Specific Political Topics Two additional constructs, “Mean Tolerance” and “Tolerance Difference,” were computed from the “Tolerance for Liberal/Conservative Speaker” subcomponents. “Tolerance Difference” was calculated by subtracting “Tolerance for Conservative Speakers” from “Tolerance for Liberal Speakers” and then taking the absolute value (so that a bias on either side would be treated the same). The other four assess administrative behavior in regards to free expression on campus: •Scholars supported by the administration during a free expression controversy from 2019 to present. •Scholars sanctioned during a free expression controversy from 2019 to present.[1] •Successful disinvitations from 2019 to present.[2] •FIRE’s rating of the school’s speech code policies.[3] The overall score for each school is standardized so that the average score is 50 and the standard deviation is 10. Scores are then adjusted according to each school’s FIRE speech code rating. A full explanation of the methodology and scoring is provided in the appendix. A school’s overall score can range from 0 to 100. Full Report In 2020, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), College Pulse, and RealClearEducation published the first-ever comprehensive student assessment of free speech on 55 American college campuses: the College Free Speech Rankings. For the first time, prospective college students and their parents could systematically compare current students’ understandings of the level of tolerance for free speech on campus. In 2022, FIRE surveyed and ranked 203 schools.[4] Stanford University has an average speech climate, ranking 106th overall with an overall score of 45.94. The student body itself is predominantly liberal, with 64% of students describing their political beliefs as “slightly,” “somewhat,” or “very” liberal. In contrast, 16% of students described themselves as “slightly,” “somewhat,” or “very” conservative, and just 9% described themselves as moderate. The liberal to conservative student ratio was 4:1. In other words, for every conservative student on campus there are four liberal students. How Comfortable are Students Expressing Their Views on Controversial Topics? “If I feel a professor was leaning toward a certain political ideology, I would hesitate to bring up a point that didn’t align with that professor’s in fear that they may let their personal feelings on the topic affect their evaluation of me.” “When I was taking a class on free speech there was a discussion on what that meant and I had an opinion that went against others but I chose to stay silent because I felt like there would be judgment if I said what I wanted to.” Compared to students nationally, students at Stanford were less comfortable expressing disagreement with their professor and expressing themselves on social media. When asked if they felt “somewhat” or “very” comfortable disagreeing with their professor in a written assignment, 53% of Stanford students said this compared to 59% of students nationally. Fewer than two-in-five Stanford students (38%) said they felt comfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor on a controversial topic, and just 30% felt this way about expressing an unpopular opinion to their peers on a social media account tied to their name, compared to 40% nationally for both contexts. When it came to expressing views to their peers in campus settings, roughly three-fifths of Stanford students (61%) said they felt “very” or “somewhat” comfortable expressing their views on a controversial political topic to other students during a discussion in a common campus space, such as a quad, dining hall, or lounge. One-in-five Stanford students reported that they self-censored “fairly” or “very” often – compared to 22% of students nationally – and 72% said they were worried “a lot” or “a little” about damaging their reputation because someone misunderstood something they have said or done – compared to 63% of students nationally. Overall, Stanford University ranked 141st on Comfort Expressing Ideas. What Topics are Difficult to Have Conversations About? “I think there is a general vibe that makes it difficult to express oneself without being ostracized.” “Any insinuation that covid restrictions are sometimes contradictory makes people think you're an anti-masker. Any suggestion for rationality in a conversation about race-relations makes you a racist.” The Israeli/Palestinian conflict was identified by almost half (49%) of Stanford students surveyed as a topic that was difficult to have an open and honest conversation about. Police misconduct (40%) was also identified by a notable portion of students as difficult to discuss. Overall, Stanford University ranked 38th on Openness. Which Speakers are Controversial? “This could refer to any instance of disagreeing with liberal views. Because the school's population is majority liberal, even showing interest in attending a Ben Shapiro talk was frowned upon.” Stanford students demonstrated a fairly large ideological bias when asked about allowing controversial speakers on campus. A majority of students said that all five controversial liberal speakers should be allowed on campus, with the percentage of students saying this ranging from 72% (for a speaker who has promoted the idea that “The Second Amendment should be repealed so that guns can be confiscated.”) to 89% (“Undocumented immigrants should be given the right to vote”). In contrast, allowing all four controversial conservative speakers was staunchly opposed, with percentages in opposition ranging from 54% (“Abortion should be completely illegal.”) to 76% (“Transgender people have a mental disorder.”). Overall, Stanford University ranked 22nd on Tolerance for Liberal Speakers, 65th on Tolerance for Conservative Speakers, 13th on Mean Tolerance, and 151st on Tolerance Difference. What Kinds of Disruptive Conduct are Acceptable? “When students set up outside of a Shapiro speech I knew I’d start a fight if I tried to explain free speech to them.” The students at Stanford University, when compared to students nationally, tended to be more supportive of disruptive conduct to stop a campus speech. Over two-in-three Stanford students (69%) said shouting down a speaker or trying to prevent them from speaking on campus was acceptable to some degree, compared to 62% of students nationally; 45% said it was acceptable to some degree to block other students from attending a campus speech, compared to 37% nationally; and one-in-four (25%) said that using violence to stop a campus speech was acceptable to some degree, compared to 20% of students nationally. Overall, Stanford University ranked 128th on Disruptive Conduct. How is the Administration Perceived? “Someone threw a rock at my friend standing beside me when we were having a public, civil, outdoors conversation about a Constitutional amendment. The rock was large enough to have easily caused serious or even lethal bodily harm to the student. The incident was reported to the university administration, but no action nor statement was publicly taken. That moment really solidified within me the unilateral polarization that the campus represents, both stretching from the lowest level of students up to the highest office of the university's presidency, the lattermost often bearing larger semblances with the stereotypical cowardice of a horrible monarch.” Students perceived the administration’s stance on free speech as clear, with 79% saying it was “extremely,” “very,” or “somewhat” clear that the administration protects free speech on campus. An almost identical percentage, 75%, said that it is “extremely,” “very,” or “somewhat” likely that the administration would defend a speaker’s rights if a speech controversy occurred on campus. Overall, Stanford University ranked 41st on Administrative Support for Free Speech. A Yellow Light School With Plenty of Controversy The speech policies at Stanford University received a yellow light rating from FIRE. When it came to campus speech controversies Stanford University was certainly not a stranger to them. A total of 18 scholars were targeted for sanction between 2019 and July 1, 2022, the highest total for any institution in FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire database. Of these 18 attempts, two did result in sanctions that Stanford was penalized for. Stanford was also penalized for the disinvitation of Joe Lonsdale in 2019. How Can Stanford University Improve? First and foremost, Stanford University can improve their ranking if the administration takes a clear and strong stance in support of free expression. This can be done by making clear statements in support of free expression, continuing to defend scholars if a controversy over their expression erupts, or by revising its speech code policies. These policies include some of Stanford’s sexual harassment policies, student engagement policies, protest and discrimination policies, and policies regarding tolerance, respect, and civility. A strong administrative display of amending one or more of these policies so that they earn a yellow or green light rating would clarify the administration’s stance on free speech and provide a boost in next year’s rankings. Topline Results for Stanford University Are your current courses all online, mostly online, mostly in person, all in person, or an equal mix of online and in person? 14% All online 18% Mostly online 34% Mostly in person 21% All in person 14% Equal mix of online and in-person How comfortable would you feel doing the following on your campus? [Presented in randomized order] Publicly disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic. 13% Very comfortable 25% Somewhat comfortable 31% Somewhat uncomfortable 31% Very uncomfortable Expressing disagreement with one of your professors about a controversial topic in a written assignment. 18% Very comfortable 35% Somewhat comfortable 31% Somewhat uncomfortable 17% Very uncomfortable Expressing your views on a controversial political topic during an in-class discussion. 16% Very comfortable 37% Somewhat comfortable 32% Somewhat uncomfortable 15% Very uncomfortable Expressing your views on a controversial political topic to other students during a discussion in a common campus space such as a quad, dining hall, or lounge. 20% Very comfortable 41% Somewhat comfortable 33% Somewhat uncomfortable 6% Very uncomfortable Expressing an unpopular opinion to your fellow students on a social media account tied to your name. 9% Very comfortable 21% Somewhat comfortable 39% Somewhat uncomfortable 32% Very uncomfortable Student groups often invite speakers to campus to express their views on a range of topics. Regardless of your own views on the topic, should your school ALLOW or NOT ALLOW a speaker on campus who promotes the following idea? [Presented in randomized order] Transgender people have a mental disorder. 13% Definitely should allow this speaker 11% Probably should allow this this speaker 19% Probably should not allow this speaker 57% Definitely should not allow this speaker Abortion should be completely illegal. 15% Definitely should allow this speaker 31% Probably should allow this this speaker 33% Probably should not allow this speaker 21% Definitely should not allow this speaker Black Lives Matter is a hate group. 14% Definitely should allow this speaker 17% Probably should allow this this speaker 25% Probably should not allow this speaker 44% Definitely should not allow this speaker The 2020 Presidential election was stolen. 13% Definitely should allow this speaker 18% Probably should allow this speaker 35% Probably should not allow this speaker 34% Definitely should not allow this speaker The Second Amendment should be repealed so that guns can be confiscated. 22% Definitely should allow this speaker 50% Probably should allow this this speaker 22% Probably should not allow this speaker 6% Definitely should not allow this speaker Undocumented immigrants should be given the right to vote. 46% Definitely should allow this speaker 43% Probably should allow this this speaker 10% Probably should not allow this speaker 1% Definitely should not allow this speaker Getting rid of inequality is more important than protecting the so-called “right” to free speech. 23% Definitely should allow this speaker 53% Probably should allow this this speaker 17% Probably should not allow this speaker 7% Definitely should not allow this speaker White people are collectively responsible for structural racism and use it to protect their privilege. 40% Definitely should allow this speaker 42% Probably should allow this this speaker 16% Probably should not allow this speaker 2% Definitely should not allow this speaker Religious liberty is used as an excuse to discriminate against gays and lesbians. 30% Definitely should allow this speaker 47% Probably should allow this this speaker 13% Probably should not allow this speaker 10% Definitely should not allow this speaker How acceptable would you say it is for students to engage in the following action to protest a campus speaker? [Presented in randomized order] Shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus. 6% Always acceptable 27% Sometimes acceptable 36% Rarely acceptable 31% Never acceptable Blocking other students from attending a campus speech. 2% Always acceptable 7% Sometimes acceptable 36% Rarely acceptable 55% Never acceptable Using violence to stop a campus speech. 1% Always acceptable 5% Sometimes acceptable 20% Rarely acceptable 75% Never acceptable How clear is it to you that your college administration protects free speech on campus? 6% Extremely clear 25% Very clear 47% Somewhat clear 16% Not very clear 6% Not at all clear If a controversy over offensive speech were to occur on your campus, how likely is it that the administration would defend the speaker’s right to express their views? 10% Extremely likely 24% Very likely 41% Somewhat likely 21% Not very likely 5% Not at all likely On your campus, how often have you felt that you could not express your opinion on a subject because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond? 14% Never 25% Rarely 41% Occasionally 11% Fairly often 9% Very often How worried are you about damaging your reputation because someone misunderstands something you have said or done? 25% Worried a lot 47% Worried a little 21% Not very worried 7% Not at all worried How much pressure do you feel to avoid discussing controversial topics in your classes? 16% No pressure at all 33% Slight pressure 33% Some pressure 11% A good deal of pressure 6% A great deal of pressure [Next two questions presented in random order] How would you describe the climate on your campus towards people who do not share your political beliefs? 13% Very supportive 27% Somewhat supportive 45% Somewhat hostile 16% Very hostile How would you describe the climate on your campus towards people who share your political beliefs? 29% Very supportive 41% Somewhat supportive 19% Somewhat hostile 11% Very hostile Where do you think the political views of the average student on campus are on the following scale? 24% Very liberal 43% Somewhat liberal 23% Slightly liberal 7% Moderate, middle-of-the-road 1% Slightly conservative 0% Somewhat conservative 0% Very conservative 1% Haven’t thought much about this 1% Something else Where do you think the political views of the average faculty member on campus are on the following scale? 12% Very liberal 41% Somewhat liberal 28% Slightly liberal 8% Moderate, middle-of-the-road 8% Slightly conservative 11% Somewhat conservative 1% Very conservative 1% Haven’t thought much about this 1% Something else Some students say it can be difficult to have conversations about certain issues on campus. Which of the following issues, if any, would you say are difficult to have an open and honest conversation about on your campus? [Percentage selecting each option] 31% Abortion 28% Affirmative action 23% China 13% Climate change 33% COVID-19 vaccine mandates 28% Economic inequality 26% Freedom of speech 25% Gender inequality 36% Gun control 24% Immigration 49% The Israeli/Palestinian conflict 34% Mask mandates 40% Police misconduct 33% Racial inequality 36% Religion 34% Sexual assault 35% Transgender issues 8% None of the above What campus changes would make you feel that you can express yourself? [Percentage selecting each option] 25% If there were more people of my race. 12% If there were more people of different races than me. 8% If there were more people of my gender. 4% If there were more people of a different gender than me. 9% If there were more people of my religion. 7% If there were more people of different religions than me. 22% If there were more people with my political views. 17% If there were more people with different political views from me. 40% If there were more tolerance of views that some consider hateful. 24% If there were less tolerance for views that some consider hateful. 18% None of the above In politics today, do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat, or something else? 22% Strong Democrat 23% Weak Democrat 16% Independent, lean Democrat 14% Independent 5% Independent, lean Republican 7% Weak Republican 2% Strong Republican 10% Something else Using the following scale, how would you describe your political beliefs? 25% Very liberal 28% Somewhat liberal 11% Slightly liberal 9% Moderate, middle-of-the-road 7% Slightly conservative 7% Somewhat conservative 2% Very conservative 8% I do not identify as a liberal or a conservative 3% Haven’t thought much about this [If “I do not identify as a liberal or a conservative” is selected]: Which of the following best describes your political beliefs? 3% Democratic Socialist 2% Libertarian 4% Something else [write-in] Methodology The College Free Speech Survey was developed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, RealClearEducation, and College Pulse. College Pulse administered the survey. No donors to the project took part in the design or conduct of the survey. The survey was fielded from January 13 to May 31, 2022. These data come from a sample of 44,847 undergraduates who were currently enrolled full-time in four-year degree programs at 208 colleges and universities in the United States. The margin of error for the U.S. undergraduate population is +/- 1 percentage point, and the margin of error for college student sub-demographics ranges from 2 to 5 percentage points. The initial sample was drawn from College Pulse’s American College Student Panel™, which includes more than 630,000 verified undergraduate students and recent alumni at more than 1,500 different two- and four-year colleges and universities in all 50 states. Panel members are recruited by a number of methods to help ensure student diversity in the panel population, including web advertising, permission-based email campaigns, and partnerships with university-affiliated organizations. To ensure the panel reflects the diverse backgrounds and experiences of the American college population, College Pulse recruits panelists from a wide variety of institutions. The panel includes students attending large public universities, small private colleges, online universities, historically Black colleges such as Howard University, women only colleges such as Smith College, and religiously-affiliated colleges such as Brigham Young University. College Pulse uses a two-stage validation process to ensure that all its surveys include only students currently enrolled in two-year or four-year colleges or universities. Students are required to provide an .edu email address to join the panel and, for this survey, had to acknowledge that they were currently enrolled full-time in a four-year degree program. All invitations to complete surveys are sent using the student’s .edu email address or through notification in the College Pulse app that is available on iOS and Android platforms. College Pulse applies a post-stratification adjustment based on demographic distributions from multiple data sources, including the 2017 Current Population Survey (CPS), the 2016 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), and the 2019-20 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The post-stratification weight rebalances the sample based on a number of important benchmark attributes, such as race, gender, class year, voter registration status, and financial aid status. The sample weighting is accomplished using an iterative proportional fitting (IFP) process that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables. Weights are trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results. The use of these weights in statistical analysis ensures that the demographic characteristics of the sample closely approximate the demographic characteristics of the target populations. Even with these adjustments, surveys may be subject to error or bias due to question wording, context, and order effects. For further information, please see https://collegepulse.com/methodology. College Free Speech Rankings The College Free Speech Rankings are based on a composite score of ten sub-components. Six of these assessed student perceptions of different aspects of the speech climate on their campus. The other four assessed administrative behavior in regards to free expression on campus. Student Perceptions The student perception sub-components included: •Comfort Expressing Ideas: Students were asked about how comfortable they felt expressing their views on controversial topics in five different campus settings (e.g., in class, in the dining hall). Options ranged from “very uncomfortable” to “very comfortable.” They were also asked about how often they felt they could not express their opinion because of how other students, faculty, or the administration would respond (options ranged from “never” to “very often”); if they were worried about damaging their reputation because someone misunderstands something they have said or done (options ranged from “worried a lot” to “not at all worried”); and, if they felt pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics in their classes (options ranged from “no pressure at all” to “a great deal of pressure”). Responses were coded so that higher scores indicated greater comfort expressing ideas. The maximum number of points was 34. •Tolerance for Liberal Speakers: Students were asked whether four speakers espousing views offensive to conservatives (e.g., “Undocumented immigrants should be given the right to vote”) should be allowed on campus, regardless of whether they personally agreed with the speaker’s message. Options ranged from “definitely should not allow this speaker” to “definitely should allow this speaker,” and responses were coded so that higher scores indicated more tolerance of the speaker (i.e., they should be allowed on campus). The maximum number of points was 16. •Tolerance for Conservative Speakers: Students were also asked whether four speakers espousing views offensive to liberals (e.g., “Black Lives Matter is a hate group”) should be allowed on campus, regardless of whether they personally agreed with the speaker’s message. Scoring was done in the same manner as the Tolerance for Liberal Speakers sub-component, thus the maximum number of points was 16. •Disruptive Conduct: Students were asked how acceptable or unacceptable it is to engage in different methods of protest against a campus speaker. These included “Shouting down a speaker or trying to prevent them from speaking on campus,” “Blocking other students from attending a campus speech,” and “Using violence to stop a campus speech.” Options ranged from “always acceptable” to “never acceptable,” and were coded so that higher scores were indicative of less acceptance of disruptive conduct. The maximum number of points was 12. •Administrative Support: Students were asked about how clear their campus administration’s stance on free speech was and how likely the administration would be to defend a speaker's right to express their views if a controversy over speech occurred on campus. For the administrative stance question, response options ranged from “not at all clear” to “extremely clear”; for the administrative controversy question, response options ranged from “not at all likely” to “extremely likely.” Options were coded so that higher scores were indicative of greater clarity and greater likelihood of defending a speaker’s rights. The maximum number of points was 10. •Openness: Finally, students were asked which topics (e.g., abortion, freedom of speech, gun control, racial inequality) were difficult to have open conversations about on campus. Students also could select an option stating that none of these issues were difficult to discuss. These options were coded so that higher scores were indicative of fewer issues being selected. Seventeen issues were asked about, so the maximum number of points was 17. Two additional constructs, Mean Tolerance and Tolerance Difference, were computed from the Tolerance for Liberal/Conservative Speaker sub-components. Tolerance Difference was calculated by subtracting Tolerance for Conservative Speakers from Tolerance for Liberal Speakers and then taking the absolute value. Administrative Behavior The administrative behavior sub-components included: •Supported Scholars 2019 to 2022: The number of scholars whose speech rights were supported by the administration at a school during a free expression controversy over a four-year time period as recorded by FIRE’s Scholar’s Under Fire Database.[5] This support was unequivocal; if an administration condemned the speech, apologized for the scholar’s expression, or sanctioned the scholar, despite issuing a statement of support, it was not included in a school’s total. •Sanctioned Scholars 2019 to 2022: The number of scholars sanctioned (e.g., placed under investigation; suspended; terminated) at a school over a four-year time period as recorded by FIRE’s Scholar’s Under Fire Database.[6] •Successful Disinvitations 2019 to 2022: The number of successful disinvitations that occurred at a school over a four-year time period as recorded by FIRE’s Campus Disinvitation Database.[7] •FIRE Speech Code Rating: FIRE rates the written policies governing student speech at more than 475 institutions of higher education in the United States. Three substantive ratings are possible: “Red,” “Yellow,” and “Green” (termed “red light,” “yellow light,” and “green light,” respectively). A “red light” rating indicates that the institution has at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech. Colleges with “yellow light” ratings have policies that restrict a more limited amount of protected expression or, by virtue of their vague wording, could too easily be used to restrict protected expression. The policies of an institution with a “green light” rating do not seriously threaten speech, although this rating does not indicate whether a college actively supports free expression. Finally, a fourth rating, “warning,” is assigned to a private college or university when its policies clearly and consistently state that it prioritizes other values over a commitment to freedom of speech. “Warning” schools, therefore, were not ranked, and their overall scores are presented separately in this report.[8] Overall Score To create an overall score for each college, we sum the student sub-components of Comfort Expressing Ideas, Mean Tolerance, Disruptive Conduct, Administrative Support, and Openness. Then we subtract from this sum the Tolerance Difference. By including Mean Tolerance (as opposed to Tolerance for Liberal Speakers and Tolerance for Conservative Speakers) and subtracting Tolerance Difference, we are adjusting each school’s score to account for the possibility that ideologically homogeneous student bodies may result in a campus that appears to have a strong culture of free expression, but is actually hostile to the views of an ideological minority – whose views students may almost never encounter on campus. To account for how the administration handles speech controversies on campus, we incorporated three administrative behavior sub-components. We gave a bonus point to each school’s score when the administration successfully supported (i.e., did not sanction and/or offer conflicting messaging) a scholar during a free expression controversy. We decreased this bonus by a quarter of a point each year, so we awarded a full point for support given in 2022, three quarters of a point for support given in 2021, half a point for support given in 2020, and one quarter of a point for support given in 2019. We also applied penalties when the administration sanctioned a scholar or when a speaker was disinvited from campus. Each time a scholar was sanctioned (e.g., investigated, suspended, terminated) we subtracted one point from a school’s score. If the administration terminated a scholar, we subtracted two points, and if that scholar was tenured, we subtracted three points. When the sanction did not result in termination, we decreased the penalty by a quarter of a point each year, so a full point was subtracted for a sanction in 2022, while three quarters of a point was subtracted for a sanction in 2021, half a point was subtracted for sanction in 2020, and one quarter of a point for sanction in 2019. Finally, each time a successful disinvitation, we subtracted one point from a school’s score.[9] After we applied the bonuses and penalties, we standardized each school’s score so that the average score was 50.00 and the standard deviation was 10.00. Following standardization, we added one standard deviation to the final score of colleges whose speech codes received a Green rating, we subtracted half a standard deviation from the final score of colleges that received a Yellow rating, and we subtracted one standard deviation from the final score of schools that received a Red or Warning rating. Overall Score = (50 + (ZRaw Overall Score)(10)) + FIRE Rating ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The Scholars Under Fire Database includes both supported and sanctioned scholars. It can be found on FIRE’s website at https://www.thefire.org/research/publications/miscellaneous-publications/scholars-under-fire/. For 2022, the cutoff date for inclusion was July 1, 2022. [2] The Campus Disinvitation Database can be found on FIRE’s website at https://www.thefire.org/research/disinvitation-database/. For 2022, the cutoff date for inclusion was July 1, 2022. [3] The Spotlight Database can be found on FIRE’s website at https://www.thefire.org/resources/spotlight/. [4] A total of 208 schools were surveyed, however 5 of them received a “warning” rating from FIRE for their speech policies. An overall score was calculated for these schools but they were not assigned a ranking. [5] Scholars Under Fire Database: https://www.thefire.org/research/publications/miscellaneous-publications/scholars-under-fire/ [6] Scholars Under Fire Database: https://www.thefire.org/research/publications/miscellaneous-publications/scholars-under-fire/ [7] Campus Disinvitation Database: https://www.thefire.org/research/disinvitation-database/ [8] The Spotlight Database is on FIRE’s website at https://www.thefire.org/resources/spotlight/. [9] In the 2023 College Free Speech Rankings, penalties for terminations and successful disinvitations will begin to decay in the same manner that the penalty for a sanctioned scholar decays. The Contrarian Ethos By Mimi St. Johns | From the Stanford Review, November 14, 2022, https://stanfordreview.org/editors-note-the-contrarian-ethos/ [Editor's note: Mimi St. Johns is currently a junior at Stanford studying both Computer Science and German.] ​ The philosopher G.K. Chesterton once quipped, “freedom of speech means practically, in our modern civilization, that we must only talk about unimportant things.” At the moment, freedom of speech is more restricted than possibly any other time in the history of Stanford — and more broadly America. Depressing as that may be, this predicament often allows for contrarians to have an even greater effect. In the Review’s founding decade, the 1980s, politically incorrect hits like Caddyshack, Airplane, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High played in theaters. George Carlin and Rodney Dangerfield, still in their irreverent prime, dared to tour college campuses. Donahue and Oprah broadcasted taboo social, cultural, and political topics onto American screens. The Latchkey Kids — a generation of children with little parental supervision — found their way into the world. America has changed significantly since then. Now, like it or not, we’re in a culture war. At Stanford, the current coming-of-age generation is not the freewheeling Latchkey Kids but one of sheltered students, protected from anything that is possibly offensive by a nanny state of a university. The 1980s were a time when unpopular opinions were still tolerated by the public, without mass-scale condemnation or cancellation. Stanford was still the spot for intelligent bohemians who tolerated disagreement. Now, we’re at a period in Stanford’s history when many, understandably, have a bleak view of this university and their place in it. Students not only face a battle when espousing dissenting opinions, but they also deal with a campus bereft of genuine social connection and the fading geographic relevance of Silicon Valley. While we can only speculate about what exactly the next decade will look like, we can be certain of how the Review and contrarianism fit into it. Minority opinions are not only crucial, but they can also be supremely impactful in the next decade. Perhaps this is because we find ourselves in a time where that which is most pertinent can no longer wait. Contrarianism is most needed now. Throughout the past 35 years, the Review is the one place on Stanford’s campus where free speech has been consistently celebrated. This publication is a home for contrarians, intellectual outlaws, and those with controversial opinions. Though the inquisitive and irreverent ethos of Stanford is dying, it’s always alive in individuals and in the Review. Contrarianism is not disagreement purely for the sake of opposition, but unfiltered thought for the purpose of intellectual engagement. Tolerance for unorthodox beliefs is at a modern low. This is perhaps most prominent on college campuses. A majority of college students feel uncomfortable expressing their opinions and some even think violence is an acceptable reaction to speech with which they disagree. Instead of more conscious learners, modern higher education is building mobs. These hordes continually degrade the fabric of university education and culture. This struggle exemplifies Stanford’s gradual stagnation from an academic standpoint. We see it in the injection of leftist ideology into every facet of university life. Humanities courses often cover obscure topics and focus on identity politics. Engineering and science courses — ones that most think should be the most concrete and logical — are often not. If we cannot genuinely discuss big ideas and debate in the highest echelons of American education, then where does intellectual honesty exist? How does one instill it in at least some of the crop of future leaders that Stanford indelibly spawns? The answer lies in small groups of students and faculty who remain willing to question the leftist orthodoxy and argue for heterodox opinions. When institutions fail, it’s up to individuals to save our society’s fundamental values. Ernst Jünger, a German reactionary thinker, wrote “when all institutions have become equivocal or even disreputable, and when open prayers are heard even in churches not for the persecuted but for the persecutors, at this point moral responsibility passes into the hands of individuals, or, more accurately, into the hands of any still unbroken individuals.” This is the spirit of contrarianism. The courage required makes people more confident and better writers. We can rise out of the ashes of a broken university. This is not a time to be complacent: we must be proactive. For the remainder of Volume LXVI, we’ll continue to expose woke antics in every corner of campus, offer thoughtful and intellectual pieces, and showcase the intellectual vitality of our quite disagreeable community. Most importantly, we’ll continue to build an even stronger heterodox political scene at Stanford. We are the intellectual rebels and most importantly, you can be too! For any students lost and searching for a place where rational intellectual engagement is still alive, drop by a meeting or consider joining the Review. You have the opportunity to expose and elucidate some of the most crucial arguments of the decade. This is a moment that should not, and cannot, be wasted. Fiat Lux, Mimi St Johns Stanford’s Prof. Gerald Gunther Warned About Limits on Campus Free Speech Three Decades Ago By Ronald L. Collins, March 29, 2023 Three decades ago, Stanford Law School’s renowned constitutionalist Gerald Gunther (1927-2002) predicted the problem that today has engulfed his law school in a heated free speech controversy. Gunther did so in a debate published in the Stanford Lawyer in 1990. His exchange with professor Charles Lawrence centered around the topic of whether “one person’s freedom of expression may be another’s verbal assault — a dilemma with First Amendment implications.” Below are a few passages from Professor Gunther’s comments: "[Limits of free speech on campuses] are not only incompatible with the mission and meaning of a university; they also send exactly the wrong message from academia to society as a whole. University campuses should exhibit greater, not less, freedom of expression than prevails in society at large. "Proponents of new limits argue that historic First Amendment rights must be balanced against 'Stanford’s commitment to the diversity of ideas and persons.' Clearly, there is ample room and need for vigorous University action to combat racial and other discrimination. But curbing freedom of speech is the wrong way to do so. The proper answer to bad speech is usually more and better speech-not new laws, litigation, and repression. "Lest it be thought that I am insensitive to the pain imposed by expressions of racial or religious hatred, let me say that I have suffered that pain and empathize with others under similar verbal assault. My deep belief in the principles of the First Amendment arises in part from my own experiences." ​ Gunther’s personal history influenced his views on free speech. The German-born American constitutional law scholar was in primary school when Hitler gained power and experienced “virulent anti-Semitism.” One Nazi teacher called Gunther a “Jew-pig” and “segregated him from his classmates.” In response, his family fled Germany in 1938, “only a few hours after witnessing the destruction of their town synagogue.” Reflecting back on those experiences, Gunther explained: “I lived in a country where ideological orthodoxy reigned and where the opportunity for dissent was severely limited. The lesson I have drawn from my childhood in Nazi Germany and my happier adult life in this country is the need to walk the sometimes difficult path of denouncing the bigots’ hateful ideas with all my power, yet at the same time challenging any community’s attempt to suppress hateful ideas by force of law. . . . Obviously, given my own experience, I do not quarrel with the claim that words can do harm.” Such harm notwithstanding, Gunther felt compelled to defend such expression: “I firmly deny that a showing of harm suffices to deny First Amendment protection, and I insist on the elementary First Amendment principle that our Constitution usually protects even offensive, harmful expression. “That is why — at the risk of being thought callous or doctrinaire — I feel compelled to speak out against the attempt by some members of the Stanford community to enlarge the area of forbidden speech under the Fundamental Standard. Such proposals, in my view, seriously undervalue the First Amendment and far too readily endanger its precious content. Limitations on free expression beyond those established by law should be eschewed in an institution committed to diversity and the First Amendment.” For Gunther, even offensive speech — the very kind railed against by Stanford’s Tirien Steinbach (associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion) — deserved protection: “[S]peech should not and cannot be banned simply because it is ‘offensive’ to substantial parts or a majority of a community. The refusal to suppress offensive speech is one of the most difficult obligations the free speech principle imposes upon all of us; yet it is also one of the First Amendment’s greatest glories — indeed it is a central test of a community’s commitment to free speech.” Events at Stanford Law School Protesting Federal Judge Kyle Duncan (Updated) ​ On March 9, 2023, a Stanford law school student organization (the Federalist Society) had invited Judge Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to give a talk and answer questions about specific cases and how they relate to recent Supreme Court developments. Unfortunately, the judge was continually heckled by a group of protestors and then the law school’s Associate Dean for DEI read to the judge and the attendees her previously prepared remarks largely attacking the judge. The judge eventually was escorted from the school by a security detail that intervened after there were mounting concerns. As was reported in our July 28, 2023 Newsletter, on July 20, 2023, Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez announced that Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach had resigned from Stanford Law School. The text of Dean Martinez' announcement is set forth in our July 28 Newsletter. ​ A Vimeo video showing key portions of the protest against Judge Duncan and the intervention by the law school’s Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach is available here. And here are some items about the issues being raised (see also comments from our readers here): Law School Dean Jenny Martinez’s Letter to the Community A copy of Stanford law school Dean Jenny Martinez’s March 22, 2023 letter to the Stanford law school community is available here: ​ From David Lat – Dean Jenny Martinez Speaks Out About the Protest of Judge Duncan at Stanford Law School: https://davidlat.substack.com/p/dean-jenny-martinez-speaks-out-about Excerpt: In the world of campus free-speech issues, certain pronouncements have acquired canonical status. There’s the Kalven Report (1967). The Woodward Report (1974). The Chicago Principles (2014). And now we have a new addition to their august ranks: the Martinez Memo (2023). This is what leadership looks like . . . [Website editor's note: See our own compilation of the Chicago Trifecta here.] ​ As I’ve said before, I wish Judge Duncan had been more restrained in reacting to the protestors. But as I told Nico Perrino of FIRE when we discussed L’Affaire Duncan on his free-speech podcast, So To Speak, that’s not really the news; the news is that yet another event at an elite law school was subject to a disruptive protest. (And in fairness to Judge Duncan, let’s not forget that he was provoked—by protestors who said, among other things, “we hope your daughters get raped”—and he tried to give his prepared remarks for quite some time before finally criticizing the hecklers.) ​ See also prior posting: https://davidlat.substack.com/p/yale-law-is-no-longer-1for-free-speech ​ WSJ Op-ed by Stanford Law School Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach The WSJ published an op-ed by Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach in which she expressed her own views about the incident. A copy of that op-ed can be found at this link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/diversity-and-free-speech-can-coexist-at-stanford-steinbach-duncan-law-school-protest-dei-27103829?mod=opinion_lead_pos5 Excerpt: Diversity, equity and inclusion plans must have clear goals that lead to greater inclusion and belonging for all community members. How we strike a balance between free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion is worthy of serious, thoughtful and civil discussion. Free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion are means to an end, and one that I think many people can actually agree on: to live in a country with liberty and justice for all its people. From Above the Law – Mandatory Programming at Stanford Law: https://abovethelaw.com/2023/03/stanford-law-protects-their-speakers-from-institutional-orthodoxy-and-coercion-by-forcing-their-students-to-undergo-mandatory-educational-programming/ Excerpt: The letter [from law school Dean Jenny Martinez] is well written enough, but there are some obvious questions that remain after reading. What is going to be the content of the half-day thought etiquette course? Will there be an arts and crafts segment that details how distracting your protest cards are allowed to be? Will the civility for dummies course have some defensive strategems for what to do if the esteemed speaker calls you some flavor of idiot like Judge Duncan did? There should be some elaboration, given the recognition of behavior that is freely within one’s rights to express but still unfit for whatever culture Stanford is aiming for. . .. [On the other hand,] there are some views worth nipping in the bud, whose tacit approval in the name of tolerance and civility enable social mores that violate tolerance. From NY Times – Free Speech Doesn’t Mean Free Rein to Shout Down Others: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/opinion/free-speech-campus.html Excerpt: . . .an ideological monoculture doesn’t prepare students for these kinds of confrontations. Instead, they’re provided with a mountain of confirmation bias divorced from real-world context. . .. Those who strike down free speech aren’t liberators; they’re oppressive (even when they silence powerful men). And when aspiring lawyers act oppressively, they don’t just undermine liberty; they undermine the very profession they seek to join. From National Review: https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/stanford-dei-dean-escalates-battle-against-law-school-dean/ Excerpt: [Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach] never acknowledges or apologizes [in her WSJ op-ed] for her own gross misconduct. On the contrary, she defends her conduct in terms that directly conflict with Martinez’s criticism of her: She aimed “to give voice to the [protesting] students.” She “wanted Judge Duncan to understand why some students were protesting his presence on campus” so that he could ponder “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” So much for Martinez’s admonition that administrators “should not insert themselves into debate with their own criticism of the speaker’s views and the suggestion that the speaker reconsider whether what they plan to say is worth saying.” From a law school alum: http://the18thcenturyclub.com/free-speech-at-stanford-associate-dean-for-dei-urges-balancing-test-between-free-speech-and-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/ Excerpt: The fundamental flaw in this reasoning [by the law school’s Associate Dean for DEI] is the assumption that free speech should be “balanced” against diversity, equity, and inclusion, or any other societal goal. Balancing free speech against any goal of society (Who decides what are and ranks societal goals? Who balances? What standard or test is used to balance?) is a slippery slope that leads very quickly to the curtailment of free speech. Academic Freedom Videos from the November 2022 Academic Freedom Conference Sponsored by the Classical Liberalism Initiative at Stanford ​ In early November 2022, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business hosted a two-day conference on issues related to academic freedom and with panelists and attendees nationwide and even worldwide. Videos of each of the individual panels can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@stanfordcli . Also, here’s a link to the conference agenda: https://cli.stanford.edu/events/conference-symposium/academic-freedom-conference . ​ This program was organized by some very talented Stanford faculty who, in addition to their other teaching and research, are leading a unit at Stanford known as the Classical Liberalism Initiative and which sponsors a regular series of webinars found here: https://cli.stanford.edu/ . Faculty Letter re Restoring Academic Freedom [Editor’s note: The following letter was drafted by a diverse group of Stanford faculty members from various departments throughout the University. The letter has now garnered signatures from nearly 1,700 faculty members from colleges and universities throughout the country and worldwide and with the number increasing daily. A list of all the signatories can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_vTk2EPGqe_4pjj9KntQLKAKO8ZqfL0Pquj89TlazYA/edit] ​ The mission of the university is the pursuit of truth and the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. A robust culture of free speech and academic freedom is essential to that mission: Intellectual progress often threatens the status quo and is resisted. Bad ideas are only weeded out by unfettered critical analysis. Unfortunately, academic freedom and freedom of speech are rapidly declining in academic institutions, including universities, professional societies, journals, and funding agencies. Researchers whose findings challenge dominant narratives find it increasingly hard to get published, funded, hired, or promoted. They, and teachers who question current orthodoxies, are harassed in person and online, ostracized, subjected to opaque university disciplinary procedures, fired, or canceled by other means. Employment, promotion, and funding are increasingly subject to implicit or explicit political litmus tests, including approval from bureaucrats seeking to impose a social agenda such as specific views of social justice or DEI principles. Activism is replacing inquiry and debate. An increasing number of simple facts and ideas cannot even be mentioned without risk of retribution. Public high-profile victims are the tip of the iceberg. An atmosphere of fear and self-censorship pervades academia. Many faculty and students believe they cannot voice their views, question dogmas, investigate certain topics, or question the loss of academic freedom without risking ostracization and damage to their careers. Knowledge is lost, and many talented scholars are leaving academia. Universities and professional societies are failing to resist such illiberal forces–which have arisen many times throughout history, from all sides of the political spectrum –and to defend academic freedom and freedom of speech. Many universities and professional organizations now qualify their support for freedom: free speech, they say, so long as the speech does not offend or exclude; free speech, so long as it does not challenge institutionally approved narratives and conceptions of social justice; free speech, but only within narrow credentialed boundaries. These restrictions are counterproductive, even to their goal of advancing a particular ideology. People infer from censorship a desire to protect lies from being exposed. Historically, censorship has supported monstrous regimes and their ideologies. Bad ideas are only defeated by argument and persuasion, not by suppression. True justice and freedom cannot exist without each other. The loss of academic freedom results in part from a leadership crisis. While many university leaders issue statements that support open debate, they nonetheless oversee and expand politicized bureaucracies that harass, intimidate, and punish those who express views deemed to be incorrect and enforce ideological conformity in hiring and promotions. A boilerplate generic defense of free speech does little good if at the same time university administrators conduct investigations in secret, without due process, and based on anonymous complaints; if administrators publicly ostracize the victim to all potential future employers. Boards of trustees, alumni organizations, donors, government granting agencies, and other institutional stakeholders likewise fail to uphold the principles of academic freedom. Universities and professional organizations are instead moving headlong into institutional political and ideological activism. Departments and other university units make public statements of political views, thus effectively branding as heretics -and even bigots- members who may question those causes. Increasingly, centers and “accelerators” are devoted to political and policy advocacy, advocacy of the supporting ideologies, and suppression of competing ideas. Professional organizations and journals announce, all too often, that certain kinds of research, no matter how methodologically valid, may not be published, and have turned to advocacy. University bureaucracies demand that certain authors be included and others excluded from reading lists and classroom discussion. What can be done? We call for all Universities, academic associations, journals, and national academies to adopt the “Chicago Trifecta,” consisting of the Chicago Principles of free speech, the Kalven Report requirement for institutional neutrality on political and social matters, and the Shils report making academic contribution the sole basis for hiring and promotion. The Kalven report emphasizes, “To perform its mission in society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.’’ The University and its administrative subunits must abstain from taking position on the political issues of the day: “While the university is the home and sponsor of critics, it is not itself the critic and therefore cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness.” “The neutrality of the university as an institution arises … not from lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.” We also call for faculty to create (or join existing) non-partisan associations, aimed at defending these values on campus, and at a national level such as FIRE, the Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, FAIR and ACTA. Professional organizations should prioritize the defense of academic freedom and free speech of their members. Many universities have officially adopted the Chicago Principles. Robust structures must be developed to uphold these principles. Faculty under fire from student groups, other faculty, deans and administrators, or university staff, must be able to effectively assert their freedom of speech and inquiry by appealing to those statements. Universities must deploy safeguards to ensure that administrators work to uphold these principles rather than to undermine them. University disciplinary procedures must become transparent, following basic centuries-old protections of the accused such as the right to see and challenge evidence, confront witnesses against them, the right to representation, and innocence until proven guilty. University leaders must also promote and institutionalize free speech and academic freedom by concrete actions. Freedom is a culture, not merely a set of rules, and a culture must be nurtured. Free speech, free inquiry, tolerance for opposing views, meeting such views with argument, logic and fact, abstaining from ad-hominem attacks, character assassination, doxing and other unethical behavior must be highlighted in the orientation materials for all new students and employees. Freedom comes with a culture of responsibility, but responsibilities are better enforced by social norms than by extensive rules enforced by non-academic bureaucrats. If community members or groups petition school leaders for the sanction or punishment of a faculty member or a student for expressing their point of view, university leaders should publicly and clearly respond with a statement affirming that the University is a place to discuss and debate all views, and that an attempt to punish others for having “incorrect” views is incompatible with the community standards of the school. The University should also commit to all students, faculty, and employees, that it will not punish or sanction free expression. How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test As many readers know, Prof. Jay Bhattacharya, who has been at Stanford for over 30 years, was subjected to extreme criticism and hostility at Stanford in the past three years. And the controversy was solely over a position Prof. Bhattacharya had taken regarding what became known as The Great Barrington Declaration , now with nearly a million signatories worldwide. ​ Read here Prof. Bhattacharya’s personal description of what he encounte red, and why he believes Stanford failed the academic freedom test. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Prof. Bhattacharya, in our view and that of increasing numbers of others, Stanford’s leadership fell woefully short in protecting Prof. Bhattacharya’s right to raise important scientific and social issues. It brought to mind Galileo putting forth the preposterous (at the time) idea that earth might revolve around the sun and not the other way around, and having the elites at the time convict Galileo and others of heresy which potentially carried the death penalty. In our view at least, Stanford’s administrators, faculty and even trustees fell far short of their obligations to demonstrate that Stanford is a place that cherishes and protects speech and the freedom to pursue important areas of inquiry, even if unpopular at the time. ​ This also is another reason we urge Stanford to adopt the Chicago Trifecta (freedom of expression, the university’s role in political and social matters, and criteria for academic appointments) posted here along with the Back to Basics reforms we have posted here . ACTA Issues a Challenge to Stanford Regarding Academic Freedom ACTA (the American Council of Trustees and Alumni) has issued a challenge to Stanford’s faculty, students and alumni on issues of free speech and academic freedom. Their press release can be found here , and an ACTA webpage that is devoted to the Stanford challenge is here . We have posted the related video below, which is also available at YouTube here . According to ACTA’s website, the group is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting academic excellence, academic freedom, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities. Their challenge to Stanford, as they have done with other major colleges and universities: commit to a culture of free expression, foster civil discourse, cultivate intellectual diversity, break down barriers to free expression, and advance leadership accountability. And with specific action items listed at their website for each of these five goals. ​ While our Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking group was not involved in creating this challenge, we think the issues it raises are very important ones for all of Stanford’s faculty, students and alumni, and we thus hope the issues will receive appropriate discussion and resolution. We also note that the challenge makes reference to the Chicago Trifecta, something we have long endorsed and is posted at our Chicago Trifecta page. ​ Further information about ACTA and the initiatives it sponsors can be found here , and if you have any thoughts about the challenge or the issues it raises, please feel free to submit them at our Contact Us page. Student Life Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students An article titled “Stanford’s War Against Its Own Students” was recently published by The Free Press (the Substack publication created several years ago by former NY Times editor Bari Weiss). The article raises concerns about Stanford’s Office of Community Standards and related administrative units, including their involvement in cases involving residential education, student discipline, the Katie Meyer suicide and other items. The article further notes that Stanford now has more than 10,000 administrators who oversee the 7,761 undergraduate and 9,565 graduate students—"almost enough for each student to have their own personal butler.” A copy of the article is available at this link . And we again call your attention to our proposed reforms regarding student matters at our Back to Basics webpage. The Current Student Climate at Stanford [Editor's note: In addition to the main theme in a recent 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 to 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 ​ ​ Requeste d 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 Inside 'Stanford's War on Fun': Tensions Mount Over University's Handling of Social Life By Theo Baker, Stanford Daily, October 24, 2022 ​ On the first Friday of the academic year, a group of students wandered aimlessly through campus, cutting the silence with music played from a portable speaker. They took turns climbing lamp posts and pushed shopping carts filled with beer through Main Quad. One wore a shirt emblazoned with “Stanford Hates Fun” written in red marker. This was, perhaps, what passed for fun after unclear instructions from University administrators forced the Kappa Sigma fraternity to postpone its annual Eurotrash event, typically the first all-campus party of the year. In a normal year, the postponement of a single party would not be cause for alarm. But to some frustrated students, the delay was yet another example of University pressure to restrict student social life. Across more than a dozen interviews with The Daily, students alleged that Stanford has exerted pressure through its policies, lack of communication and adversarial approach to party registration and funding. The University, on the other hand, has maintained that it has worked to provide social opportunities for students during this academic year, the first in two years free of widespread pandemic restrictions. But a University spokesperson broadly declined to comment on specific allegations raised by students for this article, and numbers provided by the spokesperson indicate that the number of social events on campus has fallen sharply. There were just 45 parties registered on campus during the first four weeks of the fall quarter, compared with 158 in the same period in 2019, according to Student Affairs spokesperson Pat Harris. Student concerns are also not going away: one month after Eurotrash was postponed, four students, including mascots from both Stanford and Arizona State University, walked a 40-foot banner with the same “Stanford Hates Fun” slogan into the middle of a football game during Reunion Homecoming. Without alternatives, students and safety advocates warned that dangerous decision-making, including solitary drinking or rebellious adventures such as pole-climbing, is on the rise. Freshmen this year describe wandering campus Friday and Saturday nights in search of an open party or even trekking to San Jose State University in search of social engagement. Where music and loud laughter once were prevalent, weekends are often much quieter. Moritz Stephan ’24, president of the Sigma Nu (SNU) fraternity, said communication with the administration about hosting social events for non-members broke down in the months leading up to the new school year. “There was no guidance to any organizations about what the rules were going to be for this quarter until the Friday of the first week of classes, which is crazy,” he said. Stephan said he and other Greek life leaders reached out to administrators repeatedly asking for guidance. In addition to the lack of communication, Stephan charged that the administration’s policies on social life and the resulting lack of options have led the existing parties to be dangerously overcrowded. “When you do host [parties], there are just way too many people,” Stephan said. “Last year, there were a couple where 600 to 800 [underclassmen were] trying to storm into our house, breaking through windows, physically and verbally assaulting members doing door security. And we just had to call the police on ourselves to, like, get everything cleared out.” Harris declined to comment on the allegations that the University did not provide adequate and timely guidance, and on the threat posed by overcrowded parties. 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.” Arman Sharma ’24, author of the Review op-ed, said he wrote his piece in response to “dead silent” bike rides home on weekend nights. He said his friends in the Kappa Alpha (KA) fraternity told him “about the bureaucratic nightmare that they had to go through to get [the annual KAbo party] approved. And I was like, this doesn’t really make sense for a college campus. [One] like this, in particular, that has been known as America’s dream school for a very long time.” Complaints have spread beyond the initial concentration of those in or around Greek life circles — according to several students, a marked decline in social events of all types has swept Stanford as a direct result of actions taken by the administration. One Voluntary Student Organization leader, who requested anonymity because much of the group’s funding is supplied by the office they criticized, said, “You feel like you’re being audited by the IRS to get boba for people.” The student said the University is “excessively bureaucratic” and those trying to host events are “burnt out” from trying to navigate a ruleset that “has expanded and [adds] challenges that don’t need to be there.” Harris, who also responded on behalf of the Office of Student Engagement, wrote that the University has worked to expand social opportunities. “Student Affairs, student leaders, and campus partners have been working earnestly to provide many and vibrant social options for undergraduates this fall,” Harris wrote. “We now have funds specifically earmarked to support all Row houses, Greek and non-Greek, in hosting all-neighborhood or all-campus events,” Harris added. But some students alleged that programs like Cardinal Nights have not been funded and advertised enough to serve as real alternatives, especially since they have been actively hampered by changing school policies. (Cardinal Nights disappeared in September 2021 after a departmental reshuffling, though it has returned under new management.) And other efforts have proven ineffective. In April 2022, the University created a Student Social Life Accelerator Task Force, claiming “Stanford has long been known for its fun, irreverent, whimsical social scene. Yet it just hasn’t felt as vibrant as it could be.” According to students, the task force has failed to make progress. (The co-chairs of the task force did not respond to a request for comment.) Other policies have also served as cause for concern among some in the student body, including changes to the alcohol policy in May 2021. Multiple members of residential staff said that the changes reversed a previous “open door” understanding, where students who were underage could drink in their rooms under supervision from their residential staff. 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. Many students echoed the danger they felt this policy caused students. A 5-SURE on Foot employee, who requested anonymity in fear of retaliation from superiors, said the new alcohol policy “made our job a lot worse. I’ve seen firsthand the side effects of that which are, like, really catastrophic. Last year and this year I’ve seen people extremely drunk, some slipping on the verge of alcohol poisoning, just on their own” because they don’t have safer alternatives. Stephan shares this concern for underclassmen. “I’m of age,” Stephan said. “I just went to San Francisco with my friends. And the number of freshmen that I saw there — girls by themselves, trying to get into crappy bars in bad areas with fake IDs — was just scary.” When approached with these concerns about the alcohol policy, Harris declined to comment, and Dean of Students Mona Hicks did not respond to a request for comment. Eurotrash eventually did take place at the end of Week 2, but the party was shut down at 11 p.m. after a student was taken to the hospital. The first major all-campus party was held the third week of the quarter at Sigma Phi Epsilon (SigEp). Leo Rossitter ’25, a sober monitor at the party which left little room for dancing much less for conversation, said, “Social definitely has a lot more headaches now. The University is putting up barriers [that] are unnecessary.” When asked why, he said he “[couldn’t] speak to that.” Rossitter’s restraint was echoed by a number of other sources. More than 30 students involved in campus social life and employees involved in alcohol and social life policy declined to be interviewed, fearing retribution for being associated with criticisms of the University. When asked whether they would be comfortable with including some of their anodyne quotes in this article with attribution, the club leader whose funds come from the University said: “Ah, sorry, but the perception would be terrible if I’m associated in any way.” Other sources were similarly skittish. Claudio Aguilar ’24, the president of SigEp who had agreed to an on-the-record interview, stood up and walked out of an interview after being told he couldn’t review the article in advance, which is The Daily’s policy. Some of their concerns were not unfounded. When the University learned that a SUPER employee had spoken with The Daily for this article, Joe Kaczorowski, assistant director at SUPER, emailed 5-SURE student-workers telling them any conversations with the media “need to be cleared by me first.” The Daily reviewed materials and policies from the SUPER office extending back several years and could not find records of such a policy. When asked where this policy had appeared in writing previously, Kaczorowski declined to comment. Stephan said that with the current administration, “We have to be hyper-cautious. [It’s] a big reason why almost all Greek parties aren’t open to everyone anymore; we have to control the risk and control the liability.” The alternative to this tiptoeing, he said, is clear: Last spring, all on the same day, the administration “sent basically every Greek org an investigation letter.” Over the summer, they hired outside lawyers to investigate the fraternities for their various potential transgressions. The night of the SigEp party, DJs shut off the music at around 12:34 a.m., a strategy several brothers described as an attempt to get the freshmen to leave. Jack Givhan ’25 summed it up in an interview at the party. “This is the only thing going on tonight.” Theo Baker is a writer for the campus life desk. Contact news 'at' stanforddaily.com. Censorship Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists. and We Fought Back. Last week, a federal appeals court confirmed that science cannot function without free speech and freedom of inquiry. Longtime Stanford Medical School Prof. Jay Bhattacharya reflects on how this judicial decision was a victory not only for him personally, but for all Americans. By Jay Bhattacharya September 11, 2023 ​ When I was four, my mother took her first flight and first trip out of her native India to the U.S. with me and my younger brother in tow. We were going to meet my father, an electrical engineer and rocket scientist by training, who had won the U.S. visa lottery in 1970. He had moved to New York a year earlier. By the time we arrived he was working at McDonald’s because engineering jobs had dried up during a recession. ​ Both of my parents—children of the violent partition of India and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)—had grown up in poverty, my mother in a Calcutta slum. They immigrated to this country because they believed in the American dream. That belief led to the success my father ultimately found as an engineer and my mother found running a family daycare business. ​ Our family had indeed won the lottery. But coming to America meant something more profound than financial opportunity. ​ I remember in 1975 when a high court found that then-prime minister of India Indira Gandhi had interfered unlawfully in an election. The ruling disqualified her from holding office. In response, she declared a state of emergency, suspended democracy, censored the opposition press and government critics, and threw her political opponents in jail. I remember the shock of these events and our family’s collective relief that we were in the U.S., where it was unimaginable that such things could happen. ​ When I was 19, I became an American citizen. It was one of the happiest days of my young life. The immigration officer gave me a civics test, including a question about the First Amendment. It was an easy test because I knew it in my heart. The American civic religion has the right to free speech as the core of its liturgy. I never imagined that there would come a time when an American government would think of violating this right, or that I would be its target. Unfortunately, during the pandemic, the American government violated my free speech rights and those of my scientist colleagues for questioning the federal government’s pandemic policies. My parents had taught me that people here could criticize the government, even over matters of life and death, without worry that the government would censor or suppress us. But over the past three years, I have been robbed of that conviction. American government officials, working in concert with big tech companies, have attacked and suppressed my speech and that of my colleagues for criticizing official pandemic policies—criticism that has been proven prescient. On Friday, at long last, the Fifth Circuit Court ruled that we were not imagining it—that the Biden administration did indeed strong-arm social media companies into doing its bidding. The court found that the Biden White House, the CDC, the U.S. Surgeon General’s office, and the FBI “engaged in a years-long pressure campaign [on social media outlets] designed to ensure that the censorship aligned with the government’s preferred viewpoints.” The judges described a pattern of government officials making “threats of ‘fundamental reforms’ like regulatory changes and increased enforcement actions” if we did not comply. The implication was clear. To paraphrase Al Capone: Nice company you have there. It’d be a shame if something were to happen to it. It worked. According to the judges, “the officials’ campaign succeeded. The platforms, in capitulation to state-sponsored pressure, changed their moderation policies.” In exposing this behavior—and in declaring it a likely violation of the First Amendment—the ruling is not just a victory for my fellow scientists and me, but for every single American. The trouble began on October 4, 2020, when my colleagues and I—Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, and Dr. Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford—published the Great Barrington Declaration. The Declaration called for an end to economic lockdowns, school shutdowns, and similar restrictive policies on the grounds that they disproportionately harm the young and economically disadvantaged while conferring limited benefits to society as a whole. The Declaration endorsed a “focused protection” approach that called for strong measures to protect high-risk populations while allowing lower-risk individuals to return to normal life with reasonable precautions. Tens of thousands of doctors and public health scientists signed our statement. With hindsight, it is clear that this strategy was the right one. Sweden, which in large part eschewed lockdown and, after early problems, embraced focused protection of older populations, had among the lowest age-adjusted all-cause excess deaths than nearly every other country in Europe and suffered none of the learning loss for its elementary school children. Similarly, Florida has seen lower cumulative age-adjusted all-cause excess deaths than lockdown-obsessed California since the start of the pandemic. But at the time, our proposal was viewed by high government officials like Anthony Fauci and some in the Trump White House, including Deborah Birx, then-White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, as a kind of heresy. Federal officials immediately targeted the Great Barrington Declaration for suppression because it contradicted the government’s preferred response to Covid. Four days after the Declaration’s publication, then-director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, emailed Fauci to organize a “devastating takedown” of it. Almost immediately, social media companies such as Google/YouTube, Reddit, and Facebook censored mentions of the Declaration. As The Free Press revealed in its Twitter Files reporting, in 2021 Twitter blacklisted me for posting a link to the Great Barrington Declaration. YouTube censored a video of a public policy roundtable of me with Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the crime of telling him that the scientific evidence for masking children is weak. I have been a professor researching health policy and infectious disease epidemiology at a world-class university for decades. I am not a political person; I am not registered with either party. In part that is because I want to preserve my total independence as a scientist. I have always viewed my job as telling people honestly about the data issues, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans liked the message. Yet at the height of the pandemic, I found myself smeared for my supposed political views, and my views about Covid policy and epidemiology were removed from the public square on all manner of social networks. I could not believe this was happening in the country I so love. In August 2022, my colleagues and I finally had a chance to fight back. The Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general asked me to join as a plaintiff in their case, represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, against the Biden administration. The aim of the suit was to end the government's role in this censorship—and restore the free speech rights of all Americans in the digital town square. Lawyers in the Missouri v. Biden case deposed representatives, under oath, from many federal agencies involved in the censorship efforts, including Anthony Fauci. Broad discovery of email exchanges between the government and social media companies showed an administration willing to use its regulatory powers against social media companies that did not comply with censorship demands. The case revealed that a dozen federal agencies—including the CDC, the Office of the Surgeon General, and the Biden White House—pressured social media companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor and suppress even true speech contradicting federal pandemic priorities. For instance, in 2021, the White House threatened social media companies with damaging regulatory action unless it censored scientists who shared the demonstrable fact that the Covid vaccines do not prevent people from getting Covid. True or false, if speech interfered with the government’s priorities, it had to go. On Independence Day this year, federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction in the case, ordering the federal government to immediately stop coercing social media companies to censor protected free speech. In his decision, Justice Doughty compared the administration’s censorship infrastructure to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. His ruling decried the vast federal censorship enterprise that dictated who and what social media companies could publish. ​ The government appealed, convinced it should have the power to censor scientific speech. An administrative stay followed and lasted much of the summer. But on Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit unanimously restored a modified version of the preliminary injunction, telling the government to stop using social media companies to do its censorship dirty work: Defendants, and their employees and agents, shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech. That includes, but is not limited to, compelling the platforms to act, such as by intimating that some form of punishment will follow a failure to comply with any request, or supervising, directing, or otherwise meaningfully controlling the social media companies’ decision-making processes. As I read the decision, I was overcome with emotion. I think my father, who died when I was 20, would be proud that I played a role in this. I know my mother is. That is because the victory is not just for me but for every American who felt the oppressive force of this censorship industrial complex during the pandemic. It is a vindication for parents who advocated for some semblance of normal life for their children but found their Facebook groups suppressed. It is a vindication for vaccine-injured patients who sought the company and counsel of fellow patients online but found themselves gaslit by social media companies and the government into thinking their personal experience of harm was all in their heads. The decision provides some solace for scientists who had deep reservations about lockdowns but censored themselves for fear of the reputational damage that came with being falsely labeled misinformers. They were not wrong in thinking science wasn’t working right; science simply cannot function without free speech. The decision isn’t perfect. Some entities at the heart of the government’s censorship enterprise can still organize to suppress speech. For instance, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security can still work with academics to develop a hit list for government censorship. And the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Fauci’s old organization, can still coordinate devastating takedowns of outside scientists critical of government policy. But the headline is a good one: the federal government can no longer threaten social media companies with destruction if they don’t censor on behalf of the government. The Biden administration, which has proven itself to be an enemy of free speech, will surely appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. But I am hopeful that we will win there, just as we have at every venue in this litigation. I am grateful for the resilience of the U.S. Constitution, which has withstood this challenge. But I can never go back to the uncomplicated faith and naive confidence I had in America when I was young. Our government is not immune to the authoritarian impulse. I have learned the hard way that it is only we, the people, who must hold an overreaching government accountable for violating our most sacred rights. Without our vigilance, we will lose them. ******* Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, is a professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he researches epidemiology and health economics. He is a founding fellow of the Academy for Science and Freedom, a Hillsdale College initiative. He also podcasts at the Illusion of Consensus site. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @DrJBhattacharya. Miscellaneous Stanford Concerns Copy of the Meyer Complaint ​ The lawsuit recently filed by the Katie Meyer family against Stanford raises important issues separate from the merits of the case itself. In many ways, these issues overlap concerns that have been raised in recent years by alumni, students, faculty, parents and other friends of Stanford and are a primary reason for the creation of this website. Here is a link to the complaint that was filed by the Meyer family in November 2022: ​ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23320591-meyer-v-stanford-complaint .

Archive -- Commentary ​Click on any bulleted item for direct access: Colleges Should Compete on Free Speech Universities Shouldn't be Ideological Churches Freshman Orientations Emphasize DEI Over Free Speech College Student Views on Free Expression and Campus Speech 2022 What Can be Done? Actionable Solutions to R egaining Academic Freedom Harvard Faculty Create Entity for Defense of Academic Freedo m Former DEI Director at De Anza College Speaks Out Academic Freedom and Inclusion Aren't Always Compatible My 'Free Speech' College is Silencing Me Professor Blocked for Tweeting 'All Men are Created Equal' Files First Amendment Lawsuit Censorship Demands Behind Deep Fake Hype U.S. Fifth Circuit Upholds Injunction Against Federal Agency Interference with Web Activities Cornell Free Speech Alliance Offers Major Policy Recommendations Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry MIT Faculty Adopts Free Expression Statement ​ Duk e Prof. John Rose: How I Liberated My College Classroom Commentary by Heather Mac Donald Campus Speech Colleges Should Compete on Free Speech By Edward Yingling and Stuart Taylor Jr. ​ [Editor's note : Edward Yingling, who is a Stanford law school graduate, and his fellow Princeton undergraduate alum Stuart Taylor recently published this op-ed at Real Clear Politics urging that colleges and universities should explain their positions on free speech and academic freedom in their recruiting materials and compete on these factors.] ​ The lists of “top colleges” have varied little in many years. They always include the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, etc. But that could change. Colleges of all types can differentiate themselves on the core values of free speech and academic freedom, and those that do will increasingly attract more and better students, faculty, and employment opportunities for their graduates. ​ There are many factors that go into choosing a college or grad school – affordability, location, and strength in specific disciplines – but many parents and students are overly focused on the prestige of the school. However, most of these “prestige” schools have low ratings in the annual survey of students on free speech issues conducted by the Foundation for Rights and Expression (FIRE). Many have had recent embarrassments that rightfully tarnished their image on free speech. And many have atmospheres that smack of indoctrination and huge bureaucracies to enforce those atmospheres. ​ Certainly that is the case with the university, Princeton, that we both attended and with the law school, Stanford, that one of us attended and at which the other briefly taught. Both schools have received negative publicity on free speech. Would we go to either school today? In a recent survey by Princetonians for Free Speech, only 24% of Princeton students said it is never appropriate to shout down a speaker; only 57% said it is never appropriate to block other students from attending a speech; and 16% said it might, on at least rare occasions, be appropriate to use violence to stop a speaker. At Stanford Law, a large group of students shouted down a federal judge and then tried to intimidate the dean for having apologized to the judge. The deeper problem, students have told us, is not such high-profile events. It is the campus culture. Views not in keeping with the orthodoxy are not valued; they are often viciously attacked. In our Princetonians survey, 70% of students say they would be very or somewhat uncomfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor on a controversial topic. 56% say they would be very or somewhat uncomfortable expressing their views in class on a controversial topic. Another survey shows it is much worse for conservative students. At Princeton, where we talk regularly with students, there is no question there is a negative culture. A student in the ballet club received a memo from the club’s leaders stating that ballet was “white supremacy” and “perfectionism,” and requiring members to do specified community service. Conservative students have received no contact orders from the university for normal political disagreements. This type of thing goes on every day. There are better choices. The University of Chicago and Purdue have a history of promoting free speech. The University of North Carolina and Vanderbilt have recently demonstrated a strong commitment to free speech by adopting institutional neutrality. While some colleges are now focusing more on free speech, they should go further and develop a strong reputation for promoting free speech values. Why wouldn’t students want to attend great colleges that have cultures of free speech and academic freedom rather than Princeton, Stanford, Yale, or Harvard, where the culture stifles the free exchange of ideas? Why wouldn’t parents want their children to choose schools where students are not afraid to say what they think? Why wouldn’t more faculty want to teach at schools where academic freedom flourishes? Why wouldn’t employers want to recruit at schools where students are taught how to think for themselves, rather than to bow to orthodoxy? Why would alumni want to continue to give to schools that no longer support the core values they were created to promote? There are anecdotal signs that a reaction against such orthodoxy has already started. For example, some federal judges have said they will no longer look to the law schools at Yale and Stanford for law clerks. Alumni giving participation rates are down substantially at Princeton. As parents, students, faculty, and employers increasingly look to colleges’ records on free speech and academic freedom, more resources will become available to meet the demand. The annual FIRE free speech report will become more influential, and other measurements and reviews of colleges’ records on free speech and academic freedom will be developed. FIRE and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, among others, already provide resources to help colleges advance a free speech agenda. Maybe the elite colleges will not care about such competition. Their endowments are so large they have little need for contributions. Their acceptance rates are in the single digits. But over time they may lose their elite status. As students, faculty, and employers look to other schools, the elite colleges will become even more narrow in their orthodoxy and even more unattractive for most. Over time the elites could be forced to change. This is not about becoming a conservative oasis. It is about returning to the core mission of a university – advancing knowledge and learning through free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity. Colleges that state that mission clearly and follow through on it will have a competitive advantage. Edward Yingling is co-founder of Princetonians for Free Speech and chairman emeritus of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. Stuart Taylor Jr. is a co-founder of Princetonians for Free Speech and a board member of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. Universities Shouldn't Be Ideological Churches By Prof. Robert George ​ [E ditor's note: The Atlantic recently published this op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert George concerning the risks of colleges and universities publicly taking political positions, and even concerns if specific schools and departments were to do so. The full op-ed can be found here . See also compilations of the Chicago Principles/Chicago Trifecta here .] Excerpts: . . . "As it happens, Princeton, like some other nonsectarian institutions, is currently deliberating about what rules we should adopt regarding statements made by the university’s various departments and offices regarding political questions that are not directly related to the teaching and research mission of the university—questions such as abortion, U.S. policy toward Israel, defunding the police, and reparations for slavery. What should those rules be? What principles are to be considered in devising limitations on institutional pronouncements? "To my mind, the University of Chicago arrived at the right answer more than 50 years ago, when it adopted, in the midst of the Vietnam War controversy and other matters of contention, the report of a committee chaired by the law professor Harry Kalven. The Kalven Report committed the university and its various units to institutional neutrality on political questions, encapsulating its rationale in the helpful dictum: “The University is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” The Kalven Report did not forbid faculty, students, or staff in their individual capacities from stating their opinions publicly, or even from identifying themselves by their academic titles and affiliations when doing so. It did, however, generally forbid anyone from committing the university or its departments and offices to particular points of view on controversial political questions. . .. "[Even when there allegedly is consensus,] where are the dissenting voices? Has groupthink set in—in a unit, or perhaps in an entire field? What message does the lack of representation of dissenting voices send to students? Has there been discrimination or favoritism based on viewpoint? If so, is it continuing? Has this affected hiring and promotion decisions, or created what is broadly known to be a hostile environment for people who dissent from established orthodoxies? . . . ​ "Let me linger a bit on this last point. If academic units are permitted to make statements on political issues, then the following will be the case: When considering a job or tenure candidate, voting faculty members will anticipate that he or she, if appointed, will vote on future political statements. So they will perfectly reasonably want to know, and will take into account, the candidate’s ideological leanings and political views and affiliations in deciding whether to support or oppose the appointment. Of course, this is something that faculty are not supposed to do under existing academic norms for nonsectarian institutions. It is condemned, for example, by the American Association of University Professors. But putting into place a policy that permits departments and other units to take political stands and issue political statements would undermine this prohibition. After all, voting on political statements—if departments were to be authorized to do so and chose to act on that authorization—would be one of the things a faculty member is, as a practical matter, hired to do. . .. "Institutional neutrality protects the university’s fundamental mission of pursuing, preserving, and transmitting knowledge. This mission requires not only academic freedom and viewpoint diversity, but also principles and policies that enable us to avoid contests among people of competing ideological stripes for control of the university and its individual units. The university must belong to everyone in our community, not simply those who are on the allegedly “right” side of contested issues." Freshman Orientations Emphasize DEI Over Free Speech, Nationwide Survey Finds By Katelynn Richardson ​ Free speech conversations ‘strikingly absent’ from most freshman orientations, and DEI topics covered 7.37 times more than free speech issues Almost all — 91 percent — of university freshman orientation programs across the country emphasize diversity, equity and inclusion topics, a recently released investigative report found. By contrast, free speech and viewpoint diversity topics are only mentioned in about 30 percent of orientation programs, and are often “strikingly absent” from the conversation, the Speech First survey found. Speech First, a 4-year-old nonprofit that advances free speech on college campuses through advocacy and litigation, obtained the results by filing Freedom of Information Act requests to over 50 public universities asking for freshman orientation materials. The group found DEI topics are covered in “3.71 times more orientation slide material, 4.9 times more orientation handout material, and 7.37 times more orientation video material” than free speech topics. Speech First Executive Director Cherise Trump told The College Fix that the process of developing the report, which took nearly a year to finish, was “wrought with delays, excuses, additional fees, and redactions.” Many universities were reluctant to comply with the Freedom of Information Act requests. While 51 universities ultimately complied, 3 universities—Arizona State University, Colorado State University-Fort Collins, and University of California-Berkeley—did not respond. Examples of orientation DEI issues highlighted by Speech First include a Northern Kentucky University orientation video that labels the phrases “Where are you from?” and “I don’t see race” as microaggressions and a James Madison University PowerPoint featuring 34 slides on diversity, power and oppression. James Madison University spokesperson Mary-Hope Vass told The College Fix this presentation is “not in use” and that the president “will address free speech and viewpoint diversity during his opening remarks to all new students.” At State University of New York at New Paltz, Speech First found incoming students are required to take an “Implicit Association Test” asking them to match skin colors with various words, objects and weapons. The test is hosted on a Harvard website and facilitated at multiple universities nationwide. At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, freshman orientation features a presentation that asserts “bias” includes “a tendency to believe that some ideas are better than others” and asks students to analyze their identities using an “identity wheel.” “Freshman orientation programs must be restructured,” Speech First’s report states. “Currently, students have very little understanding of their free speech rights and the value this adds to their education.” To combat the overemphasis on DEI, Speech First opened a tip line for university students to share what is being covered during new student orientation. “We know our findings only scratched the surface of what we are certain is out there,” Trump said via email. “We hope that students and pro-free speech faculty send us materials from their new student orientations (videos, powerpoints, images, pdfs, etc.) that will expose universities that are attempting to impose their dogmatic political agendas onto students while encouraging them to censor and report one another if they diverge.” Speech First did find commendable examples of orientation programs at George Mason University and Louisiana State University, both schools that have made robust statements in support of free speech. “It is not the proper role of the University to shield individuals from speech protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America…including without limitation ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive,” the LSU Permanent Memorandum 79 on Free Speech and Expression states. Several other universities, the report notes, have also taken steps to incorporate material on free speech. The Rochester Institute of Technology announced in February it would include “free speech programming” in its New Student Orientation, as did the Iowa Board of Regents for all students, faculty and staff at the three public Iowa universities. A lack of preparation during orientation can set the tone for greater free speech problems later on. In a study conducted last year by Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, RealClearEducation and College Pulse, 80 percent of students reported that they self-censor on campus. Another 66 percent said it was acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus. “If students are told as soon as they step on campus that they must feel guilty, ashamed, and they must be hyper-sensitive towards their peers, then they will be afraid to express their thoughts, ultimately limiting their knowledge to whatever they are told rather than expanding their minds through discourse, debate, and inquiry,” Speech First states in the survey’s conclusion. Trump said she hopes her organization’s tip line and report will influence universities to do more than “mention free speech subtly amidst a flood of DEI/CRT propaganda.” “I look forward to hearing from universities that have changed their ways and modified their materials to reflect a strong and obvious dedication to students’ First Amendment rights, free speech, open discourse, rigorous debate, and viewpoint diversity in their freshman orientation materials,” she said. College Student Views on Free Expression and Campus Speech 2022 A Look At Key Trends in Student Speech Views since 2016 College campuses have long been places where the limits of free expression are debated and tested. In recent years, this dialogue has grown more fraught as some schools have sought to create a more protective speech environment for students. Moreover, key events shaping the past two years, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial justice movement and the 2020 election, have only added deeper dimensions to the dialogue around free speech playing out on campus and in society at large. The “Knight-Ipsos College Student Views on Free Expression and Campus Speech” report is the fourth in a series of Knight Foundation reports measuring college student attitudes toward speech and the First Amendment since 2016. For this report, Knight Foundation commissioned Ipsos to conduct a survey with a nationally representative sample of over 1,000 college students ages 18-24 enrolled in all types of higher education institutions, along with 4,000 American adults, offering insight into how college students’ views on free speech compare with those of the general public. In addition to the past Knight-Gallup campus speech surveys (2016, 2017, 2019), Knight has studied free speech views among high school students since 2004. Trends in college student attitudes are included throughout this report. For findings on how the adult population views free speech and expression, please see “Free Expression in America Post-2020,” published earlier in January 2022. This Knight Foundation-Ipsos report offers nuanced insight into how college students perceive campus speech and First Amendment protections today, including how views are evolving within different factions of the student body. This survey reinforces that students are not a monolithic group when it comes to speech, finding that partisanship, race, and ethnicity drive meaningful differences in how college students view speech. Understanding where different groups stand is vitally important for higher education leaders as they seek to foster free expression on college campuses and create a campus environment that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive. The findings described in this report cover many, but not all, of the rich insights possible from this complex dataset. We invite the public and researchers to explore this publicly available resource in further detail. KEY FINDINGS Students view speech rights as important, yet less secure than in years past: Students continue to believe First Amendment rights and concepts of free speech are important to democracy. However, the percentage of students saying speech rights are secure has fallen every year since this question was first asked in 2016. This includes a 12-point decrease from 2019 as an increasing number of students—particularly Republicans—say they believe speech rights are threatened. Students of color believe their speech is less protected: While a majority of college students express confidence that the First Amendment protects “people like them,” Black students in particular feel much less protected, with a sharp decline from 2019 to 2021. Students believe exposure to a wide spectrum of speech at college is important: Most students continue to say colleges should allow students to be exposed to all types of speech, including political speech that is offensive or biased, rather than prohibiting speech they may find offensive. Students favor college policies that limit racist speech, but support for other speech interventions remains low: Most students favor colleges instituting policies that restrict the use of racial slurs on campus, suggesting that, for them, this particular category of speech does not merit mandated exposure on campus. Just 1 in 4 students favor schools disinviting controversial speakers, down from more than 2 in 5 in 2019. Similarly, the number of students who support colleges providing safe spaces or speech codes has fallen over the past two years. Students say the campus climate stifles free expression, yet speech on campus is making nearly 1 in 5 feel unsafe: More students now say the climate at school prevents some from saying things others might find offensive, and fewer feel comfortable disagreeing in class. Yet slightly more now report feeling unsafe because of comments made on campus than in 2019. This is particularly true for female students and students of color. KEY POPULATIONS Experience with and attitudes toward speech vary widely among different student groups. The greatest differences exist among race and partisanship, and less so by gender or other demographic groupings. The following is a brief summary of the major findings and how opinion has changed over time, including the degree to which students have a formed opinion at all. DEMOCRATIC STUDENTS A majority of Democratic students believe that freedom of speech is secure in America today, a view that has held constant since 2019. When it comes to free expression broadly on campus, just over half of Democratic students favor schools fostering an environment in which all forms of speech are allowed, a view that’s softened since the last time Knight asked these questions two years ago. Democrats are most likely to favor colleges implementing restrictions on certain forms of speech on campus, particularly around speech that is offensive to minority groups, something that was also true in prior Knight-Gallup research. Both now and in 2019, a large majority of Democratic students believe that colleges should be able to restrict the use of racial slurs on campus. When it comes to other speech policies, 3 in 4 support the creation of safe spaces on campus, close to half support the creation of speech codes that could limit offensive or biased speech, and 2 in 5 favor schools disinviting potentially controversial speakers. These views are consistent with previous surveys. A majority of Democrats feel that their campus climate prevents people from saying what they believe for fear of offending others, although they are less likely to feel this way than Republicans and independents. Compared with two years ago, Democratic students now feel less comfortable voicing disagreements in class. INDEPENDENT STUDENTS Independent students express growing concerns about the fundamental security of free speech in America today while indicating their wariness of colleges limiting speech on campus. Just under half of all independents feel that free speech is secure today, down from 3 in 4 who felt this way in 2016. At the same time, a strong majority (8 in 10) believe that they are protected under the First Amendment. This puts them on about equal footing with Democrats, but slightly behind Republicans. A majority believe that colleges should allow students to be exposed to all forms of speech. Opinion is split among the remaining minority with equal numbers (around 1 in 5 each) either believing that colleges should foster a protective environment or having no opinion on the matter. Much like two years ago, few support colleges disinviting controversial speakers or instituting speech codes. A majority feel that their campus climate limits free expression, a view that has remained the same since 2019. Independents were more likely than other groups of students to respond with the newly prompted “No opinion” option this year, indicating that many of them do not have strong views on these issues at all. REPUBLICAN STUDENTS Republican students are increasingly likely to feel that freedom of speech is under threat—just over a quarter believe it is secure today, down from two-thirds in 2016. More now also believe that their school’s climate stifles free expression. A strong majority (7 in 10, down from 90% in 2019) say it is more important for colleges to allow students to be exposed to all types of speech, even if they find it offensive or biased, than to prohibit offensive or biased speech. A majority (56%)—albeit a smaller share than either Democratic or independent students—believe that colleges should be allowed to prohibit the use of racial slurs on campus. Moreover, for Republican students, this represents a more than 20-point drop from 2019 in the percentage who feel that colleges should restrict the use of racial slurs on campus. Republicans are more divided around whether safe spaces should be allowed on campus—half favor this—but come down firmly against schools disinviting controversial speakers, something that was also true two years ago. A slim majority oppose schools instituting speech codes that could restrict offensive or biased speech. Unlike their Democratic counterparts, there has been no change over time in their already low level of comfort voicing disagreements with professors or other students; less than half remain comfortable. WHITE STUDENTS White students tend to favor allowing all types of speech on campus, over protecting students by prohibiting certain speech. They are least likely to report having felt unsafe or uncomfortable on campus because of comments about their identity, as compared with Black and Hispanic students. This has not changed substantially since 2019. Overall, half of white college students believe that freedom of speech is under threat in America today. Yet a large majority feel that the First Amendment protects them, a view that has held steady since 2019. When it comes to free expression on college campuses, white students are more likely than their Black or Hispanic counterparts to agree that schools should favor exposing students to all forms of speech, rather than protecting them from speech they may find offensive or biased. This was also true two years ago. They are slightly more likely than Black or Hispanic students to believe that the campus environment stifles free expression. BLACK STUDENTS Fewer Black students express confidence that the First Amendment protects people like them. At the same time, a growing number of Black students favor a more protective campus environment. The share of Black students who feel the First Amendment protects them a great deal has fallen by 20 percentage points over the past two years. Black students also express less confidence than the broader Black adult population about how effectively the First Amendment protects either them or the average American. When it comes to campus free speech, the number of Black students who favor a campus environment that protects students by prohibiting speech that they might find offensive or biased has grown from 28% in 2019 to 36% in 2021. Both in 2019 and 2021, a majority of Black students feel that colleges should restrict the use of offensive racial slurs on campus. Black students are more likely than white or Hispanic students to say that they have been made to feel uncomfortable due to statements that others have made in their presence about their identity or political beliefs, both in daily life and on campus. This has remained constant since 2019. HISPANIC STUDENTS Hispanic students’ views of campus speech, and personal experiences, fall somewhere between the differing views of Black and white students. A strong majority of Hispanic students believe that the First Amendment protects people like them, something that was also true two years ago. The number of Hispanic students saying this is nearly equal to the number of white students. Similarly, Hispanic students align closely with white students on perceptions that free speech is under threat; half agree. However, with regard to colleges restricting offensive racial slurs, Hispanic students fall closer to Black students, with 7 in 10 supporting such an action. Hispanic students (along with independents) are among the most likely to say they have no opinion about whether colleges should foster a more protective speech environment or allow all types of speech on campus. A plurality oppose disinviting controversial speakers, but they are split around instituting speech codes. Like white students, close to 6 in 10 favor the creation of safe spaces on campus, less than the share of Black students who do. MALE AND FEMALE STUDENTS For the most part, male and female students are aligned in their attitudes and experiences of free speech, with a few key differences. Overall, a majority of both male and female students say that free speech rights are important to American democracy, although fewer feel this way than in 2019. Now, female students are more likely than male students to say that free speech rights are extremely important, a change from 2019 when more men said free speech rights were extremely important. Nearly 1 in 5 male and female students alike report having felt unsafe due to comments on campus, whereas larger gender differences were observed in prior years. A more meaningful difference appears when male and female students are asked if they have felt uncomfortable on campus. Female students remain significantly more likely to have felt uncomfortable due to speech on campus, as they did in 2019. Academic Freedom What Can be Done? Actionable Solutions to Regaining Academic Freedom By Leslie Spencer, April 3, 2023 ​ [Editor's note: Ms. Spencer is a graduate of Princeton University, a former writer and associate editor at Forbes, and currently Vice Chair of Princetonians for Free Speech which, like Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking , is a member of the nationwide Alumni Free Speech Alliance referenced at our Resources page.] ​ Hardly a day goes by without national media spotlighting controversies involving free speech and academic freedom at universities across the country. In California, Stanford Law School is scrambling to repair the damage done to its reputation when, on March 9, law students, aided and abetted by Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach, heckled invited speaker 5th Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan with jeers and obscene insults until, finding it impossible to finish his speech, he escaped with the help of federal marshals.​ In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis’ efforts to overhaul the public university system with aggressive legislative intervention has been the subject of intense disagreement, most notably among advocates of academic freedom. Detractors claim that in his efforts to expunge Critical Race Theory (CRT), diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and other illiberal “woke” dogmas such as gender politics from Florida’s state universities, DeSantis is trampling on academic freedom and tenure protections. Proponents claim it is long overdue pushback against leftist attacks on academic freedom. In “DeSantis’s Terrifying Plot against Higher Education,” Princeton professor Keith Whittington, author of Speak Freelyand Chair of the governing committee of the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA), asserts that the legislation is a remedy worse than the disease. His colleague, Princeton professor, Sergiu Klainerman, while acknowledging that the legislation contains flaws, counters under the headline “DeSantis’ ‘Plot’: Not So Terrifying After All.” Quillette, which has published many insightful analyses of the perilous state of academic freedom throughout the Anglosphere, was unequivocal in its assessment of Florida’s legislation: “Left or Right, Politicians Should Not be Telling Academics What They Are Allowed to Teach.” And a lawsuit filed against Florida by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which has become the country’s premier free speech defender, has persuaded a court to put on hold key higher education provisions of DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE Act” by claiming they violate the First Amendment rights of students and faculty​. ​ These are just two among a pile-up of recent controversies and scandals that point in one direction: Higher education’s grip on free speech principles has become tenuous at best. Voices confirming that this problem is not simply a political fight between liberals and conservatives are gaining traction. Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s President and CEO, calls himself a liberal but is a strict non-partisan in his commitment to filing lawsuits against threats from any quarter to free speech and academic freedom. He is giving a talk at Princeton on April 11 titled “The Conformity Gauntlet in Higher Education.” Although quick to oppose sloppy legislation, Lukianoff is hardly against government action as a way to fix the free speech crisis on America’s campuses. In fact, he recommends imaginative, bold, even radical legislative measures, as long as they can pass constitutional muster. Although some of the following proposals are not official FIRE positions, he thinks they all are worth considering. Buckle up. •Craft a National Leonard Law: A California law passed in 1992 and amended in 2002, the Leonard Law prohibits non-sectarian public and private colleges in California from punishing any speech that would be protected off-campus. Under the Leonard Law’s terms, students may file civil lawsuits against their institutions and may recover attorneys’ fees. The 2006 amendment to California’s law adds protections for student journalists and newspapers, prohibiting “prior restraint,” which is the censoring of a specific forthcoming publication. A national Leonard Law would break what Lukianoff says is the “pretense” that private universities are in any meaningful sense “private” anymore. “Federal regulation, including so-called anti-harassment provisions, is utilized routinely to limit what you can teach and say on campus without actually applying First Amendment standards to protect academic freedom.” •Place a cap on administrative spending: As a condition of receiving federal funds, Congress could impose a cap on the percentage of a university’s expenses that go to overhead costs. Overhead, defined as costs of administration plus development, can run as high as an astonishing 80 percent, especially at schools like Princeton. Such a cap would have the ancillary benefit of reducing overall costs generally, and in particular, those costs associated with runaway administrative bloat. It’s important to focus the public’s attention on the fact that in the last several decades, massive amounts of public money have been spent on federally backed student loans, grants and other support. Lukianoff points out that tuition should have been going down. But instead, the cost of attending a four-year college has risen at twice the rate of inflation. And it’s not going towards teaching and scholarship. It is being spent on highly paid administrators. Administrative overreach is constraining the lives of faculty and students and is a primary cause of free speech and academic freedom violations. “FIRE would support aggressive efforts to lower the bureaucratization of universities because we know full well that that’s why they’re so activist and illiberal. A university with fewer administrators couldn’t enforce ideological homogeneity to the degree that they currently do.” •Curtail the protection of qualified immunity for public university administrators: A doctrine originally designed to protect law enforcement officials from frivolous law suits and financial liability in cases where they acted in good faith or in legally murky circumstances, “qualified immunity” has come to be widely criticized for allowing public officials to avoid consequences for bad behavior. Since 1982, it shields from liability all public officials performing discretionary functions (those acts requiring individual judgement) when their conduct does not violate statutory or constitutional rights known by a “reasonable person.” Is it reasonable for public university administrators to know when their conduct violates clearly established free speech rights? “It is ludicrous to suggest that administrators bound by 1st Amendment don’t know they can’t censor people on the basis of viewpoint,” Lukianoff says. To give such legislation teeth, all public university officials need to be put on notice that they risk personal liability if they deny speech rights to students, fellow administrators or faculty. To make sure the risk is felt personally, insurance should not cover the costs of those who flout the law. On this point Lukianoff doesn’t hold back: He says universities and insurers “should no more be required to cover these costs than to cover the costs of someone accused of murder.” •Ban political litmus tests: These are clearly unconstitutional, yet widely used at universities throughout the country. A recent FIRE survey reveals that over 80 percent of large universities either include or are considering DEI litmus tests as criteria in hiring and tenure standards. Requiring allegiance to a politicized understanding of “diversity” constitutes “forced speech” and therefore violates First Amendment protections. But with universities routinely requiring such DEI loyalty statements, an explicit ban is necessary. FIRE has published model state legislation designed to ban all loyalty oaths from public universities’ admissions, hiring and promotion policies, taking particular care to avoid replacing one orthodoxy with another. •Designate one flagship state school in each state. State legislatures could create premiere state universities which would admit only top students based purely on academic merit – test scores and grades. These schools would compete for students directly with the “fancies” – Lukianoff’s shorthand for the likes of Princeton, Harvard and Stanford. Wise employers would prefer to draw from these flagship state schools as alternatives to Ivy league and other elite schools whose graduates increasingly bring with them the ideological baggage of intolerance for diverse viewpoints. •Ban Legacy Admissions: Under such legislation, which has been attempted in New York, Connecticut and Colorado in the last few years, colleges and universities receiving federal funds would be barred from giving preference to legacies in admission. While it’s obvious that legacy admissions disfavor promising students from less affluent families, the link between legacy admissions and threats to academic freedom and free speech is more subtle. But Lukianoff’s reasoning is intriguing. The “fancies” are way too powerful, perpetuating a kind of intolerant monoculture across the land. A primary reason for their excessive power is the “self-perpetuating cycle” in which the wealthy elite, generation after generation, continue sending their children to the same few schools. Historically, these elite schools have had an unhealthy alliance with this demographic. They have reaped enormous gifts from these families, who in turn secure admission for their children, grandchildren, and often the children of people in their extended networks. Lukianoff fully acknowledges that schools like Harvard, Princeton and Yale also admit some of the brightest and most hard-working students who do not come from great wealth, and that many of those students become successful and wealthy on their own merit. “But the research shows that the social network you’re plugged into plays a much larger role in determining outcomes than intellect or work ethic alone,” he says. Elite institutions will, he admits, always find ways to favor children of their major donors, but he thinks that banning legacy admissions, combined with his idea of designating flagship state schools that admit solely on the basis of grades and SAT scores, could, he says, “put a serious dent in the stranglehold that the elite colleges continue to have on the culture.” •Increase Competition. Whole new institutions committed to academic freedom, like the University of Austin in Texas, Ralston College in Savannah Georgia, and Minerva University in San Francisco, constitute one form of competition, as do new centers at existing institutions, like University of North Carolina’s School of Civic Life and Leadership and Arizona State’s Center for American Institutions. But promoting competition can go much further, and could be accomplished through state legislation: •Create an extremely difficult test: This test might be called a BA GED which would allow those highest performing high school seniors who pass it to bypass college altogether and go directly to graduate school or to employment. Lukianoff anticipates that this would “scare the living hell” out of the Ivy League and other top schools, because they know that many of the best and brightest would pass this test and then choose to avoid both the costs of an undergraduate degree and the orthodoxy that has come to saturate so much of university life and contribute to the decline in quality. •Create an independent institution for academic study replication. The concept would require a group of politically balanced and esteemed scholars who, through repetition of experiments and observations in studies and reports, would evaluate the quality of research produced in higher education. Lukianoff thinks it is likely that much university-sanctioned scholarship, particularly in ethnic and gender studies departments, does not replicate. Ideally, all the scholars involved would be known to the public, but the authorship of individual reports would be anonymous so that the research remains untainted by social pressures. “People are absolutely desperate for a neutral authority that they can trust. I’m confident that a realignment around new institutions that people can trust is inevitable, it may be a role that Ralston or UATX could play, but that remains to be seen,” he says. •Conduct massive state-funded studies to test the value of a college degree. A 2012 study called “Academically Adrift” revealed that about half of students studied showed no improvement in critical thinking skills after college compared to before. Lukianoff is willing to bet that a control group of 18-22 year-olds working regular jobs rather than attending college would show the same, or perhaps even greater, improvement in their critical thinking faculties. Updating the Academically Adrift study and communicating the results to the public “could expose the scandal that we are paying billions of dollars to universities with little to no improvement in the fundamental thing they are supposed to offer....If people are fed up, skeptical, feel like they are getting ripped off or that the product is lacking, it will be easier to push for change.” What about campus-based administrative reform? Here’s some structural changes that could shift incentives of administrators, faculty and students in favor of adherence to free speech principles. •Presidents lead from the front: Adopt some variant of the University of Chicago’s trifecta: The “Chicago Statement” that guarantees free speech on campus, with clear sanctions to deter those who disrupt others’ speech; the Kalven Report principle of institutional neutrality, which forbids the university and its units from taking official positions on issues of the day; and the Shils Report, which mandates that faculty hiring and promotion be based solely on academic merit and excellence in research and teaching. Presidents should endorse and promote institutional adoption of these principles publicly and conspicuously, and explain their roles and rationale. Once adopted, college Presidents should find opportunities to reiterate them loudly and often. •Faculty, get organized: Although data shows that faculty do not necessarily want to protect speech they don’t like, it also shows that the ubiquitous administrative meddling in how faculty conduct classes and even how they conduct research makes them fear speaking freely and is very unpopular. To recenter the core mission around faculty, academic freedom proponents, with the protection tenure provides, have started to organize. “University of Chicago Free” and Harvard’s “Council on Academic Freedom,” to name just two, each have about 50 faculty who have agreed to be publicly named. They share ideas via Listserv, organize plans to enforce existing academic freedom principles, promote candidates for faculty committee positions, and advocate for hiring reforms, like the requirement that academic job listings contain a statement welcoming all viewpoints. A goal should be to make sure that alumni can designate their gifts to these groups. •Teach free speech from day one: Freshman orientation should introduce students to the principles underlying academic freedom, constitutionally protected free speech, viewpoint diversity, and truth-seeking, how these principles work in practice, and why a university cannot educate well without them. To institutionalize this orientation requirement, some suggest that faculty deans committed to academic freedom principles should take over orientation planning from administrators, who currently favor using it to mold morals and attitudes towards race, gender, sexuality, and other “identities” in ways that favor some groups’ rights over others, and encourage self-censorship. To help change course, FIRE offers a curriculum of orientation lessons and materials about free speech rights. •Require free speech and academic freedom ombudsmen. Students and faculty need immediate recourse when their free speech rights are violated. Most campuses contain armies of DEI administrators eager to generate and encourage complaints alleging discrimination or other subjectively determined “harms” committed by fellow students or faculty members. In contrast, when a student or faculty member’s free speech rights have been violated, to whom can the victim turn? Is there a single campus administrator anywhere whose job centers on the protection of student and faculty free speech rights? Let’s have some. “Turning administrators against administrators may not be a bad thing,” says Lukianoff. •Conduct annual campus climate surveys. Such surveys would address attitudes towards free expression and reveal how free students, faculty and staff feel to state their views and engage in debate. They would preferably be done in a way that would allow comparison across time and institutions. The questions in the surveys should be crafted to get to the bottom of the campus culture for debate and dissent, as well as the tolerance for faculty to pursue lines of scholarship and inquiry wherever they may lead. FIRE’s survey results show that 63 percent of students nationwide think that the climate on their campuses prevents them from speaking freely. A majority of faculty report pressure to self-censor for fear of losing their jobs or undermining their reputations. If this data is accurate, then the campus climate is hostile to education. •Take away power from those who can punish. Currently, from a student’s or professor’s perspective, the process is the punishment. This should end. When an accusation of discrimination or emotional “harm” is made against a faculty member, student or other employee, a summary judgement process should be in place, led by people who know the difference between protected speech and unprotected conduct. If the accusation is against speech that is protected, then the case is summarily dismissed. To bolster this reform, universities should be required to give out a Miranda-type warning, so the accused knows that there is no obligation to comply with any investigation into protected speech. Commitment to this process should be written into a university’s speech and expression policy and in the faculty and student handbooks, which in many states are legally binding. Presidents and Provosts should assert boldly and often that punishment for unpopular or controversial speech will not occur at their institutions. Greg Lukianoff might be seen as an unstoppable force of nature – just when we need that. He will appear on Tuesday, April 11 at 4:30pm in Robertson Hall on Princeton’s campus. Don’t miss it. Leslie Spencer, a former journalist, is Vice Chair of Princetonians for Free Speech Harvard Faculty Create Entity for Defense of Academic Freedom ​ By Steven Pinker and Bertha Madras ​ [Editor's note: Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard and Bertha Madras is Professor of Psychobiology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Laboratory of Addiction Neurobiology at McLean Hospital. The following was published on April 12 in the Boston Globe https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/12/opinion/harvard-council-academic-freedom/ ] ​ Confidence in American higher education is sinking faster than for any other institution, with barely half of Americans believing it has a positive effect on the country.​ No small part in this disenchantment is the impression that universities are repressing differences of opinion, like the inquisitions and purges of centuries past. It has been stoked by viral videos of professors being mobbed, cursed, heckled into silence, and sometimes assaulted, and it is vindicated by some alarming numbers. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, between 2014 and 2022 there were 877 attempts to punish scholars for expression that is, or in public contexts would be, protected by the First Amendment. Sixty percent resulted in actual sanctions, including 114 incidents of censorship and 156 firings (44 of them tenured professors) — more than during the McCarthy era. Worse, for every scholar who is punished, many more self-censor, knowing they could be next. It’s no better for the students, a majority of whom say that the campus climate prevents them from saying things they believe. The embattled ideal of academic freedom is not just a matter of the individual rights of professors and students. It’s baked into the mission of a university, which is to seek and share the truth — veritas, as our university, Harvard, boasts on its seal. The reason that a truth-seeking institution must sanctify free expression is straightforward. No one is infallible or omniscient. Mortal humans begin in ignorance of everything and are saddled with cognitive biases that make the search for knowledge arduous. These include overconfidence in their own rectitude, a preference for confirmatory over disconfirmatory evidence, and a drive to prove that their own alliance is smarter and nobler than their rivals. The only way that our species has managed to learn and progress is by a process of conjecture and refutation: Some people venture ideas, others probe whether they are sound, and in the long run the better ideas prevail. ​ Any community that disables this cycle by repressing disagreement is doomed to chain itself to error, as we are reminded by the many historical episodes in which authorities enforced dogmas that turned out to be flat wrong. An academic establishment that stifles debate betrays the privileges that the nation grants it and is bound to provide erroneous guidance on vital issues like pandemics, violence, gender, and inequality. Even when the academic consensus is almost certainly correct, as with vaccines and climate change, skeptics can understandably ask, “Why should we trust the consensus, if it comes out of a clique that brooks no dissent?” There are many reasons to think that repression of academic freedom is systemic and must be actively resisted. To start with, the very concept of freedom of expression is anything but intuitively obvious. What is intuitively obvious is that the people who disagree with us are spreading dangerous falsehoods and must be silenced for the greater good. (Of course the other guys believe the same thing, with the sides switched.) The counter-intuitiveness of academic freedom is easily reinforced by several campus dynamics. The intellectual commons is vulnerable to the collective action problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs: A cadre of activists may find meaning and purpose in their cause and be willing to stop at nothing to prosecute it, while a larger number may disagree but feel they have other things to do with their time than push back. The activists command an expanding arsenal of asymmetric warfare, including the ability to disrupt events, the power to muster physical or electronic mobs on social media, and a willingness to smear their targets with crippling accusations of racism, sexism, or transphobia in a society that rightly abhors them. An exploding bureaucracy for policing harassment and discrimination has professional interests that are not necessarily aligned with the production and transmission of knowledge. Department chairs, deans, and presidents strive to minimize bad publicity and may proffer whatever statement they hope will make the trouble go away. Meanwhile, the shrinking political diversity of faculty threatens to lock in the regime for generations to come. One kind of resistance will surely make things worse: attempts by politicians to counter left-wing muscle with right-wing muscle by stipulating the content of education through legislation or by installing cronies in hostile takeovers of boards of trustees. The coin of the realm in academia ought to be persuasion and debate, and the natural protagonists ought to be the faculty. They can hold universities accountable to the commitments to academic freedom that are already enshrined in faculty policies, handbooks, and in the case of public universities, the First Amendment. In this spirit, we have joined with 50 colleagues to create a new Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. It’s not about us. For many years we have each expressed strong and often unorthodox opinions with complete freedom and with the support, indeed warm encouragement, of our colleagues, deans, and presidents. Yet we know that not all is well for more vulnerable colleagues and students. Harvard ranks 170th out of 203 colleges in FIRE’s Free Speech Rankings, and we know of cases of disinvitation, sanctioning, harassment, public shaming, and threats of firing and boycotts for the expression of disfavored opinions. More than half of our students say they are uncomfortable expressing views on controversial issues in class. The Council is a faculty-led organization that is devoted to free inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse. We are diverse in politics, demographics, disciplines, and opinions but united in our concern that academic freedom needs a defense team. Our touchstone is the “Free Speech Guidelines” adopted by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1990, which declares, “Free speech is uniquely important to the University because we are a community committed to reason and rational discourse. Free interchange of ideas is vital for our primary function of discovering and disseminating ideas through research, teaching, and learning.” Naturally, since we are professors, we plan to sponsor workshops, lectures, and courses on the topic of academic freedom. We also intend to inform new faculty about Harvard’s commitments to free speech and the resources available to them when it is threatened. We will encourage the adoption and enforcement of policies that protect academic freedom. When an individual is threatened or slandered for a scholarly opinion, which can be emotionally devastating, we will lend our personal and professional support. When activists are shouting into an administrator’s ear, we will speak calmly but vigorously into the other one, which will require them to take the reasoned rather than the easy way out. And we will support parallel efforts led by undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students. Harvard is just one university, but it is the nation’s oldest and most famous, and for better or worse, the outside world takes note of what happens here. We hope the effects will spread outside our formerly ivy-covered walls and encourage faculty and students elsewhere to rise up. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and if we don’t defend academic freedom, we should not be surprised when politicians try to do it for us or a disgusted citizenry writes us off. Former DEI Director at De Anza College Speaks Out By Tabia Lee, EdD [Editor's note: Several months after this article was first posted, Dr. Lee with support from the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism has brought a legal action against De Anza Community College. A copy of the complaint is here along with a six-minute video . See also Dr. Lee's 90-minute video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRgnIs543Hs .] ​ This month, I was fired from my position as faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education at De Anza Community College in Cupertino, Calif.—a position I had held for two years. This wasn’t an unexpected development. From the beginning, my colleagues and supervisors had made clear their opposition to the approach I brought to the job. Although I was able to advance some positive initiatives, I did so in the face of constant obstruction. ​ What made me persona non grata? On paper, I was a good fit for the job. I am a black woman with decades of experience teaching in public schools and leading workshops on diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism. At the Los Angeles Unified School District, I established a network to help minority teachers attain National Board Certification. I designed and facilitated numerous teacher trainings and developed a civic-education program that garnered accolades from the LAUSD Board of Education. ​ My crime at De Anza was running afoul of the tenets of critical social justice, a worldview that understands knowledge as relative and tied to unequal identity-based power dynamics that must be exposed and dismantled. This, I came to recognize, was the unofficial but strictly enforced ideological orthodoxy of De Anza—as it is at many other educational institutions. When I interviewed for the job in August 2021, there was no indication that I would be required to adhere to this particular vision of social justice. On the contrary, I was informed during the interview process that the office I would be working in had been alienating some faculty with a “too-woke” approach that involved “calling people out.” (After I was hired, this sentiment was echoed by many faculty, staff, and administrators I spoke to.) I told the hiring committee that I valued open dialogue and viewpoint diversity. Given their decision to hire me, I imagined I would find broad support for the vision I had promised to bring to my new role. I was wrong. ​​​ Even before any substantive conflicts came to a head, warning lights started flashing. Within my first two weeks on the job, a staff member in my office revealed he had also been a finalist for my position and objected to the fact that I had been chosen over someone who had been there for years “doing the work.” I would have a rough ride ahead, this person told me—and, indeed, I would. It also soon became clear that my supervising dean and her aligned colleagues were attempting to prevent me from performing my duties. From the beginning, efforts to obstruct my work were framed in terms that might seem bizarre to those outside certain academic spaces. For instance, simply attempting to set an agenda for meetings caused my colleagues to accuse me of “whitespeaking,” “whitesplaining,” and reinforcing “white supremacy”—accusations I had never faced before. I was initially baffled, but as I attended workshops led by my officemates and promoted by my supervising dean, I repeatedly encountered a presentation slide titled “Characteristics of White-Supremacy Culture” that denounced qualities like “sense of urgency” and “worship of the written word.” Written meeting agendas apparently checked both boxes. You may have encountered this graphic or similar ones before. Derived from Kenneth Jones’s and Tema Okun’s 2001 book, Dismantling Racism, it has appeared in different forms on many institutional websites, sometimes provoking controversy. After all, doesn’t the statement that “objectivity” and “perfectionism” are “white” qualities seem kind of, well, racist? On these grounds, the National Museum of African American History eventually saw fit to remove a “White-Supremacy Culture” page from its site in 2020. But if you are wondering whether this document is still circulating and being cited inside publicly funded educational institutions, the unfortunate answer is yes. As I attended more events and spoke with more people, I realized that the institutional redefinition of familiar terms wasn’t limited to “white supremacy.” Race, racism, equality, and equity, I discovered, meant different things to my coworkers and supervising dean than they did to me. One of my officemates displayed a graphic of apples dropping to the ground from a tree, with the explanation that “equity means everybody gets some of the apples”; my officemates and supervising dean praised him for this “accurate definition.” When I pointed out that this definition seemed to focus solely on equality of outcomes, without any attention to equality of opportunity or power, it was made clear this perspective wasn’t welcome. “Equity” and “equality,” for my colleagues, were separate and even opposed concepts, and as one of them told me, the aspiration to equality was “a thing of the past.” Having recognized these differences, I attempted to use them as starting points for dialogue. In the workshops I led, I sought to make space for people to share their own definitions of various concepts and then to identify common points of reference that we could rally around, even as we acknowledged and accepted differences of perspective. In one workshop, for instance, I presented a chart summarizing two different racial-justice outlooks. The first was what I have called the neo-reconstructionist perspective popularized by Ibram X. Kendi’s bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, which presents an individual’s destiny as determined by social identity and holds that present racial discrimination can be an appropriate remedy for past racial discrimination and that ultimate emancipation from racism isn’t possible. I juxtaposed these views with those promoted by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, which takes a more open-ended view of oppression and privilege, wherein human destiny is determined by human choices, racial discrimination in all forms is rejected, and emancipation from racism is seen as possible and desirable. Without editorializing, I gave participants time to notice the differences between the perspectives. We then came together and shared things that these two seemingly divergent philosophies had in common. The aim was to enable a conversation between two perspectives that I already saw at play in divisions on campus about how to approach issues of race. When I was evaluated as part of the tenure process, some of my evaluators objected to such efforts to identify points of commonality between divergent viewpoints. They also objected to such views being presented at all. One evaluator, who described herself as a “third-wave antiracist,” aligning her with Kendi’s philosophy, made clear that the way I had presented her worldview was deeply offensive. Another evaluator objected to my presentation of “dangerous ideas” drawn from the scholarship of Sheena Mason, whose theory of “racelessness” presents race as something that can be overcome. This evaluator told me that it was disrespectful of me to set Kendi’s and Mason’s views side-by-side or to treat them as at all comparable. A dogmatic understanding of social justice shaped organizational and hiring practices. One of the faculty seated on my tenure-review committee invited me to join a socialist network she was a member of. I declined, confessing that I don’t identify with that (or any other) political label. She later observed one of my workshops and wrote up an evaluation before meeting with me to have a conversation about the workshop. I had been told that the post-observation conversation was an important part of the evaluation process. When we finally spoke, after she had already drafted her evaluation, she was dismissive and quickly terminated the conversation, stating we had nothing more to talk about. She proceeded to file her evaluation as it was written prior to our meeting. This evaluator later gave me a “needs-improvement” rating on the rubric for the “accepts-criticism” criterion. Her aligned colleagues repeatedly assigned me the same rating. It was clear that this rating was rooted in ideological concerns, rather than any substantive objections to my performance. Anything short of lockstep adherence to critical social justice was impermissible. “Criticism” was only supposed to go in one direction. Contextualizing my colleagues’ views and comparing them to other approaches to the same issues, much less criticizing them, was “dangerous”; my supposed failure to “accept criticism” was, simply put, a refusal to accept without question the dogmas these colleagues saw as beyond criticism. The conflicts were not limited to my tenure-review process. At every turn, I experienced strident opposition when I deviated from the accepted line. When I brought Jewish speakers to campus to address anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, some of my critics branded me a “dirty Zionist” and a “right-wing extremist.” When I formed the Heritage Month Workgroup, bringing together community members to create a multifaith holiday and heritage month calendar, the De Anza student government voted to support this effort. However, my officemates and dean explained to me that such a project was unacceptable, because it didn’t focus on “decentering whiteness.” When I later sought the support of our academic senate for the Heritage Month project, one opponent asked me if it was “about all the Jewish-inclusion stuff you have been pushing here,” and argued that the senate shouldn’t support the Heritage Month Workgroup efforts, because I was attempting to “turn our school into a religious school.” The senate president deferred to this claim, and the workgroup was denied support. Just hours after this senate meeting, a group of colleagues attended the Foothill-De Anza Board of Trustees meeting and called for my immediate termination. (A public video of this meeting is available.) These individuals claimed to represent campus racial-affinity groups, but they hadn’t polled their group members or gotten consensus on the statements they issued. This sort of dynamic, where single individuals present themselves as speaking for entire groups, is part and parcel of the critical-social-justice approach. It allows individuals to present their ideological viewpoints as unassailable, since they supposedly represent the experience of the entire identity group to which they belong. Hence, any criticism can be framed as an attack on the group. The majority of the people employed at De Anza College aren’t ideological extremists. During my time there, people who had previously opted not to engage with my office started to attend my workshops and told me how refreshing my approach was. When under review, I presented letters from collaborators who worked with me on each workshop I facilitated, participant evaluations, and a great deal of other material attesting to the positive impact of my work. None of these things mattered to the board of trustees, the chancellor, or the president. Only the narratives that were put forth by the ideologically biased evaluators mattered. I was fired, in other words, for delivering exactly what I had promised to in my job interview. For those who sought my termination, the same approach that appealed to faculty previously alienated by my office’s divisive callout culture was a threat to the college’s “equity progress.” For those within the critical-social-justice-ideological complex, asking questions, encouraging other people to ask questions, and considering multiple perspectives—all of these things, which should be central to academic work, are an existential danger. The advocates of critical social justice emphasize oppression and tribalistic identity, and believe that a just society must ensure equality of outcomes; this is in contrast to a classical social-justice approach, which focuses on freedom and individuality, understands knowledge as objective and tied to agency and free will, and believes that a just society emphasizes equality of opportunity. The monoculture of critical social justice needs to suppress this alternative worldview and insulate itself from criticism so its advocates can maintain their dominant position. Protection of orthodoxy supersedes all else: collegiality, professionalism, the truth. My case, sadly, isn’t unique. At colleges across the country, critical-social-justice adherents are inserting their ideological stances as the supreme determinants of whether candidates advance in the tenure-review process. Faculty are under pressure to profess their allegiance to this particular set of dogmas and to embed a certain way of talking and thinking about race into their course curriculum. They are being encouraged to categorize every student as a victim or an oppressor, and to devote their classes to indoctrination. If certain ideologues have their way, compelled speech will become an even more common aspect of university life. Faculty and staff will be obligated to declare their gender pronouns and to use gender-neutral terms like “Latinx” and “Filipinx,” even as many members of the groups in question view these terms as expressions of cultural and linguistic imperialism. Soon enough, we may also be formally required to start all classes and meetings with land acknowledgments, regardless of how empty a gesture this may seem to living members of tribal nations. All of these things are on the horizon, because faculty members are afraid to resist. They know that anyone who questions these practices will be accused of racism and other grave sins. Because critical-social-justice advocates often present themselves as representatives of their identity groups, any criticisms of them can be treated as an attack on the groups they claim to stand for. By this and other means, they ensure their worldview is unassailable. Although I knew I had colleagues who supported my approach, most had been pressured into silence. As my experience shows, questioning the reigning orthodoxies does carry many risks. But the alternative is worse. Authoritarian ideologies advance through a reliance on intimidation and the compliance of the majority, which cowers in silence—instead of speaking up. Engaging in civil discourse and ensuring that multiple perspectives are presented are crucial, if we want to preserve the components of education that ideologues are seeking to destroy. There is some reason to hope. Since my firing, I have been contacted by scores of people who have said that they are attempting to resist similar pressures. As bleak as things may seem, there are many who still believe in academia as a space where divergent viewpoints can and must be explored. Tabia Lee is a lifelong educator. Let's Face It. Academic Freedom and Inclusion Aren't Always Compatible By Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder ​​​ ​ [Editor's note: In response to ongoing discussions about academic freedom and concepts of inclusion, two Carlton College faculty members recently wrote, "In our view there will inevitably be tensions between these two values. And when those tensions arise, academic freedom must prevail — at least, if we want to ensure a college education worthy of its name." https://banished.substack.com/p/lets-face-it-academic-freedom-and . A full copy of their essay is below. In a subsequent essay, Professors Khalid and Snyder have similarly questioned recent attempts in Florida to restrict other types of campus speech and activities: https://banished.substack.com/p/dark-times-for-academic-freedom-in .] “We affirm both academic freedom and our responsibility to foster an inclusive learning community. Importantly, these values neither contradict nor supersede each other.” So declared a Hamline University faculty resolution asking President Fayneese S. Miller to resign given her handling of a now-infamous controversy over the display of the Prophet Muhammad in an art-history class. While we applaud the faculty for taking a stand against administrative overreach, we think its position on the relationship between academic freedom and inclusion is mistaken. In our view there will inevitably be tensions between these two values. And when those tensions arise, academic freedom must prevail — at least, if we want to ensure a college education worthy of its name. The assertion that inclusion and academic freedom are not in tension is an article of faith for many of those dedicated to promoting campus inclusion. In 2018, the Harvard University Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging released an 82-page report stating that the “values of academic freedom and inclusion and belonging provide each other with synergistic and mutual reinforcement.” According to this report, the two should not be conceived of as “distinct values that must be accommodated to each other” or, worse still, as “antagonistic goals.” This view is central to the frameworks advanced in books such as Ulrich Baer’s What Snowflakes Get Right: Free Speech, Truth, and Equality on Campus, John Palfrey’s Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education and Sigal Ben-Porath’s Cancel Wars: How Universities Can Foster Free Speech, Promote Inclusion, and Renew Democracy. When campuses are facing a controversy like Hamline’s, it’s important to recognize that students, faculty, and administrators don’t have the time for careful, philosophical deliberations about the meaning and value of inclusion. Rather, they find themselves in the grip of a system we call DEI Inc. DEI Inc. is a logic, a lingo, and a set of administrative policies and practices. The logic is as follows: Education is a product, students are consumers, and campus diversity is a customer-service issue that needs to be administered from the top down. (“Chief diversity officers,” according to an article in Diversity Officer Magazine, “are best defined as ‘change-management specialists.’”) DEI Inc. purveys a safety-and-security model of learning that is highly attuned to harm and that conflates respect for minority students with unwavering affirmation and validation. Lived experience, the intent-impact gap, microaggressions, trigger warnings, inclusive excellence. You know the language of DEI Inc. when you hear it. It’s a combination of management-consultant buzzwords, social justice slogans, and “therapy speak.” The standard package of DEI Inc. administrative “initiatives” should be familiar too, from antiracism trainings to bias-response teams and mandatory diversity statements for hiring and promotion. In many ways the Hamline debacle is the ideal case study for laying bare the unavoidable tensions between academic freedom and the DEI Inc. approach to inclusion. The incident has received considerable attention, but allow us to rehearse some of the key events and the language used by the various people involved. This past fall semester, the syllabus for Erika López Prater’s global-art-history online course contained an advisory alerting students that the class would feature depictions of holy figures, including the Prophet Muhammad; if students had any concerns about the visual content they were invited to contact her. During the class session on Islamic art, Prater offered students an optional exercise: Analyze a 14th-century Islamic painting of Muhammad receiving his first Quranic revelation. Before presenting the painting, she reiterated the content warning and asked students who would prefer not to see the image to turn off their screens. Despite Prater’s precautions, a Muslim student complained that pictorial depictions of the prophet offended her Muslim sensibilities: “As a Muslim, and a Black person, I don’t feel like I belong, and I don’t think I’ll ever belong in a community where they don’t value me as a member, and they don’t show the same respect that I show them.” The student complaint set the campus DEI bureaucracy into motion. David Everett, associate vice president for inclusive excellence, made a public statement calling the classroom exercise “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful, and Islamophobic.” Because of the incident, Everett said, “it was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community.” Prater was not given any opportunity to explain the rationale behind the class exercise. In December, President Miller and David Everett sent an open letter to the campus asserting that “appreciation of religious and other differences should supersede when we know that what we teach will cause harm,” and in particular “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.” After the news made national and international headlines, Miller doubled down, explaining that her decisions were guided by “prioritizing the well-being of our students,” especially by “minimizing harm.” Miller’s comments at least had the virtue of offering an honest diagnosis of the tension between academic freedom and inclusion. This tension has only ratcheted up in recent years, as colleges make grand promises to create “environments in which any individual or group feels welcomed, respected, supported, and valued.” With institutions promoting such an expansive definition of “inclusion,” we shouldn’t be surprised when they become ensnared in their own rhetoric and policies. How will DEI administrators respond when a Chinese national complains that a political-science discussion about the persecution of Uyghurs is “harmful anti-Chinese propaganda”? Or when a Christian evangelical says her faith was insulted in a contemporary art class after seeing a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph of two men kissing? The permutations are endless and, for professors who teach sensitive or controversial material, alarming. The American Association of University Professors clearly states that students do not have the right to shield even their “most cherished beliefs” from challenge or scrutiny: Ideas that are germane to a subject under discussion in a classroom cannot be censored because a student with particular religious or political beliefs might be offended. Instruction cannot proceed in the atmosphere of fear that would be produced were a teacher to become subject to administrative sanction based upon the idiosyncratic reaction of one or more students. This would create a classroom environment inimical to the free and vigorous exchange of ideas necessary for teaching and learning in higher education. The censorship of ideas because students with particular political beliefs might take offense is precisely what’s happening across the country with anti-critical-race-theory legislation. The notion of harm is central to these “divisive concepts” laws, which have used Trump’s now-revoked 2020 Executive Order 13950 as a template. Among the things prohibited in this EO was that “any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.” That white students could shut down discussions of “white privilege” and “structural inequality” because they make them uncomfortable is a most egregious affront to academic freedom. Laws like Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” underscore that policies oriented around harm-avoidance in the classroom are educational dead ends. To safeguard high-quality teaching that powerfully and accurately communicates our disciplines and fields, academic freedom must be vigorously defended. Students, DEI administrators and other campus stakeholders should understand that professors have the right to decide what and how to teach based on their academic expertise and their pedagogical goals. They should also know that there is no academic freedom without academic responsibility. Academic freedom is not a license to mouth off or teach whatever material suits our fancy. Moreover, when thorny issues arise pertaining to classroom instruction, we have a responsibility to listen to students’ concerns and take them seriously. This does not mean, however, that students should be able to dictate the curriculum. The Hamline case should serve as a wake-up call for anyone who cares about classroom teaching, critical thinking, and the future of higher education. Some may see this controversy as an exception or an outlier. It’s not. It’s a bellwether of how DEI Inc. is eroding academic freedom. Let’s not forget it took an outpouring of sustained, high-publicity resistance, not to mention a lawsuit, for Hamline to soften its charge of “Islamophobia” against Prater and affirm its commitment to academic freedom. When institutions proclaim that academic freedom and inclusion coexist in a kind of synergistic harmony, they are trafficking in PR-driven wishful thinking. In the hardest cases, there is no way of upholding an “all are welcome here” brand of inclusion while simultaneously defending academic freedom. Instead, we should turn to the wise words of Hanna Holborn Gray, former president of the University of Chicago: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.” A version of this piece was originally published on February 6, 2023 by The Chronicle of Higher Education My ‘Free Speech’ College Is Silencing Me By Christopher Nadon Students are being turned into informants In 1993, I began my first teaching job at the University of Kyiv-Mohyla in newly independent Ukraine. I had been hired to teach Hobbes, Locke, and the Federalist to the sons and daughters of communist apparatchiks who had come to recognise the corrupt character of the Soviet regime and university system, and to introduce institutional reforms that would support the kind of liberal arts approach to education then typical on American campuses. Thirty years later, the tables have turned. I am now a tenured professor at Claremont McKenna College, an elite institution that aggressively markets itself as the number-one ranked college for promoting freedom of speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. I don’t blame FIRE. But the administration here has built a Potemkin village. My real job today is to re-introduce something of the spirit of Ukraine into American education. How did this come to happen on my own and other campuses in the United States? The responsibility of a Dean of Students office used to be to handle student discipline. Today it seems to maintain student comfort by disciplining faculty who threaten their repose. Gadflies, out; massage chairs and comfort puppies, in. There are also institutional structures for climate control. On my campus there is a programme called CMCListens, the tip of an enormous bureaucracy to eliminate any student unease. It encourages them to submit anonymous reports “to senior staff” about anything “they find troubling at CMC in just a few easy steps”. The programme sets a tone that conditions students to think of themselves as minders and informants, not students. The effect in the classroom is to destroy the possibility of education. On October, 4, 2021, discussion in my “Introduction to Political Philosophy” class was devoted to Book III of Plato’s Republic and his views about the necessity for censorship in political communities. A very intelligent student objected that Plato was mistaken, a point proven by the fact that in the United States there is no censorship. Someone brought up the example of Huckleberry Finn. She replied, quite correctly, that removing a book from curriculums doesn’t constitute censorship. I suggested that the case of Huckleberry Finn was perhaps more complicated. The book had also been removed from libraries and published in expurgated editions. At this point, an international student who had never even heard of Huckleberry Finn asked me why the book had been banned. I told her, in plain English, using the precise term written by the author. This caused the first student, somewhat grudgingly but honestly, to acknowledge that censorship did exist in America. Far from being harmed by the discussion, she was benefitted. It shocked her into seeing something about her own society that she had missed. She also understood that Plato’s views were not simply outdated or wrong, but perhaps merited more serious consideration. This liberation from her initial prejudice bore fruit. Later in the semester she raised a very thoughtful question about Socrates’ criticisms of the poets and the strange role they play in the Allegory of the Cave: “But isn’t Plato himself a poet?” Her world was no longer flat. This is what good books can do. A rare success. Another student, well-trained as an informant, reported me to the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion. An associate dean then requested a meeting to discuss “serious concerns raised about one of your courses”. I requested to be informed of the concerns in writing. The associate dean refused. I insisted. This went on for a couple of weeks. Finally, the dean of faculty emailed a summary of the informant’s (inaccurate) account and demanded to know “why it was important to use the n* expressly as contrasted with simply saying the ‘n-word?’” What could possibly be the “pedagogic rationale” that justified my approach? This was my reply: “I do think that when a student asks me a direct question that I am able to answer, good “pedagogy” requires that I tell him the truth. Do you disagree? Similarly, when a student makes a false statement, I think my job requires me to confront that student with facts that contradict him. Do you think I am wrong to do so? I also hold the view that before criticizing or praising an author, one should first attempt to understand that author as he understood himself, something that requires reading and discussing exactly what he wrote. Do you think I am mistaken in this approach?” The dean never responded, at least not with an argument. Sometime after I failed to toe the line by later reading aloud in a different class from Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — its most powerful passage contains the n-word — she undertook to ban me from teaching future introductory classes. She did this without any investigation into the accuracy of student complaints, without following formal procedures, and even without the courtesy of informing me what she had done. By chance, I discovered my case was not unique. This spring, an untenured adjunct, Eva Revesz, read aloud and asked students to discuss a passage from Alice Walker’s The Color Purple that contained the n-word. They complained. The dean’s office summoned the adjunct. She apologised and agreed to undergo the recommended counseling. She met the dean. She submitted to re-education and on-line training in critical race theory. Despite all this — and a glowing recommendation by the faculty member who observed and evaluated her teaching — Ms Revesz’s contract was not renewed. The college knows the stigma attached to these kinds of complaints and the near impossibility of an academic finding a job with a scarlet “N” branded on their forehead. But if they counted on this to ensure Ms Revesz’s quiet departure, they misjudged her character. She went public, turning the tables on Claremont McKenna’s puritans. Perhaps some other college will enrich their institution and its students by hiring her. But I’m not holding my breath. Ms Revesz’s courage makes her my hero. She deserves to be yours. A third case exists. Professor Robert Faggen, friendly with the CMC’s president and well-connected to its Board of Trustees, assigned Robert Lowell’s “For the Union Dead”, a poem that contains the n-word. When he played a recording in class of Lowell himself reading the poem, a student exploded, excoriating both author and teacher as “old white dudes”. Now there’s a good “argument” for you. The Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion informed the professor by telephone, not in writing, that he was in the clear because he had not himself read the forbidden word aloud in class. A narrow escape based on an arbitrary distinction that the administration could and likely will deny ever having made. Ms Revesz was not so lucky. I discussed my situation with several colleagues. This was disheartening. Almost all counseled submission. I’m just a guy sitting in a stuffy backroom of his house with a few sheets of paper and a pen, up against an institution with an endowment of $1.2 billion dollars (market value in June of 2020), lawyers by the bushel, and the ability to comb through all my emails for the past 15 years. One colleague warned me, “If you go public with this, the administration will smear you head to foot.” Another, who thought my actions just but likely imprudent, asked, “Is this really the hill you want to die on?” They had a point. They were correct. After I published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal detailing the College’s attempts to suppress speech in my and other classrooms, the president, Hiram Chodosh, replied by circulating a statement to the media and publishing a lengthy reply in the same newspaper. Rather than take the opportunity of a national audience to discuss an important issue on his and many other campuses, he leveled an ad hominem attack on me for being the bearer of bad news. President Chodosh claimed that my op-ed contained damning and relevant omissions that explained my plight. “Low enrollment in his electives had a detrimental effect on his department. His upper-level elective fall course resulted in no students enrolled, and there is only one student enrolled in his major-required course this fall.” In fact, the cancelled course was listed by the administration without consulting me at 8:10 am. No other elective course in political philosophy has ever been assigned this hour, and with good reason. It’s not good for enrollment. As for the required course with just one student, President Chodosh omitted the fact that it had been listed only at the end of this July, three months after registration had closed and before students were back on campus. Once students were actually in a position to sign up, enrollment was just fine. And discussion lively. A fish rots from the head. In November of 2015, Mary Spellman, then Dean of Students at Claremont McKenna, was forced to resign over protests by minority students over her alleged lack of sensitivity for having emailed a Hispanic student that she would work hard to help those “who don’t fit the CMC mold”. Ms Spellman’s sincere and decent offer to help a struggling student was met with this response, “How dare you say we don’t fit the mold?” That was her crime. She resigned. While this immediately affected the way Faculty dealt with the president, I failed to realise the effect this incident would have on students. I received a text this week from an intelligent, self-possessed and assertive woman, a CMC student here at the time of the Spellman fiasco. She feared I might now be next for the undercarriage and confessed, “I remember feeling quite scared to come out then as someone who even questioned what happened there.” Afraid to come out. Afraid. Even to question. I had no idea. The situation of students today is bad. As many others have noted, they live in a world without much depth, dominated by digital communication and social media consumed on a flat screen that makes sustained reading difficult. They fear, and not without good cause, that any misstep will be engraved on the internet forever. They live under conditions of mob-rule. No one should blame them for being cautious. Yet it is less the internet than the over-valuing of the genuine democratic virtues of kindness and sensitivity that poses the greater threat to education today. The lively exchange of view-points is discouraged in elementary and high schools as likely to injure someone’s feelings. The habit of arguing falls into disuse. Students are miserable at it, not for want of intelligence, but from lack of practice. This inability to argue makes them distrustful of reason. This distrust turns into a belief that reason gives no guidance at all on any important question. The principle of equality assures them that everyone else is in the same boat. Contentious issues can therefore be determined only by authority. Upset by something spoken in a classroom? Don’t make an argument. Run to the dean to make it stop. Someone, not themselves, needs to make and enforce the rules. The dean listens. It is stopped. This confirms in their minds that this is the way to get results, but without them even noticing the full extent and deepening of their dependence and the growth in the dean’s power. This is a school for politics, not, however, of a healthy democratic kind. Fear and timidity, especially by those with university positions, are also a large part of the problem. Conformity is in all times and places a special danger to intellectuals. What is the point of assigning Frederick Douglass when those with tenure lack the courage even to read in class what is on the page? The liberating power of books, particularly those written in times and places distant from our own, is destroyed when they are bowdlerised and filtered through the sieve of contemporary sensibilities. Foot soldiers rarely get to choose the hill on which they are stationed. They must deal with the concrete circumstances in which they find themselves. Frederick Douglass defended free speech over the course of his long career as a freeman. He had no choice. He understood that the cause of liberty for millions of blacks required unfettered discussion and criticism of slave power, the US Constitution, and even his fellow abolitionists. “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants.” He risked his life and liberty to write his Narrative. I stand for the original genius of his book, exactly as he published it. Frederick Douglass deserves that, and much, much more. Huck Finn wavered between winning praise as an informant or suffering social opprobrium and eternal damnation for helping to liberate a fellow man from slavery. Lacking the benefit of Claremont McKenna College training, he chose to tear up his letter to Miss Watson informing her of Jim’s whereabouts. “All right, then,” he concluded, “I’ll go to hell.” No wonder the reading and discussion of Mark Twain’s book is discouraged by authorities. I owe a debt to Frederick Douglass and to Mark Twain for taking the trouble to educate me, or, at least, for having tried. So I lodged a formal grievance against the dean and went public. The grievance has yet to run its course. I can, however, report that two weeks after filing it, when it also became apparent to the administration that my, and other similar cases at Claremont McKenna, would be made public, the dean decided to allow me to teach Introduction to Political Philosophy this fall, a course I have offered 19 times in the past 15 years, and one that had originally been on my department’s master schedule. To date, my success has been partial. The editor of a campus paper recently interviewed students from my courses. He found critics, but many more who profited from and appreciated my approach. Yet not one of the latter would go on the record. I’d like to think they are mistaken. But I’m not sure. When I left Ukraine in 1994, I was pessimistic about the future of political liberty there. The people as a whole were so atomised and enervated by the Soviet system that it was hard to imagine them engaging in any collective action to defend their rights and liberties. But the young people I taught at Kyiv-Mohyla had not yet had their spirits crushed. Somehow, despite the horrific economic and political corruption of the Nineties, Ukraine avoided the descent into one-party, one-man rule. In the moment of greatest peril, my former students’ university became an important point of resistance to the puppet regime in 2014. Their generation went to the streets and overthrew a corrupt government during the Maidan Revolution. Their courage then and now leaves me shamefaced both for myself and my fellow academics who can no longer even stand up for reading historical texts as written. I am much more pessimistic about the fate of liberal education in America than I ever was about political liberty in Ukraine. Many, perhaps most, professors and students oppose free speech and free inquiry as an obstacle to the creation of a more equitable world. Ukrainians know how that ends. Others favour free speech and free inquiry, but give increased devotion to conformity, too cowed and cowardly to secure their blessings. I hope I am as much mistaken about America as I was about Ukraine. A classroom is not a public space, it does not have the same purposes and responsibilities as a political community. It therefore requires different rules to govern and preserve it, among the most important is civility. I am not a free speech absolutist. In the course that first got me in trouble, I tried to help a student see the power of Plato’s case for censorship. How then could I have come to utter the forbidden “n-word” in a class knowing full well the distress it might cause in some, or even most, of my students? Civility in the classroom is not the end but a means that makes the discovery of truth more likely. Liberation from falsehoods and the discovery of truth is the most important purpose of any classroom, indeed, the highest end of liberal education — not comfort and safety. College is not a resort hotel. When the means obstruct the end, reason allows their modification. If liberal education, that is, an education that makes us worthy of being free, is to have a future, it can only be secured by a movement from below, not by corrupt administrators who profit from and manipulate the current situation. As teachers, we need to take back our classrooms. We need to fight on whatever hill we find ourselves. Professor Blocked for Tweeting 'All Men Are Created Equal' Files First Amendment Lawsuit By Jennifer Kabbany ​ ‘I was blocked for quoting the Declaration of Independence’ A professor who was blocked on Twitter by a University of Oregon account after he tweeted “all men are created equal” at the account has filed a First Amendment lawsuit. Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley’s lawsuit names the campus administrator who blocked him as the defendant in the federal lawsuit, filed Aug. 11. “Clearly it’s not that I need to read the University of Oregon’s Twitter account, but what is important is I need to make use of my role as a defender of academic freedom in higher education … to make sure government-funded universities comply with our Constitution,” Gilley said Friday in a telephone interview with The College Fix. On June 14, UO’s Equity and Inclusion Twitter account tweeted “You can interrupt racism” with a wording prompt on how to start such a conversation: “It sounded like you just said [blank]. Is that what you really meant?” In response, Gilley retweeted it with the statement “all men are created equal,” tagging both the University of Oregon and its Equity and Inclusion Twitter accounts. The lawsuit alleges Tova Stabin, communication manager for the university’s Division of Equity and Inclusion, blocked Gilley as a result. Stabin and University of Oregon media affairs did not respond to an emailed request for comment Friday from The College Fix. “Blocking also removed Bruce Gilley’s ‘all men are created equal’ reply from @UOEquity’s timeline and prevented other users from viewing it or interacting with it, and with Gilley, including followers of the @UOEquity account,” the lawsuit states. The suit claims the reason Stabin blocked Gilley is because “she and her employer disagree with the viewpoint … that ‘all men are created equal.'” It also alleges Stabin “believes that Prof. Gilley’s opinion is critical of her employer’s DEI ideology and she wishes to suppress his viewpoint.” “On July 5, 2022, after Bruce Gilley filed a public records request for the policy utilized by [the Office of the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion] to block Twitter users, the University of Oregon informed him that there was no written policy and that the ‘staff member that administers the VPEI Twitter account and social media has the autonomy to manage the accounts and uses professional judgment when deciding to block users,” the lawsuit states. Two other Twitter users expressing conservative viewpoints at the @UOEquity account have also been blocked, the lawsuit alleges. Gilley is represented by the Institute for Free Speech, a nonpartisan First Amendment advocacy group, and the Angus Lee Law Firm. “The First Amendment does not allow the government or its actors to ban individuals from public forums just because they disagree with the views those individuals express,” a news release from the institute states. “The lawsuit asks the judge to order @UOEquity to unblock Professor Gilley and to issue a permanent injunction preventing the account’s manager and agents from discriminating on the basis of viewpoint when blocking users in the future.” Gilley told The College Fix on Friday that the request for a temporary restraining order has already been denied, but the effort for a permanent injunction is the long game. He described his case as “emerging jurisprudence.” “I knew immediately that this was a clear-cut, made-in-heaven case, all the more so because I was blocked for quoting the Declaration of Independence,” he said. “This is the perfect case to establish a precedent that says if you are a public agency you can’t pick and choose who is a member of the public.” He said the university cannot simply unblock him to make the lawsuit moot. “The case goes forward even if they unblock me tomorrow,” he told The Fix, “because they could reblock me anytime and because … simply to unblock me would not show they had engaged in a change of their practices.” Gilley is no stranger to controversy. In 2018 he was investigated, but eventually cleared, by his employers at Portland State after authoring a controversial article in defense of colonialism. His course on conservative political thought was also canceled by Portland State. Earlier this month, Gilley’s latest book “In Defense of German Colonialism: And How Its Critics Empowered Nazis, Communists, and the Enemies of the West” was published. Censorship Censorship Demands Behind Deep Fake Hype ​ By Michael Shellenberger ​ [E ditor's note: For several months, we have periodically posted infor mation from third parties about the alleged censorship activities tied to Stanford-based entities including the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) which then was converted to function as the Virality Project. For example, see "Stanford's Alleged Roles in Censoring the Web " and "The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Won." In that light, we are posting the following essay by Michael Shellenberger. Whether or not one agrees with these activities, we again raise the questions: why are these activities being housed at Stanford, being allowed to use the Stanford name in their names, and having their tax-deductible contributions being run through Stanford?] Republished with permission: ​ Defense Department funded the AI that government-linked NGO, "Deep Trust Alliance," says is a grave disinformation threat. ​ The ability to create deep fakes and fake news through the use of AI is a major threat to democracy, say many experts. “AI-generated images and videos have triggered a panic among researchers, politicians and even some tech workers who warn that fabricated photos and videos could mislead voters, in what a U.N. AI adviser called in one interview the ‘deepfake election,’” reported the Washington Post late last month. “The concerns have pushed regulators into action. Leading tech companies recently promised the White House they would develop tools to allow users to detect whether media is made by AI."[1] But the threat of AI to elections today is as overblown as the threat of Russian disinformation to elections in 2020. Never before has the U.S. been better prepared to detect deep fakes and fake news than we are today. In truth, the U.S. Department of Defense has been developing such tools for decades. In 1999, Defense Advanced Research Applications (DARPA) described its funding for R&D as having the goal of “total situational awareness” through “data mining,” “face recognition,” and computer networks to evaluate “semantic content.” in a proposal that anticipates the direction of the technology over the following 25 years.[2] ​ The ability to create deep fakes and fake news through the use of AI is a major threat to democracy, say many experts. “AI-generated images and videos have triggered a panic among researchers, politicians and even some tech workers who warn that fabricated photos and videos could mislead voters, in what a U.N. AI adviser called in one interview the ‘deepfake election,’” reported the Washington Post late last month. “The concerns have pushed regulators into action. Leading tech companies recently promised the White House they would develop tools to allow users to detect whether media is made by AI."[1] But the threat of AI to elections today is as overblown as the threat of Russian disinformation to elections in 2020. Never before has the U.S. been better prepared to detect deep fakes and fake news than we are today. In truth, the U.S. Department of Defense has been developing such tools for decades. In 1999, Defense Advanced Research Applications (DARPA) described its funding for R&D as having the goal of “total situational awareness” through “data mining,” “face recognition,” and computer networks to evaluate “semantic content.” in a proposal that anticipates the direction of the technology over the following 25 years.[2] Before elaborating on this point, I want to emphasize that I view AI as a human, not a machine, problem, as well as dual-use technology with the potential for good and bad. My attitude toward AI is the same, fundamentally, as it is toward other powerful tools we have developed, from nuclear energy to biomedical research. With such powerful tools, democratic civilian control and transparent use of these technologies allow for their safe use, while secret, undemocratic, and military control increases the danger. The problem, in a nutshell, is not with the technology of computers attempting to emulate human thinking through algorithms, but rather how and who will control it. There is a widespread belief that users already choose their own content on social media platforms. We choose who to follow, and see their posts on the Facebook, X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube feeds. In truth, social media platforms decide a significant portion of what users see. YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, for example, determines 70 percent of what people watch on the platform, a share that did not change between 2018[3] and 2022.[4] The amount of recommended content is lower on other platforms. Meta said last year that just 15 percent of total Facebook feed content is recommended content from non-followed accounts,[5] while 40 percent of Instagram’s feed content is.[6] But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last year that he expects Facebook will double the percentage of recommended content by the end of 2023. And users have little to no control over what is recommended to them. In fact, research published in late 2022 found that users have little control over the videos that YouTube feeds them.[7] On every other platform, the algorithms are hidden from users. The heavy lifting of censorship or “content moderation” was by 2021 done overwhelmingly by AI. Zuckerberg said, “more than 95 percent of the hate speech that [Facebook] take[s] down is done by an AI [artificial intelligence] and not by a person. . . . And I think it’s 98 or 99 percent of the terrorist content that we take down is identified by an AI and not a person.”[8] Similarly, 99 percent of Twitter’s content takedowns started with machine learning.[9] The problem with AI technology today funded by the US government, whether DARPA or National Science Foundation (NSF), is fundamentally around the control of these technologies by small groups of individuals and institutions remarkably unaccountable to the citizens of the United States. While there is always a diversity of agendas and motivations behind what decision-makers in the AI space are doing, many U.S. government-funded individuals and institutions behind deep fake alarmism are, not coincidentally, demanding greater governmental or nongovernmental control over social media platforms and Internet companies. Why is that? Why have elements within the US government promoted AI for online censorship? And can AI be used to advance free speech and free expression instead? AI and the Censorship Industrial Complex This Censorship Industrial Complex of government agencies and government contractors has its roots in the war on terrorism and the expansion of surveillance after 9/11. President George W. Bush that year authorized the National Security Agency to monitor Americans who were suspected of having a ‘nexus to terrorism,’ resulting in the Agency’s now-infamous and illegal interception of information.”[10] In 2003 DARPA told Congress that NSA was its “experimental partner” using [Total Information Awareness (TIA)] and AI to detect false information.[11] Ten years later, in 2013, a US military contractor named Edward Snowden revealed to reporters that the NSA was collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon customers, and accessing Google and Facebook to secretly collect data.[12][13] During the same period, the U.S. intelligence community (IC) and DOD alike recognized how essential AI would become to their operations overall. In 2013, a New York Times report on the NSA’s use of AI foreshadowed how “counter-disinformation” experts would, nearly a decade later, describe fighting misinformation online.[14] “Computers could instantly sift through the mass of Internet communications data,” reported the Times, “see patterns of suspicious online behavior and thus narrow the hunt for terrorists.” In 2014, the DOD unveiled its “Third Offset Strategy,” which emphasized that AI would change how the US prepared for cyberwar with China and Russia.[15] In 2015, DARPA launched the funding track that directly resulted in the AI tools that leading Internet and social media companies use today. That fall, DARPA invited proposals for its MediFor program.[16] The goal? Develop a science and practice for “determining the authenticity and establishing the integrity of visual media.”[17] DARPA funded universities to create the MediFor platform to automatically detect manipulations.[18] DARPA’s warning eight years ago is identical to the Washington Post’s warning about deep fake last month. “Mirroring this rise in digital imagery is the associated ability for even relatively unskilled users to manipulate and distort the message of the visual media,” warned DARPA. “While many manipulations are benign, performed for fun or for artistic value, others are for adversarial purposes, such as propaganda or misinformation campaigns.” The adoption of AI grew alongside alarmism about deep fakes and “misinformation,” and “disinformation” more broadly. In 2016, Facebook reported it had developed AI to automatically censor offensive live videos.[19] On January 6, 2017, outgoing Obama Administration DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson designated “election infrastructure” as “critical infrastructure,” which would become the mandate of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which Congress created the following year to protect. In 2018, journalists revealed that Facebook was using AI to predict users’ future actions for advertisers.[20] In 2019, DARPA launched “Semantic Forensics,” the successor to Medifor. SemaFor funded think-tanks, academic institutions, software companies, social media, and search engine organizations as part of a four-year project to develop AI meant to detect deep fakes, or synthetic or manipulated media.[21] It gave contracts to five primary organizations: Kitware, PAR Government, STR, Lockheed Martin, and SRI International, with this financing further divided amongst other universities and research institutes. Commercial interests in both policing deep fake and advocating policies to censor synthetic media popped up during this period. Also in 2019, a new nongovernmental organization called The “DeepTrust Alliance” launched a series of events called the “Fix Fake Symposia.”[22] The DeepTrust Alliance described itself as “the ecosystem to tackle disinformation,” and its website invited audiences to “Join the global network actively driving policy and technology to confront the threat of malicious deep fakes and disinformation.”[23] The goal of Deep Trust appeared to be to advocate for policies aimed at criminalizing “digital harms,” including forms of speech that hurt people. “If the behavior is malicious,” said the group’s CEO, Kathryn Harrison, in 2020, “that’s a problem. Laws need to be extended to digital harms… There needs to be a standard set of practices” across social media platforms.[24] “I want to see society put more safeguards in place,” she said. “This is like cars, right? When you first had cars, you didn’t have seat belts…. We’re in a very similar situation in the media ecosystem and can save information at light speed but no safety net. That’s what we need to build.” It was also in 2020 that DHS’ CISA created an “Election Integrity Partnership” to censor election skepticism. It partnered with four groups: Graphika, the University of Washington, the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab, and the Stanford Internet Observatory. Graphika and UW are DARPA’s Semafor grantees. In Deep Trust’s report, it names those four groups and progressive philanthropic donors, and other NGOs and government agencies. EIP claims it classified 21,897,364 individual posts comprising unique “misinformation incidents” from August 15, 2020, to December 12, 2020, from a larger 859 million set of tweets connected to“misinformation narratives.”[25] By January of 2021, CISA unilaterally broadened its scope “to promote more flexibility to focus on general” misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Where misinformation can be unintentional, disinformation is defined as deliberate, while malinformation can include accurate information that is “misleading.” Two months later, DARPA announced that it had funded Accenture Federal Services (AFS), Google/Carahsoft, New York University (NYU), NVIDIA, and Systems & Technology Research (STR) to “develop automated tools that aid analysts as they tackle the looming rise of automated multimodal media manipulation,” otherwise known as deep fakes or fake news.[26] While social media platforms use AI to identify and censor content, the decisions of what to censor, and how remain in the hands of humans, specifically executives at social media platforms. And so those individuals and groups that wished to see greater censorship by social media platforms rolled out a major initiative in the spring of 2022 to establish a US government agency to do precisely that. In April, DHS announced that it had created a “Disinformation Governance Board,” ostensibly to protect national security by fighting disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation on social media.[27] One week earlier, former U.S. President Barack Obama gave a speech at Stanford calling for government regulation of online speech with the same justification as Deep Trust’s Kathryn Harrison: preventing harm and protecting democracy. One month later, in May of 2022, DARPA launched its “Model Influence Pathways,” or MIP, program to automate the process of discovering the origins and “pathways” of “misinformation, disinformation, and manipulated information.”[28] The goal of the program appears to be to develop tools so social media companies can reduce the virality or spread of disfavored social media posts. In that sense, it is within the vision of Stanford Internet Observatory’s leader, Renee Diresta, who has long championed simply reducing the spread of disfavored views, rather than removing them from platforms outright. Preventing virality delivers most of the benefits of outright censorship with the benefit of not being noticed and thus not triggering the Streisand effect.[29] The Federal Trade Commission in June of last year warned Congress about the dangers of using AI for censorship and urged “great caution.” Good intentions weren’t enough, said FTC, because “it turns out that even such well-intended AI uses can have some of the same problems — like bias, discrimination, and censorship — often discussed in connection with other uses of AI.”[30] The FTC specifically pushed back against the idea, widely promoted by individuals and institutions within the Censorship Industrial Complex, that AI should be used to reduce harm. Noted the report authors, “while some harms refer to content that is plainly illegal, others involve speech protected by the First Amendment.” The FTC’s warning was well-timed. Six months later, the Twitter Files would reveal Twitter executives overruling the determination by their own Trust and Safety team that President Donald J. Trump’s tweets had not incited violence, and deplatforming him anyway, under both external societal pressure and internal employee pressure. Shortly after, emails revealed White House staff demanding that Facebook executives censor “often-true” information about COVID-19 vaccine side effects under explicit or implicit financial threats, behaviors which the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled were unconstitutional.[31] Both the Twitter and Facebook Files exposed the large involvement, influence over, and infiltration by former government intelligence and security officials. “Facebook currently employs at least 115 people, in high-ranking positions, that formerly worked at FBI/CIA/NSA/DHS,” noted an analyst. “17 CIA, 37 FBI, 23 NSA, 38 DHS.”[32] This influence may carry over to the people warning of deep fakes. Harrison, for example, worked in the French Ministry of Defense, received a graduate degree from Georgetown, and was a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations before working with IBM on AI and then founding Deep Trust.[33] Why have elements within the US government promoted AI for online censorship? Part of the reason is a well-intentioned concern over real-world harm, and undermining of liberal democracy. But another part of it appears to stem from an inappropriate and exaggerated sense of entitlement by DARPA contractors to work with social media platforms to censor disfavored voices. User-Based Content Moderation EIP, the Election Integrity Project, was the precursor to the Vitality Project, which successfully pressured social media platforms to censor “often true” information about vaccines. The Fifth Circuit Court ruling showed the limits of the First Amendment to protect free speech online. The judges ruled that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the Department of Homeland Security had likely not violated the First Amendment in creating an elaborate system for “flagging” content for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to censor. The court suggested that such mass flagging operations may be constitutionally protected free speech, at least if done right. I believe that the way CISA used AI to mass-flag so-called “Covid misinformation” in 2021, through its partnership with “The Virality Project,” created by Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and others, was a government infringement on freedom of speech. Through such mass flagging, CISA indirectly demanded that Twitter and Facebook censor “often true” information about vaccine side effects. We believe that, with Biden simultaneously threatening the Section 230 legal status of the social media platforms, having CISA’s partners make their demands constituted coercion. But I also recognize that the Fifth Circuit court is saying that such AI-supported mass flagging by “government partners” like SIO could be constitutionally protected if it did not involve coercion or, on the flip side, any incentive to cooperate. The First Amendment prevents the government from “abridging” or limiting speech. It doesn’t prevent government officials from telling publishers, whether of books, news articles, or social media posts, that, in their opinion, they shouldn’t be publishing those books, articles, or social media posts. The line the Circuit Court wants to draw is on relatively direct and obvious coercion, not jawboning. Whether or not the Supreme Court decides to hear the case and draw the line somewhere else, the ruling points to the need for Congress to take action to protect freedom of speech by defunding government contractors that advocate widened censorship by social media platforms, and exercising greater oversight over contractors developing AI tools. The threat to our civil liberties comes not from AI but from the people who want to control it and use it to censor, rather than let users control information. The obvious solution is for Congress to require that social media companies allow users to moderate their own content in exchange for Section 230’s sweeping liability protections, which allow them to exist. This specific suggestion is something another committee will need to consider. What this committee can consider is a related FTC recommendation, which is using the power of procurement to put AI tools in the hands of users, not the hands of big tech companies. “Filters that enable people, at their discretion, to block certain kinds of sensitive or harmful content are one example of such user tools,” FTC notes. The way these tools work should be transparent; users should have a right to know how these tools work. Giving users control over what content they see and don’t see is the solution most consistent with the American tradition of freedom of speech. Users should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to use these filters and other tools, not Internet companies, the government, a nongovernmental organization, or anyone else. Some tools are already becoming available. Microsoft launched Video Authenticator in 2020, while Adobe’s Content Credentials allow users to detect whether the content is likely to be authentic and unaltered. Requiring people to affirmatively choose their filters will require more reflective and slow thinking about their content choices. FTC errs in suggesting that Congress give government-certified researchers, rather than users, access to the algorithms and content moderating filters. A longstanding goal of censorship advocates leaders is to allow US government-certified researchers to gain access to the data of social media platforms so they can then demand censorship of disfavored views behind closed doors. This is what the “Platform Accountability and Transparency Act,” which Obama endorsed, would do. It would allow “researchers” to act as de facto censors. Such activities may be constitutional, but they are antithetical to the values of transparency, privacy, and free speech. Finally, this committee should seek to encourage or even mandate that DARPA contractors be required to share their research in a more visible way, and stand for questions from the general public. Of the roughly 60 organizations, many if not most of which have been funded by the US government to fight “mis- and dis-information,” that my colleagues and I emailed in the spring, none agreed to stand for an interview.[34] The refusal to speak to the public is an odd behavior from those whose livelihoods depend on the goodwill of the public. Congress should consider some provision whereby contractor recipients of taxpayer money must expose themselves to scrutiny. At the same time that deep fakes and other forms of synthetic media are new, deception, disinformation, and misinformation are not. One of the oft-repeated claims of those advocating expanded online censorship is that, by allowing falsehoods to go viral and undetected, the Internet poses a heretofore unanticipated threat. But the same thing was said about the Gutenberg printing press, the radio, and television. The solution today, as then, is for users to correct misinformation with good information, for themselves, not other people. None of the above information is likely to put an end to the alarmism about the threat to democracy from deep fakes and AI. But it may help expose much of it as coming from individuals and institutions with an interest in exploiting the alarmism for personal or political gain. End Notes ​ [1] Cat Zakrzewski, “ChatGPT breaks its own rules on political messages,” Washington Post, August 28, 2023. [2] J. Brian Sharkey, “Charging Into the Next Millenium: Total Information Awareness,” Accessed via Internet Archive, June 7-10, 1999. [3] Ashley Rodriguez, “YouTube’s algorithms drive 70 percent of what we watch,” QZ, July 13, 2018. [4] Hana Kiros, “Hated that video? YouTube's algorithm might push you another just like it,” MIT Tech Review, September 20, 2022. [5] Meta, Q2 2022 Earnings, July 27, 2022. [6] Rachael Davies, “Nearly half of the posts you see on Instagram are from accounts you don’t follow,” Evening Standard, April 28, 2023. [7] Hana Kiros, “Hated that video? YouTube's algorithm might push you another just like it,” MIT Tech Review, September 20, 2022 [8] Feerst, Alex. “The Use of AI in Online Content Moderation” Digital Governance Working Group, Sept. 2022. (p. 2.) [9]Kristen Ruby, “Twitter Artificial Intelligence,” Ruby Media Group, December 26, 2022. [10] Scott Shane, “Giving In to the Surveillance State,” New York Times, August 22, 2012. [11] DARPA, “Report to Congress Regarding the Terrorism Information Awareness Program,” DARPA Information Awareness Office, May 20, 2003. [12] Glenn Greenwald, “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily,” The Guardian, June 6, 2013. [13] Barton Gellman &Laura Poitras, “U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program,” The Washington Post, June 7, 2013. [14] James Risen & Eric Lichtblau, “How the U.S. Uses Technology to Mine More Data More Quickly,” The New York Times, June 8, 2013. [15] Gentile et al., A History of the Third Offset, 2014–2018, Rand Corporation, 2021. [16] Dr. William Corvey, Media Forensics (MediFor) (Archived), darpa.mil, nd. [17] Media Forensics (MediFor) Grant DARPA-BAA-15-58, grants.gov, September 29, 2015. [18] Contractors included Notre Dame, Purdue University, Duke University, Ideal Innovations Inc, Schaefer Corporation, University of Siena, New York University, University of Southern California, Politecnico di Milano, Unicamp, NVIDIA, Columbia University, Dartmouth, University of Albany, UC Berkeley, and Kitware. [19] Kristina Cooke, “Facebook developing artificial intelligence to flag offensive live videos,” Reuters, December 1, 2016. [20] Sam Biddle, “Facebook uses artificial intelligence to predict your future actions for advertisers, says confidential document,” The Intercept, April 13, 2018. [21] Semantic Forensics (SemaFor) Grant HR001119S0085, sam.gov, November 19, 2019. [22] Aros Harrinson, “Deepfake, Cheapfake: The Internet’s Next Earthquake?”Fix Fake Symposium Proceedings Part 1, 2020. [23] DeepTrust Alliance, Homepage, deeptrustalliance.org, nd. [24]Jon Prial & Kathryn Harrison, “Episode 133: Tackling Digital Disinformation with Kathryn Harrison,” Georgian Impact Podcast, December 11, 2020. [25] UW Center for an Informed Public, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graphika, and Stanford Internet Observatory, “The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election,” Stanford Digital Repository: Election Integrity Partnership, 2021. [26]Matt Turek, “DARPA Announces Research Teams Selected to Semantic Forensics Program,” darpa.mil, March 2, 2021. [27] Amanda Seitz, “Disinformation board to tackle Russia, migrant smugglers,” AP, April 28, 2022. [28] Dr. Brian Kettler, Model Influence Pathways (MIP), darpa.mil, May 4, 2022. [29] Michael Shellenberger, “Why Renee Diresta Leads the Censorship Industry,” Public.Substack.com, April 3, 2020. [30] Federal Trade Commission, Combatting Online Harms Through Innovation, Report to Congress, June 16, 2022. [31] Michael Shellenberger, “War on Free Speech War On Free Speech Means Social Media Users Must Be Free To Moderate Their Content,” Public, September 9, 2023. [32] @nameredacted, twitter.com/NameRedacted247/status/1604641866342756352?s=20, X, December 18, 2022, 4:56 PM. [33] Kathryn Ann Harrison Experiences. LinkedIn. Retrieved September 11, 2023. [34] Matt Taibbi, “Report on the Censorship-Industrial Complex,” Racket News, April 25, 2023. U.S. Fifth Circuit Upholds Injunction Against Federal Agency Interference with Web Activities As discussed in our July 7, 2023 Newsletter , in early July a Federal District Court issued an decision that enjoined federal agencies from engaging in their coordination with Big Tech companies to restrict and even remove text that had been posted by third parties in social media, Tweets and elsewhere. On September 8, 2023, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous decision upholding the major items in the District Court's opinion and preliminary injunction while leaving open issues, among other things, about the roles of third parties such as the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates A PDF copy of the Fifth Circuit opinion is below and where the Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates the Virality Project and the Election Integrity Project are specifically named at the bottom of page 68 and the top of page 69. Stanford Medical School Prof. Jay Bhattacharya is a plaintiff in this case, and we have posted one of his essays about the litigation at our webpage here . Views from Other Schools Cornell Free Speech Alliance Offers Major Policy Recommendations ​ The Cornell Free Speech Alliance, an independent alliance of Cornell alumni, faculty, students, and staff, recently submitted to Cornell's president, provost and trustees recommendations for restoring academic freedom and free expression at Cornell. The recommendations are based on what is commonly referred to as the Chicago Trifecta and a separate statement adopted at Yale several years ago. A link to the Cornell recommendations is here . Also see our Back to Basics at Stanford proposals here and our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta here . ​ Excerpts: “In recent years, Cornell University has drifted away from its founding mission of discovering and disseminating 'knowledge and truth'. . . “Make diversity of thought and viewpoint diversity a clearly stated and prominent objective of the University. Free speech and academic freedom have little meaning if they do not encompass the diverse viewpoints of persons of disparate economic, geographical, and cultural backgrounds. “Freshman orientation should include a training module on the importance of free speech and academic freedom on campus as well as practical instruction on how to engage in civil debate and constructive disagreement. “Students should not be encouraged or supported in spying and reporting on each other or any other member of the University community for any alleged infraction arising from any speech, expression, or the reporter’s interpretation thereof that is protected by the First Amendment, the Constitution of the State of New York, or any other state or federal law. [Editor's note: See our prior article "Stanford's Protected Identity Harm Program for Reporting Bias" here.] “DEI (by any name) course requirements should be eliminated for all courses of study that do not directly implicate it. "DEI statements (by any name), or other pledge of allegiance or statement of personal support or opposition to any political ideology or movement should not form any part of the evaluation of an individual’s fitness for a faculty position. “Any faculty or staff accused of any infraction should have due process, including immediate dismissal of any complaint that involves protected speech or infringes on academic freedom . . ..” Princeton Pri nciples for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry ​ A set of principles was recently published as the result of a conference of scholars from around the country held at Princeton in March 2023. A PDF copy of the Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry is below. See also our compilations of the Chicago Principles on our webpage here . ​ Excerpt: The American university is a historic achievement for many reasons, not least of which is that it provides a haven for free inquiry and the pursuit of truth. Its unique culture has made it a world leader in advancing the frontiers of practical and theoretical knowledge. . . . To do their work well, universities need a protected sphere of operation in which free speech and academic freedom flourish. Scholarship and teaching cannot achieve their full potential when constrained – externally or internally – by political, ideological, or economic agendas that impede or displace the disinterested process of pursuing truth and advancing knowledge. MIT Faculty Adopts Free Expression Statement ​ By Jennifer Kabbany, The College Fix, December 29, 2022​​​ ​ Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty have adopted a resolution that defends freedom of speech and expression — even speech some find “offensive or injurious.” The “Free Expression Statement,” approved by the faculty senate Dec. 21, states that “Learning from a diversity of viewpoints, and from the deliberation, debate, and dissent that accompany them, are essential ingredients of academic excellence.” The statement was approved by a vote of 98 to 52, a source close to MIT told The College Fix. “We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious,” the statement reads. It had been presented earlier this year by MIT’s Ad Hoc Working Group on Free Expression, developed after the venerable university was engulfed in controversy for canceling a guest lecture to be given by University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot in 2021. Activists had led a campaign against Abbot for his comments critical of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, but he had been slated to speak on climate change, not DEI policies. If MIT leadership is proud of the statement’s passage, they have not said so it publicly. A roundup touting the institution’s 2022 accomplishments, published a couple days after the statement was approved, does not mention it. Others have celebrated the development. “The MIT Free Speech Alliance has from the beginning advocated the free expression statement’s adoption, and we’re very pleased to see the faculty take this step,” MIT Free Speech Alliance President Charles Davis said in a news release. “We especially commend the faculty who tirelessly fought for the statement’s adoption as it was debated this fall.” Peter Bonilla, MIT Free Speech Alliance’s executive director, called on incoming MIT President Sally Kornbluth to continue to work to defend free speech and academic freedom. “President Kornbluth can set a strong example by endorsing the free expression statement herself, as well as by considering and implementing the thoughtful recommendations of the free expression working group,” Bonilla said in a news release. The statement did garner a bit of criticism from its supporters. Writing on his popular Why Evolution Is True blog, University of Chicago emeritus biology Professor Jerry Coyne took issue with the statement’s “slightly hedged” final version. “The only objection I have is to … calling for ‘civility and mutual respect’, as well as ‘considering the possibility of offense and injury’. You simply cannot have free speech without offense and injury. Abbot’s invitation provoked precisely such offense and injury, with many people supporting his deplatforming,” Coyne wrote. “… You can’t have free speech without harm, much though the word is much overused by the faux offended. Duke Prof. John Rose: How I Liberated My College Classroom By John Rose From the Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2021 ​ [Ed itor's note: John Rose is a faculty member at Duke who teaches courses in ethics, religion and political science. He also is the associate director of Duke's Civil Discourse Project.] The conservative critique of American higher education is well known to Journal readers: The universities are run by intolerant progressives. The left counters with an insult: The lack of intellectually respectable conservative arguments is responsible for campus political uniformity. Perhaps a better starting point in this debate is the students, most of whom actually want freer discourse on campus. They want to be challenged by views they don’t hold. This, at least, has been my recurring experience with undergraduates at Duke University, where I teach classes called “Political Polarization” and “Conservatism” that require my students to engage with all sides of today’s hottest political issues. True engagement, though, requires honesty. In an anonymous survey of my 110 students this spring, 68% told me they self-censor on certain political topics even around good friends. That includes self-described conservative students, but also half of the liberals. “As a Duke student, it is difficult to be both a liberal and a Zionist,” one wrote. Another remarked, “Although I support most BLM ideas, I do not feel that I can have any conversation that even slightly criticizes the movement.” To get students to stop self-censoring, a few agreed-on classroom principles are necessary. On the first day, I tell students that no one will be canceled, meaning no social or professional penalties for students resulting from things they say inside the class. If you believe in policing your fellow students, I say, you’re in the wrong room. I insist that goodwill should always be assumed, and that all opinions can be voiced, provided they are offered in the spirit of humility and charity. I give students a chance to talk about the fact that they can no longer talk. I let them share their anxieties about being socially or professionally penalized for dissenting. What students discover is that they are not alone in their misgivings. Having now run the experiment with 300 undergraduates, I no longer wonder what would happen if students felt safe enough to come out of their shells. They flourish. In one class, my students had a serious but respectful discussion of critical race theory. Some thought it harmfully implied that blacks can’t get ahead on their own. Others pushed back. My students had an honest conversation about race, but only because they had earned each other’s trust by making themselves vulnerable. On a different day, they spoke up for all positions on abortion. When a liberal student mentioned this to a friend outside class, she was met with disbelief: “Let me get this straight, real Duke students in an actual class were discussing abortion and some of them actually admitted to being pro-life?” For my student’s part, she was no longer shocked the conversation had taken place, nor scandalized at the views of her classmates. Not long after Jan. 6, I asked my students how many of them had a family member or friend who voted for Donald Trump. In a class of 56, 50 hands went up. I then asked them to keep their hands up if they thought this person’s vote was motivated by anything unsavory—say, sexism or racism. Every hand but two went down. Despite our masks, I could see that students were surprised. Turns out, their Trump-supporting cousin wasn’t the exception. When you actually know others, they aren’t an abstraction onto which you can project your own political narratives. The same is true in the classroom. On the last day of class this term, several of my students thanked their counterparts for the gift of civil disagreement. Students told me of unlikely new friendships made. Some existing friendships, previously strained by political differences, were mended. All of this should give hope to those worried that polarization has made dialogue impossible in the classroom. Not only is it possible, it’s what students pine for. Progressives, the power to make this a widespread reality on campus is in your hands; in so doing, you’ll remain true to your own tradition of liberalism. Conservatives, don’t write off the modern university; in continuing to support it, you’ll uphold your own tradition’s commitment to passing down wisdom. Both sides should support efforts within universities that promote civil discourse. We’ll all be happier about the state of the country if we do. After all, as they say, what starts on campus doesn’t stay on campus. Mr. Rose is associate director of the Arete Initiative at Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics. Miscellaneous Commentary Dismantle DEI Ideology By Heather Mac Donald [Editor's note: Ms. Mac Donald is a widely published author and a graduate of Stanford Law School] ​ For now, the adults at the Stanford Law School appear to be in charge. In a March 22nd letter addressed to the “SLS Community,” Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martínez unequivocally repudiated the shoutdown of federal judge Kyle Duncan by Stanford law students earlier this month. The law school’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Tirien Steinbach, who had lectured Duncan about his allegedly injurious presence on campus, has been placed on leave. That is the good news. Martínez’s letter is one of the most thorough defenses of academic free speech to come from a college administrator in recent years. However, she has declined to discipline the students involved in the heckling. Distinguishing those students who had engaged in punishable conduct from those who had not would be too difficult, she claims. Moreover, the hecklers had not been warned that they risked sanctions. Punishing the hecklers would also leave unpunished those who did not literally disrupt the event but whose vulgar signs or insulting personal questions were outside the norms of civil discourse. Instead of discipline, Martínez will require all law students to attend a half-day session on free speech later in the semester. (One can’t help but observe that Judge Duncan’s student hosts, who engaged in no speech disruption, do not seem to be in need of such training.) The reasons for Martínez’s amnesty are not persuasive. Nevertheless, that amnesty could serve as an acceptable compromise if other measures to prevent a reoccurrence were in place. They are not, and Martínez’s letter shows why they likely never will be. ​ First, however, it is worth recalling the details of the Steinbach affair, since it is a flawless embodiment of how diversity ideology distorts academic life and constrains decision-making. The Stanford Law School chapter of the Federalist Society had invited Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan to deliver a speech titled, “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: COVID, Guns, and Twitter.” Judge Duncan was a 2018 Trump appointee to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Headquartered in New Orleans, the circuit is the most conservative federal appellate court in the country. Duncan’s remarks, had he been permitted to deliver them, were going to address how appellate courts reach their decisions in areas of doctrinal flux before the Supreme Court has fully established an emerging legal rule. The speech would have provided Stanford’s future lawyers with practical insights into the evolution of federal case law. It would also have given them the opportunity to interact with a judge who has been centrally involved in his circuit’s important recent cases. Such considerations mattered nothing to Stanford’s left-wing students, however, because Duncan does not subscribe to contemporary academic orthodoxies. Before becoming a judge, he had written a law-review article as a private lawyer, arguing that the definition of marriage should be left to the states. He had represented a Virginia school board that opposed allowing high-school boys to use girls’ bathrooms. And once on the bench, Duncan had declined to use “she” to refer to a male prisoner federally convicted of possessing child pornography. Thus, according to a large contingent of the student body, Duncan was unfit to set foot in the Stanford Law School. The Outlaws—a self-described “social, support, and political group” that actively combats “homophobia, transphobia, [and] heterosexism” at the law school—were joined by the National Lawyers Guild chapter and other left-wing student groups in demanding that Duncan’s speech be moved off campus or held exclusively via Zoom. Never mind that Duncan’s speech would have nothing to do with “gender” issues. He would allegedly have put the “safety” of Stanford’s “marginalized” students at risk simply by being on campus. The Federalist Society rejected the Outlaws’ demand to quarantine Duncan. Accordingly, photographs of Federalist Society members began appearing around the law school over the caption: “You should be ASHAMED.” At 7.02am on March 9th, the morning of Duncan’s planned speech, Associate Dean for DEI, Tirien Steinbach, initiated the first of her two intercessions into the event. She sent an email to the Stanford Law School under the subject line “Today at SLS” intended, she said, to “share [her] office’s goals and roles in this situation”—the “situation” being Duncan’s appearance. A question immediately presented itself: Why was Steinbach weighing in on Duncan’s speech in the first place? Leave aside for a moment whether or not there are matters which might actually require the involvement of a Stanford DEI administrator. A speech on how the Fifth Circuit interacts jurisprudentially with the Supreme Court would not seem to be one of them. We have grown so accustomed to the intrusion of the diversity bureaucracy into every area of academic life that this oddity may pass unnoticed. It should not so pass, however, since this oddity is, until almost yesterday, without precedent. For centuries, legal training in the Anglosphere was bare bones. In the American colonies, an aspiring lawyer would apprentice in the office of a practicing attorney, preparing legal documents out of a form book and performing clerical odds and ends. The first law schools, formed after the Revolution, were little more than a designated professorship within an existing college. Jefferson and John Marshall were taught by one such professor at William & Mary. Lincoln still rose up through the apprenticeship system several decades later, however, reading William Blackstone’s 1769 Commentaries on the Laws of England (the core legal reference text in the United States for over a century) under the tutelage of an Illinois legislator. Long after law schools had evolved into professionalized graduate institutions, they still lacked a therapeutic bureaucracy. In the mid-20th century, a skeletal crew of administrators dealt with the logistics of class registration and job placement; the rest of the educational enterprise was largely left to the faculty. Classes were large, the ruthlessly unsentimental Socratic method prevailed, and if you needed counseling, you went to the health services. The idea of mobilizing an administrator to psychologically prepare students for the arrival of a federal judge would have been unthinkable. Yet here was Steinbach weighing in on Duncan’s upcoming appearance without even knowing the details of what he was going to say. And the reason for that intervention is an interlocking set of fictions that currently reign on university campuses: first, that universities discriminate against and “marginalize” certain student groups; second, that such marginalization puts those groups at physical and psychological risk; and third, that their precarious physical and mental status means that ideas can injure them. A designated bureaucracy is therefore needed to protect these vulnerable groups from harm. Martínez created one such bureaucracy in 2020, during the hysteria that swept college campuses after the George Floyd race riots. She installed Steinbach in the law school’s new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Office the following year. Immaculately intersectional (though, sadly, still using “she/her/hers” pronouns), Steinbach had been a public-interest attorney in the Bay Area and had offered trainings on “increasing mindfulness” in the legal profession, an undoubted plus in the era of the therapeutic college spa. The Stanford law school’s DEI office seeks to remove the school’s “barriers to belonging.” Reality check: There are no barriers to belonging, outside of those created by the school itself through its vigorous use of racial preferences. As a Stanford law student in the early 1980s, I tutored a classmate in legal writing. Based on her abysmal writing and analytical skills, that classmate did not belong at the Stanford Law School, though she would have done just fine at nearby Santa Clara Law School. Stanford welcomed her, however, with open arms (and if asked, would no doubt have penitently attributed her academic difficulties to its own racism), just as it welcomes and celebrates members of every other group that proclaims itself “marginalized.” Given the Outlaws’ contention that Duncan’s presence on campus put them at risk, Steinbach was tasked with mediating between Duncan’s opponents, his Fed Soc hosts, and the judge himself. Her 7.02am memo made no attempt to be even-handed. If there were anything that students might learn from Duncan’s speech, you would not know it from Steinbach’s recitation of Duncan’s past infractions and likely future depredations. Her ultimate announcement that Stanford would not be cancelling the event came off as a conflicted concession to an unfortunate intellectual regime. Unsurprisingly, that early-morning memo had no effect on the law students’ sense of wounded entitlement. Duncan had to pass through a gauntlet of about 100 jeering Stanford students to get to the classroom where he was supposed to speak. The level of discourse was not elevated. “We hope your daughters get raped!” someone taunted. Another protester noted that though he, as a gay man, could find the prostate, Duncan could not “find the clit.” Posters and banners in the classroom proclaimed, “We hate you,” “Leave and never come back,” and “FED SUCK.” Waves of mostly female shrieking interrupted the Fed Soc president’s introduction of his guest. And once Duncan started speaking, the heckling prevented any possible delivery of his speech. The student-services bureaucracy had previously assured the Fed Soc board that members of Stanford’s public-safety department would be nearby and ready to step in if there were a disruption. Having campus security actually in the room would apparently put LGBTQ+ students at further psychological and physical risk. (Yale’s equally delicate law students advanced this claim last year as well.) The campus cops never showed, however. So even if someone had issued the hecklers a warning, which Martínez now says is the prerequisite for discipline, no one would have been available to remove the fractious students. Flabbergasted by the display of aggressive irrationality, Duncan began posing rhetorical questions to the screaming audience. “Is this a law school?” “You’re supposed to be learning to be lawyers, what court are you going to go into and act like this?” The responses were puzzling. “You just said that this is a law school; there’s no jurisdiction!” “Trigger!” “This is not your court!” Most weirdly, laughter broke out when Duncan asked, “Why do you want to cancel people’s speech?” Unbeknownst to Duncan, five student-services administrators, including Steinbach, were standing to the side of the podium. After 10 minutes of being yelled at, Duncan asked if an administrator was present. Steinbach stepped forward, introduced herself as an associate dean, and said that she wanted to address Duncan and the students. Confused as to why an administrator would address a speech to him, Duncan repeated his request. The response from the gallery was predictable: “Your racism is showing!” “Black female!” Bowing to inevitability, Duncan ceded the podium and Steinbach began to read from a prepared speech, her voice trembling. From its opening phrases, her remarks captured the ethos of the therapeutic diversity university: "I had to write something down because I am so uncomfortable up here. And I don’t say that for sympathy. I’m just saying I’m deeply, deeply uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable cuz this event is tearing at the fabric of this community that I care about and am here to support. And I don’t know and I have to ask myself and I’m not a cynic to ask this: Is the juice worth the squeeze? Is this worth it?" The crowd erupted in a chorus of ecstatic finger snaps. Steinbach would go on to use “uncomfortable” or “not comfortable” 11 times, “feel” seven times, “harm” or “harmful” five times, “safety” or “safe” twice, and “pain” once—all in six minutes. It is again worth noting the oddity of Steinbach’s role at this juncture. It was she who represented the administration because the DEI office is at the fulcrum of every university function. And the DEI office is at the fulcrum of every university function because everything in a university today bears on identity. There is no independent sphere of thought and knowledge. Steinbach might still be the acting DEI dean today but for her by-now infamous, thrice-repeated question to Duncan: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” Asked to clarify, she explained: "I mean is it worth the pain that this causes and the division that this causes? Do you have something so incredibly important to say about Twitter and guns and COVID that that is worth this impact on the division of these people who have sat next to each other for years, who are going through what is the battle of law school together, so that they can go out into the world and be advocates." The answer was obvious. “Luckily,” Steinbach said, Stanford students were gaining the advocacy skills to challenge free-speech policies that do not take harm into account. She concluded with a celebration of the hecklers: “I look out [at this room] and I don’t ask, ‘What is going on here?’ I look out and I say, ‘I’m glad this is going on here.’” Several videos of this dismal episode went viral. By the next day, the law school was in damage-control mode. Dean Martínez sent an email to the law school calling the attempts at managing the room “well-intentioned,” but ultimately not aligned with the school’s “institutional commitment to freedom of speech.” The day after Martínez’s March 10th email, Martínez and Stanford University’s president co-signed a letter to Judge Duncan apologizing for the disruption of his speech. This time Martínez was a little more critical of Steinbach, writing that “staff members … intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.” Martínez’s apology to Duncan and her guarded criticism of Steinbach were too much for the Outlaws and their allies. On Monday, March 13th, nearly a third of the law school student body protested in Martínez’s constitutional-law classroom, having covered the whiteboard with signs attacking Duncan and commending the hecklers as free-speech heroes. Over half of Martínez’s con-law students joined the protest; those who did not were subject to silent shaming. Feelings were again dominant. When Martínez ducked out of the building after her class, reported the Washington Free Beacon, the protesters began to cry and hug each other, presumably in the belief that they had achieved an historic civil-rights victory. In her March 22nd letter, Martínez announced that Steinbach was “currently on leave.” That letter was implicitly directed at Steinbach’s many supporters inside the law school and the wider university. That Martínez felt compelled to justify her apology to Duncan and her mild rebuke of the DEI dean is a reminder of how politically skewed the academic population is compared to the public at large. Remarkably, the Outlaws insist that it was their free speech that was violated by Duncan’s parrying questions and by his description of his tormenters as “bullies” and “idiots.” And Steinbach’s “allies” claim that she is being “thrown under the bus.” Those allies are right. Her behavior was perfectly in keeping with the ideology of her office. If she ended up tacking a bit too far in the direction of protecting marginalized communities from harm, well, we all make mistakes. Firing Steinbach (more likely, her leave will quietly become permanent during the summer) or abolishing her office, as many who deplore the identity-based university are calling for, will not restore the idea-based university. And Martínez’s letter shows why. For all her eloquent defense of free speech and free association, she nonetheless ends up rewarding the hecklers. Stanford will be offering even more programming and events on LGBTQ+ rights in the spring, Martínez announced. It is hard to imagine how much more thorough Stanford’s celebration of LGBTQ+ identity could be. Martínez justifies this sop to the shutdown lobby on the grounds that what motivated the protests was the “desire by students to bring greater attention to discussion [sic] of LGBTQ+ rights.” That is fanciful. The hecklers were motivated by hatred and censoriousness, period. No one claimed that Duncan needed to be run off campus in order to “bring greater attention to discussion of LGBTQ+ rights.” But even if that had been the motivation, rewarding it now means that the protests worked. The only programming that should be increased in the wake of the shutdown is Federalist Society programming. But Martínez has offered the Stanford chapter no apology, besides stating in her latest letter that the “Federalist Society has the same rights of free association that other student organizations at the law school have.” That self-evident assertion is hardly a rousing endorsement of their role as virtually the only remaining source of ideological diversity at the law school. If we are on the lookout for marginalized minorities to celebrate, we need look no further than the Fed Soc chapter. Martínez’s rush to placate the wounded sensibilities of the LGBTQ+ lobby and her unwillingness to discipline them are signs of how difficult it will be to return the university to a place where reason, not self-pity, rules. Another indication is provided by the law school’s acting associate dean of students. On March 11th, the same day that Martínez and Stanford’s president sent Duncan their apology, that associate dean, Jeanne Merino, sent a one-page memo to the law school’s student groups. It was just as drenched in the rhetoric of victimhood and vulnerability as DEI dean Steinbach’s pronouncements. Merino uses “safety” or “safe” three times, “feeling” or “feel” three times, “hurt” twice, and “comfortable” and “mental health” once each: "The focus of this email is to provide you with resources that you can use right now to support your safety and mental health. I am so sorry that you are having to deal with this difficulty at all, much less now. Many of us are feeling raw and hurt right now. That’s understandable. Use … the wonderful counselors at CAPS and therapists at SLS if you need help dealing with your hurt and anger. … And of course, please connect with anyone at SLS with whom you feel comfortable who can support you now." Merino suggested that the memo’s recipients reach out to Tirien Steinbach and to the Levin Center, the public interest group that had provided what Steinbach, in her 7.02am memo, had called an “alternative space” for “community members for whom [sic] their sense of belonging is undermined by this event taking place.” The Federalist Society leadership received a copy of the Merino memo, addressed to “Dear Fed Soc leadership.” Some observers have wondered why Merino would recommend that Fed Soc members seek help from Steinbach, of all people, in “processing” the previous week’s events. But Merino clearly composed the memo with the Outlaws in mind and merely copied and pasted it to the Fed Soc leadership, oblivious to the resulting incongruity. Thus properly understood, the memo is another marker of the solipsistic bathos that characterizes universities in the grip of victim ideology. It was the Outlaws and their allies who coerced the shutdown of Duncan. Their tactics raised questions of foundational principle for university governance. And yet Merino responded to the incident with the language of feeling, characterizing the Outlaws as the injured party in need of mental-health support. The most astonishing aspect of the Steinbach affair is that it occurred at a law school. The essence of lawyerly work is to represent someone other than oneself—a defendant, a business client, a plaintiff seeking redress. One’s own identity is not at stake. A lawyer is supposed to grapple with legal ideas—the principles behind a statute or constitutional provision, the implications of a contractual clause. Here, too, his identity should be irrelevant. Much of legal work is adversarial; a lawyer confronts strongly opposing viewpoints, the outcome of which may lead even to the loss of a client's liberty. A lawyer rebuts those arguments not by claiming to be emotionally wounded by them, but by posing a stronger set of arguments that better accord with reason. Here, yet again, a lawyer’s own identity should not come into play. A large portion of the Stanford law school student body seems to have no grasp of these truths. They weaponized their feelings against Duncan, and claimed that his mere presence somewhere on campus, even if they stayed away from him, was intolerable. Several administrators openly validated this emotionalism; others may be in quiet agreement. It was not coincidental that Steinbach began her speech to Duncan with a recitation of her feelings. Merino offered Stanford’s vast therapeutic apparatus to salve the wounded students’ “hurt and anger.” The question now is: Where are the faculty? They are looking at an educational failure. If they are not appalled by the protesters’ frenzy of irrationalism, they, too, misunderstand law and their role in passing on legal culture. To be sure, Martinez argues in her March 22nd letter that “lawyers in training must learn to confront injustice or views they don't agree with and respond as attorneys.” But a one-time statement of principle, even one backed up by a “mandatory half-day session on ... the norms of the legal profession,” is hardly enough to reverse the all-encompassing incursion of solipsism. The faculty, either collectively or individually, should themselves put out a statement against the weaponization of alleged victimhood. They should emphasize in all their classes the priority of principle and ideas in the practice of the law. Their continuing silence on the matter demonstrates either cowardice or complicity with the narcissism of the identity-besotted student. Stanford’s law students are not alone in rejecting the ideal of disinterestedness. For decades, certain topics have been off-limits in moot court because students claim that making or hearing arguments on the politically “wrong” side of a question is injurious to them. A number of criminal-law professors have stopped teaching the law of sexual assault. The student protests at Yale, Harvard, and other elite law schools against the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanagh to Supreme Court embraced the motto “Believe Survivors!,” a motto antithetical to the presumption of innocence and to due process. The emotional solipsism of the Stanford students and their peers around the country would make the practice of law impossible. But it also undercuts the highest ideals of Western civilization: that human beings can transcend tribal identities and use reason to govern themselves and to unlock the secrets of nature. By all means, axe every college DEI office, since every one is a monument to a lie. But the student-services bureaucracy and a large portion of the faculty will simply continue their work. That is why, if we are to restore academic integrity, it will not be sufficient to advocate for free speech, however important such advocacy is. It will be necessary to challenge head-on the grounding falsehoods of the diversity university: that majority society (or whatever is left of it) is always and everywhere oppressing the fragile “Other” and that victim identity trumps the ideal of transcendent, objective knowledge.

Stanford Speaks ​Click on any bulleted item for direct access: ​ Letter from President Saller and Provost Martinez to Class of 2028 (New) Stanford Daily: 'Keeping Stanford's Speech Free' Prof. Russell Berman: 'Does Academic Freedom Have a Future at Stanford?' John Etchemendy: ‘The Threat From Within’ Marc Tessier-Lavigne: 'Remarks on Our Campus Climate for Discussing Divergent Views' John Hennessy: 'The True Test of Free Speech' Gerhard Casper: 'Statement on Corry vs. Stanford University' Gerhard Casper: 'Concerning Culture and Cultures' Archive Letter from President Saller and Provost Martinez to Class of 2028 April 3, 2024 ​ Dear XXX, ​ Congratulations on earning a place in Stanford University’s Class of 2028! This is a moment to celebrate the hard work and determination that have brought you to this moment, and also to reflect on the next stage of your education. Amid all the challenging and polarizing issues being discussed in the world right now, you may be wondering what kind of intellectual community you would be joining at Stanford. And we think this is important to address directly. ​ Stanford strives to provide its students with a liberal education, which means one that broadens your mind and horizons by exposing you to different fields of study and different ways of thinking. A rigorous liberal education depends on questioning your assumptions and seeing if they hold up. As a member of the Stanford community, you will quickly learn that freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression are core values at Stanford. They animate our central missions of teaching and research. Stanford is also a place that values diversity in its broadest sense – which includes diversity of thought. ​ This means that every member of the Stanford community is accepted and valued for their unique characteristics and ideals. It is precisely the distinct attributes each community member brings to Stanford that, when openly and constructively shared, create a vibrant educational environment where the search for truth is advanced. ​ Our Founding Grant commits the University to “teach the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and … the great principles of government as derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The "blessings of liberty” are a middle point between mere license (doing whatever you want) and conformity (doing what others want you to do). Liberty to think and say what you believe involves taking responsibility as well. It requires recognizing the freedom and rights of others and helping to create the conditions that make everyone’s freedom possible here on campus and in our broader society. ​ Freedom of expression does not include the right to threaten or harass others and prevent them from engaging as equal participants in campus life. But the freedom of expression necessary for fulfilling the mission of a university – and for a democracy – does require allowing speech that some may find offensive or wrong. Many of humanity’s greatest advances have come from ideas that offended conventional wisdom and seemed heretical at first. In a university, the remedy for ideas that you think are wrong is not to seek to silence them but to counter them with better ideas, evidence, and arguments. ​ As a part of your education you should expect, and indeed welcome, disagreement. You will undoubtedly encounter and hear ideas that are contrary to your beliefs and values. Stanford culture will expect and demand that when you face disagreements that you respond with respect for the humanity of those you disagree with, and with an open and curious mind. We aim for an environment where we are tough on ideas, but generous and respectful to one another. Being exposed to the very different views of others will invariably broaden your outlook and may transform some of your beliefs -- or at least change your understanding of what they mean and how to defend them. ​ Your education at Stanford is designed to prepare you for life as a citizen of the communities in which you live. Whether it is your dormitory, your town, or your workplace, and regardless of what career path you eventually choose, you should have the skills to critically and constructively engage with those who are different from you. ​ Guided by the principles outlined above, we are delighted to welcome you and your unique perspective into this culture of free thought, inquiry, and expression. We hope you’ll seriously embrace the extraordinary opportunities available here. ​ Sincerely, ​ /s/ Richard Saller, President, and Jenny S. Martinez, Provost Stanford Daily: 'Keeping Stanford's Speech Free' ​ By the Stanford Daily Editorial Board, October 29, 2023 ​ Stanford is again in newspaper headlines. Most notably, The New York Times recently published a column titled “The War Comes to Stanford,” highlighting students’ speech, banners and chalk messages around campus. Other universities have been under as much, if not more , scrutiny. This is not a new phenomenon; college students’ reactions to current events have long stoked heated debate. As a Board, we are grateful to attend university in a country with the greatest free speech protections in the world. That scope of freedom includes the expression of beliefs that we may consider immoral, inflammatory or even factually incorrect, all in the shared interest of our own speech not being silenced for these very reasons. We are also fortunate to be under the leadership of President Saller and Provost Martinez, who have come out strongly in defense of free speech within both legal limits and Stanford community guidelines — despite strong opposition from some. The alternative to ban, condemn or censor such speech would make Stanford the arbiter of acceptable speech, which is not a position that any leading research institution should take. ​ Vindictive retaliation to students’ political expression can dampen free speech on college campuses. To be clear, we do not believe that college students deserve any sort of special pass to speak without facing the associated consequences. However, students should not receive threats to their safety on the basis of their opinions. We believe that being held accountable means that our views may — and should — be questioned and criticized. Our ideas may be lambasted; they may be called unacceptable and disgusting. But recent years have seen targeted efforts to punish students by exposing personal information such as their email and home address, opening the gateway for online harassment and physical danger. These include doxxing trucks parading the names and faces of college students who voiced strong opinions on geopolitical issues, Turning Point USA’s “Professor Watchlist” which includes undergraduate students, harassment of student journalists and doxxing campaigns against professors and alumni. Such attacks do not constitute engagement with someone’s ideas, but rather an attempt to humiliate and punish those who take staunch stances on social and political issues. It is these threats — especially when issued by those who wield the power to realize them — that chill speech, as students rightfully fear for their safety and future prospects. As a college student in this environment, is it better to be silent or to test your ideas? Either choice seems unacceptable according to social media, yet at least silence carries less risk. But our country’s educational institutions should be incubators of ideas, which requires us to engage with a diversity of interpretations. Students should be free to challenge and contradict their peers’ views, and even their own. This is how we learn about the world with nuance, change our minds and reinforce our beliefs. Some may say that such a view is nice in theory, but dangerous when words hold so much power to stoke hatred. It is undeniable that the modern world exists in a continual war of information and the presentation of that information. We must each acknowledge the weight of that responsibility: that our words have the real ability to harm and misinform others. Incitement that is likely to produce violence is, of course, unacceptable. Despite these risks, the alternative of a quiet campus is far worse. As the Supreme Court has held over the ages, we must preserve a free market of ideas so that the best ones may prevail through trial and scrutiny. If we fail to do so, instead choosing to silence the voices of our opponents out of fear that their views will overwhelm ours, we will have lost all faith in our peers — and the future of our country. ---------- The Editorial Board consists of Opinion columnists, editors and members of the Stanford community. Its views represent the collective views of members of the Editorial Board. Prof. Russell B erman : 'Does Academic Freedom Have a Future at Stanford?' ​ [Editor's note: These remarks were delivered by Professor Russell A. Berman at Stanford's Faculty Senate meeting on January 26, 2023 and were published in The Stanford Review on February 1. Prof. Berman's remarks refer to Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative. See also President Tessier-Lavigne's letter to the Stanford community on this issue dated January 4, 2023 and posted at our Stanford Concerns page.] The [Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative] has been a catastrophe for the university. It has shaken the faith of faculty and students in the university's commitment to academic freedom and free speech. The authors of the list have an indisputable right to express their opinion, even though I disagree with their understanding of semantics. The problem results from the endorsement of the list by the universityʼs Chief Information Officer (CIO) and his Council. That makes it policy. But we have been told by the university leaders that the elimination list is not policy. There seems to be confusion as to who is in charge. The goal of EHLI, as stated, is protecting university members from allegedly harmful words. Such words are to be purged, but if we purge words, we ban ideas, and we ban books. By this logic of avoiding harm, I will not be able to teach poems by T.S. Eliot because of their antisemitism which might cause harm. I wonʼt be able to teach Huckleberry Finn nor, for that matter, Grapes of Wrath because of racist language. We should ban Richard Wrightʼs Native Son or Toni Morrisonʼs Beloved for treatments of sexual violence, which may cause harm. This is a road we must not go down. It is not the role of a university to protect students or anyone else from difficult ideas or words. On the contrary, we need the intellectual courage to confront them, and we faculty have to regain the assurance that the university supports us when we do so. That trust in the administration has been lost. This is bitter: we need to confront the real status of academic freedom at Stanford honestly. People have become fearful of voicing their opinions. I have heard from students, worried about the sanctions they may face for word choices. I have heard from a junior colleague, fearful that expressing his views would jeopardize a promotion. I have heard from a senior colleague who feels like she is walking on eggshells in her lectures. And for lecturers without job security, academic freedom remains as elusive as ever. This is not a healthy atmosphere. The way to fix it is by asserting faculty oversight in a university run solely by administrators, like the CIO-Council, where there is no faculty presence and where, evidently, there is no appreciation for academic values. Stanford can do better. In 1900 Jane Stanford had President Jordan fire a faculty member for his political views. Distinguished members of the faculty resigned. An indirect result was the founding of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), but the fight for academic freedom began here, at Stanford. We have a historic obligation not to let it die here. In the words of former President Donald Kennedy, there are times when "faculties can take hold of the values of their institutions, defend them successfully, and make a reality of the vision of the academy under even the most stressful challenges." This is the time for the Senate to show its character. Russell A. Berman is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. At Stanford, Professor Berman is a member of the Departments of German Studies and Comparative Literature. He specializes in politics and culture in Europe and the Middle East. ​John Etchemendy: ‘The Threat From Within’ Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy, in a 2017 speech before the Stanford Board of Trustees, outlined challenges higher education is facing in the coming years. Following is an excerpt from that talk. Universities are a fundamental force of good in the world. At their best, they mine knowledge and understanding, wisdom and insight, and then freely distribute these treasures to society at large. Theirs is not a monopoly on this undertaking, but in the concentration of effort and single-mindedness of purpose, they are truly unique institutions. If Aristotle is right that what defines a human is rationality, then they are the most distinctive, perhaps the pinnacle, of human endeavors. I share this thought to remind us all why we do what we do – why we care so much about Stanford and what it represents. But I also say it to voice a concern. Universities are under attack, both from outside and from within. The threat from outside is apparent. Potential cuts in federal funding would diminish our research enterprise and our ability to fund graduate education. Taxing endowments would limit the support we can give to faculty and the services we can provide our students. Indiscriminate travel restrictions would impede the free exchange of ideas and scholars. All of these threats have intensified in recent years – and recent months have given them a reality that is hard to ignore. But I’m actually more worried about the threat from within. Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country – not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines – there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves. This results in a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we won’t even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve. It will not be easy to resist this current. As an institution, we are continually pressed by faculty and students to take political stands, and any failure to do so is perceived as a lack of courage. But at universities today, the easiest thing to do is to succumb to that pressure. What requires real courage is to resist it. Yet when those making the demands can only imagine ignorance and stupidity on the other side, any resistance will be similarly impugned. The university is not a megaphone to amplify this or that political view, and when it does it violates a core mission. Universities must remain open forums for contentious debate, and they cannot do so while officially espousing one side of that debate. But we must do more. 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. I fear that the next few years will be difficult to navigate. We need to resist the external threats to our mission, but in this, we have many friends outside the university willing and able to help. But to stem or dial back our academic parochialism, we are pretty much on our own. The first step is to remind our students and colleagues that those who hold views contrary to one’s own are rarely evil or stupid, and may know or understand things that we do not. It is only when we start with this assumption that rational discourse can begin, and that the winds of freedom can blow. ​ Marc Tessier-Lavigne: 'Re marks on Our Campus Climate for Discussing Divergent Views' Former Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne made the following remarks as part of a Campus Conversation with the Stanford community on May 26, 2021. ​ I would like to address the nature of the conversations and discussions we have in our university community. Over the past several months, including in recent days, the provost and I have heard repeatedly from people of varied perspectives in our university community expressing concern that others, who hold different views from their own, are engaging in speech that intimidates, or silences, or otherwise harms people. We’ve heard these concerns from students, and also from faculty and staff. Sometimes, it has to do with an incident that has occurred on social media. In other cases, it’s about something that has occurred in a class or in our community at large. The concerns come from people on all sides of the political spectrum, and different issues have had often very different levels of visibility to the broader community. These concerns are fundamentally about the climate we have in our community for the discussion of divergent views. What I would like to express today has two parts: First, free expression is essential to the life of the university. Second, what is legally permissible to say is not necessarily the same as what we should aspire to as an intellectual community. We should seek a higher level of discourse than we sometimes see at Stanford. Several years ago, Persis and I posted a piece on the web, titled “Advancing free speech and inclusion,” that explained our approach to these issues. First, as a university, we deeply value free expression. The ability to express a broad diversity of ideas and viewpoints is fundamental to the university’s mission of seeking truth through research and education, and to preparing students for a world in which they will engage with diverse points of view every day. The administration is not the speech police; on the contrary, we seek to facilitate the exchange of a broad diversity of ideas. Second, when there is speech or conduct that someone objects to, we have processes in the university for reviewing specific complaints and determining if the action violates university policy. It’s important to understand that the bar is high for determining that speech has violated our policies. For instance, under the Leonard Law in California, the university cannot discipline students for speech that is protected by the First Amendment. The speech must meet a high legal threshold for unprotected speech, such as establishing a clear physical threat toward a specific individual. But the fact that one is free to say something in a particular way doesn’t mean that one should. This is a choice each of us has to make. And I believe, as a university, we should seek a high standard for the quality of discussion and debate in our community. Actions aimed not at engaging with and debating ideas but rather at suppressing them, including using social media to name-call or shame those with particular views – these go counter to what is needed to foster the open inquiry that our mission calls for. As president, I cannot mandate that people engage with each other in respectful ways, and the university cannot sanction people for what they say, absent a finding in a university process of the kind I mentioned. But I can champion respectful engagement; and I believe it is critical to this university that we are able to hear views and perspectives from across the ideological spectrum, and that we are able to engage with and debate those views in constructive ways. As members of this community, we will disagree on many things. We also have much to learn from one another and our differing views. Our common humanity should compel us to honor the dignity of one another as members of this community, even as we disagree. We also should value and model reasoned, fact-based discussion. It will produce deeper understanding, more learning from one another, more receptivity to the viewpoints we are seeking to advance, and a greater capacity to adjust our preconceptions in light of new information. I believe it is the kind of discussion our broader world needs, as well. ​John Hennessy: 'The True Test of Free Speech' Former Stanford President John Hennessy, "Ideas Can't Thrive Where Voices Are Muzzled." March/ April 2003 ​ The word university derives from a Latin term that essentially means “combined into one.” This centuries-old notion that many disciplines come together to form a whole is still at the center of how we understand the mission and life of Stanford and other great universities. I believe that this combining within the university goes beyond a mixing of disciplines. A university is also a mingling of scholars, experts and novices, from different backgrounds and with different values. It is a blending of scholarly approaches, experimental and theoretical. A university often hosts a rainbow of viewpoints on the most topical issues of the day. One goal of this amalgamation is to encourage all members of the community to think creatively and rigorously and to use the interplay of scholarly commentary to sharpen their insights. The exchange of contending and supporting ideas generated by insightful and engaged minds makes the position of university president one of the most interesting jobs in the world. The combination of intelligent, creative people and contentious issues can also be a volatile mix in any community, and perhaps especially so in a tightly knit intellectual community. It is very much in keeping with Jane and Leland Stanford’s original vision of the University that such issues would be part of the academic conversation. But what happens when the debate inspired by these issues is accompanied by passionate beliefs and widely divergent points of view? This year, in particular, the question has proved to be far more than hypothetical. Since students returned in September, a host of political and social issues have emerged, many of them affecting Stanford: the conflict in Israel and the occupied territories, the prospect of war with Iraq, terrorism and civil liberties, and affirmative action, to name a few. While the debates around some of these issues bring out the best thinking in people, they also engender strong feelings that can make civil intellectual exchange difficult. In fall quarter, for example, two speakers with disparate perspectives on world events addressed the Stanford community during the same week. The former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, MS ’79, spoke to a capacity audience at Memorial Auditorium. A few days later, poet and activist Amiri Baraka spoke before a group at Kresge Auditorium. Without comparing or equating these men, I can say they both elicited strong support from some and criticism from others. In the week prior to their speeches, there had been heated debate about their respective opinions and experiences, as well as whether each individual “deserved” to speak at Stanford. In advance of the speakers’ arrival, I wrote a letter to the Stanford community to reaffirm the principle of open, diverse and mutually respectful dialogue, especially on the controversial and difficult issues facing our nation and our world. My letter drew from the memorial service for Stanford’s renowned constitutional scholar Gerald Gunther, held just a few weeks earlier. At that service, President Emeritus Gerhard Casper recalled some of Professor Gunther’s most powerful words. “University campuses,” Gunther wrote, “should exhibit greater, not less, freedom of expression than prevails in society at large. . . .” In my letter, I recalled Professor Gunther’s words and reminded all members of the community of the importance of civil dialogue and freedom of expression, no matter how strongly they might disagree with a speaker. The speeches of Mr. Barak and Mr. Baraka brought us face to face with the often-repeated insight about free speech: defending the right of others to speak freely is easy when you agree with them, but the true test of the principle comes when it requires defending the rights of those espousing ideas directly in conflict with your own beliefs. The commitment to free and open speech runs deep at Stanford and is conveyed in the University’s motto, “The wind of freedom blows.” I am proud to say that both speakers were heard without interruption that week, and I was equally proud of the insightful and provocative questions posed to the speakers by Stanford students. The interactions between speakers and intelligent questioners demonstrated that civil dialogue does not inhibit the exploration of controversial issues or the ability of a questioner to challenge a speaker’s views. Instead, an open and civil debate encourages thoughtful and illuminating interchange. I sincerely believe that the challenging issues we face in the coming months will provide an opportunity for the Stanford community to show our fellow citizens that important and contentious questions can be addressed in a way that embraces the best values of free speech and academic freedom in a democratic society. Ge rhard Casper: 'Statement on Corry vs. Stanford University' Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper's Statement to the Faculty Senate on Corry vs. Stanford University, March 9, 1995 ​ On May 2, 1994, nine Stanford students filed a lawsuit - Corry v. Stanford University - challenging the Fundamental Standard interpretation titled "Free Expression and Discriminatory Harassment." The Fundamental Standard has been the measure of conduct for Stanford students since 1896. It states: "Students at Stanford are expected to show both within and without the University such respect for order, morality, personal honor and the rights of others as is demanded of good citizens. Failure to do this will be sufficient cause for removal from the University." The Student Conduct Legislative Council put the interpretation - popularly known as the Grey Interpretation - into effect in 1990, spelling out when the face-to-face use of racial epithets or their equivalent would be viewed as harassment by personal vilification, and, therefore, as a violation of the Fundamental Standard. The interpretation relied on the so-called "fighting words" exception to the First Amendment. All other forms of speech at Stanford were protected. Nobody has ever been disciplined under this interpretation. On Feb. 27, 1995, the Santa Clara County Superior Court issued its decision in Corry. The court held that the Grey explication of the Fundamental Standard was unconstitutionally overbroad; that it did not proscribe all fighting words and was thus an unconstitutional viewpoint-based rule; and that California's so-called Leonard Law was constitutional. The Leonard Law is part of the 1992 State Education Code and bars non-religious private colleges and universities from disciplining students for speech unless government could prohibit the same speech. I should like to begin my comments on the case by giving my view concerning what the decision is not about. Various newspapers have quoted one of the plaintiffs as saying that this was a victory for academic freedom and free speech. If it was, I do not believe that it was needed. At a university that is committed to speaking plainly, without concealment and to the point, a ban on insulting fighting words based on group characteristics is not likely to have a chilling effect on almost all relevant speech. Academic freedom and free speech were quite safe at Stanford University before the decision. I came to Stanford after adoption of the Grey Interpretation, and my experience has been that debate about scholarly issues, as well as public issues, has been and continues to be uninhibited, robust and wide-open here. Second, the decision is not going to unleash torrents of hate speech at Stanford. This university is characterized by a remarkable extent of peaceful interaction. In spite of occasional incidents that are played up in the press - indeed, universities are no ivory towers - there are few institutions in American society that are, comparatively speaking, more successful than universities at encouraging their members to cross bridges. The Grey Interpretation was meant to express our community's strong commitment to civility or, in the old-fashioned words of the Fundamental Standard, respect for "personal honor and the rights of others as is demanded of good citizens." Civility at Stanford will continue ,with or without the Grey Interpretation. And harassment, whether accompanied by speech or not, including harassment that is motivated by racial or other bigotry, continues to be in violation of the Fundamental Standard. Third, it is ironic that, while opposing the university's rule on First Amendment grounds, the court endorsed the Leonard Law. I thought the First Amendment freedom of speech and freedom of association is about the pursuit of ideas. Stanford, a private university, had the idea that its academic goals would be better served if students never used gutter epithets against fellow students. The California legislature apparently did not like such ideas, for it prohibited private secular universities and colleges from establishing their own standards of civil discourse. Religious institutions alone can claim First Amendment protection in this regard. However, I seem to be about the only person who finds that governmental intrusion troublesome and uncalled for. Therefore, as Justice Holmes once said, "if I am alone, probably something is wrong with my works." The San Francisco Examiner called my position a "laughable convolution." I guess the Examiner must be right. I was born in 1937 in a country where racism had become government policy. I grew up in that same country as government and private institutions attempted to rethink civil society in the wake of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. Therefore I confess to possessing less certainty about absolute positions than do the plaintiffs in Corry. To be sure, rules such as the Grey Interpretation ultimately may be futile in fighting bigotry. But should a private university not be permitted to struggle with the issue in its own, if imperfect, ways? When I ask this question non-rhetorically, I am told that racists and sexists also invoke freedom of association. Well, so they do, and I have no difficulty acknowledging a compelling state interest in eradicating discrimination. Extreme cases, however, make for bad law, especially as concerns the fragile private sphere. I disagree with the court's statement that the Grey Interpretation has nothing do with the four freedoms of a university, as put forward by Justice Frankfurter in his famous concurrence in Sweezy v. New Hampshire, i.e. a university's freedom "to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study." Until 1992, the State of California also respected a private university's right to set its own educational policies. Almost all other states do so to this date. Congress a few years ago resisted the temptation to do for the entire country what the state legislature has done for California. 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. Because these rights are so important and our country takes them so seriously, reasonable people entertain different views about doctrinal details, while strongly supporting the essence of free speech. Constitutional scholars - indeed, Supreme Court justices, even the four that attended Stanford - disagree about the line between what the Constitution protects and what it does not. For instance, the plaintiffs and the judge in this case rely heavily on a 1992 decision of the United States Supreme Court, R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul. I might point out that Justice Scalia's opinion in that case had the support of only four other justices. The four additional members of the Court agreed with the result but disassociated themselves from Justice Scalia's reasoning. After consulting with others on the matter and after listening to arguments on both sides, I have, nevertheless, concluded that, barring unexpected language in the final judgment, Stanford should not appeal the decision of the Santa Clara County Superior Court. I was not here when Stanford adopted the "Free Expression and Discriminatory Harassment" interpretation of the Fundamental Standard. Its passage by the Student Conduct Legislative Council after 18 months of discussion and debate left many on campus feeling ambivalent about it. I share that ambivalence. I am completely committed to Stanford's motto "Die Luft der Freiheit weht" - The wind of freedom blows. I do, indeed, believe that Stanford should voluntarily agree to be bound by the principles of free speech. However, such voluntary agreement to principles is not the same as being ordered by the state legislature to follow every twist of case law. In a perfect world of unlimited resources, we might test the court's ruling further. We do not live in that perfect world. With respect to this particular case, I have come to the conclusion that Stanford's limited resources of money, time, and attention are best kept applied to the central tasks of excellence and rigor in teaching, learning, and research. The 1990 interpretation was written narrowly as a statement of the university's belief that individuals should be free of harassment, intimidation, or personal vilification. Those acts have no place at Stanford or in any rational, civilized society. Among our most cherished values at Stanford are a belief in the power of reason, and in the right of each person to be accepted as an autonomous individual, free to speak and be listened to without regard to labels and stereotypes. As I have said, we have never had to use the 1990 interpretation. Harassment, threats or intimidation continue to be unacceptable. Should they go beyond what is protected by law, we will invoke university disciplinary procedures. Otherwise, we shall continue to do what we always have done. We shall counter prejudice with reason. The work of reason is hard work, as is the work of building and maintaining a great private university. I invite all faculty, students and staff to continue the work of reason. Gerhard Casper: 'Concerning Culture and Cultures' Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper's "Welcome to the Class of 1997 and Their Parents" in Frost Amphitheater, September 23, 1993 ​ Members of the Stanford college class of 1997 and those among you who have had the splendid good sense to transfer to Stanford: On behalf of the University's faculty and staff, and your fellow students, both undergraduate and graduate, I warmly welcome you. We have looked forward to your presence with pleasurable anticipation because we know, on the basis of what we have learned about you, that you will be superbly qualified to test our abilities. Equally warmly I welcome parents, other relatives, and friends who have come along to lessen the apprehensions that our freshmen might have. For many parents this is not the easiest of tasks since they themselves are full of apprehension about this rite of passage and great adventure and about what lies ahead for their daughters and sons. I understand this. After all, as somebody once said to me in a striking mixed metaphor: "The future is an uncharted sea full of potholes." A newspaper columnist for the Olathe, Kan., Daily News, David Chartrand, wrote recently about the life of college freshmen: "You'll know right off that this isn't high school anymore when you wake up and realize there is no one telling you: To get out of bed. To get back in bed. To turn off the television. To avoid strangers. To go to bed and I swear I am not kidding this time. . . . To help with the dishes. . . To make your bed. . . . To eat your dinner. . . . To grow up. To stop growing up so fast." At Stanford we have no ambivalence about your growing up, nor will you hear the admonition "to avoid strangers." Quite to the contrary, you will be encouraged to go out of your way to meet strangers, to talk to strangers, to befriend strangers. The university and your fellow students offer you rich intellectual opportunities to explore and understand the many faces of diversity, here and abroad. The Stanford college class of 1997 is exceedingly diverse by any measure of academic achievements and interests, artistic and athletic accomplishments. It is also diverse as expressed by common demographic yardsticks, even though some of these categories tend to be overly general. Indeed, they understate rather than capture your diversity. Nonetheless, here are some figures from the demographic profile of the Stanford college class of 1997. 2% American Indian 5% foreign students from 37 different countries 9% African-American 10% Mexican-American 24% Asian-American 50% in that residual category called "white." This last category, whatever the government may mean by it, refers, of course, only to students from the United States. The American students come from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Very few among you have graduated from a high school or lived in a community with such diversity. Not many will have had much personal experience of interacting with people of different ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds. As you cross bridges to meet strangers at Stanford, the going will sometimes be rough. That, however, is an inevitable part of the excitement that college offers you. I should like to think through with you some of the issues that have become associated with diversity on college campuses. I do so because for you, our new students, these will be matters of great opportunity and challenge in the next few years. They are also, I am sure, of great interest, and sometimes concern, to you, the parents. Last May I received a letter from the parents of a graduating college student from which I should like to quote the most important passages. Dear Dr. Casper: Our son, Andy, graduates from Stanford in a few weeks. He has enjoyed Stanford... One of the reasons he elected to attend Stanford was the cultural richness of its student body. We recently received the Commencement schedule of events, and that concerns us. The following are some of the events shown: Chicano/Latino Graduation Ceremony Catholic Graduation mass and Reception Asian American Graduation Dinner Native American Graduation Dinner African American Graduation Program... We should like your thoughts on the policy apparently being fostered of separating students along racial, ethnic and religious lines as evidenced by the Commencement schedule. We noticed the same atmosphere at Stanford four years ago when we enrolled our son. There were admissions receptions for African American, Asian, Native American, and Latino students at that time. Interestingly, there appear to be no receptions or campus groups for white Anglo Saxon students - and well there are not. We applaud the efforts of Stanford to create a diverse academic atmosphere where various American cultures and ethnic groups can exchange ideas to enrich the whole academic environment. However, it appears that rather than creating an appreciation for diversity, Stanford is fostering separatism among its students. Isn't this the very thing Stanford is trying to eliminate in its admissions policies? Aren't we trying to create an amalgam of American culture rather than a cacophony? I sometimes get 50 or more letters a day. They address many issues and express very different opinions - indeed, they often make dissonant, cacophonous points. My staff and I answer almost all of them. My reply to Andy's parents stressed that Stanford is certainly not pursuing a policy of fragmentation. I did point out, however, that maintaining a diverse academic community does require that students and their families feel at ease, especially at such festive occasions as the opening of the freshman year or commencement. Alas, the pressures of time did not permit me to address the last paragraph of the letter. In a way, what I should like to do today is belatedly to think aloud about the questions it raises as to the multiplicity of cultures represented on campus and the university's own culture. Especially, I am interested in the letter's last question: "Aren't we trying to create an amalgam of American culture rather than a cacophony?" Let me begin by making the obvious point that students, like all other human beings, are individuals pursuing their individual aspirations, but they are also social beings. When they congregate with others on campus it does not necessarily mean that they are segregating themselves. Almost all of us have a tendency to hang out with people who are familiar, who share our background, who are "our own kind." We also have a tendency to form or join groups in order to accomplish some goals of ours. Any individual may associate with a range of different groups. The groups we belong to tend to maintain a group spirit. This is, incidentally, especially true as to the "group spirit" of American universities, Stanford included. The "Stanford spirit" was indeed one of the factors that enticed me to join the faculty last year. I trust you will embrace it quickly, because, whatever your differences may be, you have one thing in common - the choice of associating with Stanford. Individual development often takes place through groups. Our Constitution recognizes this fact and need by protecting the freedom of association as part of our First Amendment rights. Those who critically characterize various campus groups as students "segregating" rather than as students "associating" choose to construe the phenomenon, to quote Stanford alumnus Woodrow Myers, as alienation, rather than as a means for exploring cultural identity - though the latter interpretation is frequently the most plausible one. To be sure, the line between "congregation" and "segregation" is a fragile one. As you know, Stanford has a number of student residences that are designated as "theme houses" and some of these are ethnic theme houses. Stanford encourages interaction and guards against separatism by requiring that, in the case of the ethnic theme houses, no more than fifty percent of the residents may belong to the ethnic group that provides the "theme." This summer I talked with a student who during her freshman year had been assigned to one of these theme houses. She did indeed feel left out and ended up associating mostly with students from the "other" half. She liked neither the sense of exclusion nor the fact that, in this instance, "crosscultural interaction" did not work. Cases like this are bound to occur because universities are not immune to social developments and tensions. I do, however, view it as the institutions' responsibility, and indeed as the responsibility of Stanford students, Stanford parents, Stanford alumni to do their utmost to minimize the chances for exclusion, even as we provide opportunities for identifying one's social heritage. I shall return to this matter later on. The exploration of one's cultural identity has itself become a major theme in our country and our world. Experiences of social and political inequality have heightened emphasis on cultural differences. This in turn has led to what the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor refers to as "the politics of recognition." Taking off from the concept of the equal dignity of all citizens, we are asked to recognize the unique identity of an individual or group, their distinctness from everyone else. The phenomenon is both a domestic and a global one. Cultural conflicts seem to characterize our world at an ever escalating speed: with devastating and heartbreaking consequences in the former Yugoslavia or in Somalia, or in South Africa, where a few weeks ago, a former Stanford student, Amy Biehl, died while contributing to the dismantling of apartheid. More and more individuals seem to seek authenticity through some form of social identity and this social identity is, to a large extent, tied up with a notion of social heritage as one's "culture." I think it is very important to realize that this fairly old-fashioned definition of culture as "social heritage" owes much of its contemporary currency to the undeniable fact that minorities, in the United States and in many other countries, are emerging from experiences of subordination or even submersion. It is also the case that thinking in terms of "cultural wholes," in terms of distinct cultural identities, each more or less "complete," neglects the fact that there are myriad crossroads, bridges, and borderlands, especially in "a nation of immigrants" such as ours. To quote my Stanford colleague Renato Rosaldo: We all cross such social boundaries in our daily lives. Even... the nuclear family, is cross-cut by differences of gender, generation, and age. Consider the disparate worlds one passes through in daily life, a round that includes home, eating out, working hours, adventures in consumerland, and a range of relationships, from intimacy to collegiality and friendship to enmity. Radcliffe-Brown, the famous social anthropologist, spoke of culture as "the process by which a person acquires, from contacts with other persons or from such things as books or works of art, knowledge, skill, ideas, beliefs, tastes, sentiments." I, your president, am an immigrant which, of course, you would never have guessed listening to my accent. I came to the United States from Germany in 1964, at age 26, almost 30 years ago. When I moved initially to California my "cultural identity" was certainly predominantly German - whatever that means. It is said easily but there are, after all, many different ways to be German or Indian or American or Italian. The adage "When in Rome, do as the Romans do!" does not deprive one of choices. In my case the matter of identity was further complicated by the fact that there was little to identify with for somebody who grew up among the devastations of World War II and the cultural uncertainties and ambivalencies experienced by my generation in the wake of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis. Since 1964 I have lived in the United States, and have had contacts with people in every part of the country, with books, architecture, art, music, even, believe it or not, football. I have acquired an American "cultural identity" intermingled with my original German and European identifications. For 26 years I lived in Chicago - as Saul Bellow has shown, a rather rich cultural challenge all by itself. I am now interacting with "the Stanford culture." In addition, I have played many different roles, some of them on both sides of the Atlantic: the roles of son, student, husband, father, professor of constitutional law, dean, provost, president, friend, citizen - to mention but a few. The content and demands of these roles have been changing for me, as they have been changing for all of you. We have a difficult time indeed as we attempt to distinguish those traditional contents of a role that are worth retaining from those that should be discarded. Each of us has so many different roles with changing demands that most of the time it even seems beside the point to search for a role model - even a single specific role can be played in various ways, just like Hamlet. I think I have only one identity, but my identity, like yours, reflects myriad cultural influences and role expectations, which I have fused, adapted, integrated in my own individual way. An acquaintance of mine who had come to the United States through various waystations from Eastern Europe, once said: "I would go back to where I came from, if I hadn't come from so many places." Each one of us is actually "multicultural," has come from "so many places." Each one of us will become even more multicultural as we befriend more "strangers." Indeed, it is the opportunity to meet "strangers" that adds special pleasures to life, especially at a university. So, were Andy's parents right when they rhetorically asked: "Aren't we trying to create an amalgam of American culture rather than a cacophony?" It may surprise you to hear that I do not think that they were right. There is a great difference between a distillation that you have freely produced yourselves and one ordained by the university in accordance with its social engineering schemes. "We," in this case Stanford University, have no particular mandate to create a "culture," be it an "amalgam" or a highly differentiated one. Each one of you will develop your own version of cultural identity, will become a person. Your fellow students and your faculty and members of the staff, and therefore, in a manner of speaking, "the" university, will obviously make many contributions to your cultural formation. All of this will happen whether any of it is intended or not. As T. S. Eliot has said: "Culture is the one thing that we cannot deliberately aim at. It is the product of a variety of more or less harmonious activities, each pursued for its own sake." Culture is a highly dynamic concept. No culture is ever frozen, not even those that are completely isolated. One's social heritage does not come neatly packaged in an ice cube that can be thawed for reference and use. Nor are we frozen into a particular culture. But it is not for the university in its institutional role to tell you to blend in or to remain separate, to embrace an "amalgam" or to reject it. Whether the United States is best understood as a "melting pot" or a "mosaic" you will decide. However, neither of these metaphors of rather dubious analytic quality is a normative component of Stanford's "mission statement." It is not our goal to mold you in a particular way. What is university policy is "a commitment to actively learning about and interacting with a variety of different people." If we at the university were not committed to interactive pluralism, education would become impossible. Of course, this does not mean that the university should ignore the fact that different students have different interests and wants and that the institution's diversity creates acculturation difficulties for individuals that need to be attended to with care. The university is an institution dedicated to the search to know, the search to know of each member in her or his individual capacity. You were admitted to Stanford as individuals not in groups. No university can thrive unless each member is accepted as an individual and can speak and will be listened to without regard to labels and stereotypes. While the university has no right to tell you who you should become, with what groups to associate or not to associate, university citizenship entails the obligation to accept every individual member of the community as a contributor to the search to know. In a university nobody has the right to deny another person's right to speak his or her mind, to speak plainly, without concealment and to the point. In a university discussion your first question in response to an argument must never be "Does she belong to the right group?" Instead, the only criterion is "Does she have a valid argument?" An argument must not be judged by whether the speaker is male or female, black or white, American or foreign. I could end here and thus avoid some additional problems. However, let me retain you for a few moments more. If what I just said suggests to you that I see the university as by and large neutral territory where cultures clash, interact, adapt, and change while the institution itself is committed to cultural relativism, with no ideas and values of its own, you would be quite wrong. A university has a culture, an identity of its own. Its identity is tied to its work. Its work, as I said, consists of the search to know. The search to know is carried out by critical analysis, according to standards of evidence that themselves are subject to examination and reexamination. They cannot be set by a political diktat. Thomas Jefferson spoke of freedom as "the first born daughter of science." What I like to refer to as the "republic of learning" is committed to, I quote the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, "the Stoic ideal of the kosmou polites, or 'citizen of the entire world', that is, the ideal of being a person who can argue intelligently about the most important matters with human beings the world over, not being shut out of such debate by narrowness or prejudice." As Randolph Bourne wrote during the first World War: A college where such a spirit is possible even to the smallest degree, has within itself the seeds of this international intellectual world of the future. It suggests that the contribution of America will be an intellectual internationalism which goes far beyond the mere exchange of scientific ideas and discoveries and the cold recording of facts. It will be an intellectual sympathy which is not satisfied until it has got at the heart of the different cultural expressions, and felt as they feel. It may have immense preferences, but it will make understanding and not indignation its end. Such a sympathy will unite and not divide. The work of the university is universal by aspiration and character. The "republic of learning" reaches from Florence to Stanford, from Stanford to Kyoto, from Kyoto to Santiago, from Santiago to Moscow - all places, incidentally, where Stanford has a presence, as it has in Paris, Berlin, and Oxford. I know few universities that are better positioned than Stanford on the Pacific Rim to be at the center of this "republic of learning." The "republic of learning" has values that it prizes above all others: freedom (not just academic freedom), nondiscrimination (you will be heard regardless of your sex, race, ethnicity, religion), and equality of opportunity. It is not a mere coincidence that these are also the values, if at times distorted or forgotten, of our country. Nor is it a coincidence that the culture envisioned by Jane and Leland Stanford, as put forward in the 1885 Founding Grant for the University, comprised "teaching the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and inculcating love and reverence for the great principles of government as derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These purposes are not a coincidence, because studies cannot blossom and minds cannot move unless these rights prevail, unless the wind of freedom blows, not only at the university but also in the wider society. "The wind of freedom blows" - Die Luft der Freiheit weht - is the motto that appears in the seal of the President of Stanford University. It was chosen by Stanford's first president, David Starr Jordan. In a symbolic expression of the fact that the "republic of learning" knows no national or cultural boundaries President Jordan employed the motto that can be traced to the humanist Ulrich von Hutten in German rather than English. In June I wrote a letter to all Stanford alumni in which I discussed undergraduate education. The letter triggered responses from hundreds of our former students. Among them was one from Walter Pendergrass in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Pendergrass told me how, after the first train ride of his life, he arrived in September of 1942, "a very unsophisticated, shy and apprehensive seventeen and a half year old." He concluded his reminiscences by writing, and I quote: "So what do I remember from yesterday and hope for today, and tomorrow? A Stanford where there is a warm and honest welcoming to all; where there is exciting, challenging and rewarding opportunity to learn academically and to be a positive part of the world; and where there is opportunity to reflect that we are but a very small part of a very big picture." This is one summary of what I hope for you, the Stanford college class of 1997. It is also, in a way, a summary of what I have said this afternoon, if in a somewhat more elaborate and complicated way. It is an expression of the "Stanford spirit." Once again, Stanford extends a "warm and honest" welcome to all of you and to your families and wishes you an "exciting, challenging, and rewarding opportunity to learn" so that you may experience the pleasures that come from studies blossoming and minds moving.