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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. 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 Guiding Principles -- Stanford President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez Universities Must Reject Creeping Politicization -- Chancellors of Vanderbilt and WashU From Our Latest Newsletter "To Be True To The Best You Know" -- Jane Stanford March 30, 2026 Free Speech Wins Big in Court Including About the Questionable Activities of Stanford Internet Observatory and Others Excerpts (links in the original): “In the first week of December, 2022, a group of reporters now scattered and divided over the Iran War and other issues searched through a pile of raw correspondence at the San Francisco office of Twitter. One file we found was 67 pages of complaints about content, mostly from state officials, sent to an address marked misinformation@cissecurity. In one case, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office complained about a Fox5 Atlanta report titled, 'Computer Problems Bring Down Voting Machines in Spaulding County .' “The story about technical difficulties in Spaulding County turned out to be accurate....In those same 67 pages we found a form letter informing the Georgia official that his complaint about the Fox story had already been forwarded to ‘our partners,’ who included ‘The Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security ’ and ‘The Election Integrity Partnership ’ at Stanford University. “This was the first time an outsider had seen the plumbing of a wide-scale effort by federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA ) to regulate mis-, dis-, and malinformation in the social media landscape. It took considerable effort to untangle the mechanism by which complaints of 'misinformation' were processed -- the process was deliberately confusing -- but the documents in the Twitter Files ended up playing a role in helping a landmark First Amendment case already launched in the courts, called Missouri v. Biden . “[Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya, Jill Hines,] and others filed their first amended complaint on August 2, 2022 on the grounds that their social media posts about issues like Covid had been suppressed by a smorgasbord of government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Homeland Security.... “The Consent Decree handed down [last week] put into the books concepts that should provide a little comfort to those of us who fought to surface this issue. One principle agreed upon is that ‘modern technology does not alter the government’s obligation to abide by the strictures of the First Amendment.’ It also enjoined government agencies from threatening social media companies with ‘some sort of punishment’ if they don’t ‘remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social media content containing protected speech.’ ... “Congrats to Aaron and his co-plaintiffs, who went through a lot on the road to this result. Historians won’t know what a disgusting process it was to get here, but I’ll remember, and I hope Racket readers will as well. The plaintiffs who hung in deserve a hearty pat on the back. As John Vecchione, counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance put it, ‘Freedom of speech has been powerfully preserved by our clients.’ It’s true, and a happy thing that a few people cared enough to see it through.” Full op-ed by Matt Taibbi at Substack. See also Washington Post editorial: “Both sides ‘agree that government, politicians, media, academics, or anyone else applying labels such as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ or ‘malinformation’ to speech does not render it constitutionally unprotected,’ the settlement says. That bears repeating: Outside of narrow exceptions such as libel and threats, the government cannot punish people for speech about public affairs. ‘Misinformation’ is a bureaucratic label popularized in the 2010s. It has no legal meaning.’” and The Hill . See also these articles previously posted at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage: House Judiciary Committee Letter to Stanford Dated October 22, 2025 Regarding Alleged Censorship Activities Stanford's Prior Roles in Censoring the Web Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back See also paragraph 4.d. at our Back to Basics webpage: “Under no circumstances may any of these [200 to 300 centers and similar entities at Stanford], 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.” Reader Comments in Response to Last Week’s Newsletter Regarding the project to compare syllabi from the past 10 to 20 years or more in order to show increased bias in university curricula: “Quantifying course content is indeed a ‘blunt instrument’ and wholly despicable in our current polarized political environment where the real danger to independent thought is the infringement on the university's long tradition of intellectual autonomy and the massive campaign to reduce or excise creative and qualitative analysis of human behavior by removing humanities and social sciences from the curriculum.” (See full comment at our Reader Comments webpage.) Regarding the shortcomings in Stanford’s undergraduate housing: “I personally believe there is little doubt of the direct and powerful connection between Stanford’s dystopian housing system and endemic shortages of adequate housing, and later alumni donor rates. The evidence is right in front of our noses: unfavorable responses from undergrads on surveys, low alumni donor rates as a general matter, and paltry donor rates relative to peer schools which, not coincidentally, provide their future alumni with stable, secure, well-appointed residences during their formative years on campus. Someone once said, ‘There is no such thing as a coincidence.’” (See full comment at our Reader Comments webpage.) We welcome your own comments, now and in the future, here . Professors Scramble to Save Critical Thinking in an Age of AI Excerpts (links in the original): “Bea Pao, a professor of literature at Stanford University, has been experimenting with ways to get her students to learn offline. She has them memorize poems, perform at recitation events, look at art in the real world. “It’s an effort to reconnect them to the bodily experience of learning, she said, and to keep them from turning to artificial intelligence to do the work for them. ‘There’s no AI-proof anything,’ Pao said. ‘Rather than policing it, I hope that their overall experiences in this class will show them that there’s a way out.’ “It doesn’t always work. Recently, she asked students to visit a local museum, look at a painting for 10 minutes, and then write a few paragraphs describing the experience. It was a purposefully personal assignment, yet one student responded with a sophisticated but drab reflection -- ‘too perfect, without saying anything’, Pao said. She later learned the student had tried to visit the museum on a Monday, when it was closed, and then turned to AI.... “Michael Clune, a literature professor and novelist, said that, already, many students have been left ‘incapable of reading and analyzing, synthesizing data, all kinds of skills.' In a recent essay, he warned that colleges and universities rushing to embrace the technology were preparing to ‘self-lobotomize’.... “A number of tech and finance companies have recently said that they are looking to hire humanities majors for their creativity and critical thinking skills. Indeed, enrollment data at some universities suggests that the long-struggling humanities might have begun to see a resurgence in the age of AI, with early signs pointing to a reversal in decades-long decline in English majors in favor of Stem ones.” ... Full article at The Guardian. Other Articles of Interest Young Graduates Face the Grimmest Job Market in Years Full article at NY Times: “Artificial intelligence could reshape work, but for now a low-hire, low-fire labor market is the main impediment for young people seeking employment.” See also “Most Employers Still Value College Degrees” at Inside Higher Ed : “A new survey shows that employers still prefer to hire workers with college degrees. But only 54 percent of those same employers say students are graduating with the skills their organizations need.” How One College Helps Students Navigate Civil Discourse Full article at Inside Higher Ed: “During his senior seminar at Kalamazoo College, Hollis Masterson was given an assignment to interview someone whose political views sharply differed from his own. For Masterson, a self-described social democrat, the outcome surprised him.” Are We Headed for Federal Control of College Sports? Full op-ed by Stanford alum Allysia Finley at WSJ: “The Supreme Court took away the NCAA’s ability to regulate. Now Congress is thinking of intervening.” Diversifying the Academy Full op-ed by Vanderbilt Prof. Brian T. Fitzpatrick at Law & Liberty: “The supply problem is that very few conservatives want to go into academia. I don’t blame them.” See also the article in last week’s Newsletter about Stanford Prof. Ivan Marinovic’s research showing the increase in activism in the course offerings of select universities. What to Make of the Wave of College Closures Full article at Minding the Campus. I Know What's Missing from College Education -- Virtue Full op-ed by Pepperdine President Jim Gash at USA Today. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. AI Could Spot the Next Financial Crisis -- But There’s a Catch Immune Cell Bloodhounds Track Cancer Cells’ Unique Metabolic Signatures, Eliminate Tumors in Mice Pythons’ Extreme Eating Habits Hint at a New Weight-Loss Pathway ********** “Everybody is able to complicate. Only a few can simplify.” -- Italian designer Bruno Munari (1907-1998) Subscribe Contact Us 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. 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.

Commentary from Others - Issues and Discussion from Around the Country Click on any bulleted item for direct access: Universities Must Reject Creeping Politicization Vanderbilt-WashU Statement of Principles The Death of Viewpoint Diversity Mapping Free Speech Around the World DOJ’s Guidance Regarding Unlawful Activities at U.S. Colleges and Universities Dartmouth's President: Standing Up for Higher Education and Our Values Federal Government's April 11, 2025 Demand Letter to Harvard Harvard's April 21, 2025 Federal Court Complaint re Funding Freeze Censorship in the Sciences -- Interdisciplinary Perspectives From an Alum: 2025 -- A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campuses Nationwide Dartmouth Policy on Institutional Restraint The Decline and Fall of the University Faculty for Yale Reaping What We Have Taught Bill Ackman: How to Fix Harvard Timeless Counsel from Former Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh The Westminster Declaration re Censorship California Community College Professors Sue Over New DEIA Hiring and Performance Standards More About Campus Bias Response Teams and Programs Cornell Alumni Urge Emphasis on Free Speech and Critical Thinking During New Student Orientation Additional commentary: Campus speech , academic freedom , censorship , views from other schools , miscellaneous commentary Universities Must Reject Creeping Politicization By Chancellors Daniel Diermeier (Vanderbilt) and Andrew D. Martin (WashU) February 18, 2025 American research universities are at a crossroads. The creeping politicization of our campuses has become a crisis we cannot ignore. In a polarized era in which every American institution has become a political Rorschach test, the Israel-Gaza conflict, in particular, has divided college campuses and public opinion to a degree unseen since the 1960s. Universities are now in the crosshairs of government and activists alike. Some universities have exacerbated the situation by drifting from their core purposes of education and research to take official positions on political and social issues. This has led many to see universities as just another ideological combatant in the daily political struggle. Public confidence in American higher education has reached an all-time low . This is dangerous. American research universities are vital to the nation’s economy, security, and democratic systems. Their capacity for research and innovation is unmatched. They offer students a proven path to higher wages and career advancement. If they are properly focused on their core purpose, universities are an essential training ground for civic life in a pluralistic society. At a time when everything is contested, universities insist on reason, evidence, and truth. With so much at stake, universities must return to their foundational purpose and recommit to the core principles that sustain them. As the heads of two of America’s preeminent research institutions, we call on our fellow leaders in higher education to do just that. The boards of our universities have recently committed to a “Statement of Principles” articulating our bedrock commitment to three essential, time-tested tenets our institutions have long embraced and that can be a bulwark against politicization. We urge other universities to adopt them as well. The first principle is excellence. We must be committed to it above all else, in every aspect of our work, free of political criteria. This includes how we admit students, how we hire and promote faculty and staff, how we allocate resources, and how we recognize members of our community. Some universities, perhaps influenced by pressure to rise in national rankings or a desire to gain political favor, have allowed excellence to become compromised. But by muddling its focus on excellence, a university hampers its ability to provide life-changing learning, make pathbreaking discoveries, bring innovation to Main Street and medicine, enhance economic opportunity, and strengthen our national security. To reaffirm this core principle, universities must select students, faculty, and staff with the highest potential, without regard to any political litmus tests. To ensure we are finding this high-potential talent and that they are finding us, recruiting efforts should be broad and far-reaching. We must make sure that highly qualified candidates beyond the tried-and-true wells of talent know about our institutions, believe they can be part of them, and are thoroughly supported once they’re here. To this end, universities can work more closely with nonprofits and community-based organizations to reach rural students, urban students, veterans, and others. Vanderbilt and WashU’s work with The STARS College Network , which provides college pathways for rural students, is an example of how these partnerships can work. The second principle is a commitment to both academic freedom and free expression. Intolerance has gripped too many campuses. Recommitting to academic freedom and free expression means fostering a culture of unfettered inquiry and discovery for faculty as well as for students. It means encouraging a broad range of views related to all aspects of the human experience — political, economic, social, religious, and so on. And it means providing ample opportunities for debate and dissent without censorship or retribution characterized by a respect for the perspectives of others. The protests that roiled America’s campuses last spring showed us how sorely universities need a return to a culture of civil discourse. And universities that have not yet done so must return to the practice of institutional neutrality, whereby the institution and its leaders refrain from taking positions, in word or deed, on political and social matters not directly connected to the u niversity’s core function. To reaffirm the core principle of free expression and academic freedom, universities should review and consider amendments to their bylaws, student handbooks, faculty manuals, and community creeds. Programming is critical to establishing a robust culture of civil debate. Vanderbilt, for instance, offers talks, debates, trainings, fellowships, and an annual free-speech summit through a program called Dialogue Vanderbilt; WashU offers courses, programs, and workshops to prepare students for an increasingly complex society through its Dialogue Across Difference program. A culture of civil discourse is essential, but we also need rules. And those rules must be enforced. Clear policies governing expression, protest, and dissent that include appropriate limitations on time, place, and manner are necessary to provide maximum freedom of expression without trampling on the rights of fellow classmates and faculty or obstructing the core operations that support the teaching and research mission of these institutions. The third principle is accessibility. We must continue working to minimize the barriers, financial and otherwise, that impede students’ access to our institutions or that hinder their academic success, pursuit of excellence, and personal growth. We cannot price out the very students who will help us to achieve our goal of cultivating a robust and varied community of independent thinkers. This means redoubling financial aid, recruiting, and student-support efforts to make it possible for qualified students from any background to live, learn, and thrive on our campuses. These three principles are not new. They have defined America’s great research universities for decades. But too many universities have lost sight of them. We must vigorously commit to them once again. The potential cost of not doing so is too high. Despite their recent challenges, America’s research universities remain the envy of the world. They must not lose their way. Universities contribute to the betterment of society not by pursuing ideological agendas but through the research and innovation of their faculty and students, by producing knowledgeable leaders, and by serving as a model for civil discourse grounded in critical reasoning. The universities we oversee have drawn a line against politicization so that we can continue contributing to the nation’s competitiveness and strength abroad, and to stability and prosperity here at home. All American research universities should do the same. Vanderbilt-WashU Statement of Principles Fall, 2024 The Vanderbilt-WashU Statement of Principles was adopted by the Boards of Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis in fall 2024 to affirm and codify each university’s ongoing commitment to these values. The core purpose of a research university is the creation, preservation and dissemination of knowledge. Supported by government funding and private philanthropy, research universities in the United States have produced transformational breakthroughs in every domain, generating extraordinary benefits to society. The tremendous success of this distinctively American system of research, education and innovation has garnered respect and admiration across the world. The most important condition for the enduring success of the American research university is the pursuit of truth solely through the use of reason, argument and evidence rooted in a culture of free inquiry and rigorous debate. If research universities are to pursue the truth wherever it lies, they cannot have a political ideology or pursue a particular vision of social change. They contribute to the betterment of society not by pursuing an ideological agenda but through the research and innovation of their faculty and students, by producing educated and knowledgeable leaders, and by serving as a model for civil discourse grounded in critical reasoning. Our institutions are committed to taking collective and individual action to ensure that this core purpose continues to govern our endeavors in the twenty-first century. We are guided by three key principles: Excellence We are committed to excellence in all aspects of our work, free of political criteria—that includes admissions and support of student success, faculty and staff hiring and promotion, the allocation of resources and the recognition of members of our community. Academic Freedom and Free Expression We foster an environment of unfettered inquiry and discovery where our faculty and students are free to pursue their academic interests. We actively encourage opposing views across a broad spectrum of the human experience, including political, economic, social, religious and other aspects, and provide ample opportunities for open debate and dissent without censorship or retribution. We live by an ethos of civility and respect for the perspectives of others, guided by policies that support dialogue—and enable research and education—free from disruption. We are committed to institutional neutrality whereby the institution and its leaders, including those in charge of academic units like schools, departments and research centers, do not take positions on political and social matters not directly connected to the core function of the university. Growth and Development We seek to assemble a broad range of perspectives, backgrounds, and expertise of students, faculty and staff on our campuses as a core driver of excellence in everything we do. We are committed to minimizing financial and other barriers that impede students’ access to our institutions or that hinder their academic success, pursuit of excellence and personal growth. We are committed to a vibrant campus community where all members can grow in their academic and professional pursuits. We strive to prepare our students for purposeful and engaged lives and meaningful careers. By focusing on our core purpose and these key principles, our institutions will be positioned to continue providing our students with a transformational education, conducting pathbreaking research, and driving the field-defining agendas for international scientific learning and research. This is the time to clearly affirm who we are and to live by our purpose and principles in everything we do. The Death of Viewpoint Diversity by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samual J. Abrams -- originally published at Minding the Campus under the heading "Harvard's Got an Ethics Problem" “Should I let go of my Zionist friends?” asks an anonymous Harvard student. A Harvard Crimson editor responds: yes, the student is entitled to end those friendships. What sounds like a thoughtful meditation on friendship and conviction instead reads like a dispatch from a campus that no longer knows what truth is—or what friendship requires. The anonymous student, Jewish and anti-Zionist, worries that his or her friends’ politics taint his or her certainty of their decency. It’s quintessentially Harvard: polished and cerebral, yet utterly vacuous. There is no effort to test the moral assumptions beneath the question. Is Zionism truly a moral stain? Can friendship survive deep disagreement? What do we owe to truth when feelings conflict with facts? None of this is considered. The result is bloodless relativism, where ethics are reduced to personal comfort and truth becomes optional. In miniature, it captures the intellectual and moral decay of elite higher education—where moral reasoning has become branding, and virtue is measured by separation, not encounter. The Death of Viewpoint Diversity The Crimson column is not just a bizarre ethical thought experiment; it is emblematic of a campus culture that has abandoned its primary vocation. A university’s primary purpose is to pursue the truth. That requires conflict, argument, and exposure to unsettling ideas. Harvard, as with much of higher education, has forsaken that purpose. The numbers confirm this decline. FIRE’s 2024 faculty survey found that 94 percent of professors nationwide report suffering negative consequences for expressing their views, ranging from lost professional relationships (47 percent) and workplace shunning (40 percent) to seeking psychological counseling (27 percent) or losing their jobs (20 percent). At least one in five faculty members says they are likely to self-censor professionally. At Harvard specifically , 94 percent of students report self-censoring in conversations with peers. This is not the culture of a free university. It is a culture of fear. When disagreement is treated as danger, moral inquiry collapses. Students stop testing ideas and start curating identities. “Zionist” becomes not a belief to debate but a contagion to avoid; “anti-Zionist” becomes a badge of moral sophistication. The moral vocabulary shifts from true and false to pure and impure. Selective Moral Outrage Can you imagine the Harvard Crimson running a column titled “Ethicist, Should I Let Go of My Radical Muslim Friend?” Or “Should I Let Go of My Queer Socialist Friend?” Ironically, such hypotheticals would have made for a stronger ethical dilemma. There would be, at least, a clearer moral basis for questioning those friendships, since ideologies like radical Islam and revolutionary socialism have been linked to profound global harm and genuine violence. Yet even then, most readers would rightly recoil from the idea of judging a friend solely by association with a broad label or ideology. That the Crimson instead reserved this moral scrutiny for Jewish “Zionist friends” reveals the bias at work. The supposed ethicist finds moral complexity only where it flatters prevailing sentiment. Some identities are treated as sacred; others—especially Jewish and Zionist ones—are fair game. The message to students is unmistakable: moral empathy is selective, and truth is negotiable. Of course, had the target been any other group, the outrage would be immediate: statements from deans, vigils in the Yard, open letters about “safety.” We’ve seen it before. When a professor at Hamline University displayed a 14th-century Persian painting of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class—with advance warnings—she was fired after student activists claimed the image caused harm. (The professor’s lawsuit against Hamline over the firing was settled in July 2024.) Administrators capitulated instantly, turning the episode into a national scandal and a symbol of the academy’s fear of offending any identity deemed untouchable. Yet questioning the basic decency of Jewish “Zionist friends” provokes no such institutional outrage. At Harvard, this passes for moral seriousness. This double standard is bigotry cloaked in enlightenment. Bright students learn to mistake facility with moral language for moral seriousness itself—to confuse the posture of radicalism with its practice. They style themselves courageous truth-tellers while speaking only what their peers already believe, from positions of complete security. The Crimson column, with its elaborate show of ethical wrestling, avoids every hard question while congratulating both parties for their sensitivity. It is philosophy as social signaling—exquisitely calibrated to offend no one who matters. Moral Education Without Moral Seriousness The Crimson exchange is a case study in what happens when ethics loses its spine. The student’s question is not illegitimate; maintaining friendships across deep disagreement is hard. What’s revealing is that neither student nor ethicist grounds the conversation in truth or duty. Instead, they treat friendship as a matter of comfort. That assumption is telling. For many young people today, friendship exists chiefly for ease and affirmation. When disagreements arise—or when a friend faces real difficulty—the instinct is to retreat rather than to endure. Elite universities encourage this disposition: they teach students to curate relationships around convenience, to conflate discomfort with harm, and to mistake withdrawal for integrity. But friendship, like marriage or citizenship, is not meant to be frictionless. It exists to sustain people through difficulty, to test and refine character, to build trust and loyalty. When students lose sight of that, they risk forming relationships as brittle as their moral reasoning—connections that collapse at the first sign of strain. This brittleness is no accident; it reflects what might be called the therapeutic turn in higher education. Universities now teach that feelings are facts and discomfort is harm. Ethics becomes validation. The ethicist’s answer affirms autonomy but avoids responsibility: you may end the friendship, but need not. The harder question—what you owe to truth and to others—is never asked. In the liberal tradition, freedom without truth is license. Aristotle, Maimonides, and Mill alike understood that moral growth demands friction between conviction and doubt. But friction is precisely what Harvard has banished. Why Students Are So Fragile It’s easy to mock a student who says he or she cannot maintain friendships with certain peers. But we should ask how such fragility took root. For years, universities have rewarded moral posturing over genuine moral reasoning. Students have learned to fear being wrong more than they value being right. This fragility is not a personal flaw—it is a survival skill, honed in institutions where a single misstep can jeopardize a reputation. In my own classroom at Sarah Lawrence College, the toll is clear. Bright, curious students preface every comment with disclaimers like, “I might be off base,” or “I don’t want to offend,” as if curiosity itself were a transgression. They are not cynical—they are frightened. They have absorbed the lesson that safety, not truth, is the highest academic value. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once wrote, “The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognise God’s image in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideals, are different from mine?” The same test applies to universities. When students are taught that proximity to dissent is contamination, the university ceases to be a place of learning and becomes a monastery of moral vanity. From Harvard Yard to Everywhere Harvard is not alone in this trend; elite universities across the country prioritize comfort and conformity over rigorous debate and moral inquiry. At Stanford Law School in March 2023, students shouted down federal Judge Kyle Duncan during an invited talk, while Dean Tirien Steinbach questioned whether the event was “worth the squeeze” rather than enforcing free-speech policies. At Columbia, a large number of faculty members signed a letter calling the October 7 massacre “a military action” and “military response,” while professor Joseph Massad described it as a “resistance offensive” whose scenes he found “astounding.” These are not outliers; they are the norms on college campuses where anti-Semitism has taken root, and where, within the leftist orthodoxy of the oppressed-versus-oppressor narrative, Jewish students and the State of Israel are treated as villains. The Civic Consequences When universities no longer model dialogue across difference, the civic order pays the price. The habits of listening, debating, and enduring disagreement are not merely academic exercises—they are the foundations of democratic life. Friendship across disagreement is not a luxury; it is the apprenticeship of democracy. The same habits that sustain lasting relationships—humility, curiosity, restraint—also sustain self-government. Students who cannot engage with those who differ from them will struggle to build workplaces or democracies capable of surviving difference. Yet friendship—and democracy—also require boundaries. There are moments when differences cut so deep that “agreeing to disagree” is impossible. When opposing sides operate from entirely distinct moral frameworks, coexistence can devolve into paralysis or moral evasion. The North could not have told the South, “We disagree about slavery, but we can still be friends.” Some ideas are irreconcilable with liberty and human dignity, and one vision must ultimately prevail. The test for universities is whether they still foster an environment in which ideas can meet and compete fairly, so the strongest arguments rise to the top. Increasingly, the answer is no. The problem is not mere disagreement—it is censorship, particularly of those who dissent from prevailing leftist orthodoxies. Conservatives, in particular, often lack the institutional space to present and defend their ideas. A campus culture that claims to value inclusion has, in practice, excluded the very contest of ideas that keeps democracy alive. This is why Harvard’s failure matters. Ethics, properly taught, is not about affirming emotion but disciplining it. It requires testing our intuitions against reason and evidence. When an institution that trains future leaders cannot distinguish between disagreement and harm, it no longer produces citizens—it produces moral narcissists. Recovering Courage and Truth Reversing this decline will be difficult. It requires faculty willing to trade comfort for conviction, administrators who defend free speech not just in policy but in practice, and students who value dialogue over faction—listening before judging, asking before condemning. Harvard calls itself the conscience of the republic. Yet its conscience is in crisis: moral reasoning has turned into moral branding, and virtue now lies in separation, not encounter. Universities were once custodians of civilization—places where intellect met humility, and freedom and truth were inseparable. If Harvard has forgotten this, others must remember: the smaller colleges, classical schools, and local communities that still believe argument is not division but the lifeblood of a free people. Because a nation that forgets how to argue will soon forget how to live together. The tragedy of the Crimson’s column is not that one student wonders about her friends. It’s that an entire institution has forgotten how to wonder rightly. Until Harvard rediscovers the meaning of Veritas (truth pursued through reasoned debate and friendship across difference) it will continue to mistake therapy for thought and virtue for vanity. And the rest of us will pay the price for its failure. Mapping Free Speech Around the World Our November 10, 2025 Newsletter had excerpts from an article “The Global Free Speech Recession.” That article included a link to a report from the Vanderbilt Future of Free Speech Project entitled “Mapping Laws and Regulations Affecting Free Speech in 22 Open Democracies.” For reader convenience, we have posted a full copy of this report, below. Mapping Laws and Regulations Affecting Free Speech in 22 Open Democracies DOJ’s Guidance Regarding Unlawful Activities at U.S. Colleges and Universities On July 29, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice issued official guidance regarding what it considers to be unlawful policies and procedures at U.S. colleges and universities as well as other entities that receive federal funding. While some entities might question some of the guidance and even seek review in the courts, the memo provides an important outline of issues for leaders at Stanford and elsewhere to consider when evaluating current and future policies and procedures and we therefore have posted a PDF copy of the memo, below. DOJ's Guidance Regarding Unlawful Activities at U.S. Colleges . . . Statement by Dartmouth's President: Standing Up For Higher Education and Our Values April 23, 2025 Dear Dartmouth community, It’s been a little over a month since I wrote to you at the start of spring term. During that short time, higher education has been in the national headlines daily, with our Ivy League peers under investigation by the federal government for potential Civil Rights Act violations, or having to deal with major federal funding freezes, or both. I know this has created concern, anger, and anxiety on our campus—especially as SEVIS record revocations have affected our own community and, earlier this evening, the White House issued new executive orders related to education that we are still reviewing. People on and off campus are asking what I think about the battle between higher education and the federal government. A binary framework has emerged—fight or flight—that, I worry, means higher-education institutions aren’t reflecting on what we could do better to further our standing as a trusted beacon for knowledge and truth. To be clear, reflection does not mean capitulation. I commit to you that I will always stand up for higher education, academic freedom, and Dartmouth’s specific dedication to values like “responsibility for each other and for the broader world” and “vigorous and open debate of ideas within a community marked by mutual respect.” For example, the recent threat to Harvard’s tax exempt status, among other threats, is fundamentally inconsistent with the notions of free expression and inquiry that make America’s universities the envy of the world, and of the limited government that our founders rightly celebrated. Receivership, censorship, and external pressures about what can and cannot be taught or studied hamper the free exchange of ideas on our campus and across institutions. Dartmouth will never relent on these values, and I hope my peers don’t either. I understand that some see any sort of self-reflection at this moment—anything less than all-out battle—as surrender. I disagree. Given the long, successful partnership America’s research universities have had with the federal government, we owe it to our country to look for ways to move forward, and for solutions that protect our fierce independence as institutions of higher education while improving who we are and what we offer. I see this as time well spent, and I believe that it takes a vibrant ecosystem of colleges and universities for these values to flourish. As president, I have never signed open form letters because they are rarely effective tools to make change. I prefer joining action-oriented coalitions, as we have done this past month as part of two successful AAU lawsuits focused on NIH and DOE indirect-cost rates. That said, I agree with much of the open letter signed by many school presidents . The letter rightly points out that “American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom.” And that we “are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.” I would add a clear acknowledgement that we can do better. Higher-education institutions, especially the most elite among us, are not above reproach. Not only is trust in higher education at an all-time low, but that trust is hugely polarized, second in polarization only to the U.S. presidency . If we don’t ask ourselves why, we will squander this opportunity to do better. That spirit of self reflection does not, in any way, insulate the government from criticism. It simply gives us an opportunity to look at ourselves and ask where we can be truer to our own ideals. I believe we can do better by staying focused on what we are: educational institutions, not political organizations, as laid out in Dartmouth’s institutional restraint policy , which preserves our ability to fiercely defend Dartmouth and the academic freedom that drives discovery and makes our institution great. It also encourages taking actions in support of our mission or in solidarity with other schools. Most importantly, institutional restraint is not in conflict with faculty, students, and staff speaking their minds, protesting, or demonstrating within the bounds of our policies on freedom of expression and dissent . Indeed, the goal of institutional restraint is that it empowers individuals to speak up without worrying about aligning with any institutional position. This is how knowledge is developed—different people with different ideas and identities bravely pushing at each other in a community of trust and respect. Let me end by saying that I am so grateful to be in this community at this moment. We continue to be a model for productive dialogue and dissent at a time when many institutions are finding it hard to come together. Next Wednesday, our faculty experts will have a lively discussion on freedom of expression and dissent. More information can be found here . I also have office hours most weeks for students and will have them this Friday for faculty and staff as well. As I said when I spoke about the importance of academic freedom last month , even in times of uncertainty—especially in times of uncertainty—we must not waver in our commitment to one another or to the values of free and open inquiry that are integral to American higher education. Best, Sian Leah Beilock President [See also video interview on Bloomberg as posted at X (3-1/2 minutes).] Federal Government's April 11, 2025 Demand Letter to Harvard On April 11, 2025, the United States government sent to Harvard University a demand letter which begins: "The United States has invested in Harvard University's operations because of the value to the country of scholarly discovery and academic excellence. But an investment is not an entitlement. It depends on Harvard upholding federal civil rights laws, and it only makes sense if Harvard fosters the kind of environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor, both of which are antithetical to ideological capture." Here is a copy of the letter in its entirety: See also "There’s a Limit to Government Intrusion in Academic Matters " by Indiana U. Prof. Eric Rasmusen at Substack and "This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, If They Dare " at NY Times. See also our long-existing proposals at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Gov't Demand Letter to Harvard Harvard's April 21, 2025 Federal Court Complaint re Funding Freeze In response to the federal government's demand letter to Harvard dated April 11, 2025, posted above, on April 21, 2025 Harvard filed the following complaint in the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts: Harvard's 4/21/25 Complaint Censorship in the Sciences -- Interdisciplinary Perspectives A three-day conference (January 10 through 12, 2025) was held at USC regarding censorship in the sciences. A full conference schedule is available here , and videos of all three days are now posted at YouTube: Day One - "What Is Censorship and How Does It Operate?" and (starting around the 3:58-hour mark) "Research Freedom versus Ethical Restraints" Day Two - "Scientific Freedom versus Social Responsibility" and (starting around the 3:08-hour mark) "Consequences of Censorship for Public and Society" Day Three - "Censorship in Life Sciences and Medicine" In addition, these presentations have been individually posted at YouTube: We Must Defend Liberalism – Brookings Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch The Censorship Crisis Gripping Academia – ASU Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krauss The Rise of Women in Science and Society – Behavioral Scientist Cory Clark How Woke Warriors Destroyed Anthropology – San Jose State Prof. Elizabeth Weiss The Free Speech Recession and How to Reverse It – Danish Commentator Jacob Mchangama Transgender Discourse & Censorship – Northwestern Prof. Michael Bailey Mechanisms of Censorship in Academia – Stony Brook Prof. Musa al-Gharbi From an Alum: 2025 -- A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campuses Nationwide By Edward L. Yingling, Stanford Law School Class of '73 and co-founder of Princetonians for Free Speech INTRODUCTION: It is now widely understood that for years many of our country’s colleges and universities have been losing their way; they are no longer bastions of the core values of free speech, open discourse, and academic freedom, nor are they focused on promoting learning and the advancement of knowledge. Instead, they have increasingly become focused on a specific agenda and advancing that agenda, in the process often repressing these core values. There have been individuals and institutions fighting back, trying to reform universities and to restore these core values, but it often seemed a lonely fight. Much of the effort was to support those who had been “cancelled.” In more recent years the reform side gathered new advocates and began to coordinate. Existing organizations – such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) , the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) , and the Heterodox Academy (HxA) – became stronger and expanded their efforts. Faculty across the country organized to form the Academic Freedom Alliance . On some campuses, groups of faculty members began to organize, often informally. Also, on some campuses small groups of students organized to support free speech and open discourse. In 2021, start-up alumni groups from Davidson, Princeton, The University of Virginia, Washington and Lee and Cornell announced the creation of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance , which was launched in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in October 2021 . At least thirty schools now have active alumni groups supporting free speech on their campuses. Still, it seemed progress would be slow against the entrenched opposition on campuses. But then, in the wake of the tragic attack on Israel in October of 2023, everything changed. The protests, and in some cases riots, on campuses, including on the campuses of leading universities, laid bare for all to see what had been developing for years. The blatant antisemitism was shocking. And the responses of the leaders of some of the country’s leading universities drew attention to their narrow viewpoints and the complicity of the trustees who had chosen them. In 2024, there was important movement on many fronts in the battle to restore universities to their historic and critical role. Yet still there were warning signs of the walls that had to be scaled. Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, has stated that, according to FIRE’s database, 2024 was the worst year ever for deplatforming attempts, such as shout downs and disinviting speakers, since FIRE started tracking them in 1998 . There were many green shoots in 2024, but 2025 is sure to be a year of dynamic and disruptive change. In fact the very broad and aggressive Executive Orders issued by the Trump administration guarantee that there will be significant changes. Individual advocates of campus free speech and academic freedom may believe some of these changes go too far or are counterproductive, and this outline does not attempt to judge the changes. The purpose of this article is to outline in one place areas where dynamic change will occur in 2025. It is not designed to be either comprehensive or rigorous in its analysis; rather it serves as a synthesis of the main areas of change, organized by constituency. STUDENTS, PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS, PARENTS AND EMPLOYERS: There is already anecdotal evidence that applications are down materially at some of the most prestigious schools that suffered reputational damage as result of protests and the reaction to those protests. For example, Harvard refused to release information on early admissions as it has in the past, raising suspicions that applications were down. At the same time, there is anecdotal evidence that applications to schools that emphasize the values of free speech and academic freedom are up. Prospective students are voting with their feet. Some universities are stressing their values, implicitly contrasting them with elite universities the reputations of which have been badly tarnished. An example of this is Vanderbilt University, which has taken clear steps to raise its profile in supporting free speech . In some cases, employers have indicated that they will no longer be recruiting at certain schools because of the values those schools are teaching. This will also influence where students want to go. This trend for students and employers was foreshadowed in a June 2023 article written by Stuart Taylor and Edward Yingling, Princeton alumni, entitled “ Colleges should compete on Free Speech. ” While this trend of applicants and potential employers looking to schools with better values and records on free speech and academic freedom will take years to play out, 2025 may be the year the trend accelerates and is more widely recognized, as more prospective students and prospective employers become educated on the options. FACULTY: The faculty of many universities are not only overwhelmingly liberal, but highly progressive, according to numerous polls, and can be intolerant of free enquiry and intellectual pluralism. This is a huge long-term problem for viewpoint diversity that is likely to get worse in the short term as conservative and moderate professors age out. It is greatly exacerbated by the litmus tests of diversity statements often now required in applications to join a faculty. In recent years, even many liberal faculty members have become concerned about the atmosphere on campuses that inhibits free speech and academic freedom. They have in some instances become afraid of the growing non-faculty bureaucracy that can criticize and even investigate them over one sentence said in a classroom if a student reports them. Surveys show many faculty pull back from fully expressing themselves in class or elsewhere, knowing that their careers can be ruined. According to Lukianoff, a 2024 FIRE survey found that one out of three faculty members admitted to hiding their political views to avoid censorship reprisals. While there have been some small groups of faculty members that worked informally to promote the core values, they often worked behind the scenes and were largely made up of conservatives. As noted, in recent years, the number of these groups has increased, and non-conservatives have joined the effort. Heterodox Academy undertook an organized effort to promote such groups. The Academic Freedom Alliance was formed to support faculty whose free speech rights were threatened. However, in 2024, this movement began to accelerate. At several leading universities, groups of faculty members came together publicly to support core values. The one that has received the most attention is the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard . Princeton faculty members have formed the Princeton Council on Academic Freedom. And in just the last few months, similar groups have been formed at seven other universities, including Duke, Columbia, MIT, and Yale. In September of last year, the University of Chicago received an anonymous grant of $100 million to support free speech efforts at the Chicago Forum for Free Speech and Expression . With these strong examples, it seems likely that 2025 will be the year that this faculty movement really takes off, both in terms of the impact of existing faculty groups and in the creation of new ones. ALUMNI: As noted above, alumni of various universities have already begun to organize to promote free speech and academic freedom on their campuses, and at this point at least thirty such organizations have been created. Almost all are members of the umbrella group, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance . With support from ACTA and FIRE, this alumni movement is now set to expand in 2025. Alumni also have raised concerns about what has been happening at their schools in other ways. There have been high profile cases of large donors cutting off contributions, for example at Harvard and Penn. While some of these situations have received significant publicity, there is no doubt much more alumni discussion with university administrators and trustees behind the scenes. Furthermore, there are now real examples of this trend in alumni giving playing out: After increasing every year for ten straight years, in 2024 Columbia’s Giving Day donation totals dropped by 28.8 percent and the number of gifts dropped by 27.9 percent. (Giving Day was postponed in 2023.) Also, behind the scenes, alumni are increasingly discussing ways to target giving to specific programs they support rather than to give to the university to use as it sees fit. As the numbers are reported in 2025, there will likely be significant drops in the amount given and in participation rates at schools that have failed noticeably to support the core values. CONGRESSIONAL ACTION: There are a number of ideas to address campus reform being discussed in Congress. Although there was little publicity about it, in 2024 the House of Representatives passed, by a party-line vote, a multifaceted bill on the issue. In 2025 the Congress will likely be much more active in considering important legislative changes in the area of higher education. The political atmosphere generated in large part by the events on campuses in 2024 will provide impetus to aggressive legislative approaches. However, the very narrow Republican majorities in the House and Senate and the historically large Republican agenda in Congress could limit how much is enacted. A proposal that’s likely to be enacted is a higher tax on the income of large university endowments. This does not directly address the role of universities and their core values, but it will be a direct response to the political and reputational problems of many universities generated in 2024, and especially of the “elite” ones (which generally have the largest endowments, sometimes in the tens of billions of dollars). The weak political position of such universities is further exacerbated by the fact that Republicans will be looking hard for additional tax revenue to offset the extension of the Trump tax cuts and other suggested tax cuts. Furthermore, there is already a tax on endowment income in the law, and so this would not be unprecedented. Under a provision enacted in 2017, income on endowments of over $500 million is subject to a 1.4% tax. Also in the last Congress, J. D. Vance introduced a bill, S. 3514, that would have imposed a 35% tax on the investment income of university endowments of $10 billion or more. If a broader tax on endowments is enacted, universities will face a constant political problem – it will be easier to increase the tax rate if they remain unpopular. The reason this tax is likely to be enacted is that it could qualify to be included in the reconciliation bill, which will be enacted in the first part of the year, and which can be enacted by simple majorities in the House and Senate. While the process on reconciliation will be messy, there is almost no chance a reconciliation bill will not be enacted. Another legislative measure not directly related to the problems on campuses, but that is likely to be actively considered, is significant change in the student loan program. There is talk among Republicans about requiring schools to bear some small percentage of the losses on loans to their students – to have “skin in the game.” Conceivably such a change, or other changes to the student loan program that would cut its costs, could be included in reconciliation as well, if not in a 2025 version, then in a 2026 version; but such changes will be complicated and are not yet fleshed out. Other provisions affecting college and universities may be more difficult to enact. The House might pass a package with unanimous Republican support, but it likely would require sixty votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. Even if all fifty-three Republicans supported such efforts, seven Democrats would be needed to stop a filibuster. However, on some specific issues, given the unpopularity of the “elite” universities, it might be possible to attract Democratic support. In addition, specific items might be split out and put in other “must pass” legislation, such as appropriation bills. The bottom line is that in addition to an increased tax on endowment income, universities are likely to be at risk for other legislative changes they will not like throughout 2025 and beyond. The entire relationship between Congress and universities will change for the foreseeable future, providing pressure for reforms that may be traumatic for university leadership and faculty. To see what these other potential changes might include, it makes sense to look at the bill that passed the House on a party-line vote last October – H.R.3724, the End Woke Higher Education Act. It will certainly be the starting point for Congressional action, and a version of that bill could pass the House in the first part of 2025, possibly with a few additional items. This House-passed bill: ensures colleges and universities are not forced to adhere to DEI principles or to support or oppose political beliefs to receive accreditation; makes free speech a condition for receiving federal funds under Title IV of the Higher Education Act; requires schools to educate students on their First Amendment rights; prohibits schools from forcing students, faculty, or applicants to take political litmus tests; and requires schools to annually disclose their free speech policies. The leadership of the House Education Committee has taken a strong advocacy role on the problems on college campuses, as publicly demonstrated in the dramatic hearing held last year with university presidents and in the passage of legislation through the House in October. Congressman Greg Murphy of North Carolina, a former member of the Committee, has also taken a leadership role. These are Members very committed to the effort who, along with Senators who have already expressed a willingness to legislate, will drive change. REGULATORY ACTION: With the new Trump Administration, it is certain that the Department of Education will undertake an aggressive approach toward colleges and universities. It will be the complete opposite of the approach the Obama and Biden administrations took. There will be a strong effort to eliminate the Department; indeed, it will be among the highest priorities of the Department of Government Efficiency effort, although key leaders of Congress have expressed skepticism about the ability to fully eliminate it. In the interim, there will be a major focus on addressing free speech related issues within the purview of the Department. The new Secretary will look for innovative ways to make changes relating to higher education, including on DEI and diversity statements. In the first Trump Administration, significant changes were made to Title IX of the Higher Education Act. The Biden Administration finalized a new rule on Title IX that not only undid most of the Trump changes, but also went much further. Some of the Biden changes had negative implications for free speech on campuses , for example by broadly defining prohibited harassing speech. A decision by a Federal District Court Judge in early January threw out the new Biden rule in its entirety. While there is a possibility of appeal, there is no reason to believe the Trump Administration would support such an appeal. Legal analysts believe the result of the court decision is to restore the original Trump rule. Even if that is the case, the Trump Education Department is likely to review the Trump rule in view of recent campus developments and possibly strengthen its provisions relating to free speech and due process. In addition to changes in accreditation policies contained in the bill that passed the House in 2024, changes could be made through regulatory action. Trump has publicly stated his interest in making major changes to accreditation, and the Education Department has authority to make changes. Furthermore, the new Executive Orders, discussed below, will impact accreditation policies. There is already an active process underway to create an alternative to the currently authorized accreditors, which, to many, appear to display an inherent bias in their requirements for accreditation. While the approval process for the alternative may take time, it seems likely to come to fruition. Thus, while changes may not be finalized, 2025 could be the year when the foundations are laid for major changes in the current accreditation process. Finally, among the many Executive Orders signed by President Trump are three that, while not specifically addressing campus free speech or academic freedom, show the intention to move aggressively on these and related issues. The first relates to DEI policies in government and the second relates broadly to government censorship of speech at the federal level. The third, most important for higher education, aims to end discriminatory policies and restore merit-based opportunities throughout the country . According to the Wall Street Journal , this separate Executive Order requires federal agencies "to investigate diversity programs at publicly-traded corporations, non-profits, colleges, and foundations." The article also says that recipients of federal contracts will be required to certify that they do not have "programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination law" and that the Trump Administration "intends to use its executive order on DEI to force universities to drop their internal diversity programs." According to the article and other sources, grants from NIH in particular, a major source of funding for many universities, will be used to force such changes. These sweeping changes under the Executive Orders will undoubtedly be complex to administer, and will take time. There will be many court challenges. But clearly, due to the threat of federal funding cuts, universities will be under enormous financial pressure to change or eliminate DEI policies and programs. UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATIONS: The most important changes, of course, must occur at universities themselves. In 2024, changes occurred in important areas on some campuses, changes that would have been unlikely only a year before. In 2025, the pace of these changes should accelerate as more college administrations and trustees are asked why they also have not made such changes and as pressure from applicants, potential employers, alumni, Congress, and the Trump Administration increases. Key issues on which change may accelerate include: 1. Institutional Neutrality: According to FIRE, twenty-nine schools have now moved to adopt institutional neutrality, including some leading universities such as Vanderbilt, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. However, the policies of institutional neutrality adopted should be read carefully. For example, the President of Dartmouth wrote a high-profile op-ed on Dartmouth’s new policy, but that policy is not true neutrality, as it contains exceptions that undermine its stated purpose. 2. Removal or limitations on DEI: For years, DEI programs at many universities have grown steadily, both at the university level and within departments. In 2024 the DEI movement came under extensive criticism, both for its direction and for the large amount of money being devoted to it. This criticism was not only directed at higher education. Business and government DEI programs were also criticized. A number of businesses, including Meta , Walmart and McDonald’s, began cutting back or dismantling their DEI programs, and it is clear that the new Trump Administration will be doing the same across the federal government, as shown in the Executive Order on DEI mentioned above. At universities, there has been a relatively small number of announcements of cutbacks on DEI programs, but now that DEI-related issues are receiving such scrutiny, the movement to cut back or eliminate such programs will accelerate in 2025. Already three states -- Texas, Tennessee, and Utah -- have enacted laws to stop such programs at their public universities, and more will in 2025; legislation to do so has been introduced in the majority of states . Of greater significance, as outlined above, Congress and the Trump Administration will have a very strong focus on DEI. The Administration has already acted aggressively through its Executive Orders. Expect there to be significant pushback from some university administrators and faculty. Nevertheless, the ability of the Administration to use the contracting and grant process to force change is an extremely powerful tool. 3. Litmus tests: In 2024, for the first time, there was significant movement to stop requiring DEI statements for faculty applications. High-profile examples of where DEI statements were removed are the University of Michigan, MIT, and Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Some states have moved to outlaw such statements in their public universities, including Ohio and Wisconsin, and more states will act. Often these changes were strongly opposed by faculty members, but the trend to remove these types of statements, which so clearly chill free speech and academic freedom and which act as a barrier to viewpoint diversity, will build momentum in 2025. 4. Creation of programs and schools devoted to civics and study of the Constitution: There have long been programs at some universities devoted to the study of civics, the Constitution and American government, but only a few were significant in affecting the climates on their campuses. In 2024 this began to change. Large and robust programs were created, most often at state universities. A prime example is the new UNC School of Civic Life and Leadership. Others were launched at state universities in Florida, Texas, Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan and Utah. Many of these are patterned, at least in part, on the highly successful James Madison Program at Princeton , where notably student interest has grown steadily in recent years. The number of these programs can be expected to increase significantly as more state governors and legislatures will want such programs in their schools, and private schools will want them to compete for student applicants. If fact, the limiting factor may be the need to increase the number of faculty able to teach in such programs. 5. Adoption and implementation of free speech principles: According to FIRE , over 100 institutions have now adopted free speech rules based on the Chicago Principles. In 2025, more schools will feel the need to adopt them since more prospective students will be looking for such policies at schools they are considering. In that connection, the annual FIRE free speech rankings will be increasingly considered by prospective students. For university administrators, a key lesson from the turmoil of 2024 is the need for clear implementation policies on free speech and the consistent enforcement of them going forward. Of course, not every administration will have learned that lesson. 6. Anonymous Campus reporting systems: An issue that has not received much national attention is the campus reporting systems that have been instituted by many universities in recent years. The justification for these systems is to prevent harassment or discrimination. However, free speech advocates strongly believe these systems result in a chilling impact on free speech. The definition of harassing actions and speech is quite often both overly broad and vague; many of these systems allow anonymous reporting; and reports often result in investigations with little due process. In 2025 this could change, as more focus is put on these reporting systems. It is quite possible that continuing legal actions will force schools to abandon, or at least pull back, these systems. In 2024, a lawsuit by Speech First that challenged such a system at Virginia Tech reached the Supreme Court, which ruled against Speech First on procedural grounds. However, a strong dissent in the case lays out the rationale for the Supreme Court eventually ruling against a university that continues such reporting. 7. New universities: The new University of Austin (UATX) , which took in its first entering class in 2024, has created a model for an alternative that addresses current problems in our system of higher education. Instead of, or in addition to, reforming universities where problems are deeply imbedded, the idea behind the new school was to create a university from scratch committed to core values and the traditional role of a university, with a constitution explicitly designed to implement those values. As the University of Austin continues to succeed in 2025, it will show that such alternatives can prosper. SUMMARY Even without the protests and riots on campuses, resulting from the terrorist attacks in Israel and the war in Gaza, that shined a spotlight on the deep problems in universities, the movement to restore core values to campuses was already growing. However, due to this spotlight, in 2024 the momentum of that movement increased. 2025 is a year when change will accelerate and where more tangible results will be shown. Dartmouth Policy on Institutional Restraint: Statements from Dartmouth and its Academic Units Summary of Policy The Board of Trustees and the following senior leaders (or their designees) are the recognized institutional spokespeople for Dartmouth: the President, the Provost, the Senior Vice President for Communications, the Director of Media Relations, and the General Counsel. Dartmouth seeks to foster a community where faculty, students, and staff engage complex issues. To provide space for diverse viewpoints to be raised and fully considered, Dartmouth should exercise general restraint in issuing institutional statements. This general policy of restraint applies to the leaders of all Dartmouth's schools and academic subunits. Affected Parties All Students, All Faculty, All Staff Policy Statement Dartmouth is committed to free speech and open inquiry and seeks a community in which a diversity of viewpoints can be freely shared and exchanged to promote deeper understanding of complex issues and ideas. Moreover, Dartmouth supports and protects the academic freedom of faculty to engage in scholarly activity. Any communication from Dartmouth's designated spokespersons related to core mission that is conveyed to the public, the entire Dartmouth community, or its schools, is an institutional statement. To provide space for diverse viewpoints to be raised and fully considered, Dartmouth should exercise general restraint in issuing institutional statements. Restraint at the institutional level protects and enhances freedom of expression because institutional endorsement for a specific position or belief may deter community members who do not share that belief from expressing their skepticism or opposition. An institution committed to inquiry and open discourse should, therefore, issue institutional statements sparingly – typically when external events have a direct impact upon the relationship of the institution to its members. When confronted with issues directly relating to Dartmouth's mission, senior leaders will reaffirm Dartmouth's core values and commit to taking actions in support thereof. Institutional spokespersons for Dartmouth shall be limited to: the Board of Trustees, the President, the Provost, the Senior Vice President for Communications, the Director of Media Relations, and the General Counsel (or their designees). No other individual, group, or department has the authority to issue official statements or speak on behalf of Dartmouth. This general policy of restraint, with exceptions for speaking on issues that affirm core values related to their missions or making their communities aware of resources, applies to the leaders of all Dartmouth's schools and academic subunits. Dartmouth community members are free to make statements as individuals, including, for example, as subject-matter experts. Such statements must be clearly made in an individual capacity and should include a disclaimer that community members are not speaking on behalf of Dartmouth. Statements by other academic units • Before issuing a specific public statement or endorsement, and in a process separate from deliberation on any specific public statement or endorsement, the academic unit must establish the list of unit members who are enfranchised to propose and to vote on public statements or endorsements. Enfranchised members may include tenure-line faculty, non-tenure-line faculty, research associates, graduate students, and staff. • Votes on any proposed statement or endorsement must be conducted anonymously. • For any statement or endorsement the unit publishes, it must include a list of the categories of members enfranchised to vote (for example, "tenure-line faculty, lecturers, and research faculty") and the vote tally – the number of enfranchised members in favor, against, abstaining, and not voting. • Before publication, the academic unit should inform the Provost of any statement it intends to publish or endorse. • Public statements or endorsements should be published in a separate location from the unit's main channel of communications on curricular and administrative matters, campus activities, unit initiatives and programs, and resources available to students and unit members. Currently, the main channels of communications are the homepages of unit websites. In this context, the academic unit may establish a webpage other than its homepage to host public statements and endorsements from its members. Any statements or endorsements from the academic unit that preexist these guidelines should be moved from their current location to the unit's location dedicated to public statements and endorsements. • Public statements or endorsements must include a clear disclaimer that the unit is not speaking for Dartmouth as a whole. • Per the Lobbying and Political Activities policy, public statements and endorsements may not "participate in, or intervene in... any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office", "or otherwise attempting to influence legislation." • No individual should purport to speak on behalf of the academic unit in any communication unless they have completed this process. Dartmouth Policy on Institutional Restraint The Decline and Fall of the University by University of Virginia Prof. Emeritus Garret Sheldon, as published at The Jefferson Council website Since retiring from the university, several people have asked if I miss it. I tell them I miss what it was, but not what it has become. Higher education in America has gone from being the best in the world to one of the most pathetic. Why? It’s hard to describe what academia was to me and to millions in the past. It was not just a job, but a way of life, and of Western Civilization; and I’m so close to it, that it’s hard to describe—like trying to describe one’s own mother (hence alma mater !). But let me try. University life at its best was both the most serious, difficult, challenging and maddening existence; and yet, it was also the most exciting, lively, rewarding, and fun experience. It was deadly serious because we constantly examined the most intense human issues: historical and personal tragedies; ethical dilemmas, philosophical complexities; theological mysteries; and scientific wonders. It was hard because it stretched you intellectually and emotionally, made you question everything and be changed by that knowledge. And it was difficult, because of the enormous workload and demands; assignments, exams, papers, presentations and seminars. I don’t know of another situation, except possibly the military during a war, where one could be tested so much. Yet this academic rigor was so exciting, lively, and fun because it developed and fulfilled the most essential part of the human soul, what the Bible calls “Logos” and Aristotle “reasoned speech” of a naturally social being. It was exciting because that individual development occurred within a discipline, but free, intellectual and social environment—full of debate, discussion, argument, and questioning in a community of tolerance and respect, but also laughter, joking, flirting, fighting, explaining, and learning. That “community of scholars”—open, searching, teachers and students—changed one’s life and prepared one for whatever came one’s way. Socrates’ dictum “Know Thyself” and “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living” underlay the traditional liberal arts education: to learn something of every subject (“Renaissance Man”) and all perspectives on every subject and thereby to learn how to think, reason, and analyze: and then be able to handle anything in life and adapt to change. I realize that this “life of the mind” within a rigorous but friendly community is an ideal; there were plenty of dull classes and mediocre professors at every university. But the “system” of academic freedom and its attendant experiences of intellectual growth prevailed. Nor did the academy lack in conflict (as the old joke went: “The fights in academia are so bad because the stakes are so low”). But those battles were over policy or personalities (mostly egos), not the essential basis of the university: free thought and debate. I never can remember, even in the midst of terrible fights that led to presidents being fired or programs being altered, or board members resigning, that anyone questioned the right to free speech, academic inquiry, or liberty of conscience. Academia was full of eccentric professors with various crazy ideas and habits (some brilliant), naïve students, and pompous administrators; but they all adhered to the same standard of knowledge. This led not just to scientific discovery and technological progress, but to every other kind of progress: economic, political, social, and ethical. Restraint at the institutional level protects and enhances freedom of expression because institutional endorsement for a specific position or belief may deter community members who do not share that belief from expressing their skepticism or opposition. An institution committed to inquiry and open discourse should, therefore, issue institutional statements sparingly – typically when external events have a direct impact upon the relationship of the institution to its members. When confronted with issues directly relating to Dartmouth's mission, senior leaders will reaffirm Dartmouth's core values and commit to taking actions in support thereof. Institutional spokespersons for Dartmouth shall be limited to: the Board of Trustees, the President, the Provost, the Senior Vice President for Communications, the Director of Media Relations, and the General Counsel (or their designees). No other individual, group, or department has the authority to issue official statements or speak on behalf of Dartmouth. This general policy of restraint, with exceptions for speaking on issues that affirm core values related to their missions or making their communities aware of resources, applies to the leaders of all Dartmouth's schools and academic subunits. Dartmouth community members are free to make statements as individuals, including, for example, as subject-matter experts. Such statements must be clearly made in an individual capacity and should include a disclaimer that community members are not speaking on behalf of Dartmouth. Statements by other academic units The priority afforded to open, inclusive expression applies within Dartmouth schools and its academic units as it does in the broader Dartmouth community. Therefore, the principle of restraint should guide statements from Dartmouth's schools. The dean of each of Dartmouth's schools, or their designees, shall be the only official(s) with the authority to issue statements on behalf of the school. For similar reasons, the principle of restraint should guide statements from academic units like departments, programs, centers, and institutes. That said, academic units are loci of specialized scholarly expertise and academic practice. On matters where such expertise applies, academic units may choose to issue public statements informed by their expertise. Academic units should be attentive to the beliefs of all their faculty, students, and staff members, and cognizant of the possibility that those with minority perspectives may be reluctant to express their views. On matters where the expertise in scholarship and academic practice located in an academic unit is salient, members of that unit may decide to issue a public statement or to endorse a statement produced by another source. Such statements and endorsements must conform to the following practices: oBefore issuing a specific public statement or endorsement, and in a process separate from deliberation on any specific public statement or endorsement, the academic unit must establish the list of unit members who are enfranchised to propose and to vote on public statements or endorsements. Enfranchised members may include tenure-line faculty, non-tenure-line faculty, research associates, graduate students, and staff. oVotes on any proposed statement or endorsement must be conducted anonymously. oFor any statement or endorsement the unit publishes, it must include a list of the categories of members enfranchised to vote (for example, "tenure-line faculty, lecturers, and research faculty") and the vote tally – the number of enfranchised members in favor, against, abstaining, and not voting. oBefore publication, the academic unit should inform the Provost of any statement it intends to publish or endorse. oPublic statements or endorsements should be published in a separate location from the unit's main channel of communications on curricular and administrative matters, campus activities, unit initiatives and programs, and resources available to students and unit members. Currently, the main channels of communications are the homepages of unit websites. In this context, the academic unit may establish a webpage other than its homepage to host public statements and endorsements from its members. Any statements or endorsements from the academic unit that preexist these guidelines should be moved from their current location to the unit's location dedicated to public statements and endorsements. oPublic statements or endorsements must include a clear disclaimer that the unit is not speaking for Dartmouth as a whole. oPer the Lobbying and Political Activities policy, public statements and endorsements may not "participate in, or intervene in... any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office", "or otherwise attempting to influence legislation." oNo individual should purport to speak on behalf of the academic unit in any communication unless they have completed this process. Faculty for Yale As downloaded from https://facultyforyale.yale.edu/homepage Mis si on Faculty for Yale is a s pontaneously coalescing group of faculty drawn from across the university. Its members believe that Yale must rededicate itself to its fundamental mission: to preserve, produce, and transmit knowledge. This inspiring ideal is as vital to our work today as in the past. It is perfectly captured by our ancient motto, Lux et Veritas. Yale faculty are the custodians of a system of values that is under challenge from several quarters. Reaffirming Yale’s central mission is the key to grasping the nature and magnitude of this challenge and to understanding why important changes of emphasis and direction are needed to meet it. Some of these changes pertain to the freedom of academic expression; others do not. But all are motivated by the perception that Yale today appears to be struggling to meet its most important responsibilities as an academic institution in a clear and consistent way. Commitments Faculty for Yale: insist on the primacy of teaching, learning, and research as distinct from advocacy and activism, and on the centrality of the faculty to these core activities; confirm Yale’s commitment to robust free expression, including affirmative efforts to foster more open campus and classroom discourse, coupled with institutional neutrality; affirm the university’s commitment to the pursuit of excellence; critical thinking applied to all points of view; and a tolerant and broad-minded campus ethos and culture; urge greater administrative transparency and increased faculty oversight of all pedagogic and academic activities. One important corollary is that Yale as an institution should not prescribe any moral or political positions as institutional orthodoxy or treat the failure to endorse such a position as grounds for sanction or exclusion, whether formal or informal. Doing so thins our collective knowledge and experience and diminishes the truth-seeking enterprise in which we are all engaged. Issues Yale faculty today face a number of related issues that are the result, in significant part, of a retreat from the university’s basic mission and the blurring of its essential responsibilities as an academic institution. These issues include: a decline in faculty governance of academic matters; an increase in the scope and cost of Yale’s bureaucracy (according to both internal and external analyses), of unclear justification; and a weak record on free speech (according to external ratings). Meanwhile, the broader society in which we exist and on whose support we depend (including the citizens who pay taxes that underwrite many of our activities and the donors who support Yale more directly) is losing confidence in our willingness to protect the academic values with whose defense we have historically been entrusted. The warning signs include surveys indicating declining public trust; intrusion by politicians (often self-serving) into academic affairs; and disaffection on the part of donors. This situation can and must be redressed. Yale’s resources (human, physical, financial, historical, and reputational) are immense. But our aspirations are greater still. This is always the proper balance between resources and ideals. Ensuring that this balance is maintained requires an energetic reaffirmation of the lasting importance of the academic goal of the work we pursue in so many different ways. First steps Faculty for Yale endorses the following measures: Establishment of a website with signatories supporting the mission of Faculty for Yale. Reaffirmation of the central role of faculty decision-making in all academic matters and of the need for greater transparency and broader consultation in the management of university affairs more generally. In this spirit, we call for a thorough reassessment of administrative encroachment on a number of important areas—including the conduct of faculty searches; the requirement of techniques and interventions unrelated to the pedagogical demands of classroom instruction; and the design of student orientation programs whose purpose and content is largely invisible to the faculty at large. Encouragement of activities on campus intended to foster greater tolerance for diverse points of view. Endorsement of the principles set out in the Woodward Report and explicit description in the Faculty Handbook of the protections these principles afford. Endorsement of the Kalven Report’s principle of institutional neutrality at the university, school, and departmental levels (of course, this does not restrict faculty as individuals from expressing themselves). Support for the implementation of the guidelines regarding donor influence promulgated in 2022 by Yale’s Gift Policy Review Committee. Support for a detailed university-wide review of the size and scope of the bureaucracy that appears to have grown to such a large size at Yale in the past 15 years. Reaping What We Hav e Tau g ht By Harvard Prof. Harry R. Lewis [Editor's note: Prof. Harry R. Lewis is a Gordon McKay Research Professor of Computer Science and also served as Dean of Harvard College from 1995 to 2003. His o p-ed was initially published at The Harvard Crimson , January 8, 2024.] Let’s go back to how Harvard’s current crisis began: charges of antisemitism. Why antisemitism seems to be a problem at Harvard and other universities is one of the still-unanswered questions that precipitated the University’s downward spiral. But, it surely is not Claudine Gay’s fault. It is not because Harvard admits antisemitic students or hires antisemitic faculty. No one is suggesting there are comparable antisemitism problems in other kinds of institutions — such as hospitals or libraries — so there must be something that uniquely happens in universities. That something must be the source of our woes. 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.” Though word frequency is an imperfect measure and the precise counts are muddied by duplicate numberings and courses at MIT, this experiment supports the suspicion that the Harvard curriculum has become heavily slanted toward recent fashions of the progressive left. For example, “intersectionality” was almost unattested before the year 2000, while published uses of “decolonize” have more than tripled since then. Merchants of hate are repurposing these intellectual goods that universities are producing. 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. The political bias in our faculty is now widely accepted. One solution is to use a kind of affirmative action program for conservative thinkers to change the faculty, but that idea is noxious and misses a crucial point. 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. Instead, individual faculty might diversify what they teach. Committees and departments could enforce a standard that curricula exhibit intellectual diversity and a variety of agreed-upon topics and techniques. If done correctly, it would not infringe upon individual academic freedom to allow our faculty colleagues to have a stronger role in shaping each others’ syllabi and curricula. Nor would it be improper for the Board of Overseers — with its elaborate Visiting Committee structure — to weigh in on the evident political biases and ideological vectors in our educational program. As obvious as this all may sound, it would be a big change from the present. Over the fifty years I have been on the Harvard faculty, the expectation has evolved that individual Harvard professors are free to teach whatever they wish to whomever they wish. It was once the norm for faculty to rotate through courses of unpredictable size and with stable curricula, but now enrollments are predetermined quite rigorously and even introductory courses may change their reading lists and lecture topics drastically when new professors take charge. Curricular committees theoretically vet these courses, but not annually, and not for the kinds of political biases that have skewed undergraduate education. The result is to favor the hip, current, and “relevant,” over foundational learning — what instructors personally believe to the exclusion of what students should learn to participate knowledgeably in the world outside our gates. The leftward shift of Harvard’s faculty deserves scrutiny. Judicious changes to the hiring and promotion process can thwart intellectual inbreeding — just as the current tenure system, now tired and manipulable, was once an innovative revamp of a system that resulted in ethnic and gender homogeneity. Now is the time to change a system that will take decades to alter the composition of the faculty. But there is no need to wait for that reform. 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.” How to Fix Harv ard - I t’s Time We Restore Veritas to My Alma Mater By Bill Ackman, January 3, 2024 (links in the original) [Editor’s note: Per Wikipedia, Bill Ackman is an American billionaire hedge fund manager who is a Harvard alum and the founder and CEO of Pershing Square. His full op-ed, printed below, is also available at various other sources including Free Press .] In light of today’s news, I thought I would try to take a step back and provide perspective on what this is really all about. I first became concerned about Harvard when 34 student organizations , early on the morning of October 8—before Israel had taken any military actions in Gaza—came out publicly in support of Hamas, a globally recognized terrorist organization, holding Israel “solely responsible” for Hamas’ barbaric and heinous acts. How could this be? I wondered. When I saw then-president Claudine Gay’s initial statement about the massacre, it provided more context (!) for the student groups’ statement of support for terrorism. The protests began as pro-Palestine and then became anti-Israel. Shortly thereafter, antisemitism exploded on campus as protesters who violated Harvard’s own codes of conduct were emboldened by the lack of enforcement of Harvard’s rules, and kept testing the limits on how aggressive, intimidating, and disruptive they could be to Jewish and Israeli students, and the student body at large. Sadly, antisemitism remains a simmering source of hate even at our best universities among a subset of students. A few weeks later, I went up to campus to see things with my own eyes, and listen and learn from students and faculty. I met with 15 or so members of the faculty and a few hundred students in small and large settings, and a clearer picture began to emerge. I ultimately concluded that antisemitism was not the core of the problem. It was simply a troubling warning sign—it was the “canary in the coal mine”—despite how destructive it was in impacting student life and learning on campus. I came to learn that the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard was an ideology that had been promulgated on campus, an oppressor/oppressed framework, that provided the intellectual bulwark behind the protests, helping to generate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate speech and harassment. Then I did more research. The more I learned, the more concerned I became, and the more ignorant I realized I had been about DEI, a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard but the educational system at large. I came to understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion was not what I had naively thought these words meant. 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.” Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy (and even climate change, due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc., that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist. As a result, according to DEI, capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist—in other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization that has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology. In order to be deemed anti-racist, one must personally take action to reverse any unequal outcomes in society. The DEI movement, which has permeated many universities, corporations, and state, local, and federal governments, is designed to be the anti-racist engine to transform society from its currently structurally racist state to an anti-racist one. After the death of George Floyd, the already-burgeoning DEI movement took off without any real challenge to its problematic ideology. Why, you might ask, was there so little pushback? The answer is that anyone who dared to raise a question that challenged DEI was deemed a racist, a label that could severely impact one’s employment, social status, reputation, and more. Being called a racist got people canceled, so those concerned about DEI and its societal and legal implications had no choice but to keep quiet in this new climate of fear. The techniques that DEI has used to squelch the opposition are found in the Red Scares and McCarthyism of decades past. If you challenge DEI, “justice” will be swift, and you may find yourself unemployed, shunned by colleagues, canceled, and/or you will otherwise put your career and acceptance in society at risk. 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. These speech codes have led to self-censorship by students and faculty of views privately held, but no longer shared. There is no commitment to free expression at Harvard other than for DEI-approved views. This has led to the quashing of conservative and other viewpoints from the Harvard campus and faculty, and contributed to Harvard’s having the lowest free speech ranking of 248 universities assessed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. When one examines DEI and its ideological heritage, it does not take long to understand that the movement is inherently inconsistent with basic American values. Our country, since its founding, has been about creating and building a democracy with equality of opportunity for all. Millions of people have left behind socialism and communism to come to America to start again, as they have seen the destruction leveled by an equality of outcome society. The E for “equity” in DEI is about equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out). Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many not to be racism, or alternatively, it is deemed acceptable racism. While this is, of course, absurd, it has become the prevailing view in many universities around the country. You can say things about white people today in universities, in business, or otherwise, that if you switched the word white to black, the consequences to you would be costly and severe. To state what should otherwise be self-evident, whether or not a statement is racist should not depend upon whether the target of the racism is a group who currently represents a majority or minority of the country or those who have a lighter or darker skin color. Racism against whites is as reprehensible as it is against groups with darker skin colors. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous words are instructive: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” But here we are in 2024, being asked and in some cases required to use skin color to affect outcomes in admissions (recently deemed illegal by the Supreme Court), in business (likely illegal yet it happens nonetheless), and in government (also I believe in most cases to be illegal, except apparently in government contracting), rather than the content of one’s character. As such, a meritocracy is anathema to the DEI movement. DEI is inherently a racist and illegal movement in its implementation even if it purports to work on behalf of the so-called oppressed. And DEI’s definition of oppressed is fundamentally flawed. I have always believed that the most fortunate should help the least fortunate, and that our system should be designed in such a way to maximize the size of the overall pie so that it will enable us to provide an economic system that can offer quality of life, education, housing, and healthcare for all. America is a rich country and we have made massive progress over the decades toward achieving this goal, but we obviously have much more work to do. Steps taken on the path to socialism—another word for an equality of outcome system—will reverse this progress and ultimately impoverish us all. We have seen this movie many times. Having a darker skin color, a less common sexual identity, and/or being a woman doesn’t make one necessarily oppressed or even disadvantaged. While slavery remains a permanent stain on our country’s history—a fact that is used by DEI to label white people as oppressors—it doesn’t therefore hold that all white people, generations after the abolishment of slavery, should be held responsible for its evils. Similarly, the fact that Columbus discovered America doesn’t make all modern-day Italians colonialists. An ideology that portrays a bicameral world of oppressors and the oppressed based principally on race or sexual identity is a fundamentally racist ideology that will likely lead to more racism rather than less. A system where one obtains advantages by virtue of one’s skin color is a racist system, and one that will generate resentment and anger among the disadvantaged who will direct their anger at the favored groups. The country has seen burgeoning resentment and anger grow materially over the last few years, and the DEI movement is an important contributor to our growing divisiveness. Resentment is one of the most important drivers of racism. And it is the lack of equity (i.e, fairness) in how DEI operates that contributes to this resentment. I was accused of being a racist by the president of the NAACP among others when I posted on X (formerly Twitter) that I had learned that the Harvard president search process excluded candidates that did not meet the DEI criteria. I didn’t say that former president Gay was hired because she was a black woman. I simply said that I had heard that the search process by its design excluded a large percentage of potential candidates due to the DEI limitations. My statement was not a racist one. It was simply the empirical truth about the Harvard search process that led to Gay’s hiring. When former president Gay was hired, I knew little about her, but I was instinctually happy for Harvard and the black community. Every minority community likes to see their representatives recognized in important leadership positions, and it is therefore an important moment for celebration. I, too, celebrated this achievement. I am inspired and moved by others’ success, and I thought of Gay’s hiring at the pinnacle leadership position at perhaps our most important and iconic university as an important and significant milestone for the black community. I have spent the majority of my life advocating on behalf of and supporting members of disadvantaged communities, including by investing several hundreds of millions of dollars of philanthropic assets to help communities in need with economic development, sensible criminal justice reform, poverty reduction, healthcare, education, workforce housing, charter schools, and more. I have done the same at Pershing Square Capital Management when, for example, we completed one of the largest IPOs ever with the substantive assistance of a number of minority-owned, women-owned, and veteran-owned investment banks. Prior to the Pershing Square Tontine, Ltd. IPO, it was standard practice for big corporations occasionally to name a few minority-owned banks in their equity and bond offerings, have these banks do no work and sell only a de minimis amount of stock or bonds, and allocate to them only 1 percent or less of the underwriting fees so that the issuers could virtue signal that they were helping minority communities. In our IPO, we invited the smaller banks into the deal from the beginning of the process so they could add real value. As a result, the Tontine IPO was one of the largest and most successful IPOs in history, with $12 billion of demand for a $4 billion deal by the second day of the IPO, when we closed the books. The small banks earned their 20 percent share of the fees for delivering real and substantive value and for selling their share of the stock. Compare this approach to the traditional one, where the small banks do effectively nothing to earn their fees—they aren’t given that opportunity—yet they get a cut of the deal, albeit a tiny one. The traditional approach does not create value for anyone. It creates only resentment, and an uncomfortable feeling from the small banks who get a tiny piece of the deal in a particularly bad form of affirmative action. While I don’t think our approach to working with the smaller banks has yet achieved the significant traction it deserves, it will hopefully happen eventually as the smaller banks build their competencies and continue to earn their fees, and other issuers see the merit of this approach. We are going to need assistance with a large IPO soon, so we are looking forward to working with our favored smaller banks. I have always believed in giving disadvantaged groups a helping hand. I signed the Giving Pledge for this reason. My life plan by the time I was 18 was to be successful and then return the favor to those less fortunate. This always seemed to be the right thing to do, in particular, for someone as fortunate as I am. All of the above said, it is one thing to give disadvantaged people the opportunities and resources so that they can help themselves. It is another to select a candidate for admission or for a leadership role when they are not qualified to serve in that role. This appears to have been the case with former president Gay’s selection. She did not possess the leadership skills to serve as Harvard’s president, putting aside any questions about her academic credentials. This became apparent shortly after October 7, but there were many signs before then when she was dean of the faculty. The result was a disaster for Harvard and for Claudine Gay. The Harvard board should not have run a search process that had a predetermined objective of hiring only a DEI-approved candidate. In any case, there are many incredibly talented black men and women who could have been selected by Harvard to serve as its president, so why did the Harvard Corporation board choose Gay? One can only speculate without knowing all of the facts, but it appears Gay’s leadership in the creation of Harvard’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging and the penetration of DEI ideology into the corporation board room perhaps made Gay the favored candidate. The search was also done at a time when many other top universities had similar DEI-favored candidate searches underway for their presidents, reducing the number of potential candidates available in light of the increased competition for talent. As a side note, unrelated to the DEI issue, I would suggest that universities should broaden their searches to include capable businesspeople for the role of president, as a university president requires more business skills than can be gleaned from even the most successful academic career with its hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and many books. Universities have a dean of the faculty and a bureaucracy to oversee the faculty and academic environment of the university. It therefore does not make sense that the university president has to come through the ranks of academia, with a skill set unprepared for university management. The president’s job—managing thousands of employees, overseeing a $50 billion endowment, raising money, managing expenses, capital allocation, real estate acquisition, disposition, and construction, and reputation management—are responsibilities that few career academics are capable of executing. Broadening the recruitment of candidates to include top business executives would also create more opportunities for diverse talent for the office of the university president. Furthermore, Harvard is a massive business that has been mismanaged for a long time. The cost structure of the university is out of control due in large part to the fact that the administration has grown without bounds. Revenues are below what they should be because the endowment has generated a 4.5 percent annualized return for the last decade in one of the greatest bull markets in history, and that low return is not due to the endowment taking lower risks as the substantial majority of its assets are invested in illiquid and other high-risk assets. The price of the product, a Harvard education, has risen at a rate well in excess of inflation for decades (I believe it has grown about 7–8 percent per annum), and it is now about $320,000 for four years of a liberal arts education at Harvard. As a result, the only students who can now afford Harvard come from rich families and poor ones. The middle class can’t get enough financial aid other than by borrowing a lot of money, and it is hard to make the economics work in life after college when you graduate with large loan balances, particularly if you also attend graduate school. The best companies in the world grow at high rates over many decades. Harvard has grown at a de minimis rate. Since I graduated 35 years ago, the number of students in the Harvard class has grown by less than 20 percent. What other successful business do you know that has grown the number of customers it serves by less than 20 percent in 35 years, and where nearly all revenue growth has come from raising prices? In summary, there is a lot more work to be done to fix Harvard than just replacing its president. That said, the selection of Harvard’s next president is a critically important task, and the individuals principally responsible for that decision do not have a good track record for doing so based on their recent history, nor have they done a good job managing the other problems that I have identified above. The corporation board led by Penny Pritzker selected the wrong president and did inadequate due diligence about her academic record despite Gay being in leadership roles at the university since 2015 when she became dean of the Social Studies department. The board failed to create a discrimination-free environment on campus, exposing the university to tremendous reputational damage, to large legal and financial liabilities, Congressional investigations and scrutiny, and to the potential loss of federal funding, all while damaging the learning environment for all students. And when concerns were raised about plagiarism in Gay’s research, the board said these claims were “demonstrably false” and it threatened the New York Post with “immense” liability if it published a story raising these issues. It was only after getting the story canceled that the board secretly launched a cursory, short-form investigation outside of the proper process for evaluating a member of the faculty’s potential plagiarism. When the board finally publicly acknowledged some of Gay’s plagiarism, it characterized the plagiarism as “unintentional” and invented new euphemisms (i.e., “duplicative language”) to describe plagiarism, a belittling of academic integrity that has caused grave damage to Harvard’s academic standards and credibility. The board’s three-person panel of “political scientist experts” (that to this day remain unnamed) who evaluated Gay’s work failed to identify many examples of her plagiarism, leading to even greater reputational damage to the university and its reputation for academic integrity as the whistleblower, and the media continued to identify additional problems with Gay’s work in the days and weeks thereafter. According to the New York Post, the board also apparently sought to identify the whistleblower and seek retribution against him or her in contravention to the university’s whistleblower protection policies. Despite all of the above, the board “unanimously” gave its full support for Gay during this nearly four-month crisis, until eventually being forced to accept her resignation earlier today, a grave and continuing reputational disaster to Harvard and to the board. In a normal corporate context with the above set of facts, the full board would resign immediately to be replaced by a group nominated by shareholders. In the case of Harvard, however, the board nominates itself and its new members. There is no shareholder vote mechanism to replace them. So what should happen? The corporation board should not remain in their seats protected by the unusual governance structure that enabled them to obtain their seats. The board chair, Penny Pritzker, should resign along with the other members of the board who led the campaign to keep Claudine Gay, orchestrated the strategy to threaten the media, bypassed the process for evaluating plagiarism, and otherwise greatly contributed to the damage that has been done. Then new corporation board members should be identified who bring true diversity, viewpoint and otherwise, to the board. The board should not be principally composed of individuals who share the same politics and views about DEI. The new board members should be chosen in a transparent process with the assistance of the 30-person Board of Overseers. There is no reason the Harvard board of 12 independent trustees cannot be composed of the most impressive, high integrity, intellectually and politically diverse members of our country and globe. We have plenty of remarkable people to choose from, and the job of being a director just got much more interesting and important. It is no longer, nor should it ever have been, an honorary and highly political sinecure. The ODEIB 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. Why would the ODEIB take down portions of its website when an alum questioned its legitimacy unless the office was doing something fundamentally wrong or indefensible? 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. Harvard should become an environment where all students of all persuasions feel comfortable expressing their views and being themselves. In the business world, we call this creating a great corporate culture, which begins with new leadership and the right tone at the top. It does not require the creation of a massive administrative bureaucracy. These are the minimum changes necessary to begin to repair the damage that has been done. A number of faculty at the University of Pennsylvania have proposed a new constitution, which can be found here, and that has been signed by more than 1,200 faculty from Penn, Harvard, and other universities. Harvard would do well to adopt Penn’s proposed new constitution or a similar one before seeking to hire its next president. A condition of employment of the new Harvard president should be the requirement that the new president agrees to strictly abide by the new constitution. He or she should take an oath to that effect. Today was an important step forward for the university. It is time we restore veritas to Harvard and again be an exemplar that graduates well-informed, highly educated leaders of exemplary moral standing and good judgment who can help bring our country together, advance our democracy, and identify the important new discoveries that will help save us from ourselves. We have a lot more work to do. Let’s get at it. Timeless Counsel from Former Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh [Editor's note: The following is a condensed version of the letter former Notre Dame President Father Theodore Hesburgh sent to the Notre Dame community in February, 1969 , during times of major campus controversies similar to what is being e xperienced today and that we have downloaded from th e New York Times archives . It is counsel we suggest leaders at Stanford as well as at other colleges and universities nationwide might want to consider. And we again urge Stanford's faculty, trustees and leaders to adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta as long posted here .] Dear Notre Dame Faculty and Students, This letter has been on my mind for weeks. It is both time and overtime that it be written. I have tried to write calmly, in the wee hours of the morning when at least there is quiet and pause for reflection. My hope is that these ideas will have deep personal resonances in our own community, although the central problem they address exists everywhere in the university world today and, by instant communication, feeds upon itself. It is not enough to label it the alienation of youth from our society. God knows there is enough and more than enough in our often non-glorious civilization to be alienated from, be you young, middle-aged, or old. The central problem to me is what we do about it , and in what manner, if we are interested in healing rather than destroying our world. Youth especially has much to offer — idealism, generosity, dedication, and service. The last thing a shaken society needs is more shaking. The last thing a noisy, turbulent, and disintegrating community needs is more noise, turbulence, and disintegration. Understanding and analysis of social ills cannot be conducted in a boiler factory. Compassion has a quiet way of service. Complicated social mechanisms, out of joint, are not adjusted with a sledge hammer. The university cannot cure all our ills today, but it can make a valiant beginning by bringing all its intellectual and moral powers to bear upon them: all the idealism and generosity of its young people, all the wisdom and intelligence of its oldsters, all the expertise and competence of those who are in their middle years. But it must do all this as a university does, within its proper style and capability, no longer an ivory tower, but not the Red Cross either. Now to the heart of my message. You recall my letter of November 25, 1968, which was written after an incident. It seemed best to me then not to waste time in personal recriminations or heavy-handed discipline, but to profit from the occasion to invite this whole university community — faculty, administration and students — to state their convictions regarding protests that were peaceful and those that threatened the life of the community by disrupting the normal operations of the University and infringing upon the rights of others. In general, the reaction was practically unanimous that this community recognizes the validity of protest in our day — sometimes even the necessity — regarding the current burning issues of our society: war and peace, especially Vietnam; civil rights, especially of minority groups; the stance of the University vis-à-vis moral issues of great public concern; the operation of the University as a university. There was also practical unanimity that the University could not continue to exist as a society, dedicated to the discussion of all issues of importance, if protests were of such a nature that the normal operations of the University were in any way impeded, or if the rights of any member of this community were abrogated, peacefully or non-peacefully. I believe that I now have a clear mandate from this University community to see that: (1) our lines of communication between all segments of the community are kept as open as possible, with all legitimate means of communicating dissent assured, expanded, and protected; (2) civility and rationality are maintained; and (3) violation of another’s rights or obstruction of the life of the University are outlawed as illegitimate means of dissent in this kind of open society. Now comes my duty of stating, clearly and unequivocally, what happens if. I’ll try to make it as simple as possible to avoid misunderstanding by anyone. Anyone or any group that substitutes force for rational persuasion, be it violent or non-violent, will be given fifteen minutes of meditation to cease and desist. They will be told that they are, by their actions, going counter to the overwhelming conviction of this community as to what is proper here. If they do not within that time period cease and desist, they will be asked for their identity cards. Those who produce these will be suspended from this community as not understanding what this community is. Those who do not have or will not produce identity cards will be assumed not to be members of the community and will be charged with trespassing and disturbing the peace on private property and treated accordingly by the law. After notification of suspension, or trespass in the case of non-community members, if there is not within five minutes a movement to cease and desist, students will be notified of expulsion from this community and the law will deal with them as non-students. There seems to be a current myth that university members are not responsible to the law, and that somehow the law is the enemy, particularly those whom society has constituted to uphold and enforce the law. I would like to insist here that all of us are responsible to the duly constituted laws of this University community and to all of the laws of the land. There is no other guarantee of civilization versus the jungle or mob rule, here or elsewhere. We can have a thousand resolutions as to what kind of a society we want, but when lawlessness is afoot, and all authority is flouted — faculty, administration and student — then we invoke the normal societal forces of law or we allow the university to die beneath our hapless and hopeless gaze. I have no intention of presiding over such a spectacle. Too many people have given too much of themselves and their lives to this University to let this happen here. Without being melodramatic, if this conviction makes this my last will and testament to Notre Dame, so be it. May I now say in all sincerity that I never want to see any student expelled from this community because, in many ways, this is always an educative failure. Even so, I must likewise be committed to the survival of the University community as one of man’s best hopes in these troubled times. I know of no other way of insuring both ends than to say of every member of this community — faculty and students — that we are all ready and prepared and anxious to respond to every intellectual and moral concern in the world today, in every way proper to the University. At the same time, we cannot allow a small minority to impose their will on the majority who have spoken regarding the University’s style of life. I truly believe that we are about to witness a revulsion on the part of legislatures, state and national, benefactors, parents, alumni, and the general public for much that is happening in higher education today. If I read the signs of the times correctly, this may well lead to a suppression of the liberty and autonomy that are the lifeblood of a university community. It may well lead to a rebirth of fascism, unless we ourselves are ready to take a stand for what is right for us. History is not consoling in this regard. We rule ourselves, or others rule us in a way that destroys the university as we have known and loved it. Devotedly yours in Notre Dame, (Rev.) Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. President The Westminster Declaration About U.S. and Worldwide Censorship [Editor's note: We are reprinting below a paper known as the W estminster Declaration regarding censorship activities in the U.S. and worldwide and involving universities, government and non-government entities, nonprofits and others. See also our prior posting about the activities of the Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities.] We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms. Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms. This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world. Such interference with the right to free speech suppresses valid discussion about matters of urgent public interest, and undermines the foundational principles of representative democracy. 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.’ This complex often operates through direct government policies. Authorities in India[1] and Turkey[2] have seized the power to remove political content from social media. The legislature in Germany[3] and the Supreme Court in Brazil[4] are criminalising political speech. In other countries, measures such as Ireland’s ‘Hate Speech’ Bill[5], Scotland’s Hate Crime Act[6], the UK’s Online Safety Bill[7], and Australia’s ‘Misinformation’ Bill[8] threaten to severely restrict expression and create a chilling effect. But the Censorship Industrial Complex operates through more subtle methods. These include visibility filtering, labelling, and manipulation of search engine results. Through deplatforming and flagging, social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance. They have done so with the full support of ‘disinformation experts’ and ‘fact-checkers’ in the mainstream media, who have abandoned the journalistic values of debate and intellectual inquiry. As the Twitter Files revealed, tech companies often perform censorial ‘content moderation’ in coordination with government agencies and civil society. Soon, the European Union’s Digital Services Act will formalise this relationship by giving platform data to ‘vetted researchers’ from NGOs and academia, relegating our speech rights to the discretion of these unelected and unaccountable entities. Some politicians and NGOs[9] are even aiming to target end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.[10] If end-to-end encryption is broken, we will have no remaining avenues for authentic private conversations in the digital sphere. Although foreign disinformation between states is a real issue, agencies designed to combat these threats, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States, are increasingly being turned inward against the public. Under the guise of preventing harm and protecting truth, speech is being treated as a permitted activity rather than an inalienable right. 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. 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. What's more, 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. Free speech is our best defence against disinformation. The attack on speech is not just about distorted rules and regulations – it is a crisis of humanity itself. Every equality and justice campaign in history has relied on an open forum to voice dissent. In countless examples, including the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement, social progress has depended on freedom of expression. We do not want our children to grow up in a world where they live in fear of speaking their minds. We want them to grow up in a world where their ideas can be expressed, explored and debated openly – a world that the founders of our democracies envisioned when they enshrined free speech into our laws and constitutions. The US First Amendment is a strong example of how the right to freedom of speech, of the press, and of conscience can be firmly protected under the law. One need not agree with the U.S. on every issue to acknowledge that this is a vital 'first liberty' from which all other liberties follow. It is only through free speech that we can denounce violations of our rights and fight for new freedoms. There also exists a clear and robust international protection for free speech. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)[11] was drafted in 1948 in response to atrocities committed during World War II. Article 19 of the UDHR states, 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.' While there may be a need for governments to regulate some aspects of social media, such as age limits, these regulations should never infringe on the human right to freedom of expression. As is made clear by Article 19, the corollary of the right to free speech is the right to information. In a democracy, no one has a monopoly over what is considered to be true. Rather, truth must be discovered through dialogue and debate – and we cannot discover truth without allowing for the possibility of error. 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. We believe that free speech is essential for ensuring our safety from state abuses of power – abuses that have historically posed a far greater threat than the words of lone individuals or even organised groups. For the sake of human welfare and flourishing, we make the following 3 calls to action. -- We call on governments and international organisations to fulfill their responsibilities to the people and to uphold Article 19 of the UDHR. -- We call on tech corporations to undertake to protect the digital public square as defined in Article 19 of the UDHR and refrain from politically motivated censorship, the censorship of dissenting voices, and censorship of political opinion. -- And finally, we call on the general public to join us in the fight to preserve the people's democratic rights. Legislative changes are not enough. We must also build an atmosphere of free speech from the ground up by rejecting the climate of intolerance that encourages self-censorship and that creates unnecessary personal strife for many. Instead of fear and dogmatism, we must embrace inquiry and debate. We stand for your right to ask questions. Heated arguments, even those that may cause distress, are far better than no arguments at all. Censorship robs us of the richness of life itself. Free speech is the foundation for creating a life of meaning and a thriving humanity - through art, poetry, drama, story, philosophy, song, and more. This declaration was the result of an initial meeting of free speech champions from around the world who met in Westminster, London, at the end of June 2023. As signatories of this statement, we have fundamental political and ideological disagreements. However, it is only by coming together that we will defeat the encroaching forces of censorship so that we can maintain our ability to openly debate and challenge one another. It is in the spirit of difference and debate that we sign the Westminster Declaration. California Comm unity College Professors Sue Over Newly Imposed DEIA Hiring and Performance Standards (see also a PDF copy of the California Community College DEIA glossary, pasted below) A ccording to a WSJ editorial published on July 21, 2023, a lawsuit had been filed by Bakersfield Community College Prof. Daymon Johnson who has been teaching since 1993 and refused to compl y with DEI requirements adopted three months earlier by the California Community College System. Per the editorial, under the newly adopted regulations, California community colleges must "place significant em phasis on DEIA competencies in employee evaluation and tenure review.” A full copy of the editorial is here . More recently, another lawsuit has been filed by FIRE and a number of faculty members at other California Community Colleges regarding what they believe a re inappropriate intrusions on academic freedom and other rights. A copy of the the pleadings in this second lawsuit is found here. As part of its activities, the California Community College lead ership also has adopted a DEIA Glossary. Excerpts from the glossary include the following: " 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. "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. "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." [Editor's note: We have downloaded a complete copy of the California Community College DEIA Glossary, below, and where similar DEI glossaries appear to be in widespread use around the country. See also the list of discredited words and phrases that Stanford's IT unit created in recent years, a PDF copy of which is posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage, was similarly developed in coordination with other entities nationwide and was implemented at Stanford solely by administrative staff and notwithstanding California's ban on speech codes. ] Calif. Community College DEIA Glossary More About Campus Bias Re sponse Teams and Programs [Editor’s n ote: This federal appellate court decision, Speech First vs. the President of Virginia Polytechnic Institute , was issued on May 31, 2023 and involves a program at Virginia Tech similar to programs at many U.S. colleges and universities that allow students, faculty and even third parties to report, even anonymously, something that a student might have said or done as being inappropriately biased. The full text of the court’s decision can be found here and our prior discussion of Stanford’s Protected Identity Harm program can be found here . ] Excerpt from dissenting opinion of J. Harvie Wilkinson III, U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals “Consider a 19-year-old sophomore at Virginia Tech sitting in a favorite class, one involving the role that race, ethnicity, and gender play in contemporary American politics. During a lively class discussion, an interesting but controversial topic comes up. She considers raising her hand to add her thoughts to this fascinating debate, but she hesitates. “She remembers hearing about the University’s Bias Intervention and Response Team, which Virginia Tech established to ‘eliminate acts of bias’ through ‘immediate direct or indirect responses to bias-related incidents.’ She cannot recall how ‘bias incident’ was defined but thinks it was something about ‘expressions against a person’ in a protected class. She knows that biased speech can be reported anonymously online. In fact, Virginia Tech ‘encourages’ students ‘to make a report’ if they ‘hear or see something that feels like a bias incident’ even if they are ‘unsure.’ She vaguely remembers that those reported for bias will be invited to a meeting with the Dean of Students or referred to another University office. Students are told the meetings are voluntary, but word travels quickly on college campuses, and she does not want to be ‘that girl who got reported.’ She cannot recollect whether those who get accused of bias get in trouble with the University, but she knows the Dean of Students keeps a file of all complaints. “She thought she had an insightful comment to add to the discussion, but it might not be worth risking an encounter with the bias response team, especially because the team comprises representatives from the offices of Inclusion and Diversity, Student Conduct, the Dean of Students, and the Virginia Tech Police Department. “Faced with these circumstances, what would a reasonable student do? Speak up and risk an anonymous report? Or keep her head down, sit silently, and avoid the potential fallout? A student in this situation will almost always choose the latter. And this is how Virginia Tech objectively chills speech. … “How did it ever come to this—that such a fine and distinguished university would institute a policy with such incipient inquisitional overtones, one that turns its campus into a surveillance state? The First Amendment guarantees to everyone not just passive access to but active participation in the marketplace of ideas. Today, the majority breaks that promise to a segment of society who needs it most—college students. … “It is beyond wrong to place these students in the crosshairs. It was beyond wrong in the civil rights era to make those courageous voices for racial equality subject to vilification or worse. It was beyond wrong to make American pacifists in times of war feel beyond the pale of civil discourse. The First Amendment does not permit the fevers of majority passions to deny the minority its say.” 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 becom e wiser and more thoughtful adults.” See the following most recent letter (January 9, 2023) to Cornell's president: Dear President Pollack, We are writing on behalf of the Cornell Free Speech Alliance (CFSA) to reiterate a request made earlier in the year for inclusion of a free speech instruction unit during Freshman Orientation. We applaud your public statements in defense of free speech and civil discourse on campus. An orientation program is among the policies and activities that will be instrumental to achieve the conditions envisioned in the University’s Statement of Core Values on the fundamental nature of Free and Open Inquiry and Expression: We are a community whose very purpose is the pursuit of knowledge. We value free and open inquiry and expression—tenets that underlie academic freedom—even of ideas some may consider wrong or offensive. Inherent in this commitment is the corollary freedom to engage in reasoned opposition to messages to which one objects. Engaging new students can begin to address the current threats to these values, but also presents an opportunity, one for which we believe Cornell is supremely advantaged, to become a pacesetter of academic freedom. CFSA wants to support the University in this goal. The speech and assembly rights protected by the First Amendment are necessary to self- governance; and the “mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge.”2 Thus strengthening the skills of speaking, listening, and engaging new or uncomfortable ideas is critical to the success of the university and the country as a whole. 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. As the Kalven Committee pointed out over fifty years ago, “[f]rom time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.” In its most recent rankings, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) awarded Cornell its highest, “green light” rating4 for its “Demonstrations Not Involving Structures”5 policy. Nevertheless, in its 2022-2023 College Free Speech Rankings, Cornell came in at number 154 out of the 203 universities ranked, earning an overall evaluation of Below Average. Perhaps more concerning for university students in general, “More than three-in-five students (63%) expressed worry about damaging their reputation because of someone misunderstanding what they have said or done;” “just over one-in-five (21%) reported that they feel a lot of pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics in their classes;” and, “[m]ore than three-in-five students (62%) said that students shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus was acceptable to some degree.” The gap between Cornell’s free speech commitment and its campus reality were demonstrated by the events of November 9, 2022, during which invited speaker Ann Coulter’s (Cornell ’84) event was disrupted and ultimately shut down. While the University’s response was consistent with its own free speech principles, clearly students need resources to walk- the-walk when it comes to speech rights. Strengthening the skills of speaking, listening, and engaging new or uncomfortable ideas will enable students to navigate the current environment and close the gap between the “green light” policies and the below average rating. Elements of a Free Speech Training These skills must be learned and honed. For many students, their time at Cornell is their first, best, and (sadly) potentially last opportunity to do so. And like any skill, the proficiency in engaging in rational discourse requires practice—repetition in the face of inevitable failures, encouragement to try again, and the opportunity to experience the benefits of success. We propose training to assist students in recognizing the difference between speech and violence; in differentiating between pre-school level “expressions” such as loudly blowing a whistle versus the reasoned discourse expected from a student at a world class university; that listening to ideas is a necessary predicate to considering them; that listening alone does not equal endorsement; and that some dearly held beliefs—that students sincerely believe reflect their own views—are opinions assigned to them by the environment in which they grew up and which they have never seen competently challenged. In other words, through listening to reasoned challenge they may become wiser and more thoughtful adults. Two models of student orientation training we recommend for your consideration, the Purdue model7 and FIRE’s freshman orientation modules8. CFSA has access to expert and proven resources and stands ready to assist Cornell in selecting an appropriate model or developing a Cornell-specific approach to opening ears and minds. Thank you for your consideration. We would appreciate the opportunity to meet in person with you to discuss how we may support this initiative. Please let us know whom on your staff to contact to discuss next steps. Best Regards //SIGNED// Cornell Free Speech Alliance

During earlier times of considerable campus turmoil, the University of Chicago's faculty issued three reports dealing with: (1) Freedom of expression (the Chicago Principles ), (2) A university’s involvement in political and social matters (the Kalven Report ), and (3) Academic appointments (the Shils Report ). These three reports are now often referred to as the Chicago Trifecta. We have compiled the core principles of each of the three reports, solely using language taken directly from each report and in the exact same order as the language appears in each report, and have posted below copies of those compilations (you will need to click on the arrows to see subsequent pages of each report). PDF versions also have been included at the bottom of this webpage for readers who might want to download copies. We continue to urge Stanford’s faculty, administration and trustees to adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta as a way to guarantee the types of free speech, critical thinking and viewpoint diversity we believe are essential for a leading university like Stanford. Chicago Trifecta Principles for Freedom of Expression (compilation of the Chicago Principles ) A University's Role in Political and Social Action (compilation from the Kalven report) Principles for Academic Appointments (compilation from the Shils report)

Past Newsletters -1 2025 - 2026 March 16, 2026 College Leaders Reflect on the Future of Higher Education Excerpts : “At [Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research's] economic summit [two weeks ago] , Provost Jenny Martinez, former President John Hennessy, and leaders from UC Berkeley, Brown, and Oregon discussed challenges and opportunities for universities. “American universities are facing some of their steepest challenges in decades, including funding cuts, eroding public trust, political controversies, and an AI revolution that is transforming how students learn. “But at Stanford’s SIEPR Economic Summit, leaders from several prominent U.S. universities argued that the moment could also be an opportunity to rebuild trust, discard outdated practices, and focus on what universities do better than anyone else. “‘It’s a time for universities to go back to first principles -- what are we good at? What is our distinctive role in society?’ Martinez said at the summit. ‘We’re places of discovery and places of learning, and those are critical functions for society.’... “If people aren’t sharing their views and learning to engage with those they disagree with, we can’t have the kind of functioning democracy that America has benefited from over the last centuries,’ Martinez said. “She also emphasized the importance of academic freedom -- the ability to consider ideas that might seem unorthodox or controversial. “Without it, she said, ‘you’re not going to get to the discoveries that are so foundational to the progress of science, of technology, of the economy and society.’” [Followed by discussion of AI’s impact on learning, a new economic model for universities, and China and national security.] Full article at Stanford Report. Video of the full one-hour panel here . See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Forming Virtuous Minds Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “The University of Tulsa’s Honors College is not the only program to face liberal arts cuts and closures . Since 2023, nearly 50 nonprofit institutions have closed their doors, with at least 40 merging with other institutions since 2020. This comes at a time when trust in higher education remains fragile , enrollments are down, and perceptions of a college education are at a low point.... “Political pressure from both sides of the aisle has hastened the decline of the liberal arts. The left has hollowed out traditional curricula, replacing the liberal arts with ideology-driven ‘grievance studies.’ The right, meanwhile, increasingly judges degrees by a single metric: whether they lead directly to a high-paying job -- a standard that consigns most of the humanities to irrelevance.... “. . . Courses in Western civilization must be strengthened , along with English and languages, while ideology-driven courses must go. Ian Oxnevad, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) Senior Fellow for Foreign Affairs and Security Studies, writes for Minding the Campus how the reform and restoration of language instruction is vital to the West’s civilizational continuation.... “. . . Schools must not equate ‘studies’ or ‘grievance’ programs with standard liberal arts courses. These programs often degrade education, radicalizing students by simply keeping them at arm's length from studying the fruits of their civilization. Very few students want to sign up for a program that teaches them to despise their way of life. No English literature graduate should leave their program believing that the English in their degree name ought to be struck out of existence after a four-year program of postcolonial theory, gender studies, queer theory, critical race theory, intersectional feminism, and fat studies. “The liberal arts are necessary to the health and vitality of our culture. A liberal arts education forms students into wise and thoughtful leaders with a deep understanding of the Western mores needed for society to flourish. Such education instills a never-ending hunger for not only the ‘hows’ but also the ‘whys,’ lending to continual growth and improvement, personally and then society as a whole. The liberal arts mold the whole person, ideally into a virtuous citizen. This is why it is our mission at the NAS to uphold the standards of a liberal arts education that fosters intellectual freedom, searches for the truth, and promotes virtuous citizenship.” Full article at National Association of Scholars. See also “UT-Austin to Consolidate Seven Liberal Arts Departments, Including African Studies and Women's and Gender Studies” at EDU Ledger (formerly known as Diverse Issues in Higher Education): “Under the plan, the departments of African and African Diaspora Studies; American Studies; Mexican American and Latina/o Studies; and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies will be merged into a new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Separately, the departments of French and Italian Studies; Germanic Studies; and Slavic and Eurasian Studies will be folded into a new Department of European and Eurasian Studies. The university has also launched a curriculum review to determine which majors and minors will continue to be offered under the consolidated departments.” Also discussed at City Journal . See also “UVA Ecofeminist Course Has Students Listen to Birds, Lichen, Etc. to Understand Oppression” at College Fix : “The syllabus defines ecofeminist research as ‘any mode of inquiry guided by critical ecological feminism, the idea that women and the more-than-human world share a political fate determined by a master model that divides up the world into unequal and antagonistic dualisms.’” See also our Ask AI webpage with detailed analyses of the issues colleges and universities are currently facing. Other Articles of Interest What’s Keeping College and University Presidents Up at Night in 2026 Full article at Inside Higher Ed. What AI Can’t Give Your College Student Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. AI Is Not Replacing Learning, It’s Exposing Where Learning Was Thin to Begin With Full op-ed by U Virginia Prof. Xinyao Yi at Inside Higher Ed. To Prepare for a Future With AI, We Must Educate Differently Full op-ed by Junior Achievement USA CEO Jack Harris at DC Journal. Why Grad Students at Columbia May Go on Strike Full article at Free Press: “’They’ve singularly focused on pursuing policies that are meant to disenfranchise Jews and Israelis, as opposed to pursuing and negotiating on policies for the betterment of all student workers,’ one Columbia grad student told me." But see also “The powerful United Auto Workers won’t allow a strike on campus if the grad students’ union clings to its obsession with politics,” also at Free Press . Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Immune ‘Peacekeepers’ Teach the Body Which Foods are Safe to Eat Probing Electrical Signals to Understand Alzheimer’s Disease New Approach Could Accelerate Historical Analysis by Teaching AI to Read Documents Like Scholars Do Researchers Design 3D-Printed Materials for Fusion Reactors and Other Clean Energy Systems Engineers Improve Infrared Devices Using Century-Old Materials ********** “As scholars and educators, we question accepted notions, in order to seek the truth, and we challenge each other with ideas and opinions that may be different from our own in order to stimulate intellectual growth. Official institutional positions can stifle the free exchange of ideas that is so central to our purpose.” — Former Stanford President John Hennessy. March 9, 2026 Professors Are Inviting Dialogue; That’s Not the Same as Free Speech Editor’s note: Last week’s Newsletter had excerpts and a link to a recent study by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation saying that while a large percent of Americans remain highly skeptical about what has been taking place at America’s colleges and universities, others see it differently. The following op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams takes a closer look at the issues. Excerpts (links in the original): “I regularly teach a freshman seminar at Sarah Lawrence College. And every semester, without fail, the same scene plays out. A student lingers after class, or appears at my office door, or sends a carefully worded late-night email, sharing a view they would never dream of voicing to their peers. Sometimes it’s a defense of Israel, or abortion rights, or gun control, or simply to confide that they are not extremely liberal. Sometimes it’s skepticism about a campus orthodoxy everyone seems to take for granted. Sometimes it’s something as basic as having a different opinion about an assigned text. They tell me these things because they’re not afraid of me. They’re afraid of the room. “I thought about those students when I read the new Gallup and Lumina Foundation report, ‘The College Reality Check: What Students Experience vs. What America Believes .’ Its central message is reassuring: the critics of higher education are exaggerating. Between 64% and 74% of Democratic, Republican, and independent students say their professors encourage open dialogue. A mere 2% of all students, including just 3% of Republicans, feel they don’t belong on campus because of their political views. Nothing to see here, the report implies. Move along. “But before accepting that reassurance, it helps to know who’s offering it. The Lumina Foundation is one of the most influential funders in American higher education, with an endowment of roughly $1.4 billion and a mission organized explicitly around equity and increasing college access and graduation rates. Those are laudable goals. But they shape the questions a researcher thinks to ask and, just as importantly, the questions that never make it onto the survey. A foundation whose work depends on students trusting and enrolling in colleges is unlikely to commission a study asking whether the climate inside those colleges suppresses minority viewpoints. The report does ask whether professors create safe environments for students with minority views -- and the answers are broadly positive. But those questions measure only faculty behavior. They cannot capture whether students themselves feel free to take the social and intellectual risks that genuine dissent requires. “Scrutinize what actually is there, and the problems multiply. And FIRE’s data makes clear just how deep they go.... “The Gallup questions ask whether professors have encouraged dialogue and created safe classroom environments, but they do not measure whether students themselves feel able to take the social and intellectual risks that genuine dissent requires. Even beyond the survey’s design, there is reason to question whether a professor’s stated openness to diverse views translates into a classroom climate in which students are comfortable expressing disagreement. Harvard President Alan Garber offered a candid admission about his own institution that cuts to the heart of the problem. In rare and unusually candid remarks on the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Identity/Crisis podcast in January 2026, Garber acknowledged that Harvard ‘went wrong’ by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism has chilled free speech and debate.... [Followed by discussion of how the survey is measuring the wrong thing, what FIRE’s data actually shows, why the problem is structural and not individual, and what needs to be done to get the diagnosis right.] “Garber’s admission -- that Harvard went wrong, that faculty activism chills speech, that students won’t go toe-to-toe with a professor who has already taken sides -- is the most honest thing a university president has said about this problem in years. The Gallup report, for all its data, cannot see what Garber finally described: that the invitation to speak and the freedom to speak are not the same thing, and that on most campuses, one has been systematically undermining the other for a very long time.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at FIRE. The Ongoing Problems with Stanford’s Housing Accommodations Editor’s note: Our Newsletter dated February 9, 2026 had excerpts from an article stating that nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates now claim they are disabled and need special accommodations for their on-campus housing, test-taking and/or other matters -- a number that significantly exceeds anything that exists at any of Stanford’s peer institutions. We present below still another student op-ed and some more recent developments on the subject. The concern is that this problem largely arises from the fact that Stanford has failed to provide adequate undergraduate housing not just in recent years, but for decades, now made all the worse with the announcement that Stanford is in the process of increasing its undergraduate enrollment by 1,000 or more but with no increase in housing. All of this has, in turn, sent a strong signal to students to ignore the Fundamental Standard and do whatever is necessary to get a decent place to live. Hardly a way to teach critical and honest thinking. Possible solution: Pause any increases in the undergraduate enrollment until there is truly adequate housing, not just in numbers but also in quality. In the process, consider adopting the plan proposed years ago by former Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman where freshmen and sophomores would remain in the same dorm for their first two years and would then move into independent style housing for the remainder of their undergraduate years (on-campus apartments; housed fraternities, sororities, co-ops and other types of student-run theme houses; and single room facilities). One of the easiest ways to remedy the problem would be to re-purpose, at the start of the 2026-27 academic year, 1,000 or more on-campus living spaces for undergraduates that are currently occupied by graduate students. It’s a matter of priorities. The obligation to provide adequate campus facilities, including on-campus housing, was a high priority of Senator and Mrs. Stanford and, under the Founding Grant and related documents, falls directly upon the Trustees. In any event, this is a problem that needs a solution. Excerpts (links in the original): “My first initiative as an undergraduate senator was to run a campus-wide survey about last spring’s housing selection process, which left many students feeling confused and upset. Housing selection will never satisfy everyone, but -- with an average satisfaction score of 2.2 out of 7 -- it’s clear the 2024 process failed to clear most people’s bar. “The biggest concern of students was the palpable increase in Office of Accessible Education (OAE) assignments, which many believe are being exploited to grab the best housing. So I met with many administrators in the Stanford Housing Machine (my umbrella term for R&DE, ResEd, CoRL and the URGC), and I learned this student concern was something very real: OAE accommodations have risen by 200% in the last few years. But housing sees this as a problem beyond their control. ‘We can’t refuse any accommodations,’ they explained in our advocacy meeting, arguing that the only thing to do is raise our concerns to OAE itself. “Housing’s view was understandable: they cannot unilaterally restrict the number of accommodations [among other things, because of the requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act]. But the rest of the University also has plenty of reasons to ignore the ballooning OAE problem. Raising documentation standards could make the accommodation process harder for under-resourced students. A crackdown might also spark an all-school witch hunt for ‘fake OAEs,’ targeting students with less visible disabilities the hardest. And of course, every rejected OAE application risks non-compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.” .... [Followed by these topics: make reassignment easier without OAE, bring back data-informed housing selection, end sophomore-priority, expand the number of themed houses, and renovate-renovate-renovate.] Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate Mandla Msipa at Stanford Daily (March 4, 2025). See also this change in policy as announced last week: “Stanford Students with OAE Accommodations Blocked from Forming Roommate Groups Under New Housing Rules” at Stanford Daily (March 3, 2026) followed by “Stanford’s Housing Change Hurts Disabled Students” also at Stanford Daily (March 8, 2026) . Even though it is from June 2024, see also “Stanford’s Housing Disaster” at Stanford Daily that is referenced above (links in the original): “The disastrous housing draw this year has seen rising seniors ending up in one-room triples and quads, with dozens of rising juniors being left unassigned -- meaning that they may not have confirmed housing for months up until move-in. All the while, Stanford has actively reduced both the number and quality of available rooms by slashing availability in [Escondido Village Graduate Residences] and converting doubles -- living spaces intended to fit two people -- into triples and quads in Roble and Toyon.... This situation has led to the creation of Swapford, an unofficial dorm room marketplace where desperate students are buying, selling and trading rooms for thousands of dollars on top of existing room prices.” See also this recently posted reader comment from an alum : “The combination of a chronic housing shortage (indeed getting worse as more students are admitted to each class), housing stock which varies substantially in quality and desirability, and a complicated ‘Draw’ system with arbitrary, bureaucratically derived rules, will inevitably lead to on-going efforts by students to ‘game the system’, which will inevitably lead to the creation of even more rules and regulations by bureaucrats. It’s a completely dysfunctional situation. “Surprisingly, it has been that way for decades, class year after class year, without being remedied in a thoughtful way, and is being made a more serious problem by admitting a thousand or more additional students without adding any additional housing stock. “Not a smart way to run a railroad.” Other Articles of Interest Responding to Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Tyler VanderWeele at Public Discourse: “The culture of self-censorship, cancellation, and lack of exposure to viewpoints has adversely affected the university. The increasing ideological skew of the faculty is largely responsible. Universities need to address these issues to help restore their truth-seeking mission.” See also “Academic Freedom on the Line; the Critical Necessity of Viewpoint Diversity” by former Stanford law school dean and Prof. Emeritus (active) Paul Brest at Stanford Daily (February 10, 2026). See also “Professors Need to Diversify What They Teach; It Isn't Indoctrination, But It Is a Lack of Ideological Diversity” by Claremont Colleges professors Jon A. Shields, Yuval Avnur and Stephanie Muravchik at Persuasion (October 16, 2025): “We wondered how well professors are introducing students to the moral and political controversies that divide intellectuals and roil our democracy. Not well, as it turns out. Across each issue we found that the academic norm is to shield students from some of our most important disagreements.” Don’t Just Track Foreign Funding of U.S. Universities, Police It Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. See also “Stanford Received $2.2 billion in Foreign Gifts and Contracts Since 1986” at Stanford Daily . See also U.S. Department of Education website with interactive charts showing which foreign countries have made the highest total payments to U.S. universities (the top three are Qatar, China and Germany) and which universities received the highest total amounts (the top six are Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Cornell, Penn and Stanford). Indiana Legislation Targets Low-Earning Degrees Full article at College Fix: “An undergraduate degree is classified as having low earnings outcomes if, four years after graduation, the median earnings of its graduates do not exceed the median wages of certain high school-educated workers.” Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. How a HAI Seed Grant Helped Launch a Disease-Fighting AI Platform A Daughter’s Diagnosis Transforms a Stanford Scientist’s Career Efforts Continue to Develop a Better Alzheimer’s Drug ********** “A university is a community of scholars… not an agency of propaganda.” — Former U Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899 - 1977) March 2, 2026 Fixing Civil Discourse Starts with an Ethics Requirement Excerpt (links in the original): “Harvard is infamous for its inability to foster civil discourse among students. “Last month, Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 identified a key factor chilling speech on campus: faculty activism. As classroom conversation chills and political contentions rise, veritas -- a symbol of Harvard’s commitment to intellectual truth-seeking and integrity -- is at stake. “If Harvard is serious about its commitment to a neverending pursuit of truth, a meaningful ethics requirement is the first place to start. “The University has placed among the bottom of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s college free speech rankings for the past three years, penalized for its 'abysmal' campus speech climate, high rates of student self-censorship, and a 'yellow' light for restrictive speech policies. A report from Harvard’s Classroom Social Compact Committee even found that only 35 percent of the Class of 2024 answered 'agree' or 'strongly agree' when asked if they were comfortable expressing opposing views on controversial topics in their courses. “Surprisingly, Harvard’s response was more of a jumble of administrative buzzwords than substantive pedagogical reform. Harvard convened an Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group and established a Classroom Social Compact Committee. These administrative abstrusities have only seemed to float above the classroom spaces, with the noble aim of reshaping norms and dialogue, yet lacking the concrete strategy to achieve it. “While this top-down approach might be an effective way to signal University values to administrators, donors, and the public, these initiatives are completely divorced from the realities of the classroom.” ... Full op-ed by Harvard undergraduate Ava M. Ribaudo at Harvard Crimson. See also these two articles in our own Newsletter a week ago: “Stanford Needs More Rigorous General Education Requirements” at Stanford Daily and “We Must Do Better Than COLLEGE” at Stanford Review . FashionX Again Transforms Memorial Church into a Fashion Runway Editor’s note: Imagine staging in a Muslim mosque or a Jewish synagogue the kind of event that was held in Memorial Church this past Saturday and is described below. Also keep in mind the sacred religious images that constitute the entire interior and exterior of Memorial Church. And Stanford’s Trustees and administration believe this is in accord with the Founding Grant and/or just good taste? And that there aren’t other facilities throughout the campus that could have been and should have been used for these purposes instead of a house of worship and its altar? We also note that these concerns were raised last year by student and other groups (see "FashionX Violates Sanctity of Memorial Church " March 7, 2025) but apparently Stanford’s Dean for Religious & Spiritual Life and others again saw no problems here. We also suggest that what was allowed to happen here is contrary to this longstanding official policy statement regarding the use of Memorial Church: “The church includes a diversity of programs and assemblies in its space and primarily exists to provide opportunities for worship, reflection, spiritual practice, conversation, education, and community building related to religious, spiritual, ethical, and moral formation. Through the governance of the Stanford University Board of Trustees and guidance of the Memorial Church Advisory Board, approval for all reservations will be determined by the Event Manager under the direction of the Dean of Office for Religious & Spiritual Life.” Excerpts (link in the original): “Beneath the Romanesque arches of Memorial Church, the pews were transformed into an haute-couture runway for FashionX’s fourth annual sold-out production, ‘The Mirror Stage,’ on Feb. 28. Inspired by the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, the show explored the ‘ecstatic limit’ of self-perception through avant-garde student designs. “In front of the church, the line began forming nearly an hour before doors opened, stretching down the arcades of Main Quad.... “The show began in near-total darkness, the historic silence of Memorial Church replaced with the mechanical thrum of pulsing music. A distorted voice served as the master of ceremonies (MC), welcoming the audience in the sanctuary illuminated only by a glowing, white ‘X.’ “As the music intensified, the lighting shifted into rapid, multi-colored strobe effects -- flashing blues, purples and reds across the golden backdrop of the church’s chancel. The show emerged into what the MC described as the ‘drama of primordial jealousy,’ a reference to the complex and often competitive nature of self-perception.... “Down the runway came models in floor-length gowns: one in green with a matching veil, pink flowers cascading down and around the skirt; another in iridescent colors whose sleeves fanned out like butterfly wings. In line with the show’s theme, a strong silver theme emerged throughout, with dresses reflecting like mirrors under the stage lights. Models showed off skirts and bodices made of multicolored peacock feathers, shells sewed into fabric that clinked with each step and accessories from a glowing lotus lamp to a sword.” ... Full article at Stanford Daily. See also “Family Weekend Brings Festivity to The Farm ” and “University Leadership Emphasizes Academic Freedom at Family Weekend Panel ," both also at Stanford Daily. Students and Graduates Say College Delivers on Value and Career Preparation, Even as Public Skepticism Persists Excerpt (link in the original): “New national research released by Lumina Foundation and Gallup reveals a striking disconnect between public perceptions of higher education and the experiences of college students and graduates themselves. Findings from The College Reality Check: What Students Experience vs. What America Believes show that while students and alumni largely report strong academic quality, career preparation and value from their degrees, broader public confidence has declined in recent years, driven by concerns about cost, politicization and workforce outcomes. “In 2015, a majority of U.S. adults (57%) reported having ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in higher education. That share declined steadily over the next decade, reaching 36% in 2024, while nearly one-third (32%) reported little or no confidence. Confidence began to rebound in 2025, with 42% reporting high confidence, though nearly one in four Americans still expressed significant reservations. “‘This study makes something clear: Students and graduates know firsthand the difference college has made in their lives,’ said Courtney Brown, vice president of impact and planning at Lumina. ‘Even as public skepticism grows, experience tells a different story. They are building real skills, expanding their opportunities, and finding campuses where dialogue and belonging matter. The gap between perception and lived reality raises important questions for leaders and policymakers.’” ... Full press release at Gallup, and a PDF copy of the full report can be downloaded here . Other Articles of Interest UC Leader Prefers to Talk, Not Battle Full article at LA Times: “UC California President James Milliken says avoiding lawsuits over Trump’s funding cuts is the ‘better course.’” The War on Student Speech Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Career Education Is the Future of Learning Full op-ed at DC Journal. How the College Essay Declared War on Critical Thinking Full op-ed at James Martin Center. Colleges Face a Choice -- Try to Shape AI’s Impact on Learning, or Be Redefined by It Full article at The Conversation. Generative AI is Not Just a Tool for Learning; It Shapes How Students Think Full op-ed by Detroit College for Creative Studies Prof. James Garvey at Times Higher Education. AI, Cheating and the Illusion of Learning Full op-ed by Merrimack College Prof. Dan Sarofian-Butin at Real Clear Education. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. AI Challenges Core Assumptions in Education Stem Cell-Based Organoids Reveal Shared Genetic Pathways in Autism Engineered Immune Therapy Could Help Fight the Aging Brain Why the Brain Misunderstands Speech After Stroke ********** "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 February 23, 2026 Stanford Needs More Rigorous General Education Requirements Excerpts (links in the original): “‘The requirements serve as the nucleus around which students build their four years at Stanford.’ “This is how Stanford passionately describes the Undergraduate General Educational Requirements (Gen-Ed) on their official website, but has any student ever actually thought of them this way? The answer from this year’s frosh class is no.... “When designing Gen-Ed requirements, one must consider both the factual knowledge students must learn and the ways in which they engage with and pass on that information after graduating from Stanford. Across the board, there seems to be a lack of understanding that, just like STEM subjects, the humanities are cumulative. In the same way that one cannot hope to understand calculus without first learning arithmetic and algebra, one cannot understand, for instance, the current rise of populism without understanding the historical and political forces in preceding centuries. Without this perspective, learning about new developments lacks crucial context. The same is true for the new ethical frontiers we confront today. You might draw solutions to AI’s ethical problems with no historical context, but you would be neglecting thousands of years of moral philosophy and historical lessons on new technology that could point you in the right direction. Even if faced with novel ethical or societal problems, going back to past thinkers gives you the frameworks or tools to approach the issue. “This all sounds great in theory, but how should Gen-Ed requirements be structured to give students both a consistent set of factual knowledge and a broad set of intellectual skills? I propose three guiding principles: prioritization, standardization and rigor. First, prioritization and standardization. For many students, Gen-Ed classes are the only time they will be required to learn about subjects outside of their field of study. This begs the question: what are the essential topics that a Stanford student must know to be an educated member of society? Currently, students select courses that fulfill the different WAYS based on their interests, or more likely, what will require the least work. Instead, I propose that students be required to take a set of standardized courses that will expose them to the most fundamental subjects in the humanities and sciences. I am certainly not an expert, but a few classes that should be required are: introductory courses in philosophy, English literature, religious studies, U.S. history and civics. In STEM, students should be required to take an introductory course in statistics and a fundamental science such as physics or chemistry. The remaining units could be completed through a tailored list of courses designed to dive deeper into the subjects above or explore other foundational disciplines.” ... Full op-ed by recent Stanford alum and current master's degree student Alexander Mescher at Stanford Daily (February 16, 2026). We Must Do Better Than COLLEGE Excerpts (link in the original): “It has been almost five years since the Faculty Senate approved the COLLEGE program in May 2020, and I believe I speak for most Stanford students when I say it’s time to go back to the drawing board. “The COLLEGE program (a loose abbreviation of Civic, Liberal, and Global Education) is the latest in a long series of attempts to design a first-year general education curriculum for students at Stanford University.... “The feeling among my fellow freshmen is that the COLLEGE program amounts to, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a direct contributor to the climate of anti-intellectualism on campus. The curriculum is discontinuous and, at times, just plain nonsensical -- why, for example, are we assigned a brief excerpt from Plato's Allegory of the Cave one week and the entirety of Open , a ghost-written celebrity memoir about a tennis player, the next? Seemingly, the readings were selected to check boxes: one from the right, four from the left, and racial and gender diversity throughout. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with diversity unless it comes at the expense of substance. In my view, asking the esteemed faculty of this university to lead freshmen in discussions on a miscellany of magazine articles, blog posts, and news stories on broad themes like ‘Education and the Good Life’ and Citizenship in the 21st Century’ is an insult not only to their intelligence but to ours.... “My message to the university is this: “Please do not coddle us in the hope of coaxing us out of our shells.... We want to write essays and receive detailed feedback on how our writing can be improved. We appreciate profound ideas no matter who they come from, and we are not offended by the prospect of reading two texts written by white males in a row. We want to imbibe the sophistication we admire so much in our professors, and we want to learn what they have to teach us. Above all, we don’t want to be told how valuable a liberal education can be, we want to experience its value first-hand. And if we can’t experience it first-hand at Stanford, I’m afraid there’s nowhere on planet Earth where we can.” Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate Ben Botvinick at Stanford Review (February 5, 2025). Beyond Big Science, a Reform Agenda for American Science Excerpt (link in the original): “The academic sciences need to be rescued. “This is the premise of the National Association of Scholars' (NAS) latest report, Rescuing Science. Recovering Science as Civic Virtue , authored by NAS’s Director of Science Programs J. Scott Turner. In this report, Turner reassesses America’s 75‑year experiment with federally funded ‘Big Science,’ arguing that the system built to spark discovery has instead smothered it under bureaucracy, politics, and perverse incentives.” ... Full article at National Association of Scholars. A PDF copy of the full report can be downloaded here including a detailed analysis of the growth of indirect costs (capped at 8% prior to 1956 and now running between 50% and 90%), a return to grants based solely on scientific merit, the need to fund research separately from facilities and administration, better methods of funding, reforms in graduate student education and related issues. See also our Stanford Concerns webpage showing, among other things, the significant increases in Stanford’s own administrative staffing and costs.. Other Articles of Interest James Madison U Wants Students to Learn How to Deliberate Respectfully Full article at College Fix. More Than Half of College Students Are Lonely, and Social Media Is Making It Worse Full article at EDU Ledger (formerly known as Diverse Issues in Higher Education). Oklahoma Is Phasing Out Tenure; Will the Idea Catch On? Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. New Tool Opens Up Access to Stanford’s Vast Collections AI Sovereignty’s Definitional Dilemma Reading-specific Region Differs in the Dyslexic Brain “A brain region specialized for recognizing text is smaller or absent in kids with dyslexia. Tutoring that improves their reading partly closes the gap, a Stanford-led study found.” ********** “Despite the reforms that our institutions of higher education must embark on to ensure that we are teaching our students how to think — and not what to think — a four-year residential-college experience remains one of the most powerful human environments for cultivating human qualities.” – Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock February 16, 2026 The Critical Necessity of Viewpoint Diversity Excerpt (links in the original): “Last week, Professor Jessica Riskin argued that the concern for viewpoint diversity (VPD) is fundamentally a conservative attack on universities, which are already adequately ideologically diverse. Granted that it has been used as a conservative bludgeon, I believe that the concerns about ideological homogeneity (the lack of VPD) are nonpartisan and involve the very missions of higher education. “Why is VPD essential for a university’s missions of teaching and research? The short answer is that it tends to reduce confirmation biases, which inhibit critical inquiry and the search for truth. In John Stuart Mill’s 'On Liberty' (1859), he articulates this elegantly and extensively. “Given his general aim of defending free speech, Mill doesn’t address academic freedom as such. But here’s how VPD contributes to academic freedom. A faculty member’s right to academic freedom can be abridged both by institutions and groups of individuals. Typical institutional actors are state governments (e.g., the Florida Stop W.O.K.E. Act ), the federal government (e.g., the Trump administration’s demands on universities ) and university administrations (e.g., Texas A&M’s forbidding the teaching of materials condoning homosexual relationships). “But a faculty member’s academic freedom can also be effectively curtailed by the actions of fellow faculty members and students. This is most evident when a faculty member is, or reasonably fears being, ostracized, cancelled or doxed because of their views on academic topics. Less obviously -- but still pernicious -- being surrounded by colleagues who collectively hold views that differ from their own creates social pressures to conform and therefore to refrain from expressing contrary views in their classroom or their scholarship. This can result in self-censorship as destructive as institutional sanctions. Moreover, an ideologically homogeneous faculty will tend to hire faculty who share their beliefs, thus exacerbating the social pressure and its adverse effect on academic freedom.” ... Full op-ed by former Stanford law school dean and Prof. Emeritus (active) Paul Brest at Stanford Daily. See also paragraph 1.d. of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage regarding viewpoint diversity. Counting Vice Presidents Misses the Point Excerpts (link in the original): “I’ve spent much of my career working as a college administrator. I’ve held senior roles, carried expansive portfolios, and had titles that critics of higher education increasingly cite as evidence of ‘administrative bloat.’ I understand why those titles and the organizational charts behind them can feel alienating to faculty. They can reinforce an unhealthy sense of ‘us versus them’ on campus. “But after years inside those roles, I’ve come to believe that title inflation is not the core problem it’s often made out to be. It’s visible. It’s frustrating. And it’s easy to blame. However, focusing solely on titles risks mistaking a symptom for the disease, and in the process, leaving the real cause of administrative overload unexamined. “That’s why Austin Sarat’s recent Inside Higher Ed essay asking, 'How Many Vice Presidents Does a College Need?' [also linked in our January 12, 2026 Newsletter] resonated with me, even as I think it ultimately misdiagnoses the challenge. Sarat is right to be uneasy about what he calls the ‘vice presidentialization’ of higher education. Titles matter. Hierarchies matter. And the proliferation of vice presidents deserves scrutiny. “But the growth of administrative titles is not what is hollowing out institutional capacity or widening the divide between faculty and administrators. It is what happens when leadership repeatedly avoids the more challenging work of setting priorities and enforcing limits.... “. . . It’s not that administrators take their titles too seriously. It’s that institutions take on too many priorities without making corresponding choices about what not to do. And while many of those initiatives might be 'good,' too many of them fall outside the core scope of educating students. The result is not just administrative strain, but less institutional attention devoted to teaching and learning itself.... “Which is why the solution cannot simply be fewer vice presidents or humbler titles. It must start with presidents, boards and faculty leaders willing to exercise real leadership discipline. That means distinguishing between core academic work and aspirational initiatives. It means abandoning programs and committees as readily as launching them. And it means acknowledging an essential truth that higher education often avoids: Adding priorities without subtracting others is not strategic ambition -- it is organizational debt.... “We need to do a better job ensuring that our institutions are designed around teaching our students rather than running an ever-expanding business enterprise.” Full op-ed by former Indiana U Vice Chancellor P.J. Woolston at Inside Higher Ed. See also our Stanford Concerns webpage including charts and graphs from third parties that document the extraordinarily high number of managerial and professional staff at Stanford as compared to its peers. See also proposed solutions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage including significantly reducing Stanford's administrative bureaucracy in both size and costs and spinning off the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities if not primarily or even exclusively engaged in support of the core teaching and research of tenured members of the faculty. Other Articles of Interest Some Concerns About the Current Campus Climate Disagreement Itself Has Become Morally Legible -- Brown Prof. Emeritus Glenn Loury critiques self-censorship at Stanford Daily : "Argumentation becomes ritual, compromise becomes betrayal. This culminates in what can be described as the collapse of common knowledge.” No Stanford Kids -- They’re Cowards at Stanford Review : " Stanford mythology holds that students built remarkable things and changed the world not because they were enticed by a McKinsey title, a Google badge, or a six-figure salary, but because they had conviction. They didn’t try to look normal. They threw parties that felt (or actually were) illegal. They said things that made people mad and didn’t immediately apologize.... That Stanford had a distinct and different flavor: courage.” Two Colleges, Two Different Responses to the Heckler’s Veto Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. Stanford Student Startup Pairs 5,000 Singles and Has Taken Over the Campus Full article at WSJ. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. First-Ever Map of Rare Earthquakes Enhances Preparedness Synthetic Biology Boosts Plant Defenses Against Pests How Math Learning Disabilities Affect Problem-Solving ********** “Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.” — Theodore Roosevelt February 9, 2026 Recent Reader Comments We have added to our Reader Comments webpage some recent submissions regarding the high percent of Stanford students claiming disabilities in order get housing and other preferences (see also the new op-ed on this topic, directly below) as well as reader comments with differing viewpoints about diversity, equity and inclusion. Nearly 40% of Stanford Undergraduates Claim They’re Disabled; I’m One of Them Editor’s note: We included a link to a similar article several weeks ago but believe the following first-person account presents the issues even more dramatically. We further note that students, faculty and staff are typically put through hours of mandatory training each year about various topics (sexual harassment, security, etc.), so how is it that students so freely engage in abuses like this and the student services staff and senior administration haven't addressed the problem? Including removing the main cause of this widespread fraud by building more and better undergraduate housing before, of all things, further increasing the undergraduate enrollment by an additional 1,000 or more but without addressing this long-existing lack of adequate housing? We also respectfully note that, per Stanford’s Founding Grant, it is among the specifically enumerated obligations of the Trustees to determine “the time when buildings are needed, and of the time and manner of their construction, and of the time and manner of making additions thereto” and that, per Mrs. Stanford’s subsequent directives to the Trustees, “it is desirable so far as may be [possible] that the faculty and students should reside on the University grounds.” It likewise is a primary obligation of all directors and trustees to protect the reputations of the entities which they oversee. All of these obligations appear to be at stake here. Excerpts : “In 2023, one month into my freshman year at Stanford University, an upperclassman was showing me her dorm room -- a prized single in one of the nicest buildings on campus. As she took me around her space, which included a private bathroom, a walk-in shower and a great view of Hoover Tower, she casually mentioned that she had lived in a single all four years she had attended Stanford. “I was surprised. Most people don’t get the privilege of a single room until they reach their senior year. “That’s when my friend gave me a tip: Stanford had granted her ‘a disability accommodation’. She, of course, didn’t have a disability. She knew it. I knew it. But she had figured out early what most Stanford students eventually learn: the Office of Accessible Education will give students a single room, extra time on tests and even exemptions from academic requirements if they qualify as ‘disabled’. “Everyone was doing it. I could do it, too, if I just knew how to ask.... I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant.... “That’s why I decided to claim my legitimate illness -- endometriosis -- as a disability at Stanford. It is a painful condition in which cells from the uterus grow outside the womb. I’m often doubled over in agony from the problem, for which there is no known cure, so I decided to ask for a single room in a campus dorm where I could endure those moments in private. “The application process was very easy. I registered my condition on the Stanford Office of Accessible Education website and made an appointment to meet an adviser later that week. The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students. “As I explained my diagnosis and symptoms over Zoom to one woman, she listened, nodded sympathetically, related my problems to her own life and asked a few basic questions. Within 30 minutes, I was registered as a student with a disability, entitled to more accommodations than I asked for. “In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes. I was met with so little skepticism or questioning, I probably didn’t even need a doctor’s note to get these exemptions. Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for.... “Another student told me that special ‘accommodations are so prevalent that they effectively only punish the honest’. Academic accommodations, they added, help ‘students get ahead … which puts a huge proportion of the class on an unfair playing ground’. “The gaming even extends to our meals. Stanford requires most undergraduates living on campus to purchase a meal plan, which costs $7,944 for the 2025-26 academic year. But students can get exempted if they claim a religious dietary restriction that the college kitchens cannot accommodate. “And so, some students I know claim to be devout members of the Jain faith, which rejects any food that may cause harm to all living creatures -- including small insects and root vegetables. The students I know who claim to be Jain (but aren’t) spend their meal money at Whole Foods instead and enjoy freshly made salads and other yummy dishes, while the rest of us are stuck with college meals, like burgers made partly from 'mushroom mix'.”... Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate Elsa Johnson at The Times of London. See also “Stanford Students Fake Jain Beliefs to Dodge Mandatory Meal Plan” at India Today; “Getting Better Dorm Rooms and Meals at Stanford” at College Fix ; “Gaming the System,” a 9-minute video at The Hill; and a followup op-ed at The Times of London by Ms. Johnson about reactions to her initial article. See also an expansive comment from an alum about these issues at our Reader Comments webpage, including: “Stanford is teaching its students how to game the system for their own personal betterment rather than teaching ethical behavior and instilling in students how to live by an ethical code of conduct.” This reader comment also identifies one of the core reasons for this widespread cheating: the long-existing lack of adequate undergraduate housing. The Next Campus Battle After Free Speech -- Viewpoint Diversity at America’s Elite Universities Excerpts (most links in the original): “The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles. For example, in the last year, many university leaders, including the Presidents of Princeton, Stanford and Cornell, have given speeches and undertaken initiatives to promote open inquiry and academic freedom on their campuses. However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem -- the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities. “Our Princeton alumni group, Princetonians for Free Speech , has as its mission the promotion of three core values -- free speech, open discourse, and viewpoint diversity. This is a typical mission statement for the more than thirty alumni free speech groups [including Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking ] . With all such groups, most of the focus has been on the first two values. Until recently, this has also been true for leading national groups active in this area, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) , which have played critical roles in trying to reform our universities. An exception is Heterodox Academy (HxA) , which is putting important focus on faculty viewpoint diversity. “If universities are truly to live up to their purpose in society, the lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty must be addressed. (There is also a real problem with viewpoint diversity among university administrators, but this article will focus on faculty.) In a recent HxA article , President John Tomasi stated the situation succinctly: “In today’s changing campus climate, supporting free expression and respectful discussion have (thankfully) become fashionable, but viewpoint diversity remains a third rail of university life.” “Indeed, without viewpoint diversity, the values of free speech and open discourse are of limited importance. If everybody on a campus believes pretty much the same thing, there is not much learning or advancement of knowledge through open inquiry and debate.” ... [Followed by discussion of specific numbers, the role for universities in society, the growth of civics centers at some universities, reform from within the faculty, banning diversity statements, the need to recognize that there is a problem, the need for action by senior administrators, the need for support from trustees, how to measure progress, faculty should not be the sole gate keepers, alumni need to engage, and the importance of how prospective students and parents evaluate universities.] Full op-ed by Princeton and Stanford alum Ed Yingling and Princeton alum Leslie Spencer at Princetonians for Free Speech. See also paragraph 1.d. of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage: “Viewpoint diversity is critical to the university’s academic mission in both teaching and research. Accordingly, all decisions regarding the hiring, retention and promotion of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff shall follow the principles of the Shils Report . In any recruitments and decisions to make offers, schools, departments and other academic units shall assure that the pools of candidates reflect viewpoint diversity. This does not mean partisan diversity but rather a diversity of thinking with respect to the substantive areas of the relevant academic unit. Among other things, academic units that consider societal issues shall make special efforts to recruit and retain faculty who may have different viewpoints than the majority of the faculty and have the academic skills to present their alternative viewpoints. The President, Provost and Advisory Board shall take these principles into account in their own decision-making with respect to the hiring, retention and promotion of members of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff.” Universities Need a New Defense “We should cringe when we hear anyone, including those on the inside, speak about the university as a business.” Excerpts: “The American university remains the standard for the world. Some of the most talented individuals from around the globe spend their lives as professors on American campuses working to discover new knowledge and introduce the next generation to accomplishments of the human mind. “But this moment has brought severe and unprecedented challenges to its continued viability -- indeed, to its very existence. The most immediate threats come, of course, from our own federal government.... “We need nothing less than a new conception of the role of the university in a free society. The traditional arguments for why we should value universities -- that they advance civilization, that they are an engine of economic and social growth, that they are a competitive advantage for the nation in the world, and that they educate our young and prepare our citizens and attempt to equalize the opportunities available to them -- are valid.... “The simple fact is that leaders at every level, from faculty members to deans to presidents to trustees and alumni, must focus now on building this sense of mission. We must express it over and over again, taking every opportunity to explain and affirm it in as much detail as possible. This idea cannot be treated as something that everyone will grasp on their own or will naturally intuit. Like the modern meaning of the First Amendment, the idea of the freedom of the university is not self-evident, and the latter is certainly not part of the general knowledge of the faculty, students, and the public. We must never be shy about characterizing the university as one of the key means of realizing the human need to know, to understand, and to search for truth. It must be repeated endlessly and with all the infinite variations that will come over time.” ... Full op-ed by former president of Michigan and then of Columbia Lee Bollinger at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also “Harvard Prof. Randall Kennedy Is Afraid and He Thinks You Should Be Too” at Chronicle of Higher Education . See also our Stanford Concerns and our Back to Basics at Stanford webpages. When Speech No Longer Seems Sufficient Excerpt : “I walked into my politics classroom at Sarah Lawrence last week, ready to teach a lesson about civic protest. The prompt was Minneapolis, where ICE’s Operation Metro Surge has sparked mass protests, a general strike, and violent confrontations between demonstrators and federal agents. "I planned to cover basics: citizens can record police activity, protests must remain nonviolent, participants should comply with lawful orders. My students had other ideas. “‘What are we supposed to do?’ one asked. ‘Hold up signs and chant while people are being shot in the street?’ “Another jumped in: ‘You’re asking us to play by rules that only we follow.’ “They cited the Black Panthers. They invoked Stonewall. They argued that throughout American history, violence (or the credible threat of it) has driven social change. Several insisted that armed citizens confronting ICE would accomplish what peaceful protest could not. “These weren’t fringe voices. This was classroom consensus. “I study campus culture and have watched these attitudes develop for years in the data. But data is abstract. Percentages don’t argue back. What shook me was hearing my own students, students I know and have taught for months, articulate these views with moral certainty. The numbers had names now.” ... [Followed by discussion of data, in defense of fiery words, the partisan surprise, if free speech only matters when convenient it isn’t free at all, the historical debate, and what this means now and in the longer term.] Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at FIRE. Other Articles of Interest What’s Missing on Campus? Men Full op-ed at Real Clear Education as reproduced from Boston Globe. See also “The Missing Men of UNC” at James Martin Center . Why Your University Has So Many Administrators Full op-ed by Vanderbilt Chancellor Emeritus Nicholas S. Zeppos at Chronicle of Higher Education: “Great teaching is expensive, but back-office functions should be getting cheaper. Why aren’t they?” See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. What Keeps Higher Ed Up at Night Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education: “A University of Wyoming professor says she used to walk into the classroom on the first day of the semester ‘and wonder, which one of these minds will I get to watch bloom?’ But after watching colleagues get pilloried for comments that were recorded in class and circulated online, ‘now my first thought is, which one of these students is going to get me fired?’” Grading Is Hard, and Grade-Inflation Makes It Worthless Full article at The Hill. See also “Professors Say Gen Z Students Can’t Read, Forcing Colleges to Lower Academic Standards” at Campus Reform . The Activist Veto -- How Identity Politics Restricts Scientific Inquiry Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars: “Scientific inquiry has suffered another blow amidst the ongoing science crisis and loss of public trust. The New York Times revealed that genetic data from over 20,000 U.S. children, gathered over the last decade, has been ‘misused’ for ‘race science’....” Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Light-Based Platform Sets the Stage for Quantum Supercomputers Aging Brains Pile Up Damaged Proteins New Chip-Sized Optical Amplifier Can Intensify Light 100 Times ********** “A university's freedom must be the freedom of its members, faculty and students to think and speak for themselves. A university must not have dominant ways of thinking.... No university can thrive unless each member is accepted as an autonomous individual and can speak and will be listened to without regard to labels and stereotypes." -- Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper February 2, 2026 Is a Four-Year Degree Worth It? Excerpts : . . . . “American higher education has a trust problem. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise, and it won’t solve itself. In 2026 I’d like to see colleges and universities across the country take steps to restore trust. As president of Dartmouth College, I’m committed to this goal, and how to restore public confidence in higher education animates conversations among my presidential peers. “Assuming that most Americans value our mission is a recipe for irrelevance and decline. We must demonstrate to students and families -- and to the broader public -- that we’ve heard their criticisms and will address them. I see five areas where we can build back trust. [Followed by discussion of these five points: Make college affordable The return on investment matters Re-center higher education on learning rather than political posturing Emphasize equal opportunity, not equal outcomes Testing is important] “Next month, I’ll join other university presidents at a summit in Washington hosted by the Association of American Universities to continue the conversation about how universities can take responsibility and be held accountable for our actions. I hope we’ll move beyond defensiveness and talk of federal compacts and instead take action. “We should leave the table having made specific commitments. We won’t agree on everything. One size won’t fit all. But we must agree that the status quo is untenable. If we’re willing to reform ourselves -- to listen, change and recommit to our core mission -- we can again be a trusted engine of the American dream, scientific breakthroughs and the global economy. This work can’t wait. It starts now, with us.” Full op-ed by Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at WSJ. See also our long-existing webpages “Stanford Concerns -- Warning Signs in the Numbers ” and “Back to Basics at Stanford .” Fixing DEI's Damage to Academic Science Could Take a Generation Editor’s note: In our view, diversity, equality of opportunity and inclusion have always been important elements for teaching and research and, at least in recent decades, already widely existed at U.S. colleges and universities nationwide, including at Stanford. Frankly, it's hard to find places that are more diverse, supportive of equal opportunity and inclusive than any of our contemporary U.S. campuses. Rather, the concerns have been the huge and costly bureaucracies that were created in recent years (see the charts re Stanford and other major universities at our Stanford Concerns webpage) and which in turn fostered what have increasingly appeared to be anti-intellectual policies and activities on our campuses. We don’t necessarily support the solutions proposed in the following article, but we present these excerpts to help focus on the possible problems and urge readers to consider these and other possible solutions. Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “The National Association of Scholars (NAS) just spent several years examining how deeply embedded DEI ideology has become in undergraduate and graduate science education and research. As part of this effort, we conducted forensic case studies of the growth of DEI ideology in three of America’s top institutions of science and technology: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). These case studies show in detail how identity politics took over institutions that had built stellar reputations on competence, ingenuity, and intellectual merit. The message is clear: DEI has had a profoundly corrosive effect on academic science. Keep this in mind the next time someone tells you to ‘follow the science.’ ... “Both for the long-term goal of reforming science, and for the short-term goal of stopping DEI’s corruption of American science, federal science funding should be reformed to remove taxpayer dollars as much as possible from university science, and universities as much as possible from scientific research. Possible solutions include: Legislation (following up on existing executive orders) to limit research grants’ indirect costs to universities to 10% of the total. Elimination of government policies that support the ‘total cost reimbursement’ model of supporting academic research. The creation of legislative support for Independent Science Faculties, so that government monies can go to scientists independent of universities. The redirection of federal grant money wherever possible to intramural research and to private industry research, so as to minimize the involvement of universities. The broadening of the model of portable funding both for graduate students and for faculty research, so as to reduce the lock hold of universities on scientific research. “These reforms would bring with them, as a corollary, the division of scientists into a dedicated research track and into an academic track focused on teaching students. The argument for giving students the possibility to undertake research with leading scientists is strong -- but the unfortunate consequence has been that a great many science professors have abandoned actual science education and left it to ill-trained graduate students. America would benefit from a reorientation of its university science education toward dedicated science teaching, with professors devoted to classroom instruction rather than to securing government grants.” ... Full op-ed at Real Clear Science. See also Stanford's renamed Office of Inclusion, Community and Integrative Learning with an estimated 70 or more total staff, including the Eight Centers for Equity and Community Leadership , plus still more people with similar full-time and part-time responsibilities in individual schools and departments. The Age of Interdisciplinary Slop Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “Seven years ago, I argued in these pages that ‘interdisciplinarity,’ originally a way of forging connections between well-established modes of inquiry, had degraded into a slogan weaponized by administrations to run universities like corporations. What I was observing was a new language taken from business schools and Silicon Valley that emphasized innovation, efficiency, and relevance, whether to solve the world’s problems or create marketable skills. That language took aim at the expertise and special methods of individual disciplines, representing them as so many silos that should be broken down to facilitate the flow of information across a flexible workplace. “I concluded by defending a pluralist university, one that values genuine interdisciplinary collaboration while preserving the disciplinary integrity from which it occurs. Academic disciplines are not arbitrary bureaucratic units, but historically developed forms of judgment tailored to distinct objects of study. Keeping them is not a retreat into tradition but a necessary condition for intellectual resistance in an era increasingly dominated by managerial logics.... “. . . In its heyday, the jargon of interdisciplinarity was not merely a managerial device but a utopian promise.... That confidence has evaporated, even as the vocabulary remains. Today the jargon lingers on in a kind of zombie state: animated, repetitive, and oddly untethered from belief. Administrators still speak of ‘flexibility,’ ‘dynamism,’ and ‘future orientation,’ but no longer with the conviction that these words name an educational transformation anyone actually expects to arrive.... “What remains, then, is interdisciplinarity as slop: a residue of once corrosively ambitious ideas, endlessly reheated to justify mergers, eliminations, and the hollowing out of intellectual life. No one seriously imagines that folding English into ‘Human Narratives and Creative Expressions’ will produce Davidson’s world of empowered learners and creative problem-solvers. The jargon persists not because it convinces but because it obscures, masking loss with abstraction and austerity with euphemism. The problem today is no longer that the jargon of interdisciplinarity promises too much, but that it promises nothing at all while continuing to do real damage to the disciplines that once gave the university its purpose and its authority.” ... Full op-ed by Yale Prof. Jonathan Kramnick at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also “How Politicized Philanthropy Is Corrupting Charity” in our January 19, 2026 Newsletter and where we questioned the elimination of school and department names that are based on well-established academic disciplines and the substitution instead of whatever is a currently desired political or social outcome. For example Stanford’s long-existing School of Earth Sciences is now the Doerr School of Sustainability -- an area of potential inquiry, but does that mean the faculty here are now professors of sustainability? And if not that, what are they professors of? As we also noted in our prior Newsletter, “once you establish a desired outcome in an entity’s name or its foundational documents, how do you then foster viewpoint diversity within the entity? And what happens when society's priorities change over time?” Other Articles of Interest An Ancient Answer to AI-Generated Writing -- Go Back to Speaking Full op-ed by Brown U Prof. Stephen Kidd at Inside Higher Ed. Embedding AI in the Curriculum Full interview of UNC Vice Provost Jeffrey Bardzell at James Martin Center. See also “90% of College Faculty Believe AI Is Dumbing Down Students’ Critical Thinking Abilities” at NY Post . COVID's Long Shadow Looms Over a New Generation of College Students Full article at SF Gate. Rutgers Athletics Has Lost $516.9 Million Since Joining the Big Ten in 2014-15 Full article at The Comeback. See also “College Athletics Is Breaking Universities” at Minding the Campus . Editor’s note: Stanford has proved for decades that there are college students who can simultaneously excel in both their academic work and their athletic specialties, including at Stanford. We are presenting these two articles not because we oppose college athletics (quite the contrary) but rather to remind readers of the serious issues now facing Stanford and other comparable schools. How a Few Foundations Shape Academic Culture Full op-ed at Future of the American University. The Pace Is Relentless -- How College Leaders Are Adapting to an Increasingly Hectic Job Full article at Higher Ed Dive. Can Tenure Endure? Full article at Minding the Campus. See also “Tenure Under Threat” at Inside Higher Ed . Stanford Settles Lawsuit with Family of Katie Meyer Full article at Stanford Daily. Yale Will Go Tuition-Free for Families Making Up to $200,000 Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Thomas Sowell Discusses Modern Education (video) Full interview of Hoover Senior Fellow Emeritus Thomas Sowell at YouTube (1 hour, 11 minutes, and with discussion of universities starting at the 33-minute mark). Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. The Face Scars Less Than the Body, and a Stanford Medicine Study Unravels Why New Atlas of Brain Proteins Could Help Researchers Studying Neurological Disease Even Small Amounts of Online Math Practice Can Improve Skills ********** "By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true.” – Albert Einstein January 26, 2026 The Power of Saying ‘I Don't Know’ Excerpts (links in the original): “One of the most important intellectual skills a student can learn is also one of the first we train them out of: the ability to say, plainly and without embarrassment, I don't know. “In education today, ‘I don't know’ is often treated as a failure -- a sign of weakness, disengagement, or insufficient preparation. “From a remarkably young age, students learn that uncertainty is penalized. We test four- and five-year-olds. We score confidence. We reward quick answers, fluent guesses, and verbal assertiveness. Hesitation is read as a deficiency. Silence is suspect. Studies of early assessment environments show that children quickly learn to associate speed and certainty with approval, even when accuracy suffers.... “This is backwards. “Saying I don't know is not an intellectual weakness. It is intellectual honesty. And in many cases, it is a marker of higher-order thinking. Cognitive psychologists have long shown that recognizing the limits of one's knowledge -- what in academic terms is called metacognition -- is strongly associated with deeper learning, better problem-solving, and long-term academic success. Students who can accurately judge what they do and do not understand consistently outperform peers who express high confidence but poor calibration. “To recognize what you do not know requires judgment. It requires self-awareness. It reflects humility before complexity and an openness to learning rather than performance. In advanced fields -- from science and medicine to philosophy and engineering -- I don't know is often the beginning of real inquiry, not its end. Expertise, research shows , is defined less by constant certainty than by the ability to slow down, reassess, and revise in the face of incomplete information.” ... Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. American Studies Can’t Stand Its Subject Excerpts: . . . . “On the one hand, America’s is a story of greatness: The U.S. is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. Its founders created what is now the world’s longest-lasting liberal democratic constitution. The Declaration of Independence put forth revolutionary ideas about human freedom and equality that ushered in a new era for the world. At the same time, the American experience is complicated. Our history includes the mistreatment of Native Americans, slavery and Jim Crow, and high levels of economic inequality that persist to this day. “Yet we found only one part of this narrative presented in most of almost 100 articles we examined from over a three-year period in American Quarterly, the flagship journal of the American Studies Association. Published by Johns Hopkins University, it’s widely considered the country’s premier journal of American studies. “The journal’s scholarship paints a one-sided and unrelentingly negative portrait of the U.S. We found that 80% of articles published between 2022 and 2024 were critical of America, 20% were neutral, and none were positive. Of the 96 articles we examined, our research identified 77 as critical, focused on American racism, imperialism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia. Some articles went to absurd lengths to identify sins. One essay posited that thermodynamics -- the science dealing with the relationship between energy, heat, work and temperature -- is ‘an abstract settler-capitalist theory that influenced the plunder of Indigenous lands and lives.’... “Academics will point out that they’re not running for office. Their commitment is to writing what is true, not what is popular. But on that measure, American Quarterly is a failure. The cartoonish picture of America found in its pages constitutes educational malpractice.” Full op-ed at WSJ. Meantime, click here for a full listing of courses currently offered by Stanford’s history department and where these are the only course groupings (clusters) considered relevant by the department’s own search engine: Activism, Public History, and Service Economics/Political Economy Environment, Science, Medicine, and Technology Gender and Sexuality Global Affairs/International Relations Law and Public Policy Race and Ethnicity Religion and Intellectual History And without even a passing mention of American History and/or the History of Western Civilization. 97.6% of the Money Yale Faculty Members Gave to Political Groups Last Year Went to Democrats Editor’s note: The concern isn’t whether someone is a Democrat, Republican, independent or something else politically. It’s to what extent this obviously skewed percentage reflects other types of systemic biases as to who is recruited, hired and promoted on the faculties of major universities, and not just at Yale. Excerpts : “In 2025, Yale professors made 1,099 donations to federal political campaigns and partisan groups reflected in fundraising disclosures. Not one of the recipients was Republican. “The [Yale Daily News] analyzed data from more than 7,000 Federal Election Commission filings from 2025 for which the employer was listed as Yale. Of 1,099 filings that included ‘professor’ in their occupation, 97.6 percent of the donations went to Democrats, while the remaining 2.4 percent went to independent candidates or groups. “This data is consistent with conservative criticism that university professors are not representative of the country’s political spread -- one rationale used by the Trump administration for its threats to universities’ funding in the past year.... “Political science professor Steven Smith said in a phone interview that the overwhelming support for the Democratic Party among faculty is ‘characteristic’ of standard demographic trends. “‘That’s old news,’ he said. ‘That’s no surprise. It’s true, generally across the culture, not just in universities, on the whole, in the country, educated people vote Democrat.’ “But Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis said in a Monday interview with the News that the vast majority of professors teach subjects, such as physics, in which political views are minimally relevant. Even in classes where politics is more relevant, he noted, professors want students to understand various perspectives of subject matter, and he doesn’t think the professors’ party affiliation affects that goal.” ... Full article at Yale Daily News. This is a followup article to one from College Fix that was linked in our December 22, 2025 Newsletter and that provided statistics for specific departments at Yale. See also Buckley Institute reports on this same subject dated December 1, 2025 and September 23, 2024 . Lawmakers Zero In on the NCAA and the Economics of College Sports Excerpts (links in the original): “An effort to curb the big business of college sports is gaining steam on Capitol Hill, where a growing number of lawmakers in both parties are outraged at the NCAA and signaling intervention from Congress on athlete compensation and revenue sharing is inevitable. “[Last week’s] college football national championship game served as a marquee symbol of the profitability of the current system for college football.... “’We have way too many gaps in the process. I’m all for the players making money, but there’s got to be some rules that play into it,’ said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), was a college football head coach for 21 years and won the 2004 national Coach of The Year award at Auburn before seeking public office. “The NCAA should have been running it the right way [in prior years], giving money to players out of revenue sharing. So now we’re in a spot where there’s no rules and it’s pretty much out of control,’ he said." ... Full article at The Hill. Other Articles of Interest Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Slips Full article at NY Times: “Six prominent American schools that would have been in the top 10 in the first decade of the 2000’s -- the University of Michigan, the University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University -- are producing more research than they did two decades ago, according to the Leiden tallies. But production by the Chinese schools has risen far more.” Up to 25% of U.S. Colleges May Close Soon, Brandeis President Warns Full article at College Fix: "Levine is working on the Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts, aiming to revamp the curriculum, enhance career readiness, and implement competency-based assessments." Cuts to the Liberal Arts Will Backfire Full article at American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). Women Far Outnumber Men in Law School, Med School, Vet School and Other Professional Programs Full article at Hechinger Report. Even MBAs From Top Business Schools Are Struggling to Get Hired Full article at WSJ. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. ASSU Town Hall Solicits Input on Fun, Housing (Stanford Daily) Empowering Users to Discern Fact from Fiction in the Age of AI Study Reveals Promising Diet for Managing Crohn’s Disease New Allergen-free Dining Supports Safer Meals for Stanford Students ********** A generation which ignores history has no past, and no future." -- Robert Heinlein January 19, 2026 Economic and Workforce Development Tops State Higher Education Priorities for 2026 Excerpt (link in the original): “State higher education leaders have identified economic and workforce development as their top policy priority for 2026, with nearly all respondents calling the issue critically important amid federal policy changes and budget pressures, according to a new survey released Tuesday. “The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association's annual priorities report shows 97% of state higher education chief executives rated economic and workforce development as important or very important -- the highest ranking for any issue in the survey's history, with an average score of 4.77 on a five-point scale.” ... Full article at the EDU Ledger, formerly Diverse Issues in Higher Education. See also “How Oregon’s Top Higher Ed Board Wants to Solve University Deficits” at Higher Ed Dive : “Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission last week approved a suite of policy recommendations meant to increase efficiency at the state’s seven public universities. If enacted, institutions would see regular audits of academic programs and could face mergers.” How Politicized Philanthropy Is Corrupting Charity (and our universities, too?) Excerpts (link added): . . . . . “The shift toward politicized ‘charity’ surged in 2020 when the Black Lives Matter Foundation scooped up a gush of mogul, corporate, and foundation gifts. These were offered without any accountability, and multiple BLM officials soon misdirected millions, resulting in a flurry of fraud indictments.... “After wildfires burned several Los Angeles neighborhoods in early 2025, the FireAid charity raised more than $100 million to help victims. The Annenberg Foundation, an established national philanthropy, was enlisted to administer the funds. But foundation staff ended up giving almost none of the cash to actual fire victims. Instead, grants were showered on ‘social justice’ nonprofits like FreeForm, the Alliance for a Better Community, and the California Native Vote Project. “So: The charitable impulse can be misused and manipulated, and it’s absolutely appropriate for regulators to react when this happens. Charities are given tax and legal protections on the grounds that they are truthful and earnest, that they build up citizens and bolster society. Their donations are not supposed to go to political activism, personal enrichment, or violence. If charitable gifts are being exploited in this way, there must be a law-enforcement response. In my new book Sweet Charity – Why Private Giving Is So Important to America I suggest some starting points: The foreign philanthropy that has politicized American charities should be cut off immediately. (The five largest foreign donors recently funneled almost $2 billion into advocacy by U.S. nonprofits.) Many 501(c)(3) charities have involved themselves in ‘voter registration’ efforts that quickly veer into politicking. Likewise, 501(c)(3)'s should not promote ballot initiatives, as some currently do. 501(c)(3)’s shouldn’t be allowed to take donations and re-grant them to politically involved 501(c)(4). The tax-law language which says that 501(c)(4)’s can get involved in politics so long as it is not their ‘primary activity’ should be tightened. Congress should place time limits on foundations. The longer a foundation lingers as a bureaucracy, the likelier it is to be taken over by politicized staffers. Foundations should be expected to distribute 10-12% of their endowment every year, instead of today’s 5%, so they don’t coast as forever-employers of social activists with no fealty to the founding donor. “But here’s a caution light: While there’s no denying we’ve seen an uptick in politicized philanthropy in recent years, there is a crucial larger reality that legislators who address this issue must not lose sight of: Partisan givers and charities are only a tiny slice of American philanthropy. Fully 74% of the money donated in America is given by individuals, not foundations or corporations. And the bulk of that comes from ordinary citizens, at an annual rate of about $3,000 per household. That’s middle America in action, not culture corruption by politicized billionaires or corporations. This civic engagement by generous everyday people must be protected. “Private giving -- at our current rate of around $600 billion every year -- is the goose that lays golden eggs for America. Personal donations allow our civil society to solve problems and strengthen the U.S. in millions of ways, mostly out of sight and behind the scenes, but with powerful results. Charitable action outside the control of government has been one of the deepest secrets of our nation’s success. “Philanthropy is now being assailed by a mix of progressive projectors of a ‘billionaire boys’ club’ and Trumpers disturbed by flares of ideological charity. We can stanch partisan abuses and corral checkbook manipulators of our culture. But we must do so without crimping one of America’s quintessential superpowers.” Full op-ed at Real Clear Politics. [Editor’s note: If there are concerns about major charities having become politicized, don’t those same concerns apply to today’s colleges and universities? Including where at least some if not most of Stanford’s 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities have donor-specified advocacy and outcomes in their names and missions, as opposed to entities that are engaged primarily if not exclusively in truly independent research, teaching and scholarship? Including when an entire school is no longer named for academic disciplines that have long existed and are respected worldwide (“earth sciences”) but is renamed instead for a desired societal outcome, sustainability? And once you establish a desired outcome in an entity’s name or its foundational documents, how do you then foster viewpoint diversity within the entity? And what happens when society's priorities change over time? To paraphrase Pogo, perhaps Stanford’s faculty leaders, administrators and current and former trustees who are trying to reestablish viewpoint diversity and a focus on independent scholarship should consider the possibility that “We have met the source of the problem, and it was us. Because if not us, then who?”] To Combat Academic Fraud, Scholars Confront a Hallowed Tradition Excerpts (links in the original): “The driving ethos of academia, ‘publish or perish,’ is fighting for its life. “The requirement that scholars constantly publish or face academic ruin has been considered the primary engine of scientific discovery for decades. But a growing movement of universities and researchers is trying to banish the practice to the archives, saying it has perverted the pursuit of knowledge and eroded the public’s trust in science. “Reformers at top universities in Europe and the U.S., including Cambridge, Sorbonne, and UC Berkeley, say this traditional system of advancement has led to an explosion in the growth of low-quality research , with little meaningful impact on academic fields or society. It has also sparked the spread of fraudulent research, as ‘paper mills ’ churn out fake articles for sale to academics seeking to pad their CVs. “To weaken the ‘publish or perish’ stranglehold on universities, hundreds of research institutions are reforming the incentive system that shapes academic careers. It currently rewards scholars for frequently winning grants and publishing papers, with extra points for landing in the most esteemed, high-impact journals, even when the articles are not themselves influential.... “The Nature family is highly selective, attracting more than 50,000 scholarly submissions a year and publishing less than 10% of them. Nature’s tendency to report on major advances in many fields, famously illustrated by the Watson and Crick paper on DNA structure, has helped give the 157-year-old journal its magisterial reputation. “But the fact that prestigious journals publish important articles doesn’t mean everything they run is noteworthy....[Journal Impact Factor] is also easy to manipulate: Authors are sometimes encouraged to include citations to articles in the same journal that they are publishing in to raise the JIF score.... “While the U.K. is a success story for reformers, they have yet to deeply penetrate the biggest research system of all -- the U.S. -- where only a handful of major research institutions have joined the movement. Unlike in Europe, U.S. universities don’t face federal funding pressure from above to transform how they reward scientists. Under the Trump administration, federal agencies are mainly focused on ending what they deem, sometimes wrongly, as DEI-related research, and reducing overhead fees that add up to 70% to the cost of research grants.... “Nonprofits like the Pew Charitable Trusts are also joining the movement. Pew is working with a group of philanthropic and public funders who want their grants to produce a bigger impact in healthcare, education, and other areas. To engage researchers in the effort, Pew has convened a group of 18 university leaders , including those at Brown, Duke, and UC Berkeley , who are redesigning their reward systems to encourage the public interest research that the funders seek....” Full article at Real Clear Investigations. Other Articles of Interest Athletics Makes List of Biggest Risks for Colleges Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Vanderbilt Is Opening a Campus in San Francisco in 2027 Full article at USA Today. See also SF Gate and WSJ . Court Vindicates Professor Investigated for Parodying University’s Land Acknowledgment Full article at FIRE. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Researchers and Air Force Partner to Test AI Copilots Stanford’s Farm Goes Fully Electric Flu Season Survival Tips ********** "Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?" — Martin Luther King, Jr. January 12, 2026 Recent Reader Comments [Slightly edited for language, specific names, redundancies, etc.] Comment Number One For a considerable amount of time, we have been reading articles about the administrative bloat affecting Stanford. Is there a plan to start trimming the excess? I should think the Board of Trustees would be actively working with President Levin to trim administrators and hire more professors. Perhaps this condition is much like an out-of-control fungus immune to corrective action? Comment Number Two My impression is that Stanford values the professional schools much more highly than the undergraduate schools. I do not believe they would dare impose these radical changes [increase in undergraduate enrollment] on the professional schools for fear of downgrading their reputations, rankings, etc. Same reason (in my humble opinion) the institution has permitted a serious housing shortage for undergrads for several decades. The undergraduate experience is not a high priority with Stanford’s leaders relative to other concerns. That has been my observation for many years, and expanding the undergrad population without any corresponding increases in faculty, housing, classes, etc. underlines that observation. The Class of 2029 has at least 250 more students than classes just a few years ago. So they have already effectively “announced” a 1,000 person or greater increase (over four class years) of the undergraduate enrollment. It’s done. Those 1,000 extra students will be graduating long before any new housing is approved, designed and built (if ever). I sadly think Stanford is severely mistaken and misguided on the student enrollment matter. It has the potential to blow up in the administration’s face. Comment Number Three 17,000 staff members is shocking. With the one-to-one ratio between students and staff, every student has his/her own corresponding staff member. For an institution on the cutting edge of tech innovation and societal productivity, it is instead structured like an old-time, bureaucratic, outdated institution of the distant past: GE, GM, etc. Really in need of a serious re-structuring. 29 development staff just at Stanford Law School alone, and even though Stanford Law School has the smallest student body of all of the top law schools. In most cases (other than Yale), by far the smallest, a fraction of the size of Harvard, Georgetown, Michigan, Columbia, etc. The bureaucratic imperative has conquered Stanford. Comment Number Four Reading the most recent Newsletter, I thought “ok, now everyone knows the magnitude of the administrative bloat. How do you go forward from there?” I doubt just repeating the numbers will change much, if anything. You need to bring in an outsider with a proven reputation for cost cutting and streamlining. It’s hard to believe that the administrators themselves are going to get behind such an effort when it means they themselves might be the next ones to be offered early retirement. ********** See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Other reader comments on various topics in recent years are available at our Reader Comments webpage. Send us your own comments here . Required Stanford Writing Courses Range from How 'ICE Raids Destabilize Communities,' to an All-Male Drag Ballet Excerpts (links in the original): “A series of spring 2026 required writing courses for students at Stanford University have students learn about topics ranging from ‘biracial and bicultural identity,’ to how ‘ICE raids destabilize communities.’ “Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) currently offers courses to students to fulfill a ‘Writing and Rhetoric Requirement at Stanford.’ “In a description for the program, the university states that ‘PWR instructors in PWR 1 and PWR 2 courses carefully design their courses to offer in-depth intellectual experiences based on shared assignments, goals, and learning outcomes.’ “For each course that is offered to students, they are ‘rooted in analysis, research, and the presentation of research in various forms,’ while professors are given authority to ‘[build] on this shared core, designing class activities to support a dynamic, interactive classroom community.’ ... “Amongst the listed course offerings includes one course on ‘Writing Mixed Race Identity,’ where students will ‘look at the ongoing rhetoric surrounding multiraciality.’ Students will also learn about how ‘mixed race people are always and already politicized,’ and are ‘represented as figures of shame,’ ‘exoticism,’ ‘tragedy,’ and as figures of ‘post-racial utopia.’ ...” Full article at Campus Reform. Stanford's own description of the program is here , and a sample of the courses is here . Editor's note: Is our understanding correct that these courses -- at four units each and required in both the freshman and sophomore years -- are taught solely by part-time lecturers and not members of the faculty? Also, how many hours are spent creating the photos, video interviews, etc. at these webpages on top of all of the other Stanford-wide non-essential and non-teaching activities in which hundreds (thousands?) of staff are engaged? Wouldn't it be better to reduce and even eliminate these peripheral activities and use the resources instead for the hiring of more tenure-line faculty? Likewise, shouldn't students who have met the extraordinarily high threshold of being admitted to Stanford be allowed to decide whether they want or need to take courses of this nature? And in the end, aren't there more appropriate ways to provide a general education including assuring that students have an understanding of U.S. and world history, civics and cultures versus what is taking place here? Harvard President Admits Faculty Activism Is a Problem Excerpt (links in the original): “Political activism in the classroom has become a problem among faculty at Harvard University, its President Alan Garber said on a recent podcast. “Garber, whose contract was extended in December, said higher education ‘went wrong’ when institutions began allowing faculty to engage in activism in the classroom and in their research, and he is working to steer Harvard back in the right direction, The Harvard Crimson reports . “His remarks come on the heels of the high profile departure of longtime Harvard Professor James Hankins who criticized the institution for, among other things, its focus on identity politics. “Last week, on an episode of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s ‘Identity/Crisis Podcast,’ Garber said it used to be that ‘one of the characteristics of excellent teaching’ was not allowing personal views to influence classroom discussions. “Good professors would ‘present alternative points of view fairly,’ and they would not allow their personal opinions to color their research, he said. “When Garber worked as a policy research leader at Stanford University, he said the faculty and staff ‘would never take a policy position, for a variety of reasons, one of them, and maybe most importantly, it would call into question the objectivity of our work.’” ... Full article at College Fix. See also “The Problems of History at Harvard” at our January 5, 2026 Newsletter including discussion of the reasons Prof. Hankins decided to leave Harvard. Free Expression in Higher Education -- Q&A with U Chicago’s Tom Ginsburg Excerpt (link in the original): “The ongoing debate about free expression in higher education has grown increasingly complex and contentious in recent years, shaped by a variety of societal and political factors that are continuously evolving. In a recent Q&A, Professor Tom Ginsburg, faculty director of the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression , offers valuable insights into why freedom of expression is vital for higher education -- and for society as a whole -- to thrive.” Full Q&A at U Chicago website. See also our compilations of the three fundamental statements from the University of Chicago in past decades concerning freedom of expression, institutional neutrality and principles for the hiring and promotion of faculty at our Chicago Trifecta webpage. Other Articles of Interest How Many Vice Presidents Does a College Need? Full op-ed by Amherst Prof. Austin Sarat at Inside Higher Ed. At Harvard and Elsewhere, the New Campus Orthodoxy Is Even More Stifling Full op-ed at NY Times. Parody Is Protected in the Pacific Northwest Full editorial at Washington Post. See also op-eds at WSJ and Minding the Campus . It’s Time to Mandate Merit Full op-ed at James Martin Center. UCLA Athletics Facing Enormous Debt, per the School's Academic Senate Full article at Pasadena Now. See also “UC Regent Questions UCLA Athletics' Finances: How does this thing not sink?” at Yahoo Finance as reproduced from LA Times: “an athletic department deficit that has ballooned to $219.5 million after running in the red for six consecutive fiscal years, including a $51.8-million shortfall in the 2024 fiscal year.” Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford AI Experts Predict What Will Happen in 2026 AI Predicts Disease from Sleep To Advance Science, Blur the Boundaries Between the Disciplinesy Synthetic Biologists Transform Waste CO2 Into Useful Chemicals Explaining the Meteorological Phenomenon of Atmospheric Rivers ********** “Education at its best makes people more whole, not more uniform.” – Stanford Prof. Emeritus Claude Steele January 5, 2026 The National Movement to Trim Higher Ed Bloat Excerpts (links in the original): “Americans don't agree on much these days, but we all seem to agree that higher education in our country is broken. The good news is that we may now see the beginning of a nationwide movement to make higher education a better investment for students and help prepare them for life after school. “Since the 1990s, we have seen an explosion in the cost of college driven by a growth in administrators and virtually endless government-backed debt. Continued increases in enrollments allowed even state schools to create classes and even entire majors for which there was absolutely no job market."... Full op-ed at Real Clear Education, including a link to “Administrative Bloat at U.S. Colleges Is Skyrocketing” at Forbes (August 28, 2023): “. . . Why have administrative positions exploded? There are several reasons, including greater student demand for services, the growing number of accreditors, government regulations, and the natural tendency for administrators to solve most problems with -- you guessed it -- more administrators. “This massive increase in personnel never could have happened without the growing availability of federal aid and student loans (albeit any corresponding constraints on costs). But given the rapidly deteriorating fiscal condition of the federal government, and the recent decision by the Supreme Court on loan forgiveness, the likelihood of a major expansion in tuition assistance (or full-scale student loan bailout) seems unlikely in the near future. “With no market or regulatory forces to contain the reckless spending behavior of colleges and universities, school presidents have focused on fundraising, not good management. But starting [now] , they will need to learn quickly how to streamline administrative costs, or be replaced by a new generation of school leaders who do.” See also, with respect to Stanford specifically, “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and where, among other things, Stanford went from approximately 2,800 managerial and supervisory personnel in the year 2000 to nearly 13,000 such personnel by the year 2022 (an increase of approximatelly 10,000) while the faculty increased by only 400 during that same period of time (see the graph at the top of the Stanford Concerns webpage). As also shown at the Stanford Concerns webpage, Stanford currently has the highest number of business and finance staff of any U.S. university (even for schools with triple the enrollment) and the highest administrative costs per student of any U.S. university. And yet Stanford has among the worst student-faculty ratios and among the worst participation of alumni donors as compared to its top-ranked peers. While it's true that Stanford's wealth and prestige may insulate it from competitive pressures, that wealth and prestige can also mask problems that both the administration and the trustees may need to finally address. To quote management guru Peter Drucker, “Tomorrow is being made today, irrevocably in most cases.” A Black Box of Overhead Spending and Academia’s Mission Creep from Rigorous Science Excerpts (footnotes deleted): “American universities are falling short of their mission to push the limits of scientific discovery and prepare students for the workforce, often while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in federal research and development grants.... “Overhead funds are meant to go toward university and department infrastructure, but recent reports have suggested exorbitant overhead spending feeds into bloated university administrations that distract from academic inquiry.... “This report examines research and overhead funds granted to five universities over ten years, along with the growth of administration and, in particular, DEI-related positions. The impact of broader impact requirements embedded in grant proposals is also explored. “The results will demonstrate that universities are undermining their former commitments to true scientific endeavor in research, in favor of building ever more new administrative functions and special projects.” ... [Followed by a detailed analysis of Rutgers and the universities of Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia.] Full report , including graphs and charts, can be downloaded at Open the Books. See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also Section 3 at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage where we suggest that Stanford's administrative bureaucracy needs to be reduced significantly in both size and cost and, at Section 4, we suggest that Stanford's 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities need to be engaged primarily in front-line research and teaching supervised by tenured members of the faculty or else should be moved off campus and cease using the Stanford name. The Problems of History at Harvard Excerpt: “At Harvard University today, professors who teach Western history are history. “James Hankins, a specialist in Renaissance thought, was one of the last holdouts. “Now Hankins, who has just published a hefty book that teaches what Harvard doesn't -- The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, Vol. 1 -- has decamped for the University of Florida's Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education. “It's not the warmer weather that's drawn him away from Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It's the contrast in intellectual climates: frozen and dead, where Western history is concerned, at Harvard; full of green shoots at the University of Florida. “‘We have not hired with tenure a historian in a Western field -- ancient, medieval, early modern, or modern -- in a decade,’ Hankins says about his Harvard department, which in that time ‘lost eight senior historians in Western fields -- all major figures -- through death, retirement or departure for other universities. I will be the ninth, and I am not expecting to be replaced.’ “The loss isn't just Harvard's: ‘the replacement of Western history by global history’ has done ‘serious harm ... to the socialization of young Americans,’ the historian warns in Compact magazine.” ... Full article at Real Clear Politics. Harvard President Alan Garber Has Met the Moment Excerpts: . . . . “Harvard’s governing boards have been historically secretive, making it difficult to know whether such self-assessments occur and, if so, what they have revealed. But their decision to hand the presidential reins to Garber on an indefinite basis speaks as loudly as we can expect about their views on Harvard’s past and future directions. “We should be grateful for that decision.... [Followed by discussion of Harvard’s working group on open inquiry and constructive dialogue, Harvard’s adoption of policies re institutional neutrality, ending the requirement for DEI statements in faculty hiring, and major reforms of Harvard’s student orientation programs.] “Actions taken by schools to change programs (and program leadership) have been more controversial. When programs are judged to have strayed from the required level of scholarly rigor in favor of explicit activism, I see such decisions as within the purview of university leadership and proper governance -- and failure to prevent such straying, in the past, has often proved to be the real problem. To counter expected opposition, decisions such as these must reflect rigorous assessment, be accompanied by public explanation, and remain content-neutral, aspects that require greater clarity than exists at present....” Full op-ed by Harvard professor and former medical school dean Jeffrey S. Flier at Harvard Crimson. A Utah University Gave Guest Speakers a List of Banned Words Editor’s note: We have long had posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage an article about Stanford’s now discredited list of words and phrases and including a PDF copy of the words and phrases we downloaded before they were removed from Stanford’s websites and subsequently repudiated by senior Stanford administrators. In the situation described below, a Utah state university was largely copying a state law that restricts words and phrases. In our view, any such restrictions -- whether for conservative or progressive purposes -- are inappropriate and especially in a campus environment. Excerpts : “After she agreed to give a book talk at Weber State University, Darcie Little Badger was sent a document titled ‘Speaker Information Request.’ It asked Little Badger for personal and logistical information, all fairly standard for a guest speaker, but at the bottom of the page there was something unusual: a list of banned words and phrases. “The document cited HB 261, a bill targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that passed the Utah State Senate in July 2024. The bill prohibits diversity training and statements in higher education, among other provisions. It includes several of the prohibited words Weber State passed along to Little Badger but does not apply them to speech on campus.... “The university has a page on its website dedicated to frequently asked questions about HB 261, and one question asks how the law will affect speakers. The university answers: ‘Under current university and Board of Higher Education policy, the university is charged to provide the opportunity for a plurality of speakers to engage an array of viewpoints. HB 261 affirms that directive and the university will be reviewing its processes for creating those forums for speakers on campus.’ ... ““The people who champion this type of censorship,” [Little Badger] said, ‘I think they’re afraid of difference.’” Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Other Articles of Interest The Campus ‘Vibe Shift’ Is an Illusion Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Washington Examiner. Push for Censorship on Campus Hit Record Levels in 2025 Full op-ed at Real Clear Education: “We need courage: from faculty, from students, and especially from administrators. It’s easy to defend speech when it’s popular. It’s harder when the ideas are offensive or inconvenient. But that’s when it matters most.” American Graduates Need Not Apply A senior partner at a large U.S. company admits corporations will skirt H-1B restrictions, leaving American graduates behind. Full article at Minding the Campus. College Rankings Are Flawed, but City Journal’s New Alternative System Only Compounds the Problems Full op-ed at Real Clear Education. See also explanation of the rankings at City Journal , an interactive version of the actual rankings (Stanford ranks #18) here and with a more detailed discussion of Stanford's strengths and concerns here . Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Intriguing Innovations at Stanford in 2025 Stanford Medical School's Scientific Advancements in 2025 Stanford Law School’s End-of-Year Reading List ********** “Students don’t need more administrative offices policing speech or mediating micro‑aggressions. They need mentors -- professors and deans who hold them to high standards while caring fo r their growth.” -- University of Dallas President Jonathan J. Sanford December 22, 2025 The Importance, Scope and Bounds of Intellectual and Viewpoint Diversity Excerpts : “In recent decades, the ideological diversity of faculties in the United States has declined considerably, and this has arguably had implications for a number of other aspects of academic life. Efforts to promote intellectual and viewpoint diversity are, however, often met with skepticism, and also with reasonable concerns over threats to the autonomy and integrity of academic disciplines and institutions. Clarifying the role, scope, and bounds of intellectual and viewpoint diversity within academic life in ways that respect the scholarly standards of disciplines is thus of critical importance.... “[In this paper,] I put forward proposals for educational leaders, faculty, and students for engaging with or, when appropriate, cultivating intellectual and viewpoint diversity in a manner that respects the scholarly standards of disciplines. I discuss what is at stake with these matters in the present context concerning the nature of the university itself, and its purposes in the generation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge.... [Followed by discussion of the differences of intellectual, viewpoint, ideological and political diversity; causes of the decline in diversity and data that demonstrate the decline; the typical denial and dismissal of the problem by campus leaders; the role and importance of intellectual and viewpoint diversity; and possible remedies.] “Underlying many of the criticisms of higher education is the concern that some universities have themselves effectively become partisan institutions, wherein the vast majority of the work is devoted to, or comes from the perspectives of those aligned with, a single political party. Universities may deny this, and reaffirm their ideals. But the statistics are nevertheless troubling.... “With greater ideological homogeneity, the defense of academic freedom can become more difficult still because progressive ideologies can sometimes be accompanied by notions of a subjective or relativistic understanding of truth; by an understanding of the university that emphasizes activism; by a priority of power over the pursuit of knowledge; and by a strategy of suppression or refusal to engage with certain ideas if they are contrary to a progressive agenda. Open inquiry and the free exchange of ideas can seem like secondary values.”... [Followed by discussion of specific corrective actions that might be taken.] Full article by Harvard Prof. Tyler J. VanderWeele at MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute). See also our Back to Basics at Stanford and Stanford Concerns webpages where we discuss the need for Stanford's faculty, students, administrators and trustees to address these issues; the impact Stanford's bloated administrative bureaucracy is having on these issues; and the need to address what are primarily advocacy and other non-academic activities at many if not most of Stanford's 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities. A Much-Needed Exposé of Academic Fraud A new book reveals why academic-publishing incentives must change. Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “Professor Max Bazerman of Harvard Business School has done a great public service in writing Inside an Academic Scandal: A Story of Fraud and Betrayal . His book puts people on guard against believing an idea just because it comes in scholarly wrapping. It was inspired by Bazerman’s own experience as a co-author of a paper in which others had falsified data to make the conclusion look strong. Over a period of years, he came to suspect the data behind the paper and sought to have the other authors explain their conduct, which they never did. Besides telling his own lamentable tale, Bazerman recounts many other instances of scholarly fraud, but let’s begin with his story. “. . . with the big higher-education push starting in 1965, ‘publish or perish’ became a mass phenomenon, and the huge numbers of aspiring academics overwhelmed the system.... “Moreover, colleges and universities created many new academic ‘disciplines’ where rigor took a backseat to publishing ideologically correct papers on topics like ‘implicit bias .’ Our institutions were employing an army of professors whose main job was not to teach a body of knowledge but, rather, to produce research in avant-garde fields such as Women’s Studies. The result was an outpouring of extremely dubious scholarship -- a prodigious waste of resources. “Here’s an analogy. Suppose that a country, acting on the belief that art is a public good that should be given government support, set up a system to subsidize the production of art. After a time, the country found that it was paying for a huge outpouring of absurd artworks, which it would then spend more money to store in warehouses. (The Dutch actually did that, as we read in this article .) Similarly, suppose that a country, acting on the belief that higher education is a great public boon, decided to subsidize college degrees and academic research. The United States has done that, with predictable results: far more degrees and scholarship than previously but with steadily falling quality.” ... Full op-ed at James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. 90% of Undergrads Believe Words Can Be Violence Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “In 2017, when the conflation of words and violence was relatively new, Jonathan Haidt, a New York University psychology professor, worried that the false equivalence fed into the simmering mental health crisis among young people . He and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff wrote in The Atlantic that ‘growing numbers of college students have become less able to cope with the challenges of campus life, including offensive ideas, insensitive professors, and rude or even racist and sexist peers’ and that the rise in mental health issues ‘is better understood as a crisis of resilience.’ “Telling young people who haven't been raised to be resilient and to deal with the certainty of encountering debate, disagreement, and rude or hateful expressions in an intellectually and ideologically diverse world plays into problems with anxiety and depression. It teaches that the world is more dangerous than it actually is rather than a place that requires a certain degree of toughness. Worse, if words are violence it implies that responding ‘in kind’ is justified.... “Americans worry that the country is becoming less friendly to free expression. But the insistence of too many people that words and violence are the same thing is a big part of the problem.” Full op-ed at Reason. See also article and link to the full poll at FIRE . Other Articles of Interest They Graduated from Stanford; Due to AI, They Can’t Find a Job Full article at LA Times: “‘There’s definitely a very dreary mood on campus,’ said a recent computer science graduate who asked not to be named so they could speak freely. ‘People [who are] job hunting are very stressed out, and it’s very hard for them to actually secure jobs.’ The shake-up is being felt across California colleges, including UC Berkeley, USC and others. The job search has been even tougher for those with less prestigious degrees.” We Should Teach Our Students How to Think, Not What to Believe Full op-ed at NY Times: “We’ve been heading toward this moment for some time. For at least the past decade, political expression has become more and more ubiquitous in public schools. Schools effectively allowed political advocacy to become part of the curriculum when it was easy to ignore.... Now it isn’t so easy. It’s time to resurrect the idea that education and activism are not just distinct, but incompatible.” Zero Republican Professors Found Across 27 Academic Departments at Yale Full article at College Fix. The list: American Studies, Anthropology, Architecture, Astronomy, Black Studies, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Classics, Comparative literature, Earth and Planetary Sciences, East Asian Languages and Literature, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, English, Environment, French, Germanic Languages and Literature, Global Affairs, History of Art, Italian Studies, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Music, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Neuroscience, Psychology, Slavic Languages and Literature, and Sociology. In addition, “Across the 18 humanities departments, Democrats outnumber Republicans at a ratio of 72 to 1.” See also the first article in today’s Newsletter re the importance of intellectual and viewpoint diversity, and how campus leaders continue to deny there's a problem. The Entry-Level Hiring Process Is Breaking Down Full op-ed at The Atlantic. See also “America’s Schools Still Teach for Yesterday’s Jobs” at Minding the Campus . ********** “ When I look at my students, I see hope. They're idealistic and eager to make a difference. What they lack is a framework for translating learning into life: understanding that attention, empathy, and reason cultivated in college are necessities for citizenship, not luxuries.” -- Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams December 15, 2025 How the Past Has Undermined Higher Ed’s Present Excerpts (links in the original): [Discussion of what led colleges and universities to build expensive buildings and increase the pipeline of students -- in-person and online -- who, in turn, have provided large amounts of money as a result of their student tuition, fees and debt.] “The bottom line is that student loans were paying for the expansion and upkeep of many campuses long after the business model made sense. When one takes a hard look at what student-loan borrowing has wrought, the Trump administration’s turning off the spigot -- or at least drastically slowing the flow by capping Parent Plus loans and phasing out income-driven repayment options -- makes a certain sense.... “Every student is a pipeline to federal money. Enrolling more students gets the institution more money. And it worked for many years.... “The president who survives the coming shakeout will be the one who abandons the prestige theater [that Joshua Travis Brown documents in his book Capitalizing on College: How Higher Education Went From Mission Driven to Margin Obsessed ] and focuses solely on delivering a human experience of smaller classes, deeper faculty relationships, more intensive advising, and the kind of high-touch education that used to occur on the picturesque campuses. This will be, of course, more expensive than chasing new students, and not every institution will be able to survive. It may be that the ones who don’t were simply delaying the inevitable.” ... Full op-ed by U Utah Prof. Hollis Robbins at Real Clear Education as reprinted from Chronicle of Higher Education. And from our November 24, 2025 Newsletter: “At Stanford, this would mean implementing a more personalized education and possibly also copying Oxford, Cambridge and others by reducing the undergraduate degree to three years instead of four. It might also mean postponing the increases already underway in Stanford’s undergraduate enrollment (as one alum has noted, if you add 200 to 250 to each entering class, per the article following this one, that means an increase in the undergraduate population at the end of four years by 800 to a thousand or more but with no announced increases in student housing or tenure-line faculty). “What might be done instead would be to significantly improve the quality of residential education while at the same time redirecting Stanford’s high administrative costs per student to resources devoted instead solely to undergraduate teaching. In this regard, see ‘Warning Signs in the Numbers’ at our Stanford Concerns webpage including Stanford's $48,231 annual administrative cost per student (and that's solely for central administrative services and not student or similar services), an unfavorable ratio of faculty to students as compared to peer institutions and a surprisingly low percentage of Stanford alumni who are donating as also compared to peer institutions.” What Broke University Science? Excerpts: “I became a scientist because I was drawn to difficult questions. As a child, I searched for patterns and tried to uncover the deeper logic behind everyday phenomena. That instinct carried me into chemistry and physics, then into a PhD at MIT, where I worked at the intersection of biophysics, engineering, computation, and early AI.... “Over nearly 20 years I published over 200 papers, becoming one of the world’s most highly cited scholars, received teaching awards, collaborated across disciplines, contributed to biotechnology, and advised the National Institutes of Health. “I also assumed -- naively -- that scientific accomplishment offered a degree of protection. If you did good work, if you advanced understanding, institutions would support you. There were early warning signs: jealousy from senior colleagues when my research outpaced theirs; the creeping politicization of academia; hiring and leadership decisions that elevated people for their symbolic value or personal relationships rather than their expertise. But I did what most scientists do: I focused on the work and ignored the noise. “It took far too long to understand how misplaced that belief was. My awakening came through something ordinary: an authorship dispute between two members of my lab at Duke’s medical school, where I was a tenured professor. These disagreements happen in every lab and are typically resolved with a straightforward conversation. But this dispute unfolded when universities were reframing their missions around social-justice narratives about power imbalances, recasting accomplished scientists as oppressors and others as oppressed.... “The process quickly detached from reality. Administrators launched what they called a culture review, claiming they needed to assess whether I was aligned with Duke’s values. In practice, investigators interrogated people for hours, attempting to elicit any negative phrasing that could be stitched into a narrative.... “After a couple months of interviews, audits, and surveillance, the investigation concluded with no findings of misconduct. But the damage had already been done. Years of work were disrupted, the careers of my trainees derailed, and student protests about my treatment ignored -- even as other forms of activism were eagerly embraced. Eventually I was pressured to sign a compact containing conditions and monitoring requirements that would have made any serious research impossible.... [Followed by discussion of the rise of economic pressures at universities and their affiliated medical centers and including from NIH.] “Roles that were once part-time service positions for accomplished scientists became full-time managerial jobs occupied by people with little or no scientific background. Decision-making moved away from faculty and into opaque administrative bodies insulated from accountability.... “The consequences extend far beyond the university. Journals and scientific societies, beholden to the same incentives, reflect the same distortions. Chronic disease rates continue to rise because the scientific areas most relevant to prevention have been neglected. Basic research in nutrition, metabolism, environmental exposures, and physiology is decades behind where it should be, hampering progress in aging and public health.... “If universities and their medical centers want to regain public trust, they must demonstrate that knowledge and learning -- not image management -- are once again the point of academic life. If they fail, new institutions will rise to take their place. “Science will continue somewhere; curiosity will find a home. The only question is whether our universities will remain worthy of it.” Full op-ed by former Duke Prof. Jason Locasale at Brownstone. See also “What Happened to Me” by Jason Locasale at Substack : “Altogether, Duke had spent millions disrupting my research lab and I had lost years of work. These are administrators with mid to high 6 or 7 figure salaries paid to do this.” See also at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage “Dr. Jay Bhattacharya's Opening Statement at His Senate Confirmation Hearing to Lead NIH -- Five Goals if Confirmed as Head of NIH” and “Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back.” Why We Should Worry About Europe’s Speech Restrictions Editor’s note: Several years ago, it was one of our readers who first brought to our attention the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and related entities. Our initial reaction was that the concerns were overstated and not relevant for purposes of our Newsletters and website. Within weeks, we realized we were totally wrong and that somehow Stanford was taking the lead, through the SIO, in censoring emails, blogs, social media and even traditional news articles that government and private parties did not want published, especially regarding the 2020 election and then the causes of and responses to Covid. Among other things, see at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage “House Judiciary Committee Letter to Stanford Dated October 22, 2025 Regarding Alleged Censorship Activities” and “Stanford’s Prior Roles in Censoring the Web.” SIO has now been dismantled although we understand Stanford is still spending money on lawyers defending SIO’s past actions, most likely because the employment contracts with previous SIO staff members require that Stanford pay their legal costs. Since these prior censorship activities in the U.S. have been significantly reduced and even eliminated, the concern now is that U.S. nonprofits and others are coordinating with European governments and non-governmental agencies to restrict speech there and with the expectation that the prohibitions established in Europe can then be exported to the U.S., notwithstanding the protections otherwise provided by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. It is with that background that we present this mere sample of recent articles from third parties (links in the originals). Civilizational Suicide Behind Europe’s Demand for Censorship “[Two weeks ago,] the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s X €140 million for, it says, breaking laws requiring social media transparency. Specifically, said the Commission, which is the executive branch of the European Union, X broke the law by making its blue checkmarks available to anyone, failing to make its advertising repository transparent, and failing to provide researchers with special access to its data. ‘Today’s decision has nothing to do with content moderation,’ insisted the Commission’s spokesperson. “In truth, the Commission’s fine has everything to do with ‘content moderation,’ which is censorship. The EU wants X to give its data to government-selected ‘researchers’ so they can identify which posts and advertisements should be censored. This is a censorship-by-proxy strategy [including discussion of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project, the latter two of which were largely run by the Stanford Internet Observatory] . The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2020 to 2022, and Europe today, have authorized government-funded NGOs to demand censorship of social media platforms in an attempt to deceive the public. “As such, the European Commission is spreading disinformation in order to demand censorship, and is openly engaged in a deception campaign aimed at confusing the people of Europe and the United States about what it is doing.” ... Full op-ed by Michael Shellenberger at Substack. Europe Fires a Speech Warning “The Digital Services Act , the European Commission’s content control law developed across multiple stages dating to the mid-2010s, has finally become fully operational, in Star Wars parlance. Officials announced a long-threatened €120 million (about $140 million) fine of Elon Musk’s X platform, with the major offenses being the use of a ‘deceptive’ check mark program and failure to ‘provide researchers with access to the platform’s public data.’ “The fine comes at a strange time. A few weeks ago, the EC began a public campaign of walking back its biggest censorship initiatives, thanks to a growing belief that its stifling regulatory environment was costing Old-World companies a chance to compete for investment in AI technology.” ... Full op-ed by Matt Taibbi at Substack. Is Germany Previewing America's Speech Future? “On November 26th, three armed police officers in Berlin showed up at the door of American playwright and author C.J. Hopkins brandishing a search warrant. Having already charged and issued a ‘punishment order ’ to Hopkins two summers ago essentially over the satirical use of a swastika on the cover of his book The Rise of the New Normal Reich -- it’s in a white-on-white medical mask, mocking pandemic authorities -- officials returned with a new theory. After questioning him and his wife, they searched the place for evidence that Hopkins is indeed the publisher of his book and the operator of his Consent Factory blog , where the book is promoted. “‘Basically, distributing and promoting my book is a crime in Germany, at least according to the District Prosecutor,’ Hopkins explains.” ... Full op-ed by Matt Taibbi at Substack. Free Speech Wobbles in the U.K. “Britain has no equivalent to the First Amendment, but the common law tradition of England and Wales has long respected free speech as a so-called ‘negative right,’ a right that the government respects by not taking action for or against. In 1998, the U.K.’s adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to which it remains subject despite Brexit, required legally defined free speech, which arrived in the U.K.’s Human Rights Act, passed the same year. The ECHR provides that all individuals have 'the right to freedom of expression,' including the 'freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference.' “In recent years, however, Britain has mimicked the EU’s more proactive approach to ‘hate speech’ and other subjective content to police what people say and, increasingly, post online. In 2003, a new law, the Communications Act, broadly prohibited undefined ‘malicious communications’ and made it a criminal offense to ‘persistently make use of a public electronic communications network for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety’ -- all highly subjective categories. The act also authorized a new national regulatory agency, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), to monitor all forms of communication for illegal content. In other words, the law prohibited vague speech offenses and then empowered a government agency to police them. “Over time, Britain’s speech authorities have become more powerful while the offenses have become more vague. According to Rowley, prohibited communications include ‘incitement, stirring up racial hatred, [and] numerous terrorist offenses regarding the publishing of material.’ In practice, this has led to thousands of arrests and prison sentences for social media posts, publicly displayed signs, shared memes, personal insults, and even prayers by pensioners.”... Full article at Tablet. Free Speech Under Attack in the U.K. “British authorities are not slouching in enforcement. According to police records analyzed by the London Times, over 12,000 Britons per year are arrested for speech-related offenses -- an average of 30 per day and nearly a fourfold increase over the 2016 figure. Recent cases have reportedly included arrests for derogatory comments about migrants , displays of the national flag that others found offensive, and even silent prayer near abortion clinics. Since 2014, police can record comments merely perceived as offensive as so-called ‘non-crime hate incidents ,’ which remain on the offending party’s record even if no charges are filed. “Britain’s free speech laws have an international dimension, as Vice President J. D. Vance observed earlier this year, when he noted that they could affect U.S. companies and individuals. The Online Safety Act imposes a heavy burden on platforms of any nationality -- though most are, of course American -- to remove content that the U.K. considers criminal. Noncompliance can result in a fine of 10 percent of the offending company’s net global revenue, up to a maximum penalty of £18 million .” ... Full op-ed at City Journal. Other Articles of Interest The Importance of a Liberal Education Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education: “The ivory tower is collapsing, and perhaps that's as it should be. What we're building isn't a tower but a bridge between contemplation and action, tradition and innovation, mind and world. Our students don't need refuge from reality. They need the intellectual courage to remake it.” See also “Liberal Education as Civic Education” by U Tulsa Prof. Jennifer Frey at Jack Miller Center . Pro-Hamas Students Aren't the Source of Campus Antisemitism Full op-ed by UC Santa Cruz Prof. Emeritus John Ellis and former UC Santa Cruz Prof. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin at WSJ: “Administrators have to address the root cause -- faculty who have politicized their academic programs and departments.” How Federal Red Tape Is Driving Up College Costs Full article at Real Clear Education. How Shall Academic Freedom Be Defined? Full interview with UNC faculty assembly chair Wade Maki at James Martin Center. National Association of Scholars Applauds House Bills to Combat Foreign Influence in Schools Full op-ed at NAS website. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. AI Wearable Device Aims to Improve Mindfulness New Course Builds Practical Skills for Emotional Resilience Experts Cut Through the Noise to Clarify AI's Actual Economic Impact (Video trailer, 3:26 minutes) ********** "Institutions thrive when they cultivate disagreement, not when they suppress it.” -- Stanford School of Humanities & Sciences Dean Debra Satz December 8, 2025 Now Is the Time to Fix the Office of Community Standards Excerpts (links in the original): “Stanford has a new leadership team, so now is the time to address a years’ long problem at the Office of Community Standards (OCS) that has been an affront to the core values of our University for at least 15 years. To her credit, Provost Jenny Martinez has already acted aggressively, recently appointing law professor Larry Marshall as Interim Director at OCS. Marshall has the requisite background, and skill sets to bring about needed changes. Members of both the undergraduate and graduate senate have also taken up the cause this school year. “In 2011, two other alumni and I represented three students in a cheating case processed through what was then Stanford’s Judicial Affairs Office (JAO; now known as the OCS). “All of our three clients were acquitted in November 2011. As their representatives, all of whom have substantial administrative law experience, we were appalled at the inability of JAO employees to follow the University’s Judicial Charter and provide any semblance of a fair hearing. “Our group of alumni volunteered to work with the JAO to improve their systems. They referred the matter to the Office of the General Counsel headed, then and now, led by Debra Zumwalt. The attorney assigned to work with us said that General Counsel’s Office would be pleased to do so if we all started with the same predicate which she described as: ‘This is a discipline system designed to correct bad behavior.’ “The problem with her predicate is that it reflects a presumption of guilt of anyone that goes into the system. Our three students were all acquitted. Why were they in what the University referred to then, and even oftentimes now, as a ‘discipline system’? “We were so troubled by the despicable treatment of the students, and this presumption of guilt that permeated the processing of these cases, that we prepared a 62-page, single spaced Case Study of that case identifying 99 distinct errors, mistakes or violation of student rights in the course of OCS’s handling of the matter. “Only when it became clear that administrators and others had no interest in improving the system, did we provide the Case Study to The Stanford Daily, 18 months after we first started our efforts to make that process fair. The Daily highlighted the Case Study in a front-page story on May 13, 2013. “We took the undisputed facts of that Case Study to every level of the University, including the Provost and the President, as well as select Trustees. With no interest from anyone, we issued our second report entitled: 2013 Internal Review of Stanford University’s Office of Judicial Affairs . Both reports are still online .... “In the 2021-22 school year, Stanford student Katie Meyer was involved in a seven-month OCS investigation . She took her own life in March 2022, the night she received a charge letter from that office. In the ESPN documentary that aired in May of this year ('Save: The Katie Meyer Story') her family shared that her laptop was opened to the letter from the OCS when she took her last breath.... “Students are transitory. Alumni are not. Our group is still here, and we have now spent 14 years trying to protect students. We ought to be able to resolve the myriad of issues at OCS without asking the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to initiate a full scale investigation. “A wrongful conviction at OCS goes on a student’s permanent record. That wrongful conviction then has the potential to destroy your life dreams before you even have a chance to pursue them.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum Bob Ottilie at Stanford Daily. See also “Control of Student Life Must Be Restored to Stanford's Students” at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, especially paragraphs 2.e. through k. re our own proposed reforms to the student disciplinary process. See also “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including PDF documents about the abuses of systems like this. Stanford Loves Innovation, Its Bureaucracy Does Not Excerpts (links in the original): “I can still picture myself at 18: bright-eyed and bushy tailed, hunched over my Stanford supplemental essays and meticulously typing and deleting words as if my future depended on every sentence. I dreamed of an education built not just on classes but the un-manufacturable serendipity of being surrounded by the brightest young minds on the planet. Before I even stepped on campus, I believed, wholeheartedly, in the vision of an education shaped by community. And that belief carried me here. “As I write this, I’m heading into my final week at Stanford, which feels surreal to put into words.... Founding Stanford Sustainable Investment Group (SSIG) -- now the university’s largest climate organization -- and helping organize Stanford Climate Week became my way of building the climate ecosystem I wish had existed when I first pictured Stanford. “But in the process of trying to build that kind of vibrant, student climate community, I ran headfirst into the countless layers of institutional bureaucracy that quietly shape campus life. Again and again, I found myself fighting tooth and nail for things that were objectively positive for the student body. Things that should’ve been easy, obvious and even welcomed somehow became uphill battles. “Take something as simple as booking a room. For Stanford Climate Week -- a series of educational panels and speaker events on topics like climate innovation, energy abundance, career pathways and nature-based solutions -- our student team had to fundraise and pay thousands of dollars just to reserve campus spaces. $5,650, to be exact, for events that aligned squarely with the University’s own academic mission and attracted over 1,300 individuals from across the Bay Area. And let’s not even mention the countless back and forth email chains with administrators and the outdated booking systems. “Even more perplexing, we were required to hire a designated vendor to place chairs in those rooms -- a service that brought total costs past $7,000 -- because students are not permitted to set up the chairs themselves..... “I’m writing this because these experiences reveal institutional flaws in how Stanford supports -- or fails to support -- student initiatives. If it takes thousands of dollars to book rooms, if student groups are unable to accept funding and if administrative infrastructure can’t keep pace with the urgency and ingenuity of students, something is off. Bureaucracy goes from a safeguard against risk to a bottleneck stifling creativity and bias to action.” ... Full op-ed by Stanford recent graduate and current masters student Samir Chowdhury at Stanford Daily. See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including 15,340 non-teaching personnel (19,169 if you add clinical and SLAC staff) as compared to 2,345 total faculty (1,738 of whom are members of the Academic Council) and 17,469 total students; also, highest administrative costs per student of any U.S. university at $48,231 annually per student, and that is solely for central administration and does not cover staff for student services, housing and similar activities. See also "From a Current Undergraduate Student: Stanford's Bureaucracy Undermines the University's Academic Mission" at our Stanford Concerns webpage as reprinted from Stanford Review, includiing this excerpt: “Former Provost John Etchemendy, in an interview with the Review, has been candid in his assessment of the university’s bloat. ‘When I first came to Stanford, I just felt that if you had a good idea, you could do it at Stanford -- anything was possible,’ Etchemendy said. ‘And now people will say that Stanford is a no-can-do university.’ Faculty and students alike are drowning in a sea of red tape. Processes that should take minutes, such as the procurement of services for campus events, now drag on for weeks, weighed down by unnecessary layers of approvals and oversight. “As one university insider put it, ‘Its [administrative size] has grown too much. And it's actually hampering the mission of the university.’ These layers of inefficiency don’t enhance the university -- they actively harm it.” See also Section 3 of our Back to Basics webpage, “Stanford’s Administrative Bureaucracy Must Be Reduced Significantly and Immediately in Both Size and Costs.” Ten Goals for Campus Leaders [Editor’s note : Four years ago, a group of Princeton alumni created Princetonians for Free Speech in order to start a discussion about policies and procedures that were increasingly working against campus free speech and academic freedom. Princetonians for Free Speech is now approaching 20,000 members which is close to a third of Princeton's living undergraduate alumni. Their founders subsequently helped create a nationwide network of similar entities, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance , and of which Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking is a member entity. I n their recent annual report, Princetonians for Free Speech highlighted ten goals for Princeton's leaders and which we commend to Stanford’s leaders as well.] Excerpts, and where the word "university" is substituted at times for "Princeton": Protect the reputation of the university and its commitment to diversity of viewpoints by adopting as a core principle an institutional policy such as the Kalven Report.... [ See our own compilation of the Kalven Report here .] Eliminate the use of DEI statements for faculty hiring, promotion and funding throughout the university. As compelled speech, such statements are ideological litmus tests that incentivize insincerity as they undermine freedom of expression. Develop a comprehensive program to teach all students about the university's policies. These actions should include: A required freshman orientation program that explains the university's commitment to freedom of expression and its policies around respectful disagreement.... Develop a program led by faculty whereby all university faculty, particularly those in leadership roles, affirm and celebrate the university’s commitment to freedom of expression and academic freedom.... Adopt principles for academic appointment similar to those embodied in the University of Chicago’s Shils Report, which prioritizes academic excellence in research and teaching.... [ See our own compilation of the Shils Report here .] Educate and train all administrators on the importance of free expression and viewpoint diversity. Administrators have an outsized and widely criticized influence on the student experience. They are likely to lack appreciation for freedom of thought and viewpoint diversity, and they often act to create restrictive boundaries on what they deem to be acceptable speech and expression.... Work with faculty to encourage academic and administrative departments to post statements in support of freedom of expression, academic freedom and viewpoint pluralism that resemble the departmental commitment to diversity and anti-racism. Faculty should be required to communicate that sharing private classroom discussion for the purpose of inviting external attention, ridicule or harassment is strictly forbidden. This rule should be made explicit in the honor code. The university should establish a free-standing ombuds office specifically dedicated to examining claims of breaches of free speech protections.... Reform the university's anonymous reporting system to ensure transparency, prompt notification, a right of rebuttal, and swift rejection of all complaints against First Amendment protected speech.... [These concerns very much exist at Stanford; see, for example, paragraphs 2.i, j. and k. at our Back to Basics webpage and “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.] Admissions reform: In marketing, recruitment and evaluation, the university should reform admissions to expand viewpoint diversity and reward open inquiry. Add recruitment efforts to encourage intellectual pluralism.” ... Full text at Princetonians for Free Speech website. Free Speech Requires a Pious Commitment Excerpts (links in the original): “Too many Americans who say they believe in free speech mean only their speech. Adopting progressive dogma , the Biden administration claimed that free speech had limits, and broadly suppressed dissenting views. On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order to restore traditional (and constitutionally mandated) protections, but his administration’s adherence to that order has been situational.... “The Supreme Court explained that with few exceptions, the ‘First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content’ (Ashcroft v. ACLU ) , or because it is false (United States v. Alvarez ) , or because it is hateful (Matal v. Tam ) . The remedy is more speech that corrects the record (Whitney v. California ) .... “The Trump administration’s efforts to regulate or defund universities that permit antisemitic speech or favor anti-Israel speakers is unconstitutional, though defunding universities that tolerate the intimidation of Jewish students is laudable. We don’t have to issue student visas to foreigners who oppose American principles, but once students arrive, unless they lied on their applications or commit crimes, deporting them for their distasteful views, as the administration apparently has sought to do, is inconsistent with American values.... “In Brandenburg v. Ohio , the Supreme Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it is ‘directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action’ and is ‘likely’ to do so.... “A majority of Americans believe government is the biggest threat to free speech. In 1783, George Washington warned that if ‘the Freedom of Speech may be taken away,’ then 'dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.' ..." Full op-ed at Real Clear Politics. A Solution to Campus Extremism Excerpts: “The ideological partisanship, dogmatism and bigotry on display in our society today are to some degree the fruit of our educational system. Too many college classrooms have become indoctrination camps.... “So what should we do? The answer isn’t complicated, but acting on it will take determination and courage. Colleges and universities must return to offering a rigorous liberal arts education that refuses to engage in indoctrination and challenges groupthink. College courses must actively cultivate the virtues of curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual humility, analytical rigor and, above all, dedication to the pursuit of truth.... “...Twenty-five years ago, Princeton University authorized me to establish and direct a program in civic education dedicated to helping young men and women become determined truth seekers, courageous truth speakers, lifelong learners and responsible citizens. “The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions provides undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with the intellectual community, opportunities and resources to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of truth. We insist, as does the university, on intellectual honesty and integrity. But the program welcomes students of all points of view. There are no political, religious or secularist orthodoxies or litmus tests. We treat no perspectives as out of bounds, nor do we exempt any idea from being challenged. In short, everything is on the table. Ideas stand or fall on their merits.” ... Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George at WSJ. See also the Stanford Civics Initiative . Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Ideological Teaching in Higher Ed Excerpt (links in the original): “Most Americans say colleges should prioritize critical thinking and citizenship over political activism and ideological teaching, according to a new poll from Vanderbilt University . “The survey of 1,033 U.S. adults, conducted Nov. 7-10, found that 90 percent believe developing the ‘ability to think more logically’ is very or most important for a college education. “Fewer Americans support colleges getting involved in politics. Just 28 percent said universities should engage in broader political debates. “Additionally, 85 percent said colleges should help students ‘get along with and understand people,’ and 80 percent supported strengthening students’ ability to be a ‘more useful citizen.’...” Full article at Campus Reform. Other Articles of Interest College and University Leaders Discuss How Campuses Are Preparing for the Future NY Times Deal Book panel consists of Stanford President Jon Levin along with Sian Leah Beilock (Dartmouth), Daniel Diermeier (Vanderbilt), Carmen Twillie Ambar (Oberlin), Ron Daniels (Johns Hopkins), James Harris (U San Diego) and SUNY (John B. King). Full video at YouTube (1 hour 19 minutes). Recent NBC Poll Shows Nearly Two-Thirds of Americans Say College Degree Isn’t Worth the Cost Full article at College Fix. See also “Overton Insights Poll Finds Just 14% of Voters Think Bachelor’s Degree Is Worth the Cost" at College Fix and “Most Americans Don’t See Value of Four-year College Degrees” at The Hill . Meet the Millionaire Masters of Early Decision at Colleges Full article at NY Times. AI May Be Scoring Your College Essay; Welcome to the New Era of Admissions Full article at AP. See also “Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Warns AI Could Think for Itself in Four Years” at Harvard Crimson . The American Higher Education Restoration Act Full text as PDF download at James Martin Center. Peer Review Gone Wild Full text as PDF download at James Martin Center. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Why We Can’t Stop Clicking on Rage Bait “Rage bait is the negative, vengeful cousin of clickbait. Where clickbait titillates your imagination with an alluring headline (‘You’ll never believe what happened next!’) that nudges you to click, rage bait engages negative emotions, often provoking you to make harsh comments.” A Trustworthy AI Assistant for Investigative Journalists Cancer-promoting DNA Circles Hitchhike on Chromosomes to Spread to Daughter Cells Teen Video Game Addiction -- Five Things to Know The Hottest Stanford Computer Science Class Isn't Banning AI Tools, It's Embracing Them (Business Week) "What matters now isn’t AI prompt hacks but years of domain knowledge that let professors ask the right questions and teach students to do the same. As creation gets cheap, the premium shifts to human judgment, framing and ethical use that keep powerful tools productive rather than misleading.” -- Cal State Chico Professors Zach Justus and Nik Janos December 1, 2025 Universities Need Better Communication with the Public That Funds Them Excerpts (links in the original): “The acrimony between red America and many universities will not be easily or quickly resolved. “I profoundly disagree with some of the demands made by the federal and state governments to control the operations of universities. But I also believe that university administrators and faculty have lost touch with the public on issues relating to university governance, academic freedom, scholarly research and classroom pedagogy.... “The universities can plausibly argue that their research work, particularly in the sciences, requires considerable expertise to assess its merit -- expertise beyond the common knowledge of the polity. And this research undeniably provides enormous economic, medical, environmental and military benefits to our nation. “But this powerful point only begins the discussion. Several rejoinders must be addressed. “Not all academic disciplines provide the kinds of tangible benefits associated with the hard sciences. What, then, justifies the independence, indeed the existence, of Humanities Departments? ... “Scholars can justifiably assert the need for freedom to push the boundaries of their disciplines without being chilled by the oversight of government monitors. But do they deserve the special freedom that some universities provide to comment on a range of political, social and moral issues unrelated to their areas of expertise because they are academic appointees? ... “A final issue relates to classroom pedagogy. To the taxpayer, universities are teaching institutions as well as research institutions. Yet some professors do little teaching and seem to resent their teaching assignments.... “...too often, we hear about classes in which debate and inquiry is stifled to pursue a professor’s ideological agenda. These accusations may be false or overstated. But faculty need to be willing to discuss, openly and with candor, what happens in their classrooms to respond to these challenges. “Put simply, whoever speaks for public universities has to engage in nuanced dialogue with the public if they want to reestablish the polity’s trust in the academy.” Full op-ed by UC Davis Prof. Emeritus Alan Brownstein at The Hill. The New Must-Have College Admissions Skill -- Tolerating Other Viewpoints Excerpts (links in the original): “For years, high-schoolers have boasted in college applications about learning Latin, leading the chess club or acing Advanced Placement Physics. “Now there is a new way to get a leg up: Show how well you can disagree with people. “Elite schools like Harvard , Columbia, Emory and Wellesley have added essay questions in the last couple of years asking applicants to recount a dispute with someone whose beliefs differ from their own. Known as the “disagreement essay,” its rise comes as conservatives accuse top schools of being hotbeds of liberal groupthink where students can’t tolerate dissent.... “Besides the essays, colleges are using other ways to assess whether students can handle disagreements. A handful of schools -- including Columbia, the University of Chicago and Northwestern -- started accepting something called a ‘Dialogues’ report this fall from a peer-tutoring site. It pairs high-schoolers with opposing views to discuss subjects such as abortion, immigration and gun control over Zoom calls. They score each other on metrics like curiosity and listening skills, and can submit their results to colleges.” ... Full op-ed at WSJ. Harvard’s Workshops Won’t Fix a Campus Afraid to Speak Excerpts (links in the original): “Harvard wants the world to know it is taking open inquiry seriously again. “Last week, the Harvard Gazette ran a glowing report announcing that the university is ‘building momentum on open inquiry.’ It showcased new workshops, training sessions for teaching fellows, dialogue exercises for first-year students, and online modules imported from the Constructive Dialogue Institute -- all designed to teach students how to listen better, argue respectfully, and understand those who disagree with them. “As a Harvard graduate who cares deeply about the institution’s intellectual health, I wish I could say this represents a substantive shift. “The initiatives Harvard is touting are not meaningless; they may even prove helpful. But they are largely cosmetic. Harvard is confusing the aesthetics of open inquiry with the structures that make open inquiry possible. And in doing so, it risks masking the deeper, far more dangerous realities of its current academic climate while permitting administrators to claim progress they have not earned. “Harvard doesn’t have a crisis of conversational skills. It has a crisis of fear -- fear among students, faculty, and researchers that certain ideas carry real social and professional risk. And that fear is documented. “Harvard’s own Report of the Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group (October 2024) makes the point plainly: 45 percent of students hesitate to share views on controversial issues in class; 51 percent of faculty and staff feel reluctant to teach such material; 41 percent are wary of pursuing research on politically or socially sensitive topics. These findings were reported not by critics but by Harvard Magazine and the Boston Globe , which noted widespread self-censorship across the political spectrum driven by peer judgment, social-media backlash, and career concerns.” ... [Followed by: Why Faculty and Students Self-Censor and Why Training Won’t Fix It, What Harvard Is Offering, What Harvard Is Not Offering, What Students Actually Need, The Cost of This Approach, The False Narrative of Progress, What Real Reform Requires, The Challenge, and What’s at Stake.] Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest How AI Is Changing Higher Education Op-eds by 15 scholars at Chronicle of Higher Education. The Student Op-Ed That Texas A&M Refused to Publish Full article at College Fix. Schools of Civic Thought Are on the Rise, but Are Students Interested? Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. What’s New This Season at Stanford Art Museums Stanford’s Community Law Clinic Celebrates Its New Location in Redwood City Top Chef Joins Stanford Bioengineers to Rethink Sustainable Food ********** “The freedom to explore and present new, unconventional, and even unpopular ideas is essential to the academic mission of the university; therefore, Stanford shall promote the widest possible freedom of expression, consistent with the university’s legal and moral obligations to prevent harassment and discrimination.” – From the Statement on Freedom of Expression at Stanford November 24, 2025 Dear Readers: Thank you for being part of our community. We wish you a Thanksgiving filled with peace and gratitude. *********** Is the Solution to AI a Return to Original Concepts of an Undergraduate Education? Editor’s note: Prior Newsletters have included articles expressing concerns about how AI may be undermining current teaching methods. A number of the articles likewise have suggested that instead of looking for ways to detect and block student use of AI, AI should be seen as a partner in teaching combined with more direct interactions between faculty and students to assure students are mastering the material no matter how the students are learning that material. Which might mean more widespread use of tutorials and seminars as has been the case at Oxford and Cambridge which ironically were the models for our initial U.S. colleges. At Stanford, this would mean implementing a more personalized education and possibly also copying Oxford, Cambridge and others by reducing the undergraduate degree to three years instead of four. It might also mean postponing the increases already underway in Stanford’s undergraduate enrollment (as one alum has noted, it you add 200 to 250 to each entering class, per the article following this one, that means an increase in the undergraduate population at the end of four years by 800 to a thousand or more but with no announced increases in student housing or tenure-line faculty). What might be done instead would be to significantly improve the quality of residential education while at the same time redirecting Stanford’s high administrative costs per student to resources devoted instead solely to undergraduate teaching. In this regard, see "Warning Signs in the Numbers" at our Stanford Concerns webpage including Stanford's $48,231 annual administrative cost per student (and that's solely for central administrative services and not student or similar services), an unfavorable ratio of faculty to students as compared to peer institutions and a surprisingly low percentage of Stanford alumni who are donating as also compared to peer institutions. As a start, Stanford might test the concept by offering an alternative curricular option for incoming as well as existing students. With all of this in mind, we asked Google AI to describe a current Oxford undergraduate education and are reproducing below the response in its entirety: * * * * * * * * * * “An undergraduate education at Oxford is characterized by a strong emphasis on independent study, world-class experts, and a personalized tutorial system that involves weekly meetings with a tutor, often one-on-one, to discuss submitted work. Students supplement these tutorials with lectures, seminars, practical sessions, and extensive independent research, which can include lab work, fieldwork, and research opportunities, averaging around 40 hours of study per week. “Key components of Oxford's undergraduate education: Tutorial System: This is the core of the academic experience. Students meet with their tutor, an expert in the subject, to discuss written work, engage in in-depth discussion, and receive personalized feedback. Lectures and Seminars: Students attend lectures that cover core topics and participate in seminars and practical sessions for specific skill development or in-depth topic exploration. Independent Study: A significant portion of the learning is self-directed. Students are expected to conduct their own research, read widely, and develop their own knowledge and understanding of the subject. World-Class Faculty and Resources: Students learn from academic experts, many of whom are world-leading researchers. They also have access to resources like laboratories and opportunities for fieldwork and research. Course Structure: The majority of Bachelor of Arts degrees are three years long, though some, like language degrees with a year abroad, may be four years. Teaching takes place within central Oxford, in college or departmental buildings, though some courses may involve activities outside of Oxford. 6. Academic Divisions: The university is organized into four divisions: Humanities; Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences; Medical Sciences; and Social Sciences.” * * * * * * * * * * We then asked ChatGPT to describe concerns facing the modern university and have posted at our Ask AI webpage a more complete response, including this ChatGPT-produced summary: “The modern university’s drift can be summarized as: From formation of the mind → To credentialing and job training From truth-seeking → To knowledge production and research emphasis From unified intellectual tradition → To hyper-specialization From debate and disputation → To avoidance of intellectual risk From small-scale collegial community → To large bureaucratic administration From moral and intellectual formation → To therapeutic and consumer-oriented models From great texts → To ephemeral trends and ideological agendas From coherent mission → To multipurpose, multi-agenda institutions From tutor-led thoughtfulness → To online modules and mass instruction From intellectual humility → To institutional self-certainty “What was once a community of scholars dedicated to cultivating free and rational minds has become a complex, bureaucratic, multi-purpose enterprise whose incentives often run counter to the original ideals of education.” See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Stanford Expands Access with Larger First-Year and Transfer Classes Excerpts : “This fall, Stanford University enrolled 1,866 first-year undergraduate students, representing a larger class than in recent years as the university takes steps to expand access to a Stanford education. “In addition, Stanford enrolled the largest class of transfer students in recent memory, with 90 students coming from 76 colleges and universities, including 36 community colleges. “In all, Stanford enrolled 196 more first-year and transfer students compared to last year, in an intentional effort to increase the class size to give a greater number of talented, exceptionally well-qualified students the opportunity to earn a Stanford degree. University leaders are studying possibilities to further expand future undergraduate classes in a significant way, while also preserving the experience of being a Stanford student.... “Families of undergraduates with annual incomes below $100,000 pay no tuition, room, or board, and those with incomes below $150,000 pay no tuition. Families with higher incomes also may receive aid based on their financial circumstances. “The students composing the Class of 2029 took varied paths to arrive on campus: Two-thirds of domestic first-year students graduated from public high schools, and 20% of all new undergraduates are the first in their families to attend college. They speak 81 languages at home, and they represent all 50 states and 65 countries.” ... Full article at Stanford Report. See also Stanford Daily with data re racial composition, etc. See also “StanfordNext Project Devises Long-Term Campus Growth Initiative” at Stanford Daily . An Online Loophole That Promotes Violence Excerpts : . . . . “Outrage keeps us online. Fear generates clicks. Division sells. None of this is accidental; it is a system carefully designed. Social-media companies build products that thrive on our worst impulses and then hide behind the claim that they are neutral conduits for speech. But neutrality and manipulation can’t coexist.... “Legislation I am introducing with Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly will bring our legal code into the 21st century. The idea behind the Algorithm Accountability Act is simple: If companies use algorithms to influence the reach of content, they should bear responsibility when those algorithms negligently cause harm. We hold automakers accountable when a design flaw causes an accident. We hold pharmaceutical companies accountable when their products cause injury. There is no reason Big Tech should be treated differently. “Some will raise the alarm that this threatens the First Amendment. It doesn’t. Free speech means you can say what you want in the digital town square. Social-media companies host that town square, but algorithms rearrange it. These algorithms decide who stands next to you, who shouts the loudest, and how often you hear the same angry echo until it drowns out everything else.” ... Full op-ed by Utah Sen. John Curtis at WSJ. Other Articles of Interest From FIRE -- Three-Quarters of Americans Say Free Speech Is Headed in the Wrong Direction Full article including graphs and charts at Substack: “From July of this year, Democrats who think things are heading in the right direction [regarding freedom of speech] fell from 17% to 11%, Independents fell from 31% to 19%, and Republicans fell from 69% to 55%.” The Heckler’s Veto Is Killing Universities’ Credibility Full op-ed by Cal State Long Beach Prof. Kevin Wallsten at Real Clear Education. At This College, the English Dept. Is Out; ‘Human Narratives’ Is In Full article at NY Times: “The departments of English, classics, philosophy, world languages and Spanish and Latino studies, for example, will be grouped into the tentatively titled School of Human Narratives and Creative Expressions. The psychology, linguistics, social work and religion departments will make up the School of Human Behavior and Well-Being.” It’s the Wild West of College Sports Full op-ed at WSJ by Cody Campbell, chair of the Texas Tech board of regents and former college football player: “We’re heading toward a place where college sports are going to become very, very small and very limited, and we’re going to lose something.” Strengthening America's Education System to Secure Our Future Full op-ed by Hoover director and Stanford Prof. Condoleezza Rice at Freedom Frequency: “Education is undoubtedly important for any country, but it is particularly important for the United States of America because we are not united by ethnicity, nationality, or religion. We are united by a creed -- a belief that it doesn’t matter where you came from, it matters where you are going.” Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. GSB Deepens Its Commitment to AI Reimagining the Future of Food Light Causes Atomic Layers to Do the Twist Lupus Is a Nearly Universal Virus with Selective Effects Use of Machine Learning in Transplants Type 1 Diabetes Cured in Mice with Gentle Blood Stem Cell and Pancreatic Islet Transplant How Medications Change Our Gut Microbiome ********** "Use your time to be curious, to explore, and to be grateful for the opportunities that are in front of you.” -- Stanford President Jon Levin November 17, 2025 The Education of Service Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “My former student had just attended Condoleezza Rice’s Ogden Lecture at Brown. His words captured something I’ve seen again and again as an educator: when young people meet real public servants instead of their social-media caricatures, cynicism gives way to curiosity. “Like Cheney, Rice has long been flattened into a symbol, admired by some, despised by others, but rarely understood as a person shaped by conviction and duty. In today’s political echo chamber, such figures are treated as relics or villains. Yet when students actually hear them speak, they encounter something missing from modern public life: moral seriousness. “At Brown, Rice traced her improbable journey from segregated Birmingham to the State Department, describing how mentors, discipline, and faith shaped her path. ‘We have a conceit,’ she told students , ‘that your mentors and your role models have to look like you… Sometimes you’ll be the first.’ “In a climate obsessed with identity, that line felt almost revolutionary; a reminder that leadership is measured by responsibility, not racial representation.... “My student described how classmates who had planned to boycott the lecture left inspired. ‘Ms. Rice surprised many with her charisma, her knowledge, and her care for the country,’ he wrote. ‘Some of us walked out wanting to be Secretary of State -- or at least to study international politics.' “He added that a classmate summed it up simply: ‘I didn’t agree with every point she made, but it was an important experience to hear her talk.’ “Those are not partisan reactions; they are civic ones. They show what happens when universities foster engagement instead of insulation.” ... Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. See also "Levin and Rice Discuss Challenges for Universities in Era of Misinformation" at Stanford Daily . Stanford’s Unsustainable Charade re Student Use of AI Excerpts (links in the original): “Somewhere between the launch of ChatGPT and the latest 'no-AI' syllabus clause, we’ve arrived at an absurd impasse: students hide their AI use, professors pretend not to notice, and universities collect six-figure tuition to sustain the fiction. With sources reporting as high as 90% of students now cheating using AI tools , we all clearly can't continue pretending that such uses are 'strictly prohibited,' as if policy statements could stop a technological tsunami. Everyone knows the truth, yet here we are, pretending the emperor is fully clothed when he's standing naked in the quad. Thus far, the response to AI use has been dominated by largely ineffective attempts to police cheating, rather than acclimating to the new reality. Research keeps showing that AI detectors are 'neither accurate nor reliable,' since light paraphrasing of AI-generated text breaks most systems. Vanderbilt publicly disabled Turnitin's AI detector after months of testing, and the University of Pittsburgh's teaching center followed suit, warning that current detectors create unacceptable false positives. Inside Higher Ed reports that Montclair State, UT Austin, and Northwestern told faculty not to rely on detectors. As University of Adelaide professors concluded: ‘We should assume students will be able to break any AI-detection tools, regardless of their sophistication.’ The only result of policing was forcing students to reword LLM-generated text or nudge code style. “Perhaps the greatest irony in all this is that developing the ability to work more efficiently with AI is actually a highly in-demand skill.... The only rational way forward is to stop fighting AI and assimilate it into education.” ... Full op-ed at Stanford Review. See also “Faculty Lead AI Usage Conversations on Campus” at Inside Higher Ed : “Survey data shows a majority of college students are aware of appropriate AI use cases in the classroom because their instructors -- not administrators -- set the expectations.” See also “Teaching Responsible Use of GenAI in Graduate Studies” at Times Higher Education . The Decline of the Great American Research University Excerpts (links in the original): “American universities are heading downwards in a spiral of self-delusion. They still talk about their commitment to excellence, their great achievements, their leadership of the world of science, but they lament the damage that President Trump has inflicted, is inflicting, or is about to inflict on them.... “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s response to ‘government activity’ put it similarly: ‘MIT continues to press forward with its vital research and education mission, including on topics such as human health, energy innovation, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and other areas important to national security, economic competitiveness, and quality of life for all Americans.’ “The cold reality, however, is that American university research, particularly in the sciences, began to decline decades ago, and Trump had nothing to do with it. The decline was largely self-inflicted.... “Americans generally focus on the domestic rankings published by U.S. News and World Report , and maybe some business-school rankings, the Princeton Review , or even the alternative Washington Monthly rankings. When they look at global rankings, they usually see only the 'big four': the Shanghai Rankings (aka the Academic Ranking of World Universities); the U.S. News Best Global Universities ; the QS; and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the latter two of which are published in the United Kingdom.... “But this is a deceptive story. Those four rankings are not the entirety of the global-ranking scene. There are a dozen others, generally published by universities or research centers, that rely on publicly available sources rather than surveys or data submitted by institution.... [Followed by discussion of methodologies used in ranking universities worldwide.] “At the same time, the recruitment and promotion of faculty has been seriously compromised. At University of California campuses and other institutions, prospective faculty were until recently subject to political loyalty oaths in the form of diversity statements . In the social sciences and in pharmacology and medical research , there are signs of a widespread crisis of replicability. "In contrast, the leading Chinese universities have maintained rigorously meritocratic policies.... “So, the relentless process continues. Every year American researchers produce relatively fewer papers, and their quality declines while Chinese universities produce relatively more papers and more high-quality papers in science and engineering. The process is especially apparent in fields like physics, robotics, and artificial intelligence. And so the scientific world is about to face a dramatic shift in its center of gravity.” Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education. But see also “America’s Universities Are National Security Assets” at Inside Higher Ed : “The vast majority of our 4,000-odd colleges and universities (including the elite ones) are hardly the ivory towers so associated with so-called woke movements and high-profile culture wars. Many, in fact, are the R&D labs of our national security infrastructure.” See also our compilation of the Shils Report regarding the recruitment and promotion of faculty and as long posted at our Chicago Trifecta webpage. Harvard Has an Ethics Problem Excerpts: “‘Should I let go of my Zionist friends?’ asks an anonymous Harvard student. A Harvard Crimson editor responds: yes, the student is entitled to end those friendships. “What sounds like a thoughtful meditation on friendship and conviction instead reads like a dispatch from a campus that no longer knows what truth is -- or what friendship requires. The anonymous student, Jewish and anti-Zionist, worries that his or her friends’ politics taint his or her certainty of their decency. “It’s quintessentially Harvard: polished and cerebral, yet utterly vacuous. There is no effort to test the moral assumptions beneath the question. Is Zionism truly a moral stain? Can friendship survive deep disagreement? What do we owe to truth when feelings conflict with facts? None of this is considered. “The result is bloodless relativism, where ethics are reduced to personal comfort and truth becomes optional. In miniature, it captures the intellectual and moral decay of elite higher education -- where moral reasoning has become branding, and virtue is measured by separation, not encounter.... [Followed by these topics: the death of viewpoint diversity, selective moral outrage, moral education without moral seriousness, why students are so fragile, from Harvard Yard to everywhere, the civic consequences, and recovering courage and truth.] “Universities were once custodians of civilization -- places where intellect met humility, and freedom and truth were inseparable. If Harvard has forgotten this, others must remember: the smaller colleges, classical schools, and local communities that still believe argument is not division but the lifeblood of a free people. Because a nation that forgets how to argue will soon forget how to live together. “The tragedy of the Crimson’s column is not that one student wonders about her friends. It’s that an entire institution has forgotten how to wonder rightly. Until Harvard rediscovers the meaning of Veritas (truth pursued through reasoned debate and friendship across difference) it will continue to mistake therapy for thought and virtue for vanity. “And the rest of us will pay the price for its failure.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest On the Spectrum Between Free Speech and Cancel Culture, Where Are Today’s Colleges? Full article at The Hill: “As political polarization intensifies, America’s colleges and universities face threats to free speech from both the left and right. Campus conservatives risk ostracization, shaming or social media mobbing for expressing unpopular views on hot-button identity and social justice issues. Complaints about progressive faculty periodically go viral, triggering torrents of online abuse . Students protesting Israel’s conduct in Gaza risk suspension, expulsion, arrest, doxxing and retraction of offers of employment.” The College Kids Who Can’t Do Basic Math Full article by Rhodes College undergraduate Tanner Nau at Free Press: "A report released last week by the University of California San Diego, which has about 45,000 students and is one of America’s highest-ranked public universities, said that the number of entering first-year students whose math skills fall below middle-school level ‘increased nearly thirtyfold’ from 2020 to 2025 -- to roughly one out of every eight new students.” Also covered at Newsweek . How Yale Escaped the Crackdown on Higher Education Full article at WSJ. Higher Education Needs Receivership, Not Reforms Full op-ed by UC Santa Cruz Prof. Emeritus John Ellis at WSJ. The Perverse Impact of Grade Inflation Full op-ed at WSJ. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Why AI Still Struggles to Tell Fact from Belief Be Careful What You Tell Your AI Chatbot New Ultrasound Technique Could Help Aging and Injured Brains ********** “Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.” -- George Orwell November 10, 2025 The Global Free Speech Recession Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “The administration’s most alarming actions blur the distinction between protected and unprotected speech as well as words and violence. Right after the Kirk tragedy, Attorney General Pam Bondi said : ‘We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.’ Bondi later walked this statement back, saying that ‘Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.’ But since then, the administration has only continued to conflate protected speech with violence.... “There’s little subtlety here. The White House has flagged Americans it considers anti-American, anti-capitalist, or anti-Christian -- none of which the memo defines -- as potential national security threats. The president’s memo asserts a vast left-wing conspiracy to incite political violence and then directs the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices to ‘investigate all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies.’ “This guilt-by-association tactic is absolutely chilling in a free society.... “Two years ago, The Future of Free Speech, a nonpartisan think tank at Vanderbilt University, released a report, ‘The Free Speech Recession Hits Home .’ The report analyzed free speech developments in 22 democracies between 2015 and 2022. It found something alarming: ‘Over 75 percent of the developments discussed are speech restrictive.’ ..." [Followed by specific examples around the world.] Full op-ed by FIRE Vice President Matthew Harwood at Substack and as originally published at Dispatch . For convenience, we also have posted a PDF copy of the Vanderbilt report referenced above, “Mapping Laws and Regulations Affecting Free Speech in 22 Open Democracies” at our Commentary from Others webpage. Responding to Skepticism in Higher Education Excerpt (link in the original): “For months, the biggest headlines from American campuses have centered on legal battles with the Trump administration. These arise, in part, from growing public skepticism (especially, but not exclusively among conservatives) about U.S. campuses. “Removed from these combative headlines -- and receiving far less attention -- are proactive steps being taken by many universities to get at the heart of concerns felt by many Americans. “Presidents and senior leaders from nine of America’s private universities gathered on Oct. 7–8 in Washington, D.C., for discussions about what more could be done to ‘model healthy civic life and intellectual exchange’ on U.S. campuses. “Convened by Jonathan Haidt’s Constructive Dialogue Institute, these universities included Brown University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Tufts University, Vanderbilt University and Yale University. “Participants in the two-day summit worked to ‘develop innovative models for strengthening constructive dialogue, open inquiry and free expression in higher education.' ..." [Followed by examples of actions being taken at various campuses.] Full article at Deseret News. See also “Refining Trump’s Higher-Education Reform” by Hoover Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics . Universities Have a Logic Problem Excerpts (link in the original): “There is nothing like political ideology to create difficulties with thinking, and the situation worsens when it is channeled through institutions. Among the most pronounced sources of such difficulties, ironically, is the university.... “While our higher education tradition in America has brought us many successes, it is also creating problems, notably in how we think. “That may be counterintuitive: On our college campuses, we tend to address what we think are serious problems seriously. In reality, they often become points of disagreement, stemming from differences in perception.... “One of the most reliable places in the university system to locate the logical problem of induction is in our law schools. Law, as practiced in academia, is especially vulnerable to such error because, among other problems, it systematically mixes law and politics as teaching content, thereby portraying law as an instrument of politics—and, by extension, of ideology—and ideology as an instrument of justice." ... [Followed by specific examples of different faculty approaches.] Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. See also “Academia Has a Freedom of Speech Problem That Starts with Professors” by Kansas State Prof. Emeritus Dennis Weisman at The Hill . Faculty Face Widespread Punishment for Speech While Administrators and Unions Stay Silent Excerpts (link in the original): “The ideal of academic freedom has always rested on a simple promise: scholars must be free to pursue truth, wherever it leads. But new data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) show how far higher education has drifted from that ideal. “In FIRE’s latest survey , an astonishing 94 percent of faculty reported suffering some negative consequence for their speech. These range from lost professional relationships (47 percent) and workplace shunning (40 percent) to seeking psychological counseling to cope with the fallout (27 percent) or even losing their jobs (20 percent). “These are not isolated anecdotes. They describe a profession under siege.... “FIRE’s Sean Stevens put it plainly, stating, ‘Support for academic freedom should never depend on the views being expressed, but our survey shows that’s exactly what’s happening.’ His colleague Nathan Honeycutt added, ‘Cancellation campaigns are often wrapped in the language of preventing emotional harm. But it’s the mobs themselves that inflict lasting mental anguish on academics.’ “That’s the paradox of the modern campus. Speech is punished in the name of compassion. Administrators invoke ‘well-being’ as a justification for silencing, yet it’s dissenters -- not mobs -- who bear the real psychological cost. The result is a culture of timidity that corrodes the mission of higher education."... Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest Why FIRE Is Now Judging Bias-Reporting Systems More Harshly Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also “Stanford’s Program re Bias ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage . A European Threat to the First Amendment Full op-ed at Law & Liberty. The Free World Is Losing the Information War; Here’s How It Can Win Full op-ed at West Point Modern War Institute: “A third of Americans do not believe the media should be able to report news without state censorship.... Nearly one in five believe the NATO alliance is no longer necessary.... At the core of each of these beliefs and many others are disinformation campaigns that overstate the dangers of free speech....” Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Interview of President Emeritus John Hennessy Debunking Common Free Speech Myths Academic Integrity Working Group Addresses Generative AI and Exam Policies Five Things to Know About the Dangers of High Blood Pressure Is There a Limit to Indoor Nature’s Benefits? ********** “If the rising generation of students is taught, either implicitly or explicitly, to censor themselves or to despise those with different viewpoints, they will act accordingly in the public square after they graduate. But if they’re taught to debate vigorously -- with an exchange of arguments and evidence -- in pursuit of truth instead of victory at all costs, they’ll take that spirit of free speech and mutual respect into the public square.” -- UNC Prof. Jed W. Atkins November 3, 2025 Is Stanford Getting Involved in Censorship Again? Editor's note: We don’t know the answer to this question although the question has become relevant with the issuance of a letter dated October 22, 2025 to Stanford from the House Judiciary Committee. For reader convenience, we have posted a copy of this letter at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage along with a copy of the agenda for a conference held at Stanford on September 25 and 26 on the topic, although there also was an invitation-only event held the day before the public conference, that is, on September 24 and that is specifically referenced in the House letter and subsequent commentaries. With issues like this resurfacing, we have long suggested, specifically in Section 4 of our Back to Basics webpage, that the proper role of a university is to engage in front-line, independent and scholar-based research and teaching. Hosting panels and conferences to discuss relevant issues can further that research and teaching, although one would expect strong viewpoint diversity to be expressed at any such panels and conferences. The concerns arise when a unit at Stanford -- including its 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities -- starts to engage in advocacy and implementation activities and with the Stanford name being used to give credibility to whatever is then being advocated and implemented. We leave it to readers to decide if that has happened here. From the House Judiciary Committee letter: “Foreign censorship laws, regulations, enforcement actions, and judicial orders may have the effect of limiting Americans’ ability to access constitutionally protected speech in the United States. In fact, this seems to be the intended effect of many foreign censorship efforts.... The Committee is concerned that Stanford, and specifically its Cyber Policy Center, may be one of the third parties engaged in assisting foreign governments attempting to suppress American speech.... This collaboration with foreign censorship officials is even more alarming in light of Stanford’s past efforts to facilitate domestic government censorship of lawful speech” [through its now-defunct Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities]. * * * * * * * * * A week after issuance of this letter from the House Judiciary Committee, commentator Michael Shellenberger posted his own analysis of the potential concerns. Excerpts : “In the spring of 2022, former President Barack Obama gave a major policy address at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, where he laid out a sweeping proposal for government censorship of social media platforms through the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act.... “At the heart of Obama’s vision for Internet censorship was legislation that would have authorized the US government’s National Science Foundation to authorize and fund supposedly independent NGOs to censor the Internet. The DHS and Stanford Internet Observatory, which was part of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, pioneered this censorship-by-proxy strategy as a way to get around the First Amendment in 2020 with posts raising concerns about the 2020 elections and in 2021 with ‘narratives’ expressing concern about the Covid vaccine.... “And Public has discovered that the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, which is led by Obama’s former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, is at the heart of a new, secretive, and possibly illegal censorship initiative that appears even more ambitious than the one Obama proposed in 2022. “On September 24 [2025] , the Cyber Policy Center hosted a secret dinner between its leaders and top censorship officials from Europe, UK, Brazil, California and Australia. The meeting was titled ‘Compliance and Enforcement in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape.’ Frank McCourt, the same person behind the Stanford Internet Observatory, financed the gathering through his ‘Project Liberty Institute,’ (PLI), toward which he gave $500 million to ‘strengthen democracy’ and ‘foster responsible technology.’ ... “A spokesperson for the Australian government said, ‘Whilst in attendance at Stanford for the 2-day conference, some attendees, including trust and safety researchers, industry, civil society, and government representatives, were also invited to attend an informal evening roundtable event organised by Stanford University entitled, ‘Compliance and Enforcement in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape.’ ... “Much of the following two days of the public conference were focused on coordinating government censorship (‘regulation’) of social media platforms, and the other nations that attended the meeting are all intensively involved in censoring their citizens and US tech companies.... “Why did Stanford Cyber Policy Center hold this meeting, what is its strategy for global censorship? Who leaked the agenda to Public and why? And what can be done to stop Stanford, Brazil, Australia, the EU and others from realizing their totalitarian censorial vision?” Full op-ed by Michael Shellenberger at X (October 28, 2025). See also these related articles: Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center Coordinates International Internet Censorship” at Stanford Review (October 29, 2025): “We urge Stanford to cease the promotion of censorship at home and abroad. Stanford should not be the ‘Lead Academic Partner’ advising foreign institutions on censoring their citizens. Free societies require free speech to flourish; universities must defend the conditions of open inquiry, not erode them. When universities abandon that duty, they imperil both academic freedom and the democratic values they claim to serve.” "House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan Demands Stanford Turn Over Documents Relating to Foreign Censorship Scheme" at Substack (October 29, 2025). “Great Britain Averages 12,000 Arrests Per Year for Online Speech” at All Sides (October 2, 2025). "Civil Liberties Groups Say That the Authorities Are Over-policing the Internet" with detailed statistics and charts re number of arrests in the UK, cities with highest number of arrests, sentencing, etc. at Times of London (April 4, 2025). “Digital Services Act -- Does Internet Regulation Threaten Freedom of Expression?” at Max Planck Institute (July 21, 2025). “German-Style Internet Censorship Catches On Around the World” at Reason (October 12, 2020). “Freedom on the Net” with detailed analysis and statistics of benefits versus restrictions at Freedom House (2024). “Google Admits to Prior Censorship; Promises to End Bans of YouTube Accounts of Thousands of Americans Censored for Political Speech" at House Judiciary Committee website and including a link to letter from Google (September 23, 2025). “Mark Zuckerberg Says Biden Officials Would 'Scream' and 'Curse' When Seeking Removal of Facebook Content” at NBC News (January 10, 2025). “Zuckerberg Says He Regrets Caving to White House Pressure on Content” at Politico (August 26, 2024). Sanctioned Scholars -- The Price of Speaking Freely in Today’s Academy Excerpts (footnotes deleted): . . . . “In the classic model of a university, a professor does not simply transmit knowledge, but also is a guardian for and advocate of inquiry -- someone who models intellectual bravery. That ideal is under strain. Today, many faculty and scholars operate in a climate where speaking honestly may feel risky, and defending unpopular views dangerous. In such a climate, courage becomes a professional necessity. “Since 2000, almost 1,700 scholars have faced sanctions over their speech, with more than 300 of these cases resulting in termination or forced resignation. These campaigns have been driven by both on-campus actors -- such as students, faculty, and administrators -- and off-campus groups, including activist organizations, politicians, and members of the general public. They have also come from all across the political spectrum.... “FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire database independently tracks and documents the ways and reasons scholars in the United States have faced calls for sanction for their speech from 2000 to present. This database includes almost 1,700 documented sanction attempts, including a record number this year, with 300 of these attempts resulting in faculty terminations. Most of these incidents have occurred over the past decade. “While these records provide ample detail about the incidents themselves, they tell us little about the personal experiences of the scholars targeted. To address this gap, FIRE invited 635 scholars listed in the database who were sanctioned or targeted between 2020 and 2024 to participate in a survey. Of these, 209 completed our survey, yielding a 33% response rate." ... Full article at FIRE including detailed charts and quotes. A PDF copy of the full report can be downloaded here . New Stanford Speaker Series for Civil Disagreement Excerpt (links added): “KIND Snacks founder Daniel Lubetzky JD ’93 launched the Stanford Builders Forum , a new speaker series intended to promote respectful civil dialogue across lines of disagreement, with a talk at Stanford Law School (SLS) on Oct. 8. “The Forum comes as a gift from Lubetzky in an effort to increase sociopolitical dialogue on campus. As a program of ePluribus Stanford , an initiative by Provost Jenny Martinez aimed at enhancing student citizenship, Lubetzky’s donation will also support a new faculty fellow in Civic, Liberal and Global Education (COLLEGE ), the first-year course requirement for students to navigate self-definition as citizens. “Martinez and psychology professor Jamil Zaki joined Lubetzky on the panel, moderated by School of Humanities and Sciences Dean Debra Satz, sharing how their personal experiences navigating conflict reshaped their perspectives on communicating with others. “‘My father was a Holocaust survivor,’ Lubetzky said. ‘When I was nine years old, he started talking to me about what he went through. He terrified me … I wanted to build bridges between people so that what happened to him would not happen to people.’” ... Full article at Stanford Daily. Teaching Critical Thinking in the Age of AI Excerpt (links in the original): “[A student wrote,] ‘In class, the professor was discussing binaries, but I didn't really understand what they were. I asked ChatGPT about it, and it helped me figure it out.’ “This is probably one of the most unsettling reflections I have ever read from a student. Yet as we struggle in higher education to figure out how to integrate AI into our classrooms, it is also one of the most exciting. I want to tell you how I have finally -- after three long years of experimentation and wanting to give up -- figured it out: I’ve basically made AI my co-instructor.” ... Full op-ed by Merrimack College Prof. Dan Sarofian-Butin at Real Clear Education. Other Articles of Interest Universities Can’t Pursue Truth Without Viewpoint Diversity Full op-ed by Brown U Prof. Emeritus John Tomasi and NYU Prof. Jonathan Haidt at Inside Higher Ed. Colleges Face a Financial Reckoning; U Chicago Is Exhibit A Full article at WSJ. See also our Stanford Concerns webpage for data on Stanford’s administrative and other costs and Sections 3 and 4 of our Back to Basics webpage with suggestions for addressing those costs. Despite Naysayers and Rising Costs, Data Shows That College Still Pays Off for Students and for Society Overall Full op-ed by Columbia Prof. Stanley S. Litow at The Conversation. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Common Crystal Proves Ideal for Low-temperature Light Technology The Antidote to Loneliness Might be Recognizing How Much Others Care Eye Prosthesis Is the First to Restore Sight Lost to Macular Degeneration ********** October 27, 2025 Beyond the Research University Excerpts : . . . . “During World War II, Vannevar Bush ran the Office of Scientific Research and Development, which funded research for radar, guided missiles and even the Manhattan Project. In July 1945, he published a report to the president titled ‘Science: The Endless Frontier,’ writing that ‘scientific progress is essential’ to promote national security and public welfare. To achieve this, he wrote, the U.S. must ‘foster the opening of new frontiers’ by doing ‘basic research in the colleges, universities, and research institutes.’ “This was a brilliant idea, and it worked for decades. The list of successful university research is astounding. Start with Gatorade and work your way up (computing, mRNA, air bags). Students and professors make for cheap research labor. Even today, post doctorates toil at universities doing biotech research before being hired by drug companies.... “‘I think universities have become detached from society and from reality as well,’ Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice says in a podcast interview. ‘People take for granted some of the innovations that have come out of universities.’ True. Colleges also take for granted why we do research at universities in the first place. Change is needed.... “But who will step in? A public company can’t just fund billions for new quantum models or moon-shot cancer drugs without incurring losses, which would annoy shareholders. Universities can do basic research all day long because they aren’t in the business of generating income. “What we need is a new type of research organization with tax advantages and the ability to incur losses -- call it a Basic Research Entity, or BRE. It could hire researchers or even contract out to universities. It would be directed by corporations and government, with funding coming from corporate, government, venture-capital and even philanthropic sources. Intellectual property would be held in the BRE. No tax liability until the commercialization phase, much like today. Researchers could own a piece of future royalties. “The government gets what it wants -- basic research, disease cures -- and companies get new product ideas and access to patents, cutting out the university middleman. “Other models could work too.” ... Full op-ed at WSJ. The UVA Model for Settling with the Federal Government Excerpt : “Universities have been in fight mode with the Trump Administration, but it doesn’t have to be that way. On Wednesday [October 22, 2025] the University of Virginia signed an agreement with the Justice Department that pauses all federal investigations against the school, without an enormous ransom or coercive new mandates. “The agreement specifies that UVA and the government ‘affirm the importance of and their support for academic freedom.’ It says the agreement should not be read as ‘giving the United States authority to dictate the content of academic speech or curricula.’ That’s an important note for intellectual independence. “In return, UVA ‘acknowledges its obligation as a public institution,’ supported by federal funds, ‘to maintain admissions, employment, discipline and speech policies and practices that prevent the suppression of speech and discrimination based on political viewpoint.’ Under the new agreement, Virginia also pledges to meet the standards laid out as ‘best practices’ in the Administration’s July guidance for schools that take federal funding.” ... Full editorial at WSJ. See also articles at NY Times and Washington Post . See also “How the Compact Curtails Academic Freedom” by former Stanford law school dean and Prof. Emeritus Paul Brest at Inside Higher Ed . Vanderbilt Didn’t Accept or Reject the Compact; the Chancellor Plans to Provide Feedback Instead Excerpts (links in the original): “Vanderbilt University’s leader posted a response to the compact on Monday [October 20] , taking a markedly different tack. “Whereas presidents for seven out of the nine original recipients of the compact explicitly stated they were declining to sign the document as written, Daniel Diermeier, Vanderbilt’s chancellor, wrote, ‘Despite reporting to the contrary, we have not been asked to accept or reject the draft compact. Rather, we have been asked to provide feedback and comments as part of an ongoing dialogue, and that is our intention.’... “Diermeier has drawn attention in recent months for imploring higher education to change, though he hasn’t endorsed the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics. He has been especially adamant about rejecting 'creeping politicization' and embracing institutional neutrality -- the idea that colleges should not take positions on current events -- which is included in the compact.”... Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta re free speech, institutional neutrality and standards for the hiring and promotion of faculty. What College Rankings Are Missing Excerpts (links in the original): “Inscribed upon the exterior of Harvard Yard’s Dexter Gate are the words, ‘Enter to grow in wisdom,’ while the gate’s interior admonishes those leaving: ‘Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.’ ... “These are beautiful aspirations, which our institutions of higher learning are right to strive for. Nonetheless, our evaluations and rankings of colleges and universities frequently neglect these matters.... “In a chart we have prepared, one can take a glance at how students at the 429 institutions providing at least 50 respondents each see their college’s contributions. Harvard falls about in the middle of the pack for average scores on these four questions. While this is a far cry from Harvard’s dominant place in conventional rankings of colleges, it is nonetheless considerably better than we do in the Foundation for Individual Rights of Expression’s annual free speech rankings . The two issues -- student formation and academic freedom -- are also closely linked. As we have argued at length elsewhere , virtues such as patience, courage, justice, and humility are not only important in their own right, but are also crucial for achieving the University’s primary academic goals of education and research. Without courage, students will struggle to express controversial views in or out of class, while without patience, justice, or humility, they will struggle to give those they disagree with a fair and impartial hearing.” ... Full op-ed and chart by Harvard Prof. Tyler J. VanderWeele and Associate Director for Research Brendan W. Case at Harvard Crimson. Other Articles of Interest As More Question the Value of a Degree, Colleges Fight to Prove Their Return on Investment Full article at Hechinger Report. Interest in American MBA Programs Shrinks, but Schools Across Asia Are Booming Full article at WSJ. Harvard Cuts PhD Admissions by 60% to 75% Full article at Harvard Crimson. How English Departments Became Broken Full op-ed at James Martin Center. Can VR Teach Students Ethics? Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. How Stanford Is Bringing AI Into the Classroom Why Wall Street Is Booming While Main Street Is Stagnating Roadmap for the Future of Sustainability Education What Does It Take to Bridge Differences? Exercise -- The Most Powerful Drug We’ve Ever Known Two New Therapies for Treating Prostate Cancer Without Surgery, Radiation or Chemotherapy How Is AI Changing Your Doctor Visit? ********** “…academic freedom and a culture of open inquiry are at the core of Stanford’s ability to fulfill our mission of research and education. Universities thrive when faculty and students invite and confront competing ideas and arguments. We have made it a primary focus this year to nurture that ideal: from clearer time, place, and manner rules on free speech, to the ePluribus initiative, to new programs to support a strong civic culture.” – Stanford Pres. Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez October 13, 2025 American Association of University Professors Rejects Viewpoint Diversity, and a Faculty Member’s Response Excerpts (links in the original): “The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) recently published an essay in its flagship magazine, Academe, titled ‘Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity .’ Written by Lisa Siraganian, the J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in Humanities and professor at Johns Hopkins University, the piece makes a sweeping and unsettling claim: that efforts to foster intellectual diversity on campus are ‘anathema to academic freedom.’ “This was not an obscure post or a stray faculty blog entry. Academe is the AAUP’s most visible publication, read by professors, administrators, trustees, journalists, and policymakers nationwide. While the essay is not an official AAUP policy resolution, its prominent platform gives it influence and credibility. For many observers, publishing such a manifesto sends a message that the AAUP not only tolerates but amplifies these ideas. “The stakes could not be higher. Public trust in higher education has collapsed. A Gallup survey conducted earlier this year found that only 36 percent of Americans express significant confidence in colleges and universities, with just 19 percent of Republicans sharing this confidence. The lack of ideological diversity on campus is one of the most pronounced and visible drivers of this crisis. By framing viewpoint diversity as illegitimate, Academe has chosen to deny what students, alumni, and citizens can plainly see: the narrowing of debate, the silencing of dissent, and the rise of an academic monoculture. “Universities should be places of fearless inquiry, where multiple schools of thought collide in the pursuit of truth. Publishing an argument that openly rejects this ideal does not merely miss the point; it deepens the very crisis it claims to address. It substitutes orthodoxy for openness, ideology for inquiry, and isolation for engagement. To understand why this is so destructive, we must examine each of the essay’s seven theses -- and why they fail both as arguments and as a vision for higher education."... [Followed by discussion of and rebuttals to these seven points made in the AAUP article:] Thesis 1: Viewpoint Diversity Is Anathema to Academic Freedom Thesis 2: Viewpoint Diversity as a Partisan Strategy Thesis 3: Viewpoint Diversity Mistakes Politics for Expertise Thesis 4: Some Viewpoints Are Too Dangerous or False to Include Thesis 5: Viewpoint Diversity Justifies External Interference Thesis 6: Viewpoint Diversity Distracts from Real Diversity Thesis 7: Viewpoint Diversity Undermines Trust in Expertise “The publication of ‘Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity ’ in Academe is more than just another faculty essay. While it is not an official AAUP policy, its appearance in the association’s flagship magazine signals that these arguments are gaining traction within influential corners of academia. When the nation’s most visible faculty organization gives prominent space to an essay that dismisses the very notion of intellectual diversity, it sends a chilling message to the public: that higher education’s leaders are comfortable defending an ideological monopoly rather than confronting it. “Universities now face a defining choice. They can continue to retreat into insularity, denying what students, parents, and citizens plainly see. They can insist that one dominant worldview is enough and dismiss dissent as dangerous or illegitimate. They can ignore the plummeting levels of public trust and gamble that their endowments and prestige will insulate them from scrutiny. “Or they can choose a different path: to reclaim the spirit of fearless inquiry and robust debate that once made American universities the envy of the world. This means more than vague calls for 'tolerance' or procedural neutrality. It requires tangible reforms -- transparent hiring processes, protection for dissenting scholars, deliberate efforts to foster debate across ideological lines, and a renewed commitment to institutional neutrality so that campuses remain open to all students and ideas."... Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. NCAA Division I Campus Leaders Are Deeply Concerned About the Direction of Division I Sports Source: Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and Elon University Poll Excerpts (links in the original): “An overwhelming majority of NCAA Division I campus leaders express negative views about the direction of college sports, indicating that new rules and trends will disproportionately harm collegiate women’s and men’s Olympic sports. Those leaders are also concerned about the growing reliance on student fees and other institutional funding, and they are strongly opposed to the current athlete transfer rules. “At the same time, these leaders strongly affirmed their unwavering commitment to the historic academic mission and standards of college sports. “These findings emerge from a national survey of Division I leaders conducted in early August 2025 by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and the Elon University Poll . A total of 376 university presidents and chancellors, athletics directors, senior woman administrators and faculty athletics representatives responded to the survey, a 26% response rate that provides a statistically representative sample of these Division I leadership positions within a +/-4.4% margin of error."... Full article here including detailed poll results and links to PDF copies of charts and data, executive summary and full report. Op-ed: Academia Is Broken; the Compact Can Help Fix It Excerpt: .... “This sort of proposal is not unusual. For more than 20 years, government mandates on a host of issues -- including diversity, discrimination and student discipline -- have been welcomed on college campuses because they fit within the prevailing partisan ethos. But this government mandate, intended to promote excellence in core academic pursuits and to protect free speech, is being met with prophesies of doom. “As someone who played a part in the compact’s initial formulation, working alongside an administration working group, I would like to offer what insight I can into the motivation and need for the compact and to address its detractors. “I am the product of and have long believed deeply in the promise of America’s institutions of higher education. At their best, colleges and universities instill curiosity, critical thinking and commitment to bettering ourselves and our communities. American higher education has, moreover, been an engine of opportunity to countless Americans who have acquired the skills to pursue meaningful work, support their families and drive American prosperity. “But the system is broken. Over the past year, I have spoken with countless university presidents, directors and advisers; scholars and academics; and lawmakers, policy experts and activists. The one thing they all agree on is that our university system, which was once one of the nation’s greatest strategic assets, has lost its way. “The evidence is overwhelming: outrageous costs and prolonged indebtedness for students; poor outcomes, with too many students left unable to find meaningful work after graduating; some talented domestic students and scholars have been crowded out of enrollment and employment opportunities by international students; and a high degree of uniformity of thought among faculty members and administrators, which can result in a hostile environment for students with different ideas. “Critics have argued that it is not the place of the federal government to solve these problems. But without government involvement, reform will be difficult. Many colleges and universities, and especially some of the oldest and traditionally prestigious schools, are burdened with archaic governance structures that make self-reform all but impossible. This means that course correction must come from the outside. “Given the enormous investment of taxpayer money, it is appropriate that the federal government be involved. The government should not be using public funds -- tens of billions of dollars annually in research funding, to say nothing of student aid -- to prop up a system that purports to educate American students and serve the public good but is all too often doing nothing of the sort.”... Full op-ed by Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan at NY Times. See also "What President Trump Wants from Targeted Colleges" at WSJ including key deal points along with charts showing impacts at specific schools. See also "MIT Rejects Proposed Compact" at WSJ : "In a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon Friday, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said the proposal -- called the 'Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education' -- would restrict freedom of expression and MIT’s independence. The proposal is inconsistent with the school’s belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone, she said." See also NY Times : “'I am deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will always defend our fierce independence,' Dartmouth’s president, Sian Leah Beilock, wrote last week. 'You have often heard me say that higher education is not perfect and that we can do better,' she wrote, 'At the same time, we will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.' ” See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Other Articles of Interest Don’t Let Polarization Undermine the Vital Role Colleges Play in the U.S. Full op-ed by UC Davis Chancellor Gary May at Higher Ed Dive. U.S. Colleges Feel the Pinch of Fewer Foreign Students and Fewer Dollars Full article at Reuters. 2025 Higher Education Trends Full article at Deloitte. Can AI Help College Athletic Programs Win More Games? Full article at Ed Tech. Harvard Faculty Say Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades Full article at NY Times . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. New Undergraduate Study Options Combine Data Science with Humanities and Arts Breaking the Chronic Disease Cycle Stanford’s Return on Investment Portfolio and Value of the Endowment ********** “The Trustees [shall bear in mind] that extensive and expensive buildings do not make a University; that it depends for its success rather upon the character and attainments of its Faculty.” – Stanford’s Founding Grant October 6, 2025 Amid Controversy in Higher Ed, Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier Steers a Different Course Excerpts (links in the original): “. . . Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier is one [of the few college leaders willing to admit to the problems in higher education]. He has long been a champion of political neutrality and has called out the politicization of scholarly associations -- approaches other university leaders are only now catching up on. “. . . In a recent interview, transcribed below, he told me that education and research are ‘noble work,’ but only if they are grounded in core principles. And he emphasized how politicization in some departments overshadows the good work conducted in others.... [Followed by Q and A, including the following:] Daniel Diermeier: “We have seen an erosion of trust over the last few years, and it’s pretty dramatic. The critical thing is that universities need to be super-clear about what their purpose is and the values that support their purpose. We believe that the purpose of universities is to create an environment for pathbreaking research and transformative education. Universities are not political parties, and they’re not in the business of taking positions on political or policy issues. Universities have not always done a good job making this clear. “The first pillar is open forums. This means that we have the most open possible environment for our students and faculty to explore ideas without fear of retribution and censorship. It means, in practice, that our registered student organizations or faculty can bring to campus any outside speaker they want. “Openness also needs to happen in the classroom. We have a class that we started a few years ago, and it’s very popular, called ‘Free Speech and Dangerous Ideas.’About 120 students are enrolled in that class right now, and they only discuss hyper-controversial topics. “The second pillar is institutional neutrality. It means that, as an institution, we will not take positions on political or policy issues unless they directly and materially affect the core functioning of the university. We do not take positions on foreign policy. We do not take positions on domestic policy. We don’t criticize the Supreme Court. If there is something directly affecting higher education, then we would get involved, but not on general issues such as abortion. And we believe that if you [comment on political issues], you are creating a chilling effect. You are creating an institutional orthodoxy that inhibits the free expression of ideas. “The third pillar is a commitment to civil discourse. Civil discourse means that we’re members of one learning community. And we are committed to using arguments and fact-based reasoning -- to treat each other with respect, to advocate for all ideas, but also to be willing to be convinced. We don’t demonize each other. We don’t shout each other down. Our students, when they come on campus, are signing a pledge that reinforces their commitment to these values. By doing that, students are committing themselves to be stewards of civil discourse and to make sure that the culture is alive and well at Vanderbilt.... “At the end of the day, it’s people in departments, faculty in departments and associations, that make those decisions. It’s the responsibility of our faculty to uphold fundamental standards of the academy, even though they may have strong political commitments. If we are setting this [responsibility] aside to advance particular political or ideological positions, we’re basically not living up to those standards, whether that happens in a department or in a professional association.... “You’ve got to be crystal clear about your values and purpose. You’ve got to communicate them, and then you need to have the courage to act on them. My sense is that universities get into trouble when they’re trying to navigate the political waters, whether the political waters are on campus or off campus, to try to make it to the other side of a crisis. That’s when people get into trouble....” Full interview at City Journal. See also our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta regarding speech, political neutrality and standards for the appointment and promotion of faculty. See also concerns about the non-academic activities of Stanford’s 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities at Section 4 of our Back to Basics webpage. Teaching the Republic to Disagree Excerpts (links in the original): “A self-governing republic lives by persuasion, not intimidation.... “Law can mitigate the risk -- better security that protects public figures, electoral reforms such as top-two primaries that broaden the power of the median voter at the expense of the extremes, and a renewed federalism that lowers national stakes. Government, however, can only do so much. Law, like politics, is downstream of culture. Civil society must take the lead in addressing the mutual contempt that stokes hatred. Education is our best hope because it can habituate citizens to turn political animus into reasoned disagreement -- and at times into consensus. Unfortunately, the illiberal turn in our educational system is currently a source of antagonism rather than a solution to it. Our educational system at all stages fails to model the respectful disagreement that prepares citizens for civic discourse.... “. . . Begin with law schools. Over recent decades, the focus on legal and political debate that was once at the heart of legal education has declined. The reasons are many. First, the faculty is more ideologically homogeneous, and so are most student bodies. Overwhelmingly uniform and unchanging political perspectives breed intolerance and a lack of interest in other views that a more politically balanced community fosters. Second, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs present other obstacles because they prioritize affect over argument. When one liberal law professor argued against Roe v. Wade because no one would take that side in class, students complained to DEI. That kind of intervention chills professors from injecting dissent into class.... “Matters are even worse at the undergraduate level. There, faculties are even more politically homogeneous than they are at law schools. There is no need to address counterarguments to orthodoxy because law and judicial opinions based on contrary views are not part of the curriculum. Several studies -- from scholarly working papers to journalistic investigations and think-tank reports -- have examined college syllabi across many institutions and fields, and detected left-wing bias in assigned readings and course content. As former Harvard University President Larry Summers recently noted , an investigation of recent journal articles in the field of American studies revealed that seventy-six were critical of America, sixteen were neutral, and none were positive.... “Universities can help heal our civic culture by getting back to their own truth-seeking mission. Essential to that objective is debate over controversial matters, which encompass much of what develops at the frontier of social sciences and humanities....” Full op-ed by Northwestern Prof. John O. McGinnis. One of the links contained in this op-ed is to a panel recorded on September 7, 2025, “Universities in the Crosshairs: Larry Summers and Lee Bollinger,” which we commend to readers (YouTube , 1 hour ten minutes). College Is Worth Saving Excerpt (links in the original): “Earlier this year, Columbia University was hit with what sophisticated PR types call a double whammy. On the morning of May 7, New York magazine posted ‘Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College,’ a 5,000-word exposé of ChatGPT reliance at the Upper West Side institution. Later that same day, 80 pro-Hamas demonstrators stormed the campus’s Butler Library, rechristening the school ‘the Basel Al-Araj Popular University’ and staying until hauled out by police several hours later. Although American colleges had been under popular suspicion for years -- not least since elite campuses responded to the latest Gaza terrorism with an outpouring of antisemitic bile -- Columbia’s day from hell seemed a culmination. If academic dishonesty was ubiquitous and campus politics had gone mad, what, exactly, was the point of higher education? “Of course, most colleges are not Columbia. Nor is every Columbia student a participant in the intellectual and moral dissolution of the academy. One could be forgiven, however, for viewing the institution as a representative of its class, a school so famous and wealthy that it simply must stand in for the aspirations, if not the reality, of its peers. This would be, in my opinion, a grave error. Not only is Columbia unrepresentative of universities generally, but Columbia’s worst days and weeks are unrepresentative of that institution at its best. To be sure, reformers in positions of power should sometimes use the levers of the state to correct campus misdeeds -- especially, though not exclusively, at public schools. Nevertheless, higher education as it is still frequently practiced in this country deserves our gratitude and respect. “The contrary case is so easy to make that it nearly writes itself. For decades, colleges and universities have allowed tuition to creep skyward, outpacing both inflation and the rise in instructional spending (i.e., the money devoted to actual teaching and learning). Small armies of administrators now roam most campuses, occasionally making trouble but largely shuffling paperwork and plotting to expand their ranks still further. Whereas a bachelor’s degree once carried a significant wage premium, new research by the San Francisco Fed suggests that the bump has declined notably since the pandemic. Just this July, a Financial Times analysis found that young men with a college degree now have approximately the same unemployment rate as their uncredentialed peers.... “. . . What ought not to be forgotten, however, is that American higher education is the work of many generations, the envy of the world, and the source -- still -- of life-altering value for countless men and women. One is inclined, reading the newspapers, to burn the whole system to the ground. Let’s fix it instead.” Full op-ed at James Martin Canter. Other Articles of Interest Professors Can Be Ignorant; That’s Why We Need Viewpoint Diversity Full op-ed by Ohio State Prof. Michael Clune at Chronicle of Higher Education. Majority of Parents Now Say They Would Encourage Their Children to Skip College If Another Track Was Stable and Well Paid Full article at Newsweek: “About 67 percent of parents said they would encourage their children to opt out of higher education, while 78 percent said they believe non-college options can deliver the same long-term success as a four-year degree.” ‘Ivy League’ Doesn’t Mean Excellent Medical Schools, According to New Index Full article at Just the News. (Note: Stanford Medical School got a B .) Fighting the Status Quo, Reform Faculty Search Committees Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. New Speaker Forum to Focus on Solving Problems Across Differences Stanford Law Unveils liftlab, an AI Initiative Focused on the Legal Profession’s Future Rethinking Alzheimer's -- How These Tiny Balls of Fat Factor In Tracking Microplastics from Sea to Body ********** “At its best, the university, more than anywhere else, is where society’s leaders learn how to think, speak, and act. Universities must help students learn to listen to one another actively, to exchange their different views patiently, and to assail only bad arguments -- not people.” – UNC Prof. Jed W. Atkins September 29, 2025 Stanford’s Administrative Costs Per Student Have Gone Up Again and Remain the Highest in the Nation We have updated the tables and charts that have long been posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage to include the most recent numbers (2023) as reported to the National Center for Education Statistics and as then published by How Colleges Spend Money . According to the updated numbers, Stanford’s administrative costs per student were $48,231 in 2023 (up from $45,235 in 2022) as compared to $7,770 at UCLA, $9,494 at UC Berkeley, $19,283 at Dartmouth, $24,708 at Yale, $27,903 at Chicago, $32,659 at MIT, $33,277 at Caltech, $37,862 at Princeton, and $43,816 at Harvard. Some key points to keep in mind: Quoting from the How Colleges Spend Money website, “administrative costs are defined as a function of what institutions report to the [national data base] as ‘institutional support’ expenses, or those for the ‘day-to-day operational support of the institution.’ Institutional support commonly includes costs for executive management, a legal department, fiscal operations, public relations, or a development office.” “Institutional support does not include items like student activities, career services, or financial aid staff (which fall under a separate category of expenses called student services), or parking facilities, housing, or food services (which are reported as auxiliary enterprises).” The tables and charts posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage show that the administrative costs per student at more than half of the schools listed there actually declined in 2023 as compared to 2022 , so the questions arise: Why do Stanford’s administrative costs remain so noticeably higher than comparable schools and why did Stanford’s administrative costs go up and not down as between 2022 and 2023? The numbers contained in Stanford Facts 2025 and as posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage also show that Stanford still has nearly one staff person for every student and ten staff persons for every member of the faculty. We have long posted at Section 3 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage some proposed actions to bring down these and related costs and, in the process, hopefully simplify and improve the campus experiences of both students and faculty. We appreciate that making changes in any organization, and especially at a university, can be a complex task and requires the support of many constituencies. But we believe this is the year when significant actions need to be taken. Unlike some other commentators around the country, we do not believe a board of trustees should be involved in the academic activities of a college or university (among other things, the longstanding concepts of “shared governance”) unless those activities significantly affect the safety and soundness of the institution. On the other hand, a primary fiduciary obligation of any governing board and its officers is to assure the efficient and cost-effective operations of the entity vis-à-vis its key stakeholders (per former Stanford president Gerhard Casper, “all of us are here for only one reason, to support our faculty and students in their work of teaching, learning and research”). Something for everyone to consider, and especially Stanford’s trustees and senior officers. We welcome your comments here . Stanford Ranks First in WSJ/College Pulse Rankings for Preparing Graduates for Financial Success Excerpt (link in the original): “Stanford University tops the list of the best U.S. colleges in the latest WSJ/College Pulse rankings . “Unlike other school rankings, this list emphasizes one point: How well did the college prepare students for financial success? More than any other factor, it rewards the boost an institution provides to its graduates’ salaries, beyond an estimate of what they could have expected from attending any college. “Stanford returns to the top of this list for the first time since the 2017 rankings. Ivy League schools also figure prominently, with Yale University, Princeton University and Harvard University finishing third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Two other Ivy League schools -- Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania -- come in at eighth and ninth, respectively....” Full article at WSJ. How to Think, Not What to Think Excerpts (links in the original): “Across the country, people are questioning the value and role of higher education, and institutions -- particularly the elite ones -- are experiencing a crisis in public trust . On top of that, tech titans are convinced that AI will break higher education , while many observers lament its corrupting influence and ask whether the 'mind-expanding purpose and qualities of a university,' as one historian of education put it recently, are gone forever. “The idea that higher education has outlived its usefulness to society, however, requires taking an astonishingly narrow view of the true purpose of the university. Higher education is not merely the transfer of knowledge. We live in an age of informational opulence; we are awash in readily available data but lacking discernment, communication skills, and empathy. “As a cognitive scientist, I have studied the negative consequences of excessive information. We are in a state of constant information overload, under assault by relentless alerts, updates, and notifications. Research shows that the cognitive burden of lots of information coming at us simultaneously can negatively affect our brains and, ultimately, our performance -- especially when we are not experts in the topics we are bombarded with. “Despite the reforms that our institutions of higher education must embark on to ensure that we are teaching our students how to think -- and not what to think -- a four-year residential-college experience remains one of the most powerful human environments for cultivating human qualities.... “The problem isn’t just a lack of dialogue -- it’s rising polarization. As the Dartmouth political scientist Sean Westwood has shown , disparaging those with whom you disagree as the “other” erodes trust and discourages even the attempt at conversation or engaging across the aisle. That might sound abstract, but in the age of AI, this siloing has tangible consequences. When students retreat into algorithmically curated feeds -- or AI tools that reflect their own assumptions, and validate even their worst impulses -- the divide deepens. Machines are good at confirming biases, real and perceived , not challenging them. We need people to do this hard work themselves, by leaving their information bubbles and interacting with one another in the flesh, not from behind a keyboard....” Full op-ed by Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at The Atlantic. Restoring the Academic Social Contract Excerpts: “Higher education in America sits at a paradox: American universities are simultaneously the crown jewel of the American education system and are also enduring their worst crisis in over a century. The crisis itself has multiple dimensions, including the financial challenges of escalating tuition and student debt burdens, the ideological imbalance among faculty and administrators, the institutional embrace of radical dogmas and speech restrictions, the resurgence of anti-Semitism, the deep ties many universities have forged with foreign nations whose interests are often inimical to the United States, and the new punitive measures that the Trump administration and Congress are wielding. “Most fundamentally, the crisis is one of legitimacy and trust. It is now widely acknowledged that a critical mass of the American people has lost confidence in American universities. In last year's Gallup poll, only 36% of Americans expressed high confidence in higher education, compared to 32% who held little or no confidence. The decline is recent and substantial: A decade ago, 57% of Americans voiced trust in higher education... “But academia's political imbalance is not the whole story. The crisis confronting our universities is best understood as both a cause and a symptom of the core problem besetting higher education: the rupturing of its social contract with American society. This fundamental problem lies at the heart of the academy's loss of public trust. It's long past time for universities to meaningfully address it.... [Followed by discussion of the historic development of the research university, the involvement of national security, the role of tenure, the punishment and cancelling of leading faculty members who thought differently, the role of foreign students and investments, the decline and renewal of the liberal arts and related matters including specific references to Stanford.] “Many universities have already been taking important steps (albeit often under duress, or mandates from boards or legislatures) -- like eliminating diversity statements, curtailing frivolous general-education classes, and adopting new commitments to free speech and institutional neutrality -- to address their shortcomings. These are needful measures. Yet even with illiberal practices ended and speech protections restored, a major question will remain: What should universities research and teach? ...” [Followed by discussion of the challenges of proposed reforms.] Full op-ed by U Texas Provost William Inboden at National Affairs. Large-Scale Syllabi Study Finds Significant Bias Excerpts (link in the original): “Contentious topics are often taught in college classrooms from a uniformly one-sided perspective, according to newly published research that used the Open Syllabus Project, which hosts over 27 million syllabi, to develop its findings. “The research focused on three topics -- ‘racial bias in the American criminal justice system, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the ethics of abortion’ -- to determine how controversial issues are presented. “The research primarily looked at assigned reading materials to conclude that ‘professors generally insulate their students from the wider intellectual disagreement that shape these important controversies.’ “‘Personally, I thought we’d find some imbalance, some activist teaching,’ co-author Jon Shields, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, told The College Fix . ‘I just didn’t expect it to be the norm in the cases we studied. That was genuinely surprising to me.’ “The 66-page working paper , ‘Closed Classrooms? An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues,’ was also co-authored by Claremont McKenna College Professor of Government Stephanie Muravchik and Scripps College Professor of Philosophy Yuval Avnur.... “The paper calls on universities to make reforms through curricular assessments and the formation of faculty groups open to teaching scholarly disagreements. “Moreover, it suggests universities could incentivize change through course development grants or additional hiring lines for programs that show a commitment to a classically liberal education....” Full article at College Fix, and a copy of the working paper can be downloaded here . See also " Make Syllabi Public" by Emory undergraduate Alyza Harris at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest Why Columbia Needs Free Speech 101 Full op-ed by Columbia alum Timothy Tracy at Columbia Spectator. When Academics Want to Bring Down the Academy, a Princeton Example Full op-ed at Princetonians for Free Speech; see also “Princetonians for Free Speech Defends Free Speech for All” at Daily Princetonian . Everyone’s a Free-Speech Hypocrite Full op-ed by Stanford alum and CEO of FIRE Greg Lukianoff at NY Times. Colleges Once Taught Truth and Character; Now, They’re Unrecognizable Full op-ed at College Fix. Colleges Must Embed Career Purpose Throughout the Student Journey Full op-ed at EDU Ledger (formerly Diversity in Higher Education). What To Do About Political Diversity on Campus Full op-ed at Milken Institute Review. Federally Funded Research Should Reflect America’s Interest Full op-ed at City Journal. To Save In-Person Lectures, Universities Need to Provide Lessons Worth Showing Up For Full op-ed by U Melbourne Dr. Hugh Gundlach at The Conversation. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. President Levin Calls on New Students to Create a Culture of Dignity; see also “President Levin in Conversation with Two Student Leaders ” (video, 6:17 minutes) Andrew Luck Aims to Recapture Stanford Football’s Glory Days Teaching Robots Realistic Human Tasks Connecting the Gut, Brain and Microbiome to Heal Chronic GI Conditions How a Speech Gene Could Help Treat Huntington’s Disease How Music Supercharges the Brain ********** "Stanford is a resilient institution, full of problem-solvers. We are confident that we will be able to address whatever challenges come and find creative solutions.” – Pres. Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez September 15, 2025 What Management Expert Peter Drucker Would Say About Organizational Complexity In early May, we asked ChatGPT to suggest ways to address various concerns at Stanford and posted the responses at our Ask AI webpage. A week ago, we asked Google AI what management expert Peter Drucker might say about organizational complexity at Stanford and elsewhere. Here’s an excerpt from the response we received and with the full results posted at our Ask AI webpage: “Drucker saw organizational complexity as an enemy of effectiveness that hinders performance and demoralizes employees. He famously quipped, ‘Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done’. Drucker believed that simplicity, decentralization, and a clear focus on the organization's mission were the best countermeasures to this natural tendency toward complexity.... “Inefficiency grows with size. Drucker compared organizations to living organisms, noting that as they grow, an increasing proportion of their energy is spent on managing their own internal structure rather than producing results for customers. He believed that an organization's internal ‘mass’ or bureaucracy grows faster than its ‘external surface’ or output. To combat this, he advocated for organizations to ‘run lean’ and prioritize having a few highly effective people over many mediocre ones....” [Followed by: Meetings are a sign of failure, Information overload hinders clarity, The answer is simple and decentralized, The remedy is planned abandonment, and Focus on external purpose.] See also our Back to Basics and Stanford Concerns webpages. Some Stanford Concerns Administrative Bloat We recently updated the article "Stanford's Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy" at our Stanford Concerns webpage to include the more recent numbers from the Stanford Facts 2025 booklet and which shows that Stanford now has 15,340 non-teaching personnel (19,169 if you add clinical and SLAC staff) as compared to 2,345 total faculty (1,738 of whom are members of the Academic Council) and 17,469 total students. In other words, Stanford has close to one staff person for every student and ten staff persons for every member of the faculty. As shown in charts long posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage, this has resulted in Stanford having the highest administrative costs per student as compared to every other university in the United States (and per the instructions for the federal data base, these numbers don't even include student services and related activities which are reported separately) and where many/most of the other top colleges and universities are operating at a fraction of the administrative costs per student as compared to Stanford. According to 2022 data as reported to the federal data base, Stanford's administrative costs per student were $40,227 in 2022 ($49,199 in 2021) as compared to $4,640 at UCLA, $16,111 at Dartmouth, $22,461 at Yale, $23,553 at Chicago, $34,390 at Princeton and $38,835 at Harvard. ResEd We also note that the Stanford Daily article that was linked in our Newsletter a few weeks ago confirmed that the undergraduate neighborhood housing program is finally being disbanded. Never mind the millions of dollars and tens of thousands of staff hours that were devoted to this failed program -- a program that most alumni and students knew would never work and continued to say so. But here’s what is also interesting. In that same Daily article, it appears that with the abandonment of the neighborhood housing program, the central staff at ResEd is going to be increased, not decreased, along with more organizational complexity: “[Assistant Vice Provost for Residential Education (ResEd) Cheryl Brown] said ResEd departments will be restructured into ‘Administration + Operations,’ ‘Communication, Strategy + Project Management’ and ‘Student Support.’ To support this transition, ResEd will hire a new associate director for student support and two associate directors for program administration. ResEd will also collaborate with ePluribus Stanford and the SHARE Title IX and Title VI office to update the curriculum for RA training. RAs will additionally have regular check-in meetings with a dedicated resident director (RD) and community coordinator (CC) during the year.” Here are some comments we’ve received about the RedEd changes: COMMENTATOR A: “There should be stricter oversight before ANY new non-academic positions are created, and maybe it should be a bunch of hard-ass people who can shield the provost and president from always being the bad guys. This is absolutely classic mission creep.” COMMENTATOR B: “One of my pet peeves with Stanford since my undergraduate days has been the dysfunctionality and defects in the undergraduate residential system. I lived in six different residences during my undergraduate years. I think the Draw is a very poor way to maximize the residential experiences of students, and continuing to permit a housing shortage is an equally bad way to manage the system. Hiring more administrators doesn’t bear any relationship to fixing a bad system.” COMMENTATOR C: “This is what happens with an unrestrained culture of empire-building, so that every administrator is seeking an excuse to add to the size of the empire.” Years ago, then-Vice Provost John Bravman (president at Bucknell since 2010) had proposed that freshmen and sophomores stay in the same dorm for their first two years in order to provide continuity as well as to provide a structure where second-year students could help mentor their first-year colleagues. This would also eliminate the upheavals created by the Draw when first-year students have barely settled into college life. For their junior and senior years, students could select among the options that have always existed at Stanford and, we and others believe, can never be overcome in light of the diffuse housing structures long in place at Stanford: dorms suitable for upper-class students, fraternities and sororities, co-op houses, theme houses, other Row houses and on-campus apartment-style units. Follow the Money So where does the money come from to support all of this administrative activity? Some is from tuition, room and board, and fees imposed by the university and student government. A larger portion is from what are called “indirect costs,” that is, the surcharges that are added to most grants to Stanford from government agencies and foundations -- at Stanford, currently 54% on top of the amount of the grant itself. However, longtime tenured Stanford faculty member Jay Bhattacharya -- who now heads the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical and related research in the U.S. and the world and who understands in detail the issues of overhead -- has imposed a 15% cap on indirect costs, and other federal agencies are expected to do the same, if they haven’t already. This is compared to the fact that major foundations (Gates and others) have long imposed a cap of zero to 15% on the indirect costs that they were willing to pay. Another source of funding is an 8% tax on donations from alumni and others, as shown at this webpage (Section IV.2.). Meaning, if you donate $10,000 for a specific program in, say, the English or athletics departments, unless subject to an exception, $800 will not go to your intended program but will be used instead for administrative and other central costs and even though the program itself typically has to budget for overhead as well. We understand that in the 1990’s, this sort of tax, which was much smaller at the time, was eliminated and the costs of the business and other administrative units were to be funded instead from the university’s central budget, not from a tax on donations. Back to Basics Stanford like most U.S. colleges and universities is facing serious financial pressures. Which is why we continue to advocate that Stanford get Back to Basics -- that is, that it stay focused on teaching and front-line research versus the peripheral activities that have accumulated in recent years, including at the 200 to 300 centers now housed at Stanford. Which is why we also have posted the Peter Drucker article at the top of today’s Newsletter and why we again urge Stanford’s trustees, senior administrators and faculty to significantly simplify and flatten Stanford’s administrative organization, significantly reduce Stanford’s non-teaching staff, and in the process get Back to Basics . As Peter Druker points out, organizations are like living organisms, and as they grow, an increasing proportion of their energy is spent on managing their own internal structure rather than producing results for customers, here, Stanford’s students and faculty. Or as Stanford's former Vice President for Administration Ken Cuthbertson used to say, “I resist the idea that learning and teaching should be ‘administered’ in a university. 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.” Also from Cuthbertson: “My job is like that of a groundskeeper. It’s to be sure the playing field is kept in good condition so that the faculty and students can interact with one another, which is the only reason the university exists; to draw boundary lines around the edges; and after that, to stay the hell out of the way.” See also a student’s perspective of the impact the Stanford bureaucracy has on students and Stanford generally at Stanford Review . Comments We welcome your comments here . Stanford Ranks 75th Out of 257 in FIRE’s 2026 Free Speech Rankings Excerpts (links in the original): “WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 9, 2025 -- If America’s colleges could earn report cards for free speech friendliness, most would deserve an ‘F’ -- and conservative students are increasingly joining their liberal peers in supporting censorship. "The sixth annual College Free Speech Rankings , released today by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and survey partner College Pulse , show a continued decline in support for free speech among all students, but particularly conservatives . Students of every political persuasion show a deep unwillingness to encounter controversial ideas. The survey, which is the most comprehensive look at campus expression in the country, ranked 257 schools based on 68,510 student responses to a wide array of free speech-related questions. "The rankings come at a notable moment for free speech on college campuses: clashes over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a vigorous and aggressive culture of student activism, and the Trump administration’s persistent scrutiny of higher education. “‘This year, students largely opposed allowing any controversial campus speaker, no matter that speaker's politics,’ said FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff. ‘Rather than hearing out and then responding to an ideological opponent, both liberal and conservative college students are retreating from the encounter entirely. This will only harm students' ability to think critically and create rifts between them. We must champion free speech on campus as a remedy to our culture's deep polarization.'...” Other key findings from the report include: 166 of the 257 schools surveyed got an F for their speech climate, while only 11 schools received a speech climate grade of C or higher. Only 36% of students said that it was ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ clear that their administration protects free speech on campus. A record 1 in 3 students now holds some level of acceptance -- even if only 'rarely' -- for resorting to violence to stop a campus speech. 53% of students say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a difficult topic to discuss openly on campus. On 21 of the campuses surveyed, at least 75% of students said this -- including 90% of students at Barnard. For the first time ever, a majority of students oppose their school allowing any of the six controversial speakers they were asked about onto campus -- three controversial conservative speakers and three controversial liberal ones.” And from the specific writeup re Stanford: 44% of Stanford students say they have self-censored on campus at least once or twice a month. 72% of Stanford students say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases. 34% of Stanford students say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases. There are roughly 5.33 liberal Stanford students for every conservative Stanford student. Full press release at FIRE. In addition, Stanford’s specific writeup is here including, unfortunately like most other schools, grades of F for administrative support and for political tolerance and an overall grade of D-. Other Articles of Interest University of Chicago’s Self-Made Crisis Full op-ed at Minding the Campus: “A society that watches a university -- U Chicago, no less -- abandon this cornerstone of its mission and recast itself as a mere economic opportunity zone should not be surprised when civic life collapses. That collapse is only hastened by the fact that students, lured by the promise of lucrative careers, discover too late that they have not only failed to receive a prestigious education, but that their prestigious, marketable degrees lead to underemployment.” Percentage of Americans Saying College Is ‘Very Important’ Has Fallen to 35% Full article along with charts at Gallup. Leading Medical Accreditor Closes DEI Department and Ends Related Mandates Full article at College Fix. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Scientists Uncover Extreme Life Inside the Arctic Ice How Physics Can Tackle the Complexity of AI 5-Day Wilderness Excursions for Stanford’s New Students How We Learn to Move Experimental Drugs May Be Able to Reverse Symptoms of Autism (from Neuroscience News) Generating Synthetic Medical X-Rays with AI (video, 6:30 minutes) ********** “Stanford is the university of the American frontier. Like the frontier, it is infused with a sense of openness, possibility, and hope that are fundamental to who we are. Those characteristics are an essential part of what makes this place so distinctive, and will help us define our future.” – Stanford President Jon Levin September 8, 2025 Professors Should Actually Teach Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “If you want to argue that elite scholars at research universities should be focused on grant-funded research, I’m very sympathetic. I get the argument that teaching loads at the nation’s top 40 or 50 research universities might feature a lot of one-ones for pioneering scholars who are pushing the frontiers of knowledge. But this isn’t that. “This is about the larger political economy of higher education. As Richard Keck and I documented a few months ago, the norm across much of higher education is for faculty to spend most of their time on activities other than teaching. Even at second- and third-tier institutions, faculty are mostly found shuffling papers, sitting in meetings, chasing grants, and publishing trivial, never-read papers in one of the 24,000 barely read journals. This is a story of warped expectations, incentives, and academic culture -- one with unfortunate implications for the quality and cost of undergraduate education. “In his terrific book on college teaching, University of Pennsylvania historian Jonathan Zimmerman drily notes that faculty tend to characterize research as their ‘work’ and teaching as their ‘load’ -- a habit that, he observes, speaks 'volumes about academic priorities.' Generally, faculty aren’t hired, recognized, or promoted for their teaching. Instead, more and more instruction is off-loaded to an itinerant army of adjuncts and graduate students, few of whom have the incentive or opportunity to maintain rigorous standards or mentor their charges.... “We need to do better, and it starts by overhauling expectations for faculty. Some will inevitably read such talk as an attack on professors, given the ongoing tumult in higher education. But this isn’t about point-scoring or assigning individual culpability; it’s about misaligned priorities.... For any institution willing to realign its priorities, there’s a win-win lurking for students and scholars alike.” Full op-ed at Education Next. Stanford’s Graduate Student Union Tries to Stifle Dissent Excerpts: “I’m working as a teaching assistant while studying for a doctorate in economics at Stanford, but a campus union is trying to get me fired. The Stanford Graduate Workers Union wants my head on a plate because I refused to sign a membership form and pay dues. I won’t fund an organization whose values and tactics I don’t support. “Similar unions across the country are using their bargaining power not to improve working conditions but to coerce ideological conformity. This isn’t solidarity; it’s suppression. Shame on Stanford for going along with it.... Freedom to dissent -- including from union politics -- is foundational to the academic enterprise. No student should face financial retaliation for exercising that freedom.” Full op-ed by Stanford graduate student Jon Hartley at WSJ; see also Mr. Hartley’s op-ed at Stanford Review . Editor's note: If teaching is to be given a stronger priority, per the article above; if Stanford's graduate students are the current and future teachers and frontline researchers at Stanford and elsewhere; and if viewpoint diversity is also a priority as seems to be a growing theme, how is it that Stanford entered into an agreement that works so contrary to these priorities? See also This Week's Quote at the end of today's Newsletter. When Evidence Is Branded as Hate Excerpts (links in the original): “On today’s campuses, evidence itself is too often branded as hostility. Research that once sparked debate now risks being dismissed as ‘harm.’ At Sarah Lawrence College, that reflex has escalated further: a faculty member joined students in a federal lawsuit, mischaracterizing scholarship as an “attack.” That isn’t mentoring or teaching. It is indoctrination in grievance tactics, and it represents a dangerous turning point for higher education. “I know this firsthand. In a complaint just filed in the Southern District of New York (Case 1:25-cv-06442, filed August 5, 2025), a group of students and a faculty member sued Sarah Lawrence College and Congress over the potential release of material related to campus protests and violent building occupation. Though the case is not about me or my writing, the filing made use of well-known anti-Semitic tropes against me as a Jewish and Zionist professor -- the filing invoked the ‘myth of Jewish greed ’ and posited that I am a ‘mouthpiece for…deep-pocketed benefactors’ -- and then made note of my co-authored article in Real Clear Investigations, The Rise of the Single Woke (and Young, Democratic) Female, mislabeling it as an ‘attack’ on ‘politically active women.’ ... “Professors are stewards of intellectual life. Their task is not to amplify outrage but to cultivate argument. When they fail, they betray both their students and their profession. When professors trade evidence for indignation, they do not teach citizens; they train partisans. And parents, students, and citizens alike have no reason to trust them.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education; see also “We Are Losing the Basis of Our Civic Discourse” by Prof. Abrams at The Hill . Gen Z Students More Engaged in School and Ready for the Future Excerpts: “Gen Z students are feeling more prepared for their futures than at any point in the past three years, according to a new survey from the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup Voices of Gen Z study. Nearly six in 10 middle and high school students now agree they feel prepared for the future, an 11-percentage-point increase over 2024. “The survey, conducted May 16-27, 2025, with 1,687 13- to 18-year-olds enrolled in grades six through 12, finds Gen Z boys and girls are equally confident in their readiness for the future (58%), while Black students (67%) are more confident than their White peers (54%). Asian (58%) and Hispanic (61%) students’ preparedness for the future is statistically similar to that of Black and White students....” Full article at Gallup, and a copy of the full report is available for download here . College Students Show Declining Tolerance for Free Speech Despite Stated Support Excerpts: “College students express strong support for free speech in principle but demonstrate significant intolerance for viewpoints they disagree with in practice, according to the 2025 American College Student Freedom, Progress and Flourishing Survey released by the Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth. “The fifth annual survey of 2,067 students at 472 four-year U.S. colleges and universities reveals a troubling disconnect between students' stated values and their actual attitudes toward diverse perspectives on campus. “While 74% of students say protecting free speech is more important than ensuring no one feels uncomfortable, their responses to specific scenarios paint a different picture. Most concerning, 72% of students favor reporting professors to university administrators if they say something students deem offensive -- a figure that has remained consistently high since the survey began in 2021.... “The survey revealed stark differences across political ideologies and gender lines. Liberal students (79%) and independent students (74%) were significantly more likely than conservative students (56%) to support reporting professors for offensive comments. Similarly, 81% of female students and 84% of students identifying as unknown/other gender supported professor reporting, compared to 57% of male students.... “Perhaps most telling, among the 71% of students who say they feel comfortable sharing controversial opinions in class, nearly half cited alignment with their peers and professors as the reason for their comfort, suggesting the apparent openness may reflect ideological homogeneity rather than genuine tolerance for diversity....” Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Concerns About Complaint-Driven Policing in the UK . . . and at U.S. Universities too Excerpts (links in the original): “Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan was arrested at London’s Heathrow airport [a week ago] by armed officers. The arrest was over posts he made on social media in April while traveling in the United States.... “London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mark Rowley, seems to agree that Linehan’s arrest was contrary to the best aspirations of liberal society. He publicly called for a review of the speech laws his officers are obliged to enforce -- and enforce them they do. British police are making roughly thirty arrests a day for 'offensive' or otherwise unlawful online communications.... “Authoritarian governments keep their populations in check by visiting consequences on a small portion of their population and watching the effects reverberate; a single arrest might chill the speech of millions. By the end of 2023, based on the numbers in The Times [of London] , the U.K. had accomplished nearly 66,000 arrests for speech.... “The U.K. has done exactly what FIRE has been trying to get universities to stop doing, and convince American states not to do: use complaint-driven policing to create shadow records that chill speakers and form the basis of eventual illiberal prosecutions....” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage regarding Stanford’s own processes that do what this op-ed is concerned about and not solely about speech. Including where even false information and accusations can be entered into students' permanent files without students knowing that this is happening but where the cumulative information can later be used in disciplinary actions against students. Our webpage also includes proposed solutions such as removing all anonymously filed information and also advising students at least annually of their rights under federal law to review their files and allow them to correct or have removed any false or other incorrect information. Other Articles of Interest At Dartmouth, a Green Shoot in the Higher Ed Desert Full op-ed by former Purdue President Mitch Daniels at Washington Post. How Stanford Has Escaped Trump’s War on Higher Ed Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate George Porteous at Harvard Independent. Rise of Paper Mills -- 32,700 Fake Scientific Papers Published in Real Journals Full article at College Fix. What To Do About Political Diversity on Campus Full op-ed at Milken Institute Review. As Financial Unpredictability Looms, Higher Ed Is Borrowing Full article with specific numbers for specific schools including Stanford at Chronicle of Higher Education . A Trustee Guide to Ensuring a Discrimination-free Campus Full PDF copy (18 pages, 52 with appendices and notes) available at American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Respond to Employee Feedback, but Not Too Quickly New Tool Helps Users Size Up the U.S. Economy How the Rise of Plant Life Reshaped River Behavior After First Four Billion Years Researchers Are Creating Artificial Synapses to Replicate the Brain’s Efficiency A New Way to Image Brain Development ********** “When professors face career destruction for engaging in scholarly debate and university administrators cave to activist pressure rather than defend intellectual freedom, students are taught that thoughtful dissent leads to punishment. They learn that conformity is safer than critical thinking, that ideological purity matters more than rigorous inquiry, and that courage is punished while cowardice is rewarded.” – U North Texas Prof. Timothy Jackson August 25, 2025 With AI, College Students Have Already Changed Forever Excerpts (links in the original): “A college senior returning to classes this fall has spent nearly their entire undergraduate career under the shadow -- or in the embrace -- of generative AI. ChatGPT first launched in November 2022, when that student was a freshman. As a department chair at Washington University in St. Louis, I witnessed the chaos it unleashed on campus. Students weren’t sure what AI could do, or which uses were appropriate. Faculty were blindsided by how effectively ChatGPT could write papers and do homework. College, it seemed to those of us who teach it, was about to be transformed . “But nobody thought it would happen this quickly. Three years later, the AI transformation is just about complete. By the spring of 2024, almost two-thirds of Harvard undergrads were drawing on the tool at least once a week. In a British survey of full-time undergraduates from December, 92 percent reported using AI in some fashion. Forty percent agreed that ‘content created by generative AI would get a good grade in my subject,’ and nearly one in five admitted that they’ve tested that idea directly, by using AI to complete their assignments. Such numbers will only rise in the year ahead.... “Da’Juantay Wynter, [a] rising senior at WashU who has never seen a full semester without AI, told me he always writes his own essays but feels okay about using ChatGPT to summarize readings, especially if he is in a rush.... “Another member of his class, Omar Abdelmoity, serves on the university’s Academic Integrity Board, the body that adjudicates cases of cheating, with AI or otherwise. In almost every case of AI cheating he’s seen, Abdelmoity told me, students really did have the time to write the paper in question -- they just got stressed or preoccupied by other things, and turned to AI because it works and it is available.... “[Meantime] students seem to want a deeper sort of classroom innovation. They’re not looking for gimmicks -- such as courses that use AI only to make boring topics seem more current. Students like [Harrison Lieber, a WashU senior majoring in economics and computer science] , who sees his college education as a means of setting himself up for his career, are demanding something more. Instead of being required to take tests and write in-class essays, they want to do more project-based learning -- with assignments that ‘emulate the real world,’ as Lieber put it....” Full op-ed by WashU Prof. Ian Bogost at The Atlantic. Campus Virtue-Signaling Has Become Widespread Excerpts : . . . . “Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We asked, have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes. “These students were not cynical, but adaptive. In a campus environment where grades, leadership, and peer belonging often hinge on fluency in performative morality, young adults quickly learn to rehearse what is safe. The result is not conviction but compliance. And beneath that compliance, something vital is lost.... “Authenticity, once considered a psychological good, has become a social liability. And this fragmentation doesn’t end at the classroom door. Seventy-three percent of students reported mistrust in conversations about these values with close friends. Nearly half said they routinely conceal beliefs in intimate relationships for fear of ideological fallout. This is not simply peer pressure -- it is identity regulation at scale, and it is being institutionalized. “We do not fault students for perpetuating a climate that is hostile to intellectual integrity. We fault the faculty, administrators, and institutional leaders who built a system that rewards moral theater while punishing inquiry. In shielding students from discomfort, they have also shielded them from discovery. The result is a generation confident in self-righteousness, but uncertain in self....” Full op-ed by Northwestern researchers Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman at The Hill. Vanderbilt-WashU Statement of Principles The quote at the end of last week’s Newsletter was taken from a statement of principles that was supported not just by administrators, but was adopted by the boards of trustees of two major universities, Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis. For convenience, we have subsequently posted the full text of the statement at our Commentary from Others webpage. The Big Beautiful Fix for Graduate School Borrowing Excerpts (link in the original): “When policymakers and the public talk about student debt, they usually picture undergraduates: young people taking their first steps into higher education and making some of their first consequential financial decisions. That’s where most of the attention and reform energy has gone. But the real engine of recent growth in federal student loan volume has increasingly been graduate education, where borrowing is less constrained and loans are larger -- a cost to both student borrowers and taxpayers when degrees fail to deliver a payoff. “Despite making up a smaller share of the student population, graduate students now account for more than 40 percent of federal student loan dollars handed out each year. In 2023, economists Tomas E. Monarrez and Jordan Matsudaira wrote in a Department of Education report that ‘if recent trends continue, graduate loans will soon comprise the majority of federal student loan disbursements.’ ... “The recently passed reconciliation legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill, tackles these problems head‑on. First and foremost, it imposes limits on how much graduate students can borrow from the federal government. Graduate students can still borrow through the graduate Stafford loan program, but will be limited to just $20,500 per year (or $50,000 per year for students in professional degree programs such as medicine and law). “Just as importantly, the bill introduces a new system of program‑level accountability. In order for students to maintain access to federal student loans, institutions will be required to demonstrate that previous graduates fared well financially. For graduate programs, the specific requirement is that graduates of every program out-earn the average bachelor's degree holder in their state. The idea is that the programs ‘do no economic harm.’ ..." Full op-ed at Real Clear Education. See also “U Washington Dean: Big Beautiful Bill May Cause 50% Of Law Schools to Close” at Legal Insurrection . See also the video linked in the quote at the end of today’s Newsletter. High-Income Families Have Admissions Advantage at Elite Private Colleges and Universities but No Such Advantage at Flagship Public Schools Excerpt: . . . . “Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago) as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. Two-thirds of this gap is due to higher admissions rates for students with comparable test scores from high-income families; the remaining third is due to differences in rates of application and matriculation. In contrast, children from high-income families have no admissions advantage at flagship public colleges....” PDF copy of study by Harvard Professors Raj Chetty and David J. Deming and Brown U Prof. John N. Friedman, (c) 2023 National Bureau of Economic Studies (NBER). Some Updated Numbers Our Stanford Concerns webpage has long consisted of detailed information comparing Stanford’s administrative costs and staffing with the costs and staffing of comparable colleges and universities. This past week, the Palo Alto Daily Post published an article showing that 18 Stanford administrators are paid $1 million or more. Among other things, the article names the 25 top-paid administrators along with their compensation based on IRS filings in 2024. The article also notes that Stanford reported $9.5 billion in total revenue for the year, up from $8.5 billion the year before, and that expenses went up from $8.1 billion to $9 billion during that same period. Also this past week, the Chronicle of Higher Education published its annual Almanac (subscription may be required) with numbers that are self-reported to the U.S. Department of Education by colleges and universities in accordance with detailed instructions (much of the information at our Stanford Concerns webpage is taken from this data base). With that in mind, we note that Stanford again had (at page 45 of the Almanac 2025-2026) the largest number of personnel in the category of “business and financial operations” as follows: Stanford (4,477), U Washington (4,363), UCLA (4,005), Johns Hopkins (3,664) and U Michigan Ann Arbor (3,560). In the category of “computer, engineering and science” support staff, Stanford was #5: U Michigan (4,923), Ohio State (4,175), U Wisconsin Madison (3,725), Johns Hopkins (3,633) and Stanford (3,615). In the category of “research” support staff, the top five schools did not include Stanford but consisted instead of: MIT (5,140), U North Carolina Chapel Hill (3,931), Georgia Tech (3,053), U Washington (3,000) and Yale (2,929). [See also Stanford Facts 2025, discussed below, which reports 927 in the “research staff” category as compared to these other schools.] In the category of “librarians, curators, archivists and academic affairs and other educational services,” the top five schools again did not include Stanford but consisted instead of: Harvard (1,889), Emory (1,532), U Michigan Ann Arbor (1,375), NYU (1,267) and U Chicago (1,251). In the category of “office and administrative support,” the top ten schools similarly did not include Stanford but consisted instead of: UCLA (3,899), Columbia (3,713), WashU (3,068), NYU (2,944), Weill Cornell Medicine (2,913), Ohio State (2,810), Yale (2,807), U Kentucky (2,605) Southern New Hampshire U (2,596) and Harvard (2,364). Meantime, per Stanford Facts 2025 , Stanford has: 2,345 total faculty (1,738 of whom are members of the Academic Council, page 32 of Stanford Facts 2025) 7,554 undergraduates (page 14) 9,915 graduate students (page 21) 17,469 total students (not counting 2,596 post-docs, page 23) 11,252 managerial and professional staff 1,926 administrative and technical staff 1,235 service and maintenance staff ___927 research staff 15, 340 total administrative and other staff (page 33) 1,917 clinical educators 1,912 staff at SLAC 19,169 total staff (page 33) See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, especially part 3 (re Stanford's administrative bureaucracy) and part 4 (re Stanford's 200 to 300 centers and similar entities). See also detailed charts re the growth of Stanford’s managerial and professional staff in the past two decades, Stanford’s administrative costs per student compared with other major colleges and universities, and related matters at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Other Articles of Interest A Culture of Conversation Full text of speech at Law & Liberty. Is Duke Abandoning American History? Full op-ed by Duke undergraduate Sherman Criner at James Martin Center website. What Colleges and Universities Are Supposed to Be About (video, under 2 minutes) Comments by Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at Substack. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford’s ResEd Discontinues the Neighborhood System The Rise of Universities as Engines of Innovation Longevity Is Going to Change Almost All Aspects of Our Lives Scientists Develop Interface that ‘Reads’ Thoughts from Speech-Impaired Patients Top Scholars Call for Evidence-Based Approach to AI Policy Pain Took Football Away from Andrew Luck; What Brought Him Back to Stanford? (NY Times) ********** “Diversity of thought, discussion, intellectual discourse -- that is what’s fundamental to universities, and anything that questions that is a real serious problem.” — Stanford alum Reid Hoffman (from Stanford alum Joe Lonsdale podcast, American Optimist, Ep. 121 , and with discussion of universities starting around the 29:10 mark) August 18, 2025 School Is Starting and Here's What I'm Committing to for My Students, Especially My Male Students Excerpts (links in the original): “When the semester begins, my classroom fills with anticipation and nerves -- mine included. Every term offers a chance to start fresh, build habits, and forge relationships that will carry us through. Those first weeks of any term are far more than icebreakers; they're a blueprint signaling to students who they are in this space and what we'll achieve together. “I work hard to elevate every student. But as a professor and parent, I've noticed a pattern: male students often drift first when the relationship isn't there. Men are relational learners . When a young man feels known -- when he senses his professor notices and values him -- his engagement transforms . The work sharpens. Questions get braver. Risks feel worth taking.... [Followed by discussion of five specific steps to be taken.] “These steps aren't gender-exclusive. Every student benefits from being known, encouraged, and challenged. Data shows social-emotional learning benefits manifest across demographics, improving academic outcomes and long-term success, with benefits lasting 18 years post-participation. But the stakes are especially high for male students facing unique educational challenges.... “Consider the broader context: male students are increasingly struggling in educational settings. They're less likely to graduate from college, with women now earning roughly 60% of bachelor's degrees. In 2021, men received only 42% of bachelor's degrees awarded -- the lowest male share on record. Male enrollment in higher education continues declining. These trends aren't about capability -- they're about connection. When young men don't feel seen or valued in educational spaces, they check out not just from assignments but from the entire academic enterprise.... “Education isn't just transmitting knowledge; it's developing whole humans capable of critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and meaningful contribution. When we commit to seeing and supporting whole students -- especially those most at risk of disconnection -- we don't just improve academic outcomes. We change life trajectories. “That's the real measure of our work as educators. Not the tests passed or papers written, but the confidence built, connections forged, and capacity for growth instilled. This semester, I'm committing to that deeper work, one student, one name, one relationship at a time.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. See also: “It’s Not Just a Feeling, Data Shows Boys and Young Men Are Falling Behind” at NY Times (May 13, 2025): “The outcomes for Black boys are worse, and growing up in poverty disproportionately hurts boys.” “The New Gender Gaps” at Harvard Magazine (May 15, 2025). “Gender Achievement Gaps in U.S. School Districts” at Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (June 2018) comparing math versus language skills. “Young Men in Crisis” at Stanford Review (September 30, 2024): “The classroom is only one place in which this disparity can be observed. Young men today are three times more likely to overdose, four times more likely to commit suicide, and a staggering 14 times more likely to be incarcerated than their female peers.” The University Presidents Who Want to Fix Universities Before They Get Fixed Excerpts (links in the original): “For well over a decade I have been of the view that universities need to fix themselves, or they will get fixed -- and that getting fixed is likely to be more destructive than restorative. Until recently, I held this view with regard to public universities in red and purple states, but I probably underestimated the extent to which universities had alienated large portions of the public and undermined their own reservoirs of political support -- and did not anticipate the focus with which some Trump Administration officials would target universities. To be sure, the Supreme Court's SFFA decision, which effectively declared the de facto admissions policies at most elite universities to be illegal, and the wave of campus anti-Semitism only made universities more vulnerable. “The Atlantic has an interesting article on the growing divide among some university presidents about how to respond to the Trump Administration and current political pressures. On one side are folks like Princeton's Chris Eisgruber, who seem to think there is nothing wrong and that universities can and should ride out the storm. (Those we might call the ostriches of academia.) On the other are those like Daniel Diermeier of Vanderbilt and Andrew Martin of Washington University, who recognize that universities need to reform themselves. The latter camp accept the charge made by folks like Michael Clune that universities have brought much of their current trouble upon themselves....” Full op-ed by William & Mary Prof. Jonathan H. Adler at Reason. The Rapid Rise and the Disastrous Fall of the Medical University Excerpts (links in the original): “Since January, American higher education’s research enterprise has faced unexpected reductions in funding from federal agencies brought about by executive orders and other actions from the White House. Times of crisis are also times for stocktaking. How did we get here? “The story begins around 1940, as federal agencies, state governments, and private foundations began to negotiate their partnerships with universities, leading to the rise of ‘the federal-grant university,’ a term coined by Clark Kerr, a former president of the University of California, in his famous 1963 lecture, ‘The Uses of the University,’ given at Harvard.... “By the 21st century, a new model of the federal-grant university had emerged -- what we call the mediversity, or the medical university. To trace the contours of this new model, it is useful to consider the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), which historically had not been an elite research hub but gained prominence in the last two decades. The research success of an institution like UAB illustrates how non-elite institutions could become serious players in the federal research-funding game. It also highlights an important transformation: In recent years, an increasing focus on medicine and health-related functions has become central to many institutional priorities, including the pursuit of federal dollars for research and patient care.... “The rise of biomedical sciences in federal research combined with the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid services at university hospitals made the academic medical center a distinctive entity within the American university -- and in the American economy. This new model, the mediversity, has spread to include about 20 universities in which the academic medical center is now the largest unit in budget, enrollment, and services in the host university, as well as the largest employer in its metropolitan area and perhaps in its state.... [Followed by discussion of the establishment and growth of biomedical companies with VC and government funding in coordination with academic medical centers, and then the sudden reversal with recent government cutbacks.] “Did university presidents have contingency plans for this reversal of fortunes? Had overreliance on the mediversity model thrown off the gyroscope of the American university? Reviewing records and articles from 2022 through 2024, we find scant indication that university leaders, especially those at academic medical centers and the mediversity, discussed the possibility that political support might ever wane, compromising funding.... “.... For now, one cannot presume business as usual for any part of the American university system -- and perhaps especially for those that have grounded their institutional identity in the mediversity model.” Full op-ed by U Kentucky Prof. Emeritus John R. Thelin and Prof. Neal H. Hutchens at Chronicle of Higher Education. How I Learned That College Students Aren’t Snowflakes Excerpts: “For years I threatened to teach a course called ‘Books You’ll Never Read in College.’ It wasn’t only that I had grown tired of hearing students parrot the ideological orthodoxy on campus. My main concern, as a teacher of applied ethics, was that many of my students were reluctant to talk about important social, moral and political issues. “When I asked my students to share anonymously what topics they would do their best to avoid in the classroom, the list included pretty much anything controversial: guns, religion, pronouns, the Middle East, abortion, LGBTQ rights, socialism, sexism in the workplace, transgender athletes in sports, parallels between transgenderism and transracialism, race, policing, support for or opposition to President Trump and 'anything that might anger others.' “This spring, I made good on my threat. I came up with a better name for the course: ‘You Can’t Think That! Or Can You?’ I wrote a provocative course description to attract students. The syllabus would begin with Plato’s ‘Apology’ and John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ and then would move to contemporary works such as Thomas Sowell’s ‘Social Justice Fallacies,’ Heather Mac Donald’s ‘The War on Cops,’ Abigail Shrier’s ‘Irreversible Damage,’ and Brad Wilcox’s ‘Get Married.’ To my surprise, the course filled within minutes and amassed a substantial wait list. “Still, I was anxious about whether this experiment would work.... Instead, with great enthusiasm, students embraced their newfound freedom to say what they thought and to change their minds based on what others thought and said.... “One student was an advocate of polyandry, and another defended traditional marriage on religious grounds. One was a self-proclaimed Zionist, and another was writing an honors thesis critical of U.S. military support of Israel. With a lot of practice, they all learned how to be good intellectual friends despite their many differences. The classroom was our practice ground, where everyone was expected to try out the ideas of so-called wrongthinkers, listen carefully to one another, and find what might be true or useful even within a worldview or ideology that might be largely mistaken. Students couldn’t get enough of it. They carried their disagreements into the halls after class, and some set up lunch dates to understand better those whose views differed from their own.... “So, no, students aren’t snowflakes. Deep down, they are as hungry as ever for intellectual freedom. It’s also what they deserve. Many of their professors once received this kind of education, and they owe it to their students to provide the same opportunities for free discussion and debate. An important part of my job as an educator is to help students see that it’s possible to challenge or reject an idea while still respecting the person who holds it. As one student said in a final reflection on the course: ‘This changed the game for me. People are more than their ideas.’” Full op-ed by U Richmond Prof. Terry L. Price at WSJ. Top 12 Challenges Facing Higher Ed in 2025 and Some Exemplars for Solving Them Excerpts: “Higher education is no longer coasting -- colleges and universities now face a defining moment. In the ‘go-go’ days just 15 years ago, higher education had 21 million students (graduate and undergraduate) and 18.1 million undergraduates. When there was a recession, higher ed institutions could count on an uptick in enrollment. Institutions were building multiple new buildings and programs to offer students, and new buildings and dormitories to teach and house the same students. “Unfortunately, those go-go days did not last.... Then, when you kick in the cost of higher education and increased student debt, AI and technology reshaping how we teach and learn, and increased competition among colleges and universities, you have put [sic] is nearly the perfect storm....” [Followed by discussion of these 12 challenges and examples of what some schools are doing in response:] Declining Enrollment and Demographic Shifts Rising Costs and Student Debt Competition from Alternative Education Pathways The Need for Innovation and Adaptability Financial Sustainability Concerns Political and Policy Changes Public Perception and Value Proposition Technology Challenges, Including Artificial Intelligence (AI) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Mental Health and Wellness Globalization and Internationalization Climate Change and Sustainability Full article at Changing Higher Ed. Other Articles of Interest Higher Education Has Long Engaged in Racial Discrimination in Hiring Full op-ed at City Journal. See also “Why I Support the Civil Rights Complaint Against Cornell University” by a Cornell alum at Substack . And for convenience, a PDF copy of the DOJ July 29, 2025 letter is posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage. 32 Colleges Accused of Using Early Decision to Drive Up Costs Full article at Higher Ed Dive including a list of the schools named as defendants and NOT including Stanford. See also “Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against 32 Universities; All Students Admitted Since 2021 Named as Potential Members” at Campus Reform . The Growing Problem of Scientific Research Fraud Full article at Inside Higher Ed. How the Social Sciences Killed Our Universities Full op-ed by Boston U Prof. Emeritus Liah Greenfeld at National Association of Scholars. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford to Continue Legacy Admissions and Reinstate Standardized Test Requirements How Sleep Affects Mental Health, and Vice Versa Addressing the Potential Harms of Market-Driven Drug Development Why Voices Light Us Up but Leave the Autistic Brain in the Dark (podcast, 31 minutes) ********** “If research universities are to pursue the truth wherever it lies, they cannot have a political ideology or pursue a particular vision of social change. They contribute to the betterment of society not by pursuing an ideological agenda but through the research and innovation of their faculty and students, by producing educated and knowledgeable leaders, and by serving as a model for civil discourse grounded in critical reasoning.” – From the Vanderbilt-WashU Statement of Principles August 11, 2025 Stanford Research Matters Excerpt: “Stanford researchers have defined the cutting edge for decades. They launched the computer age in Silicon Valley, played a pivotal role in establishing the biotech industry, and have been leaders in advancing artificial intelligence, all with an eye toward benefiting humanity. In most cases, the seed of a Stanford researcher’s transformational idea was nourished by funding from the U.S. government, leading to immense economic growth and the creation of jobs across the country....” Full article at Stanford Report including detailed individual and historical examples. Editor’s note: As longtime readers know, our weekly Newsletters focus primarily on issues regarding free speech and critical thinking at Stanford as well as other colleges and universities nationwide. With the current pressures and uncertainties regarding the funding of university research, we felt it appropriate to draw readers' attention to the above article that was recently produced by Stanford and that highlights the significant impacts of Stanford’s research, both now and historically. And as longtime readers also know, we believe those activities can be even further enhanced by a series of reforms that we and others have long advocated. See, for example, our Back to Basics webpage (especially parts 3 and 4) as well as the various issues discussed at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Could Artificial Intelligence Undermine Constructive Disagreement? Excerpts: . . . . “While LLMs are shaped by the patterns contained in their training data, they are also further refined by their developers to align with human preferences. AI companies, seeking widespread adoption and a return on their substantial investments, have powerful incentives to design systems that maximize user satisfaction and/or retention. “This creates a dynamic partially reminiscent of social media platforms, where algorithms optimize for engagement by showing users content that either confirms their views or caricatures their opponents. The result is a proliferation of filter bubbles, clickbait, outrage, and flattering content at the expense of substance and rigor. “Similarly, AI systems engineered to please may prioritize affirming user beliefs, avoiding disagreement and sidestepping challenges to users’ views. As competition intensifies among AI labs, developers may feel compelled to prioritize engagement metrics and market share over epistemic integrity and ethical safeguards.... “The degree of flattery in the models’ comebacks when confronted with user pushback varied markedly between different models. In some systems, it appeared in around 10% of responses; in others, it exceeded 50%. Notably, newer models, such as GPT-4.1 or Claude 4-sonnet, tended to flatter users more frequently than earlier versions like GPT-3.5, or Claude 3.5-sonnet. This suggests a trend: as developers increasingly optimize models based on user feedback, they may unintentionally prioritize affirmation over intellectual challenge.... “Ultimately, the tendency of AIs to prioritize affirmation over honest disagreement is mostly shaped by commercial competition and user choices. Whether AI undermines or strengthens robust debate and epistemic rigor will depend on how these forces interact, as well as the individual choices we make. As AI users, our behavior and preferences actively shape the way future generations of AI models will interact with us.” Full op-ed by Otago Polytechnic Prof. David Rozado at Substack including a detailed chart showing the frequency of flattery by specific AI models in response to user pushback. See also “OpenAI Launches Study Mode for College Students” at Diverse Issues in Higher Education : “Unlike standard ChatGPT, Study Mode employs Socratic teaching methods, asking students probing questions and building exchanges that work toward answers collaboratively rather than providing immediate responses.” See also “Half of Students Say AI Is Most Important Skill They'll Learn in College” at Newsweek . FIRE Brings Lawsuit re Free Speech Rights of Noncitizens Including Non-U.S. Students; Stanford Daily Is One of Several Named Plaintiffs Excerpts: . . . . . “‘In the United States of America, no one should fear a midnight knock on the door for voicing the wrong opinion,’ said FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick. ‘Free speech isn’t a privilege the government hands out. Under our Constitution it is the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.’... “’Two lawful residents of the United States holding the same sign at the same protest shouldn’t be treated differently just because one’s here on a visa,’ said FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley. ‘The First Amendment bars the government from punishing protected speech -- period. In our free country, you shouldn’t have to show your papers to speak your mind.’ “Plaintiffs in FIRE’s lawsuit represent the wide range of groups and individuals whose speech is threatened....” Full press release at FIRE. See also “Ilya Shapiro and Robert Shibley Debate the Issues – Censorship or Good Governance? ” at Free Press. Why the Ivory Tower Wants a Deal with Trump Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “The universities’ eagerness to cut a deal shows that they don’t think they can hold off Trump indefinitely. A cut of the magnitude the NIH sought [that is, a cap of 15% on the reimbursement of indirect costs for research instead of the typical 55% to 60% and higher] would put a major dent in their budgets, slow the search for breakthroughs in health and science, and enable foreign rivals to catch up, they say.... “‘It’s been made extremely clear to us from day one by members of Congress that if we don’t do something, somebody else will,’ Kelvin Droegemeier, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who’s spearheading the effort on behalf of a coalition of universities and research institutes, told POLITICO.... “The university-led group announced this spring that it was working on a new model , one that was ‘simple and easily explained,’ and in a nod to the administration’s priorities: ‘efficient and transparent.’ ... “Debate over how much the government should pay for indirect costs has raged for decades. Both former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama suggested capping facilities and administrative costs, to no avail.... “[Former Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya and now head of NIH] said he had talked with Droegemeier during the early planning stages of the model. ‘I think they’re quite promising,’ he said.... “The university team isn’t promising cost reductions. That’s not their role, according to Droegemeier. Instead, the model is designed to show what it really costs to do research. Then the government and lawmakers can decide what they want to pay for....” Full article at Politico. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford website s. Stanford to Layoff Over 360 Staff Covered also at Inside Higher Ed . See also “Major Cuts Include the Athletics Department” at Football Scoop . What We’re Getting Wrong About Mental Health Key Mechanism of Brain Aging Energy Supplied by Gut Microbiome Depends on Diet ********** “The spread of administrative bloat threatens to turn universities into corporations with a sideline in education.” — Johns Hopkins Prof. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty and the Rise of the All-Administrative University (2011) August 4, 2025 Stanford Suspends Two Undergraduate Houses After Title VI Investigations Excerpts: . . . . “According to the University statement, several reports were filed with the Title VI Office against Kairos after ‘students participating in an extracurricular activity in the house were asked to leave and told, among other things, that the presence of Zionists in the group was making residents of the house uncomfortable.’ ... “With regards to [Enchanted Broccoli Forest] , the Title VI Office said an email sent by EBF’s RAs in June to incoming residents was deemed exclusionary toward white students and male students. "Part of the email read: ‘Enchanted Broccoli Forest is historically dedicated to uplifting the voices of queer people of color, and thus is committed to being a place of refuge for those who are black, brown, gender-marginalized, and FLI. If you are white/white-passing, or if you are a man, do understand that you are being invited into space that wasn’t and isn’t made for you. We welcome you to this community, however ask that you acknowledge and are cognizant of the space you are occupying, and how, by nature, your presence may suffocate.’ ..." Full article at Stanford Daily and also covered at Stanford Review . Editor’s note: With the many hundreds of administrators and staff in Residential Education; Dean of Students ; Community Standards ; SHARE ; Vaden ; Provost ; Office of Inclusion, Community and Integrative Learning and, separately, Office of Inclusion, Belonging and Intergroup Communication (the latter of which has just been disbanded per this article in Stanford Daily ) and an unknown number of other such offices throughout the campus, how is it possible that noninclusive and discriminatory actions like these were taking place, and possibly for many previous years and not just this most recent year? And if the administrators and staff in all of these and other offices throughout the campus knew about these and similar attitudes and actions, why didn’t they raise concerns or, alternatively, did these offices, intentionally or inadvertently, actually condone these types of noninclusive and discriminatory attitudes and actions? From Stanford's compliance manual : “Adherence to this Code also requires that any suspected violations of applicable standards, policies, laws or regulations be brought to the attention of the appropriate cognizant office.” See also the letter to all students dated September 17, 2024 from both the provost and the vice provost for student affairs regarding Title VI, bias and related matters. See also “Stanford’s Program re Title VI/Bias ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Discriminatory Hiring Practices at Cornell Excerpts (link in the original): “I’m filing a complaint against Cornell University for racial discrimination. “This isn’t a political stunt or publicity grab. It’s a last resort in response to a gross injustice that destroyed the career I spent more than a decade building. It’s about holding accountable a powerful institution that violated the law, abandoned its principles, and discriminated against me because of my race. “I’m an evolutionary biologist, a liberal and a first-generation college graduate. I dreamed of becoming a scientist for as long as I can remember. I pursued that passion for more than 12 years -- earning a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara and completing a postdoctoral position at Pennsylvania State University. Along the way, I was awarded a competitive NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and published nearly 30 peer-reviewed papers in leading academic journals. For my career stage, I was among the top in my field. “I applied to countless tenure-track positions across the country in 2019 and 2020. One of those applications went to Cornell, for a position in their Neurobiology and Behavior department. Unknown to me, a few months later Cornell initiated a separate search for a faculty member in evolutionary biology -- my exact field -- but kept it confidential. Internal emails now show this was no accident. “Last month, the America First Policy Institute released internal Cornell emails showing the university conducted an effort to recruit what the search committee referred to as a ‘diversity hire.’ One committee member described the process bluntly: ‘What we should be doing is inviting one person whom we have identified as being somebody that we would like to join our department and not have that person in competition with others.’ ... “This discriminatory practice, conducted in coordination with Cornell’s Office of the Provost -- led at the time by current Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff -- violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race. “Let my case serve as a warning that there is a price for violating civil rights.” Full op-ed at WSJ. See also “Music Professor Obtains $725,000 Settlement Resulting from Attacks for His Views re Music Theory” at Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism : “When professors face career destruction for engaging in scholarly debate and university administrators cave to activist pressure rather than defend intellectual freedom, students are taught that thoughtful dissent leads to punishment. They learn that conformity is safer than critical thinking, that ideological purity matters more than rigorous inquiry, and that courage is punished while cowardice is rewarded.” More about the controversy here . DOJ Memo Outlines Unlawful College and University Practices Excerpt (links in the original): “‘Race based scholarships,’ ‘preferential hiring,’ and other DEI initiatives are ‘unlawful practices,’ the Department of Justice warned in a recent memo . “The [July 29, 2025] memo ‘clarifies that federal antidiscrimination laws apply to programs or initiatives that involve discriminatory practices, including those labeled as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (‘DEI’) programs,’ according to a news release . “Much of the memo specifically focuses on education policies that are ‘unlawful’ or may be. “The memo lists several examples of ‘unlawful practices.’ ...” Full article at College Fix. See also Inside Higher Ed . Also, for current and future reference, we have posted a PDF copy of the DOJ memo here . 1 in 2 Graduates Say Their College Major Didn’t Prepare Them for Today’s Market Excerpt (link in the original): “As today’s college graduates struggle to start a steady career, 1 in 2 Americans say their college major didn’t prepare them for the job market, according to a June 18 report from Preply. “Beyond that, 1 in 6 Americans who went to college said they regret it. When thinking about their college experience, college graduates said their top regrets included taking out student loans, not networking more and not doing internships. “One of the main concepts of seeking higher education after high school is that college will prepare you for the rest of your life. While some graduates leave their alma mater feeling prepared to enter the workforce and begin their career, others feel underprepared,” according to the report. “In a survey of more than 1,700 Americans with an undergraduate degree, 29% said they wished they picked a different major, and 18% said they regretted the institution they attended....” Full article at Higher Ed Dive. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Antibody Enables Stem Cell Transplants Without Toxic Side Effects Virtual Scientists Help Solve Complex Biological Problems Designing Fair and Trustworthy AI Systems Competing Issues re Antidepressants for Kids and Teens ************ “A university is fundamentally about inquiry. That means putting the intellectual and educational mission first.” -- Former University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer July 28, 2025 Editor’s note: Click here to view recently added as well as past reader comments. And as always, we welcome your own comments and suggestions here . ********** How AI Laws Are Reviving the Worst Ideas of Campus Censorship Excerpts : “One of the more frustrating things about working on free speech for over two decades is watching the same bad ideas come back wearing slightly different outfits. It’s like déjà vu, but with better fonts. Dealing with them over and over again can be tiring, but doing so remains incredibly important -- particularly when it comes to AI.... “Followers of FIRE and [Eternally Radical Idea] will be very familiar with speech codes. These were policies enacted by colleges and universities, dating back at least four decades, designed to restrict certain kinds of speech on campus. And more often than not, they used 'anti-discrimination' as their rationale. Recent regulations proposed and imposed in multiple U.S. states are also invoking 'anti-discrimination' -- only this time, it’s for technologies that seek to define objective reality itself. “These laws -- already passed in states like Texas and Colorado -- require AI developers to make sure their models don’t produce ‘discriminatory’ outputs. And of course, superficially, this sounds like a noble endeavor. After all, who wants discrimination? The problem, however, is that while invidious discriminatory action in, say, loan approval should be condemned, discriminatory knowledge is an idea that is rightfully foreign. In fact, it should freak us out.... “Nobody wants to be anywhere near the sin of discrimination -- especially racial discrimination. That’s a noble impulse, and quite the cultural evolution from even fifty years ago. It’s a great sign that we find it so reprehensible that people will do backflips to avoid even the appearance of it. But when that instinct becomes so strong that we start reshaping reality, we’re not helping anyone. We’re just making ourselves -- and now, our machines -- less accurate, less honest, and less effective in navigating the world as it really is. “If we continue this trend, we will be manufacturing an epistemic crisis that will be unprecedented in its scope and scale. Our budding AI technologies will inevitably become the primary source and manufacturer of the world’s information. If that information is tarnished or tampered with to spare our feelings -- especially if it’s done pre-emptively -- there will be no changing or correcting course, because our map, our compass, and even our intuitions will be completely wrong.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also our prior articles about “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. We Need a New Theory of Academic Freedom Excerpt (links in the original): “With their wealth, exclusivity and global clout, American universities are an easy target for populist resentment. For Americans frustrated by inequality and cultural alienation, there may be a certain satisfaction in seeing these elite institutions humbled. “But the Trump administration’s coercive offensive against institutions like Harvard and Columbia, which clearly isn’t about antisemitism , isn’t really about elitism or populism either. It's about something deeper. It throws into question ordered liberties that are deeply rooted in America’s history and traditions. “If that point’s hard to explain, part of the blame lies with us academics. We’ve spent too long defending academic freedom on the basis of professional norms, free speech jurisprudence and administrative due process. “Some of these defenses might win in court, but none are winning in the court of public opinion. Whether academic freedom survives in the coming years won’t be decided by the Administrative Procedure Act or even the First Amendment . It’ll depend on whether ordinary Americans can say that academic freedom is their freedom, too . The question, in other words, is whether or not the idea of academic freedom has legitimacy . “Today, academic freedom’s legitimacy is fraying. Rising tuition, student debt, concerns over free speech, allegations of political bias, administrative bloat, billion-dollar endowments and doubts about the real-world value of degrees have made many Americans question what universities are for and who they really serve. “Legitimizing academic freedom under these conditions will be an uphill battle....” [Followed by detailed discussion of historical and philosophical precedents in academic and other contexts.] Full op-ed by Amherst Prof. Adam Sitze at Inside Higher Ed. See also our Back to Basics webpage. Achieve Legitimate Workplace Goals Without the Bureaucracies and Dogma of DEI Excerpts (link in the original): “During the past few years, DEI programs have been rolled back in both private and public organizations, and the trend may well continue. For champions of workforce diversity, who feel their work is being undone, this is a difficult time. But there is promising news. A growing body of evidence suggests that many management innovations designed to improve performance actually boost workforce diversity in the bargain -- and do so without inviting the backlash that formal DEI programs can incur.... “The animating idea of high-performance management is simple: If you can create a work environment in which all employees are valued, supported, and motivated in ways that allow them to do their best, you’ll get higher engagement from them and better business outcomes. Diversity isn’t the goal -- but it is a natural by-product. “Our research on workplace diversity -- conducted in the United States but relevant globally -- confirms that notion. We’ve run statistical analyses of data from some 800 companies in a variety of industries. Many of the techniques that companies use to improve performance have a better record of fostering inclusion than do diversity trainings and grievance processes -- popular DEI measures that tend to be counterproductive, as we detailed in HBR almost a decade ago, in ‘Why Diversity Programs Fail ’ (July-August 2016). That’s true not just for frontline jobs but for all sorts of positions, including management.... [Followed by detailed discussion of five companies: Oracle, Walmart, IBM, Gap and Amazon.] “For years, diversity and human resources experts have been calling for firms to change their management systems to open opportunity to all. The approaches we’ve identified in this article do just that -- even if that was not the intention of their creators. In these tumultuous times for DEI, performance innovations that help employees be their best selves at work may be the best hope for the dream of equality.” Full article by Harvard Prof. Frank Dobbin and Tel Aviv U. Prof. Alexandra Kalev at Harvard Business Review . Other Articles of Interest Student Concerns at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business Full article at Poets and Quants: “Stanford Graduate School of Business, long considered among the most elite MBA programs in the world, is facing a storm of internal criticism from students who say the academic experience has fallen far short of expectations.... Students voiced concerns about outdated course content, a disengaged faculty culture, and a broken curriculum structure that they say leaves them unprepared for post-MBA careers.” Stanford Is Creating a New Office of Investigations Full text at Stanford website: “As the inaugural head of Stanford’s new Office of Investigations (OI), the Executive Director will oversee a team of investigators responsible for conducting independent and neutral fact finding on a variety of subject matters involving students, faculty and staff.... The expected salary range is $250,000 to $330,000 per annum.” See also new listings for “Senior Investigator, Office of Investigations,” expected salary range of $200,000-$260,000 per annum, along with others. See also “Stanford to Reduce Budget by $140 Million and Lay Off Employees for Next Academic Year” at Stanford Daily . University of Chicago Looking at Cuts in Humanities and Language Majors Full article at College Fix: “University leaders cite historic funding pressures and possibility of new tax on endowment.” Tracking the Cancel Culture in Higher Education Full article at National Association of Scholars ("Reasoned scholarship is traded in for the cheap, vapid substitute of political activism. And in the long run, higher education itself dies.") including this link to an updated PDF chart of cases. The Ivy League Apology Show -- Princeton and Penn as Case Studies Full op-ed at Princetonians for Free Speech: “The apology has become a peculiar ritual in American public life. Our age of perpetual offense is also one of perpetual contrition.... Nowhere is this dynamic more pronounced than on university campuses, where the machinery of apology has become as essential as the campus bookstore or dining hall.” We Need to Restore Credibility to Accreditation Full op-ed at Real Clear Education: “If the U.S. truly wants to have the greatest higher education system in the world, the archaic system of college accreditation needs to change fundamentally -- and it needs to change now.” Harvard and the Trump Administration Face Off Over Funding Cuts Full article at Washington Post. See also “Even if Harvard Wins This Court Case, the Fight Won’t Go Away” at WSJ . Shared Governance and Academic Freedom Full op-ed by National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood at Real Clear Education: “The single most important responsibility of college trustees is picking the college president. The task is difficult because so few people measure up to the job. And it is all the more difficult because so many people have an interest in the outcome.” Eight Books Regarding the University Crisis Full article and recommended book list at The Atlantic. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report a nd other Stanford websites. In-body CAR-T Cell Generation Proves Safe and Effective in Mice Unexpected Windows into Neurodegenerative Disease VR Training Can Help Build Empathy in the Workplace ********** “Universities must be places open to the widest possible range of viewpoints. That is the only way minds can be truly opened.” – Former Harvard President Drew Faust July 21, 2025 An Alternative to the Proposed Cap on Research Funding Excerpts (links in the original): “A coalition of 10 heavyweight higher-ed organizations is proposing to Congress an alternative to the research-spending cap the Trump administration has been seeking to impose. The new model would overhaul the federal system of reimbursing universities for indirect costs incurred for their research, which has been in place since World War II. “The Joint Associations Group, or JAG, which includes the Association of American Universities (AAU), the American Council on Education (ACE), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), announced its proposal on Friday [Julyl 11] . The coalition sees its plan as a middle ground, one that responds to long-held gripes about how indirect costs are administered while lessening the billions in lost revenue for universities under the 15-percent indirect-cost cap proposed by several federal agencies, among them the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Departments of Defense and Energy. “JAG’s ‘Financial Accountability in Research’ (FAIR) model would offer institutions two options to be reimbursed for expenses tied to a particular project: a line-item accounting, or a less-time-intensive 'base option' that would put a fixed percentage of a project’s total budget toward certain costs. The plan represents a radical restructuring of the nation’s research-funding ecosystem, but one that JAG leaders say is necessary given mounting political pressure.... “Among the advantages of the FAIR model are that it accounts for the varying costs of research across an institution, [U. Illinois Prof. Kelvin K. Droegemeier] said. Humanities, social-sciences, and theoretical math research, for example, don’t require the same expensive equipment and facilities as medical research. That makes a more-flexible approach 'more appropriate for the 21st-century research enterprise,' he said. “The FAIR model would also eliminate the need for institutions to periodically negotiate indirect-cost rates with the government, an arduous process that typically occurs every two to four years. ‘This flexibility empowers each institution to define its own categories and cost structures using internal data, while ensuring auditability and public accountability,’ a JAG executive summary said...." Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Reform Higher Education by Raising Standards Excerpt (links in the original): . . . “Most faculty who have taught in universities for a long time are aware that educational standards have fallen dramatically in recent decades. Even the most prestigious universities have made it much easier for students to graduate with little gain in knowledge and critical thinking. As David Butterfield argued in a viral article last fall, education has become infantilized . His article was about teaching classics, but the problem is widespread in the humanities and social sciences. “Let me give an example from my own experience teaching history at Harvard. When I began teaching 40 years ago, I regularly assigned over 300 pages of reading per week. At present, assigning more than 75 pages per week, as we are advised by curriculum committees, is considered an unmanageable burden for most students. Students at highly selective colleges and universities average only about 15 hours of study outside the classroom, down from 24 hours in the 1960s. The average includes students in the natural sciences, who generally put in more hours outside of class. As long ago as 2011, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa argued , on the basis of data from the College Learning Assessment (CLA), that American higher education did not deliver substantial intellectual growth for at least a third of students. The figure must be significantly higher today....” [Followed by detailed discussion of grade inflation, loss of core curricula, interdisciplinarity, unlimited extracurriculars, ignorance of foreign languages, politicization, and the impact of university rankings and accreditation.] Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. James Hankins at Law & Liberty. Higher Education’s Crisis of Domestic Confidence Excerpts (link in the original): “Buried in a recent report from the Economic Innovation Group is a statistic that should make every university administrator in America lose sleep: Foreign-born workers who arrived in the U.S. on student visas now out-earn their native-born peers with college degrees by nearly $30,000 annually. They’re also more than twice as likely to work in research and development -- the engine room of national progress. ‘Let me be very clear: This isn’t about IQ. It’s about institutions. It’s about a cultural drift so deep, so corrosive, that a native-born population is slowly being nudged out of its own future -- not by brute force or some grand conspiracy but by decades of educational decay, elite indifference, and intellectual cowardice. America didn’t run out of smart people. It ran out of the will to cultivate them.... “Today’s American student is increasingly guided into disciplines that produce little beyond debt and disillusionment. Fields once synonymous with discovery -- engineering, chemistry, and applied physics -- are under-enrolled, underfunded, and under-defended. Instead, ... we infantilize students, training them to feel rather than think, and then we wonder why employers look elsewhere. “Enter the international student.... “Because it’s not just that America imports talent. It’s that we now rely on it. We lean on the drive of students raised in far less wealthy, far more disciplined societies because we’ve abdicated the responsibility of developing our own. We send our kids into debt traps for gender-theory degrees while begging H-1B visa holders to keep the lights on at Google and the research running at Stanford. “In this academic vacuum, universities continue courting international students -- not for the sake of diversity or global exchange but for the money. Foreign students usually pay full freight. They rarely need financial aid. They’re low-maintenance revenue streams. In many cases, they subsidize the cost of educating domestic students, and colleges are now addicted.... “Finally, and perhaps most critically, the culture of education must be rehabilitated. American students have been raised in a soup of narcissism, cynicism, and ideological confusion. They are not stupid. They are not lazy. They are malnourished. Universities must stop selling therapy and start modeling truth, intellectual seriousness, and rigor. The pursuit of knowledge is something sacred, not performative....” Full op-ed at James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. But see also “U.S. Universities Can’t Innovate in Isolation ” at Inside Higher Ed: “At a time when the global race to develop cutting-edge technologies is accelerating, the U.S. should be expanding -- not constraining -- its international research partnerships.” Cornell Historian Offers Hope for Higher Education Excerpt: . . . “We are in an exciting period of reform and rebuilding. On reflection, however, I think that reforming universities will take work both on the inside and from the outside. It’s a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ process. Within the institution, we need leadership from administrators who understand the problem and are committed to restoring liberal education. Trustees and overseers need to back them up. Those administrators need to find like-minded faculty members and work with them. They also must be committed to devoting resources to hiring new faculty, because rare is the institution that already has enough faculty who are dedicated to those goals and not to activism instead....” Full interview of Cornell Prof. Barry Strauss at College Fix. The Real Crisis in Education Is What We Aren’t Measuring Excerpts (link in the original): “There’s a reason so many students feel disconnected from school. It’s not a lack of effort by teachers or disengagement by families. It’s that the structure of our schools still reflects priorities from a very different time. We are operating a 21st-century society on a 20th-century education system, shaped by 19th-century design.... “For years, we’ve referred to communication, teamwork, empathy and leadership as ‘soft skills.’ That phrase undersells their value. Increasingly, scholars and employers are calling them what they are: durable skills. These are abilities that persist, deepen and grow in importance across careers and life stages. They don’t become obsolete with each software update. In fact, they become more essential the more complex our world becomes.... “The stakes are real. A 2024 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that fewer than half of employers believe recent graduates are proficient in leadership. Confidence in graduates’ critical thinking and collaboration skills was even lower. That’s not just a workforce challenge; it’s a civic one. In a democracy, we need citizens who can engage across differences, analyze complex problems and lead with empathy. If we don’t teach those skills with intention, we shouldn’t be surprised when they go missing in public life....” Full op-ed by Utah Cong. Jason E. Thompson at The Hill. Other Articles of Interest How Much Will Universities Pay in Endowment Tax? Full article at AEI including chart showing, in descending order, projections for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT followed by 20 others. Editor’s note: If Stanford were to significantly reduce its over 13,000 to 18,000 managerial and other non-teaching personnel (see the charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage as well as Part 3 of our Back to Basics webpage) and were to move the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that are not primarily involved in front-line teaching and research along with their restricted funding into one or more separate nonprofit entities (see Part 4 of our Back to Basics webpage), to what extent might that realignment impact the pending taxation of Stanford’s core endowment? ( FYI, faculty colleagues at Harvard believe Harvard has over 5,000 personnel at Harvard's own centers and similar entities -- reportedly numbering 100 to 200 and possibly more -- and that Harvard’s faculty disparagingly refer to as the peripherals.) Why I’m Leaving Columbia Full op-ed by former Columbia Prof. Shai Davidai at Tablet: “Don’t let the current calm on campus fool you. Even under congressional investigations , lawsuits , and threat of losing accreditation , Columbia’s leaders cling to the fantasy that these problems will fix themselves.” Confidence in Higher Education Rises from Recent Low Full article at Gallup: Great deal/quite a lot of confidence was 57% in 2015, 36% in 2023 and 42% in 2025. But see also “Trust in Ivy League and Elite Universities Is Tanking” at College Fix : “Only 15 percent of voters have a great deal of trust in the elite universities, while 46 percent have little to no trust at all.” How to Save Higher Education Full op-ed at Free Press, including text of the Manhattan Statement on Higher Education as signed by a number of faculty members nationwide, including at Stanford. State Legislatures Are Requiring Colleges to Cut Degrees in Low Demand Full article at Inside Higher Ed: “It’s just another sign that the era of ‘trust the universities, they’re doing the right thing’ has long since passed.” Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Oceanic Humanities Project Envisions New Wave in Education Five Things to Know About Ultra-Processed Food Symposium Charts New Frontiers in Brain Health ************ “We cannot force someone to hear a message they are not ready to receive, but we must never underestimate the power of planting a seed.” -- Monica Harris, executive director of Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). July 14, 2025 Doing the ‘Right Thing’ Is Not a Moral Compass Excerpts (link in the original): “Perhaps Cornell’s sprawling ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) bureaucracy and senior administrators didn’t intend to discriminate. Maybe they genuinely believed they were ‘doing the right thing.’ But history is filled with tragic consequences born from good intentions unmoored from principle. The real danger lies not just in bad people doing harm, but in well-meaning people redefining harm as virtue, and enforcing it as policy. “At Cornell, this warped sense of righteousness has manifested in what now appears to be a university-wide pattern of discrimination: in hiring, scholarships, student life, and even speech. “As detailed in a recent federal civil rights complaint , faculty candidates were allegedly eliminated not for lack of merit -- but for lack of the ‘right’ racial or gender identity. Scholarships and opportunities were offered or denied based on identity, not achievement. And those who questioned the fairness of it all were marginalized, silenced, or labeled problematic. “How did we get here? “It begins with a dangerous assumption: that individuals or institutions can simply declare what is ‘right’ based on ideological trends, emotional appeal, or political pressure. Who decides what’s right? One might say the law does -- and it does. Federal civil rights laws, for example, prohibit discrimination on the basis of race or sex. But Cornell’s leaders decided that their version of ‘right’ -- wrapped in euphemisms like ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘inclusion’ -- should supersede those laws. “This is not new. We’ve seen this kind of thinking before -- where subjective morality replaces objective principle, intent is elevated above consequence, and slogans obscure reality. “Diversity became one-dimensional. It stopped meaning diversity of thought, background, or experience, and became solely about visible traits. “Equity stopped meaning fairness. It became a mandate for engineered outcomes, regardless of effort or merit. “Inclusion became exclusion. Anyone not conforming to the dominant ideology was treated as suspect, or worse, an oppressor. “In this worldview, discrimination was no longer discrimination -- it was ‘justice.’ Preferential treatment was no longer unfair -- it was ‘equitable.’ And questioning these practices was no longer reasoned dissent -- it was ‘harmful.’ . . . “The damage extends beyond individuals. “Cornell has created segregated dorms, racially themed graduation ceremonies, and anonymous reporting tools to enforce conformity to ever-shifting ideological rules. The campus has become a minefield of suspicion and resentment. Group identity is everything; individual merit is nothing. “And so, the university now finds itself in the crosshairs. Not of political activists, but of federal law. Outside forces are intervening because Cornell abandoned the internal compass that once guided its mission: the pursuit of truth through open inquiry, fairness, and merit. “This is a moment of reckoning. Cornell must decide whether to continue down this path of ideologically justified lawbreaking or return to being a university in the truest sense of the word. That will require courage....” Full op-ed by Cornell alum David Ackerman at Minding the Campus. See also at our Stanford Concerns webpage specific data regarding Stanford’s administrative staffing as compared with other major colleges and universities, data regarding Stanford’s DEI staffing as compared with other major colleges and universities, and Stanford’s prior and recently revamped program for reporting bias . See also Cornell President Michael I. Kotlikoff letter dated May 7, 2025 to alumni and others regarding cuts in federal funding and Cornell’s response. See also Cornell's “Statement on America First Policy Institute Complaint” (June 27, 2025) at Cornell website . See also Guiding Principles (letter dated March 31, 2025 from Stanford's President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez) and President Levin’s Opening Remarks to the Faculty Senate (April 10, 2025). Marc Andreessen’s Comments re Higher Educat ion Excerpts (links in the original): “Influential tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen recently said universities will ‘pay the price’ for promoting [DEI] . . . according to messages he sent to a group chat with White House officials and technology leaders reviewed by The Washington Post. “The billionaire’s messages also cited Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, a respected institution at the heart of Silicon Valley that has incubated tech companies such as Google. Andreessen and his wife [Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen ] have donated millions of dollars to the school.... “The tech investor is known for making controversial statements , including to his 1.8 million followers on X, and has criticized universities and government agencies in media appearances, but his comments in the private chat went beyond his previous statements.... “‘They declared war on 70% of the country and now they’re going to pay the price,’ Andreessen alleged of universities, without calling out a specific school.... “Andreessen’s message to the group about subjecting the NSF to ‘the bureaucratic death penalty’ alleged that the agency, a major funder of university science and tech labs, backed projects that led to online censorship of American citizens.... The investor added: ‘Raze it to the ground and start over.’ ...” Full article including screenshots at Washington Post. See also “National Science Foundation Faces Radical Shake-up as Officials Abolish Its 37 Divisions” at Science Advisor (May 8, 2025). See also previous articles at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage including: “ Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists and We Fought Back ” (September 11, 2023) and “Dr. Bhattacharya's Opening Statement at His Senate Confirmation Hearing to Lead National Institutes of Health -- Five Goals if Confirmed as Head of NIH ” (March 5, 2025). Editor's note: Prof. Bhattacharya was confirmed on March 25, 2025 and took office on April 1, 2025. University of District Columbia Prohibits Panel on Race Excerpts (link in the original): “[Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism] is proud to announce the latest effort in our civil rights advocacy: filing a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the University of the District of Columbia.... “In May 2025, the Our America Foundation approached UDC about hosting a debate titled ‘Is the American Dream Alive for Black Americans?’ featuring diverse Black and Hispanic panelists including FAIR’s Executive Director Monica Harris [who herself is Black] . The proposed event was intended to afford UDC students the opportunity to engage with different perspectives on one of America’s most important ongoing conversations. “UDC’s response was swift and shocking. “Dr. Monique Gamble, speaking on behalf of the university, rejected the debate outright, explicitly citing the racial identities of the university’s students as justification. In her written response, Dr. Gamble stated that UDC’s students have ‘identities [that] actually do put them at risk in a society that has a known history of criminalizing race, gender, sexuality, immigration and socio-economic status.’ She further claimed that the university would not ‘entertain these realities as debatable.’ “Put simply, a public university funded by taxpayers refused to host a debate about Black Americans’ experiences -- and featuring Black panelists -- because university officials determined that their perspectives were incompatible with the institution’s mission....” Full news release at FAIR’s website. A more detailed discussion of the issues is here; a bio for FAIR’s executive director, Monica Harris, is here ; and her TEDx talk “The Labels That Divide Us” (15 minutes) is here . In a Drive to Protect Free Speech, UK Regulator Says University Students Must Face Shocking Ideas Excerpt : “Students at English universities must prepare to confront ideas they find uncomfortable and shocking, the national regulator for higher education said as it released new guidelines governing free speech on campuses across the country. “The Office for Students said Thursday [June 19] that freedom of speech and academic freedom are crucial to higher education, so the guidelines are designed to ensure that universities don’t stifle any form of legal speech on their campuses or in their classrooms. “Students must be allowed to freely share their opinions and be prepared to hear a range of views during their studies, Arif Ahmed, free speech director for the regulator, said in a statement. “‘This includes things that they may find uncomfortable or shocking,’ he said. ‘By being exposed to a diversity of academic thought, students will develop their analytical and critical thinking skills.’ . . ." Full article at AP. See also summary of guidance and PDF copy of the full text , effective August 1, 2025. UC Berkeley Chancellor Is Prepping for Capitol Hill Grilling Excerpts (links in the original): “[Last week] was supposed to be a tough week for UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons. “He was scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which wants to examine ‘the underlying factors instigating antisemitic upheaval and hatred on campus.’ ... However, the hearing was postponed. It will be rescheduled for a later date, according to a committee staff member.... “In a talk at the Berkeley City Club [two weeks ago] , Lyons addressed the assault on higher education, its impacts on Cal, the balance between free speech and the right for all students to feel safe on campus, and how the UC system is approaching this era, all while it is wondering and waiting if UC will get one of those dreaded ‘Columbia-Harvard letters’ from the administration announcing draconian cuts. “‘We face very substantial risks,’ said Lyons. “UC Berkeley has already lost between $30 million and $40 million due to Trump’s cuts to approximately 35 grants, Lyons said. The entire UC system has seen $600 million in grant and research cuts, according to Nathan Brostrom, UC’s executive vice president and chief financial officer. It receives approximately $4 billion in federal funding annually.... [Followed by discussion of past and recent events, administrative and faculty responses, etc.] “UC Berkeley and the entire UC system face multiple federal investigations, including how the system handled the spring 2024 protest against Israel’s war in Gaza, whether the system discriminates against Jewish employees , the relationship Cal has with a Chinese university and more.... “‘To be honest, and with all due respect, the hearings this committee held on this same subject last year are reminiscent not of a fair trial of any sort, but of the kind of hearings the House Committee on Un-American Activities used to hold,’ [Georgetown Law Prof. David Cole] said in his [May 7] testimony. ‘And I think we can all agree that the HUAC hearings were both a big mistake and a major intrusion on the First Amendment rights of Americans.’ ...” Full article by Stanford alum Frances Dinkelspiel at Berkeleyside. See also “UC System Bans Student Governments from Boycotting Israel” at College Fix . How DEI Policies and Procedures Have Controlled University Hiring Excerpts (links in the original): “In early 2021, Carma Gorman, an art history professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the designated ‘diversity advocate’ for a faculty search committee, emailed John Yancey , the College of Fine Arts’ associate dean of diversity, seeking approval to proceed with a job search. “‘I wanted to make sure that the demographics of our pool pass muster,’ Gorman wrote. She noted that 21 percent of applicants were from underrepresented minority groups, with another 28 percent self-identifying as Asian.... “‘Once we’ve sorted everyone into Qualified and Unqualified groups,’ Gorman wrote of the first stage in the search process, the committee would ask an administrator to ‘check the demographic characteristics’ of the initial cut. ‘If it is a diverse enough group to merit moving forward with the search, fantastic!’ But if the pool was deemed insufficiently diverse, the committee would revisit candidates from underrepresented groups who were initially considered unqualified, expand job advertising, or simply ‘cancel the search entirely.’ This step would be repeated for both the shortlist and the finalist slate. “The practice raises obvious legal red flags -- particularly when it involves canceling searches outright, effectively denying all candidates a fair opportunity based on immutable characteristics. Yet documents I’ve obtained show that more than a dozen universities have adopted some version of this approach.... “If there’s one key lesson here, it’s that the desire for power, not ideology alone, gave rise to the social-justice university. More than likely, power will also prove its undoing.” Full op-ed at City Journal. See also “Federal Investigation Launched Over Faculty Hiring Practices at George Mason University” at Diverse Issues in Higher Education . Other Articles of Interest MIT Sued Over Alleged Failure to Address Anti-Semitic Harassment Full article at Campus Reform. PDF copy of the lawsuit, as brought by the Louis D. Brandeis Center, available here . Cornell’s New President Remains Under Attack Full article at National Review. Barnard College Settles Antisemitism Lawsuit with Controversial Campus Policy Changes Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. For Grants to Prepare K-12 Teachers, Department of Education Favors Colleges and Universities with Civic Schools Full article at Inside Higher Ed. ‘Unprepared and Entitled’ College Grads Are Unpopular with Hiring Managers Full article at College Fix including this link to the survey itself. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Neurobiologist’s Research on Brain Development Paves the Way for Possible Alzheimer’s Solutions Blood-test Analysis Can Determine the Biological Ages of 11 Separate Organ Systems What Workers Really Want from Artificial Intelligence AI Is Reshaping Accounting Jobs by Doing the ‘Boring’ Stuff Students Build AI-powered Robot Dogs from Scratch ************ “I don't really understand my own position unless I also understand your opposition to my position even if I still disagree with you. ” – Stanford Prof. Andrew Huberman July 7, 2025 To Save Themselves, Universities Must Cultivate Civic Friendship Excerpt (links in the original): “The war between Washington and our nation’s elite universities continues to heat up. From stripping federal funding from Harvard to targeting the accreditation status of Columbia, the Trump administration is delivering on the campaign it promised to carry out against universities that refuse to meet its demands. “As professors who have taught at institutions including Harvard and Princeton for many years, we have consistently encouraged universities to reject any demands or conditions that would compromise basic principles of academic freedom and freedom of thought, inquiry and speech. Nevertheless, as we have previously argued , elite universities themselves bear much of the responsibility for their current predicament. From fostering (or willfully looking past) campus intellectual climates poisoned by conformism, ideological homogeneity and groupthink to failing to take adequate action against harassment and other activities that undermine their core truth-seeking mission, universities have made themselves legitimate objects of scrutiny -- and low-hanging fruit for an administration that is metaphorically out for blood. “We believe a fundamental reason for the decline of the pursuit of truth on campuses is the collapse in acknowledging the importance of civic friendship -- which, following Aristotle, we understand to be the bond of mutual respect and willingness to cooperate for the sake of the common good, even across significant disagreements or divisions....” Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George and Union Theological Seminary Prof. Cornel West at Washington Post. Reforming Higher-Education Reform Excerpts (link in the original): “To constructively reform an institution requires understanding its problems and challenges. To understand an institution’s problems and challenges, one must grasp its aims, structure, and spirit. Many well-intentioned would-be university reformers who recognize the crisis of higher education fail to appreciate the aims, structure, and spirit of liberal education, the capstone and highest justification of undergraduate study. This causes well-intentioned would-be university reformers to miss the center of the target with their criticism and impels them to advance inadequate or counterproductive remedies. “In a late-June online conversation, ‘Are We Past Peak Harvard?’: 3 Writers Mull Higher Education’s Woes , sharp-minded New York Times writers discussed ‘the state of higher education in Trump 2.0 and beyond.’ Host Frank Bruni, a thoughtful man of the left, is a Times contributing opinion writer and a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University. He exchanged views with Ross Douthat, a Times columnist and a wide-ranging and well-respected conservative thinker; and Lawrence H. Summers, a centrist Democrat, who is also a Times contributing opinion writer, a former Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2021, Harvard president from 2001 to 2006, and a longtime Harvard professor with appointments in the economics department and at the Kennedy School. “The roundtable covered considerable ground. Bruni’s comments and questions recognized that elite universities needed a course correction while condemning the Trump administration’s interventions as springing from resentment of elite universities’ power and influence and causing considerable harm. Douthat and Summers argued that whatever the president’s motives, progressive orthodoxy on campus has vilified and excluded conservative ideas. And they both espoused viewpoint diversity as an urgently needed corrective. “Yet only obliquely did they recognize that fixing higher education depends on rediscovering the aim of liberal education, revising the structure of the curriculum, and setting aside the spirit of party that many professors bring to the classroom in favor of the spirit of curiosity, fallibility, and free inquiry.... [Followed by a summary of perspectives presented in the roundtable and what was missing in the discussion.] “We need reformers who can explain that liberal education aims to form cultivated human beings capable of exercising wisely the rights and discharging effectively the responsibilities of free citizens. “We need reformers who understand that liberal education must be structured around study of American ideas and institutions; the seminal intellectual achievements -- scientific as well as literary -- and decisive events of Western civilization; and the languages, culture, and history of other civilizations. “And we need reformers who know that universities don’t in the first place need conservative professors or progressive professors but rather professors endowed with the old-fashioned liberal spirit. Such professors furnish students’ minds with facts and observations, methods and interpretations, and evidence and arguments. And such professors assist students in thinking for themselves by teaching that authors and texts must be understood before one refutes or embraces them, and that understanding an idea or an institution involves examining not only where it breaks down but also how it gained acceptance and why it exerted influence. “The paucity of such reformers gives rise to the widespread need for remedial education focusing on the university’s mission, not least for faculty and administrators, many of whose teachers failed to introduce them to the aim, structure, and spirit of liberal education.” Full op-ed by Hoover/Stanford Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics. See also Stanford Civic Initiative webpage and courses . See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Why the Traditional College Major May Be Holding Students Back Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “The college major, developed and delivered by disciplinary experts within siloed departments, continues to be the primary benchmark for academic quality and institutional performance. This structure likely works well for professional majors governed by accreditation or licensure, or more tightly aligned with employment. But in today’s evolving landscape, reliance on the discipline-specific major may not always serve students or institutions well. “As a professor emeritus and former college administrator and dean, I argue that the college major may no longer be able to keep up with the combinations of skills that cross multiple academic disciplines and career readiness skills demanded by employers, or the flexibility students need to best position themselves for the workplace.... “In response to market pressures, colleges are adding new high-demand majors at a record pace. Between 2002 and 2022, the number of degree programs nationwide increased by nearly 23,000, or 40%, while enrollment grew only 8%. Some of these majors, such as cybersecurity, fashion business or entertainment design, arguably connect disciplines rather than stand out as distinct. Thus, these new majors siphon enrollment from lower-demand programs within the institution and compete with similar new majors at competitor schools. “At the same time, traditional arts and humanities majors are adding professional courses to attract students and improve employability . Yet, this adds credit hours to the degree while often duplicating content already available in other departments.... “Before the 20th century, students followed a broad liberal arts curriculum designed to create well-rounded, globally minded citizens. The major emerged as a response to an evolving workforce that prioritized specialized knowledge. But times change -- and so can the model.” Full op-ed by former Miami U. Dean and Prof. Emeritus John Weigand at The Conversation. Harvard Must Defend Its Integrity Without Losing Its Head Excerpts (links in the original): “Harvard Government Department professors Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky recently warned in The Harvard Crimson that if Harvard negotiates with the Trump administration to restore frozen federal research funding, the university risks legitimizing authoritarian extortion. They describe any engagement as capitulation and argue that by cooperating with the administration -- even minimally -- Harvard will set a dangerous precedent for the erosion of liberal democracy. “As a member of the same Harvard community for over two decades and as a scholar of political culture and higher education, I take concerns about institutional autonomy seriously. But I also see the argument of Enos and Levitsky as alarmist and counterproductive. Harvard must absolutely preserve its independence and academic mission. But it must do so through clear thinking, legal rigor, and public accountability -- not by retreating into ideological rigidity.... [Followed by discussion of specific actions that should and shouldn’t be taken.] “Harvard, like all elite institutions, has a responsibility not just to itself, but to the country. It must show that independence doesn’t mean impunity -- and that fidelity to the law is not surrender, but strength. “We don’t need universities to become battlegrounds in America’s partisan wars. We need them to model how to live and think together in a pluralistic democracy and—in the spirit of the Kalven Report -- to model ‘integrity and intellectual competence.’ “Harvard must hold the line. But it must also remember where the line really is. Harvard’s motto is ‘Veritas,’ or truth, and Enos and Levitsky know better than what they wrote; they presented a false dichotomy of what Harvard’s choices are vis-à-vis the Trump administration and, in doing so, willfully distorted the truth. Harvard has a principled path forward with the Trump administration that can return the school to its deserved greatness.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. Yale Ends DEI Initiative and Scrubs the Website Excerpt (links in the original): “Belonging at Yale -- a five-year initiative aimed to increase diversity, bolster a sense of inclusion and ensure equity throughout the University -- has concluded, administrators announced Thursday [June 26] . “A University-wide email sent from President Maurie McInnis, Vice Provost for Faculty Development Gary Désir and Secretary Kimberly Goff-Crews indicated that the initiative was always planned to end this year. Public access to the initiative’s once-expansive website is now steeply limited. The site, which the News accessed on Thursday through web archives, previously included pages of compiled resources on diversity, equity and inclusion ; antiracism ; Yale’s historic connection to slavery ; prospective school-wide actions to increase diversity and a contact form soliciting ideas . “The updated website now consists of one central homepage displaying three annual reports on the Belonging at Yale initiative, issued in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Multiple links included in those reports are now inaccessible. The reports appear to be restricted to users who can log in through Yale’s central authentication service. “The other pages that were previously accessible on the site are no longer visible on the homepage and are inaccessible through direct links....” Full article at Yale Daily News. Other Articles of Interest Four Point Agenda for Reforming Colleges and Universities Full PDF document at Heterodox Academy. Forget Harvard Because the Traditional University Model is Failing Full op-ed by San Deigo State Prof. Emeritus John Eger at Times of San Diego. Indiana Public Universities Ending 19% of Degrees Full article at Real Clear Education. What the University of Virginia Should Have Done Full op-ed by former U Virgina chief legal officer Timothy J. Heaphy at NY Times . Ohio Signs Law to Depoliticize Colleges and End DEI Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars. The NextGen Bar Exam Is DEI in Action, Dangerously Lowering Standards Full op-ed at The Hill. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Exploring the Dangers of AI in Mental Health Care Molecule Restores Long-term Strength to Old Mice How Biomass Changed over 500 Million Years ************ “In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you'll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change.” – Prof. Gary Hamel, London School of Business June 30, 2025 Tuition Hikes and Layoffs Are Coming to a Broad Set of Universities Excerpt (links in the original): “Public universities in the Midwest are raising prices for out-of-state students, as Florida schools consider making the same move for the first time since 2012. “Cornell and Duke are among the colleges weighing layoffs. The University of Minnesota is cutting hundreds of jobs, even as undergraduate tuition soars as much as 7.5 percent. “Just as America’s colleges are preparing to welcome what could be the largest freshman class in the nation’s history , political and economic forces are unleashing havoc on higher education budgets. Schools are grappling with meager upticks in state support and topsy-turvy economic forecasts, and Republicans in Washington are pursuing federal budget cuts and threatening tax hikes ...." Full article at NY Times. Stanford to Reduce Budget by $140 Million, Lay Off Employees for Next Academic Year Excerpts (links in the original): “Stanford announced Thursday that it will impose a $140 million budget cut for the 2025-26 academic year to adapt to reductions in federal research support and an increase in the endowment tax. "President Donald Trump’s 'One, Big, Beautiful Bill ,' passed May 22 by the House of Representatives, proposes a 21% increase on Stanford’s endowment tax from the current rate of 1.4%. The bill is currently undergoing negotiations in the Senate before being sent to the president’s office. If signed into law, the increase would represent a tax of $750 million annually, placing some financial aid -- over two-thirds of which comes from the endowment -- at risk.... “'There is significant uncertainty about how federal support for universities will evolve, but it is clear that the status quo has changed,' University president Jonathan Levin ’94 and Provost Jenny Martinez wrote in their announcement of the change. "According to the letter, the budget cuts will require a reduction in staff positions, including through layoffs.... "The figure of $140 million excludes funding cuts for the School of Medicine, which will separately decide on reductions in the coming weeks.... “'In all the departments in the humanities and social sciences, in the natural sciences and engineering, in the medical school and elsewhere, the importance of that work is for the future of the country and the world,’ Martinez said. ‘The investment in education is for the long term benefit of society, and we really need to defend that.’” Full article at Stanford Daily. See also full text of Pres. Levin’s and Provost Martinez’ letter to faculty and staff, “Update on the 2025-26 Budget ,” at Stanford Report. See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage and our Stanford Concerns webpage. More of Us Are Working in Big Bureaucratic Organizations than Ever Before Excerpts (links in the original): “Writing for the Harvard Business Review in 1988, Peter Drucker predicted that in 20 years the average organization would have slashed the number of management layers by half and shrunk its managerial ranks by two-thirds. Unfortunately, it hasn’t turned out that way. Despite all of the hype around alternatives -- the gig economy, the sharing economy, holacracy, lean -- bureaucracy has been growing, not shrinking.... “While many CEOs decry bureaucracy, few can claim success in defeating it. In practice, tactical victories -- like cutting out a layer of management, trimming head office staff, or simplifying a cumbersome process -- are usually small and quickly reversed. In this regard, look again at Figure 1. Notice how rapidly the thicket of bureaucracy grew back after being pruned in the wake of the 2008 recession. [Editor’s note: charts in the article are similar to the detailed charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage showing extraordinary growth of Stanford’s managerial staff in the past 20 years as compared to virtually no growth in the faculty or student body during those same years. Among other things, note that Stanford has the highest administrative costs per student ($40,227) of any U.S. college or university and as compared to MIT ($32.719), Yale ($22,461), USC ($18,170), Cornell ($9,329) and UCLA ($7,640). ] “It could be argued that in a world characterized by increasing complexity, the growth of bureaucracy is inevitable. Who but senior executives is going to address all those vexing new issues, like globalization, digitization, and social responsibility? Who else is going to meet all those new compliance requirements around diversity, risk mitigation and sustainability? This mindset has produced a surge in new C-level roles: Chief Analytics Officer, Chief Collaboration Officer, Chief Customer Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Ethics Officer, Chief Learning Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer and even Chief Happiness Officer . And more prosaically, who, if not managers, is going to do the everyday work of planning, prioritizing, allocating, reviewing, coordinating, controlling, scheduling, and rewarding? “Yet our research suggests that bureaucracy is not inevitable; it’s not the inescapable price of doing business in a complicated world. Rather, it’s a cancer that eats away at economic productivity and organizational resilience.” Full article by London School of Business Prof. Gary Hamel and management consultant Michele Zanini at Harvard Business Review (2016). Behind Closed Doors, Harvard Officials Debate a Risky Truce with President Trump Excerpt: . . . . . “Unlike many other powerful institutions that have struck bargains with Mr. Trump, Harvard, the nation’s oldest and richest university, spent much of this spring as the vanguard of resistance to the White House, credited by academic leaders, alumni and pro-democracy activists for fighting the administration and serving as a formidable barrier against authoritarianism. “Despite a series of legal wins against the administration, though, Harvard officials concluded in recent weeks that those victories alone might be insufficient to protect the university....” Full article at NY Times. Harvard Is Asking Corporations to Fill Its Federal Funding Gap Excerpt: “Harvard University and other top research schools are seeking corporate funders to support their science labs following sweeping cuts to government grants. “The T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard, which typically gets more than 70% of its annual research dollars from the federal government, lost nearly all of the funding after the Trump administration canceled hundreds of the university’s research grants and contracts. The school expected to get more than $200 million this fiscal year. “Administrators called the losses catastrophic....” Full article at WSJ. ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills Excerpts (links in the original): “Does ChatGPT harm critical thinking abilities? A new study from researchers at MIT’s Media Lab has returned some concerning results. “The study divided 54 subjects—18 to 39 year-olds from the Boston area—into three groups, and asked them to write several SAT essays using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s search engine, and nothing at all, respectively. “Researchers used an EEG to record the writers’ brain activity across 32 regions, and found that of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and 'consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.' Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study. “The group that wrote essays using ChatGPT all delivered extremely similar essays that lacked original thought, relying on the same expressions and ideas. Two English teachers who assessed the essays called them largely 'soulless.' The EEGs revealed low executive control and attentional engagement. And by their third essay, many of the writers simply gave the prompt to ChatGPT and had it do almost all of the work. “The brain-only group, conversely, showed the highest neural connectivity, especially in alpha, theta and delta bands, which are associated with creativity ideation, memory load, and semantic processing. Researchers found this group was more engaged and curious, and claimed ownership and expressed higher satisfaction with their essays." Full article at Time. See also “Does AI Make Us Stupid?" at Free Press . Educators Must Adapt to AI, but They Need Help Excerpts (links in the original): “I recently had the opportunity to be part of an OpenAI faculty roundtable . I was one of about a dozen professors that were joined by several staff from OpenAI’s recently created ‘Education Team .’ We talked about our best practices for teaching with AI and our worries about its impact on student engagement, motivation, and academic integrity. The Education Team listened, asked questions, and presented their own vision of an ‘AI Native Institution .’ “Our conversations were all about isolated and idiosyncratic (and, sure, exemplary) pedagogical practices, but completely lacking in big-picture vision—as if all we had to do was better integrate some whiz-bang gadget one student, one faculty, one institution at a time. “But the real story is that AI has broken the transmission model of education, where professors teach and then grade students on how much they learned. A passing grade used to mean students had learned enough of what the professor had 'transmitted.' No longer. These past two years faculty have given out A’s left and right to students who don’t understand (much less read) the assignment they just submitted. I cannot overstate this: AI has decoupled students’ performance (what they submit to us) and student knowledge. “AI is not just another shiny new gadget. It is a paradigm-shifting technology. The rise of the printing press in medieval Europe fundamentally altered how people related to knowledge, sparking a centuries-long expansion of literacy and thus the democratization of knowledge. I believe AI is the printing press of our time, again expanding and democratizing the process of learning. “All of us in higher education have long known that the transmission model was deeply flawed. But until ChatGPT was released in November of 2022, we had no viable alternatives. Now we do. What OpenAI should have done, if it wanted to help reshape the future of education, is stop asking how AI fits into the old paradigm by tinkering at the edges and start imagining and investing in what a new model of education could look like.” Full op-ed by Merrimack College Prof. Dan Sarofian-Butin at Education Next. Colleges Need More Comedy Excerpts (links in the original): "We live in humorless times, and yet the need to laugh seems more vital than ever. "Conversations on college campuses are tense right now, if they happen at all. I have taught on a university campus for close to two decades, but only recently have I started to give some consideration to comedy as a serious source of study. "Today, I weave humor into everything and, as an English professor, I find so many promising parallels between jokes and narratives. As the humanities increasingly becomes a target in our data-driven world of deliverables and returns on investment, the study and practice of humor has the potential to enhance and enrich higher education. "Still, humor is a subject of widespread interest among both those in academia and the larger public. As the world welcomes Pope Leo, I came across a New York Times opinion piece by his predecessor titled 'There is Faith in Humor.' Pope Francis argues that laughter is central to living, just as humor humanizes us. The piece also emphasizes the centrality of comedy to Catholic faith, interfaith conversations and social justice. "Humor and comedy take courage, of course, and also coincide with creative and critical thinking. "The next generation of learners can certainly benefit from this focus on lifelong learning through laughter, which in many ways is the freest form of expression." Full op-ed by Sacred Heart Prof. Cara Erdheim Kilgallen at The Hill. Other Articles of Interest Department of Justice Opens Investigation re UC Berkeley’s Alleged Race and Sex-Based Hiring Practices Press release at DOJ website; full text of DOJ notice is here . See also “UC Sees the Good in Faculty Diversity While DOJ Says It May Be Illegal Discrimination” at LA Times . See also “Internal Documents Show Cornell Hired Based on Race” at City Journal . See also “Civil rights Complaint Filed Against Cornell Includes Bombshell Whistleblower Emails” at College Fix . Professors View Teaching as ‘Burden,’ Spend Less Time in Classroom Full article at College Fix. Can AI Compensate for an Inferior Education? Full article at DC Journal. Guarding Democracy by Teaching Civics Video at Higher Ed Now. Higher Ed Progress and Setbacks Full article at National Association of Scholars. College Degrees With Best Financial Return Revealed Full article at Newsweek. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Program Teaches the Art and Craft of Live Storytelling The Bold Bet That Built a Telescope New Language Model Helps Patients Understand Their Radiology Reports You Can Literally Lose Who You Are ************ “Today, university campuses are criticized for being narrow and doctrinaire. The critics are not all wrong. However, when a university is at its best – when Stanford is at its best – the campus is an unparalleled place for freedom, truth, and enlightenment.” -- Stanford Pres. Jon Levin, 2025 commencement address June 23, 2025 Moral Failure and Government Intrusion at Harvard Excerpts (links in the original): "To understand the crisis in American higher education, it is necessary to hold two thoughts at once. American higher education remains the envy of the world, with seven of its universities in the top 10 of Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings . Yet the behavior on many campuses has caused public confidence in higher education to plummet. With a recent drop of 21 percentage points, only 36 percent now express a lot of confidence, while 32 percent have little or no confidence. Among those dissatisfied with higher education, politicization stands as a major cause of their dismay. Significantly, though, the public does not seem happy about the attacks on higher education coming from the administration, with only 27 percent approving. Those mixed messages may be the fingerpost for finding a solution. “Harvard has been among the worst offenders, with cancellations, shout-downs, disruptive encampments, and egregious antisemitic conduct. “… the treatment Harvard is receiving from the Trump administration is neither measured nor reasonable nor, according to many legal scholars across the ideological spectrum, within statutory authority. Yet worse is the federal government’s apparent willingness to accept the damage being done to American scientific progress. “Enumerating the sins of Harvard is not difficult, and Harvard will need to be more transparent and specific than it has been about the way it will measure the effectiveness of its reforms. Moving forward will not be easy, and if it is to happen, both Harvard and the Trump administration will need to adjust their positions and their rhetoric. There is every reason to do so…. “Governing boards that, for good reason, do not want Leviathan’s intrusion into their campuses need to ensure fair admissions, fair hiring, and freedom from discrimination. This is their moment for strong, principled institutional governance. “But it must be said out loud: Limited government is a core value within the American concept of liberty, especially for classical liberals and conservatives. It is reasonable and wholesome in a free society for private institutions to challenge governmental fiat and intrusion into their operations. It behooves the Trump administration to respect such boundaries.” Full op-ed by American Council of Trustees and Alumni President Michael B. Poliakoff at Law & Liberty. Reforming Higher Ed from Within -- Restoring Viewpoint Diversity Through Checks and Balances Excerpts (footnotes deleted): “Concern over one-sided ideological bias in higher education has built over the past few years, resulting in a slew of articles calling for change. Government actors—namely, the Trump administration—have stepped in with the blunt instrument of threats and funding cuts, setting a poor precedent for reforming higher education. These actions often violate academic freedom and are almost certain to backfire in the long run. “A much better approach is to reform academia from the inside by setting up new policies and procedures that address the ideological imbalance and the resultant groupthink, junk science, and 'cancellations' that have occurred at such high rates in recent years. “Taking a cue from the US Constitution, we propose a series of ‘checks and balances’ among the major actors in institutions of higher ed to prevent any one faction from dominating. Each of these actors—trustees, administration, faculty, outside accrediting agencies, and review committees—must play a role in restoring the balance to higher ed. “We recommend that trustees, presidents, provosts, deans, and chairs—or their proxies—play a more active role in the hiring process to correct for this. This would not necessarily mean they would sit on every individual search committee, which would be impractical. Rather, they would participate in a holistic process tasked with examining overall viewpoint imbalance in departments, divisions, and the school as a whole. “Solutions to higher ed’s political bias problem have ranged from new centers devoted to civic education to eliminating DEI. While such measures may help, none gets to the heart of the problem, which is ultimately the ideological makeup of the faculty and its effects on curricula, student experience, and knowledge production. Our proposal is designed to address this core problem head-on that is distorting and discrediting academia. Higher ed has lost the trust of the American people, as polls show, and it’s imperative that it takes action. If this had been done earlier, we might not have seen the kind of blunt interventions higher ed is now enduring.” Full op-ed by Boston University Prof. Michael Jindra and Occidental College Prof. Jacob L. Mackey at AEI. Burnout Is the Curriculum Excerpt (link in the original): "Today’s college students are more anxious and depressed than ever. A study by the Healthy Minds Network revealed that 38 percent of students in 2023–24 reported symptoms of depression, including loss of enjoyment and persistent feelings of hopelessness. In response, universities have ramped up mental health messaging—through emails, workshops, and mindfulness events—urging students to prioritize self-care. "These offerings, though well-meaning, ignore the core problem: students are overwhelmed not by a lack of wellness resources but by the impossible demands of modern college life. "Students invest hours in performative accomplishments while neglecting authentic intellectual growth. So when colleges tell us to 'take a mental health day,' it rings hollow—because students have been conditioned to believe that missing out on anything risks falling behind in the relentless pursuit of credentials. Sure, students can take a 'mental health day'—but it might cost them the edge they’ve been told they can’t afford to lose. "If universities are serious about improving student mental health, they should reconsider their investment in wellness events and instead reevaluate the structure of student success. That means reinforcing a different metric of accomplishment—one that values meaningful education over manufactured achievement. "It means creating a campus culture that encourages focus, reflection, and intellectual curiosity, not nonstop involvement or artificial 'passion.' Only then will students be free to pursue learning without sacrificing their sanity." Full op-ed by Emory University undergraduate Alyza Harris at Minding the Campus. To Fight Political Polarization, Reinvest in Civics and the Liberal Arts Excerpts (link in the original): "As a history PhD, I’m used to hearing that I should have studied STEM (science, technology, engineering, or math) instead. We humanities graduates often retort that our skills are under-appreciated, but our arguments ring hollow in the face of a difficult job market. Facing this reality, ambitious students rapidly abandoned arts majors throughout the 2000s, causing universities to slash funding for the likes of literature and civics. Even as students learn ever less about America’s history and constitution, there has never been a compelling argument for the practical use of the humanities like there is for STEM. "Now, rising political instability has begun to change that calculus. Reinvesting in civics and the liberal arts could help arrest political chaos that has imposed very real costs on American society. "Although political polarization threatens nearly all facets of American life, its economic costs are the easiest to measure. For example, both Democrats and Republicans recognize that they will need to reform programs like Social Security and Medicare—which account for the majority of federal spending—but political mistrust has prevented them from reaching a compromise. "While turning most students into literature and history majors might help mitigate political chaos, it still wouldn’t address the humanities’ employability problem: hospitals won’t be hiring fresh history majors as surgeons, regardless of the social benefits. Instead, colleges could require all students to take classes in history and politics as part of a curriculum designed to develop them into good citizens. The University of Chicago and Columbia, for example, already require students to take a 'core curriculum,' which includes classes on history and culture. "Supporting history and civics wouldn’t require reorienting the U.S. economy; the country still needs engineers, surgeons, and bankers. Even if America reinvests in teaching our nation’s political tradition, I wouldn’t shy away from hard questions about my employment prospects. But when conversations turn to politics, more respectful discussions might replace the anger and conspiracy theories that pervade today." Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. Cornell Announces Major Staff Cuts and Hiring Restrictions in Light of 'Profound Financial Challenges' Excerpt (links in the original): "Top administrators announced actions to combat 'profound financial challenges' in a statement to the Cornell community on Wednesday. These actions include downsizing staff as the University streamlines processes, consolidates operations and restricts hiring for the 2025-2026 academic year. "The statement attributes the financial challenges to federal funding cuts, including those to research , financial aid and medical reimbursement. Additionally, the statement notes that the school faces rapidly escalating legal expenses, an anticipated tax on its endowment income and rising costs of inflation...." Full article at Cornell Daily Sun. See also “Tuition Increases and Layoffs Are Coming to a Broad Set of Universities” at NYT . See also our Stanford Concerns webpage with extensive data re Stanford's staffing and costs and our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage re proposed corrective actions. Other Articles of Interest How Universities Would Overhaul Research Funding "Two New Models Are Geared Toward Creating a More Transparent and Accountable System to Track Costs Indirectly Related to Research." Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Reimagining College Full book review at Law & Liberty. The Encampment Mindset -- The Psychology of Student Protests Full op-ed at Sapir Journal. The Handwriting Revolution Full article at Inside Higher Ed. The Great Antisemitism Debate Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Medical School Has Gotten Too Political Full op-ed by U. Alabama Birmingham Prof. Emeritus Thomas S. Huddle and Yale Medical School lecturer Sally Satel at Chronicle of Higher Education. Harvard Medical School Faces Backlash Over Latest DEI Office Renaming Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. The Unraveling of the AAUP Full op-ed by U. Illinois Prof. Emeritus Matthew W. Finkin at Chronicle of Higher Education. The Hijacking of American Classrooms and How We Can Reclaim Them Full op-ed at Fair For All. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Celebrates Its Largest Graduating Class Ever at Commencement 2025 (Video) An AI Analyst Made 30 Years of Stock Picks – and Outperformed Human Investors by a ‘Stunning’ Degree New Award Recognizes Efforts to Elevate Constructive Dialogue at Stanford How Stanford Is Simplifying Decisions and Processes How Language Bias Persists in Scientific Publishing Despite AI Tools ************ “Historical thinking requires suspending present-day judgments and learning to appreciate the complexity of human motives and actions across time. It’s a practice of empathy grounded in evidence.” – Stanford Prof. Emeritus Sam Wineburg June 16, 2025 The Courage to Converse – Tough Dialogue on Campus Excerpts: “This past spring semester, the College Debates & Discourse (CD&D) Alliance organized and hosted more than 80 campus debates and dialogues, engaging several thousand students at partner institutions across the nation. In total, these events covered a panoramic range of topics and elicited a myriad of student perspectives. A key shared takeaway has emerged: students, faculty, and community members attest that in today’s sharply divided political climate, it is more crucial than ever that universities remain strongholds of free speech and open dialogue. “National surveys of students and faculty have cast a spotlight on their reluctance to discuss controversial political and social topics. The pervasive culture of fear across campuses can feel overwhelming. Students with widely varying perspectives are increasingly afraid to speak up, unsure if participation in political advocacy or the expression of their beliefs will bring about social repercussions, or worse. “Sitting in a roomful of people with conflicting perspectives can be unnerving, and listening to someone you vehemently disagree with can be nothing short of infuriating. Sharing the deeply personal stories that influence your social and political ideology with a group of strangers can feel like a dystopian episode of Fear Factor. But these are precisely the kinds of experiences that young people need to develop the humility and empathy so crucial for navigating the diverse voices and perspectives they will encounter once they step off campus. “The right to express dissent is one of the most fundamental American values and remains critical to maintaining the integrity of our academic institutions. Against the backdrop of campus protests and volatile climate in higher education, colleges and universities should encourage their students to ask tough questions, embrace having their perspectives challenged, and build capacity to listen attentively to others with differing views.” Full article at GoActa. See also “Civil Discourse Is a Lost Art on Campus but I Learned to Disagree Better” at Minding the Campus . See also “Free Speech and the Philosophy Classroom -- The Wrong Question” at APA Online . Will the University Survive AI? Excerpts (links in the original): " . . . it is not ideology, but technology that is precipitating the greatest crisis higher education has ever faced. "A recent article by James D. Walsh in New York Magazine, widely circulated among academics, reported that “just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT [in 2022], a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used the chatbot to help with homework assignments . . . "One problem is that it’s difficult to prove that students have cheated with chatbots. They’ve learned how to detect “Trojan horse” traps in assignments, engineer prompts that won’t make them look too smart, and launder their essays through multiple bot-generated iterations. Nor is AI-powered software a reliable means of detecting such schemes. "Faced with these difficulties, universities have punted. They’ve done little more than leave faculty to establish their own AI-use policies, which vary widely and are, in any case, largely unenforceable. (What is more, some professors are using chatbots to formulate assignments and grade papers. In their classrooms, machines are talking to machines.) This response is completely inadequate. Universities will not survive if they are little more than expensive diploma mills. Nor will the United States, for what will take their place in preparing future citizens, leaders, and builders to repair our broken institutions and maintain a healthy and prospering polity? "The ultimate aim of a liberal education is fully to actualize the human capacity 'to form an instinctive just estimate of things as they pass before us,' in the words of John Henry Newman. If we are to maintain our humanity in the age of AI, an education that teaches young people to read, write, and think through the investigation of traditional sources of human meaning — goodness, truth, justice, beauty — and the cultural and political conditions in which they acquire a prominent place in human life, will be more necessary than ever. "If colleges and universities have any hope of surviving, they must articulate a compelling vision of what higher education is, and what it is for — of its signal importance for individuals and society alike. If they are to equip students to find their way in an increasingly complex world, they must provide not just a technical education, but a genuinely liberal one. That’s the only way they can convince students not to cheat themselves out of the chance to live rich and meaningful lives by unreflectively turning over their distinctively human energies and capacities to AI. Let’s hope they succeed. For if higher education ceases to preserve, extend, and transmit the wisdom and knowledge our ancestors struggled and suffered to achieve, who or what will? Full article at Unherd. See also “Assessment in the Age of AI – Universities Must Do More Than Tell Students What Not to Do” at The Conversation . See also "AI Ethics in Higher Education: How Schools Are Proceeding" at EdTech . Other Articles of Interest Here’s What Utah’s Colleges Are Doing to Win Back State Funding Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. The Alarming Decay of Mathematical Competency in America Full article at Minding the Campus. Ohio State Will Require AI Classes for All students This Fall Full article at College Fix. Four Ways Colleges Can Prepare for an Uncertain Future Full article at Higher Ed Dive. College Students Are Using No Contact Orders to Block Each Other in Real Life Full article at WSJ . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. How Stanford is Advancing Constructive Dialogue Designing Blood Vessels for 3D Printed Hearts Digital Twins Offer Insights into Brains Struggling with Math — and Hope for Students Advance in Creating Organoids Could Aid Research, Lead to Treatmen t Blood Sugar Response to Various Carbohydrates Can Point to Metabolic Health Subtypes ************ “The most morally valuable focus that a university provides is the commitment to, and practice of, reasoning clearly and thinking critically.” – Stanford Prof. Russell Berman June 9, 2025 Note to Readers: In light of comments from readers and ongoing developments nationally, we have updated our webpage Back to Basics at Stanford and where we have highlighted the new or changed text. ************ Don’t Just Fix Higher Education, Reconstitute It Excerpts (links in the original): “Academic institutions think they have a problem and that its name is Donald Trump . But he’s only the beginning of their problems. The difficulties are systemic, not only legal or political, and that means it’s time to reconsider what higher education should look like. “The current institutional players are in no condition to rethink higher education. Having cultivated and tolerated violations of civil-rights laws, universities and colleges can’t afford candid introspection, lest it be understood as an admission of wrongdoing. They are controlled, moreover, by administrators who generally don’t have the stomach to recognize the damage they’ve done to higher education, let alone what should be done with their jobs. “The federal government is no better at re-evaluating higher education. It’s focusing on the tools available to it: enforcing antidiscrimination laws and defunding science (even though scientists aren’t typically the culprits). “The academic failures of universities and colleges are obvious enough. Departments generally appoint their own faculty members -- so that once a department is ideologically captured, it tends to tilt further in the same direction, inevitably producing instruction and research that, considered as a whole, is slanted. Institutions then inculcate conformity, punish dissenters, and apply harsh disciplinary proceedings. Put another way, the recent antisemitism didn’t develop in a vacuum. It was nurtured amid ideological capture and selective enforcement of the rules. These are substantial impediments to the pursuit of truth.... “It’s time for a thorough reconsideration of higher education -- not only to fix it, but to reconstitute it. “Academic institutions could, if they had sufficient fortitude, begin to repair themselves. Colleges could avoid the impediments created by closed-minded departments by shifting funds to new, interdisciplinary departments. Where a political science department is indifferent to historical inquiry and the history department is indifferent to the development of political institutions and theory, for instance, a new department straddling the two would be well justified.... “If there is to be federal funding for higher education, it should be reduced and refined. Institutions fattened on federal funds have expanded the number of administrators more than professors. The amount of student loans and their interest rates should be inversely related to the ratio of administrators to faculty. Although it’s difficult to quantify intellectual openness, federal funds should be linked to such tolerance, whether on campus or in hiring and admissions....” Full op-ed by Columbia Prof. Philip Hamburger at WSJ. See also our Stanford Concerns webpage and our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. University Boards Need Fewer People from Wall Street, Hedge Funds and Venture Capital Excerpts (link in the original): “If it feels like there are a lot of billionaires mucking around in higher education, that might be because there are. In 1989, private-equity and hedge-fund managers held 3 percent of board seats at the top 30 private universities as ranked by Times Higher Education . By 2017, they held 17 percent of trustee positions, according to a study published earlier this year in Socio-Economic Review. “The upshot is that over the last generation, the most prestigious colleges have had the means to gather extraordinary wealth. That wealth reinforces those colleges’ exclusivity, which in turn is helping to fuel resentment against higher education, argues one of the study’s co-authors, Charlie Eaton, a sociologist at the University of California at Merced. ‘That’s become a political vulnerability,’ he said.... “Eaton published a book about the role of Wall Street in higher education, Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education , in 2022. His Socio-Economic Review paper expands on findings in the book.... “... ‘elite ties are really valuable and important for the private-equity and hedge-fund business model, because when they’re buying companies or doing financial transactions to try to outperform the stock market, what they do is trade on private information. That doesn’t necessarily require illegal insider trading. If you’ve got knowledge of what kind of public policies might change that could affect the value of a company or an industry, or if you’ve got elite information about companies that are privately held and that don’t have much public [Securities and Exchange Commission] reporting, you can make smarter decisions about what kind of private companies to try to buy out. “‘So when you’re on an elite university board with other business and government elites, you learn things that are valuable for making these private-equity buyouts, and we show this. We find that investment returns go up for private-equity firms after they gain a seat on a top university board....'" Full article and interview at Chronicle of Higher Education. America’s DEI Colleges Get an ‘F’ on Free Expression Excerpts (links in the original): “Another chaotic school year has ended at universities, and the graduates have danced across the stage waving diplomas that are shrinking in significance. Here’s hoping college administrators find time during their leisurely summer breaks to recognize their roles in diminishing the academy, largely because they have lost a commitment to rigorous truth-seeking that can only happen when ideas are freely debated. “Americans should all be concerned about the sad condition of higher education. Confidence in these previously esteemed institutions has cratered .... “Oh, sure, college administrators still pay lip service to the principle of free expression, but they really don’t seem to mean it. They hope their bold paper pronouncements about free speech will be sufficient sleight of hand to distract sensible students, their parents, alumni and employers. These constituencies, however, have figured out that academic cultures determined to push indoctrination are incapable of preparing graduates who can think critically and function effectively in today’s complex world. “The focus of any college or university should be to advance knowledge through intellectual inquiry. That can only happen when free, wide-ranging debate and expression are allowed to examine all perspectives and evidence. Too many institutions today, however, push pre-approved dogmas taught by activist professors who were hired by search committees seeking people with views identical to their own. “Disrupting the search for truth and robust free expression is a patch of weeds that presumes to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. That sounded noble enough initially, but in reality, the DEI initiative morphed into the advancement of sociopolitical ideologies designed to discredit and bludgeon Western values and civilization. “This push is more than just a relativistic replacement of truth and freedom as fundamental principles. Instead, as author and Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo has written , DEI is 'a complex of policies, priorities, departments, administrators, budget numbers, hiring guidelines, and admissions practices.' Indeed, the practices and systems of DEI manipulation permeate curricula, graduation requirements, orientation sessions and financial aid. “The irony is that the supposed push for ‘diversity’ has reduced diversity of ideas, thus suppressing free expression in classrooms. Students report in multiple surveys their hesitance to engage in honest debate, fearing repercussions for not wearing the campus ideological straightjacket. A college can’t be fully committed to free expression when it is simultaneously parading around contradictory bombast about preferred perspectives and limiting others based on how one feels.... “It is time for colleges to straighten themselves out -- not because of government pressure, but because it is the right thing to do in terms of promoting rigorous education and winning back public confidence. The ball can only get rolling with a full return to the principles of free expression and the search for truth.” Full op-ed by DePauw Prof. Jeffrey M. McCall at The Hill. See also our revised Back to Basics at Stanford webpage with newly added language re academic freedom and viewpoint diversity. Other Articles of Interest The Economic Consequences of Destroying Harvard Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Emeritus and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman at Substack. Lawmakers Probe China’s Influence on U.S. Universities Full article at College Fix. See also “Uncovering Chinese Academic Espionage at Stanford ” at Stanford Review and “How Universities Should Respond to Chinese Government Interference ” by Stanford Prof. Larry Diamond and visiting fellows Matt Pottinger and Matthew Turpin at Stanford Review letters to the editor. Don’t Let Trump’s Brutality Fool You; the Internationalization of American Schools Is a Real Issue Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. David A. Bell at NY Times. Educators Have the Tools but Not the Training or Ethical Framework to Use AI Wisely, and That’s a Problem Full op-ed at Hechinger Report. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. A Game-Changing Way to Treat Stroke and Other Clot-Related Diseases Students Create an Unofficial Guide for Incoming Students How Lasting Emotions Arise from Brief Stimuli in Humans and Mice Tree Cover Reduces Mosquito-borne Health Risk Five Things to Do in Virtual Reality – and Five to Avoid ************ “I want this institution to deal particularly with the welfare of the masses. The few very rich can get their education anywhere. They will be welcome to this institution if they come, but the object is more particularly to reach the multitude -- those people who have to consider the expenditure of every dollar.” – Leland Stanford in his last letter to President Jordan shortly before Sen. Stanford’s death June 2, 2025 Note to Readers: We have added a new webpage, Ask ChatGPT , to our website and where we have posted our prior inquiries to ChatGPT and its answers regarding current issues impacting Stanford and other colleges and universities across the country. We will update this material from time to time. ************ Harvard Derangement Syndrome Excerpts (links in the original): “In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. My 2014 essay ‘The Trouble With Harvard ’ called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current ‘eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism’ which ‘conceals unknown mischief.’ My 2023 ‘five-point plan to save Harvard from itself ’ urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained ‘how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel ,’ calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two years ago I co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard , which has since regularly challenged university policies and pressed for changes. “So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged.... “The nation desperately needs this sense of proportionality in dealing with its educational and cultural institutions. Harvard, as I am among the first to point out, has serious ailments. The sense that something is not well with the university is widespread, and it’s led to sympathy, even schadenfreude, with Mr. Trump’s all-out assault. But Harvard is an intricate system that developed over centuries and constantly has to grapple with competing and unexpected challenges. The appropriate treatment (as with other imperfect institutions) is to diagnose which parts need which remedies, not to cut its carotid and watch it bleed out.... [Followed by discussion as to why many/most of the proposed government demands are inappropriate.] “The most painful indictment of Harvard is its alleged antisemitism -- not the old-money WASP snobbery of Oliver Barrett III , but a spillover of anti-Zionist zealotry.... [Followed by discussion of whether there is or isn’t antisemitism at Harvard and ways to address the issues.] “Another no-brainer is to apply standards of scholarly excellence more uniformly. Harvard has almost 400 initiatives, centers and programs, which are distinct from its academic departments.... “If the federal government doesn’t force Harvard to reform, what will? There are legitimate concerns that universities have weak mechanisms for feedback and self-improvement. A business in the red can fire its chief executive; a losing team can replace its coach. But most academic fields don’t have objective metrics of success and rely instead on peer review, which can amount to professors conferring prestige on one another in self-affirming cliques. “Worse, many universities have punished professors and students who criticize their policies, a recipe for permanent dysfunction. Last year a Harvard dean actually justified this repression until our academic freedom council came down on the idea like a ton of bricks and his boss swiftly disavowed it . “Still, there are ways to let the light get in...." [Followed by discussion of ways to make appropriate changes.] Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Steven Pinker at NY Times. See also our own concerns and proposals regarding the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities at Stanford at Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Harvard Digs In for Battle, but Trump’s Blows Are Landing Excerpts (links in the original): “As President Trump escalated his attacks against Harvard University, its board resolved to fight. “Trustees discussed whether to sue or pursue deal talks after Trump first targeted the university in March. But as the president lobbed bomb after bomb at the school -- pulling billions in federal funds, threatening its tax-exempt status, and now trying to block it from enrolling international students -- the group stood firm. “By [May 23, 2025] , the school had filed two lawsuits against the administration, the latest to regain its foreign students.... “Harvard’s conundrum is that it cannot trust the Trump administration to negotiate in good faith nor can it count on winning an extended battle with the federal government, says Aziz Z. Huq, a law professor at the University of Chicago. “The result, Huq suggests, will be a reset not only for Harvard but across higher education. The current model for research universities was created during World War II, when the military outsourced its research and development to schools. That model served the nation well for decades but is increasingly under attack from MAGA conservatives who believe that higher education has become a hotbed of liberal ideology that needs to be torn down and rebuilt....” Full article at WSJ. Can Trump Force Harvard to Improve? Probably Not. Excerpts (link in the original): “Three outcomes are possible in Donald Trump's war with Harvard: Scenario one is that the nation’s top private universities remain delusional about the dozen reasons a large and growing share of the public distrusts them. The 'plan' is to avoid institutional course-correction and seek protection from the courts and ultimate rescue from the Democratic Party in 2029 or after. "Scenario two is that Mr. Trump and other populist-inspired politicians force change from without by intervening more consistently and even more forcefully in the internal operations of these schools. “Scenario three is that substantive reform comes from within these schools, or at least some of them. That would require their leaders to listen humbly to a broad range of legitimate criticisms.... “Every constructive path forward therefore requires the Ivy League and Ivy-adjacent schools to acknowledge they’ve screwed up. Although their crests once represented the most distinguished education in the world, years of misguided administration have left them academically adrift. Top-tier universities act entitled to elite status, even as they neglect the necessary work of persuading fellow citizens of their value and seriousness. Standards are slipping and political activism has been on the rise in classrooms, all in the public eye. When those entrusted with massive endowments fail to acknowledge valid criticism and correct course, is it any wonder they trigger a backlash?” ... Full op-ed by former U Florida and Midland U president and former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse at WSJ. See also “Trump Remedies to Harvard’s Ills Should Respect Free Speech ” by Hoover Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics. At UC Berkeley, the Faculty Asks Itself, Do Our Critics Have a Point? Excerpts (links in the original): “President Trump’s second administration has targeted higher education with funding cuts, charging that colleges -- particularly prestigious ones -- have let antisemitism go unchecked and progressive ideology run amok. “The sector’s leaders have responded by weighing whether to give ground or fight back. Lingering inside that question is another uncomfortable one: Do Trump and his allies have a point? “At the University of California at Berkeley, two professors recently put a version of that query to their peers via survey. The results -- obtained by The Chronicle -- cut against the stereotype of Berkeley’s campus as an ultra-progressive monolith. Rather, they conveyed complicated feelings among a subset of the faculty about whether and where higher education has gone wrong, and how to course-correct if it has. While some respondents did not think Berkeley should recalibrate on certain issues because of Trump, they did think their university should recalibrate, period . “As one unnamed professor put it: ‘Over the years, I’ve been confronted by various scenarios that have caused me to mutter to myself, ‘This has gone way too far.’ Do we really have to acknowledge that we are holding a conference on stolen land when it takes place over Zoom?’ “Chris Hoofnagle, a professor of law in residence, and Will Fithian, an associate professor of statistics, started sending out the survey earlier this year. Called the ‘Bearometer ,’ it poses one question every so often to members of Berkeley’s faculty senate, though it’s not affiliated with that body. Inspired by a similar effort at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the goal, as described on the Bearometer’s webpage , is to discover and highlight the views of faculty members, particularly “the reticent and the too busy for senate service,” in order to inform campus discussions. “Berkeley professors can submit questions for consideration, which are then upvoted or downvoted by their colleagues. Hoofnagle and Fithian have procedures in place for keeping the results anonymous. When they’re circulated, they’re labeled with ‘UC-FEYES: UC Faculty Eyes Only.’ (Hoofnagle and Fithian both declined to be interviewed, citing the poll’s internal nature. Both are also involved in a faculty group meant to encourage free inquiry at Berkeley, which has been a growing concern among some on campus .) ... [Followed by discussion of some of the survey results.] “Even faculty members who expressed concerns about various aspects of academe also said that caving to the federal government would be a mistake. ‘UC autonomy comes first, after which we clean up our own messes in our own way,’ wrote the professor who was uneasy about the ‘feminist’ brand of social justice being embedded in curriculum.... “Still, others advocated for serious reflection -- not because of Trump necessarily, but because they think introspection is overdue.... ‘It would be a shame,’ this person argued toward the end of a lengthy response, ‘to let defensiveness, self-righteousness, and justifiable antipathy toward the current presidential administration prevent us from seeing that our own excesses have degraded the situation of the university and left us with less public sympathy and support than we have ever had.’ “Put a bit blunter, by another faculty member: ‘Universities are under attack (often by idiots), but they deserve it and should get their houses in order.’” Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Becoming Stanford -- The Making of an American University At a time when our U.S. colleges and universities, including Stanford, are having to assess what they are and what they need to be, we were reminded of this documentary “Becoming Stanford -- The Making of an American University ” released in connection with the Millennium and as posted at YouTube (1 hour, 58 minutes). This is from the description at YouTube: “Part 1, ‘The Founding,’ covers the origins and building of the university through World War I; highlights include Stanford family history, the first Big Game between Stanford and UC Berkeley, early student life, the rise of tenure, and the 1906 earthquake. Part 2, ‘The Transformation,’ covers the development of Stanford as a world-renowned research university; highlights include the administrations of Provost Frederick E. Terman and President J. E. Wallace Sterling, the role of federal funding in the university's expansion, the turmoil of the 1960s, and the growth of new technologies leading to the personal computer revolution.” See also the more recent and partially student-produced documentary "Leland: A Stanford Story " (38 minutes) that is shown as part of the required COLLEGE program for first-year students at Stanford and as posted at YouTube. Other Articles of Interest Stanford Student Group Hosts 90 Startups in Second-ever Demo Day Full article at Stanford Daily. 'Listen to People Who Disagree with You,' Stanford Alum Stephen Breyer Tells Students Full article at Stanford Report. Harvard Alum Bill Ackman Writes About Ongoing Concerns and Possible Solutions Full op-ed at X. Harvard President Discusses Need to Stand Firm Against Government Attacks Full article at NPR. How Overregulation Has Hamstrung Progressive Priorities, Incuding at Colleges and Universities Full book review of Abundance at Real Clear Education. Medical School Accreditor Says Schools Will No Longer be Graded on Diversity Full article at USA Today. Universities Map Out New Investment Strategies to Deal with Tax Hike on Endowments Full article at WSJ. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Popular AI Models Show Partisan Bias When Asked to Talk Politics Scientists Repair Damaged Mitochondria Linked to Common Diseases Nano-scale Biosensor Lets Scientists Monitor Molecules in Real Time Alzheimer's Resilience Signature Predicts Who Will Develop Dementia and How Fast ************ “We must always ask, are we putting students and their learning first? That is the measure of a great university.” -- Harry J. Elam, Jr., former Stanford Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and former President of Occidental College May 26, 2025 Because of the Memorial Day holiday, we circulated our regular Newsletter on Friday instead of waiting for today. However, this weekend, in light of the ongoing discussions taking place among university and government leaders, we decided to ask ChatGPT the following question: What are the major challenges facing universities today? Presented below are the responses we received, using the same language and format as produced by ChatGPT. We suggest that instead of spending more money on consultants and lawyers and losing more time with committees, what follows is a useful outline of the issues that university leaders need to address both quickly and effectively. And with university leaders getting ahead of the curve, the hope is that government and other critics would accept the idea that our universities, on their own, are taking the corrective actions that are needed. What are the major challenges facing universities today? 1. Rising Costs & Student Debt Tuition Inflation: The cost of college has grown far faster than inflation or income levels. Student Debt Crisis: U.S. student loan debt exceeds $1.7 trillion, burdening millions and delaying life milestones like home ownership or family formation. Spending Priorities: Universities are often criticized for spending heavily on amenities, administrative staff, or real estate while cutting academic resources. "We are pricing the middle class and working class out of higher education." -- Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab, higher education policy scholar 2. Mission Drift & Administrative Bloat Expansion of Non-Academic Bureaucracy: There’s been a significant increase in administrative roles, sometimes diluting the core academic mission. Branding over Learning: Institutions are sometimes accused of focusing on rankings, prestige projects, and athletics rather than teaching or research quality. “Universities risk becoming businesses that happen to offer classes.” -- Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty 3. Free Speech, Political Polarization & Institutional Trust Campus Speech Tensions: There’s growing debate over whether universities are upholding academic freedom and intellectual diversity. External Pressures: Donors, politicians, and activists sometimes seek to influence curriculum and hiring, eroding public trust. “Universities must remain places where difficult questions can be asked and ideas can be freely debated.” -- Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America 4. Return on Investment (ROI) & Relevance Skills Gap: Many employers argue that graduates lack practical skills in communication, critical thinking, or digital literacy. Value of the Degree: With rising tuition and stagnating wages, the ROI of some degrees -- particularly in liberal arts -- is being questioned. “The question isn't just: 'Can you get in?' It's: 'Is it worth it?'” -- Anthony Carnevale, Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce 5. Mental Health & Student Well-being Rising Anxiety & Burnout: Students are increasingly reporting high levels of stress, depression, and burnout. Insufficient Services: Many universities are struggling to meet the mental health needs of their students. ************ Student Perspective: "Is this worth it?" 1. Cost vs. Value Students are paying more than ever and questioning whether their degree will lead to a stable career or high ROI. Many graduate with crippling debt and few job prospects tied directly to their field. “I’m $80,000 in debt and working a job that didn’t require a degree.” 2. Mental Health Crisis Anxiety, depression, and burnout are at record highs. Campus counseling centers are often under-resourced or overwhelmed. 3. Career Relevance Degrees can feel disconnected from real-world job markets. Internships, networking, and soft skills are often more impactful than coursework alone. 4. Campus Climate & Free Speech Many students report fear of speaking up -- on both the left and right -- due to political or social backlash. Navigating identity politics and “cancel culture” can be stressful and confusing. ************ Faculty Perspective: "What happened to academic freedom and scholarship ?" 1. Erosion of Tenure and Job Security Increasing reliance on adjuncts (often low-paid, no benefits) undermines faculty morale and teaching continuity. Pressure to publish and bring in grants often outweighs good teaching. 2. Administrative Overreach Faculty feel sidelined in key academic decisions by non-academic administrators. Strategic priorities often driven by branding, enrollment, or donor agendas. “Faculty are no longer the soul of the university -- they’re consultants to a corporation.” -- Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty 3. Academic Freedom under Threat Faculty increasingly report pressure to self-censor. Controversial research or public commentary may attract backlash from outside groups or university leadership. ************ Administrator Perspective: "How do we stay solvent and relevant?" 1. Financial Pressure Tuition revenue is falling in some regions (especially with declining birthrates). Inflation, deferred maintenance, and tech demands drive up costs. Endowments often can’t be tapped freely, despite public perception. 2. Competing Stakeholders Must balance demands from students, parents, faculty, donors, alumni, and policymakers. Any misstep (speech controversy, Title IX issues, diversity complaints) risks public relations and funding fallout. 3. Innovation vs. Tradition Push to modernize curriculum and expand online offerings, but tradition-bound departments may resist. Risk of falling behind in rankings or tech integration. ************ See also charts and data regarding Stanford's costs and overhead at our Stanford Concerns webpage, proposals for actions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, and a set of principles regarding speech, institutional neutrality and criteria for the hiring and promotion of faculty set forth years ago by the University of Chicago faculty at our Chicago Trifecta webpage. See also the ChatGPT questions and answers we previously posted at our May 5, 2025 Newsletter . See also “Guiding Principles ” by President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez (March 31, 2025) at our Stanford Speaks webpage. May 23, 2025 From U.S. Department of Justice -- Campus Violations of Civil Rights Are Going to Be Expensive Full text of press release: “[On Monday, May 19,] the U.S. Department of Justice announced the establishment of the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, which will utilize the False Claims Act to investigate and, as appropriate, pursue claims against any recipient of federal funds that knowingly violates federal civil rights laws. Violations of the False Claims Act can result in treble damages and significant penalties. “‘Institutions that take federal money only to allow anti-Semitism and promote divisive DEI policies are putting their access to federal funds at risk,’ said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. ‘This Department of Justice will not tolerate these violations of civil rights -- inaction is not an option.’ “‘America has watched a tidal wave of anti-Semitism sweep our universities and seen public institutions codify inherently divisive policies like DEI at an unprecedented rate,’ said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. ‘In advancing the initiative, the Department of Justice’s Civil Fraud Section and Civil Rights Division will work in concert -- alongside other Department components and government agencies -- to identify and root out instances in which recipients of federal funds fail to uphold their basic obligations under federal civil rights laws. The days of using federal funds to further discrimination are over.’ "The Department strongly encourages anyone with knowledge of discrimination by federal funding recipients to consider filing a qui tam action under the False Claims Act. See 31 U.S.C. § 3730. When a qui tam action is successful, the whistleblower typically receives a portion of the monetary recovery. The Department also encourages the public to report instances of such discrimination to the appropriate federal authorities.” Full PDF copy of DOJ memo here . See also “Justice Dept. to Use False Claims Act to Pursue Institutions Over Diversity Efforts” at NY Times and “U.S. Launches Unit to Target DEI Policies at Colleges with Civil Fraud Probes” at Reuters . See also, at Wikipedia , the history of the 1863 False Claims Act and subsequent amendments and how the law has been applied ever since then and, separately, the definition and history of qui tam actions. Editor’s note: Federal False Claims Act and similar state actions can be very expensive to defend, with the result that targeted institutions will often settle versus incurring the significant legal and reputational costs that are involved. As noted in the excerpts above, not only can the government be the plaintiff, but private parties also can bring these types of claims and share in any recoveries, thereby creating significant risks of internal whistle-blowers initiating these types of matters. All of this was intended when the statute was first adopted in the middle of the U.S. Civil War as a way to discourage fraud and abuse by suppliers and others. In recent decades, Stanford itself, rightly or wrongly, has been the target of a number of False Claims Act and similar lawsuits: “Stanford’s Statement on the Resolution of Outstanding Disputes Between Stanford and the Government on Indirect Cost Issues” at Stanford website (October 18, 1994). “Stanford Whistle-blower Lawsuit Dismissed” by federal district court at Palo Alto Online (September 4, 1996). “U.S. Biddle v Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University” dismissed by Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals at Find Law (May 26, 1998). “Stanford Children's Hospital Hit with Multi-Million Dollar Healthcare Billing Fraud Lawsuit” at KTLA website (October 11, 2022). “Stanford Agrees to Pay $1.9 Million to Resolve Allegations That It Failed to Disclose Foreign Research Support in Federal Grant Proposals” at DOJ website (October 2, 2023). “Stanford Professors Raise Questions Over $1.9 Million Stanford-DOJ Settlement” at Stanford Daily (October 27, 2023). The point is, Stanford and other college and university trustees and administrators will be faced with the questions, even if the school conceivably could win on the merits, for how long will the battle take place, what will be the costs, and as fiduciaries, is this the best use of the school’s resources, especially since it will be the students and faculty who will be the most affected by the costs of the litigation and, while the litigation is pending and maybe permanently, the loss of significant government funding. Given these factors, the ultimate question they will have to ask is, isn’t getting back to basics the more appropriate response? And since liability can be reduced or even eliminated by prior public disclosure, don’t schools need to make their own public disclosures as quickly as possible? In this regard, note also how schools like MIT (scroll down to the text in addition to the videos) are already focusing on the concept of back to basics. Show, Don’t Tell, Why University Research Matters An Arizona grant program offers a model for how to support academic research that puts the public interest first. Excerpts: “Chief among the many challenges facing America’s research universities is public skepticism of the value of higher education. How can academe respond to such intense criticism of its very purpose? How do we prove our worth -- particularly at a time when public funding of university research is being loudly and vigorously debated in the political arena? ... “We asked a broad array of public partners: ‘If you had a think tank at your disposal, what problem would you ask it to solve?’ We heard from city, county, law-enforcement, and other community leaders. Most important, we put the question to then-Gov. Doug Ducey, who assembled a task force to solicit ideas from agencies across state government.... “We pulled aside $10 million a year for the program. And because of the unique public interest being served, these grants have received as much mainstream media attention -- more than 100 stories in the past three years -- as the full $2.2-billion worth of research done by our three universities in the same time span....” Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also video (3 minutes) recently posted by MIT showing the importance of university research. From Princetonians for Free Speech and College Pulse -- Students Have Increased Awareness of Free Speech Principles but Little Understanding of What Free Speech Looks Like in Practice Excerpt (link in the original): “The Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) third annual survey of Princeton students is now available. Comparative data over three years provides valuable information and insight into changes in student views and progress in student knowledge of and attitudes toward free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity. The 2025 report shows some progress on questions such as awareness of campus free speech rules. Other results, for instance on the question of shutting down controversial campus events, are worse as compared to the last two years. The number of students who support the use of violence is up. Overall, Princeton still has much work to do to create a robust culture of free speech, academic freedom and respect for widely divergent viewpoints. “A theme emerges in this PFS survey that unites many of the questions and that deserves special note: First, some questions reveal a greater awareness of free speech, indicating that the university is putting more effort into planting that awareness. However -- and this is notable: awareness among students does not seem to translate into a greater understanding of free speech and academic freedom, nor does a greater awareness impact student views of free speech in practice. For example, an increase in awareness of free speech rules has done little to change willingness to speak up or to find it unacceptable to disrupt or shut down campus speakers and events that are considered controversial or offensive. “If you look behind some responses, it becomes apparent that a significant percentage of Princeton students do not really understand what free speech means -- i.e., how free speech works in practice, how it promotes tolerance across differences, how it deepens understanding; how a consideration of conflicting viewpoints widens understanding and deepens knowledge; how free speech enhances communication between students, professors, and employers. In short, large numbers of students do not understand how and why free speech in practice is vital to Princeton’s core mission....” Full article with links to related materials at Princetonians for Free Speech website. Veritas Betrayed -- Harvard Has Lost the Primary Truth-Seeking Purpose of a University Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “What is the telos, the purpose, of a secular university? “It is supposed to be a non-sectarian place with a primary purpose of the pursuit of truth, come what may. Any idea or theory -- no matter how sacred or taboo or orthodox -- should be up for intellectual scrutiny. It should employ freedom of inquiry on any academic question, and use meritocratic and rational -- and not ad hominem -- standards for the assessment of ideas. Universities are supposed to be places where everyone is judged as an individual based on their actual contributions to truth-seeking, not their group membership, or whether the results of their research are socially and ideologically acceptable. In a university, a diversity of viewpoints and ideas should be sought out primarily so that one may better pursue the truth and eliminate falsehoods and errors, regardless of which bodies and brains those ideas originate from. Period. “In contrast, a partisan think tank is explicitly factional and partial in its aims. There are many think-tanks in America that have explicitly partisan aims and practices, such as the Center for American Progress (liberal), Claremont Institute (conservative), Cato Institute (libertarian), Guttmacher Institute (pro-abortion). Though intellectually oriented and often producing robust scholarship, these are not universities. Consistent with their ideologies, these institutes tend to only ask a small range of all possible intellectual questions, and their answers are more predictable than not. The Guttmacher Institute, for instance, rarely does a study on post-traumatic stress disorder and moral injury after abortions, and the Cato Institute rarely writes reports documenting the needs of the most vulnerable in society and how social safety nets could help. “Harvard, by these standards, is much more like a left-wing progressive Institute, than it is a university. In its most passionate moral exhortations, Harvard resembles a secular ideological church. There are some quantitative pockets of flourishing, non-partisan academic life, but in general, Harvard does not live up to the values of a university, and is more like a think tank.... “Most observers agree that the problems of pious insularity, and born-again cult-like thinking and behavior, are more pervasive and severe in the humanities and social sciences, which research consistently shows are the most radicalized.... [Followed by examples of cancellations of faculty and others, etc.] “Diversity at Harvard is superficial and merely skin and gonads deep, as everyone tends to look different, but think alike.... [Followed by detailed charts and data.] “That means that among faculty, there are approximately 5540% more liberal than conservative faculty.... “According to FIRE , 'just over a quarter of Harvard students reported they are comfortable publicly disagreeing with their professor on a controversial political topic; only roughly a third think it is ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ clear the administration protects free speech on campus; and an alarming 30% think using violence to stop a campus speech is at least ‘rarely’ acceptable.' “Except for the hard sciences and cousin disciplines, Harvard tends to not employ meritocratic standards of assessing ideas and knowledge or practice.... “With a few exceptions, whole departments and fields of inquiry in research and teaching have tended to become distorted and disordered by the tiny slice of questions that are allowed to be asked in the first place. What gets funded and published is an even smaller misinformed fraction...." [Followed by a detailed discussion of admissions practices, the few on the faculty who have been dissenting, and eight suggested reforms.] Full op-ed at Substack. See also the Shils Report on the hiring and promotion of faculty and comprising the third part of the Chicago Trifecta . Over Half of Hiring Managers Say Recent Grads Are Unprepared for the Workforce Excerpts (link in the original): “Most hiring managers feel skeptical about the capabilities and professionalism of young workers joining the workforce, with 1 in 6 saying they’re reluctant to hire the cohort, according to a May 6 report from Resume.org.... “Among the companies where recent graduates didn’t work out, nearly half of hiring managers said the top issue was a lack of motivation or initiative. In addition, they noted a lack of professionalism (39%), excessive phone use (39%), poor time management (38%) and an attitude of indifference (37%). Others also pointed to poor communication skills, difficulty handling feedback and an inability to adapt to company culture....” Full article at Higher Ed Dive. See also “New Grads Struggle to Land Job, Keep It” at Hechinger Report . Other Articles of Interest One Year After the Encampments, Campuses Are Quieter and Quicker to Stop Protests Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. A New Headache for Honest Students -- Proving They Didn’t Use AI Full article at NY Times. ChatGPT Can Pass an Engineering Class "The chat bot earned a B, slightly below the class average. It excelled in practice problems and computing exercises but was unable to justify its work or simplify systems." Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Breaking the Deadlock -- The Interplay Among Presidents, Congress and the Courts (video) “A fast-paced one-hour journey where a moderator, UC Davis Law Professor Aaron Tang, guides a diverse panel of participants through hypothetical scenarios around the use of executive power.” Full video (56 minutes) at PBS and also posted at YouTube . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Making the Case for Active Listening Alzheimer’s Resilience Signature Predicts Who Will Develop Dementia and How Fast Mutation That Makes Orange Cats Orange ************ “Today, and every day, let us remember the servicemen and women we have lost, and let us honor them by rededicating ourselves to strengthening our Nation's promise. With love, grace, and reflection, let us honor our fallen fellow Americans, known and unknown, who sacrificed their freedom to ensure our own.” – Barack Obama May 19, 2025 Faculty Hiring Is Under Federal Scrutiny at Harvard Excerpt (links in the original): “A federal agency is claiming Harvard University may have violated antidiscrimination law through its faculty hiring and promotion decisions, citing the university’s own demographic data, The Washington Free Beacon first reported [a week ago] . “Andrea R. Lucas, acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, issued what’s called a commissioner charge against the university, which typically precedes an investigation by the EEOC. The document , which the Free Beacon obtained and is dated April 25, cites an annual report on faculty development and diversity showing the proportion of white male professors declined over the past decade, as the ranks of women and faculty of color increased. (Those reports are no longer publicly accessible on Harvard’s website , but at least some information has been archived online .) “Among the tenured, the percentage of white men decreased from 64 percent in the 2013 academic year to 56 percent in 2023. Among the tenure-track, that share dropped from 46 percent to 32 percent in the same period. “‘Since at least 2018 and continuing thereafter, Harvard may have violated and may be continuing to violate Title VII’ -- the federal law barring employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, and other factors – ‘by engaging in a pattern or practice of disparate treatment against white, Asian, male, or straight employees, applicants, and training program participants in hiring, promotion (including but not limited to tenure decisions), compensation, and separation decisions,’ wrote Lucas, whom President Trump designated acting chair in January. She also alleges that Harvard’s ‘pattern or practice of discrimination’ goes beyond the faculty and lists programs that aim to enroll students from underrepresented groups. “Asked for comment, a Harvard spokesperson referenced a Monday letter from Alan M. Garber, the university’s president, addressed to Linda E. McMahon, the education secretary. Last week, McMahon upbraided Harvard in a letter to Garber, recounting the institution’s many failures as she saw them and informing the university president that the institution ‘should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided.’..." Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also the Shils Report on the hiring and promotion of faculty and comprising the third part of the Chicago Trifecta. Harvard Spends $1.4 Billion a Year on Non-instructional Staff Excerpts: “Harvard is spending about $1.4 billion a year on ‘Salary Outlays for Full-time Non-medical School Non-instructional Staff,’ according to its most recent filing with the federal government, a figure that is about double what Yale and the University of Chicago pay, and more than triple what Harvard devotes to paying professors and other teaching staff. “Since 2017, Harvard’s spending on administrators, clerical and technical workers, and other functionaries included in that ‘Non-instructional Staff’ category has soared by about $400 million, or about 40 percent. Over the same period, spending on professors and other teachers at Harvard grew by about $80 million, or 25 percent. Degree-program enrollment has remained roughly flat, though Harvard has ramped up revenue-generating online and short-term executive-education programs offering non-degree credentials such as certificates.... “And keep in mind that the ‘Salary Outlays for Full-time Non-medical School Non-instructional Staff’ don’t even capture a lot of the money that Harvard spends on contracted-out labor, like security guards from a company called Securitas, the outside landscapers that Harvard brings in to spruce up the campus in advance of Commencement and reunions, or the 16 lawyers from King & Spalding, from Ropes & Gray, from Quinn Emanuel, and from Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP that are representing Harvard in its suit against the federal government. Harvard has cut back its spending on internal money managers at the Harvard Management Corporation and instead farmed the endowment out to private equity and venture capital managers whose fees aren’t counted as Harvard staff salary outlays. That’s another whole story.” Full op-ed including detailed charts at Substack. See also charts showing similar spending and staffing at Stanford at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also proposed actions to reduce administrative bloat at Part 3 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. These also are reasons, per Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, to move the staffing and costs of Stanford’s centers, accelerators and incubators that are not primarily engaged in front-line teaching and research and supervised directly by Stanford’s tenured faculty into one or more separate entities and, in most cases, off the core campus. Ivy League Is Still Struggling to Figure Out What's Free Speech and What Isn't Excerpt: “Our country’s most esteemed institutions of higher learning -- the Ivy League schools -- should have figured out how to ensure free speech rights on campus long ago. But they haven’t. “While these private institutions don’t have the same First Amendment requirements that public universities do, they promise their students and faculty a comparable environment where freedom of expression can flourish. Indeed, that’s a huge part of what a college education is all about. “That’s why it’s concerning to see such apparent confusion over what kind of behavior deserves punishment -- and what should be accepted....” Full op-ed at USA Today. Note however that, unlike what is stated in this op-ed, Stanford and other private schools in California are subject to the Leonard Law which requires the schools to comply with the First Amendment in disciplinary and other actions vis-à-vis their students. See also “Survey Finds Many Americans Hold Negative Views of the Ivies” at Inside Higher Ed . See also “Columbia Students Call on School to Crack Down on Protests that Disrupt Learning Ahead of Finals” at Just the News . Other Articles of Interest Stanford Daily Interview of President Levin (May 12, 2025) Full video at Stanford Daily (32 minutes); also at YouTube . Legislation Would Increase Tax on Endowments by Up to 21% Full article at Inside Higher Ed. See also “Here’s What the Endowment Tax Plan Might Cost Your College ” at Chronicle of Higher Education. Also, a 47-page, section-by-section outline of the legislation can be downloaded here . Colleges Spend Heavily on Lobbying Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Here’s a Look at the Emerging College Applicant -- the Independent Student Full article at University Business. See also “Independent Applicants - A Growing but Underserved Pool” at Inside Higher Ed . Instead of Punishing Students for Using AI, Colleges and Universities Need to Provide Clear and Consistent Guidelines and Rules Full op-ed at Hechinger Report. Brown Won’t Discipline Student Journalist for His Report on Administrative Bloat Full article at College Fix. Writing Tutors at Claremont McKenna Told Correcting Grammar Is Racist Full article at College Fix. We Have to Rethink the Purpose of Education Full transcript at NY Times. Professionalization Is Killing College Sports Full op-ed at James Martin Center. Reinvigorating Civil Discourse at MIT Full podcast (28 minutes) at Higher Ed Now. See also MIT’s revised webpages re Merit and re Understanding MIT . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Course Helps Students Put Pluralism into Practice Targeting Cells’ Trash-Sorting Systems Could Unlock New Treatments for Neurodegenerative Disease The Secrets of Resilient Aging (Podcast - 36 minutes) ************ “ No one should have to pass someone else’s ideological purity test to be allowed to speak. University life -- along with civic life -- dies without the free exchange of ideas.” – Reed College Prof. Lucia Martinez Valdivia May 12, 2025 Indirect Costs Make Science a Revenue Game, not a Discovery Quest Excerpts (links in the original, endnotes deleted): “Since the Trump administration proposed a 15 percent cap on them in February, indirect costs on research grants are the object of a roiling controversy. “If you have no idea what that sentence means, you are not alone. Indirect costs are one of the more arcane features of how scientific research is funded in American universities. As it was with the Albigensian heresy, great passions are exercised on fine points barely understood by normal people. How do we know this? Ask a critical question about indirect costs, as the Trump administration did with its proposal to cut them, and out will come the sectarian mobs to denounce you. “The indirect costs heresy obscures the fundamental question about indirect costs: is science helped or harmed by them? The message from universities and astroturfed mobs is clear: science will be devastated if they are reduced in any way. I argue here the opposite: under our current regime of science funding, science has become less free, less innovative, more craven, and more dishonest, and indirect costs have been the instruments of its degradation. “Some history. Federal support of university science is a recent phenomenon, launched in 1950 as an experiment, kicked off with the establishment of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since then, the NSF model of university science funding has spread to some two dozen federal agencies, which have distributed roughly a trillion dollars over the past 75 years. Nationwide, federal support accounts for 60-80 percent of all university research. At some universities , nearly their entire research portfolio is supported by federal funds.... “The drafters of the founding document of modern science , Science: The Endless Frontier , recognized the disparity and took pains in their recommendations to protect the interests of academic scientists from the prevailing interests of universities, governments, and powerful corporate interests. Their recommendation was to support academic science through long-term block grants to universities, which would then allocate the funds similarly to how it had used institutional funds to support the work of their scientists. Many universities had research committees, staffed by academics and administrators, who could consider proposals from colleagues and distribute funds accordingly. Scientists could appeal directly to their university administrations to raise funds. This was how most particle physics work pre-war was funded, for example, including the development of the instrument that laid the foundation for particle physics, the cyclotron. And it was admirably suited to the unique demands of the basic sciences: curiosity-driven, responsive to inspiration, built around ad hoc risk-taking, and responsive to intimate person-to-person appeals.... “...A spirit of discovery still exists in the academic sciences, although its flame is flickering. Restoring the flame will mean removing the well-entrenched landscape of perverse incentives that currently prevail. Indirect costs reform is one aspect of the restoration, along with restructuring the models for funding science that have allowed that perverse landscape to flourish. We have some suggestions for how to do that in a subsequent article.” Full op-ed by SUNY Prof. Emeritus J. Scott Turner at Minding the Campus. See also the February 7, 2025 announcement by the National Institutes of Health to place a cap of 15% on indirect costs and including a chart showing the indirect cost rates (zero to 15%) paid by nonprofits such as the Gates, Packard and Zuckerberg foundations and others for comparable work. According to Stanford's website , Stanford's current indirect cost rate for most research is 54% but can be as high as 90% when animal research is involved. Is Harvard Complying with the Tax Code? Excerpts: “President Trump’s announcement [a week ago] that he plans to take away Harvard’s tax exempt status prompted me to do something I never did while working there or serving as an alumni volunteer: actually read the plain text of the tax code that covers the tax exemption for Harvard and most other charities. “The law -- Section 501(c)(3) -- says the tax exemption applies to a corporation ‘organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes . . . no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda . . . and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.’ Courts have struggled for a century to distinguish ‘educational’ from ‘propaganda’ for tax purposes. In Bob Jones University v. U.S. (1983), the Supreme Court even ventured beyond the statutory language and upheld the Internal Revenue Service’s decision to pull a tax exemption ‘where there is no doubt that the organization’s activities violate fundamental public policy.’... “On the education-or-propaganda question, first-year Harvard medical students were required to take a course on the ‘principles of advocacy and activism’ while focusing on ‘a most consequential public health threat -- climate change.’ A high-profile Harvard task force recently reported ‘that certain faculty were injecting highly partisan discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of American Jewish groups in courses that had no direct connection with these subjects.’ The task force described a divinity school program on religion and public life as ‘one-sided, ideologically partisan, and biased.’ “At the education school, some sections of a required course featured a ‘pyramid of white supremacy’ illustrating ‘the day-to-day racist norms’ at work in American culture. Examples include the Anti-Defamation League, opposition to boycotting Israel, Wall Street, the war on terror and community policing....” Full op-ed at WSJ. But see also “The Law Bars Trump from Threatening Harvard’s Tax Exemption” by Georgetown Prof. Neal Katyal, also at WSJ . Viewpoint Diversity and the Scientists Excerpts: “Two weeks after the lawsuit, the battle is on between Harvard, which did not want battle, and the Trump Administration that sought it. A major concern among the Trump Administration is Harvard’s lack of viewpoint diversity.... “Who risks the most in Harvard’s battle? The scientists, who need the government’s money. This fact opens up a second problem of viewpoint diversity within universities that is not so easy to fix: The divide between the scientists and the humanists. “Harvard scientists will no doubt admire its president’s impressive move to check the Trumpist attempt to take over the University, but some of them will reflect that it is Harvard’s humanists who cause the trouble while the scientists pay the cost. A deeper look into the difference between science and the humanities will help to understand this second division.... “Why should Harvard be independent? Because it helps society; it’s worth the money! That answer makes Harvard the expert part of society. Doesn’t it need some standard from outside society to justify itself as independent? Something like veritas that combines science and the humanities -- a Harvard that looks for the wisdom that makes science valuable to human beings. “A political scientist myself, I like to think that this wisdom centers on politics. A wiser politics than devotion to a single party would have protected the scientists and corrected the humanists.” Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Harvey C. Mansfield at Harvard Crimson. Other Articles of Interest Yes, Harvard Deserves Due Process Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff and FIRE senior officer Adam Goldstein at Persuasion. See also Harvard Prof. Roland Fryer at WSJ : “Harvard Should Stand Up for Itself More Often - Many of these reforms may be welcome and reflect genuine concerns I’ve heard faculty express. But they aren’t reforms the federal government can or should impose on private universities.” New ESPN Documentary on the Katie Meyer Case A 13-minute segment of the one-hour documentary that was broadcast this past Saturday on ESPN re the Katie Meyer case is now available at YouTube. For convenience, we also have updated the documents posted about this case at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. See also our long-existing article about “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including relevant PDF documents and that we believe played a role in the Katie Meyer case. Brown Continues to Go After Student Journalist for His Article About DEI at Brown Full op-ed at FIRE. Audit Says U. Wisconsin System Spent Tens of Millions of Dollars on 1,200+ DEI Activities Full article at College Fix. Not All Students Go to College, and We Need to Make That OK Full op-ed at NY Times. What Do College Students Do All Day? The Answer Isn’t Studying Full op-ed at Manhattan Institute. Demand for Higher Education Remains Strong Despite Ongoing Barriers Full summary of Gallup/Lumina Foundation study along with a link to the full report at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. AI Pioneer Says World Is Not Prepared for What's Coming Excerpt of CBS interview of Nobel Laureate and U Toronto Prof. Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton at YouTube (8 minutes) . Full interview (51 minutes) here . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. We Can Change Diet to Generate a Healthier Microbiome and a Healthy Individual Taming Seismic Unrest MRI Technique Lights Up Zombie Cells That Contribute to Arthritis Treating Cardiovascular Fibrosis ************ "If you take difficult positions, you are bound to make enemies. But if you always avoid controversy, you risk making no difference at all." – Stanford alum and former Harvard president Derek Bok May 5, 2025 What ChatGPT Would Recommend Editor’s note: We and other alumni and commentators from around the country have been concerned about the growing administrative costs and related problems at U.S. colleges and universities. See for example “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage which, among other things, has detailed comparisons of Stanford’s numbers with the numbers at comparable schools. So we decided to ask ChatGPT what it might do to address these concerns and are reproducing below, in both language and format, what ChatGPT recommended in response to each of our two questions. See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. We also wonder whether these actions might be a pathway for ending the government's disputes with Harvard and others. Our Question: How can a university stop or reverse administrative bloat? ChatGPT's response: 1. Governance and Accountability Reform leadership incentives: Tie senior administrator evaluations to academic outcomes, cost-efficiency, and faculty/student satisfaction -- not just expansion of services or programs. Create oversight committees: Faculty-led bodies should review new administrative hires and budget allocations. Implement sunset clauses: Temporary administrative roles should automatically expire unless justified and renewed. 2. Budgetary Discipline Adopt zero-based budgeting: Instead of automatic increases, every department -- including administrative -- must justify its entire budget each cycle. Cap administrative growth: Set hard limits on admin-to-student or admin-to-faculty ratios. Redirect resources: Prioritize instructional and research expenditures over non-academic roles. 3. Recenter on Core Mission Reaffirm academic priorities: Ensure that new policies and spending support teaching, research, and student learning. Audit role alignment: Identify positions that duplicate services or whose duties have drifted from academic goals. 4. Process Streamlining and Tech Integration Digitize bureaucracy: Invest in technology to automate compliance, scheduling, and reporting instead of hiring staff. Simplify compliance: Work with regulators to reduce redundant or unnecessary compliance burdens. 5. Cultural and Structural Shifts Strengthen shared governance: Give faculty and students more influence over administrative policy and hiring. Decentralize decision-making: Empower academic departments to manage more of their own operations. 6. Transparency and Data Publicly report admin growth: Regularly disclose metrics like admin salaries, staff-to-faculty ratios, and non-academic expenditures. Benchmark against peers: Use data to assess whether admin growth aligns with similar institutions or exceeds norms. ************ Our Question: Suggest ways that a university can increase viewpoint diversity in its faculty and students. ChatGPT's response: 1. Inclusive Hiring Practices Broaden candidate pools: Actively recruit from a variety of institutions, including those with differing philosophical, political, or religious leanings. Use structured interviews: Minimize bias by applying consistent criteria across all candidates. Encourage intellectual diversity as a hiring value: Include questions in hiring processes that explore a candidate’s commitment to open inquiry and constructive engagement across differences. 2. Admissions and Outreach Widen geographical and demographic outreach: Target recruitment in underrepresented regions or communities that may have different perspectives. Consider a broader definition of diversity: Incorporate ideological and experiential diversity alongside race, gender, and socioeconomic status. 3. Curriculum and Course Design Offer courses in diverse traditions of thought: Include curricula representing a wide range of political, philosophical, and cultural viewpoints. Encourage debate and dialogue: Design courses that require students to engage with contrasting views, supported by evidence and respectful discourse. 4. Campus Culture Support student organizations across the spectrum: Ensure funding and support is available for a wide range of political, religious, and cultural groups. Host speaker series and debates: Bring in a variety of voices, including those that challenge mainstream or dominant campus perspectives. Foster a climate of civil discourse: Promote norms that encourage listening, questioning, and respectful disagreement. 5. Institutional Commitments Adopt free speech and open inquiry policies: Publicly affirm the institution’s support for academic freedom and diverse viewpoints. Create a viewpoint diversity advisory committee: Include faculty, students, and administrators tasked with monitoring and supporting intellectual diversity efforts. May 2, 2025 The Broken Promise of Academic Freedom Excerpts (link in the original): “Lately, everyone seems to have an opinion about academic freedom. Some defend it as sacred. Others sneer that it’s a racket. The truth is: it’s neither. Academic freedom isn’t a right. It’s a deal -- a bold investment society made in people who could wrestle meaning from complexity and pursue truth beyond the noise of daily life. “And it paid off. Spectacularly. In exchange for protecting a small class of thinkers from mobs, markets, and monarchs, humanity doubled life expectancy, eradicated famine on a planetary scale, and wiped out entire categories of disease -- not with good vibes, but with methodical inquiry, evidence, and reason. “In the 19th century, within the Humboldtian model , universities became the natural home of the emerging intellectual class -- offering not only time and resources for research, but a growing degree of protection from public, political, and commercial pressures. They offered not only space for research but also a means of transmitting knowledge -- teaching others how to seek truth with rigor and independence. As religion receded as the primary source of shared moral authority, the modern university stepped in to fill the void. It fashioned itself not just as an institution of learning, but as one of value formation. “It was a noble ambition. And it’s where the trouble began. “The Humboldtian ideal envisioned the university as a space free from political and social pressures, dedicated solely to dispassionate, objective scholarship. But as massive public funding began to flow into universities to support research and teaching, one of the key pillars of independence -- financial detachment from the state -- began to erode. As the old saying goes: he who pays the piper calls the tune. “Academic freedom was never a license to say or do anything without consequences. It was a shield -- meant to protect scholars chasing truth, not activists pushing boycotts, slogans, and ideological manifestos. The moment your research becomes a political weapon, you step outside the zone academic freedom was built to defend.... “Let’s be clear: universities don’t need cosmetic diversity. They need viewpoint diversity. In such environments, viewpoint diversity isn’t a nice feature -- it must be the core of the academic enterprise and the foundation of academic legitimacy. It’s the only check against intellectual ossification and mechanism for self-correction. A genuine contest of ideas, not just a rainbow of faces parroting the same beliefs. Affirmative action for ideas isn’t ‘woke in reverse.’ It’s the minimum standard for any institution serious about the pursuit of truth.... “Winning that trust back will require making room for real debate, not just sanctioned variations on a single moral narrative. And it will mean ditching the pretense of ‘moral clarity’ as the new scholastic paradigm instead of objectivity. History never lacked agents for moral clarity -- Torquemada and Hitler both claimed it. The lesson is not that moral conviction is dangerous, but that without epistemic humility and rigorous self-correction, it becomes indistinguishable from dogma.... “Academic freedom is still worth defending -- but only if we remember what it was for. It wasn’t meant to protect ideology. It was meant to protect inquiry. “What society grants, society can also revoke. If academic freedom is to endure, we must remember: it's not a sacred right -- it's a promise to keep.” Full op-ed by Sasha Rozenberg at Fair for All. See also our long-existing webpages: Back to Basics at Stanford including (at Part 4) calls for the removal from the core campus the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities if they are not engaged in frontline teaching and independent research but instead are engaged primarily if not exclusively in advocacy and implementation activities, are run by non-members of the faculty, are devoid of scholarly inquiries and generally exclude consideration of alternative viewpoints. Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy with charts and other data showing Stanford’s massive and costly administrative apparatus that all too often gets in the way of the university’s core teaching and research. Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web which we believe is an example of the harm that has been caused in recent years by the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that are largely if not exclusively delivering viewpoints and outcomes that are directed by government agencies, foundations and other grant-makers and donors. How Universities Should Respond to the Attacks on Academic Freedom Excerpts (links in the original): “Facing federal funding suspensions and investigations , elite universities have arrived at a moment of crisis. “Many have -- rightly, in our opinion -- pledged never to compromise on core principles of academic freedom, and vowed to resist the federal government’s heavy-handed tactics. Most have refused, however, to fully acknowledge how their own delinquencies have precipitated their current predicament: their failure to maintain viewpoint diversity in any meaningful sense among faculty and students; failure to dismantle entrenched campus cultures of self-censorship and intellectual conformism; failure to sustain robust climates of intellectual freedom; and failure to act against anti-Semitic and other forms of harassment. These failings undermine the most basic mission of universities -- namely, the pursuit of truth.... “This is by no means to say the government may not investigate compliance failures or misconduct in or by universities. But government itself must, as a matter of law, comply with federal regulations in conducting investigations and deciding whether a grant should be suspended.... “University units, and in some cases entire institutions, have become politicized and ideologically partisan. Viewpoint diversity, particularly among faculty members but in some institutions among students, too, has essentially collapsed. A 2023 survey revealed that nearly 80 percent of Harvard faculty identify themselves as liberal or very liberal, while less than 3 percent identify as conservative -- all while prominent leaders at Harvard have called for content-based restrictions on faculty members’ freedom of expression rights. More broadly, classrooms are too often centers of indoctrination, not forums for learning by the examination of the best evidence and arguments on competing sides of contested questions.... “The way to [achieve reform] is not through ‘affirmative action’ or preferences of any kind to conservatives, as some propose. Viewpoint diversity can be increased simply by ending discrimination in hiring and promotion against scholars who dissent from ideas that have hardened into orthodoxies on so many campuses. This means, among other things, getting rid of such practices as mandatory ‘statements’ on job or promotion applications, which screen out dissenters by implicitly demanding a pledge of ideological fealty as a condition of employment or advancement. “In addition, elite universities in particular need to admit their past hypocrisy and failures on free-speech matters (as the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tragically failed to do in a widely publicized December 2023 congressional hearing) and adopt strictly enforced free-speech and institutional-neutrality policies to ensure that non-sectarian universities function as impartial forums for the robust examination of ideas, and not as partisan participants in political debates....” Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George and Union Theological Seminary Prof. Cornel West at The Hill. What Must a Modern Top-Flight Education Look Like? Excerpts (links in the original): “A good education prepares one for the realities of adulthood and successful interaction with the world. At the university level, whether via college or homeschooling, a good education develops the intellectual, emotional, and social muscles. One is moulded into a person who uses tools, not crutches; who accepts responsibility rather than accepting stories of victimhood; and who recognises that human flourishing happens in communities, not in isolation.... “We ourselves have enjoyed the best of the system as it was in the late 20th century, from European gymnasiums to the American Ivy League. Indeed, our generation has the highest average IQ of any generation in the West. “By contrast, newer generations have regressed to cognitive levels not seen for a century, with sharp declines at the top end: average mathematics scores have dropped, and attention spans are particularly reducing for the young, from over half an hour to under a minute . The abilities to focus, to think critically, and to be socially resilient have declined spectacularly over the past 50 years . Studies suggest strongly that the average IQ in Western countries, after steadily increasing during the 20th century as more people got access to better education, has been falling for the past few decades.... "The first solution principle is to deliver higher education once again in a small and independent format. This requires eliminating the layers upon layers of bureaucracy that encrust our modern institutions of higher learning, as these layers rob academics and the institution as a whole of independence, including the freedom to deliver transformative education....” [Followed by a discussion of issues and possible solutions.] Full op-ed by New South Wales Prof. Gigi Foster, London School of Economics Prof. Paul Frijters and writer Michael Baker at Brownstone Institute. Stanford’s Seven Schools and Other Units Told to Prepare for Potentially Significant Budget Cuts Excerpt: “School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) Dean Debra Satz informed H&S program directors and chairs of a new directive to model potentially ‘significant’ budget cuts in their divisions in a Tuesday email obtained by The Daily. “The email stated that Satz and others in Stanford’s seven schools had been asked by Provost Jenny Martinez to model budget cuts and submit ‘high-level plans’ for their implementation. H&S’s planning exercise involves modeling a 10% and 15% cut to general funds and a 10% cut to endowment funds. “Graduate School of Business (GSB) Dean Peter DeMarzo affirmed in an email to the Daily that the GSB ‘received the same guidance as other units on campus.’...” Full article at Stanford Daily. Other Articles of Interest Foreign Funding Comes Under Scrutiny at UC Berkeley and Harvard Full article at College Fix. How Universities Restrict Faculty Freedom Full op-ed at City Journal. Yale Professors Call Out University’s Bureaucracy A letter from nearly 100 members of the Yale faculty denounces administrative bloat and stresses the importance of focusing on the school's academic mission. Full op-ed at City Journal including a link to the letter. Concerns About Discrimination in Faculty Hiring at Princeton Full op-ed at Rufo website. See also “Trump Challenges Princeton on Race and Free Speech ” by Princeton alum Stuart D. Taylor at Real Clear Politics. Harvard Fights in Court but Retreats on Campus Full article at Harvard Crimson. Harvard Promises Changes After Reports on Antisemitism and Islamophobia Full article at NY Times. See also “Internal Harvard Report Criticizes School’s Response to Antisemitism ” at WSJ. Harvard Finds Politicized Instruction in Long-Awaited Antisemitism Report Full article at Off the Press. See also Just the News . Harvard’s Kennedy School Criticized for Lack of Viewpoint Diversity Full op-ed at Harvard Salient. Harvard Law Review Criticized for Alleged Pattern of Racial Discrimination Full op-ed at Washington Free Beacon. See also Associated Press . National Association of Scholars Releases Quantitative Study of DEI Statements in University Job Listings Press release at NAS along with a link to the full report . Majority of Gen Z Graduates Now Think College Was a Waste of Money Full article at Newsweek. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Law School Creates Largest-ever Public Dataset of Over a Million Corporate Contracts Stanford Students Learn to Lead with Civic Courage Stents and Bypass Are More Comparable Than Once Thought ************ “ The truth is slower to catch on but it's harder to get rid of.” — Stanford Prof. Andrew Huberman April 28, 2025 Statement by Dartmouth's President Editor’s note: Last week, Dartmouth’s president Sian Leah Beilock circulated a letter to the Dartmouth community which set forth what we believe are some very important concepts regarding the current pressures on U.S. colleges and universities. She, like our leaders at Stanford (see Developments at Stanford, below), has resisted signing petitions and group letters and instead is trying to resolve the issues in more individualistic and hopefully productive ways. E xcerpts (links in the original): . . . . “People on and off campus are asking what I think about the battle between higher education and the federal government. A binary framework has emerged -- fight or flight -- that, I worry, means higher-education institutions aren’t reflecting on what we could do better to further our standing as a trusted beacon for knowledge and truth. “To be clear, reflection does not mean capitulation. I commit to you that I will always stand up for higher education, academic freedom, and Dartmouth’s specific dedication to values like ‘responsibility for each other and for the broader world’ and ‘vigorous and open debate of ideas within a community marked by mutual respect.’ For example, the recent threat to Harvard’s tax-exempt status, among other threats, is fundamentally inconsistent with the notions of free expression and inquiry that make America’s universities the envy of the world, and of the limited government that our founders rightly celebrated. Receivership, censorship, and external pressures about what can and cannot be taught or studied hamper the free exchange of ideas on our campus and across institutions. Dartmouth will never relent on these values, and I hope my peers don’t either.... “Higher-education institutions, especially the most elite among us, are not above reproach. Not only is trust in higher education at an all-time low, but that trust is hugely polarized, second in polarization only to the U.S. presidency . If we don’t ask ourselves why, we will squander this opportunity to do better. That spirit of self-reflection does not, in any way, insulate the government from criticism. It simply gives us an opportunity to look at ourselves and ask where we can be truer to our own ideals....” Full text of the letter by Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at Dartmouth website and also posted at our Commentary webpage. See also video interview on Bloomberg as posted at X (3-1/2 minutes). A Conservative Harvard Professor’s Assessment on How the University Can Save Itself Excerpts (links in the original): “In recent reports about the Trump administration’s assault on Harvard, the statistic is often cited that, at most, 3% of Harvard faculty members identify as conservative . I’m one of that 3%. I’ve taught at Harvard for 40 years. I’ve known some of my liberal and progressive colleagues for decades. I have great respect for many of them as scholars, scientists and human beings. I have a good idea of how they think.... “Faculty at Harvard for the most part are serious scholars and scientists who just want to get on with their work. They have books to write and papers to publish. They want to pass on what they have learned to the next generation. They resent it when activists create turbulence at department meetings and waste everyone’s time.... “In his official response to the Trump administration, [Harvard President Alan Garber] refused its demands while strongly reaffirming the university’s commitment to values that conservatives and traditional liberals can fully endorse.... “One inescapable truth in higher education is that he who pays the piper calls the tune. Harvard’s endowment is massive, around $50 billion, but most of it is tied up in donor-restricted funds, and it pays for only 37% of Harvard’s annual operating costs of $6.5 billion. For the rest, the university relies on tuition (20%), federal grants (11%), current gifts from alumni and other donors, and borrowing. Since Harvard’s response to the Hamas attack of October 2023 led to a donor revolt, it has increasingly resorted to the bond market to cover operating costs, and on increasingly unfavorable terms. “In the short term, unwinding the university’s dependence on federal funding risks creating a substantial deficit. But that funding itself comes at a steep price, not all of which can be measured in dollars and cents. It changes how the university operates and how power is distributed within it. Federal funding tends to increase the number and power of administrators, to turn faculty into their supplicants and to insulate the university from alumni opinion. “For instance, a 2011 ‘Dear Colleague’ letter from the Obama administration’s Education Department led Harvard to hire over 50 ‘Title IX Resource Coordinators’ to police sexual mores. The university’s sprawling DEI apparatus created, without faculty input, the pressure to regulate speech, require trigger warnings and enforce preferred pronouns. These administrators, who are the most politically active element in the university, opened the doors to further radicalization following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. “There are very good reasons for Harvard (and other universities) to reduce our financial dependence on the federal government. Instead, we should strengthen ties with loyal alumni who know and love Harvard. Alumni are loyal in part because they remember with gratitude the teaching they received as undergraduates. That makes them more closely aligned with the university’s real mission: to teach and to produce high-quality, unpoliticized research. Empowering alumni would carry its own risks, no doubt, but in my experience, they have a much sounder sense than politicians and government bureaucrats of what Harvard should be doing to help the country and itself.” Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. James Hankins at WSJ. See also the detailed graphs and charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage showing the very large growth of non-teaching staff at Stanford in recent years, the fact that Stanford has the highest total amount of government funding in recent years as compared to all other colleges and universities and similar data. See also our previous link to "Stanford's Bureaucracy Undermines Its Academic Mission" at Stanford Review . UC Faculty Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement Excerpt (links in the original): “The University of California will not proceed with making a semester-long course in ethnic studies a new admissions requirement. “The UC Faculty Assembly defeated the proposal by a vote of 29 to 12 with 12 abstentions on Wednesday. (Go here for background on the proposal.) “Had the Assembly endorsed it, the plan would have gone before the UC regents, who would have had the final say. Instead, the rejection ends a five-year effort by the UC ethnic studies faculty to determine the content of high school ethnic studies courses that would have met the admissions requirement. “The Legislature has already mandated that high schools offer an ethnic studies course, starting in the fall of 2025, and that all students take the course to graduate, starting in 2029-30. But implementation of the 2021 law is contingent on state funding, at a cost the California Department of Education has estimated at $275 million per year. But Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t funded it, and a Newsom adviser told a UC faculty representative that it will not be a priority for 2025-26, amid uncertain revenues....” Full article at Ed Source. See also statement from FAIR. Europe Really Is Jailing People for Online Speech Editor’s note: We have previously presented a number important articles by Johns Hopkins Prof. Yascha Mounk but suggest this one may be the most important to date and strongly urge readers to read the article in its entirety here . As is discussed by Prof. Mounk, the risks are not just within Europe but that these types of actions could erode even the protections provided within the U.S. by our own laws and Constitution. Excerpts (endnote deleted): “Imagine this scenario. “The interior minister of a country that considers itself a democracy reports scores of citizens to the police for making critical statements about her while she is in office. Many of them are given hefty monetary fines or even prison sentences. “In protest, a journalist publishes a satirical meme. It features a real photograph of the interior minister holding a sign that is digitally altered so that, apocryphally, it reads: ‘I hate freedom of speech.’ “As if to prove the point, the interior minister reports the journalist to the police. He is duly prosecuted and, after a brief trial, given a seven-month suspended prison sentence. “Would you say that this nation has a problem with free speech? “If you do, then you should be very concerned about what has happened in Europe over the last few years. For, as you may have suspected, this scenario is not fictional; rather, it depicts the true facts of a recent German court case -- one that is far less of an outlier than most otherwise well-informed observers recognize.... [followed by discussion of prohibitions being established throughout Europe] “As a result of these broad prohibitions and the ease of enforcing them, Britain has quickly become one of the continent’s leaders in prosecuting -- and even jailing -- people for speech. As the Times of London recently reported, ‘officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests [under section 127] in 2023.’ This means that, on average, over 33 arrests are made every day for what people in the United Kingdom have said on the internet.... “The argument for strong restrictions on free speech implicitly rests on the idea that these have historically proven necessary to preserve our democratic institutions, making them all the more justified at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise. But this argument is historical nonsense twice over. “This argument wrongly presumes that past failures of democracy can be chalked up to an excess of free speech when the opposite comes closer to being true. [followed by further discussion and examples] ...” Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Yascha Mounk at Substack, a version of which was initially published at Dispatch . See also our prior postings "Stanford's Roles in Censoring the Web" at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. Developments at Stanford Last Week's Faculty Senate Hears Report on Government Pressures and Other Issues Excerpt (link in the original): . . . . “President Jonathan Levin also discussed a letter published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) this week. 'I don’t disagree with the sentiments in that letter,' Levin said. 'In general, I prefer not to sign open letters. I think it’s good practice at a university for people to formulate and express their own views.' “Levin noted that he and Provost Jenny Martinez have shared their views regarding government overreach and the need for universities to engage with legitimate criticism, which has been covered widely by national media. “‘To be clear, I do believe in working together with a broad array of peer institutions on actions to advance higher education,’ Levin said. ‘We’re doing that in many ways, in small groups with the [Association of American Universities] and other organizations, including just last week, filing a second successful lawsuit related to cuts in federal funding.’ “Levin added that he foresees many opportunities to collaborate in greater depth in coming months...." Full article at Stanford Report. See also “Levin and Martinez Field Questions at Admit Weekend About Academic Freedom and Budget Cuts” at Stanford Daily . From the Faculty Senate Two Weeks Earlier , President Levin Expands on the University’s Guiding Principles Excerpts (posted in a prior Newsletter but we believe worth repeating here; link in the original): . . . . . “In addressing the senate, Levin expanded upon the set of principles he and Provost Jenny Martinez are using to guide the university at this time. “‘First, the partnership between universities and the federal government is exceptionally important -- to universities and the country,’ Levin said. ‘There is perhaps no university which demonstrates that more than Stanford. When the government began its investment in scientific research, we were a good regional university. Federal funding enabled us to become a great national and global university. In turn, we demonstrate how university research can be an engine of innovation for the country and for the world.’ "Studies of federally funded research find that it has exceptionally high social return on the investment, Levin said, and many specific examples come from Stanford. “‘Second, academic freedom is an essential part of that contract,’ Levin said. ‘It protects members of the university to question orthodoxy, to debate ideas, to pursue lines of thought that go against the prevailing political winds. It requires protection from both internal and external coercion. On the external side, First Amendment protections for free speech, including unpopular ideas, are a fundamental part of the country. “‘It is also important for universities to recognize that we have not always lived up to our internal end -- we have had speakers shouted down, published lists of harmful words, and had situations where the careers of students or faculty were threatened for politically unpopular speech. Today, I believe we can be proud of what we are doing at Stanford to protect free inquiry and model civil discourse.’ ..." Full article at Stanford Report. See also the Guiding Principles as outlined by President Levin and Provost Martinez in their March 31, 2025 letter to the community, a copy of which is now also posted at our Stanford Speaks webpage. April 25, 2025 Harvard Showed a Spine; Now Comes the Hard Part Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “On April 11, three federal agencies sent the university a sweeping list of demands: make major changes or risk losing billions in research funding. While some demands -- like ending ideological litmus tests in hiring -- reflect reforms [Heterodox Academy] supports, many others crossed a dangerous line. For example, the government called for mandatory plagiarism reviews of all current and prospective faculty and audits of departments it deemed ideologically ‘captured’ -- without offering clear evidence of problems or due process. “These are not reasonable steps to fight discrimination; they’re an attempt to control a university’s internal affairs while claiming failure to address antisemitism as the reason. As Harvard rightly argued in its response , the demands violate core constitutional principles and threaten academic freedom. No school should be forced to choose between government funding and intellectual independence, and certainly not without due process . In rejecting these terms, Harvard defended more than itself. It defended the very idea of the university.... “The administration’s demands are a serious threat to academic freedom. Yet Harvard's resistance will ring hollow unless it pairs its bold defense of independence with an equally honest reckoning about the internal failures that made it vulnerable to such scrutiny in the first place. “In a recent op-ed for the Boston Globe , the faculty chairs of the Academic Freedom Councils at Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton spoke of these problems: “‘While differing in our politics and much else, we recognized that our campuses had become intellectually cramped, with insufficient diversity in the range of ideas and viewpoints we teach and research. We witnessed the cancellation of speakers with unpopular views, saw some departments devolve into monocultures inhospitable to contrary opinions, and watched in dismay as well-meaning administrators implemented identity-focused policies that hardened boundaries between groups instead of dissolving them. “‘Lately, we have seen universities fail to adequately address antisemitism, tolerate protests that cross the line from expression to disruption and coercion, violate their own well-founded rules, and apply antidiscrimination and harassment rules inconsistently. The result is a spiral of silence in which students and faculty censor themselves, leaving public discourse to the loudest and most zealous voices.... “ .... If a 26:1 ideological imbalance shows viewpoint diversity, what would count as a monoculture? “At [Heterodox Academy] , we believe the best defense against political overreach is a university that lives up to its highest ideals. Harvard’s moment of courage must now be matched by real reform. That means publicly affirming its commitment to civil rights and the open exchange of ideas -- and then demonstrating that commitment through faculty hiring practices, classroom culture, and intellectual climate. America needs great universities. And it needs those universities to be truly great -- not just in rankings, but in their commitment to truth, pluralism, and academic integrity. “Harvard just showed it has a spine. But now comes the hard part: Harvard must commit itself to the difficult, long-term work of building a culture of open inquiry.” Full op-ed by Brown U Prof. and President of Heterodox Academy John Tomasi at Substack. See also: Statement by Harvard Alumni for Free Speech. Federal government’s letter to Harvard dated April 11, 2025. Harvard’s litigation response to the federal government . Additional Articles re Harvard In Harvard vs. Trump, Both Are Right and Both Are Wrong Full op-ed by Harvard Fellow Barak Sella at The Hill. “Harvard’s inglorious past deserves scorn and punishment, but the size and scope of the Trump administration's sanctions go too far” Full op-ed by NYU Prof. Richard Epstein at Civitas. Commonsense Changes at Harvard Could Go a Long Way to Diffusing the Trump Standoff Full op-ed including detailed numbers and charts re federal grants, foreign donors, growth of endowment, increased administrative costs, etc. by Open the Books at Substack. Harvard Sought a Deal, and Some Donors Still Want That Outcome Full article at NY Times. A Perfect Storm Comes for Elite Universities Excerpts (links in the original): “The country’s most elite universities are panicking over President Donald Trump ’s pressure campaign against them, but their problems run far deeper than a stand-off with the White House. “Fewer students are applying to top schools. Private donors are closing their checkbooks. Lucrative foreign student visas are in the State Department’s crosshairs . “And the diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies that grew around universities’ desire to pursue liberal social justice not only inflicted reputational damage -- they may have exposed the schools to civil rights violations. “‘Higher education periodically goes through crises, which sometimes feel more existential than others. By all indications, this is among the more serious crises that we’ve faced in many decades,’ Neil Gross, a sociology professor at Colby College, told the Washington Examiner. ‘It’s been building for some time.’ ... [Followed by discussion of declines in student applicants.] “Federal funding is not the only source of income presently at risk for elite universities. “Amid the backlash to top schools’ handling of anti-Israel protests and leadership upheaval at several universities, some private donors stopped giving money before the fight with Trump began. “Donations to Harvard fell by 14% in fiscal 2024, according to the Harvard Crimson. “‘The $151 million decline marks one of the most significant year-over-year drops in donations in the past decade,’ the school paper reported.... “However, others see the current moment as an opportunity for an overdue course correction after years of drifting from the core values of higher education. “‘This is a comeuppance that has been long coming,’ [Drexel Prof. Stanley Ridgley] said. ‘The bar tab that Harvard ran up over the last 20 years, well, that tab is coming due.’..." Full article at Washington Examiner. Kicking Out Foreign Students Is a Loss for America Excerpts: “Imagine a country that invites the world’s best students to study there, only to deport them over a traffic violation.... “Revoking legal status en masse for unclear or illegitimate reasons contributes to a climate of uncertainty that will drive the best and brightest students into other countries, upending their lives and depriving the U.S. of massive talent. “Based on what’s known about some of the legal statuses that have been revoked, it’s not clear that [engaging in activities that are contrary to U.S. policy] is the case for these students, who have also already gone through extensive background checks when applying for their visas. Immigration attorney Charles Kuck, who is involved in one of the lawsuits against the government for the termination of SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) records, said in an interview that many students have had their status terminated merely for having a traffic violation, or a discharged offense from years ago, and some don’t have a criminal record at all. His clients weren’t involved in the pro-Palestinian protests, either. The government didn’t give a clear reason why their statuses were terminated. ‘ICE didn’t tell these students what they did wrong,’ Kuck stated.... “Student visas are expensive and hard to get. Applicants must be accepted by a U.S. university, pay hefty fees, comply with many regulations, and secure funding for their tuition and living expenses throughout their education. (These visas often don’t allow students to work while they study.) This process is already prohibitive and discourages many talented individuals from applying. “The mass revocation of legal status for hundreds of apparently peaceful students is a loss for America. These individuals are among the ‘best and brightest’ who come here to pursue great education, are willing to pay for it, and often aspire to build a life here. They know this country affords unique opportunities and they greatly benefit from this opportunity.... “Ultimately, the whole student visa program should be overhauled to allow more freedom for universities to attract students, and for companies to hire them. But for now, the current student visa program should make it easier, not harder, for students to come here. President Trump’s idea [in June 2024 during the campaign ] of attaching a green card to every college degree was good back then -- and his administration should pursue that end instead of the path it’s currently on....” Full op-ed at Real Clear Politics. See also "The Case Against Student Deportations " at Stanford Review. Other Articles of Interest NIH Says Colleges Must Eliminate DEI Programs to Receive Research Funding Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. When Do Scholarly Retractions Become a Form of Censorship? Full op-ed at Quillette. GenAI Will Not Make Students Smarter Full op-ed at James Martin Center. Federal Government to Begin Garnishing Wages on Defaulted Student Loan Borrowers Full article at Politico. When Good Academics Do Bad Things Full op-ed at Quillette. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. From School of Medicine: RNA Blood Test Designed to Detect Cancers, Other Clues From Center on Artificial Intelligence: Assessing the Role of Intelligent Tutors in K-12 Education From School of Engineering: In My Lab, Curiosity Drives Discovery ************ "I think we have a very good Honor Code. What’s broken is the education around it. We need to inculcate it by talking about it … and infuse it in our culture." -- Stanford Prof. Andrea Goldsmith April 18, 2025 Editor’s note: Because of rapidly changing developments regarding recent demands on Harvard and other universities, we are distributing this Newsletter a few days earlier than normal. As always, we welcome reader comments and suggestions here . ************ President Levin and Provost Martinez Address Government Attacks on Harvard and Universities Generally (April 15, 2025) Full Text of Statement : “America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth. This strength has been built on government investment but not government control. The Supreme Court recognized this years ago when it articulated the essential freedoms of universities under the First Amendment as the ability to determine who gets to teach, what is taught, how it is taught, and who is admitted to study. “Universities need to address legitimate criticisms with humility and openness. But the way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution. Harvard’s objections to the letter it received are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending.” [Note: A copy of the government's letter to Harvard dated April 11, 2025 is posted at our Commentary webpage. See also April 18, 2025 op-ed at Stanford Review .] Statement from Our Colleagues at Harvard Alumni for Free Speech Excerpts (link in the original): "Harvard Alumni for Free Speech (HAFFS) believes deeply in the principles of academic freedom, free expression, and genuine viewpoint diversity. These values are not merely aspirational -- they are essential to the mission of any university, and to the health of a democratic society. "We have reviewed the federal government’s letter to Harvard University dated April 11th. The letter goes far beyond ensuring that Harvard does not discriminate.... "We believe that further changes are needed to current Harvard policies and that the implementation of changes made at Harvard in the past year needs to be assessed to confirm that the core principles of academic freedom and free expression are being advanced. However, we do not think it appropriate for the federal government to be the party responsible to determine and monitor what values are acceptable for private universities to foster, and we are deeply troubled by the growing federal overreach into the intellectual life of universities. "Free expression cannot thrive under any orthodoxy -- whether imposed by university administrators or by federal agencies...." Full text of statement here . Reclaiming Academic Rigor and Intellectual Vitality Excerpts: “Roosevelt Montás is an outspoken advocate for a humanistic liberal arts education rooted in transformative texts, particularly the Great Books tradition. As director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum from 2008 to 2018, he did more than anyone else to safeguard and sustain a set of foundational courses and essential knowledge that all students are required to engage with and master. “A Dominican immigrant who discovered the power of classical texts as a Columbia undergrad, Montás argues that exposure to foundational works of literature, philosophy and political thought is not an elitist pursuit, but a democratizing force -- one that offers students, regardless of background, the tools for intellectual and moral self-discovery.... “We often hear about the threats to education from political polarization, but the real crisis is more insidious: a broad cultural shift that has deprioritized deep learning, rigorous intellectual engagement and the foundational knowledge necessary for an informed citizenry. “This is not a conspiracy of the right or the left -- it is a product of market forces, technological shifts and a culture that increasingly values efficiency, credentialing and convenience over substantive education.... “Here’s how higher education lost rigor and depth: [Followed by discussion of: The Decline of the Humanities and the Marginalization of the Serious Arts. The Absence of a Serious Foundation in Science, Mathematics and Quantitative Methods. The Shift to Asynchronous, Low-Engagement Online Learning. The Weakening of General Education and the Fragmentation of Knowledge. [As well as proposed corrective actions.] “The strength of a nation is not measured merely by its economy or its military but by the depth of its ideas, the clarity of its discourse and the rigor of its thinking. In an era of misinformation, declining civic literacy and technological distractions, the need for an intellectually engaged citizenry has never been greater. If America is to lead in the 21st century -- not just in wealth or power but in wisdom -- it must first make America smart again. “This is not about nostalgia for a past golden age but a recognition that serious learning, deep engagement and intellectual rigor are the foundations of a flourishing democracy. It is time to raise -- not lower -- the bar." Full op-ed by U Texas Prof. Steven Mintz at Inside Higher Ed. There’s a Limit to Government Intrusion in Academic Matters Excerpts (link in the original, endnotes deleted): “On April 11, President Trump sent a letter to Harvard with various demands, threatening to cut off federal science grants if Harvard does not comply. Some demands related to ending racial discrimination in admissions and hiring, which is fine, since Harvard has blatantly discriminated against white and Asians in the past and continues to do so. “Other demands are improper, even if they are things that we think the university should do. He asks Harvard to check faculty publications for plagiarism. Maybe Harvard should do that, but why should the federal government condition cancer research grants given to Professor Smith on whether the university has audited Professor Jones’s publications? This is an intrusion onto the university’s internal management.... “Even more dubious is the demand that Harvard require its departments to have diverse viewpoints. The letter says, " ' Harvard must abolish all criteria, preferences, and practices, whether mandatory or optional, throughout its admissions and hiring practices, that function as ideological litmus tests. Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity’ “This sounds good, but it isn’t.... “Liberal faculty think that if 20% of a department voted for Trump, that department is hideously conservative; they have lost sight of their own biases. And Trump is not even asking for ‘the MAGA worldview’. He is just asking that biology departments not veto job candidates who say that a man cannot become a woman and that economics departments not veto candidates who favor tariffs. “Even imposing a little balance on a politicized university department, though, is still not the business of the federal government.... “... If a department doesn’t hire an economist because of his views on sex change operations or climate change, that is a bad thing. Where universities have gone most wrong is in refusing to hire people because they have conservative views on topics unrelated to their field of study. That is what we should aim to end.... “If you were the university president, vested with full authority from the board of trustees, what would you do?” Full op-ed by Indiana U. Prof. Eric Rasmusen at Substack. See also “Only 39 U.S. Colleges Can Withstand Trump’s Freeze on Research Dollars ” at Times of India. What Our Universities Need to Do Now Excerpts (links in the original): “’Finally!’ “That was my first reaction to Harvard’s letter on Monday, which pledged to resist the Trump administration’s attacks on its autonomy. You can’t have a free university or a free society when the government is dictating what you can teach, think or write. Good on Harvard, for stating what most schools have been too scared to say . “Yet we should also read the letter as a challenge to our universities, which haven’t always lived by their ideals of free expression and open inquiry. President Trump’s proposed restrictions and penalties pose a dire threat to these values, as the Harvard letter makes clear. But we shouldn’t pretend that we have made good on them ourselves. “Consider the question of viewpoint diversity, which the Trump administration highlighted in its own letter to Harvard earlier this month. The university was instructed to abolish 'ideological litmus tests' and to 'hire a critical mass of new faculty' in departments where everyone thought the same way. “I heartily endorse that goal, even if I detest Trump’s mechanism for achieving it. Surveys have repeatedly confirmed that faculty at elite schools like Harvard lean heavily and almost uniformly left in their politics . That’s a big problem if you think that education should expose us to a wide range of perspectives. And it also helps explain the rising public disdain for universities , especially -- but not only -- among conservatives. “But I don’t want Trump or any other government official deciding which departments or schools are so ideologically lopsided that they will forsake their federal funding, as Trump has threatened. That’s a formula for corruption, not balance. “And that’s why the universities have to step up, admit they have a problem, and commit to solving it. So I was pleased to see that Harvard’s letter pledged to ‘broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community,’ as Harvard president Alan M. Garber wrote . “Message to the world: Harvard isn’t as intellectually diverse as it should be. Nor has it done enough to ‘nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry’ or to ‘develop the tools, skills, and practices needed to engage constructively with one another,’ as Garber also admitted...." [Followed by discussion of additional concerns and possible actions.] Full op-ed by Penn Prof. Jonathan Zimmerman at The Hill. This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, If They Dare Excerpt : .... “There is a way for universities to fight back. It requires more than refusing to bend to Trump’s will, and it requires more than forming a united front. They must abandon all the concerns -- rankings, donors, campus amenities -- that preoccupy and distract them, and focus on their core mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge." ... Full op-ed at NY Times. See also our long-existing Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Other Articles of Interest Stanford Professor Discusses Harmful Impact of DEI Full op-ed by Stanford Prof. Jonathan Berk at Stanford Daily. Without Self-Criticism, There Can be No Progressive Thought in the Academy Full op-ed by Queen Mary U of London Prof. Eric Heinze at Education Next. The Importance of Viewpoint Diversity and Free Expression, What Comes After DEI? Full op-ed at New Yorker. Higher Ed Digs In, Refuses Reform Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. From Graduate School of Business: The Grit and Determination of Entrepreneurs From Department of Biology: The Neuroscience and Physiology of Animal Relationships Multi-disciplinary Study Reveals How to Make Prescribed Forest Fires Burn Safer and Cleaner ************ “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.” — Stanford’s 1974 Statement on Academic Freedom April 14, 2025 Editor’s note: We present here four articles with competing messages. The first article includes the results of recent polling showing that the majority of U.S. students believe their campuses have a climate that promotes free speech. The second article discusses some of the conflicts that nevertheless also are taking place. The third is an example of the tensions that have long existed and the fourth is a call for better civic education. These are themes that have been consistently presented ever since these Newsletters and the related website were launched in September 2022, and long before these issues became the subject of more widespread public discussion. Stanford itself has been a participant in what many/most observers believe were seriously wrongful actions such as the government-coordinated censorship that was based at Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates, the attacks by Stanford’s own faculty and others on Prof. Jay Bhattacharya, and related issues (see examples at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage). On the other hand, Stanford’s administration and faculty are to be commended in their trying to address these concerns including President Levin's and Provost Martinez’s recent statement on disruption along with Stanford's updated policies on freedom of expression, the Civic Dialogues program for freshmen, the Democracy and Disagreement course being offered this spring quarter and the long existing Stanford Civics Initiative . We welcome here your own comments on these issues. Gallup Poll Says Majority of Students Feel Safe with Campus Speech Excerpts : “About three-quarters of currently enrolled bachelor’s degree students say their college or university does an ‘excellent’ (31%) or ‘good’ job (43%) promoting free speech on campus. Nineteen percent say their institution is ‘only fair’ at promoting free speech, while 5% say their school does a ‘poor’ job. Republican, Democratic and politically independent students are about equally likely to say their school does an excellent or good job promoting free speech.... “Bottom Line: Amid significant national debate over free speech protections on college campuses, particularly in response to last year’s protests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict, most students report that their institution fosters a respectful and open environment. The majority of bachelor’s degree students believe their college does a good job of promoting free speech, with similar ratings across political affiliations. “Additionally, most students say they feel respected by both their peers and faculty, and a substantial majority report a sense of belonging at their institution. These findings suggest that although high-profile controversies have sparked public discourse about campus tensions, most students feel their school does a good job promoting free speech, respect and feelings of belonging on campus.” Full article at Gallup website and including a link to a PDF copy of the full report. But see also FIRE's and College Pulse's most recent report and rankings (released September 2024) re campus speech, including this student comment about Stanford which ranked 218 out of 251 schools: “Generally, other students are not particularly accepting. If you don't follow whatever Instagram or TikTok is claiming to be the most 'moral' political view at the moment, people don't want to hear it and they will label you as non-politically correct. This behavior usually comes from liberal students -- I'm saying this as a very liberal person myself. I don't think I have non-politically correct viewpoints. I often agree with these students, but the manner in which they enforce their viewpoints across campus is something I disagree with....” I Was Called an ‘Inbred Swine’ at a Recent Princeton Event Excerpt (links in the original): “[Last week] at Princeton, Jewish students were called ‘inbred swine,’ told to ‘go back to Europe,’ and taunted with gestures of the Hamas triangle by masked protesters. Sadly, slurs like these have become commonplace at anti-Israel protests at my college in the months since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, but university president Christopher Eisgruber insists he is ‘proud of the campus climate at Princeton.’ “What would it take for him to question that belief? “The latest outrage was sparked by a visit from former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett. More than 200 students had turned up to hear Bennett talk about his time as prime minister from 2021 to 2022 and the current government under Benjamin Netanyahu post-October 7. “Days before Bennett arrived, the Princeton chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine had plastered posters all over campus, calling him a ‘war criminal,’ and flooded listservs and social media with messages saying the college was ‘complicit in normalizing his murderous policies.’ SJP students publicly declared that ‘Bennett should be in prison, not at Princeton.’ Never mind that he was the first Israeli PM to form a coalition with the Arab party in the Knesset. Or that Princeton’s Hillel and four other organizations had invited him to the talk in good faith. All students who registered for the event were encouraged to submit questions in advance; only those with a Princeton ID were able to register...." Full op-ed at Free Press. See also “Tackling Antisemitism in Higher Education Requires Boldness, Not Moderation ” at Real Clear Education. The Campus Cold War – Faculty vs. Administrators Excerpts (link in the original): “If you’ve ever worked in higher education, you know the stereotypes. College administrators are soulless careerists brimming with will to power who ram through clueless decisions, whether the rest of the institution likes it or not. College faculty members, meanwhile, are myopic, overeducated children who take forever to do anything and throw tantrums anytime their routines are disrupted. “These caricatures are unfair to the actual people who run and teach at colleges. But they’ve only gained purchase in recent years. Behind closed doors, presidents are more likely to grumble about obstreperous, obstructionist professors. In faculty-senate meetings and other public forums, those professors are directing distrust, even disdain, at administrative leaders. “The two factions aren’t meant to move in lockstep, and they never have. Tension is baked into the way colleges are run, says Brian C. Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College who’s now a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. The American Association of University Professors’ 1966 ‘Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities’ laid out the blueprint most colleges follow. ‘The faculty has responsibility for the academic programs and curriculum,’ Rosenberg says. ‘The president has responsibility for the other stuff. You have built into the shared-governance model this divide, so it’s always been strained.’ ... [Followed by a detailed discussion of likely causes and effects.] “Ultimately, most administrators and professors want the same thing: to do right by their students and continue their work. Many of the obstacles they face they share, including their own foibles. ‘Tension is inevitable because we’re humans,’ says Mills, of Buena Vista University, ‘trying to do human things.’ If administrators and professors can look beyond their own immediate concerns and consider those of their counterparts, who knows what could happen?” Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education. Why Civic Education Must Be at the Forefront of Reform Excerpts (links in the original): “Gen Z was expected to be more instrumental in the 2024 presidential election than they turned out to be. Despite their active engagement in political discourse online, only 42 percent turned out to vote, down from 50 percent in 2020 . While the reasons for this vary, one core issue can be remedied: American grade schoolers aren’t learning what it means to be American.... “Civic education is not a partisan issue. Society benefits when citizens are knowledgeable and invested in the functions of their government. That’s why we need programs like California’s State Seal of Civic Engagement and initiatives like Project Citizen , which have demonstrated measurable success in increasing political participation among young people. The Ramos Research Institute is developing a Citizenship Empowerment Framework , with plans to release it this summer as a comprehensive, actionable model for strengthening civic education in higher education institutions. With its emphasis on media literacy, this program addresses the growing digital crisis where algorithm-driven newsfeeds influence public discourse...." Full op-ed at DC Journal. See also discussion of model legislation -- the REACH Act -- at James Martin Center. The Costs of Federal Taxation on Endowments and Cutbacks in Federal Funding Late last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article discussing the possible impact on 77 named colleges and universities of the proposed cutbacks in federal funding as well as the proposed tax on endowment income. The article also includes a detailed interactive chart for the named schools, including these highlights but all of which also are subject to the various assumptions set forth in the article: Among other things, the endowment tax, which is only in discussion stages, could potentially cost Stanford $404 million a year as compared to $566 million for Harvard, $460 million for Yale, $390 million for Princeton and $273 million for MIT. When you combine the endowment tax along with proposed cutbacks in National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation funding and compare that total with the total of all expenses at a given school, the total impact as a percent of total expenses -- again, subject to various assumptions -- would be 19% for Princeton, 18% for Grinnell, 13% for Yale and 7% for Stanford and where the total cost per student of the proposed cutbacks and tax would be $49K at Princeton, $42K at Yale, $41K at Caltech, $32K at Stanford, $30K at MIT and $27K at Harvard. The schools most impacted by reductions in NIH funding, in descending order, would be Johns Hopkins, Yale, Penn, Michigan and Columbia (Stanford could come in as eighth with a loss of $113 million). The schools most impacted by reductions in NSF funding, again in descending order, would be Texas, Michigan, UC San Diego, Cornell and Washington (Stanford would come in as twenty-first with a loss of $43.5 million). Full article and interactive chart at Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription may be required). See also the detailed charts we have previously published at our Stanford Concerns webpage including a chart from Open the Books showing schools with the highest federal contracts and grants (2018 to 2022) and where Stanford shows as the highest of all schools at $7 billion during those years. Other Articles of Interest ASU’s Investments in Virtual Reality Education Are Paying Off Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Lawsuit Is Filed Alleging University Discrimination Against Asians Full op-ed at Substack. In addition to the substance of the complaint, note the quotes of one or more university leaders and also the fact that the complaint was largely drafted with the use of AI. Note also, an SAT score of 1590 is at the top 99%. A Colloquy on Free Speech A PDF copy of the discussion featuring ACTA President Michael Poliakoff and former ACLU President/Prof. Nadine Strossen can be downloaded here . I Led Harvard’s Medical School, and I Fear for What’s to Come Full op-ed by former Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier at NY Times. NYU Cancels Doctor’s Speech, Citing Anti-Government Tone Full article at NY Times. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. The State of AI in Ten Charts A PDF copy of the full report is here . 3D Printed Human Organs -- ‘It Really Is the Holy Grail of Curative Medicine’ Six Big Ideas to Help Avoid a U.S. Electricity Crisis Gene Linked to Development of a Critical Coronary Artery ************ "It’s very important that if we’re going to have free speech, we have it for everyone." — Stanford Prof. (now deceased) and one of the pioneers in AI John McCarthy April 7, 2025 Colleges Have to Be Much More Honest with Themselves Excerpts (links in the original): “Leaders of American higher education have largely reacted to the Trump administration’s rhetorical and financial assaults by locking down in a defensive crouch. That is understandable given the administration’s view of universities, which JD Vance once called ‘ hostile institutions, ’ and its apparent admiration of the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban’s takeover of higher education. But there will be scant room for American higher education to tell its story of opportunity, transformation and discovery as long as colleges and universities deny what many of us know but few will say: Our critics have a point. “I worked in Democratic politics before my second career in higher education. Many ideas commonly espoused on the academic left would have been considered bizarre in the Democratic mainstream, assuming they could be understood at all. As a sector, higher education is considerably left of the American public, a perspective often expressed in language that is less offensive than it is incomprehensible. “We decry state censorship while ignoring a comparable threat to free expression on campuses: the crushing pressure inside many colleges and universities to conform with dominant political views. This pressure is hardly new. But the outrage emanating from campuses about Trump administration policies places our lack of self-awareness about longstanding dynamics within higher education in sharper relief.... “Taken together, those survey results [discussed earlier in the op-ed] suggest that some of the most intense pressure to conform to political orthodoxy comes from within the academy. The solution is neither more regulation nor more denial. It is sitting in front of us: Colleges and universities should retreat from politics and renew our core mission of teaching, learning and discovery. “That is easily said, of course. But faculties have immense powers of self-governance. Neither academic administrators nor elected officials should regulate what is taught in college classrooms. But members of faculties can formally recommit to what the principle of academic freedom has long required: not only tolerating but also encouraging different perspectives. Even those disciplines in which contemporary controversies may seem more relevant -- such as my own field, political science -- serve students better by focusing on enduring ideas rather than transient events.... “Colleges and universities have a compelling story to tell. But we will have neither an audience for that story -- nor the moral authority to tell it -- until we are as fearless about examining ourselves as we are about decrying interference from beyond our walls." Full op-ed by Assumption University President Greg Weiner at NY Times. And once again, see our "Back to Basics at Stanford " webpage . Principles That Should Stand at the Foundation of Universities Excerpts (endnotes deleted): “To assert that American universities, and in fact most western universities, are in a crisis simply restates the obvious. The crisis, long in the making, is not just one of financial solvency, costly and rapidly expanding bureaucracies, worthless academic programs or declining enrollments. It is primarily a crisis of meaning resulting from the pursuit of divergent, often wildly contradictory goals: the traditional pursuit of Truth, wherever it leads, social engineering in the name of repairing the world, or simply vocational training to help students to advance their careers. “Finding possible solutions to this malaise is the main focus of the essay but, before engaging in this task we: 1) recall what are the putative, i.e., commonly accepted, principles of our institutions of higher learning, 2) provide a diagnosis of the degree to which those principles are being adhered to and 3) formulate what principles should lay at the foundation of future universities -- or perhaps educational and scientific institutions more broadly. Once done, a series of proposals are presented that could be used to bring universities more closely in line with both the current putative principles of the university as well as those proposed for the future university.... [Followed by detailed discussion of the points stated above.] “Here are some ideas about the steps which need to be taken: a. Ban DEI, based on Trump’s recent executive actions and reduce university administrations significantly, perhaps to about 30% of their current size. b. Eliminate all grievance-based academic programs, based on their low intellectual content and discriminatory axioms, approaches and practices. c. In new institutions, replace tenure with a 5-10 year renewable contract to allow departments and universities to get rid of dead wood and reward people willing to take risks with faster promotions and higher salaries.... d. Bring back the Great Books programs and make them obligatory for all first-year students. Introduce serious, broad based, courses on the history of mathematics and the natural sciences, including Philosophy, and history of Western civilization, and make these courses mandatory for first and second year students. e. A special effort must be made to reform the Humanities.... f. Reduce the reliance on NSF, NIH and other major US government [agencies] for funding research and rely more on private organizations, like the Simons Foundation, who will, hopefully, choose to fund new and risky directions of research. g. Reform NSF and NIH by cutting all programs which are not directly connected to fundamental research and which can be funded by industry. Make sure that projects are evaluated on scientific merit alone. We applaud the recent efforts to reduce the percentage of allowed indirect funds to universities. There is little rationale for indirect funds except to allow these universities to divert government funds to other projects unrelated to the grants.... h. Reform the National Academy of the Sciences (NAS).... The NAS is a much too important national institution to be left to wither on the vine.... i. Pressure existing professional organizations, heavily compromised by wokeism, by creating alternatives ones.” [Followed by details of other proposals.] Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Sergiu Klainerman at Substack. The Case for Economic-Based Affirmative Action Excerpts: “In November 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic raging, I took off my mask and sat down nervously in the witness stand at the federal district courthouse in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “I was there to testify as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a conservative group challenging racial preferences at the University of North Carolina. (SFFA and I were also involved in a parallel suit against Harvard University.) I would be testifying that racial student body diversity is very important to achieve on college campuses, but that, according to my research, UNC-Chapel Hill could create an integrated campus without using race -- if it jettisoned its preferences for privileged children of alumni and faculty and gave a meaningful admissions boost to economically disadvantaged students of all races. “This was a very unusual position for me to be in. Over the years, I’d allied myself closely with civil rights groups and leading Black officials -- from civil rights activist and attorney Maya Wiley to politicians like Sen. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and President Barack Obama’s Education Secretary John B. King -- on issues of schooling, housing and employment. But on the issue of whether preferences at elite colleges should be based on race or class, I was on the opposite side from many of my friends.... “I had long been convinced, however, that there was a better way to achieve the valid goals of racial affirmative action. I agreed with my liberal friends that campuses needed to be racially integrated. It is crucial that in a multicultural democracy students learn to appreciate and value individuals of all backgrounds. And I agreed that the nation had to take steps to remedy a terrible history of racial oppression. But giving a break to economically disadvantaged students, the evidence showed, could help universities do both without all the divisiveness and unfairness associated with counting skin color in who gets ahead...." [Followed by a discussion of political pressures, the Supreme Court decision re Harvard admissions, responses by various universities, and related matters.] Full op-ed by GW Prof. Richard D. Kahlenberg at Politico. Other Articles of Interest President Levin and Provost Martinez Discuss Key Issues at the Start of Spring Quarter Full letter at Stanford Report. See also “President Levin and Provost Martinez Discuss Campus Uncertainty in Light of Recent Federal Actions” at Stanford Daily . About the Proposals to Increase Taxation of University Endowments Full analysis by Stanford law school alum Ed Yingling at Princetonians for Free Speech. The College Essay Is Everything That’s Wrong with America Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Yascha Mounk at Substack. Why Censorship Is Making Us All Dumber Full op-ed at Substack. The Bias in Health Science Full op-ed by Indiana Prof. Richard Gunderman. See also “UConn Med School Drops Mandatory DEI-infused Hippocratic Oath” at College Fix . A College Education Still Easily Beats the Alternative s Full op-ed by Cornell Prof. Emeritus Glenn C. Altschuler and Hamilton College President Emeritus David Wippman at The Hill. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. An Open-Source AI Agent for Doing Tasks on the Web Glucose’s Surprising Role As Master Manipulator of Tissue Maturation A Prevention Plan for Avoiding a Bird Flu Epidemic ************ "The greatest threat to academic freedom is not external censorship but self-censorship -- the fear of speaking one's mind in an environment that should encourage, not stifle, debate." – Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy March 31, 2025 Scholarship and Activism Are Two Different Things Excerpts (link in the original): “Disciplines have been central to the organization of academic life since the dawn of the modern university. They serve as communities for organizing the interrogation of knowledge, each making claims to expertise in a distinct approach or subject matter. “Yet many disciplines now seem to be destabilizing. The complexity of the world never fits into neat boxes, and there is an increasing recognition that major problems require interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle. Disciplinary coherence is also being challenged by constantly shifting border claims in knowledge production. “At the same time, some disciplines have become highly ideological, creating echo chambers that stall progress. This in turn has diminished the image of universities in the eyes of the general public, posing a profound political threat. Some disciplines have become, one might say, undisciplined -- freely pronouncing on matters outside their putative field of expertise, or expanding their claims of special knowledge to match political exigencies.... “The question is particularly salient in light of the variable stances of disciplines with regard to core governance questions. Disciplines are not uniformly disciplined in exercising their role as gatekeepers of good scholarship, nor are they all equally tolerant of dissent. Some of them purport to speak via collective associations about issues of the day, a major trend in our era. And many are not content with knowledge formation as the sole or primary mission of academe but instead seek to advance versions of activism.... “When one’s scholarship is designed to include advocacy -- what Tarunabh Khaitan has called ‘scholactivism’ -- risks are obvious. Advocates may reject or downplay inconvenient results, distorting academic debates. More deeply, they violate the “role morality” -- the notion that some roles entail specific ethical commitments -- of scholarship, which is the very basis for the social tolerance of academic freedom in the first place. While of course there is always a deep politics of scholarship, for example in the selection of topics for inquiry or methods for approaching them, these biases ought to be examined and minimized in genuine inquiry, not celebrated. This requires a humility about the limits of one’s own perspective.... “In a prescient observation in 2001, Clark Kerr noted that there was a conflict between the traditional view of the university that flowed from the enlightenment, embodied in a vision of seeking truth and objectivity, and a postmodern vision in which all discourse is political, with university resources to be deployed in ways that were liberatory and not repressive. He thought the conflict might further deepen, and noted that ‘any further politicization of the university will, of course, alienate much of the public at large.’ “As we stand at a moment of deep alienation, stepping back from the further politicization of scholarship is an existential step.” Full op-ed by U Chicago Prof. Tom Ginsburg at Chronicle of Higher Education and initially published at Inquisitive (Prof. Ginsburg is also the founding faculty director of Chicago's Forum on Free Inquiry and Expression ). See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage where we have long advocated that the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that do little if any front-line research or teaching but instead are engaged primarily if not exclusively in advocacy and implementation activities need to stop using the Stanford name and need to be moved off the core campus. How Campuses Can Better Cultivate Critical Awareness, Civic Engagement, Student Development and Global Literacy Excerpt (link in the original): “In 2019, sociologist Musa al-Gharbi called for a college education that would help students ‘understand biases and cognitive distortions (including and especially their own!)’ and prioritize civic education and engagement. “Al-Gharbi noted that despite significant increases in the number of Americans with college degrees and a rise in average IQ levels, civic, historical and cultural literacy have remained stagnant. Meanwhile, political polarization, mistrust and social fragmentation have intensified, with many Americans increasingly reluctant to marry, date or even befriend those with different political views. Trust in one another and confidence in the future have steadily declined. “Al-Gharbi’s observations raise a troubling question: If more Americans than ever are educated, why hasn’t this translated into greater civic knowledge or social cohesion? One answer may lie in the fragmented structure of today’s college curriculum. While most universities attempt to balance breadth, depth and choice, these elements often don’t work together to produce the kind of well-rounded, civically engaged graduates higher education aspires to cultivate....” [Followed by a discussion of these topics: Addressing deficiencies in civic and cultural literacy The need for holistic multidimensional development Toward a transformative and cohesive curriculum Development of an integrated and purpose-driven program of learning From passive learning to active engagement Redefining faculty roles Enhancing the student experience Strengthening civic and ethical engagement Encouraging critical self-reflection and self-awareness A path toward holistic education] Full op-ed by U Texas Prof. Steven Mintz at Inside Higher Ed. Other Articles of Interest Brown U. Student Asked Administrators: What Do You Do All Day? Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also the student-created website, “Bloat@Brown ." (NOTE: the students' homepage says that after they went public with their investigation, someone with a Brown IP address hacked their website and that access to a public data base also was blocked; some of their webpages nevertheless remain in operation while they are working to restore all of the website's functionality.) See also article at FIRE website . New Law Requires Utah State Students to Study Western Civ in General Ed Revamp Full article at College Fix. How Universities Could Reduce Poor Teaching and Shoddy Research Full op-ed at Heritage. Feds Tell Med Schools to Stop Discriminating Full article at James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal . AI Ethics in Higher Education Full article at Ed Tech. Cornell Says Deletion of DEI Language Was a Clerical Error Full article at College Fix. Senate Committee Probes the Censorship Industrial Complex Full video at YouTube (1 hour 40 minutes) including references to the Virality Project at Stanford and similar activities at other universities and nonprofits. See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Can Generative AI Tackle Global Health Problems? Science-Backed Ways to Combat Self-Doubt Roles of Nature and Nurture in Brain Organization ************ "Colleges and universities are among the few places in the United States today where people from remarkably different backgrounds, cultures, and ideologies come together to wrestle with the complexity of what it means to be a democratic community." – Penn professor and education historian Jonathan Zimmerman March 24, 2025 More About the Indirect Costs of Federal Research Excerpts : . . . . . “Previously, the NIH was adding up to 69 percent of a research grant to cover the facilities & administration infrastructure that allegedly undergirded subsidized research. For every dollar that a university received to support a particular project, NIH would throw in as much as an additional 69 cents for indirect costs, say, bringing the total amount of the grant to $1.69.... Now, the NIH announced in February, those indirect cost rates would be capped at 15 percent of the direct cost of a grant and would not be negotiated on a university-by-university basis. The 15 percent indirect cost-rate cap applied to grants already under way, not just to future grants. “Reaction was apocalyptic.... “University skeptics reject the advocates’ arguments. A number of red flags suggest that federal overhead payments are not the lean and mean reimbursements that the universities claim they are. The principle of economies of scale appears to have been suspended in the indirect cost funding context. Ordinarily, one would think that bigger universities with richer grant portfolios would spend a lower percentage of their grants on indirect costs. The opposite is the case.... “Furthermore, similar indirect cost rates apply to wildly different types of research grants.... “In 2023, NIH gave Stanford University $2 million to cover the direct costs of enrolling ‘sexual minorities (individuals with a sexual orientation that is not heterosexual) and gender minorities (individuals with a gender identity that is not congruent with their sex assigned at birth)’ in a federal health database, in the words of the NIH grant. According to the agency, ‘sexual and gender minority communities’ share a ‘common experience of social marginalization, legal discrimination, political disenfranchisement, and familial rejection.’ The NIH grant included $907,660 in indirect costs. It is unlikely that that database project imposed nearly $1 million in overhead on Stanford University, even if the target population is, as NIH insists, ‘socially marginalized’ and ‘politically disenfranchised.’ “The NIH guidance justified its new 15 percent indirect cost cap by comparing what foundations typically pay for indirect costs: zero. The Gates Foundation has a maximum indirect cost rate of 10 percent. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation pays up to 12 percent. If universities accept zero to 12 percent indirect cost rates from foundations, they should accept a similar rate from the government, argues the NIH....” Full op-ed at City Journal. See also "The Angst of Well-Endowed Colleges" by Matt Taibbi at Substack . Democracy and Disagreement Course Encourages Students to Explore Differing Viewpoints in Peer-led Discussions Excerpts (links in the original): “In a winter quarter course, Stanford undergraduates learned another way to disagree: by learning why people hold the positions they do. “Approaching difference through curiosity was at the center of an optional, peer-led discussion seminar for undergraduates enrolled in Democracy and Disagreement , the popular course taught by Debra Satz , the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S), and Paul Brest , professor emeritus (active) and former dean at Stanford Law School (SLS). The course features scholars with opposing viewpoints modeling meaningful conversations on contentious topics such as hate speech , presidential immunity , the composition of the Supreme Court , and reparations .... “Students discovered that disagreement can lead to a better understanding of complex issues. “‘We’ve created an environment where we encourage everyone to try and view arguments in their full complexity,’ explained ICDP fellow Shreya Mehta, ’26, who is co-facilitating a discussion group with Ryan Loo, ’25. “‘One thing we really emphasized is asking clarifying, or dialogic, questions,’ Mehta added. “While students agreed on a problem or issue, they found they often disagreed on solutions. Probing questions helped uncover nuances and dig deeper into issues.... “This distinction became clear on Feb. 25 when, for the first time in the course’s two-year history, several individuals who were not Stanford students disrupted a session featuring former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and economist Emmanuel Saez, preventing Summers from delivering his opening remarks for about 12 minutes. “Frustrated, students attending the course asked the demonstration to stop so they could listen to the speakers. Afterward, Brest addressed the class, noting that this was the first disruption in 18 sessions on controversial topics, including one featuring politicians from Israel and Palestine.... ““It goes against the whole point of class,’ one student said. Another agreed: ‘It was ineffective, given the audience is a group of people who want to hear a debate.’ Some noted that a more constructive approach would have been to challenge Summers with questions during the discussion portion of the class. “Loo also invited students to consider protests and disruptions more broadly. ‘What do you think is the point of protest?’ he asked. “Students discussed how protests can raise awareness or mobilize actions versus when they backfire, as seen in the Democracy & Disagreement class that week....” Full article at Stanford Report. See also “Dorm-Based Civic Salons Engage Students on Complex Issues ” also at Stanford Report. The Misinformation Crisis Isn’t About Truth, It’s About Trust Excerpts (links in the original): [This op-ed begins with a discussion of controversial subjects in recent years and how they were treated politically, in media and elsewhere. After that discussion:] “It’s difficult to overstate just how much damage our academic, scientific, and intellectual elites have done to our universe of shared facts, our institutions, and the public’s ability and willingness to believe them. There is a growing sense among people that trust and confidence in our experts and institutions is unwarranted -- and particularly in the last ten years, there has been no shortage of behavior to justify this suspicion. “The paperback edition of [Greg Lukianoff’s] and Rikki Schlott ’s 2023 book ‘The Canceling of the American Mind ’ hits shelves on April 29 with updated data, reflections on FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings , and an entirely new epilogue. The book is filled with examples and case studies illustrating how the behavior of our social and intellectual elites has contributed to this crisis of trust in expertise and institutions. This includes Cancel Culture itself, which Greg has previously described as ‘the military arm of the Anti-Discourse Industrial Complex.’ “In the last decade or more, we have seen people getting in trouble for being on the ‘wrong’ side of virtually every hot button issue in the United States. Cancel Culture has ruined lives . It has cost people their livelihoods . And combined with the constant denial that Cancel Culture even exists, it has understandably fomented a general distrust in academia, journalism, and expertise -- the very mechanisms of knowledge creation in our society. “This shouldn’t be surprising. When the penalty for having a disfavored opinion can be life-destroying, trust in the objectivity of experts is inevitably going to take a hit. As Greg mentioned in an early [Eternally Radical Idea] post , ‘When even a single thinker is punished for their academic opinion or for engaging in thought experimentation, it leads the public to be justifiably skeptical that any expert on that topic is being fully honest.’ ... “This shouldn’t have been a surprise. Studies have shown that politically or ideologically homogenous media and institutions increase polarization -- but you shouldn’t have needed that data to see how counterproductive a move like that would be. Actions like these have the aftereffect of politicizing everything, making the acceptance of a scientific fact a signal of tribal affiliation more so than a pragmatic position based on empirical evidence. It’s not hard to imagine how this will destroy trust in science overall.... “Our expert class and our institutions need to earn back the trust they lost. And they need to do this by consistently showing themselves to be transparent, honest, and competent.... This is also why academic freedom is critical. A circumstance where people do not feel free to dissent, challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, and engage in good-faith debate is one in which our ability to discern truth and produce knowledge ceases to exist....” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff and co-author Angel Eduardo at Substack. See also “Stanford’s Censorship: An Interview with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya” at Stanford Review (May 7, 2024) and various articles re censorship at our Stanford Concerns 2 webpage. How Business Metrics Broke the University Excerpts: …. “In eras past, when power was more decentralized, distinguished faculty voices of varied political persuasions might compete with the president from power bases inside the institution. Today, in contrast, politically active junior faculty see that attracting controversy can be a way to get ahead, while traditionally minded senior faculty who once acted as moderating forces in academic life have been sidelined as their departments and disciplines have been merged and dissolved in favor of new interdisciplinary programs.... “Addressing the hyper-politicization of academia must therefore start with a recognition that metrics-based centralized planning nurtured this tendency [of politicization] in the first place. While other factors played a role, the centralized university became an incubator for ideological extremism above all because its structural design makes students into customers and incentivizes faculty to seek visibility through controversy rather than through traditional scholarly achievement.... “The most visible leader of the centralization movement was Arizona State University President Michael Crow, who first articulated his model for a ‘New American University’ when he took the helm in 2002. His ‘reinvention’ and ‘transformation’ involved breaking down disciplinary ‘silos’ to put students before faculty and ‘impact’ before everything else.... “The intellectual vacuum on campus is filled by junior faculty who gain visibility by taking extreme positions that respond to the incentives of the attention economy. The rise of metrics-driven administration coincided with the rise of social media, making it easier for politically driven faculty to build followings outside of department structures. The most radical voices bypassed traditional academic hierarchies entirely, deploying online attention to demonstrate their ‘impact’ directly. A star system was born. Adjunct instructors, lacking job security, also came to see that provocation and siding with students could serve as a kind of employment insurance, ensuring popular classes. The traditional forces that once encouraged moderation and scholarly rigor have been replaced by incentives that reward polemics and ideological fervor. “The push for scale further nudges the climate toward politicization. Administrative metrics favor large or online courses that can process hundreds of students simultaneously.... “Universities must recognize that their experiment with centralized planning has had unintended consequences that have damaged the institution’s status and pose serious political risks. They must support their own faculty voices and devolve power to departments, not in deference to quaint traditions but as an essential mechanism for maintaining academic standards and intellectual diversity. Only by addressing the vacuum that enabled polarization can universities claim their proper role as centers of reasoned debate and scholarly inquiry.” Full op-ed by Utah Prof. and former Dean of the College of Humanities Hollis Robbins at Compact. See also Part 1 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage where we have long suggested that control of academic matters must be restored to Stanford’s faculty and Part 4 of that same white paper where we believe a significant part of the problem are the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that use the Stanford name and campus resources but have little if any involvement of tenured faculty and do little if any front-line research or teaching but instead are engaged in advocacy and implementation activities determined by donors and non-faculty staff. Tenured faculty at Harvard have identified a similar problem at Harvard: approximately 5,000 personnel at centers, etc. and that the Harvard faculty pejoratively refer to as "the peripherals" -- people and entities that don't have to meet academic standards but publish white papers, hold panels, seek media coverage, etc. using the Harvard name. See also “Stanford's Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including the charts that show, among other things, that Stanford’s faculty went from 1,640 in 2000 to 2,304 in 2022 while Stanford's managerial staff went from 3,127 in 2000 to 12,336 in 2022. Or that Stanford, with a total of 17,529 undergraduate and graduate students, has 4,140 administrative personnel in its business and finance offices as compared to Ohio State that has 2,652 comparable personnel for a student population of 60,540 – and these are numbers provided by the universities themselves. Other Articles of Interest A Look at Princeton’s DEI Structure, the Federal Attacks and Related Matters A detailed examination of the issues by Princeton alum Stuart Taylor at Real Clear Politics. SpaceX Parachutes Use Zylon, a Fabric Invented at Stanford Full article at space.com. See also “SpaceX Completes Crucial Tests of Its Crew Dragon Parachutes” at Engadget (November 2019). UC Bans DEI Statements in Faculty Hiring Full article at College Fix. Amherst’s Title IX Office Goes After Student Following His Article in the Campus Newspaper Criticizing DEI Full article at College Fix. Aftermath of DEI Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars. Modern Learners Demand a Change to the Status Quo Full article at University Business. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Jon Levin and His Father Rick Levin (President Emeritus of Yale) Discuss Generational Shifts Micro-lightning in Water Droplets May Have Sparked Life on Earth Researchers Develop Easy-to-Apply Gel to Prevent Abdominal Adhesions in Animals Five Things to Know About the Effects of Seed Oils on Health Theta Delt Alumni File Appeal in Lawsuit Against Stanford ************ "In a free society, universities must be strong, they must be free, and they must be creative. Freedom of the mind is the best defense against the ignorance that would destroy democracy." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower March 17, 2025 More Universities Are Choosing to Stay Neutral Excerpt (links in the original): “Just a few years ago, university statements on the day’s social and political issues abounded. “When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, Harvard’s president at the time called it ‘senseless’ and ‘deplorable,’ and flew the invaded country’s flag in Harvard Yard. After George Floyd died under the knee of a white police officer, Cornell’s president said she was ‘sickened.’ The University of Michigan’s president described the Oct. 7, 2023, violence against Israel as a ‘horrific attack by Hamas terrorists.’ “But over the last year, each of those universities has adopted policies that limit official statements on current issues. “According to a new report released on Tuesday [March 11, 2025] from the Heterodox Academy, a group that has been critical of progressive orthodoxy on college campuses, 148 colleges had adopted ‘institutional neutrality’ policies by the end of 2024, a trend that underscores the scorching political scrutiny they are under. All but eight of those policies were adopted after the Hamas attack....” Full article at NY Times. See also “Institutional Neutrality Is Sweeping Across American Higher Ed” at Heterodox . See also the Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social matters at our Chicago Trifect a webpage. Students Speak Up -- Fill the Empty Buildings Excerpts (link in the original): “In recent years, Stanford University has repurposed prime student housing into administrative offices, significantly reducing the availability of on-campus accommodations. Buildings such as Bechtel International Center, Mariposa House, and Attneave House -- once vibrant student residences -- now sit empty as administrative staff continue working remotely. "A Stanford Review investigation revealed that these buildings, which once housed students, remain eerily deserted during business hours. Over multiple visits, The Review found them completely unoccupied -- offices meant to justify the displacement of student housing are now unused.... “The emptiness of these buildings reflects a systemic failure in Stanford’s resource management. The university’s adoption of flexible work policies has allowed many administrators to work remotely, leaving these office conversions vastly underutilized. Meanwhile, the housing crisis has reached critical levels: singles have been converted into doubles, doubles into triples, and in Roble Hall, formerly spacious rooms have been repurposed into cramped quads. Many students have been pushed off campus entirely, while prime residential spaces remain empty.... "The university has a clear path forward: relocate administrative offices and restore student housing to its rightful place....” Full op-ed at Stanford Review. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also possible ways to address these concerns at Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage including not only reducing the size of the administrative staff but also moving the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities off the core campus if they are not primarily engaged in frontline teaching and faculty-supervised research versus the advocacy and implementation activities that often are their primary and sometimes sole functions. Department of Education Sends Letters to 60 Universities Under Investigation for Antisemitism, Including Stanford Excerpt (link in the original): “The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters to 60 universities currently under investigation for alleged antisemitic harassment and discrimination. “The letters, issued Monday [March 10, 2025] , warn the universities of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus, according to department press release . Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. National origin includes shared Jewish ancestry....” Full article at Campus Safety Magazine. 9th Circuit Rules in Favor of Professor Punished for Criticizing College for Lowering Academic Standards Excerpt (link in the original): “[On March 10, 2025] , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of Lars Jensen, a math professor unconstitutionally punished for criticizing what he believed was his college’s decision to water down its math standards. “Reversing a federal district court, the Ninth Circuit held Jensen suffered wrongful dismissal of his claims against Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, and that he should have his day in court to prove college administrators violated his First Amendment rights. The court also held Jensen’s right to speak out about the math standards was so clearly established that the administrators were not entitled to dismissal on qualified immunity grounds. “‘This decision is a major victory for the free speech rights of academics,’ said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression attorney Daniel Ortner, who argued the case before a Ninth Circuit panel in November 2024. ‘This decision will protect professors from investigation or threats of termination for their speech, and promote accountability for administrators who violate the First Amendment.’ …” Full article at FIRE website. The Power of the Classroom -- Why Diversity in Higher Education Matters Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “A university education is more than lectures and exams; it’s a gateway to opportunity, transformation, and belonging. Diversity in the classroom isn’t just important -- it’s essential. As a faculty member who studies leadership in post-secondary education, I see both the challenges and opportunities within higher education. The lack of diversity at top institutions impacts not just who enters our classrooms, but how students experience their education. Representation matters, and universities must reflect the diverse realities of the students they serve. “For centuries, great universities have been bastions of knowledge, passing on a rich heritage to the next generation of scholars and leaders. For me, teaching at the university feels like an immense responsibility. Entering that classroom isn’t just about transmitting knowledge; it is about honoring a legacy passed down by my mentors and predecessors, while also shaping the future through my students, although in some small way. The impact of what occurs at the university extends far into society and democracy.... “Providing access and opportunity to high-quality education for every student is an important societal goal. Elite institutions of higher learning play a pivotal role and bear the responsibility of shaping future leaders. True fulfillment of both the students’ aspirations and our democratic principles is achieved when access to college classrooms is made inclusive for all.” Full op-ed by U Wisconsin Prof. Anthony Hernandez at Fulcrum. College Application Surge; Underrepresented Students Lead Growth in 2024-25 Admissions Cycle Excerpts (link in the original): “According to Common App's latest Deadline Update report released Thursday [March 13, 2025] , college applications for the 2024-25 admissions cycle continue to show strong growth, particularly among underrepresented and first-generation students.... “One of the most significant trends is the substantial growth among underrepresented minority applicants, which increased by 12% over last year. Specifically: Latinx applicants rose by 13% Black or African American applicants increased by 10% The share of domestic applicants identifying as Black or African American grew from 13.3% to 14% White applicants' share of the applicant pool continued its long-term decline, dropping from 48.2% to 45.7% “First-generation college students showed remarkable growth, with a 13% increase in applicants while continuing-generation applicants remained flat. Similarly, applicants eligible for Common App fee waivers increased by 9%, compared to just 2% for non-eligible students.... “Applications to public institutions grew at 10%, significantly outpacing the 2% growth rate for private institutions. Additionally, less selective institutions (those with admit rates above 25%) saw application growth of 6-7%, while the most selective institutions (admit rates below 25%) experienced the slowest growth at 4%....” Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Other Articles of Interest USC Shutters DEI Office but Keeps Racially-Themed Graduation Ceremonies and Dorms Full article at College Fix. When Student Protest Goes Too Far Full op-ed by Barnard College President Laura Ann Rosenbury at Chronicle of Higher Education. National Association of Scholars Supports Legislation to Combat Foreign Influence in Higher Education Full article at NAS website. Whatever Happened to Freedom of Association? “Nearly 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the propensity of Americans ‘of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions’ to form voluntary associations. Indeed, he regarded the free pursuit of a common interest among like-minded citizens as key to the survival of our democracy.” Full op-ed by Carleton College Professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron at Substack. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Researchers Team Up with Student-Athletes to Unlock Peak Performance Newly Discovered Molecule Rivals Ozempic in Weight Loss and with Fewer Side Effects What’s the Deal with the Gut-Brain Connection? From Stanford Review - Stanford’s Hiring Freeze Exposes the Big Lie of Research Funding From Stanford Daily - Student Favorite Places on Campus ************ “The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue -- questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.” Former U.S. Supreme Court Judge William O. Douglas March 10, 2025 The Smearing and Resurrection of Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Editor's note: Many of the attacks on Dr. Bhattacharya discussed below came from the leaders of the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of medical research in the world, and related entities. Ironically, Dr. Bhattacharya has now been nominated to head the NIH. Excerpts (links in the original): “Jay Bhattacharya was in pretty terrible shape five years ago. He was losing sleep and weight, not because of the COVID-19 virus but in response to the efforts of his colleagues at Stanford University and the larger medical community to shut down his research, which questioned much of the government’s response to the pandemic. “Some of his Stanford colleagues leaked false and damaging information to reporters. The university’s head of medicine ordered him to stop speaking to the press. Top leaders at the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, dialed up the attacks, dismissing him and his colleagues as what Collins termed ‘fringe epidemiologists’ while their acolytes threw mud from a slew of publications, including the Washington Post, The Nation, and the prestigious medical journal BMJ.... “‘Free speech is fundamental for science to function properly,' [Bhattacharya] notes simply.... “Bhattacharya first caught the attention of the nation’s scientific bureaucracy in April 2020 when he reported that the COVID virus was not as dangerous but more widespread than many of his colleagues and government officials were maintaining. This suggested a policy focusing on the most vulnerable populations with fewer restrictions on younger, healthier Americans. The study was discussed at the highest levels of the government and was passed around by Fauci and others in the White House, according to emails made public by a Freedom of Information Act request. “‘For anyone with an open mind, the study’s results implied that the lockdown-focused strategy of March 2020 had failed to suppress the spread of the disease,’ Bhattacharya wrote in a 2023 essay. But the paper’s other obvious conclusion put Bhattacharya in the crosshairs of Stanford faculty: It suggested that fear-mongering about the fatality rate of the virus was irresponsible.... “Responding to the Buzzfeed flurry of reports, Stanford announced a fact-finding investigation of Bhattacharya’s research, which he began calling an ‘inquisition.’ The administration later informed him there was no ‘whistleblower’ as Buzzfeed had falsely reported, and they sent a confidential report that found him and his colleagues at no fault. “‘I got a letter which basically says we did nothing wrong. But also a condition that I’m not allowed to release the letter,’ Bhattacharya explained in a 2023 interview. ‘This was a low period in my life. I was getting death threats, racist attacks, because the press was attacking me.’ …” [Followed by a detailed discussion of the coordinated attacks on Bhattacharya; his research and the Great Barrington Declaration that to date has been signed by over 940,000 scientists, doctors and others worldwide; alleged conflicts of interest of those leading the attacks; some of the activities at the Wuhan labs, and related issues.] “[Former CDC Director Robert] Redfield said that Collins, Fauci, and other critics should apologize to Bhattacharya for the years of harassment and actions that were both wrong and unprofessional. ‘If you survive these attacks, and you have a resurrection, you do very well,' Redfield said. ‘You now have a reputation for substance and standing up for what you believe is true. Not everyone has that. I’m pretty confident he’ll do well, move forward, and do the right thing.'" Full article at Real Clear Investigations. See also “Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back " (September 11, 2023) at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. Five Goals of Dr. Bhattacharya If Confirmed As Head of NIH Reproduced in their entirety, as excerpted from Dr. Bhattacharya’s opening statement at his Senate confirmation hearing last week: . . . . . “I have five concrete goals if confirmed as director of the NIH. “First, NIH research should focus on research that solves the American chronic disease crisis. American health is going backwards. Life expectancy flatlined between 2012 and 2019, plummeted during the pandemic, and still has not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. The chronic disease crisis is severe, with hundreds of millions of Americans, children and adults, suffering from obesity, heart disease, cancer, and more. If confirmed, I will carry out President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s agenda of committing the NIH to address the dire chronic health needs of the country with gold-standard science and innovation. “Second, NIH-supported science should be replicable, reproducible, and generalizable. Unfortunately, much modern biomedical science fails this basic test. The NIH itself, just last year, faced a research integrity scandal involving research on Alzheimer’s disease that throws into question hundreds of research papers. If the data generated by scientists is not reliable, the products of such science cannot help anyone. It is no stretch to think that the slow progress on Alzheimer’s disease is linked to this problem. The NIH can and must solve the crisis of scientific data reliability. Under my leadership, if confirmed, it will do so. “Third, if confirmed, I will establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH. Over the last few years, top NIH officials oversaw a culture of coverup, bias, and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs. Dissent is the very essence of science. I’ll foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists, including early-career scientists and scientists that disagree with me, can express disagreement respectfully. “Fourth, the NIH must recommit to its mission to fund the most innovative biomedical research agenda possible to improve American health. My plan is to ensure that the NIH invests in cutting-edge research in every field to make big advances rather than just small, incremental progress over years. “Fifth, the NIH must embrace and vigorously regulate risky research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic. It must regulate risky research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic. It should embrace transparency in all its operations. While the vast majority of biomedical research poses no risk of harm to research subjects or the public, the NIH must ensure that it never supports work that might cause harm...." See Dr. Bhattacharya's full opening statement at his Senate confirmation hearing at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage here . Santa Clara County DA Dismisses Criminal Case Against Stanford Daily Reporter Excerpts (link in the original): “Prosecutors in California said Thursday [March 6, 2025] that they are not going to pursue a criminal case against Dilan Gohill, the Stanford student journalist who was arrested while covering a pro-Palestinian campus protest and occupation of the university president’s office last June. “Gohill had faced allegations of burglary, vandalism, and conspiracy -- all felonies. He was never formally charged, even though Stanford’s provost and then-president had publicly urged the Santa Clara County district attorney to prosecute the teenager. The case raised concerns among press and civil liberties groups about how authorities should handle a journalist who is caught up in a lawbreaking event. “‘This Office supports a free press and recognizes that the law gives reporters latitude to do their jobs in keeping the public informed,’ District Attorney Jeff Rosen stated. ‘We have no evidence that this student did anything other than cover this event as a journalist.’ … “The news comes nine months after Gohill, then nineteen and a freshman reporter for the Stanford Daily, was handcuffed and jailed while covering the predawn break-in and occupation of Building 10, where the Stanford president’s office is located. A story about his arrest and the journalistic issues surrounding it appeared in CJR last December. “By most accounts -- including contemporaneous Slack messages as well as interviews with protesters and Daily staffers -- Gohill was there to report on the demonstration, not to participate in it.... Gohill spent the next twelve hours in jail, until his mother mustered the money to cover his $20,000 bail....” Full article by Stanford alum and Columbia U Prof. Bill Grueskin at Columbia Journalism Review. See also letter from the Daily's editorial board that was sent shortly before the DA made his announcement. See also “District Attorney Declines to File Charges Against Daily Reporter” at Stanford Daily . Editor's note: We likewise had questioned Stanford’s longtime equivocation in the matter. Trespassing has to be without the consent of the property owner, and Stanford itself had concluded there was no trespassing or other wrongful behavior by this freshman reporter, so why was Stanford then so reluctant to tell the DA to drop the case? Harvard College's Intellectual Vitality Statement Reproduced in its entirety: "During spring 2020 a group of students convened to discuss campus climate and the critical need to develop principles around respectful dialogue and understanding not only among the student body but for the entire College community. From those conversations, the following statement was created: “Members of the Harvard College community affirm the value of intellectual vitality -- meaning, a spirit of open and rigorous inquiry. To this end, we believe that our community is best served through the charitable exchange of ideas, where we take as given one another’s best intentions and treat each other as partners in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. In doing so, we recognize the importance of giving and receiving criticism of ideas without extending these critiques to people themselves. Further, an engagement with and sincere consideration of competing views lies at the heart of education more broadly. “To maintain a spirit of intellectual vitality, we must cultivate in ourselves an attitude of humility, respect, and curiosity toward each other. Through the spirit of intellectual vitality, we are able to strengthen our perspectives and reconsider foundational assumptions about the world, society, and our place in it -- while this may prove discomforting, the capacity to test core ideas is a precondition of growing in wisdom and understanding. “All members of the Harvard College community therefore commit ourselves to uphold intellectual vitality in our respective capacities. We agree to foster this spirit of rigor, charity, and open exploration in classrooms, student organizations, and social interactions.” Editor's note: Harvard’s Intellectual Vitality project is a much broader multiyear program, and we urge readers to look at the project’s more complete website here . Two-thirds of Colleges Show At Least One Sign of Financial Stress Editor’s note: In the detailed table, linked below, Stanford shows as having one year of operating losses and one year of endowment losses as compared to, for example, Harvard (2 years of operating losses and 3 years of endowment losses), Yale, Princeton and MIT (each with 3 years of operating losses and 3 years of endowment losses), UC Berkeley (3 years of operating losses and 2 years of appropriations losses) and Pomona (4 years of operating losses and 4 years of endowment losses). Excerpt (links in the original): “The first month of the Trump administration has been a series of body blows to American colleges. These actions include the freezing of grants for research and outreach that were even tangentially related to topics of race or gender, attempts to sharply reduce indirect cost rates for existing grants, and a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter that seeks to go well beyond the current Supreme Court’s decision limiting race-conscious admissions. This has led to a series of major research universities implementing hiring ‘chills ’ and freezes while they wait to see how everything plays out in the courts. “See the table to look up how your college has performed over the past 10 years [subscription may be required] . “It is somewhat ironic that the universities most affected by the Trump administration’s actions to this point are the ones that have fared the best over the last decade. Enrollment growth in recent years has been concentrated at a small number of flagship public and wealthy private universities, while regionally focused institutions -- engines of social mobility -- have generally struggled. Tuition prices have increased more slowly than the rate of inflation for much of the last decade , and rising tuition-discount rates have reduced revenue for many colleges. On the other side of the ledger, operating costs have risen quickly since the pandemic and typically outpace gains in revenue. While there was some rare good news on enrollment across higher education last fall, this does not make up for a lost decade for many institutions....” Full article and table by U Tennessee Prof. Robert Kelchen at Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription may be required). See also “NIH Funding Cuts Leave Stanford Researchers in Limbo” at Stanford Daily . Don't Derail Universities, America's Innovation Engine Excerpt (links in the original): “Since World War II, American universities have served as our nation's engines of innovation, combining government funding with academic research to yield breakthrough discoveries in medicine, agriculture, engineering, and computer science. This was made possible largely by the system of funding that underpins university-based research. That system is now under attack from the Trump administration. Critics charge that the system is inefficient, unduly costly, and that universities can fund these efforts through other means. We think the decision is short-sighted and will harm U.S. interests by debilitating the system of research that underpins our national security and the most innovative sectors in our economy. “Most of the important research at our universities relies on funding from federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and others. Universities negotiate an 'indirect cost rate' with the government whereby each dollar of research funding comes with additional support for building, maintaining, and staffing the facilities needed to conduct the research in question. The most research-intensive universities charge rates in excess of 60 percent to support these costly research activities. However, the Trump administration ordered the NIH to reduce its indirect rate to 15 percent . Federal judges issued restraining orders temporarily pausing the change . If this reduction ultimately occurs and spreads to other federal government funding agencies our national capacity for research will rapidly decline....” Full op-ed by USC Deans/Professors Pedro A. Noguera and Mark Power Robison at Newsweek. Other Articles of Interest Students Question the Appropriateness of Using Memorial Church for Fashion Shows “To see random people . . . posing in front of the crucifix, wearing revealing clothes on a Saturday night, showing up drunk in the church, treating it like it’s a party, or like a place to see and be seen, it’s so upsetting.” Full op-ed at Stanford Review. Penn State Will Close Some Campuses Amid Enrollment Decline Full article at Higher Ed Dive. University of North Carolina System Makes It Nine Years in a Row with No In-State Tuition Increase Full article at Just the News. How Many Administrators Do Colleges Have? Full op-ed at AEI. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including detailed graphs and charts. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford to Introduce Revenue-sharing Model for Athletes New Antibodies Show Potential to Neutralize Virus That Causes COVID-19 A Stanford-led team has found two antibodies that can work together to defeat all SARS-CoV-2 variants. More research is needed, but the approach could help in the development of treatments to keep pace with evolving viruses. Stanford Engineers Help Prepare Air Force Test Pilots for Autonomous Technology Advances A Prescription for Produce Improves Health Summit Explores Role of Human-Centered AI in the Learning Ecosystem ************ “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” – Plato February 24, 2025 Active and Passive Academic Freedom Excerpts (links in the original): “In a NYTimes op-ed by former NCI and NIH director, and Nobel Laureate, Harold Varmus, Varmus argues that future NIH director Jay Bhattacharya is wrong to tie NIH funding to academic freedom. He calls the plan ‘outlandish’ [long quote deleted] …. “Varmus’ claim begs the questions: What is academic freedom? Is there a public interest to incentivize universities that honor it? How can the NIH practically consider it in grant giving? “I consider academic freedom to come in two forms: passive and active. "Passive academic freedom means that Universities should take no disciplinary action towards faculty based on their point of view or speech (as long as it is legally permitted), while active academic freedom means University should actively encourage debates and discussion on important, disputed topics, particularly those with relevance to ongoing policy decisions.... “Bob Harrington, Chair of Medicine at Stanford , told Eran Bendavid, an [infectious diseases] doctor, to stop speaking to the press with his view that school closure and lockdowns were misguided. Bob was rewarded by being promoted to Dean of Cornell. Eran went silent. “Scott Atlas, a radiologist, underwent academic censure for stating that kids should not wear cloth masks, that covid-19 posed low risks to children, and that school closure was misguided.... “On the issue of active academic freedom, universities failed even more spectacularly. There were no debates on school closures, masking children, vaccine mandates, and other health policy of incalculable significance at major universities, including Johns Hopkins, Harvard, or Stanford. These discussions were simply not held.... “In short, there is nothing 'outlandish' [typo corrected] about Jay Bhattacharya considering academic freedom alongside other facilities and opportunities present at universities in deciding whether federal funding should be invested. We already ensure universities treat women fairly, lest they lose [typo corrected] funding. We already ensure universities have the physical space to conduct the work that is being funded. We now ask only that universities offer the intellectual environment that is conducive to free and open thought. That is not only in the interest of universities, it is directly in the public interest as well.” Full op-ed by UCSF Prof. Vinay Prasad at Substack. JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon Sounds Off on Bureaucracy Excerpts (link in the original): “The breaking point came at a town hall in Ohio [a week ago] . According to audio obtained by Barron's, JPMorgan's CEO unleashed his frustration when he learned a single wealth management project needed approval from 14 different committees. ‘I am dying to get the name of the 14 committees, and I feel like firing 14 chairmen of committees. I can't stand it anymore. I want it out of the company.’ “For Dimon, the issue goes beyond wasted time. Every year brings more controls, more checkpoints, more coordination meetings. Until one day your organization can barely move. ‘It just kind of creeped in,’ he said.... “He went on to say: "’Bureaucracy is also centralizing too much. Everything's got to be documented too much, and so it's just creeped in in a million different ways’ “This is how bureaucracy works -- it spreads under the guise of prudence, risk management, and coordination. Each additional approval step seems reasonable. Each new committee appears to add valuable oversight. Each documentation requirement feels prudent. But the cumulative effect is organizational sclerosis.... Full article at Michele Zanini website. For an example of what Dimon is talking about, see Stanford’s party planning webpages for what it now takes for students to hold a party at Stanford. TreeHacks Awards $200,000 in Prizes to Students from Around the World Excerpts: “At 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, students were hard at work under bright lights in the basement of the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center competing in TreeHacks, Stanford’s annual hackathon. “TreeHacks is a 36-hour sprint. Over 1,000 students from around the world convene on Stanford campus for two days of intense collaboration to create a prototype or functioning product by the end of the event. While there is no set challenge, participants are instructed to ‘turn [their] crazy ideas into real projects,’ according to the TreeHacks website. “Teams of up to four competed for over $200,000 in prizes, with awards including the ‘Most Creative Hack,’ ‘Most Impactful Hack’ and ‘Most Technically Complex Hack.’... “For Legasse Remon, a junior from the University of Florida, coming to TreeHacks has long been a dream. Remon applied four times before being accepted this year, and he believes that hundreds of students applied from his university. “’I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t come to [TreeHacks],’ he said. ‘They gather people from around the world -- it’s the biggest [hackathon] with a lot of the biggest prizes.’... Full article at Stanford Daily. There’s Good News in U.S. Higher Education If You Look for It Excerpts (links in the original): “Anxiety and uncertainty are high within U.S. higher education right now. Anyone attending or working at an American university is struggling to understand what 2025 and beyond will bring. And, of course, the whirlwind of challenges did not start this year. Throughout 2024 there was no shortage of surveys revealing that an increasing percentage of Americans are disappointed with traditional colleges and universities. “Given this turbulence and uncertainty, it would seem almost perverse to talk about good news in higher education. Still, it exists and needs to be highlighted, if only to remind ourselves of our collective mission to educate students and advance their social and economic mobility. “First, college applications are up.... “On employability, student demand for apprenticeships currently outstrips supply. And three-year degrees are gaining momentum : good news for working adults and those seeking to accelerate their pathway to a degree. This is evidence of innovative thinking within higher education and a deep commitment to college completion for more Americans. “Access is also getting fairer.... “None of this is to deny the profound challenges higher education must address. But amid the current uncertainty, it is as well to acknowledge that while US post-secondary education is imperfect, it remains among the best strategies for individuals to gain a foothold in the middle class and contribute to the nation’s economic and social prosperity.” Full op-ed by UCLA Prof. Eileen L. Strempel at Times Higher Ed. Other Articles of Interest AI Grading -- A Game-Changer or a Double-Edged Sword? Full op-ed at Educators Technology. Alumni Reactions Around the Country Full article at Real Clear Investigations Theory and Practice of Excellent University Governance (podcast) Full interview (24 minutes) at Higher Ed Now. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. How to Turn Old Ideas into Creative Solutions to Modern Problems Why Corporate AI Projects Succeed or Fail New Findings on the Power of Enzymes Could Reshape Biochemistry Researchers Identify DNA Changes, Biological Pathways Associated with Inherited Cancer Risk ************ "Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think." – Albert Einstein February 17, 2025 President Levin Discusses Recent Wave of Executive Orders and Other Federal Actions Excerpts (links in the original): “In a Friday [February 14, 2025] interview with The Daily, University president Jonathan Levin ’94 commented on the storm of policies under President Donald Trump that have rocked Stanford since January, including potential federal funding cuts, escalating immigration enforcement, a clampdown on DEI efforts and changes to Title IX rules. “Levin acknowledged the instability in federal policies, expressing his opposition to research funding cuts, and said he was ‘very concerned’ about the potential effects of new immigration policies on international and undocumented community members. He refrained from overtly criticizing the Trump administration, instead emphasizing institutional neutrality.... [From the Q and A interview:] Levin: “I believe it’s a critical moment for universities, and a moment not just to wrestle with specific issues, of which there are many, but to renew the social contract between universities and the federal government, which is such a defining source of strength for the country. “The U.S., after World War II, established a brilliant strategy for scientific leadership. It’s allowed the U.S. to be the leader in the world. The government funds research in universities through a competitive merit-based process. Universities share the results openly, the private sector builds on them, and that is what drives innovation in the country. “That’s just an exceptional model. Virtually every study of federal funding has shown that a dollar allocated to university research generates several dollars in return. The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, and the research that it funds is what drives advances in human health and in biomedicine. It benefits everyone in the country and everyone in the world. “Last week, the agency announced that it would make a sharp cut in the indirect cost payments to universities. It’s not the greatest terminology, but the concept is pretty simple. That is the money that goes to fund the construction and maintenance of labs and facilities, equipment and administrative support for research. It’s hard to do research without a lab and the equipment that’s in it. “The order has been rescinded, and we’re part of a lawsuit objecting to it, but the threat to federal funding is very real and it’s hugely consequential for Stanford, every research university in the country and for the country as a whole. This is a moment not just to respond to that particular issue, which we have to do, but to be focused on, ‘How do we strengthen this core partnership between universities and the government on which everyone depends?'… " Full interview at Stanford Daily including re cutbacks in federal funding, Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya as nominee to head the NIH, the future of the U.S. Department of Education, immigration, institutional neutrality and other issues. New Guidance from U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights re Non-Discrimination Policies Editor's note: The following is the text of the letter from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights sent on Friday, February 14, 2025 to Stanford and all other U.S. colleges and universities and that is also referenced in the interview with Pres. Levin, above. Excerpts (footnotes deleted): “Dear Colleague: “Discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is illegal and morally reprehensible. Accordingly, I write to clarify and reaffirm the nondiscrimination obligations of schools and other entities that receive federal financial assistance from the United States Department of Education (Department). This letter explains and reiterates existing legal requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution, and other relevant authorities. “In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families.... [Followed by discussion of the Supreme Court decision in the Harvard admissions case and how those principles will now be applied to all aspects of a school's operations.] “Although some programs may appear neutral on their face, a closer look reveals that they are, in fact, motivated by racial considerations. And race-based decision-making, no matter the form, remains impermissible.... “All educational institutions are advised to: (1) ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law; (2) cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends; and (3) cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race. “Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding....” Full text of letter including with footnotes at U.S. Department of Education website. UK University Adds Over 200 Trigger Warnings to Shakespeare Excerpts (links in the original): “A university in England has put over 200 trigger warnings on Shakespeare works and adaptations for things such as the ‘popping of balloons,’ violence, ‘psychological trauma,’ ‘extreme weather,’ and more. “The University of the West of England issued warnings for murder, suicide, violence, and family trauma in Macbeth, as well as ‘storms’ and ‘extreme weather’ in The Tempest, The Telegraph reported. “The school also placed a warning on a stage adaptation of The Tempest due to the ‘popping of balloons,’ while another work, Much Ado About Nothing, has been flagged for ‘treatment of women’ and ‘mourning.’ “For Romeo and Juliet, the university issued warnings for ‘death, suicide, violence, knives and blood,’ the outlet reported. “Further, ‘Students are warned that the Winter’s Tale has ‘accusations of adultery’ and ‘references to wild animal attack,' the New York Post reported...." Full article at College Fix. Science Returns to Science Excerpts (link in the original): “I thought the academic DEI juggernaut was unstoppable. Then, a week after President Trump’s inauguration, I got an email with an announcement from the Department of Energy: ‘The Office of Science is immediately ending the requirement for Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) Plans in any proposal submitted. . . . Reviewers will not be asked to read or comment on PIER Plans. Selection decisions will not take into consideration the content of PIER Plans or any reviewer comments on PIER Plans.’ “PIER plans, which the Biden administration instituted in 2022, required every grant application to ‘describe the activities and strategies of the applicant to promote equity and inclusion as an intrinsic element to advancing scientific excellence.’ In the words of the announcement, ‘The complexity and detail of a PIER Plan is expected to increase with the size of the research team and the number of personnel to be supported.’ “The end of the PIER Plan and other DEI-related requirements is seismic. The major source of physical science research support in the country has sent a message to universities: Stick to science. It may be the death knell of what appeared to be an invulnerable academic bureaucracy that has been impeding the progress of higher education and research for at least a decade.... “Last year a colleague of mine and I used ChatGPT to examine all 12,065 awards made by the National Science Foundation and classified more than 1,000 of them, accounting for more than $675 million, as focused on DEI rather than science. And under Biden decrees, even science-focused grants were evaluated on DEI grounds....” Full op-ed by ASU Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krause at WSJ. A Call for a Return to Core Medical Principles Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “The original Hippocratic Oath, though not penned by the Greek physician Hippocrates himself, encapsulated ethical responsibilities that resonate with the essence of patient-centered care. The Oath’s call to avoid harm and respect the dignity of patients has been a guiding light for countless physicians.... “A recent trend has emerged in medical schools across the United States and Canada, where the incorporation of terms like 'equity,' 'diversity,' and 'social justice' have been incorporated into revised versions of the Hippocratic Oath. A 2022 survey by the Association of American Medical Colleges revealed that a staggering 96% of participating institutions are prioritizing diversity and inclusion as key learning outcomes. While the intentions behind these changes may in some cases be commendable -- aimed at acknowledging the social determinants of health -- the implications for medical education are deeply troubling.... “As a physician trained within the framework of the Hippocratic tradition, I find these developments misguided. The focus on demographic categories risks overshadowing the rigorous scientific education that is vital for effective medical practice. Rather than equipping future healthcare providers with the profound understanding of disease mechanisms, prevention, and treatment, we are diverting attention to a discourse that categorizes patients into overly simplistic boxes. This approach not only undermines the complexity of individual health needs, but also has the potential to dilute the mastery of clinical skills required for effective patient care.... “We can recognize diversity and treat everyone fairly without promoting division and ostracization. Personalized care can and should be provided based on demonstrated evidence of need. By prioritizing the fundamental tenets of the Hippocratic tradition, we can cultivate a healthcare system that respects individual differences without allowing them to overshadow the art and science of medicine. Let us not forget that the ultimate goal is to improve patient health outcomes -- something that can only be achieved through unwavering dedication to the craft of medicine.” Full op-ed by Dr. Nikki M. Johnson at Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. What Do We Mean by the Liberal University? Excerpts (links in the original): “When faculty members attempt to raise their students’ political awareness or mobilize them to political action, are they living up to their highest calling or betraying it? When university presidents take official stands on issues like the Black Lives Matter protests or Israel’s actions in Gaza, are they displaying civic responsibility or undermining their institutions’ intellectual mission? Underlying these topical concerns is the vexed and longstanding question about the proper relationship between academe and politics. “The positions people take on this question range between two poles. At one end are those who regard academic work, especially in the humanities and social sciences, as political activism by other means. Richard Rorty speaks for this group when he writes that “we cannot take the idea of unpoliticized humanities any more seriously than our opposite numbers in the clergy can take seriously the idea of a depoliticized church.” For Rorty, there is no return to the humanist myths of universal values, disinterested criticism, or objective knowledge. Teaching and scholarship are inescapably political because knowledge, culture, and subjectivity are inescapably political. Classrooms are political spaces, whether we like it or not. The honest thing is to admit it. “At the other end of the spectrum are those who hold that academe and politics are distinct realms which should be kept as far apart as possible. Stanley Fish , the most-trenchant proponent of this view since Max Weber, insists that academics are neither trained nor qualified -- let alone paid -- to act as moral guides or political seers. We have no business shaping the political consciences of the students who wander into our classes. Our job is to train them in the forms of knowledge and methodology appropriate to our disciplines. When we go further by trying to recruit students to our pet political causes, we overstep the bounds of our professional remit. “I think it’s fair to say that, after a decade of activist ascendency, Fish’s view is about to have its moment in the sun.... “To put my cards on the table: I believe this course correction is, on the whole, a good thing. The aggressive framing of academic scholarship, pedagogy, and administration in overtly progressive terms has yielded few demonstrable gains for progressive politics, while causing real harm to individual careers, institutional reputations, and academic culture at large. A reaction was bound to happen.... “Doing the job of an academic requires checking one’s politics at the classroom’s door -- not because a professor’s political opinion is a dirty secret, but because once politics are allowed in, the discussion ceases to be academic and becomes something else. In fact, the more a professor’s politics are a matter of public knowledge -- which is not uncommon, as many academics are also public intellectuals -- the more stringently they should depoliticize their classrooms. To check one’s politics at the door is not to compromise one’s values; it is to make room for another kind of value....” Full op-ed by Tel Aviv Prof. Nir Evron at Chronicle of Higher Education. Other Articles of Interest Yale Jewish Students Kicked Out of Their Own Center During Pro-Palestinian Protest Full article at College Fix. New Stanford Database Tracks Learning Losses and Gains in California and Other School Districts Nationwide Full article at Ed Source. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Study Reveals Striking Variations in Pandemic Recovery Among U.S. School Districts Additional Benefits of Tool for Carbon Dioxide Removal New Sepsis Test Significantly Reduces Life-or-Death Diagnosis Time Physicians Make Better Decisions with Help of AI Chatbots Student Voices Stanford Review: A Place to Debate Stanford Daily: DEI Information Disappears from University Web Pages ************ "Stanford remains steadfast in its dedication to academic freedom, which serves as a key foundation for the university’s truth-seeking scholarship and impactful research.” -- Stanford Board Chair Jerry Yang February 10, 2025 Removing the Ivy-Tinted Glasses Editor’s note: Stanford has long been a key member of what are called the “Ivy-Plus” schools, including as discussed in the article that follows. Excerpts (links and most italics in the original): “Many Americans are frustrated by elite private universities. We’ve seen their hostility to diversity of opinion and free speech, politically imbalanced faculty and administrators , galling instances of antisemitism , enormous costs , unfair admissions processes, and more. For such reasons, public approval of higher education had been low and falling for some time, particularly on America’s right . And that was before the campus unrest of 2024, which was concentrated at the most affluent private schools. “As a result, a growing number of hiring managers claim to be looking elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on firms souring on Ivy grads, and 13 federal appeals court judges now won’t hire clerks from Columbia. However, according to two major new studies, it would take a whole lot more to make even a dent in the influence of America’s most prestigious private schools. “It’s no secret that a few American institutions are led by a disproportionate number of elite-college graduates. For example, all nine of today’s US Supreme Court justices went to private colleges; seven went to Ivies as undergraduates, and eight went to Ivies for law school. And since 1989, every president other than Joe Biden has had at least one Ivy degree. But that might be only the tip of the iceberg. A 2023 paper by a team of Ivy economists about ‘Ivy+’ schools (the eight Ivies plus four other highly selective privates) argued that 'leadership positions in the US are disproportionately held by graduates' of these colleges. Covering the study for The Atlantic , a Harvard-educated author wrote an essay titled, ‘You Have to Care About Harvard’ with the subtitle, ‘It creates the super-elite. The super-elite create America.’ … “[On the other hand,] I researched the educational backgrounds of those holding an array of top public positions: governors, state attorneys general, state supreme court justices, state legislative leaders, and state education superintendents. I also identified which law firms were considered the most elite in each state and then researched the schooling of those firms’ leaders (e.g., managing partner, practice leader, management-team member). “My findings challenge the notion that the graduates of a small number of elite private schools dominate our leadership ranks and show the importance of geography when considering leadership development.... “More than half of governors went to a public college, and all of these went to a school in their state or in a state that bordered their own. Demonstrating that America has many pathways into public leadership: The 49 governors with a college degree graduated from 46 different colleges. State legislative leaders (like house speakers and senate presidents) were seven times likelier to go to a public flagship than an Ivy+. “Possibly the most surprising office is state supreme court justice. Vastly different than U.S. Supreme Court justices, these leading figures were likelier to go to public undergraduate and public law schools than private. In fact, in 22 states not a single Supreme Court justice went to an Ivy+ college; in half of states, not a single justice went to an Ivy+ law school....” Full article by former chair of the Maryland Higher Education Commission Andy Smarick at Law and Liberty. We also recommend the full text of the report here including the egalitarian education of American leaders, rightsizing for opportunity, American pluralism, the Ivy-Plus universities as compared to the state flagship and other public universities, degree inflation, and detailed charts regarding federal and state supreme court and lower court judges, legislators, governors, education chiefs, attorneys general and top law firms. Celebrating Ten Years of the Chicago Principles Editor’s note: Not only do we concur with the following, but we again suggest that Stanford’s faculty, administration and trustees should adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta as set forth here . And if anyone disagrees with any of the specific items in any of the three parts, they should consider the following questions: What provision do you disagree with, what specific language do you suggest instead, and why? This process would put in place a fundamental framework for decisions and operations while allowing the various governing bodies to debate any specific changes they think are needed. Excerpts (links in the original): “In 2014, American colleges faced an existential crisis -- campuses erupted over controversial speakers as the heckler’s veto increasingly replaced debate. In response, the University of Chicago drafted a landmark statement reaffirming the school’s commitment to free speech. “Since then, more than 110 colleges and universities have adopted the ‘Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression ,’ commonly known as the Chicago Statement or the Chicago principles, transforming the landscape of higher education in the country. “In a star-studded, all-day symposium last month, the University of Chicago celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the iconic Statement and its famous assertion, ‘It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.’ ... “Geoffrey Stone, the First Amendment scholar and chair of the committee, spoke of the ‘fundamental challenge’ universities face in encouraging students and faculty to speak their minds. Kenneth Warren, professor of English, echoed this by speaking of faculty members ‘who are taking on the deep responsibility of exploring difficult questions.’ “The conversation was engaging and frank -- all faculty members acknowledged challenges and remained open to the possibility that mistakes may be made along the way -- sentiments true to the ethos of the principles themselves....” Full article at FIRE. Harvard Committee Reports Students Frequently Self-Censor and Give Extracurricular Activities Higher Priority Than Academics Excerpts : “A Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee released a report Friday concluding that many Harvard College students self-censor when discussing controversial topics and frequently prioritize extracurricular commitments over their academics. “The committee recommended strengthening course attendance requirements, discouraging phone use in class, standardizing grading, and amending student and faculty handbooks to include a classroom confidentiality policy.... “The report concluded that some undergraduates avoid politically fraught conversations, opting instead to socialize and take courses with like-minded peers and instructors. Only 33 percent of graduating College students feel free to express their views on controversial issues, according to a 2024 survey of graduating seniors cited in the report....” Full article at Harvard Crimson including a summary of recommendations. ************ The Costs of DEI Editor’s note: We are presenting below a mere sampling of articles from the past week re DEI issues universities are facing nationwide with respect to the recent Executive Orders. We do so not to reflect a political view, one way or another, but rather to put a spotlight on activities that have been allowed to accrue in recent years that turned out not only to be very costly but also appear to have been largely counterproductive to diversity and inclusion. We suggest a solution is not to reinvent the wheel but to simply adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta and then to address all of the pending issues based on those concepts. See also Back to Basics at Stanford where we have proposed (paragraph 3.c.) that as these and other programs are reduced or eliminated, all savings, dollar for dollar, “shall be redirected SOLELY to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and graduate student fellowships .” In other words, let’s move resources from administrative overhead back to where they should be spent: solely on the core educational activities of the students themselves. DEI Costs at U Michigan Excerpts (links in the original): “New research has found the number of University of Michigan employees who work either full-time or part-time on diversity, equity, and inclusion-related efforts now tops 1,100. “The findings come as the U.S. Department of Education under President Donald Trump has eliminated all its DEI initiatives, including placing DEI staff on paid administrative leave and removing DEI language, trainings, directives, and advisory boards throughout the agency.... “Economist Mark Perry, a University of Michigan-Flint emeritus professor who tallied up the latest number of DEI jobs at UMich, told The College Fix its DEI bureaucracy is extraordinary in its size and scope. “The report identifies 248 full-time UM staff members whose main duties are to provide DEI programming services and advance DEI 2.0 at an annual payroll cost of $24 million. “When fringe benefits are added at a rate of 32 percent of base salaries it brings the total annual compensation of UM’s DEI staff to nearly $31.7 million -- or enough to pay in-state tuition and fees for approximately 1,800 students. “On top of [the activities of the central DEI staff] , the university employs 167 staffers across UM’s schools, colleges, centers, programs, offices, and libraries to advance DEI, such as the College of Engineering’s Office of Culture Community and Equity (21 staffers) and Michigan Medicine’s Office for Health, Equity, and Inclusion (20 staffers) .... “Michigan maintains an Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, or ODEI, that includes a chief diversity officer, Chavous, who earns $417,000 annually plus benefits. “'In contrast, Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer’s salary is $159,300, and the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at UM (all campuses) are $130,037, $145,360, and $207,827 respectively,' according to the research study compiled by Perry and provided exclusively to The College Fix .... “But wait -- there’s more. To enact its massive ‘DEI 2.0 Plan ,’ the university has tapped 118 ‘Unit Leads’ -- a mix of deans, scholars and staffers -- 46 who are full-time diversity employees and 72 who work part-time alongside their normal jobs to oversee the implementation of the various DEI goals within each of the university’s 51 units, from 17 academic schools and colleges to the IT division to Athletics to the Department of Public Safety to three libraries to the Museum of Art and even the Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum . “To support those ‘Unit Leads,’ a total of 679 additional staffers across the 51 units have been tasked with helping roll out the DEI 2.0 plan, according to Perry, who reviewed each of the 51 Unit Strategic Plans to count the number of employees tasked with DEI advancement. “All told, that’s roughly 1,122 jobs dedicated to advancing DEI at the University of Michigan, according to Perry’s findings. The University of Michigan-Flint emeritus professor also notes in his report he didn’t even include 51 jobs in the Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX Office in his round-up....” Full article at College Fix. See also “Stanford’s Program re DEI ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. DEI Courses Consume 40 Million Hours of Undergraduate Time and $1.8 Billion in Selected States Text of full report here . Excerpts from summary article (links in the original): “Diversity, equity, and inclusion course requirements in at least 30 states cost students and taxpayers at least $1.8 billion per four-year period. Meanwhile, ‘the current undergraduate population at public universities will spend at least 40 million hours’ fulfilling these mandates in order to graduate, a conservative think tank report found. “The author of the Goldwater Institute report told The College Fix that DEI initiatives are costly to taxpayers not only due to the funds diverted to them but also because consultants and faculty profit from these programs. “‘One of the reasons DEI is so costly to taxpayers is because its proponents actively enrich themselves as they increase its scope and influence over institutions,’ Matt Beienburg, director of education policy at the Goldwater Institute, told The College Fix . “‘DEI ‘consultants’ and other ‘gurus’ such as Ibram X. Kendi extract speaking fees from taxpayer-funded public institutions at rates of tens of thousands of dollars per engagement,’ Beienburg said....” Full article at College Fix; full text of the report here . Other Articles of Interest Survey Indicates Students Feel Unprepared to Use AI in the Workplace Full article at Ed Tech. UNC’s New School Uses AI to Promote Civil Discourse Full article by UNC Prof. Mark McNeilly at James Martin Center. The Use and Misuse of AI in Higher Education Writing Courses Full op-ed by Indiana Wesleyan Prof. Russell Fox at Minding the Campus. UConn Requires Medical Students to Take DEI Oath Full article at FIRE. Brown Medical School Gives DEI More Weight Than Clinical Skills in Promotion Criteria for Faculty Full article at Free Beacon. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites Alumni and Others Again Seek Dismissal of Charges Against Stanford Daily Reporter How Four Stanford Researchers Are Using 3D Printing to Improve Health Advances in the Science, Prevention and Care of Cancer (an entire issue of Stanford Medicine magazine ) Stanford Professor Tells Davos Attendees That Billions of Dollars Are Being Wasted on AI Recycling Lithium-ion Batteries Delivers Significant Environmental Benefits ************ "The freedom to question and challenge ideas -- even those held sacred -- is what makes the university the engine of progress and the guardian of truth." — Clark Kerr, former President of the University of California February 3, 2025 Interview of Stanford President Jon Levin (podcast) This interview by Freakonomics co-author and University of Chicago Prof. Steven Levitt took place in a podcast that was initially broadcast on January 17, 2025. The interview began with questions and answers about Pres. Levin’s academic background including his obtaining a PhD in economics at MIT following his undergraduate studies at Stanford and then his returning to Stanford years ago as a new member of the faculty. The discussion later turned to the challenges of being the president of a modern university like Stanford, including these excerpts: LEVITT: In the abstract, being the president of perhaps the most important and influential university in the world, Stanford University, sounds like it would be fun. But the actual tasks that I imagine you do on a daily basis, those don’t sound at all fun to me -- trying to please a dozen different constituencies, fundraising, making difficult budget decisions, saying no on tenure cases. You’re probably working 70 hours a week doing these things. Do you actually enjoy your job? LEVIN: I love my job. The opportunity to lead a great academic institution like Stanford, it’s an incredible honor. It’s a big responsibility. But it’s mostly just an extraordinary opportunity and pleasure. And that’s because -- look around the world. There’s just very few places on the planet that assemble the collection of people and talent and brilliant scholars, students across so many disciplines, that you have on a campus like this. And your job is, first and foremost, to gather those people and then ensure that they have the freedom and the resources to accomplish really extraordinary things. That’s a great job to have. There’s just so much to take pride in terms of what people are doing and to see their success. And of course, there’s strategic elements -- what should the university be investing in, and direction. And there’s some challenges too. There’s certainly legion at the moment when it comes to higher education. One of the things I discovered in my career, which was -- serendipity was I loved being a economist and a faculty member and a researcher. You could more or less spend your time thinking about any problem that you’re interested in. What job gives you that kind of freedom to explore and be curious and be creative and engage in problems and have collaborators to do it with? Maybe 15 years ago, I became a department chair and I realized being a faculty member is a very entrepreneurial thing. It’s you, your graduate students, a few collaborators, you get grants, you kind of run your own ship with a lot of freedom and autonomy. And I really enjoyed when things went well, whether it was hiring colleagues or seeing people get tenure or success in student programs. The collective feeling of success, that kind of got me hooked on academic leadership and ended up taking my career in a little bit different direction. And of course, at the scale of a university like Stanford, it’s a great feeling to have an institution that you care about and deeply want to succeed, and you have a whole set of people who want the same thing. And to feel that if you can articulate a compelling vision for the future and bring people along and empower them, great things happen. And many, many people can take pride in the success of a great university. Who wouldn’t love to be in that position? And I feel fortunate to be in it.... LEVITT: Where a lot of universities got into a kind of trouble was in trying to define hate speech. As you say, look, it’s pretty easy to say that we’ll put restrictions on activities like blockading classrooms or shouting down invited lecturers because those are interfering with other people’s activities. But my impression is that this slippery slope came around this idea of hate speech and hate speech is hard to define because somebody’s got to draw a line someplace and people won’t necessarily agree where that line is. Do you see that definition of hate speech as being fundamentally challenging for what you do? LEVIN: At Stanford, the boundary for what speech is permissible and at what point it crosses the boundary into discrimination or harassment is we protect constitutionally protected speech. So we use the Constitution of the United States and the First Amendment as our formal rules. The Constitution protects a lot of speech that is not necessarily what you’d want to have on a campus. It’s not necessarily productive and conducive to discovery and learning, which is what we’re here to do. Some of that is having rules, but a lot of that is culture. So much of what drives behavior at a university and drives the quality of dialogue and discourse is just people’s thinking about: why am I here? What am I fundamentally involved in? Campuses should be places with deep curiosity about ideas and they should be places where you can take chances and test things out. And your research is a great example of this, Steve. You’ve done some research that was very controversial on issues that got people quite upset because you were pushing and testing ideas that went against the grain of how people necessarily wanted to think about things. And having a university that protects that kind of activity is so important because it might be right and it might change the way people think. So you want people to come into a university to help them understand that about a campus, and tell them this is a place to be curious. This is a place to have an open mind. This is a place to try to engage with people who don’t think about things in the same way, to ask them questions. And it’s so important for the faculty to set that example in the classroom. And rules can get you so far there, but really that’s about culture. That’s about people’s expectations of: what does it mean to be a constructive member of this institution and be here and contribute to the learning of others? There’s an important role there for university leadership and there’s a very important role there for the faculty and there’s a very important role there for actually everyone who’s on the campus....” Full podcast (58 minutes) at Freakonomics, including a written transcript. Hate Endowment Taxes? Reform the University Excerpts (links in the original): “Now that the second Trump administration has begun, colleges are busy navigating what could be the most adversarial relationship between the presidency and higher education in American history.... One avenue that Republicans may pursue is to tax college endowments.... Rather than simply denouncing these developments, college leaders should work to understand why they came about -- and why they might be in a weaker position to fight them off than they imagine.... “There is nothing inevitable about endowments as a financial basis for education, and the vastness of the present endowments of the major American colleges is anomalous both in a comparative and historical perspective. Other countries’ universities have nothing like endowments of this size, when they have endowments at all. And historically U.S. college endowments were smaller and covered a smaller proportion of their overall costs. It is not a law of nature that societies be so permissive toward the accumulation of capital and property beyond the necessary operating expenses of educational institutions. Laws can be made that tightly condition the privileged tax position of endowed nonprofits on certain spending and institutional requirements; or that restrict or disincentivize gifts to colleges; or that simply stipulate that colleges distribute each year such a portion of their assets that their endowments dwindle. Measures of this sort were contemplated in this country a mere half-century ago in the deliberations that led up to the 1969 Tax Reform Act that placed heavier regulations on private foundations, and other liberal nations have policies in place that are designed to discourage endowment accumulation. “Nor should we think of skepticism toward endowments as an intrinsically right-wing proposition, even if that is the direction from which hostility is coming at present. As I have noted before , what historians considered liberalism’s heyday saw liberal politicians and authors express wariness toward educational endowments and encourage the state to reform them. Arguably the greatest liberal statesman in history (not to mention one of the most devoted to education), William Gladstone, proposed removing the tax exemption from the endowments of charitable foundations, including schools and colleges. In this attitude, such figures were drawing on a venerable legacy . Animosity toward endowments of all sorts was a feature of the French Enlightenment, and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations included an extended discussion of how inappropriate endowments were for educational purposes, arguing that they insulated professors too much from the realities of market demand (or lack thereof) and left colleges ill-adapted in the long run to the needs of the population.... “Finally, and at the risk of stating the obvious, we should remind ourselves that exemption from taxation is a subsidy . To pay no or less tax than other similarly situated institutions or persons effectively increases the resources available to the exempt entity no less than receiving a direct financial grant from the government would. And it likewise increases the burden on others. As one report puts the matter plainly, 'the favorable tax treatment of private nonprofit and public higher education is a mechanism to transfer resources to higher education.' If colleges wish for their endowments to remain in this fiscally privileged position, what is needed is a set of justifications for the specific proposition that the current methods of financing higher education, which facilitate the development of institutions at once less reliant on consumer preferences and on government largesse, are so valuable that we should continue placing extra fiscal requirements on the rest of the public to preserve it, rather than simple denunciations of endowment taxes as attacks on education. After all, higher education is provided the world over, while American colleges almost alone enjoy such enormous untaxed or undertaxed resources....” Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Gregory Conti at Chronicle of Higher Education. Censorship in the Sciences -- Interdisciplinary Perspectives A three-day conference (January 10 through 12, 2025) was held at USC regarding censorship in the sciences. A full conference schedule is available here , and videos of all three days are now posted at YouTube: Day One - "What Is Censorship and How Does It Operate?" and "Research Freedom versus Ethical Restraints" Day Two - "Scientific Freedom versus Social Responsibility" and "Consequences of Censorship for Public and Society" Day Three - "Censorship in Life Sciences and Medicine" In addition, these presentations have been individually posted at YouTube: We Must Defend Liberalism – Brookings Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch The Censorship Crisis Gripping Academia – ASU Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krauss The Rise of Women in Science and Society – Behavioral Scientist Cory Clark How Woke Warriors Destroyed Anthropology – San Jose State Prof. Elizabeth Weiss The Free Speech Recession and How to Reverse It – Danish Commentator Jacob Mchangama Transgender Discourse & Censorship – Northwestern Prof. Michael Bailey Mechanisms of Censorship in Academia – Stony Brook Prof. Musa al-Gharbi Other Articles of Interest Why I’m Celebrating the End of the DEI Era “As a Black woman born into poverty in rural Virginia, I benefited tremendously from the Civil Rights Movement. But today’s DEI policies are not advancing that cause.” Full op-ed by retired Vanderbilt and Princeton Prof. Carol M. Swain at Katie Couric Media. Is Classroom Discussion a Dying Art? Full article at Ed Surge. Polarization Is Battering Campuses; Here Is How College Leaders Are Fighting Back Full article at Higher Ed Dive. America Needs New Science Standards Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars and also published at Real Clear Education . Time to Abandon the College Lecture Full op-ed at Vanderbilt Hustler. Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI Full article periodically updated at Chronicle of Higher Education. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites California Historical Society Archives Are Being Moved to Stanford Includes 600,000 items as the 154-year-old society ends its operations . Cancer-Fighting Compound Shows Immense Potential to Eradicate HIV Stanford’s Multimodal AI Model Advances Personalized Cancer Care Bigger Than Basketball -- Tara VanDerveer Launches Stanford Class ************ “At a university like Stanford, we give the faculty and the students extraordinary freedom to choose what they’re going to think about, what they’re going to write about, what they’re going to say. And there’s a reason for that, which is: that’s part of the freedom, the underlying freedom, that gives rise to great research.” – Pres. Jon Levin January 27, 2025 Stanford Students Speak Up Stanford’s Bureaucracy Undermines the University’s Academic Mission Excerpts (links in the original): "Stanford University stands at a crossroads. Once a beacon of innovation and academic excellence, it is now suffocating under the weight of its own bloated bureaucracy. Administrative growth has spiraled out of control, alienating students, frustrating faculty, and diverting resources from the university’s true mission . "Over the past two decades, administrative staff have tripled, ballooning to nearly 17,000 employees -- almost outnumbering students. Yet this explosion of bureaucracy has made the university less functional, less innovative, and less aligned with its core mission. “Former Provost John Etchemendy, in an interview with the Review, has been candid in his assessment of the university’s bloat. ‘When I first came to Stanford, I just felt that if you had a good idea, you could do it at Stanford -- anything was possible,’ Etchemendy said. ‘And now people will say that Stanford is a no-can-do university.' Faculty and students alike are drowning in a sea of red tape. Processes that should take minutes, such as the procurement of services for campus events, now drag on for weeks, weighed down by unnecessary layers of approvals and oversight. “As one university insider put it, 'Its [administrative size] has grown too much. And it's actually hampering the mission of the university.' These layers of inefficiency don’t enhance the university -- they actively harm it.... “For faculty, simple tasks like securing research funding or hiring staff for labs have become ordeals. Each step involves multiple levels of approval, requiring sign-offs from finance, compliance, and legal departments. One administrator who wished to stay anonymous shared an experience where a straightforward grant reimbursement was delayed for weeks, bouncing back multiple times for minor clarifications, only to be approved in the end without any changes.... “For students, the burden is equally stifling. Administrative offices that should exist to support them have become regulatory mazes that punish them instead. Bob Ottilie, an alum who has long defended students in disciplinary cases with the Office of Community Standards (OCS), highlighted the absurdity of Stanford’s processes: ‘Instead of hiring a bunch of people to help educate students on risk...they [OCS] hire a bunch of people to prosecute you for offenses associated with the risk that they never spent any time trying to help you avoid.’ “A prime example of this is the coffee-throwing incident and the ensuing OCS investigation that now deceased Stanford soccer star Katie Meyer was subject to. Processes that could once be resolved with a quick conversation between students and an RA or dean now require extensive paperwork, hearings, and follow-ups....” Full op-ed by Stanford senior Abhi Desai at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Also posted at Stanford Review . See also: Challenges of Becoming a Less Hierarchical Organization at Harvard Business Review . Advantages and Disadvantages of Flat Organizations at Business.com . Fitter, Flatter, Faster -- How Unstructuring Your Organization Can Unlock Massive Value at McKinsey & Company website. See also proposals to address these concerns at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. President Levin Confirms Daily Reporter Will Not Face Campus Disciplinary Action Excerpts (links in the original): “Stanford has dropped the disciplinary case against Daily reporter Dilan Gohill ’27, according to an email from President Jon Levin ’94 obtained by the Daily. Gohill had been detained last June while covering the occupation of Building 10 by pro-Palestinian protesters. “‘I can confirm that this process is complete and resulted in no disciplinary action,’ Levin wrote to Ginny LaRoe, advocacy director at the First Amendment Coalition (FAC), and Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) in an email on Monday. The email was in response to a letter he received from FAC and the SPLC.... “Levin also wrote in the email that Stanford will let the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office ‘determine how to proceed based on the evidence it has assembled’ and will ‘leave that judgment up to the DA.’ … Full article by Stanford sophomore Anna Yang at Stanford Daily, including comments subsquently posted; see also prior Daily article . A PDF copy of the January 17, 2025 letter from national press advocacy groups to Pres. Levin is available here . Alumni and Others Speak Up 2025 -- A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campuses Nationwide Excerpts (links in the original): “It is now widely understood that for years many of our country’s colleges and universities have been losing their way; they are no longer bastions of the core values of free speech, open discourse, and academic freedom, nor are they focused on promoting learning and the advancement of knowledge. Instead, they have increasingly become focused on a specific agenda and advancing that agenda, in the process often repressing these core values. “There have been individuals and institutions fighting back, trying to reform universities and to restore these core values, but it often seemed a lonely fight. Much of the effort was to support those who had been ‘cancelled.’ In more recent years the reform side gathered new advocates and began to coordinate. Existing organizations -- such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) , the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) , and the Heterodox Academy (HxA) -- became stronger and expanded their efforts. Faculty across the country organized to form the Academic Freedom Alliance .... “In 2024, there was important movement on many fronts in the battle to restore universities to their historic and critical role. Yet still there were warning signs of the walls that had to be scaled. Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, has stated that, according to FIRE’s database, 2024 was the worst year ever for deplatforming attempts, such as shout downs and disinviting speakers, since FIRE started tracking them in 1998 . “There were many green shoots in 2024, but 2025 is sure to be a year of dynamic and disruptive change....” [Followed by specific discussion of students, prospective students, parents and employers; faculty; alumni; Congressional action; regulatory action; and university administrations.] Full op-ed by Stanford alum and co-founder of Princetonians for Free Speech Ed Yingling at our Commentary webpage. Also posted at the PFS website . We note that Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking is a member of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance which was started by the leaders of PFS; see also our Resources webpage for other websites and organizations. Bias Reporting Systems Were a Nightmare on Campus, and Now They’re Everywhere Excerpts (links in the origina): “Neighbors reporting neighbors for speech that is protected under the First Amendment is textbook totalitarianism, and it must not be tolerated. “As regular readers [of my Eternally Radical Idea postings at Substack] and followers of FIRE will know, I’ve been defending free speech on campus since 2001 -- nearly all of FIRE’s 25-year history. In 2022, FIRE expanded its mission , going from being the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. This was in no small part because we grew more and more concerned that the free speech crises we were dealing with on campus could and would spill over to other areas of our country. “That has actually been my biggest nightmare, and it has become reality in more ways than one. As I posted on X this morning , the word ‘fascist’ is overused, mainly for things that look nothing like fascism. Words have meanings, and ‘fascism’ is often invoked for a range of things -- from the very bad but nonetheless distinct idea of ‘authoritarianism’ to something more akin to ‘anything I don’t like.’ Hell, I’ve even heard people equate support for free speech with fascism, which is just about the most ahistorical assertion imaginable.... “I am speaking about bias reporting systems, sometimes called bias response teams , which are essentially snitch hotlines where people can report others for ‘offensive’ or ‘hateful’ speech. The act of doing this to your fellow Americans over protected speech would be bad enough, but these systems go further. They often consist not only of administrators, but also law enforcement. Your eyes are not deceiving you. These systems include law enforcement dedicated to ‘responding’ to reports on First Amendment-protected speech.... [Quoting from an article in Free Beacon :] “In January 2020, the top law enforcement agency in the state of Oregon launched a ‘Bias Response Hotline’ for residents to report ‘offensive jokes.’ “Staffed by ‘trauma-informed operators’ and overseen by the Oregon Department of Justice, the hotline , which receives thousands of calls a year , doesn’t just solicit reports of hate crimes and hiring discrimination. It also asks for reports of ‘ bias incidents ’ -- cases of ‘non-criminal’ expression that are motivated, ‘in part,’ by prejudice or hate. “Oregonians are encouraged to report their fellow citizens for things like ‘creating racist images,’ ‘mocking someone with a disability,’ and ‘sharing offensive jokes about someone’s identity.’ One webpage affiliated with the hotline, which is available in 240 languages, even lists ‘imitating someone’s cultural norm’ as something ‘we want to hear’ about.... [Followed by additional examples in Connecticut, Philadelphia, California and elsewhere.] Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also “Stanford’s Program re Title VI/Bias ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage regarding Stanford’s own bias reporting system that was modified in September 2024 but appears to still use the same computerized case management system as was previously used and that, if true, maintains permanent records about the speech and actions of students and others that may be reported from time to time. See also “Stanford’s Program re Speech ,” also at our Stanford Concerns webpage, that includes a PDF copy of the list of words and phrases Stanford’s IT department created (who originally authorized this and how much time did they spend on it?) and which reportedly has been deleted but some at Stanford say still is being used by some administrators and staff. Should What Happens in the Classroom Stay in the Classroom? Excerpts (links in the original): “If 2024 is remembered as the year when ‘DEI’ was deservedly put on the defensive and institutional neutrality gained traction as a long overdue higher-ed reform, what big changes could 2025 bring? “Some hope this will be the year when ‘the Chatham House Rule’ takes academia by storm.... [Followed by discussion of the history and use of the Chatham House Rule] “Solveig Lucia Gold, a Senior Fellow in Education and Society for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (or ACTA), calls it a ‘pro-speech policy that is ripe and ready for prime time’ in this new Real Clear Education piece . [Quoting from the Gold article:] “Harvard’s ‘Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue’ working group recommended that the university’s various schools consider adopting the Chatham House Rule -- a recommendation that was accepted by the president and provost and endorsed by most (though not all) of the Harvard Crimson’s editorial board. Now it’s up to individual faculty members at Stanford and the deans of Harvard’s schools to follow through....” Full op-ed at Alumni Free Speech Alliance "Alma Matters" website. The Courage to Disagree in Academia Excerpts (links in the original): “If a college education doesn’t teach students to disagree constructively with status quo opinions and perspectives then then it’s not fulfilling its mission. Yet too often this is precisely what happens. Colleges and universities were established on the premise of open inquiry, critical thinking, discovery, and invention. The courses students take typically expose them to new, unfamiliar topics and ways of thinking. Students who are open and curious often find that these exposures trigger questions, including questions about the disciplinary status quo that they are being taught. If colleges do not honor students’ openness and curiosity and encourage their questioning of the status quo, then they are not properly performing their function. “Challenging the academic status quo involves asking questions and introducing new perspectives or explanations that interrogate and even threaten dominant ideologies or frameworks. For example, is racism always the reason for racial disparities in academic achievement among students? Or, how does one determine which, if any, aspects of school curriculum are so influenced by white supremacist ideology that they require ‘decolonization’? Asking such questions does not indicate condemnation or dismissal, but rather the motivation to develop a critical, multifaceted understanding of these and other issues. “I’m a professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I’m a proponent of the work of Dr. Craig L. Frisby, Professor Emeritus of School Psychology at the University of Missouri, because it challenges the orthodoxy that has saturated school psychology research and practice. In his book, Meeting the Psychoeducational Needs of Minority Students , he addresses how contemporary school psychology research is focused on portraying racial and ethnic minority students as individuals who are endlessly victimized by racism, microaggressions, discrimination, and systemic oppression in schools at the hands of educators and administrators. Although these are certainly real forces that affect some students, an extreme emphasis on these particular topics reflects an ideological and political bias of many researchers. The dominant perspective in school psychology risks doing a real disservice to the very students it purports to help because it encourages all minority students to see themselves as helpless victims with no control over their lives. The problem is that this ‘in essence absolves them from any personal responsibility or accountability for life outcomes’ (p. 34) …. “As I reflect upon the state of academic free speech, I am reminded of a comment that a colleague once made to me early in my career as a professor: ‘As professors, our job is to think.’ That comment deeply resonated with me. Most of our days are taken up with teaching, service, and publishing, but the core of our job, our real job, is to think objectively and critically about topics that concern our field. Objective, critical, and of course intellectually humble thinking allows us to ponder the multitude of ways in which an issue can be solved while simultaneously being open to the reality that we could be wrong. Although it can be scary to do so in an academic environment that is very much politically lopsided , we owe it to ourselves and to our students to have the courage to disagree and the courage to challenge the academic status quo.” Full op-ed by UC Santa Barbara Prof. Miriam E. Thompson at Journal of Free Black Thought. Everything a University Does Can Be Done in Half the Time for Half the Cost Excerpts (links in the original): “When I was a business executive and CEO in the transportation and technology sector, we used a concept called ‘lean thinking.’ This concept is a manufacturing philosophy developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Jim Womack , who has been called the ‘Godfather of Lean,’ a nickname that stemmed from his work as a consultant to the Japanese automobile industry. While bringing the industry back to the United States, Womack helped transform our automotive industry into one of the best in the world. ‘Lean thinking’ means always looking for ways to reduce waste and improve quality while continuously lowering costs. It particularly focuses on time management and doing things faster than you thought possible. This takes discipline and leadership, but the results can be astonishing. “Why not apply lean management methods to our universities? “The U.S. bachelor’s degree takes students four years to complete. It can easily be done in three years, or even two if you include the summer semesters. The same goes for graduate professional degrees. The MBA can be finished in one year. The J.D. degree can easily be done in two years or even one full year. The M.P.P. is usually a two-year graduate track, but it is antiquated and will be decommissioned. That leaves the medical degree or M.D. There is nothing sacrosanct about it either, and even New York University (NYU) has cut it down to three years. With the right undergraduate preparation and focus, it can be done in two years, getting doctors where they need to be—working. Indeed, paralegals in law and nurse practitioners in medicine can do at least 50 percent of what their fully credentialed superiors do, and they can do so for a fraction of the cost. In business, the undergrad business major from schools like the University of Texas McCombs School and many others are very competitive, and they are more efficient programs for gaining technical skills like financial accounting. “Then there’s the Ph.D. In the United Kingdom, it’s a three-year program. It’s twice as long in the United States, and in the Humanities, it is not unusual to see a candidate spend up to eight years.... “Lean business thinking can bring enormous benefits to education because it forces us to ask basic questions about how we do things, what they cost, and how to improve 'throughput.' Because education, at an institutional level, is very much like manufacturing, the throughput concept is relevant and helpful in understanding education production, cost, and efficiency....” Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest Stanford to Review DEI Programs Following Trump’s Executive Orders Full article at Stanford Daily. Wanted: More Young Men Enrolling in College Full article at Deseret News. Can Cornell Alumni Steer Their University Away from Campus Madness? Full op-ed at National Review. Harvard Settles It’s Title VI Antisemitism Lawsuits Full article at The Hill. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanf ord Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites AI Agents Simulate 1,052 Individuals’ Personalities with Impressive Accuracy Stanford Launches NIH-Funded Study on Gut-Brain Connection in Parkinson’s Disease Brain-Cell ‘Periodic Table’ for Psychiatric Disorders Reveals New Schizophrenia Clues What We Know About the Health Effects of Wildfire ************ "Education requires confrontation with ideas that we don’t like. Part of education is unsettling people’s considered opinions and getting them to think in new ways and learn from ideas that are outside their comfort zone." -- Prof. Debra Satz, Dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences January 20, 2025 Judge Rebukes Stanford Misinformation Expert for Using ChatGPT to Draft Testimony Editor’s note: This is an update to a previous article that was in our Newsletter dated December 23, 2024 . We also note that the faculty member who is the subject of these articles was and remains the faculty supervisor of Stanford Internet Observatory , the activities of which have been the subject of ongoing concerns both at Stanford and nationwide. We further note that SIO and Stanford itself are named defendants in several cases around the country, including one or more cases that may eventually make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Because of California’s labor, corporate and other laws, Stanford may have obligations to defend former and current members of the SIO staff, something that could be extremely expensive and, if true, would be paid from the university’s general funds absent government contracts and private donations that allowed payment for these types of legal costs. The point is, the 100 to 300 centers, incubators, accelerators and similar entities at Stanford come with their own financial and reputational risks. See our Back to Basics at Stanford with suggestions as to ways to possibly address these types of concerns. See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage including this link regarding the past funding and operations of SIO. Excerpts (links in the original): “A federal district judge issued a harsh rebuke and tossed out the testimony of a Stanford misinformation expert who submitted a court document, under penalty of perjury, containing misinformation in a Minnesota election law case. “Jeff Hancock, who specializes in ‘research on how people use deception with technology,’ was retained by the office of Attorney General Keith Ellison to submit expert testimony defending Minnesota’s new law banning election deepfakes, which was signed in 2023 and updated the following year. “After Hancock filed written testimony last November, attorneys for plaintiffs Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, and YouTuber Christopher Kohls noticed that the document contained several citations to academic articles that do not exist. “The plaintiffs moved to have the testimony thrown out, and Hancock subsequently filed a document admitting he used a version of ChatGPT to draft the testimony, which included the non-existent citations, known among AI researchers as 'AI hallucinations.' The Attorney General’s Office argued Hancock should be allowed to file an amended declaration containing correct, non-hallucinated citations.... “Hancock is billing the Attorney General’s office $600 an hour for his services, according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Reformer under a Data Practices Act request, with billing capped at $49,000....” Full article at Minnesota Reformer, and a PDF copy of the January 10, 2025 ruling can be found here . About the Growth of Administrative Staff at Universities Nationwide Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “In recent decades, the growth in university bureaucracies has far outpaced the growth in faculties and student bodies. Department of Education data shows that, between 1993 and 2009, college admin positions grew by 60 percent , a rate ten times that of tenured faculty. Moreover, between 1987 and 2012, the number of administrators at private schools doubled, while their numbers public university systems rose by a factor of 34 . Overall, colleges added more than half a million administrators and then even more in the decade after that. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects their number to grow by 7 percent a year between 2021 and 2031. “Around 2010, schools started employing more administrators than full-time instructors. Through the following decade, some, especially elite places such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, and MIT even started having more administrators than students. Yale's administration rolls grew by 45 percent in 2003–21, expanding at a rate nearly three times faster than that of the undergraduate student body . At Stanford, administration grew by 30 percent in 2017–22 alone, with the biggest growth coming in the first full pandemic year of 2020–21. Stanford now has nearly twice as many nonteaching staff as undergrads and nearly six times as many as faculty. The ratios tend to be lower at public schools, but still, administrative growth at UCLA has far outpaced growth in other sectors, so there are now four times as many staff as faculty....” Full op-ed at Reason. And for more detailed numbers at Stanford, see “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and possible solutions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. AI Finds Widespread Bias in Stanford's Required Reading and Writing Classes Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . . “First for some context, under the [Programme in Writing and Rhetoric] students are mandated to choose from two classes over their freshman and sophomore years. These classes include ‘The Rhetoric of Plants,’ investigating ‘how plants can be a markers for social inequality,’ ‘The Politics of Pleasure, Love and Joy,’ where students explore 'the politics of sexual pleasure, heteronormative structures of joy, decolonization of joy, and love under capitalism,’ or the ‘Rhetoric of Ethnic narratives’ to learn ‘how biracial and bicultural people define their ethnicity.’... “Notably, the issue is not that we are having discussions involving oppression, inequality and anti-imperialist perspectives on the indigenous communities' use of psychedelics. (which are all real class discussions). Nor do I have a qualm with the quality of instruction: PWR lecturers are dedicated and eminently intelligent. The issue arises when the only topics and conclusions PWR deems worthy of teaching are aligned with the unique philosophical tradition of critical theory and grievance studies. When alternative centrist viewpoints and opposition to extreme views are bereft from curricula, PWR devolves into radically progressive opinions masquerading as mandatory introduction to writing and research classes.... “If the Western canon and classical conceptions of critical thinking were more universally taught, PWR students would likely realize the infamous aspiration of John Stuart Mill encapsulated in the lines ‘He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.’ “We cannot maintain the platitude that there is still room for debate when we overwhelmingly teach one set of opinions and facts in introductory classes. By broadening the range of perspectives in PWR classes, Stanford has an opportunity to foster a more inclusive and robust intellectual environment. This would not only enrich students' understanding but also uphold the university's commitment to rigorous and open academic inquiry.” Full op-ed at Stanford Review Letter to the Incoming President from FIRE’s CEO Headings: 1. Support the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act 2. Address the abuse of campus anti-harassment policies that erode free speech 3. Rein in government jawboning 4. Protect First Amendment rights in the regulation of AI technologies Full text of letter from Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff here Colleges Are Businesses -- A Budget and Business Forecast Excerpts (link in the original): “Oftentimes, those concerned with the state of higher education get wrapped up -- rightly so -- in bringing awareness to the loss of rigor, excellence, and pursuit of merit in academia. However, there is another facet of higher education forgotten right under our noses. “A former business professor of mine, and vice president of the college I attended, never let his students forget a simple fact: colleges are businesses. Though a liberal arts education, emphasizing the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty, is paramount to becoming a virtuous citizen, we cannot forget that any college or university must be run well to teach students and achieve its academic mission. Whether you agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, there is an indisputable element of truth -- good business practices make for more successful institutions in the long-run. I would add, an eye to economic trends is also imperative.... “California governor Gavin Newsom revealed last week a $322 billion budget plan for the state with a mixed bag for higher education. Some higher ed administrators expressed dismay over the proposed 2025-26 fiscal budget slashes to ongoing state funding, including an almost eight percent reduction -- i.e., $375 million -- to the California State University system, and $271 million slashed from the University of California system....” [Followed by discussion of specific colleges and specific states, potential federal cutbacks and predictions of other future actions.] Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars What It Takes to Be an Effective Education Scholar Excerpts: “On [January 16] , I’ll be publishing the 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, tracking the 200 education scholars who had the biggest influence on the nation’s education discourse last year. Today, I want to take a few moments to explain the nature of the exercise. (I’ll reveal the scoring formula tomorrow.) “I start from two simple premises: 1) Ideas matter, and 2) People devote more time and energy to those activities that are valued. The academy today does a passable job of acknowledging good disciplinary scholarship but a poor job of recognizing scholars who move ideas from the pages of barely read journals into the real world of policy and practice. This may not matter much when it comes to the study of physics or Renaissance poetry, but it does if we hope to see researchers contribute to education policy and practice. Of course, it’s vital that those same scholars engage constructively and acknowledge the limits of their expertise. “After all, I’m no wild-eyed enthusiast when it comes to academic research. I don’t think policy or practice should be driven by the whims of researchers. I think that researchers inevitably bring their own biases, that decisions around education policy and practice are value-laden, and that decisions should therefore be driven by more than the latest study. “That said, I absolutely believe that scholars can play an invaluable role when it comes to asking hard questions, challenging lazy conventions, scrutinizing the real-world impact of yesterday’s reforms, and examining how things might be done better. Doing so requires both that scholars engage in these endeavors and that they do so in responsible ways. Of course, while it’s incredibly tough to evenhandedly assess how constructively they’re playing this role, it’s more feasible to gauge which scholars are wielding the most influence. From there, we can make our own judgments about whether their contributions add value to the public discourse.... “The contemporary academy offers many professional rewards for scholars who stay in their comfort zone and pursue narrow, hypersophisticated research, but few for five-tool scholars. One result is that the public square is filled with impassioned voices (including scholars who act more like advocates than academics), while we hear far less than I’d like from careful, scrupulous researchers who are interested in unpacking complexities and explaining hard truths....” Full op-ed at Education Next Other Articles of Interest Limitations on DEI Will Likely Accelerate in 2025 “Though the Department of Education has spent over $1 billion on DEI grants since 2021, the incoming Trump administration is poised to cut federal spending and potentially abolish the department.” Full article at Campus Reform The Number of 18-Year-Olds Is About to Drop Sharply, with Significant Impact on Colleges and the Economy Full article at Hechinger Report. But also see “College Freshman Enrollment Is Up, Not Down; Error Led to Undercount” at Washington Post University of Washington Alumni Seek to Revive the Spirit of Free Inquiry Full article at FIRE website Is Higher Education Inevitably Stuck in the Past? Full book review at James G. Martin Center The College Student Mental Health Epidemic Full article at Yale Alumni Magazine Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites From Graduate School of Business: Is a Lack of Corporate Competition Stifling the U.S. Economy? From School of Medicine: AI Predicts Cancer Prognoses and Possible Responses to Treatment From Stanford Law School: Want to Save Democracy? Start by Reforming the Criminal Legal System ************ “Freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge ... it must be guaranteed by law. But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population." -- Albert Einstein January 13, 2025 Reflections of a Stanford Alum Excerpts (links in the original): “I started at Stanford Law School in 1997. I don't say this to note how old I am, but rather to point out that my tenure there was just two years after the notorious Stanford Law School speech code was defeated, in a court case called Corry v. Stanford University (FIRE Executive Vice President Nico Perrino interviewed the case’s namesake, Rob Corry, for the So to Speak podcast back in 2017, which I encourage you to check out !). “Stanford is a private university, which would normally mean that it isn’t beholden to First Amendment standards. However, after the passing of a 1992 California Education Code statute known as the Leonard Law , this was no longer the case. Named after its legislative sponsor Sen. William R. Leonard, the Leonard Law essentially extends some (but not all) First Amendment protections to students at non-religious, private institutions of higher education in California. It was passed to prevent universities like Stanford . . . from adopting a politically correct speech code -- which by then was increasingly seen as a relic of the excessively politically-correct 1980s and early 1990s, and which would infringe upon the free speech rights of students.... “It was only in 2001, when I began working as the first legal director for FIRE, that I started to understand the true nature of speech codes like these. Going back all the way to the 1960s, and accelerating through the 1970s and 80s, all attempts to regulate speech with what might be called ‘politically correct speech codes’ used anti-discrimination as their rationale.... “Unfortunately there are plenty of examples of precisely the kind of thing I’m talking about here. Carole Hooven , for instance, was forced out of Harvard for having the opinion that biological sex is real. Also at Harvard, Roland Fryer was targeted for publishing a study that found no racial differences in the frequency of officer-involved shootings. At Stanford, Jay Bhattacharya was targeted for questioning mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the University of Pittsburgh, Associate Professor of Cardiology Norman Wang’s teaching privileges were revoked because he published a research paper examining the potential harms of affirmative action policies. The list goes on. “When the general public witnesses incidents like these, they are eventually going to come to the realization that dissent is not tolerated in higher education. It will be a clear sign to them that these institutions are holding ideological conformity above free inquiry, open debate, and intellectual diversity. As a result, the public will no longer trust any ‘truths’ or ‘information’ our institutions enshrine or disseminate. This is terrible -- not just for the institutions themselves, but also for our ability to rely on expertise and, most importantly, our ability to discover knowledge....” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also Greg Lukianoff “There’s Cause for Optimism on Campus Free Speech ” at Dispatch. See also former Stanford President Gerhard Casper, “Statement on Corry vs. Stanford University ” at our Stanford Speaks webpage How Trustees Can Bring Viewpoint Diversity Back to Their Universities Editor’s note: We present the following op-ed because it raises some important issues about intellectual diversity at colleges and universities today. On the other hand, we question a fundamental concept that underlies much of what is discussed in the op-ed, which is that trustees and regents should play a more direct role in the academic activities of a given college or university. We remind readers that most campuses operate with the concept of shared governance. That is, the trustees are fiduciaries for the facilities and the endowment, have a direct role in hiring and firing the president and sometimes other senior officers, and usually review and approve the budgets. Sitting inside that structure is a separate professional body that consists of the faculty, usually with its own rules of governance and operating in the form of an academic senate or similar body and which is usually in charge of the academic activities of the relevant college or university. We also have serious concerns about one of the author's proposals as a way to overcome the current situation, which is the creation of centers that are focused on the perspectives and desires of donors, and in fact, we think that is a large source of the problems at modern universities, including Stanford, NOT a solution. See Back to Basics at Stanford . That said, we agree that trustees and regents need to be better informed about what the president and other senior administrators are doing with respect to the college or university. And like directors of all other nonprofit and for-profit entities, they should regularly sample the activities of the college or university and quiz senior administrators whether they agree or disagree with those activities. There also are obligations of trustees and regents, acting as fiduciaries, when approving budgets and allocating funds, looking at performance ratios such as the number of administrators as compared to the number of faculty and students, the costs of overhead imposed on research, the ranges of salaries of administrators and staff, the adequacy and costs of facilities and support systems and the like. Trustees, regents and senior administrators also have obligations to interact with faculty when the school's teaching and research are losing the support of alumni, government and other funders, parents, students and other essential constituents. See, for example, last week's Newsletter dated January 6, 2025 that had links to a long list of articles showing the major cutbacks already taking place this year at elite and other colleges and universities, all of which are clear warning signs for what lies ahead. Excerpt (endnotes deleted): “There is no issue more important for higher education than ensuring the free exchange of ideas. Acquiring and teaching knowledge requires the ability to expose facts, theories, and beliefs to intense investigation without political pressure. “Unfortunately, the American campus is in danger of lapsing into a rigidly partisan mentality. In many places, it has already done so; at times, it seems that the ideological bias of higher education is so great that its institutions are beyond reforming. “This rigidity of mind did not appear overnight. Higher education, which depends on collegiality and consensus among faculty, seems especially prone to groupthink -- a gradual process in which ‘majoritarianism tends to produce ideological conformity in a department,’ according to former National Association of Scholars president Steve Balch. Since a large majority of faculty already lean to the left, groupthink puts constant pressure in that direction on all....” [Followed by these topics: Subversive principles in higher education, ideological imbalance in practice, the public-private distinction, the board problem, a reform that would empower boards, board structure and control, direct board action, improving the intellectual environment, take control out of the wrong hands, employment, and conclusion.] Full op-ed at Manhattan Institute website From the Archives Stanford’s War on Fun Editor’s note: In this new feature, we will present from time-to-time past articles from our Newsletters and postings at our website. Today, we are taking excerpts from then-freshman Theo Baker’s October 24, 2022 Stanford Daily article, “Inside Stanford's War on Fun ” along with this commentary that has long been posted at our website , combined with indications that Stanford's new leadership is already addressing these types of concerns. Commentary at our website: In addition to the main theme of this October 2022 Daily article about student social life at Stanford, reprinted below, a number of us were struck with a secondary theme regarding what comes across as a climate of fear, stonewalling and retaliation. These words and phrases are in the order they appear in the Daily article, including the redundancies: Has exerted pressure ~ Lack of communication ~ Adversarial approach ~ Broadly declined comment ~ Communication … broke down ~ There was no guidance ~ Lack of communication ~ Declined to comment ~ Bureaucratic nightmare ~ Requested anonymity because much of the group’s funding is supplied by the office they criticized ~ You feel like you're being audited by the IRS ~ Excessively bureaucratic ~ Burnt out ~ Did not respond ~ Requested anonymity after supervisors warned staff against communicating with reporters ~ Requested anonymity because of [office] policy ~ Requested anonymity in fear of retaliation from superiors ~ Declined to comment ~ Did not respond ~ Couldn’t speak to that ~ Declined to be interviewed fearing retribution for being associated with criticisms of the University ~ The perception would be terrible if I’m associated in any way ~ Were similarly skittish ~ Walked out of an interview after being told he couldn’t review the article in advance ~ Any conversations with the media ‘need to be cleared by me first’ ~ Declined to comment ~ Have to be hyper-cautious ~ They hired outside lawyers to investigate. Excerpts (links added): . . . “Students interviewed said discontent about campus social life has been on the rise since last winter, but discourse was kicked into high gear in the spring when San Francisco magazine Palladium published an article called ‘Stanford’s War on Social Life ’ written by then-senior Ginevra Davis. (A derivative of that article’s title, the ‘war on fun,’ was a term used by multiple students to refer to the University’s approach to social events.) “Though the article drew some criticism for its portrayal of Greek life as an innocent actor in the University’s alleged ‘war on fun,’ the article also galvanized outrage over the steady decline of spontaneity. The piece was followed by other student articles in campus publications, including an op-ed earlier this month in The Stanford Review titled ‘Take Stanford Back: A Call to Revitalize Fun .’ “The Daily spoke with three employees of the Office of Substance Use Programs Education & Resources (SUPER) who requested anonymity after supervisors warned staff against communicating with reporters, according to emails provided to The Daily. One employee characterized the new alcohol policy as ‘hopelessly out of touch with reality’ and ‘absolute s**t.’ Students interviewed agreed, broadly characterizing it as an unhelpful, adversarial system. “One Resident Assistant (RA), who requested anonymity because of an Office of Residential Education policy preventing RAs from speaking with reporters, explained that ‘a lot of [Resident Fellows] in the neighborhood have said, ‘This is the University’s policy on alcohol and drugs, let’s make our own policy.’ [They] are telling us, don’t worry about half of this stuff.’ When asked about RFs disavowing University alcohol policy, Harris declined to comment. “Another RA vented that ‘people are still drinking, their doors are just closed. And that leads to people who are drinking for the first time who don’t know their limits,’ whom RAs can’t help...." Full article at Stanford Daily (October 24, 2022) See also Stanford’s current website that contains what apparently are still the policies and procedures for holding a party, and you wonder why students complain about a lack of spontaneity? Also consider, how many staff people , and at what cost, administer all of this? And how is it possible that contemporaries of Stanford students who attend non-residential colleges and universities somehow do just fine without this sort of micromanagement? As noted above, we trust that Stanford's new leadership is already addressing these concerns. Other Articles of Interest Recently Adopted Title IX Regs Blocked Nationwide; Here’s What That Might Mean Full articles at Chronicle of Higher Education , at National Association of Scholars website and at Title IX for All website AAUP Survey Shows Faculty Feel They Have Less Academic Freedom Than Six Years Ago Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education including a link to a PDF copy of the report. See also FIRE’s recent survey of faculty with similar findings. Three Reasons to be Optimistic for 2025 Full op-ed at Campus Reform Yale Free Speech Survey Suggests Change Is in the Air Full article at Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) Substack website Three-Year Medical Schools Are Coming Full op-ed at James Martin Center Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites Five Books to Help You Disagree Productively in 2025 Report Outlines Stanford Principles for Use of AI In Stanford’s Practical Ethics Club, Students Examine Life’s Moral Complexities Hoover Initiative Addresses the Erosion of Trust in American Institutions Economics Major Expanded to Better Suit Different Career Paths Researchers Use AI to Help Predict and Identify Subtypes of Type 2 Diabetes Blood Test Can Predict How Long Vaccine Immunity Will Last A New Ultrathin Conductor for Nanoelectronics *********** ** “We need to encourage real diversity of thought in the professoriate, and that will be even harder to achieve. It is hard for anyone to acknowledge high-quality work when that work is at odds, perhaps opposed, to one’s own deeply held beliefs. But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth. It is absolutely essential to the quality of our enterprise.” – Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy January 6, 2025 College Faculty Are More Likely to Self-Censor Now Than at the Height of McCarthyism Excerpt (link in the original): “For a number of faculty members, the threat of censorship is so pervasive on campuses across America that not even the cloak of anonymity is enough to make them feel safe expressing their ideas. This year, FIRE surveyed 6,269 faculty members at 55 major colleges and universities for “Silence in the Classroom: The 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey Report ,” the largest faculty free speech survey ever performed. “What we found shocked even us here at FIRE. A deeply entrenched atmosphere of silence and fear is endemic across higher education. “We found that self-censorship on US campuses is currently four times worse than it was at the height of the McCarthy era. Today, 35% of faculty say they have toned down their written work for fear of causing controversy. In a major survey conducted in 1954, the height of McCarthyism, by the sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, only 9% of social scientists said the same. “In fact, the problem is so bad that some academics were afraid even to respond to our already anonymous survey for fear of retaliation. Some asked us by email, or in their free response replies, to keep certain details they shared private. Some asked us to direct all correspondence to a private personal email. Others reached out beforehand just to confirm the results would truly be anonymous. Still others simply refused to speak at all....” Executive summary at FIRE website PDF copy of the full report available here including specific numbers for Stanford (page 61) See also “Professors’ Self-Censoring Has Consequences” at Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) Substack website Deficits and Cutbacks from Around the Country Editor’s note: The following is a mere sample of articles appearing in recent months. We present them here not to say that Stanford itself may have financial challenges (it might or might not), but rather that all of higher education is facing a moment of truth and when political, social and now financial issues have come to the forefront. The winners will be those colleges and universities that address the issues with honesty that is backed by facts and effective, long-term actions. We also bring readers attention to “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and proposed corrective actions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. It would be tone deaf to say that Stanford is so wealthy that none of these issues are of concern. USC Is Facing a $158 Million Deficit This Year Full article at Campus Reform Brown Is Facing a $46 Million Deficit This Year Full articles at Inside Higher Ed and at Real Clear Education Harvard Medical School Is Facing a $26 Million Deficit This Year Full article at Harvard Crimson Harvard Is Facing a $151 Million Decline in Donations This Year Full article at Harvard Crimson Boston University Is Suspending Admissions for Humanities and Social Sciences PhD Programs (American and New England studies, anthropology, classical studies, English, history, history of art and architecture, linguistics, philosophy, political science, religion, Romance studies and sociology) Full article at Inside Higher Ed Colleges in Crisis - Had Prior Warning Signs Full article at NBC News and Hechinger Report Colleges Slash Majors - An Effort to Cut Costs Full article at CBS News Three More Major Universities Reveal Plans for Budget Cuts ( Penn State, U Connecticut, U New Hampshire) Full article at Forbes (January 2024) U.S. Colleges Cut Programs Because of Budget Deficits, Fewer Students Full article at Voice of America More Academic Cuts - May 2024 Edition Full article at Bryan Alexander website Ohio State's Potential Budget Cuts in Athletics Could Be a Canary in the Coal Mine Full article at Extra Points website (August 2024) Watchlist of Schools in Trouble Full article at Scholarship Foundation website Other Articles of Interest Is University Worth It? Yes, for Both Students and Society Full op-ed by York President Rhonda Lenton at The Conversation Association of American Medical Colleges Pushes for DEI ‘To Be Embedded in Everything’ Full article at Daily Wire Do No Harm Releases Report Showing How Association of American Medical Colleges Has Been Politicizing Medical Education (MCAT, applications, admissions, curriculum, accreditation, licensing, lobbying and more) Full article and link to PDF copy of the full report, "Activism Over Meritocracy," at Do No Harm website What Today’s Economics Students Aren’t Learning About Economics Full op-ed by Texas Tech Prof. Alexander William Salte r Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites Predictions for AI in 2025 - Collaborative Agents, AI Skepticism and New Risks Five Tips for Keeping Winter Bugs at Bay How Cellular Neighbors Shape the Aging Brain Students Help Archivists Preserve the Past More Beans, Peas, Lentils - A Nutrition Expert’s Take on New Guidelines ************ "Critical thinking is not something you do once with an issue and then drop it. It requires that we update our knowledge as new information comes in." - McGill Prof. Emeritus Daniel Levitin December 23, 2024 Why Harvard Faculty Are Leaving the University to Pursue Their Work Elsewhere Editor’s note: There are growing concerns that prominent faculty members nationwide, especially in engineering and the hard sciences, are finding that the bureaucracies at their universities as well as the bloated overhead have reached a point where they would prefer doing their research and other work elsewhere. Some have said they will continue teaching, but for free and as a contribution to the next generations, but that remaining at their universities was no longer worth the time and cost. We hope this trend will not take hold at Stanford. In that regard, see our long-existing webpages Back to Basics at Stanford and Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy . Excerpts: “Not infrequently, companies lure professors to highly paid positions directing scientific research in pharmaceuticals, technology, and related fields. But the recent departures of some leading Harvard scientists deeply committed to improving human health point to a different phenomenon: challenges to conducting translational life-sciences research in academic settings. Given the University’s emphasis on and investment in the life sciences and biomedical discovery, these scientists’ differing decisions suggest emerging issues and concerns about current constraints and the future of such research. “Applying for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants can take a substantial portion of an investigator’s time, and as much as a year can pass between a submission deadline and the point when funds are received and disbursed by the recipient’s home institution. With the NIH the dominant funding source for university biomedical research, what’s at stake is not only the ability of academic institutions to remain at the cutting edge of biomedical discovery, but also their ability to attract and train the next generation of scientific talent. The typical for-profit pharmaceutical or biotechnology company can move far more quickly and mobilize vastly greater resources -- from top-notch facilities to copious funding -- enabling the private sector to rapidly move basic science research discoveries to the point of clinical application. Increasingly, researchers committed to improving human health wonder whether working within the constraints of university research settings is really in the public interest....” [Followed by interviews of specific Harvard faculty members and others] Full article at Harvard Magazine Federal Court in Louisiana Allows Case to Move Forward Against Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory Editor’s note: We are posting this story not to embarrass Stanford but rather to again highlight the dangers of censorship activities, especially when funded by and coordinated with government agencies while using Stanford as a way to shield the activities and drawing upon the prestige of the Stanford name. These activities also again demonstrate the risks of Stanford's estimated 100 to 200 centers, accelerators and incubators that are not primarily engaged in the front-line teaching and cutting-edge, peer-review research of tenured members of the faculty but instead are largely run by third parties and who are engaged primarily or even exclusively in political and social advocacy and implementation activities. We would hope that Stanford can find a way to admit what took place here while limiting the university’s financial and reputational exposures and thereby bring closure to these matters once and for all. Excerpts (link in the original): “From Hines v. Stamos [Stanford, et al.] , decided [December 18, 2024] by Judge Terry Doughty (W.D. La.): “‘This case stems from Defendants' alleged participation in censoring Plaintiffs' speech on social media. Defendants are ‘nonprofits, academic institutions, and researchers alleged to have been involved in examining the issue of the viral spread of disinformation on social-media and the resulting harms to society.’ Plaintiffs are social media users, each with significant followings, who allege that the acts of Defendants caused Plaintiffs' disfavored viewpoints to be censored -- namely their speech concerning COVID-19 and elections. As a result of this alleged past and ongoing censorship, Plaintiffs filed this putative class action lawsuit on behalf of themselves and ‘others similarly situated,’ against Defendants…. “The court didn't agree with plaintiffs that they had conclusively established that the federal court in Louisiana had personal jurisdiction over defendants -- but it did conclude that plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged facts that would justify further discovery as to personal jurisdiction.... “'Plaintiffs have alleged -- to the point of ‘possible existence’-- that the Stanford Defendants effectuated censorship in Louisiana by ‘assigning analyst[s] specifically to Louisiana, determining whether speech originated in Louisiana, tracking the speech's spread from Louisiana, and communicating with state officials in Louisiana about supposed disinformation.’ And as such, Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that the Stanford Defendants' online activities may support personal jurisdiction. Limited jurisdictional discovery is thus necessary to show to what extent Defendants' online activities were ‘directed’ at the forum state....” Full article by UCLA Prof. Emeritus and Hoover Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh at Reason, including a note that one of the attorneys representing the Plaintiffs in this case is expected to be nominated as Solicitor General of the United States. And here's an additional excerpt taken directly from the court’s order, citations deleted: “... we find that Plaintiffs have provided sufficient allegations to put beyond mere conjecture or suggestion that Defendants [including Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory], through their participation in the Election Integrity Project and Virality Project, caused Plaintiffs to be censored on social media platforms. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Defendants were active participants, if not architects, of a vast censorship scheme, and -- in collaboration with government officials -- actively monitored, targeted, and ultimately induced social media platforms to censor Plaintiffs’ speech (among many others) ….” See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, “Greater Control Must Be Exercised Over the Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford.” See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage and where, for convenience, we also have posted a PDF copy of this recent court order. See also this prior analysis of Stanford Internet Observatory Western Accreditor Reverses Course on DEI Requirement Editor’s note: Last week’s Newsletter had a link to an article stating that the accrediting agency for California colleges and universities, including Stanford, had deleted its requirement that a school demonstrate its commitment to DEI. In the intervening week, the accreditor has reversed course, saying it will leave the language in place and will study the issue some more. Full article at Inside Higher Ed Higher Education Is in Trouble Excerpts (links in the original): “Higher education in the U.S. faces a crisis: Its credibility is under attack. The public is increasingly skeptical of university-trained experts and the test-score-based meritocracy that dominates America’s upper middle class.... “Education level has become the great divider in contemporary American politics, eclipsing race and sex. Those with four-year college degrees tend to vote differently than those without.... “Measures reportedly under consideration include ending government loans for graduate students, capping the total amount a student can borrow, holding educational institutions at least partially responsible for student-loan defaults, and linking student aid to institutional policies on diversity, equity and inclusion. Colleges and universities will likely face increased congressional oversight of the political imbalance of their faculties. President-elect Trump has suggested he will use the college accreditation process to make higher education toe the line. And with deficit hawks in Congress hoping to offset a portion of Mr. Trump’s proposed tax cuts with increased revenue, Mr. Vance’s December 2023 proposal to raise the excise tax on elite universities’ endowment income from 1.4% to 35% is likely to resurface. “Faced with these challenges, colleges and universities should adopt three strategies. “First, they should get their houses in order. They should end mandatory DEI statements for faculty and staff candidates. They should adopt the principle of institutional neutrality spelled out in the University of Chicago’s seminal 1967 Kalven Report and should extend a similar policy to all academic divisions and departments, as Dartmouth College did last week.... “Second, four-year colleges and universities should broaden their support by expanding their alliances with local institutions, especially community colleges.... “Finally, these institutions should refocus on their civic mission: imparting basic knowledge about American history, political institutions and civic culture to every student; promoting social mobility by helping students who are the first in their families to attend college; and promoting civil discourse with campus wide programs such as College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, which gives students opportunities to engage in civil discourse and debate. “By modeling the balance between social order and individual liberty, higher education can best promote the common good -- and its own long-term best interests.” Full op-ed at WSJ For convenience, we have posted a PDF copy of the Dartmouth policy , discussed above, at our Commentary from Others webpage See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage ************ “Principles of free speech are among those we most cherish, as Americans and as members of a university dedicated to the open, rigorous and serious search to know.” – Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper

Commentary from Others - 2 Click on any bulleted item for direct access: Censorship U.S. Fifth Circuit Upholds Injunction Against Federal Agency Interference with Web Activities Censorship Demands Behind Deep Fake Hype Campus Speech 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 Academic Freedom What Can be Done? Actionable Solutions to Regaining Academic Freedom Harvard Faculty Create Entity for Defense of Academic Freedom 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 Views from Other Schools Cornell Free Speech Alliance Offers Major Policy Recommendations Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry MIT Faculty Adopts Free Expression Statement Prof. John Rose: How I Liberated My College Classroom Miscellaneous Commentary Commentary by Heather Mac Donald Censorship 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 a 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 . 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. 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. 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. Prof. John Rose: How I Liberated My College Classroom By John Rose From the Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2021 [Ed itor's note: At the time this op-ed was written, John Rose was a faculty member at Duke and where he taught courses in ethics, religion and political science while also serving as the associate director of Duke's Civil Discourse Project. Prof. Rose is now a director of a similar program at the University of North Carolina's new School of Civic Life and Leadership. See also a video of a panel held at Stanford in 2022 on issues of free speech and where Prof. Rose's remarks start at the 22-minute mark.] 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: President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez: 'Guiding Principles' Jon Levin: 'Inauguration Address' 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' Additional Stanford Speaks Articles President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez: 'Guiding Principles' March 31st, 2025 Dear Stanford Community, As we begin the quarter, we look ahead to the joys of spring on the Stanford campus, with its warmth and energy. We also have a sharp focus on the federal policy issues challenging the university, and we want to share a few principles that are guiding our approach. First, we are committed to the university’s fundamental mission of research and education in our decisions, policies, and financial priorities. We are advocating for the importance of federal research funding that drives national scientific leadership and innovation. We are also preparing for how to sustain excellence in multiple budget scenarios, including maintaining continuity in financial support for graduate and undergraduate students. Stanford is a resilient institution, full of problem-solvers. We are confident that we will be able to address whatever challenges come and find creative solutions. Second, academic freedom and a culture of open inquiry are at the core of Stanford’s ability to fulfill our mission of research and education. Universities thrive when faculty and students invite and confront competing ideas and arguments. We have made it a primary focus this year to nurture that ideal: from clearer time, place, and manner rules on free speech, to the e Pluribus initiative, to new programs to support a strong civic culture. And we are committed to defending the right of faculty and students to research and discuss issues they care about, free from internal and external coercion. Third, a defining strength of the university is to bring together students and faculty with different ideas, backgrounds, and aspirations, to create a community of scholars who enhance each other’s learning. Stanford functions best when we have compassion for the needs of others. We are sponsoring town halls to address uncertainty about science funding, providing resources and information for our international students, and addressing many other timely issues. When we work together, there is so much to celebrate: just last quarter, the completion of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera, the Civic Learning Week National Forum, the opening of the CoDa building for interdisciplinary data science, and our first ACC conference title, won by the women’s gymnastics team. Finally, we are advocating, in public and private settings, for the value of universities – for open minds, for discovery, for learning. The creativity, dynamism, and leadership of this country depend on the strength of American universities. Our excellence derives from the investment of public as well as private resources. We are at a time when opportunities for discovery and global competition make that commitment vital. So it is essential that we address criticisms with reflection and humility, and restore public trust. The success of universities also rests on the American ideal of the open exploration of ideas, a culture of freedom, and horizons of opportunity for all. At its best, Stanford epitomizes that spirit and we are committed to sustaining the campus as a place where, in the words of our motto, the wind of freedom blows. Jon Levin President Jenny Martinez Provost Jon Levin: Inauguration Address September 27, 2024 Welcome to everyone. I started today as I often have over the last three decades, by running around the Dish – clockwise, because it’s a little easier on the knees. And as I was climbing toward the top, I was hoping we would have a beautiful California afternoon, just like this one. I want to express my appreciation to our Board Chair Jerry Yang; members of the Stanford Board of Trustees; Presidents Emeriti Gerhard Casper, John Hennessy, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, and Richard Saller; Provost Jenny Martinez; past Provosts Condoleezza Rice, John Etchemendy, and Persis Drell; the executive cabinet and senior staff of the university. I want to thank the members of my family who are here, especially my wife Amy, and our children Madeline, Ben, and Noah. And I want to welcome all of you here today: faculty colleagues, students, postdocs, staff members, alumni, and friends. The first time I was in Frost Amphitheater was 34 years ago. It was the fall of 1990. I was a Stanford freshman attending Convocation. As I told this year’s entering class – despite having high hopes that my own first Convocation address would have a deeply enduring impact – I am unable to remember a single word the president said that day in Frost. What I do remember is the feeling of arriving in California. I had grown up on the East Coast with a deep love of the outdoors, reading about the pioneering climbs in Yosemite and the whitewater of the High Sierra. When I arrived at Stanford, I was excited to be a student, and I couldn’t wait to get to the mountains. My memories of Stanford from that time blend the exploration of the classroom – reading literature, studying mathematics, taking classes in computer science and philosophy and economics, writing a thesis on Norman Maclean – with trips to the rivers and peaks of California. For me, like so many others, the intellectual expansiveness of the Stanford campus has always been intertwined with the physical expansiveness of the American West. We are reminded of that today, when we can look up at the natural beauty of our surroundings, and look around at this array of scholars, students, and friends who have contributed so much to our academic excellence. Stanford is the university of the American frontier. Like the frontier, it is infused with a sense of openness, possibility, and hope that are fundamental to who we are. Those characteristics are an essential part of what makes this place so distinctive, and will help us define our future. Since that September day 34 years ago, I have been fortunate to spend most of my adult life at Stanford. I have gotten to see the university as a student, a teacher, a scholar, and an academic leader. Each of those experiences and perspectives makes the responsibility of becoming Stanford’s 13th president more meaningful and more humbling. I am conscious that I begin my term as president at a time when American universities are under intense scrutiny. The difficulties we have faced in recent years are evident. Many of them stem from outside influences – global events, politics, skepticism about elite institutions – some from within. We are criticized for not doing enough to address societal challenges, and for doing too much. We are criticized for suppressing speech, and for permitting it. Our admissions policies, faculty composition, research funding, campus climate, and endowments are the subject of heated debate. There is no doubt that in the coming years, we will have to navigate challenges. Our North Star is our fundamental purpose of discovery and learning. We exist as a university to create and share knowledge, and to prepare students to be curious, to think critically, to flourish, and to contribute to the world. This purpose, both simple and profound, gives us a distinctive role in society. Discovery and learning require fresh ideas, open discussion, sometimes sharp disagreement. It is no accident that Stanford’s first president chose as our motto: “The wind of freedom blows.” When our former President Gerhard Casper arrived at Stanford, he was so struck by our motto that he dedicated his inaugural address to explaining its origin, and relating it to the freedoms of the university. These include the freedom of faculty and students to pursue knowledge without constraints; the freedom to challenge orthodoxy, whether old or new; and the freedom to think and speak openly. These freedoms nurture the conditions for discovery and learning. These freedoms also provide a guide when it comes to navigating many of the contentious issues we face today. To be clear, we want Stanford’s students and faculty to engage with the world. We expect them to wrestle with social and political issues. We hope that they will have an influence on the direction of society, pursue public service, and tackle the pressing challenges of our time. Yet the university’s purpose is not political action or social justice. It is to create an environment in which learning thrives. As Harry Kalven memorably put it, the university’s obligation in challenging times is “to provide a forum for the most searching and candid discussion of public issues.” This is what we should strive for today: to foster searching discussion, to listen with curiosity, and to ensure the freedom of members of the university to study and learn. These are goals I will work toward as president, and to which we all can contribute. It is in this way that we will generate ideas that percolate out and shape the future, and that our students will graduate with the inquisitiveness and knowledge to make a difference. And it is ultimately through those means that we will fulfill our role in society and renew public faith in universities. It is also essential, when there is so much skepticism, to remind ourselves just how extraordinary an institution we are part of at Stanford. In the time since I arrived, I am inspired by how our faculty and students have advanced human welfare. Our faculty have pioneered fields such as optogenetics, bioorthogonal chemistry, market design, and large-scale online education. They have written poetry and history, and expanded our knowledge of the human condition. Our clinicians have built our academic medical center into a national jewel. Our students have served on the Supreme Court and as prime minister of the United Kingdom. They have won 81 gold medals, 12 just this summer, and founded and built thousands of companies – sometimes here on campus, occasionally in a friend’s garage, or even a Denny’s restaurant. They have won Oscars, Emmys, and Nobel Prizes. More than a hundred thousand have graduated and gone on to lives of meaning and purpose. Stanford embodies the essential characteristics that, even now, make American universities the envy of the world. We pursue parallel excellence in research and education. We seek to attract and bring together the great scholars of today and the brightest minds of tomorrow. Nowadays, we take that vision for granted. But when Leland and Jane Stanford set out to create this university, it was a new concept to integrate the research focus of German universities with the British model of college education – a distinctively American combination. It remains an exceptional one. When it works best, as it often does at Stanford, faculty share their knowledge with students, and students inspire questions and new thinking. The learning goes in both directions. And of course, what is remarkable at Stanford is the breadth of fields in which that occurs. If you walked around today, the classrooms you passed might have been full of discussion about Victorian poetry, or fluid dynamics, or constitutional law, or the politics of immigration. It is impossible for a curious mind to be bored at Stanford. We are an engine of innovation. One of the most consequential, and sometimes underappreciated, steps in American history was the decision after World War II to locate scientific research in universities, and to invest at a scale that would ensure U.S. leadership. If our political leaders today have sense, that investment and leadership will continue far into the future. Stanford took up the challenge – expanding the faculty and student body, becoming the home of a national laboratory, and moving the hospital to campus. We brought a pioneering spirit – the idea that discoveries could move from labs and classrooms to the world. By the end of the 1950s, Stanford had launched the semiconductor industry that became the foundation for Silicon Valley. A few weeks ago, I tried to count the value of Stanford-founded companies and quickly got to over $7 trillion. Most importantly, we have a culture of openness and exploration. We are open to people from around the world, from an array of backgrounds, with the widest range of interests, aspirations, values, and beliefs. We are open to new ways of thinking, to pursuing research that can reshape our understanding of humanity and the world. We are open in giving our ideas away – to publishing our research so that scholars everywhere can build on our ideas. That commitment distinguishes us from the private sector, and even universities in other parts of the world. This foundational value of openness is at the heart of American universities. Our former President Wallace Sterling referred to Stanford’s history as the story of “strong growth from good soil.” I love that description because it captures the place in which we are rooted, and the sense of progress. There is another quote that I think captures even more of Stanford’s potential. Every morning for the last eight years, as I walked onto the GSB campus, toward the Coupa Cafe, I looked to my left at the engraving by the artist Peter Wegner. It says that Stanford is “dedicated to the things that haven’t happened yet, and the people who are about to dream them up.” This afternoon, I would like to share three aspirations for Stanford’s future, each of them rooted in the values of openness and exploration. First, I aspire that this university be open-minded – that as we pursue excellence across the broadest range of disciplines, we foster a culture that embraces inquiry and curiosity. Last week when I welcomed our new students, I talked about the philosopher Jonathan Lear’s account of Socrates. Lear observes that when people came to talk to Socrates and were confronted with his probing questions, they invariably rushed off in confusion. But Socrates stood still, because he alone was comfortable asking questions and not knowing the answers. The point was that college is about asking questions, about recognizing that however much one knows, there is always more to discover. Of course that cuts against today’s world, where it often seems that everyone on the internet believes they have the answers, and feels compelled to share them. Our campus must be a place where we can ask each other questions, experiment with ideas, and share our own thinking. These skills are important not just for our own community. In a time of deep division, they are foundational to effect positive change in the world, which is precisely what we envision and hope for in our graduates. Second, I aspire that our university be open to new ideas – that we are ambitious in exploring the frontiers of knowledge. Over the next decade, I believe we will be astonished by the breakthroughs made in many fields. We are living at a time when the ability to assimilate vast amounts of information, make predictions, and formulate new hypotheses has the potential to transform discovery. And we can only begin to imagine the ways in which these technologies will affect so many parts of our lives – including the whole of education. The frontier is open: new treatments for cancer, radically improved energy storage, and a deeper understanding of human intelligence and behavior. What we do know is that if you could pick one place on Earth to be during a dramatic acceleration in discovery, it would be here. Stanford will be the leading university to advance research and teaching, and deepen our understanding of the impact and potential of these technologies. We are one of the few places where faculty and students from across every field can interact and work together. And crucially, we have the academic strength of the humanities and the arts to keep us from losing sight of the fundamental questions of what it means to be human, what it means to be a citizen, and what it means to live a good life. Third, I aspire for us to open the reach of a Stanford education – to seek to educate more students from around the world. The opportunity to learn at Stanford, and from Stanford faculty, is extraordinary. It widens students’ apertures and shows them possibilities that they did not know existed. That is true for our recently arrived frosh, our newly minted one-Ls at the Law School, our graduate students in biology and literature, the professionals taking summer programs in the Business School, or online courses in engineering. In each case, our students walk away changed by what they have learned, inspired, and prepared to contribute to humanity. Today, relative to when I was a student, there are an order of magnitude more people with the talent and preparation to benefit from a Stanford education. I believe that in the coming years, we should find new and creative ways to open a Stanford education to more students. The potential is exceptional, and it spans the world. Some might argue that this is the wrong time for that aspiration, because the world is moving toward nationalism and parochialism. In fact, it is precisely when there are political divisions that the openness of universities allows us to make our greatest contribution, because at our best, we are among the few institutions that can transcend political differences, enable the exchange of people and ideas, and foster mutual understanding. This morning on my run around the Dish, when I reached the top, I looked out at the red roofs of the campus, and the San Francisco Bay, and the hills beyond, and of course I was thinking about Stanford and our future. Let us navigate the challenges ahead by staying true to our distinctive purpose of discovery and learning, and our commitment to the university’s freedoms. Let us appreciate what an extraordinary institution this is, and its potential to contribute. And as we look forward, let us aspire to be open – to each other, to new ideas, to the world. In closing, we can take inspiration from one of our great faculty colleagues, Wallace Stegner, the founder of Stanford’s creative writing program. I love Stegner’s writing, which captures the beauty and spirit of Stanford and the American West. He wrote: “One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope.” Considering our future, I too cannot help but be optimistic. I suspect the same is true of you, because you chose to be here at Stanford – the university of the American frontier, a place of openness, of exploration, of possibility. Stanford is our home, and let us pursue our aspirations with hope. President Jonathan Levin 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 which is discussed in more detail at our Stanford Concerns webpage , "Stanford's Now Discredited List of Words and Phrases" and including a PDF copy of the words and phrases that had been proscribed by Stanford's IT department. The controversial list was subsequently made unavailable to those who didn't have a Stanford log-in account, and shortly after that, the document was removed from Stanford's website.] 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.

Past Newsletters March 23, 2026 Quantifying Curriculum Degradation -- University of Chicago as Initial Example Excerpts (references deleted): “American universities -- especially in the humanities and social sciences -- have undergone a decades-long shift away from the Western intellectual tradition and toward ideological and activist content. We present a keyword-based methodology for quantifying this process using course catalog data. Applying it to thirteen years of University of Chicago catalogs (2012–2025), we find that the progressive-signal share of the catalog more than doubled from 12.7% to 28.3%, while the Western-canon signal remained flat at ≈12%, causing the progressive-to-canon ratio to rise from 1.0× to 2.4×. These patterns are most pronounced in the humanities and social sciences, yet, perhaps unexpectedly, they also extend into STEM fields. We propose a collaborative, open index of curriculum content at the university-year level to help families, donors, and policymakers make informed decisions. [Followed by a discussion of the methodologies used including charts with the words and concepts used in the analysis, a color-coded graph showing the significant changes from 2012 to 2024, and a chart that shows the trends by specific academic disciplines.] “Quantifying curriculum content across institutions and over time could serve the same function as the FIRE Free Expression Rankings: providing transparent, comparable data that families, donors, legislators, and University administrators can use to make informed decisions. “We envision a Curriculum Content Index (CCI) at the university-year level, constructed from publicly available course catalog data and syllabi. Ideally, one should also include student enrollment data to get a more accurate understanding of the content students are actually learning from universities. Perhaps understandably, universities are reluctant to share this information. But transparency is the best disinfectant here.... “A word of caution is in order. Keyword-based textual analysis of course descriptions is a blunt instrument. A course flagged by our progressive keyword list may turn out, on closer inspection, to be a rigorous scholarly treatment of the topic; conversely, a course that escapes detection may nonetheless promote an activist agenda in practice. The signals we measure should therefore be understood as a noisy first approximation -- useful for identifying broad trends and prompting further inquiry, but never a substitute for substantive evaluation of what is actually taught. Policymakers, in particular, should resist the temptation to use simple keyword counts as the basis for funding decisions or regulatory action. Our goal is to promote transparency and informed conversation, not to supply a scorecard that short-circuits careful judgment.” Full article by Stanford Prof. Ivan Marinovic at Substack. See also “Transparency Requires More Than Half a Syllabus” at James Martin Center . Britain Tests a New Model for Campus Free Speech Excerpt (links in the original): “Key provisions of the United Kingdom’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 are now moving from statute to implementation, placing new legal duties on universities in England to protect lawful speech and academic freedom. “The law , which received royal assent in May 2023, requires universities and student unions to take reasonable steps to secure freedom of speech within the law and to promote academic freedom for academic staff. It also strengthens the authority of the Office for Students, England’s higher education regulator, to investigate alleged violations and levy fines where institutions fail to comply. “According to guidance published by the U.K. Department for Education, the act establishes a formal complaints route that allows students, staff, and speakers to seek redress if they believe their lawful speech has been restricted. Complainants may escalate cases to the Office for Students after exhausting internal university procedures, the guidance states.” ... Full article at Minding the Campus. From Undergraduates to PhDs, How AI Is Impacting Stanford’s Classroom Policies Excerpts (link in the original): “Due to rapidly evolving artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, professors now face the challenge of creating classroom policies and curricula that teach students how to walk the line between beneficial and unethical uses of AI to give students the tools to learn, but also prepare them for a world that AI is incorporated into. “A recent survey from Copyleaks found that nearly 90% of university students across the world use AI to help with their education, with roughly a third using AI tools on a daily basis. This adoption doesn’t look to be slowing down either, with almost 75% noting their AI usage has increased since 2024.... “Instead of trying to improve AI detection technology, professors are changing policies and syllabi to promote hands-on learning. CS106B has begun introducing in-person assessments.... “To navigate this line, [Computer Science Prof. Chris Gregg] explained how professors are emphasizing the importance of limiting AI usage within introductory courses such as CS 106A and CS 106B, which they hope the in-person assessments help achieve. This allows students to overcome struggles on their own, which he notes is fundamental for learning coding essentials.... “‘We, in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR), aim to demonstrate to students that their distinctive abilities as language-users, including as readers, writers, and revisers, cannot be replaced by technology, and that turning to AI as a kind of ghost reader, writer, and researcher severely limits students’ growth and development in those areas,’ Marvin Diogenes, Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Director of PWR, wrote in an email to The Daily.... “The expansion of AI has opened doors for new learning opportunities, but educators are still exploring the unknowns to better understand how all industries are responding to AI. [Vice Provost for Graduate Education and former Chair and Vice Chair for Mechanical Engineering Prof. Kenneth Goodson] emphasized how this shift is leading to more research and education, but is also creating more questions of how to use AI correctly.” ... Full article at Stanford Daily. See also “Writing Faculty Push for the Right to Refuse AI” at Inside Higher Ed . AI Comments on the Problems with Stanford’s Undergraduate Housing Our Past Newsletters dated February 9, 2026 and March 9, 2026 had some robust comments and links about concerns with respect to Stanford’s undergraduate housing. We recently received from an alum a summary of the issues that was produced by AI and we have thus added that AI-produced discussion to our Ask AI webpage. By More Than 2-to-1, Voters Say Today’s College Education Is Not Worth It Editor’s note: Stanford and its peers obviously won’t suffer from a loss of applicants. The concern is that the voter attitudes discussed in the following article will inevitably influence the priorities and decision-making of federal and state governments, foundations and others and in ways that will impact all colleges and universities. Excerpts (link in the original): “It wasn't long ago that millions and millions of American kids heard their parents' best advice: ‘The only way to get ahead is with a college education.’ And millions took their advice. Today's parents and the kids themselves are skeptical college is worth the cost, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows. “The national online poll, taken Feb. 24 to Feb. 27, asked 1,456 adults: ‘Do you believe a four-year college degree is worth the cost for most Americans today, or not?’ “The answer indicates serious erosion in how Americans view the value of higher education. Overall, of those responding, 59% selected ‘Not worth the cost,’ while just 24% picked ‘Worth the cost.’ Another 16% weren't sure. “(By comparison, as recently as 2013, a Gallup Poll found that 70% of Americans believed college was worth the price.) ... “All the major racial groupings -- whites (61% not worth it, 22% worth it), and blacks and Hispanics (55% not worth it, 30% worth it) -- agree a college education doesn't give enough value to make it worthwhile. “Perhaps most damning of all, parents (56% not worth it, 39% worth it) now believe higher ed is a bad deal.” ... [Followed by discussion and graphs broken down by age, levels of education, comparative skills, the current and future impact of AI, and the impacts of student debt,] Full article with detailed charts and graphs at TIPP Insights. Other Articles of Interest Safeguarding Academia from Foreign Mischief Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars. See also “Education Department to End Anonymity for Universities’ Foreign Donors” at College Fix . Colleges and Universities Are Failing Students in Today’s Post-Literate Era Full op-ed at The Hill: “Americans seem to have given up on reading books. Surveys show that almost 40 percent read no books at all over the course of a year.... If they are to survive America’s post-literate era and serve society in the future, colleges need to invest in programs that answer the question, ‘Why read?’ They must also design courses where the techniques of close reading are taught.” A Neurologist’s Journey from the Hippocratic Oath to the American Classroom Full op-ed at Fair for All (FAIR): “The turning point in my transformation from medical advocate to education defender occurred during a webinar I hosted for FAIR titled ‘Health Professionals in the Nazi Era.’ Preparing for that presentation was a chilling experience. I saw with terrifying clarity how the most ‘educated’ professionals of the 1930s, doctors and teachers, were the first to succumb to ideological capture. They didn’t wake up one day as monsters; they were slowly conditioned to prioritize activism over their professional oaths.” Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Watching a Lifetime in Motion Reveals the Architecture of Aging What Your Phone Knows Could Help Scientists Understand Your Health How to Prepare as AI Reshapes the Workforce ********** “Defending academic freedom of speech is not particularly difficult in times of peace and prosperity. It is in times of national crisis that our true commitment to freedom of speech and thought is tested.” – Former Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman March 16, 2026 College Leaders Reflect on the Future of Higher Education Excerpts : “At [Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research's] economic summit [two weeks ago] , Provost Jenny Martinez, former President John Hennessy, and leaders from UC Berkeley, Brown, and Oregon discussed challenges and opportunities for universities. “American universities are facing some of their steepest challenges in decades, including funding cuts, eroding public trust, political controversies, and an AI revolution that is transforming how students learn. “But at Stanford’s SIEPR Economic Summit, leaders from several prominent U.S. universities argued that the moment could also be an opportunity to rebuild trust, discard outdated practices, and focus on what universities do better than anyone else. “‘It’s a time for universities to go back to first principles -- what are we good at? What is our distinctive role in society?’ Martinez said at the summit. ‘We’re places of discovery and places of learning, and those are critical functions for society.’... “If people aren’t sharing their views and learning to engage with those they disagree with, we can’t have the kind of functioning democracy that America has benefited from over the last centuries,’ Martinez said. “She also emphasized the importance of academic freedom -- the ability to consider ideas that might seem unorthodox or controversial. “Without it, she said, ‘you’re not going to get to the discoveries that are so foundational to the progress of science, of technology, of the economy and society.’” [Followed by discussion of AI’s impact on learning, a new economic model for universities, and China and national security.] Full article at Stanford Report. Video of the full one-hour panel here . See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Forming Virtuous Minds Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “The University of Tulsa’s Honors College is not the only program to face liberal arts cuts and closures . Since 2023, nearly 50 nonprofit institutions have closed their doors, with at least 40 merging with other institutions since 2020. This comes at a time when trust in higher education remains fragile , enrollments are down, and perceptions of a college education are at a low point.... “Political pressure from both sides of the aisle has hastened the decline of the liberal arts. The left has hollowed out traditional curricula, replacing the liberal arts with ideology-driven ‘grievance studies.’ The right, meanwhile, increasingly judges degrees by a single metric: whether they lead directly to a high-paying job -- a standard that consigns most of the humanities to irrelevance.... “. . . Courses in Western civilization must be strengthened , along with English and languages, while ideology-driven courses must go. Ian Oxnevad, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) Senior Fellow for Foreign Affairs and Security Studies, writes for Minding the Campus how the reform and restoration of language instruction is vital to the West’s civilizational continuation.... “. . . Schools must not equate ‘studies’ or ‘grievance’ programs with standard liberal arts courses. These programs often degrade education, radicalizing students by simply keeping them at arm's length from studying the fruits of their civilization. Very few students want to sign up for a program that teaches them to despise their way of life. No English literature graduate should leave their program believing that the English in their degree name ought to be struck out of existence after a four-year program of postcolonial theory, gender studies, queer theory, critical race theory, intersectional feminism, and fat studies. “The liberal arts are necessary to the health and vitality of our culture. A liberal arts education forms students into wise and thoughtful leaders with a deep understanding of the Western mores needed for society to flourish. Such education instills a never-ending hunger for not only the ‘hows’ but also the ‘whys,’ lending to continual growth and improvement, personally and then society as a whole. The liberal arts mold the whole person, ideally into a virtuous citizen. This is why it is our mission at the NAS to uphold the standards of a liberal arts education that fosters intellectual freedom, searches for the truth, and promotes virtuous citizenship.” Full article at National Association of Scholars. See also “UT-Austin to Consolidate Seven Liberal Arts Departments, Including African Studies and Women's and Gender Studies” at EDU Ledger (formerly known as Diverse Issues in Higher Education): “Under the plan, the departments of African and African Diaspora Studies; American Studies; Mexican American and Latina/o Studies; and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies will be merged into a new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Separately, the departments of French and Italian Studies; Germanic Studies; and Slavic and Eurasian Studies will be folded into a new Department of European and Eurasian Studies. The university has also launched a curriculum review to determine which majors and minors will continue to be offered under the consolidated departments.” Also discussed at City Journal . See also “UVA Ecofeminist Course Has Students Listen to Birds, Lichen, Etc. to Understand Oppression” at College Fix : “The syllabus defines ecofeminist research as ‘any mode of inquiry guided by critical ecological feminism, the idea that women and the more-than-human world share a political fate determined by a master model that divides up the world into unequal and antagonistic dualisms.’” See also our Ask AI webpage with detailed analyses of the issues colleges and universities are currently facing. Other Articles of Interest What’s Keeping College and University Presidents Up at Night in 2026 Full article at Inside Higher Ed. What AI Can’t Give Your College Student Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. AI Is Not Replacing Learning, It’s Exposing Where Learning Was Thin to Begin With Full op-ed by U Virginia Prof. Xinyao Yi at Inside Higher Ed. To Prepare for a Future With AI, We Must Educate Differently Full op-ed by Junior Achievement USA CEO Jack Harris at DC Journal. Why Grad Students at Columbia May Go on Strike Full article at Free Press: “’They’ve singularly focused on pursuing policies that are meant to disenfranchise Jews and Israelis, as opposed to pursuing and negotiating on policies for the betterment of all student workers,’ one Columbia grad student told me." But see also “The powerful United Auto Workers won’t allow a strike on campus if the grad students’ union clings to its obsession with politics,” also at Free Press . Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Immune ‘Peacekeepers’ Teach the Body Which Foods are Safe to Eat Probing Electrical Signals to Understand Alzheimer’s Disease New Approach Could Accelerate Historical Analysis by Teaching AI to Read Documents Like Scholars Do Researchers Design 3D-Printed Materials for Fusion Reactors and Other Clean Energy Systems Engineers Improve Infrared Devices Using Century-Old Materials ********** “As scholars and educators, we question accepted notions, in order to seek the truth, and we challenge each other with ideas and opinions that may be different from our own in order to stimulate intellectual growth. Official institutional positions can stifle the free exchange of ideas that is so central to our purpose.” — Former Stanford President John Hennessy. March 9, 2026 Professors Are Inviting Dialogue; That’s Not the Same as Free Speech Editor’s note: Last week’s Newsletter had excerpts and a link to a recent study by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation saying that while a large percent of Americans remain highly skeptical about what has been taking place at America’s colleges and universities, others see it differently. The following op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams takes a closer look at the issues. Excerpts (links in the original): “I regularly teach a freshman seminar at Sarah Lawrence College. And every semester, without fail, the same scene plays out. A student lingers after class, or appears at my office door, or sends a carefully worded late-night email, sharing a view they would never dream of voicing to their peers. Sometimes it’s a defense of Israel, or abortion rights, or gun control, or simply to confide that they are not extremely liberal. Sometimes it’s skepticism about a campus orthodoxy everyone seems to take for granted. Sometimes it’s something as basic as having a different opinion about an assigned text. They tell me these things because they’re not afraid of me. They’re afraid of the room. “I thought about those students when I read the new Gallup and Lumina Foundation report, ‘The College Reality Check: What Students Experience vs. What America Believes .’ Its central message is reassuring: the critics of higher education are exaggerating. Between 64% and 74% of Democratic, Republican, and independent students say their professors encourage open dialogue. A mere 2% of all students, including just 3% of Republicans, feel they don’t belong on campus because of their political views. Nothing to see here, the report implies. Move along. “But before accepting that reassurance, it helps to know who’s offering it. The Lumina Foundation is one of the most influential funders in American higher education, with an endowment of roughly $1.4 billion and a mission organized explicitly around equity and increasing college access and graduation rates. Those are laudable goals. But they shape the questions a researcher thinks to ask and, just as importantly, the questions that never make it onto the survey. A foundation whose work depends on students trusting and enrolling in colleges is unlikely to commission a study asking whether the climate inside those colleges suppresses minority viewpoints. The report does ask whether professors create safe environments for students with minority views -- and the answers are broadly positive. But those questions measure only faculty behavior. They cannot capture whether students themselves feel free to take the social and intellectual risks that genuine dissent requires. “Scrutinize what actually is there, and the problems multiply. And FIRE’s data makes clear just how deep they go.... “The Gallup questions ask whether professors have encouraged dialogue and created safe classroom environments, but they do not measure whether students themselves feel able to take the social and intellectual risks that genuine dissent requires. Even beyond the survey’s design, there is reason to question whether a professor’s stated openness to diverse views translates into a classroom climate in which students are comfortable expressing disagreement. Harvard President Alan Garber offered a candid admission about his own institution that cuts to the heart of the problem. In rare and unusually candid remarks on the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Identity/Crisis podcast in January 2026, Garber acknowledged that Harvard ‘went wrong’ by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism has chilled free speech and debate.... [Followed by discussion of how the survey is measuring the wrong thing, what FIRE’s data actually shows, why the problem is structural and not individual, and what needs to be done to get the diagnosis right.] “Garber’s admission -- that Harvard went wrong, that faculty activism chills speech, that students won’t go toe-to-toe with a professor who has already taken sides -- is the most honest thing a university president has said about this problem in years. The Gallup report, for all its data, cannot see what Garber finally described: that the invitation to speak and the freedom to speak are not the same thing, and that on most campuses, one has been systematically undermining the other for a very long time.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at FIRE. The Ongoing Problems with Stanford’s Housing Accommodations Editor’s note: Our Newsletter dated February 9, 2026 had excerpts from an article stating that nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates now claim they are disabled and need special accommodations for their on-campus housing, test-taking and/or other matters -- a number that significantly exceeds anything that exists at any of Stanford’s peer institutions. We present below still another student op-ed and some more recent developments on the subject. The concern is that this problem largely arises from the fact that Stanford has failed to provide adequate undergraduate housing not just in recent years, but for decades, now made all the worse with the announcement that Stanford is in the process of increasing its undergraduate enrollment by 1,000 or more but with no increase in housing. All of this has, in turn, sent a strong signal to students to ignore the Fundamental Standard and do whatever is necessary to get a decent place to live. Hardly a way to teach critical and honest thinking. Possible solution: Pause any increases in the undergraduate enrollment until there is truly adequate housing, not just in numbers but also in quality. In the process, consider adopting the plan proposed years ago by former Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman where freshmen and sophomores would remain in the same dorm for their first two years and would then move into independent style housing for the remainder of their undergraduate years (on-campus apartments; housed fraternities, sororities, co-ops and other types of student-run theme houses; and single room facilities). One of the easiest ways to remedy the problem would be to re-purpose, at the start of the 2026-27 academic year, 1,000 or more on-campus living spaces for undergraduates that are currently occupied by graduate students. It’s a matter of priorities. The obligation to provide adequate campus facilities, including on-campus housing, was a high priority of Senator and Mrs. Stanford and, under the Founding Grant and related documents, falls directly upon the Trustees. In any event, this is a problem that needs a solution. Excerpts (links in the original): “My first initiative as an undergraduate senator was to run a campus-wide survey about last spring’s housing selection process, which left many students feeling confused and upset. Housing selection will never satisfy everyone, but -- with an average satisfaction score of 2.2 out of 7 -- it’s clear the 2024 process failed to clear most people’s bar. “The biggest concern of students was the palpable increase in Office of Accessible Education (OAE) assignments, which many believe are being exploited to grab the best housing. So I met with many administrators in the Stanford Housing Machine (my umbrella term for R&DE, ResEd, CoRL and the URGC), and I learned this student concern was something very real: OAE accommodations have risen by 200% in the last few years. But housing sees this as a problem beyond their control. ‘We can’t refuse any accommodations,’ they explained in our advocacy meeting, arguing that the only thing to do is raise our concerns to OAE itself. “Housing’s view was understandable: they cannot unilaterally restrict the number of accommodations [among other things, because of the requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act]. But the rest of the University also has plenty of reasons to ignore the ballooning OAE problem. Raising documentation standards could make the accommodation process harder for under-resourced students. A crackdown might also spark an all-school witch hunt for ‘fake OAEs,’ targeting students with less visible disabilities the hardest. And of course, every rejected OAE application risks non-compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.” .... [Followed by these topics: make reassignment easier without OAE, bring back data-informed housing selection, end sophomore-priority, expand the number of themed houses, and renovate-renovate-renovate.] Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate Mandla Msipa at Stanford Daily (March 4, 2025). See also this change in policy as announced last week: “Stanford Students with OAE Accommodations Blocked from Forming Roommate Groups Under New Housing Rules” at Stanford Daily (March 3, 2026) followed by “Stanford’s Housing Change Hurts Disabled Students” also at Stanford Daily (March 8, 2026) . Even though it is from June 2024, see also “Stanford’s Housing Disaster” at Stanford Daily that is referenced above (links in the original): “The disastrous housing draw this year has seen rising seniors ending up in one-room triples and quads, with dozens of rising juniors being left unassigned -- meaning that they may not have confirmed housing for months up until move-in. All the while, Stanford has actively reduced both the number and quality of available rooms by slashing availability in [Escondido Village Graduate Residences] and converting doubles -- living spaces intended to fit two people -- into triples and quads in Roble and Toyon.... This situation has led to the creation of Swapford, an unofficial dorm room marketplace where desperate students are buying, selling and trading rooms for thousands of dollars on top of existing room prices.” See also this recently posted reader comment from an alum : “The combination of a chronic housing shortage (indeed getting worse as more students are admitted to each class), housing stock which varies substantially in quality and desirability, and a complicated ‘Draw’ system with arbitrary, bureaucratically derived rules, will inevitably lead to on-going efforts by students to ‘game the system’, which will inevitably lead to the creation of even more rules and regulations by bureaucrats. It’s a completely dysfunctional situation. “Surprisingly, it has been that way for decades, class year after class year, without being remedied in a thoughtful way, and is being made a more serious problem by admitting a thousand or more additional students without adding any additional housing stock. “Not a smart way to run a railroad.” Other Articles of Interest Responding to Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Tyler VanderWeele at Public Discourse: “The culture of self-censorship, cancellation, and lack of exposure to viewpoints has adversely affected the university. The increasing ideological skew of the faculty is largely responsible. Universities need to address these issues to help restore their truth-seeking mission.” See also “Academic Freedom on the Line; the Critical Necessity of Viewpoint Diversity” by former Stanford law school dean and Prof. Emeritus (active) Paul Brest at Stanford Daily (February 10, 2026). See also “Professors Need to Diversify What They Teach; It Isn't Indoctrination, But It Is a Lack of Ideological Diversity” by Claremont Colleges professors Jon A. Shields, Yuval Avnur and Stephanie Muravchik at Persuasion (October 16, 2025): “We wondered how well professors are introducing students to the moral and political controversies that divide intellectuals and roil our democracy. Not well, as it turns out. Across each issue we found that the academic norm is to shield students from some of our most important disagreements.” Don’t Just Track Foreign Funding of U.S. Universities, Police It Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. See also “Stanford Received $2.2 billion in Foreign Gifts and Contracts Since 1986” at Stanford Daily . See also U.S. Department of Education website with interactive charts showing which foreign countries have made the highest total payments to U.S. universities (the top three are Qatar, China and Germany) and which universities received the highest total amounts (the top six are Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Cornell, Penn and Stanford). Indiana Legislation Targets Low-Earning Degrees Full article at College Fix: “An undergraduate degree is classified as having low earnings outcomes if, four years after graduation, the median earnings of its graduates do not exceed the median wages of certain high school-educated workers.” Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. How a HAI Seed Grant Helped Launch a Disease-Fighting AI Platform A Daughter’s Diagnosis Transforms a Stanford Scientist’s Career Efforts Continue to Develop a Better Alzheimer’s Drug ********** “A university is a community of scholars… not an agency of propaganda.” — Former U Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899 - 1977) March 2, 2026 Fixing Civil Discourse Starts with an Ethics Requirement Excerpt (links in the original): “Harvard is infamous for its inability to foster civil discourse among students. “Last month, Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 identified a key factor chilling speech on campus: faculty activism. As classroom conversation chills and political contentions rise, veritas -- a symbol of Harvard’s commitment to intellectual truth-seeking and integrity -- is at stake. “If Harvard is serious about its commitment to a neverending pursuit of truth, a meaningful ethics requirement is the first place to start. “The University has placed among the bottom of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s college free speech rankings for the past three years, penalized for its 'abysmal' campus speech climate, high rates of student self-censorship, and a 'yellow' light for restrictive speech policies. A report from Harvard’s Classroom Social Compact Committee even found that only 35 percent of the Class of 2024 answered 'agree' or 'strongly agree' when asked if they were comfortable expressing opposing views on controversial topics in their courses. “Surprisingly, Harvard’s response was more of a jumble of administrative buzzwords than substantive pedagogical reform. Harvard convened an Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group and established a Classroom Social Compact Committee. These administrative abstrusities have only seemed to float above the classroom spaces, with the noble aim of reshaping norms and dialogue, yet lacking the concrete strategy to achieve it. “While this top-down approach might be an effective way to signal University values to administrators, donors, and the public, these initiatives are completely divorced from the realities of the classroom.” ... Full op-ed by Harvard undergraduate Ava M. Ribaudo at Harvard Crimson. See also these two articles in our own Newsletter a week ago: “Stanford Needs More Rigorous General Education Requirements” at Stanford Daily and “We Must Do Better Than COLLEGE” at Stanford Review . FashionX Again Transforms Memorial Church into a Fashion Runway Editor’s note: Imagine staging in a Muslim mosque or a Jewish synagogue the kind of event that was held in Memorial Church this past Saturday and is described below. Also keep in mind the sacred religious images that constitute the entire interior and exterior of Memorial Church. And Stanford’s Trustees and administration believe this is in accord with the Founding Grant and/or just good taste? And that there aren’t other facilities throughout the campus that could have been and should have been used for these purposes instead of a house of worship and its altar? We also note that these concerns were raised last year by student and other groups (see "FashionX Violates Sanctity of Memorial Church " March 7, 2025) but apparently Stanford’s Dean for Religious & Spiritual Life and others again saw no problems here. We also suggest that what was allowed to happen here is contrary to this longstanding official policy statement regarding the use of Memorial Church: “The church includes a diversity of programs and assemblies in its space and primarily exists to provide opportunities for worship, reflection, spiritual practice, conversation, education, and community building related to religious, spiritual, ethical, and moral formation. Through the governance of the Stanford University Board of Trustees and guidance of the Memorial Church Advisory Board, approval for all reservations will be determined by the Event Manager under the direction of the Dean of Office for Religious & Spiritual Life.” Excerpts (link in the original): “Beneath the Romanesque arches of Memorial Church, the pews were transformed into an haute-couture runway for FashionX’s fourth annual sold-out production, ‘The Mirror Stage,’ on Feb. 28. Inspired by the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, the show explored the ‘ecstatic limit’ of self-perception through avant-garde student designs. “In front of the church, the line began forming nearly an hour before doors opened, stretching down the arcades of Main Quad.... “The show began in near-total darkness, the historic silence of Memorial Church replaced with the mechanical thrum of pulsing music. A distorted voice served as the master of ceremonies (MC), welcoming the audience in the sanctuary illuminated only by a glowing, white ‘X.’ “As the music intensified, the lighting shifted into rapid, multi-colored strobe effects -- flashing blues, purples and reds across the golden backdrop of the church’s chancel. The show emerged into what the MC described as the ‘drama of primordial jealousy,’ a reference to the complex and often competitive nature of self-perception.... “Down the runway came models in floor-length gowns: one in green with a matching veil, pink flowers cascading down and around the skirt; another in iridescent colors whose sleeves fanned out like butterfly wings. In line with the show’s theme, a strong silver theme emerged throughout, with dresses reflecting like mirrors under the stage lights. Models showed off skirts and bodices made of multicolored peacock feathers, shells sewed into fabric that clinked with each step and accessories from a glowing lotus lamp to a sword.” ... Full article at Stanford Daily. See also “Family Weekend Brings Festivity to The Farm ” and “University Leadership Emphasizes Academic Freedom at Family Weekend Panel ," both also at Stanford Daily. Students and Graduates Say College Delivers on Value and Career Preparation, Even as Public Skepticism Persists Excerpt (link in the original): “New national research released by Lumina Foundation and Gallup reveals a striking disconnect between public perceptions of higher education and the experiences of college students and graduates themselves. Findings from The College Reality Check: What Students Experience vs. What America Believes show that while students and alumni largely report strong academic quality, career preparation and value from their degrees, broader public confidence has declined in recent years, driven by concerns about cost, politicization and workforce outcomes. “In 2015, a majority of U.S. adults (57%) reported having ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in higher education. That share declined steadily over the next decade, reaching 36% in 2024, while nearly one-third (32%) reported little or no confidence. Confidence began to rebound in 2025, with 42% reporting high confidence, though nearly one in four Americans still expressed significant reservations. “‘This study makes something clear: Students and graduates know firsthand the difference college has made in their lives,’ said Courtney Brown, vice president of impact and planning at Lumina. ‘Even as public skepticism grows, experience tells a different story. They are building real skills, expanding their opportunities, and finding campuses where dialogue and belonging matter. The gap between perception and lived reality raises important questions for leaders and policymakers.’” ... Full press release at Gallup, and a PDF copy of the full report can be downloaded here . Other Articles of Interest UC Leader Prefers to Talk, Not Battle Full article at LA Times: “UC California President James Milliken says avoiding lawsuits over Trump’s funding cuts is the ‘better course.’” The War on Student Speech Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Career Education Is the Future of Learning Full op-ed at DC Journal. How the College Essay Declared War on Critical Thinking Full op-ed at James Martin Center. Colleges Face a Choice -- Try to Shape AI’s Impact on Learning, or Be Redefined by It Full article at The Conversation. Generative AI is Not Just a Tool for Learning; It Shapes How Students Think Full op-ed by Detroit College for Creative Studies Prof. James Garvey at Times Higher Education. AI, Cheating and the Illusion of Learning Full op-ed by Merrimack College Prof. Dan Sarofian-Butin at Real Clear Education. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. AI Challenges Core Assumptions in Education Stem Cell-Based Organoids Reveal Shared Genetic Pathways in Autism Engineered Immune Therapy Could Help Fight the Aging Brain Why the Brain Misunderstands Speech After Stroke ********** "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 February 23, 2026 Stanford Needs More Rigorous General Education Requirements Excerpts (links in the original): “‘The requirements serve as the nucleus around which students build their four years at Stanford.’ “This is how Stanford passionately describes the Undergraduate General Educational Requirements (Gen-Ed) on their official website, but has any student ever actually thought of them this way? The answer from this year’s frosh class is no.... “When designing Gen-Ed requirements, one must consider both the factual knowledge students must learn and the ways in which they engage with and pass on that information after graduating from Stanford. Across the board, there seems to be a lack of understanding that, just like STEM subjects, the humanities are cumulative. In the same way that one cannot hope to understand calculus without first learning arithmetic and algebra, one cannot understand, for instance, the current rise of populism without understanding the historical and political forces in preceding centuries. Without this perspective, learning about new developments lacks crucial context. The same is true for the new ethical frontiers we confront today. You might draw solutions to AI’s ethical problems with no historical context, but you would be neglecting thousands of years of moral philosophy and historical lessons on new technology that could point you in the right direction. Even if faced with novel ethical or societal problems, going back to past thinkers gives you the frameworks or tools to approach the issue. “This all sounds great in theory, but how should Gen-Ed requirements be structured to give students both a consistent set of factual knowledge and a broad set of intellectual skills? I propose three guiding principles: prioritization, standardization and rigor. First, prioritization and standardization. For many students, Gen-Ed classes are the only time they will be required to learn about subjects outside of their field of study. This begs the question: what are the essential topics that a Stanford student must know to be an educated member of society? Currently, students select courses that fulfill the different WAYS based on their interests, or more likely, what will require the least work. Instead, I propose that students be required to take a set of standardized courses that will expose them to the most fundamental subjects in the humanities and sciences. I am certainly not an expert, but a few classes that should be required are: introductory courses in philosophy, English literature, religious studies, U.S. history and civics. In STEM, students should be required to take an introductory course in statistics and a fundamental science such as physics or chemistry. The remaining units could be completed through a tailored list of courses designed to dive deeper into the subjects above or explore other foundational disciplines.” ... Full op-ed by recent Stanford alum and current master's degree student Alexander Mescher at Stanford Daily (February 16, 2026). We Must Do Better Than COLLEGE Excerpts (link in the original): “It has been almost five years since the Faculty Senate approved the COLLEGE program in May 2020, and I believe I speak for most Stanford students when I say it’s time to go back to the drawing board. “The COLLEGE program (a loose abbreviation of Civic, Liberal, and Global Education) is the latest in a long series of attempts to design a first-year general education curriculum for students at Stanford University.... “The feeling among my fellow freshmen is that the COLLEGE program amounts to, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a direct contributor to the climate of anti-intellectualism on campus. The curriculum is discontinuous and, at times, just plain nonsensical -- why, for example, are we assigned a brief excerpt from Plato's Allegory of the Cave one week and the entirety of Open , a ghost-written celebrity memoir about a tennis player, the next? Seemingly, the readings were selected to check boxes: one from the right, four from the left, and racial and gender diversity throughout. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with diversity unless it comes at the expense of substance. In my view, asking the esteemed faculty of this university to lead freshmen in discussions on a miscellany of magazine articles, blog posts, and news stories on broad themes like ‘Education and the Good Life’ and Citizenship in the 21st Century’ is an insult not only to their intelligence but to ours.... “My message to the university is this: “Please do not coddle us in the hope of coaxing us out of our shells.... We want to write essays and receive detailed feedback on how our writing can be improved. We appreciate profound ideas no matter who they come from, and we are not offended by the prospect of reading two texts written by white males in a row. We want to imbibe the sophistication we admire so much in our professors, and we want to learn what they have to teach us. Above all, we don’t want to be told how valuable a liberal education can be, we want to experience its value first-hand. And if we can’t experience it first-hand at Stanford, I’m afraid there’s nowhere on planet Earth where we can.” Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate Ben Botvinick at Stanford Review (February 5, 2025). Beyond Big Science, a Reform Agenda for American Science Excerpt (link in the original): “The academic sciences need to be rescued. “This is the premise of the National Association of Scholars' (NAS) latest report, Rescuing Science. Recovering Science as Civic Virtue , authored by NAS’s Director of Science Programs J. Scott Turner. In this report, Turner reassesses America’s 75‑year experiment with federally funded ‘Big Science,’ arguing that the system built to spark discovery has instead smothered it under bureaucracy, politics, and perverse incentives.” ... Full article at National Association of Scholars. A PDF copy of the full report can be downloaded here including a detailed analysis of the growth of indirect costs (capped at 8% prior to 1956 and now running between 50% and 90%), a return to grants based solely on scientific merit, the need to fund research separately from facilities and administration, better methods of funding, reforms in graduate student education and related issues. See also our Stanford Concerns webpage showing, among other things, the significant increases in Stanford’s own administrative staffing and costs.. Other Articles of Interest James Madison U Wants Students to Learn How to Deliberate Respectfully Full article at College Fix. More Than Half of College Students Are Lonely, and Social Media Is Making It Worse Full article at EDU Ledger (formerly known as Diverse Issues in Higher Education). Oklahoma Is Phasing Out Tenure; Will the Idea Catch On? Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. New Tool Opens Up Access to Stanford’s Vast Collections AI Sovereignty’s Definitional Dilemma Reading-specific Region Differs in the Dyslexic Brain “A brain region specialized for recognizing text is smaller or absent in kids with dyslexia. Tutoring that improves their reading partly closes the gap, a Stanford-led study found.” ********** “Despite the reforms that our institutions of higher education must embark on to ensure that we are teaching our students how to think — and not what to think — a four-year residential-college experience remains one of the most powerful human environments for cultivating human qualities.” – Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock February 16, 2026 The Critical Necessity of Viewpoint Diversity Excerpt (links in the original): “Last week, Professor Jessica Riskin argued that the concern for viewpoint diversity (VPD) is fundamentally a conservative attack on universities, which are already adequately ideologically diverse. Granted that it has been used as a conservative bludgeon, I believe that the concerns about ideological homogeneity (the lack of VPD) are nonpartisan and involve the very missions of higher education. “Why is VPD essential for a university’s missions of teaching and research? The short answer is that it tends to reduce confirmation biases, which inhibit critical inquiry and the search for truth. In John Stuart Mill’s 'On Liberty' (1859), he articulates this elegantly and extensively. “Given his general aim of defending free speech, Mill doesn’t address academic freedom as such. But here’s how VPD contributes to academic freedom. A faculty member’s right to academic freedom can be abridged both by institutions and groups of individuals. Typical institutional actors are state governments (e.g., the Florida Stop W.O.K.E. Act ), the federal government (e.g., the Trump administration’s demands on universities ) and university administrations (e.g., Texas A&M’s forbidding the teaching of materials condoning homosexual relationships). “But a faculty member’s academic freedom can also be effectively curtailed by the actions of fellow faculty members and students. This is most evident when a faculty member is, or reasonably fears being, ostracized, cancelled or doxed because of their views on academic topics. Less obviously -- but still pernicious -- being surrounded by colleagues who collectively hold views that differ from their own creates social pressures to conform and therefore to refrain from expressing contrary views in their classroom or their scholarship. This can result in self-censorship as destructive as institutional sanctions. Moreover, an ideologically homogeneous faculty will tend to hire faculty who share their beliefs, thus exacerbating the social pressure and its adverse effect on academic freedom.” ... Full op-ed by former Stanford law school dean and Prof. Emeritus (active) Paul Brest at Stanford Daily. See also paragraph 1.d. of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage regarding viewpoint diversity. Counting Vice Presidents Misses the Point Excerpts (link in the original): “I’ve spent much of my career working as a college administrator. I’ve held senior roles, carried expansive portfolios, and had titles that critics of higher education increasingly cite as evidence of ‘administrative bloat.’ I understand why those titles and the organizational charts behind them can feel alienating to faculty. They can reinforce an unhealthy sense of ‘us versus them’ on campus. “But after years inside those roles, I’ve come to believe that title inflation is not the core problem it’s often made out to be. It’s visible. It’s frustrating. And it’s easy to blame. However, focusing solely on titles risks mistaking a symptom for the disease, and in the process, leaving the real cause of administrative overload unexamined. “That’s why Austin Sarat’s recent Inside Higher Ed essay asking, 'How Many Vice Presidents Does a College Need?' [also linked in our January 12, 2026 Newsletter] resonated with me, even as I think it ultimately misdiagnoses the challenge. Sarat is right to be uneasy about what he calls the ‘vice presidentialization’ of higher education. Titles matter. Hierarchies matter. And the proliferation of vice presidents deserves scrutiny. “But the growth of administrative titles is not what is hollowing out institutional capacity or widening the divide between faculty and administrators. It is what happens when leadership repeatedly avoids the more challenging work of setting priorities and enforcing limits.... “. . . It’s not that administrators take their titles too seriously. It’s that institutions take on too many priorities without making corresponding choices about what not to do. And while many of those initiatives might be 'good,' too many of them fall outside the core scope of educating students. The result is not just administrative strain, but less institutional attention devoted to teaching and learning itself.... “Which is why the solution cannot simply be fewer vice presidents or humbler titles. It must start with presidents, boards and faculty leaders willing to exercise real leadership discipline. That means distinguishing between core academic work and aspirational initiatives. It means abandoning programs and committees as readily as launching them. And it means acknowledging an essential truth that higher education often avoids: Adding priorities without subtracting others is not strategic ambition -- it is organizational debt.... “We need to do a better job ensuring that our institutions are designed around teaching our students rather than running an ever-expanding business enterprise.” Full op-ed by former Indiana U Vice Chancellor P.J. Woolston at Inside Higher Ed. See also our Stanford Concerns webpage including charts and graphs from third parties that document the extraordinarily high number of managerial and professional staff at Stanford as compared to its peers. See also proposed solutions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage including significantly reducing Stanford's administrative bureaucracy in both size and costs and spinning off the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities if not primarily or even exclusively engaged in support of the core teaching and research of tenured members of the faculty. Other Articles of Interest Some Concerns About the Current Campus Climate Disagreement Itself Has Become Morally Legible -- Brown Prof. Emeritus Glenn Loury critiques self-censorship at Stanford Daily : "Argumentation becomes ritual, compromise becomes betrayal. This culminates in what can be described as the collapse of common knowledge.” No Stanford Kids -- They’re Cowards at Stanford Review : " Stanford mythology holds that students built remarkable things and changed the world not because they were enticed by a McKinsey title, a Google badge, or a six-figure salary, but because they had conviction. They didn’t try to look normal. They threw parties that felt (or actually were) illegal. They said things that made people mad and didn’t immediately apologize.... That Stanford had a distinct and different flavor: courage.” Two Colleges, Two Different Responses to the Heckler’s Veto Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. Stanford Student Startup Pairs 5,000 Singles and Has Taken Over the Campus Full article at WSJ. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. First-Ever Map of Rare Earthquakes Enhances Preparedness Synthetic Biology Boosts Plant Defenses Against Pests How Math Learning Disabilities Affect Problem-Solving ********** “Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.” — Theodore Roosevelt February 9, 2026 Recent Reader Comments We have added to our Reader Comments webpage some recent submissions regarding the high percent of Stanford students claiming disabilities in order get housing and other preferences (see also the new op-ed on this topic, directly below) as well as reader comments with differing viewpoints about diversity, equity and inclusion. Nearly 40% of Stanford Undergraduates Claim They’re Disabled; I’m One of Them Editor’s note: We included a link to a similar article several weeks ago but believe the following first-person account presents the issues even more dramatically. We further note that students, faculty and staff are typically put through hours of mandatory training each year about various topics (sexual harassment, security, etc.), so how is it that students so freely engage in abuses like this and the student services staff and senior administration haven't addressed the problem? Including removing the main cause of this widespread fraud by building more and better undergraduate housing before, of all things, further increasing the undergraduate enrollment by an additional 1,000 or more but without addressing this long-existing lack of adequate housing? We also respectfully note that, per Stanford’s Founding Grant, it is among the specifically enumerated obligations of the Trustees to determine “the time when buildings are needed, and of the time and manner of their construction, and of the time and manner of making additions thereto” and that, per Mrs. Stanford’s subsequent directives to the Trustees, “it is desirable so far as may be [possible] that the faculty and students should reside on the University grounds.” It likewise is a primary obligation of all directors and trustees to protect the reputations of the entities which they oversee. All of these obligations appear to be at stake here. Excerpts : “In 2023, one month into my freshman year at Stanford University, an upperclassman was showing me her dorm room -- a prized single in one of the nicest buildings on campus. As she took me around her space, which included a private bathroom, a walk-in shower and a great view of Hoover Tower, she casually mentioned that she had lived in a single all four years she had attended Stanford. “I was surprised. Most people don’t get the privilege of a single room until they reach their senior year. “That’s when my friend gave me a tip: Stanford had granted her ‘a disability accommodation’. She, of course, didn’t have a disability. She knew it. I knew it. But she had figured out early what most Stanford students eventually learn: the Office of Accessible Education will give students a single room, extra time on tests and even exemptions from academic requirements if they qualify as ‘disabled’. “Everyone was doing it. I could do it, too, if I just knew how to ask.... I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant.... “That’s why I decided to claim my legitimate illness -- endometriosis -- as a disability at Stanford. It is a painful condition in which cells from the uterus grow outside the womb. I’m often doubled over in agony from the problem, for which there is no known cure, so I decided to ask for a single room in a campus dorm where I could endure those moments in private. “The application process was very easy. I registered my condition on the Stanford Office of Accessible Education website and made an appointment to meet an adviser later that week. The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students. “As I explained my diagnosis and symptoms over Zoom to one woman, she listened, nodded sympathetically, related my problems to her own life and asked a few basic questions. Within 30 minutes, I was registered as a student with a disability, entitled to more accommodations than I asked for. “In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes. I was met with so little skepticism or questioning, I probably didn’t even need a doctor’s note to get these exemptions. Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for.... “Another student told me that special ‘accommodations are so prevalent that they effectively only punish the honest’. Academic accommodations, they added, help ‘students get ahead … which puts a huge proportion of the class on an unfair playing ground’. “The gaming even extends to our meals. Stanford requires most undergraduates living on campus to purchase a meal plan, which costs $7,944 for the 2025-26 academic year. But students can get exempted if they claim a religious dietary restriction that the college kitchens cannot accommodate. “And so, some students I know claim to be devout members of the Jain faith, which rejects any food that may cause harm to all living creatures -- including small insects and root vegetables. The students I know who claim to be Jain (but aren’t) spend their meal money at Whole Foods instead and enjoy freshly made salads and other yummy dishes, while the rest of us are stuck with college meals, like burgers made partly from 'mushroom mix'.”... Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate Elsa Johnson at The Times of London. See also “Stanford Students Fake Jain Beliefs to Dodge Mandatory Meal Plan” at India Today; “Getting Better Dorm Rooms and Meals at Stanford” at College Fix ; “Gaming the System,” a 9-minute video at The Hill; and a followup op-ed at The Times of London by Ms. Johnson about reactions to her initial article. See also an expansive comment from an alum about these issues at our Reader Comments webpage, including: “Stanford is teaching its students how to game the system for their own personal betterment rather than teaching ethical behavior and instilling in students how to live by an ethical code of conduct.” This reader comment also identifies one of the core reasons for this widespread cheating: the long-existing lack of adequate undergraduate housing. The Next Campus Battle After Free Speech -- Viewpoint Diversity at America’s Elite Universities Excerpts (most links in the original): “The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of free speech and academic freedom on university campuses, largely in response to the protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. There has been important progress during this period that bolsters awareness of the importance of free speech and academic freedom principles. For example, in the last year, many university leaders, including the Presidents of Princeton, Stanford and Cornell, have given speeches and undertaken initiatives to promote open inquiry and academic freedom on their campuses. However, progress on these core values will mean little if there is not a major effort to address a pressing long-term and deeply embedded problem -- the almost total lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty at many universities. “Our Princeton alumni group, Princetonians for Free Speech , has as its mission the promotion of three core values -- free speech, open discourse, and viewpoint diversity. This is a typical mission statement for the more than thirty alumni free speech groups [including Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking ] . With all such groups, most of the focus has been on the first two values. Until recently, this has also been true for leading national groups active in this area, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) , which have played critical roles in trying to reform our universities. An exception is Heterodox Academy (HxA) , which is putting important focus on faculty viewpoint diversity. “If universities are truly to live up to their purpose in society, the lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty must be addressed. (There is also a real problem with viewpoint diversity among university administrators, but this article will focus on faculty.) In a recent HxA article , President John Tomasi stated the situation succinctly: “In today’s changing campus climate, supporting free expression and respectful discussion have (thankfully) become fashionable, but viewpoint diversity remains a third rail of university life.” “Indeed, without viewpoint diversity, the values of free speech and open discourse are of limited importance. If everybody on a campus believes pretty much the same thing, there is not much learning or advancement of knowledge through open inquiry and debate.” ... [Followed by discussion of specific numbers, the role for universities in society, the growth of civics centers at some universities, reform from within the faculty, banning diversity statements, the need to recognize that there is a problem, the need for action by senior administrators, the need for support from trustees, how to measure progress, faculty should not be the sole gate keepers, alumni need to engage, and the importance of how prospective students and parents evaluate universities.] Full op-ed by Princeton and Stanford alum Ed Yingling and Princeton alum Leslie Spencer at Princetonians for Free Speech. See also paragraph 1.d. of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage: “Viewpoint diversity is critical to the university’s academic mission in both teaching and research. Accordingly, all decisions regarding the hiring, retention and promotion of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff shall follow the principles of the Shils Report . In any recruitments and decisions to make offers, schools, departments and other academic units shall assure that the pools of candidates reflect viewpoint diversity. This does not mean partisan diversity but rather a diversity of thinking with respect to the substantive areas of the relevant academic unit. Among other things, academic units that consider societal issues shall make special efforts to recruit and retain faculty who may have different viewpoints than the majority of the faculty and have the academic skills to present their alternative viewpoints. The President, Provost and Advisory Board shall take these principles into account in their own decision-making with respect to the hiring, retention and promotion of members of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff.” Universities Need a New Defense “We should cringe when we hear anyone, including those on the inside, speak about the university as a business.” Excerpts: “The American university remains the standard for the world. Some of the most talented individuals from around the globe spend their lives as professors on American campuses working to discover new knowledge and introduce the next generation to accomplishments of the human mind. “But this moment has brought severe and unprecedented challenges to its continued viability -- indeed, to its very existence. The most immediate threats come, of course, from our own federal government.... “We need nothing less than a new conception of the role of the university in a free society. The traditional arguments for why we should value universities -- that they advance civilization, that they are an engine of economic and social growth, that they are a competitive advantage for the nation in the world, and that they educate our young and prepare our citizens and attempt to equalize the opportunities available to them -- are valid.... “The simple fact is that leaders at every level, from faculty members to deans to presidents to trustees and alumni, must focus now on building this sense of mission. We must express it over and over again, taking every opportunity to explain and affirm it in as much detail as possible. This idea cannot be treated as something that everyone will grasp on their own or will naturally intuit. Like the modern meaning of the First Amendment, the idea of the freedom of the university is not self-evident, and the latter is certainly not part of the general knowledge of the faculty, students, and the public. We must never be shy about characterizing the university as one of the key means of realizing the human need to know, to understand, and to search for truth. It must be repeated endlessly and with all the infinite variations that will come over time.” ... Full op-ed by former president of Michigan and then of Columbia Lee Bollinger at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also “Harvard Prof. Randall Kennedy Is Afraid and He Thinks You Should Be Too” at Chronicle of Higher Education . See also our Stanford Concerns and our Back to Basics at Stanford webpages. When Speech No Longer Seems Sufficient Excerpt : “I walked into my politics classroom at Sarah Lawrence last week, ready to teach a lesson about civic protest. The prompt was Minneapolis, where ICE’s Operation Metro Surge has sparked mass protests, a general strike, and violent confrontations between demonstrators and federal agents. "I planned to cover basics: citizens can record police activity, protests must remain nonviolent, participants should comply with lawful orders. My students had other ideas. “‘What are we supposed to do?’ one asked. ‘Hold up signs and chant while people are being shot in the street?’ “Another jumped in: ‘You’re asking us to play by rules that only we follow.’ “They cited the Black Panthers. They invoked Stonewall. They argued that throughout American history, violence (or the credible threat of it) has driven social change. Several insisted that armed citizens confronting ICE would accomplish what peaceful protest could not. “These weren’t fringe voices. This was classroom consensus. “I study campus culture and have watched these attitudes develop for years in the data. But data is abstract. Percentages don’t argue back. What shook me was hearing my own students, students I know and have taught for months, articulate these views with moral certainty. The numbers had names now.” ... [Followed by discussion of data, in defense of fiery words, the partisan surprise, if free speech only matters when convenient it isn’t free at all, the historical debate, and what this means now and in the longer term.] Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at FIRE. Other Articles of Interest What’s Missing on Campus? Men Full op-ed at Real Clear Education as reproduced from Boston Globe. See also “The Missing Men of UNC” at James Martin Center . Why Your University Has So Many Administrators Full op-ed by Vanderbilt Chancellor Emeritus Nicholas S. Zeppos at Chronicle of Higher Education: “Great teaching is expensive, but back-office functions should be getting cheaper. Why aren’t they?” See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. What Keeps Higher Ed Up at Night Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education: “A University of Wyoming professor says she used to walk into the classroom on the first day of the semester ‘and wonder, which one of these minds will I get to watch bloom?’ But after watching colleagues get pilloried for comments that were recorded in class and circulated online, ‘now my first thought is, which one of these students is going to get me fired?’” Grading Is Hard, and Grade-Inflation Makes It Worthless Full article at The Hill. See also “Professors Say Gen Z Students Can’t Read, Forcing Colleges to Lower Academic Standards” at Campus Reform . The Activist Veto -- How Identity Politics Restricts Scientific Inquiry Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars: “Scientific inquiry has suffered another blow amidst the ongoing science crisis and loss of public trust. The New York Times revealed that genetic data from over 20,000 U.S. children, gathered over the last decade, has been ‘misused’ for ‘race science’....” Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Light-Based Platform Sets the Stage for Quantum Supercomputers Aging Brains Pile Up Damaged Proteins New Chip-Sized Optical Amplifier Can Intensify Light 100 Times ********** “A university's freedom must be the freedom of its members, faculty and students to think and speak for themselves. A university must not have dominant ways of thinking.... No university can thrive unless each member is accepted as an autonomous individual and can speak and will be listened to without regard to labels and stereotypes." -- Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper February 2, 2026 Is a Four-Year Degree Worth It? Excerpts : . . . . “American higher education has a trust problem. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise, and it won’t solve itself. In 2026 I’d like to see colleges and universities across the country take steps to restore trust. As president of Dartmouth College, I’m committed to this goal, and how to restore public confidence in higher education animates conversations among my presidential peers. “Assuming that most Americans value our mission is a recipe for irrelevance and decline. We must demonstrate to students and families -- and to the broader public -- that we’ve heard their criticisms and will address them. I see five areas where we can build back trust. [Followed by discussion of these five points: Make college affordable The return on investment matters Re-center higher education on learning rather than political posturing Emphasize equal opportunity, not equal outcomes Testing is important] “Next month, I’ll join other university presidents at a summit in Washington hosted by the Association of American Universities to continue the conversation about how universities can take responsibility and be held accountable for our actions. I hope we’ll move beyond defensiveness and talk of federal compacts and instead take action. “We should leave the table having made specific commitments. We won’t agree on everything. One size won’t fit all. But we must agree that the status quo is untenable. If we’re willing to reform ourselves -- to listen, change and recommit to our core mission -- we can again be a trusted engine of the American dream, scientific breakthroughs and the global economy. This work can’t wait. It starts now, with us.” Full op-ed by Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at WSJ. See also our long-existing webpages “Stanford Concerns -- Warning Signs in the Numbers ” and “Back to Basics at Stanford .” Fixing DEI's Damage to Academic Science Could Take a Generation Editor’s note: In our view, diversity, equality of opportunity and inclusion have always been important elements for teaching and research and, at least in recent decades, already widely existed at U.S. colleges and universities nationwide, including at Stanford. Frankly, it's hard to find places that are more diverse, supportive of equal opportunity and inclusive than any of our contemporary U.S. campuses. Rather, the concerns have been the huge and costly bureaucracies that were created in recent years (see the charts re Stanford and other major universities at our Stanford Concerns webpage) and which in turn fostered what have increasingly appeared to be anti-intellectual policies and activities on our campuses. We don’t necessarily support the solutions proposed in the following article, but we present these excerpts to help focus on the possible problems and urge readers to consider these and other possible solutions. Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “The National Association of Scholars (NAS) just spent several years examining how deeply embedded DEI ideology has become in undergraduate and graduate science education and research. As part of this effort, we conducted forensic case studies of the growth of DEI ideology in three of America’s top institutions of science and technology: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). These case studies show in detail how identity politics took over institutions that had built stellar reputations on competence, ingenuity, and intellectual merit. The message is clear: DEI has had a profoundly corrosive effect on academic science. Keep this in mind the next time someone tells you to ‘follow the science.’ ... “Both for the long-term goal of reforming science, and for the short-term goal of stopping DEI’s corruption of American science, federal science funding should be reformed to remove taxpayer dollars as much as possible from university science, and universities as much as possible from scientific research. Possible solutions include: Legislation (following up on existing executive orders) to limit research grants’ indirect costs to universities to 10% of the total. Elimination of government policies that support the ‘total cost reimbursement’ model of supporting academic research. The creation of legislative support for Independent Science Faculties, so that government monies can go to scientists independent of universities. The redirection of federal grant money wherever possible to intramural research and to private industry research, so as to minimize the involvement of universities. The broadening of the model of portable funding both for graduate students and for faculty research, so as to reduce the lock hold of universities on scientific research. “These reforms would bring with them, as a corollary, the division of scientists into a dedicated research track and into an academic track focused on teaching students. The argument for giving students the possibility to undertake research with leading scientists is strong -- but the unfortunate consequence has been that a great many science professors have abandoned actual science education and left it to ill-trained graduate students. America would benefit from a reorientation of its university science education toward dedicated science teaching, with professors devoted to classroom instruction rather than to securing government grants.” ... Full op-ed at Real Clear Science. See also Stanford's renamed Office of Inclusion, Community and Integrative Learning with an estimated 70 or more total staff, including the Eight Centers for Equity and Community Leadership , plus still more people with similar full-time and part-time responsibilities in individual schools and departments. The Age of Interdisciplinary Slop Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “Seven years ago, I argued in these pages that ‘interdisciplinarity,’ originally a way of forging connections between well-established modes of inquiry, had degraded into a slogan weaponized by administrations to run universities like corporations. What I was observing was a new language taken from business schools and Silicon Valley that emphasized innovation, efficiency, and relevance, whether to solve the world’s problems or create marketable skills. That language took aim at the expertise and special methods of individual disciplines, representing them as so many silos that should be broken down to facilitate the flow of information across a flexible workplace. “I concluded by defending a pluralist university, one that values genuine interdisciplinary collaboration while preserving the disciplinary integrity from which it occurs. Academic disciplines are not arbitrary bureaucratic units, but historically developed forms of judgment tailored to distinct objects of study. Keeping them is not a retreat into tradition but a necessary condition for intellectual resistance in an era increasingly dominated by managerial logics.... “. . . In its heyday, the jargon of interdisciplinarity was not merely a managerial device but a utopian promise.... That confidence has evaporated, even as the vocabulary remains. Today the jargon lingers on in a kind of zombie state: animated, repetitive, and oddly untethered from belief. Administrators still speak of ‘flexibility,’ ‘dynamism,’ and ‘future orientation,’ but no longer with the conviction that these words name an educational transformation anyone actually expects to arrive.... “What remains, then, is interdisciplinarity as slop: a residue of once corrosively ambitious ideas, endlessly reheated to justify mergers, eliminations, and the hollowing out of intellectual life. No one seriously imagines that folding English into ‘Human Narratives and Creative Expressions’ will produce Davidson’s world of empowered learners and creative problem-solvers. The jargon persists not because it convinces but because it obscures, masking loss with abstraction and austerity with euphemism. The problem today is no longer that the jargon of interdisciplinarity promises too much, but that it promises nothing at all while continuing to do real damage to the disciplines that once gave the university its purpose and its authority.” ... Full op-ed by Yale Prof. Jonathan Kramnick at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also “How Politicized Philanthropy Is Corrupting Charity” in our January 19, 2026 Newsletter and where we questioned the elimination of school and department names that are based on well-established academic disciplines and the substitution instead of whatever is a currently desired political or social outcome. For example Stanford’s long-existing School of Earth Sciences is now the Doerr School of Sustainability -- an area of potential inquiry, but does that mean the faculty here are now professors of sustainability? And if not that, what are they professors of? As we also noted in our prior Newsletter, “once you establish a desired outcome in an entity’s name or its foundational documents, how do you then foster viewpoint diversity within the entity? And what happens when society's priorities change over time?” Other Articles of Interest An Ancient Answer to AI-Generated Writing -- Go Back to Speaking Full op-ed by Brown U Prof. Stephen Kidd at Inside Higher Ed. Embedding AI in the Curriculum Full interview of UNC Vice Provost Jeffrey Bardzell at James Martin Center. See also “90% of College Faculty Believe AI Is Dumbing Down Students’ Critical Thinking Abilities” at NY Post . COVID's Long Shadow Looms Over a New Generation of College Students Full article at SF Gate. Rutgers Athletics Has Lost $516.9 Million Since Joining the Big Ten in 2014-15 Full article at The Comeback. See also “College Athletics Is Breaking Universities” at Minding the Campus . Editor’s note: Stanford has proved for decades that there are college students who can simultaneously excel in both their academic work and their athletic specialties, including at Stanford. We are presenting these two articles not because we oppose college athletics (quite the contrary) but rather to remind readers of the serious issues now facing Stanford and other comparable schools. How a Few Foundations Shape Academic Culture Full op-ed at Future of the American University. The Pace Is Relentless -- How College Leaders Are Adapting to an Increasingly Hectic Job Full article at Higher Ed Dive. Can Tenure Endure? Full article at Minding the Campus. See also “Tenure Under Threat” at Inside Higher Ed . Stanford Settles Lawsuit with Family of Katie Meyer Full article at Stanford Daily. Yale Will Go Tuition-Free for Families Making Up to $200,000 Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Thomas Sowell Discusses Modern Education (video) Full interview of Hoover Senior Fellow Emeritus Thomas Sowell at YouTube (1 hour, 11 minutes, and with discussion of universities starting at the 33-minute mark). Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. The Face Scars Less Than the Body, and a Stanford Medicine Study Unravels Why New Atlas of Brain Proteins Could Help Researchers Studying Neurological Disease Even Small Amounts of Online Math Practice Can Improve Skills ********** "By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true.” – Albert Einstein January 26, 2026 The Power of Saying ‘I Don't Know’ Excerpts (links in the original): “One of the most important intellectual skills a student can learn is also one of the first we train them out of: the ability to say, plainly and without embarrassment, I don't know. “In education today, ‘I don't know’ is often treated as a failure -- a sign of weakness, disengagement, or insufficient preparation. “From a remarkably young age, students learn that uncertainty is penalized. We test four- and five-year-olds. We score confidence. We reward quick answers, fluent guesses, and verbal assertiveness. Hesitation is read as a deficiency. Silence is suspect. Studies of early assessment environments show that children quickly learn to associate speed and certainty with approval, even when accuracy suffers.... “This is backwards. “Saying I don't know is not an intellectual weakness. It is intellectual honesty. And in many cases, it is a marker of higher-order thinking. Cognitive psychologists have long shown that recognizing the limits of one's knowledge -- what in academic terms is called metacognition -- is strongly associated with deeper learning, better problem-solving, and long-term academic success. Students who can accurately judge what they do and do not understand consistently outperform peers who express high confidence but poor calibration. “To recognize what you do not know requires judgment. It requires self-awareness. It reflects humility before complexity and an openness to learning rather than performance. In advanced fields -- from science and medicine to philosophy and engineering -- I don't know is often the beginning of real inquiry, not its end. Expertise, research shows , is defined less by constant certainty than by the ability to slow down, reassess, and revise in the face of incomplete information.” ... Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. American Studies Can’t Stand Its Subject Excerpts: . . . . “On the one hand, America’s is a story of greatness: The U.S. is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. Its founders created what is now the world’s longest-lasting liberal democratic constitution. The Declaration of Independence put forth revolutionary ideas about human freedom and equality that ushered in a new era for the world. At the same time, the American experience is complicated. Our history includes the mistreatment of Native Americans, slavery and Jim Crow, and high levels of economic inequality that persist to this day. “Yet we found only one part of this narrative presented in most of almost 100 articles we examined from over a three-year period in American Quarterly, the flagship journal of the American Studies Association. Published by Johns Hopkins University, it’s widely considered the country’s premier journal of American studies. “The journal’s scholarship paints a one-sided and unrelentingly negative portrait of the U.S. We found that 80% of articles published between 2022 and 2024 were critical of America, 20% were neutral, and none were positive. Of the 96 articles we examined, our research identified 77 as critical, focused on American racism, imperialism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and transphobia. Some articles went to absurd lengths to identify sins. One essay posited that thermodynamics -- the science dealing with the relationship between energy, heat, work and temperature -- is ‘an abstract settler-capitalist theory that influenced the plunder of Indigenous lands and lives.’... “Academics will point out that they’re not running for office. Their commitment is to writing what is true, not what is popular. But on that measure, American Quarterly is a failure. The cartoonish picture of America found in its pages constitutes educational malpractice.” Full op-ed at WSJ. Meantime, click here for a full listing of courses currently offered by Stanford’s history department and where these are the only course groupings (clusters) considered relevant by the department’s own search engine: Activism, Public History, and Service Economics/Political Economy Environment, Science, Medicine, and Technology Gender and Sexuality Global Affairs/International Relations Law and Public Policy Race and Ethnicity Religion and Intellectual History And without even a passing mention of American History and/or the History of Western Civilization. 97.6% of the Money Yale Faculty Members Gave to Political Groups Last Year Went to Democrats Editor’s note: The concern isn’t whether someone is a Democrat, Republican, independent or something else politically. It’s to what extent this obviously skewed percentage reflects other types of systemic biases as to who is recruited, hired and promoted on the faculties of major universities, and not just at Yale. Excerpts : “In 2025, Yale professors made 1,099 donations to federal political campaigns and partisan groups reflected in fundraising disclosures. Not one of the recipients was Republican. “The [Yale Daily News] analyzed data from more than 7,000 Federal Election Commission filings from 2025 for which the employer was listed as Yale. Of 1,099 filings that included ‘professor’ in their occupation, 97.6 percent of the donations went to Democrats, while the remaining 2.4 percent went to independent candidates or groups. “This data is consistent with conservative criticism that university professors are not representative of the country’s political spread -- one rationale used by the Trump administration for its threats to universities’ funding in the past year.... “Political science professor Steven Smith said in a phone interview that the overwhelming support for the Democratic Party among faculty is ‘characteristic’ of standard demographic trends. “‘That’s old news,’ he said. ‘That’s no surprise. It’s true, generally across the culture, not just in universities, on the whole, in the country, educated people vote Democrat.’ “But Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis said in a Monday interview with the News that the vast majority of professors teach subjects, such as physics, in which political views are minimally relevant. Even in classes where politics is more relevant, he noted, professors want students to understand various perspectives of subject matter, and he doesn’t think the professors’ party affiliation affects that goal.” ... Full article at Yale Daily News. This is a followup article to one from College Fix that was linked in our December 22, 2025 Newsletter and that provided statistics for specific departments at Yale. See also Buckley Institute reports on this same subject dated December 1, 2025 and September 23, 2024 . Lawmakers Zero In on the NCAA and the Economics of College Sports Excerpts (links in the original): “An effort to curb the big business of college sports is gaining steam on Capitol Hill, where a growing number of lawmakers in both parties are outraged at the NCAA and signaling intervention from Congress on athlete compensation and revenue sharing is inevitable. “[Last week’s] college football national championship game served as a marquee symbol of the profitability of the current system for college football.... “’We have way too many gaps in the process. I’m all for the players making money, but there’s got to be some rules that play into it,’ said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), was a college football head coach for 21 years and won the 2004 national Coach of The Year award at Auburn before seeking public office. “The NCAA should have been running it the right way [in prior years], giving money to players out of revenue sharing. So now we’re in a spot where there’s no rules and it’s pretty much out of control,’ he said." ... Full article at The Hill. Other Articles of Interest Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Slips Full article at NY Times: “Six prominent American schools that would have been in the top 10 in the first decade of the 2000’s -- the University of Michigan, the University of California, Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University -- are producing more research than they did two decades ago, according to the Leiden tallies. But production by the Chinese schools has risen far more.” Up to 25% of U.S. Colleges May Close Soon, Brandeis President Warns Full article at College Fix: "Levine is working on the Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts, aiming to revamp the curriculum, enhance career readiness, and implement competency-based assessments." Cuts to the Liberal Arts Will Backfire Full article at American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). Women Far Outnumber Men in Law School, Med School, Vet School and Other Professional Programs Full article at Hechinger Report. Even MBAs From Top Business Schools Are Struggling to Get Hired Full article at WSJ. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. ASSU Town Hall Solicits Input on Fun, Housing (Stanford Daily) Empowering Users to Discern Fact from Fiction in the Age of AI Study Reveals Promising Diet for Managing Crohn’s Disease New Allergen-free Dining Supports Safer Meals for Stanford Students ********** A generation which ignores history has no past, and no future." -- Robert Heinlein January 19, 2026 Economic and Workforce Development Tops State Higher Education Priorities for 2026 Excerpt (link in the original): “State higher education leaders have identified economic and workforce development as their top policy priority for 2026, with nearly all respondents calling the issue critically important amid federal policy changes and budget pressures, according to a new survey released Tuesday. “The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association's annual priorities report shows 97% of state higher education chief executives rated economic and workforce development as important or very important -- the highest ranking for any issue in the survey's history, with an average score of 4.77 on a five-point scale.” ... Full article at the EDU Ledger, formerly Diverse Issues in Higher Education. See also “How Oregon’s Top Higher Ed Board Wants to Solve University Deficits” at Higher Ed Dive : “Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission last week approved a suite of policy recommendations meant to increase efficiency at the state’s seven public universities. If enacted, institutions would see regular audits of academic programs and could face mergers.” How Politicized Philanthropy Is Corrupting Charity (and our universities, too?) Excerpts (link added): . . . . . “The shift toward politicized ‘charity’ surged in 2020 when the Black Lives Matter Foundation scooped up a gush of mogul, corporate, and foundation gifts. These were offered without any accountability, and multiple BLM officials soon misdirected millions, resulting in a flurry of fraud indictments.... “After wildfires burned several Los Angeles neighborhoods in early 2025, the FireAid charity raised more than $100 million to help victims. The Annenberg Foundation, an established national philanthropy, was enlisted to administer the funds. But foundation staff ended up giving almost none of the cash to actual fire victims. Instead, grants were showered on ‘social justice’ nonprofits like FreeForm, the Alliance for a Better Community, and the California Native Vote Project. “So: The charitable impulse can be misused and manipulated, and it’s absolutely appropriate for regulators to react when this happens. Charities are given tax and legal protections on the grounds that they are truthful and earnest, that they build up citizens and bolster society. Their donations are not supposed to go to political activism, personal enrichment, or violence. If charitable gifts are being exploited in this way, there must be a law-enforcement response. In my new book Sweet Charity – Why Private Giving Is So Important to America I suggest some starting points: The foreign philanthropy that has politicized American charities should be cut off immediately. (The five largest foreign donors recently funneled almost $2 billion into advocacy by U.S. nonprofits.) Many 501(c)(3) charities have involved themselves in ‘voter registration’ efforts that quickly veer into politicking. Likewise, 501(c)(3)'s should not promote ballot initiatives, as some currently do. 501(c)(3)’s shouldn’t be allowed to take donations and re-grant them to politically involved 501(c)(4). The tax-law language which says that 501(c)(4)’s can get involved in politics so long as it is not their ‘primary activity’ should be tightened. Congress should place time limits on foundations. The longer a foundation lingers as a bureaucracy, the likelier it is to be taken over by politicized staffers. Foundations should be expected to distribute 10-12% of their endowment every year, instead of today’s 5%, so they don’t coast as forever-employers of social activists with no fealty to the founding donor. “But here’s a caution light: While there’s no denying we’ve seen an uptick in politicized philanthropy in recent years, there is a crucial larger reality that legislators who address this issue must not lose sight of: Partisan givers and charities are only a tiny slice of American philanthropy. Fully 74% of the money donated in America is given by individuals, not foundations or corporations. And the bulk of that comes from ordinary citizens, at an annual rate of about $3,000 per household. That’s middle America in action, not culture corruption by politicized billionaires or corporations. This civic engagement by generous everyday people must be protected. “Private giving -- at our current rate of around $600 billion every year -- is the goose that lays golden eggs for America. Personal donations allow our civil society to solve problems and strengthen the U.S. in millions of ways, mostly out of sight and behind the scenes, but with powerful results. Charitable action outside the control of government has been one of the deepest secrets of our nation’s success. “Philanthropy is now being assailed by a mix of progressive projectors of a ‘billionaire boys’ club’ and Trumpers disturbed by flares of ideological charity. We can stanch partisan abuses and corral checkbook manipulators of our culture. But we must do so without crimping one of America’s quintessential superpowers.” Full op-ed at Real Clear Politics. [Editor’s note: If there are concerns about major charities having become politicized, don’t those same concerns apply to today’s colleges and universities? Including where at least some if not most of Stanford’s 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities have donor-specified advocacy and outcomes in their names and missions, as opposed to entities that are engaged primarily if not exclusively in truly independent research, teaching and scholarship? Including when an entire school is no longer named for academic disciplines that have long existed and are respected worldwide (“earth sciences”) but is renamed instead for a desired societal outcome, sustainability? And once you establish a desired outcome in an entity’s name or its foundational documents, how do you then foster viewpoint diversity within the entity? And what happens when society's priorities change over time? To paraphrase Pogo, perhaps Stanford’s faculty leaders, administrators and current and former trustees who are trying to reestablish viewpoint diversity and a focus on independent scholarship should consider the possibility that “We have met the source of the problem, and it was us. Because if not us, then who?”] To Combat Academic Fraud, Scholars Confront a Hallowed Tradition Excerpts (links in the original): “The driving ethos of academia, ‘publish or perish,’ is fighting for its life. “The requirement that scholars constantly publish or face academic ruin has been considered the primary engine of scientific discovery for decades. But a growing movement of universities and researchers is trying to banish the practice to the archives, saying it has perverted the pursuit of knowledge and eroded the public’s trust in science. “Reformers at top universities in Europe and the U.S., including Cambridge, Sorbonne, and UC Berkeley, say this traditional system of advancement has led to an explosion in the growth of low-quality research , with little meaningful impact on academic fields or society. It has also sparked the spread of fraudulent research, as ‘paper mills ’ churn out fake articles for sale to academics seeking to pad their CVs. “To weaken the ‘publish or perish’ stranglehold on universities, hundreds of research institutions are reforming the incentive system that shapes academic careers. It currently rewards scholars for frequently winning grants and publishing papers, with extra points for landing in the most esteemed, high-impact journals, even when the articles are not themselves influential.... “The Nature family is highly selective, attracting more than 50,000 scholarly submissions a year and publishing less than 10% of them. Nature’s tendency to report on major advances in many fields, famously illustrated by the Watson and Crick paper on DNA structure, has helped give the 157-year-old journal its magisterial reputation. “But the fact that prestigious journals publish important articles doesn’t mean everything they run is noteworthy....[Journal Impact Factor] is also easy to manipulate: Authors are sometimes encouraged to include citations to articles in the same journal that they are publishing in to raise the JIF score.... “While the U.K. is a success story for reformers, they have yet to deeply penetrate the biggest research system of all -- the U.S. -- where only a handful of major research institutions have joined the movement. Unlike in Europe, U.S. universities don’t face federal funding pressure from above to transform how they reward scientists. Under the Trump administration, federal agencies are mainly focused on ending what they deem, sometimes wrongly, as DEI-related research, and reducing overhead fees that add up to 70% to the cost of research grants.... “Nonprofits like the Pew Charitable Trusts are also joining the movement. Pew is working with a group of philanthropic and public funders who want their grants to produce a bigger impact in healthcare, education, and other areas. To engage researchers in the effort, Pew has convened a group of 18 university leaders , including those at Brown, Duke, and UC Berkeley , who are redesigning their reward systems to encourage the public interest research that the funders seek....” Full article at Real Clear Investigations. Other Articles of Interest Athletics Makes List of Biggest Risks for Colleges Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Vanderbilt Is Opening a Campus in San Francisco in 2027 Full article at USA Today. See also SF Gate and WSJ . Court Vindicates Professor Investigated for Parodying University’s Land Acknowledgment Full article at FIRE. Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Researchers and Air Force Partner to Test AI Copilots Stanford’s Farm Goes Fully Electric Flu Season Survival Tips ********** "Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?" — Martin Luther King, Jr. January 12, 2026 Recent Reader Comments [Slightly edited for language, specific names, redundancies, etc.] Comment Number One For a considerable amount of time, we have been reading articles about the administrative bloat affecting Stanford. Is there a plan to start trimming the excess? I should think the Board of Trustees would be actively working with President Levin to trim administrators and hire more professors. Perhaps this condition is much like an out-of-control fungus immune to corrective action? Comment Number Two My impression is that Stanford values the professional schools much more highly than the undergraduate schools. I do not believe they would dare impose these radical changes [increase in undergraduate enrollment] on the professional schools for fear of downgrading their reputations, rankings, etc. Same reason (in my humble opinion) the institution has permitted a serious housing shortage for undergrads for several decades. The undergraduate experience is not a high priority with Stanford’s leaders relative to other concerns. That has been my observation for many years, and expanding the undergrad population without any corresponding increases in faculty, housing, classes, etc. underlines that observation. The Class of 2029 has at least 250 more students than classes just a few years ago. So they have already effectively “announced” a 1,000 person or greater increase (over four class years) of the undergraduate enrollment. It’s done. Those 1,000 extra students will be graduating long before any new housing is approved, designed and built (if ever). I sadly think Stanford is severely mistaken and misguided on the student enrollment matter. It has the potential to blow up in the administration’s face. Comment Number Three 17,000 staff members is shocking. With the one-to-one ratio between students and staff, every student has his/her own corresponding staff member. For an institution on the cutting edge of tech innovation and societal productivity, it is instead structured like an old-time, bureaucratic, outdated institution of the distant past: GE, GM, etc. Really in need of a serious re-structuring. 29 development staff just at Stanford Law School alone, and even though Stanford Law School has the smallest student body of all of the top law schools. In most cases (other than Yale), by far the smallest, a fraction of the size of Harvard, Georgetown, Michigan, Columbia, etc. The bureaucratic imperative has conquered Stanford. Comment Number Four Reading the most recent Newsletter, I thought “ok, now everyone knows the magnitude of the administrative bloat. How do you go forward from there?” I doubt just repeating the numbers will change much, if anything. You need to bring in an outsider with a proven reputation for cost cutting and streamlining. It’s hard to believe that the administrators themselves are going to get behind such an effort when it means they themselves might be the next ones to be offered early retirement. ********** See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Other reader comments on various topics in recent years are available at our Reader Comments webpage. Send us your own comments here . Required Stanford Writing Courses Range from How 'ICE Raids Destabilize Communities,' to an All-Male Drag Ballet Excerpts (links in the original): “A series of spring 2026 required writing courses for students at Stanford University have students learn about topics ranging from ‘biracial and bicultural identity,’ to how ‘ICE raids destabilize communities.’ “Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) currently offers courses to students to fulfill a ‘Writing and Rhetoric Requirement at Stanford.’ “In a description for the program, the university states that ‘PWR instructors in PWR 1 and PWR 2 courses carefully design their courses to offer in-depth intellectual experiences based on shared assignments, goals, and learning outcomes.’ “For each course that is offered to students, they are ‘rooted in analysis, research, and the presentation of research in various forms,’ while professors are given authority to ‘[build] on this shared core, designing class activities to support a dynamic, interactive classroom community.’ ... “Amongst the listed course offerings includes one course on ‘Writing Mixed Race Identity,’ where students will ‘look at the ongoing rhetoric surrounding multiraciality.’ Students will also learn about how ‘mixed race people are always and already politicized,’ and are ‘represented as figures of shame,’ ‘exoticism,’ ‘tragedy,’ and as figures of ‘post-racial utopia.’ ...” Full article at Campus Reform. Stanford's own description of the program is here , and a sample of the courses is here . Editor's note: Is our understanding correct that these courses -- at four units each and required in both the freshman and sophomore years -- are taught solely by part-time lecturers and not members of the faculty? Also, how many hours are spent creating the photos, video interviews, etc. at these webpages on top of all of the other Stanford-wide non-essential and non-teaching activities in which hundreds (thousands?) of staff are engaged? Wouldn't it be better to reduce and even eliminate these peripheral activities and use the resources instead for the hiring of more tenure-line faculty? Likewise, shouldn't students who have met the extraordinarily high threshold of being admitted to Stanford be allowed to decide whether they want or need to take courses of this nature? And in the end, aren't there more appropriate ways to provide a general education including assuring that students have an understanding of U.S. and world history, civics and cultures versus what is taking place here? Harvard President Admits Faculty Activism Is a Problem Excerpt (links in the original): “Political activism in the classroom has become a problem among faculty at Harvard University, its President Alan Garber said on a recent podcast. “Garber, whose contract was extended in December, said higher education ‘went wrong’ when institutions began allowing faculty to engage in activism in the classroom and in their research, and he is working to steer Harvard back in the right direction, The Harvard Crimson reports . “His remarks come on the heels of the high profile departure of longtime Harvard Professor James Hankins who criticized the institution for, among other things, its focus on identity politics. “Last week, on an episode of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s ‘Identity/Crisis Podcast,’ Garber said it used to be that ‘one of the characteristics of excellent teaching’ was not allowing personal views to influence classroom discussions. “Good professors would ‘present alternative points of view fairly,’ and they would not allow their personal opinions to color their research, he said. “When Garber worked as a policy research leader at Stanford University, he said the faculty and staff ‘would never take a policy position, for a variety of reasons, one of them, and maybe most importantly, it would call into question the objectivity of our work.’” ... Full article at College Fix. See also “The Problems of History at Harvard” at our January 5, 2026 Newsletter including discussion of the reasons Prof. Hankins decided to leave Harvard. Free Expression in Higher Education -- Q&A with U Chicago’s Tom Ginsburg Excerpt (link in the original): “The ongoing debate about free expression in higher education has grown increasingly complex and contentious in recent years, shaped by a variety of societal and political factors that are continuously evolving. In a recent Q&A, Professor Tom Ginsburg, faculty director of the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression , offers valuable insights into why freedom of expression is vital for higher education -- and for society as a whole -- to thrive.” Full Q&A at U Chicago website. See also our compilations of the three fundamental statements from the University of Chicago in past decades concerning freedom of expression, institutional neutrality and principles for the hiring and promotion of faculty at our Chicago Trifecta webpage. Other Articles of Interest How Many Vice Presidents Does a College Need? Full op-ed by Amherst Prof. Austin Sarat at Inside Higher Ed. At Harvard and Elsewhere, the New Campus Orthodoxy Is Even More Stifling Full op-ed at NY Times. Parody Is Protected in the Pacific Northwest Full editorial at Washington Post. See also op-eds at WSJ and Minding the Campus . It’s Time to Mandate Merit Full op-ed at James Martin Center. UCLA Athletics Facing Enormous Debt, per the School's Academic Senate Full article at Pasadena Now. See also “UC Regent Questions UCLA Athletics' Finances: How does this thing not sink?” at Yahoo Finance as reproduced from LA Times: “an athletic department deficit that has ballooned to $219.5 million after running in the red for six consecutive fiscal years, including a $51.8-million shortfall in the 2024 fiscal year.” Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford AI Experts Predict What Will Happen in 2026 AI Predicts Disease from Sleep To Advance Science, Blur the Boundaries Between the Disciplinesy Synthetic Biologists Transform Waste CO2 Into Useful Chemicals Explaining the Meteorological Phenomenon of Atmospheric Rivers ********** “Education at its best makes people more whole, not more uniform.” – Stanford Prof. Emeritus Claude Steele January 5, 2026 The National Movement to Trim Higher Ed Bloat Excerpts (links in the original): “Americans don't agree on much these days, but we all seem to agree that higher education in our country is broken. The good news is that we may now see the beginning of a nationwide movement to make higher education a better investment for students and help prepare them for life after school. “Since the 1990s, we have seen an explosion in the cost of college driven by a growth in administrators and virtually endless government-backed debt. Continued increases in enrollments allowed even state schools to create classes and even entire majors for which there was absolutely no job market."... Full op-ed at Real Clear Education, including a link to “Administrative Bloat at U.S. Colleges Is Skyrocketing” at Forbes (August 28, 2023): “. . . Why have administrative positions exploded? There are several reasons, including greater student demand for services, the growing number of accreditors, government regulations, and the natural tendency for administrators to solve most problems with -- you guessed it -- more administrators. “This massive increase in personnel never could have happened without the growing availability of federal aid and student loans (albeit any corresponding constraints on costs). But given the rapidly deteriorating fiscal condition of the federal government, and the recent decision by the Supreme Court on loan forgiveness, the likelihood of a major expansion in tuition assistance (or full-scale student loan bailout) seems unlikely in the near future. “With no market or regulatory forces to contain the reckless spending behavior of colleges and universities, school presidents have focused on fundraising, not good management. But starting [now] , they will need to learn quickly how to streamline administrative costs, or be replaced by a new generation of school leaders who do.” See also, with respect to Stanford specifically, “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and where, among other things, Stanford went from approximately 2,800 managerial and supervisory personnel in the year 2000 to nearly 13,000 such personnel by the year 2022 (an increase of approximatelly 10,000) while the faculty increased by only 400 during that same period of time (see the graph at the top of the Stanford Concerns webpage). As also shown at the Stanford Concerns webpage, Stanford currently has the highest number of business and finance staff of any U.S. university (even for schools with triple the enrollment) and the highest administrative costs per student of any U.S. university. And yet Stanford has among the worst student-faculty ratios and among the worst participation of alumni donors as compared to its top-ranked peers. While it's true that Stanford's wealth and prestige may insulate it from competitive pressures, that wealth and prestige can also mask problems that both the administration and the trustees may need to finally address. To quote management guru Peter Drucker, “Tomorrow is being made today, irrevocably in most cases.” A Black Box of Overhead Spending and Academia’s Mission Creep from Rigorous Science Excerpts (footnotes deleted): “American universities are falling short of their mission to push the limits of scientific discovery and prepare students for the workforce, often while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in federal research and development grants.... “Overhead funds are meant to go toward university and department infrastructure, but recent reports have suggested exorbitant overhead spending feeds into bloated university administrations that distract from academic inquiry.... “This report examines research and overhead funds granted to five universities over ten years, along with the growth of administration and, in particular, DEI-related positions. The impact of broader impact requirements embedded in grant proposals is also explored. “The results will demonstrate that universities are undermining their former commitments to true scientific endeavor in research, in favor of building ever more new administrative functions and special projects.” ... [Followed by a detailed analysis of Rutgers and the universities of Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia.] Full report , including graphs and charts, can be downloaded at Open the Books. See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also Section 3 at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage where we suggest that Stanford's administrative bureaucracy needs to be reduced significantly in both size and cost and, at Section 4, we suggest that Stanford's 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities need to be engaged primarily in front-line research and teaching supervised by tenured members of the faculty or else should be moved off campus and cease using the Stanford name. The Problems of History at Harvard Excerpt: “At Harvard University today, professors who teach Western history are history. “James Hankins, a specialist in Renaissance thought, was one of the last holdouts. “Now Hankins, who has just published a hefty book that teaches what Harvard doesn't -- The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, Vol. 1 -- has decamped for the University of Florida's Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education. “It's not the warmer weather that's drawn him away from Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It's the contrast in intellectual climates: frozen and dead, where Western history is concerned, at Harvard; full of green shoots at the University of Florida. “‘We have not hired with tenure a historian in a Western field -- ancient, medieval, early modern, or modern -- in a decade,’ Hankins says about his Harvard department, which in that time ‘lost eight senior historians in Western fields -- all major figures -- through death, retirement or departure for other universities. I will be the ninth, and I am not expecting to be replaced.’ “The loss isn't just Harvard's: ‘the replacement of Western history by global history’ has done ‘serious harm ... to the socialization of young Americans,’ the historian warns in Compact magazine.” ... Full article at Real Clear Politics. Harvard President Alan Garber Has Met the Moment Excerpts: . . . . “Harvard’s governing boards have been historically secretive, making it difficult to know whether such self-assessments occur and, if so, what they have revealed. But their decision to hand the presidential reins to Garber on an indefinite basis speaks as loudly as we can expect about their views on Harvard’s past and future directions. “We should be grateful for that decision.... [Followed by discussion of Harvard’s working group on open inquiry and constructive dialogue, Harvard’s adoption of policies re institutional neutrality, ending the requirement for DEI statements in faculty hiring, and major reforms of Harvard’s student orientation programs.] “Actions taken by schools to change programs (and program leadership) have been more controversial. When programs are judged to have strayed from the required level of scholarly rigor in favor of explicit activism, I see such decisions as within the purview of university leadership and proper governance -- and failure to prevent such straying, in the past, has often proved to be the real problem. To counter expected opposition, decisions such as these must reflect rigorous assessment, be accompanied by public explanation, and remain content-neutral, aspects that require greater clarity than exists at present....” Full op-ed by Harvard professor and former medical school dean Jeffrey S. Flier at Harvard Crimson. A Utah University Gave Guest Speakers a List of Banned Words Editor’s note: We have long had posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage an article about Stanford’s now discredited list of words and phrases and including a PDF copy of the words and phrases we downloaded before they were removed from Stanford’s websites and subsequently repudiated by senior Stanford administrators. In the situation described below, a Utah state university was largely copying a state law that restricts words and phrases. In our view, any such restrictions -- whether for conservative or progressive purposes -- are inappropriate and especially in a campus environment. Excerpts : “After she agreed to give a book talk at Weber State University, Darcie Little Badger was sent a document titled ‘Speaker Information Request.’ It asked Little Badger for personal and logistical information, all fairly standard for a guest speaker, but at the bottom of the page there was something unusual: a list of banned words and phrases. “The document cited HB 261, a bill targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that passed the Utah State Senate in July 2024. The bill prohibits diversity training and statements in higher education, among other provisions. It includes several of the prohibited words Weber State passed along to Little Badger but does not apply them to speech on campus.... “The university has a page on its website dedicated to frequently asked questions about HB 261, and one question asks how the law will affect speakers. The university answers: ‘Under current university and Board of Higher Education policy, the university is charged to provide the opportunity for a plurality of speakers to engage an array of viewpoints. HB 261 affirms that directive and the university will be reviewing its processes for creating those forums for speakers on campus.’ ... ““The people who champion this type of censorship,” [Little Badger] said, ‘I think they’re afraid of difference.’” Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Other Articles of Interest The Campus ‘Vibe Shift’ Is an Illusion Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Washington Examiner. Push for Censorship on Campus Hit Record Levels in 2025 Full op-ed at Real Clear Education: “We need courage: from faculty, from students, and especially from administrators. It’s easy to defend speech when it’s popular. It’s harder when the ideas are offensive or inconvenient. But that’s when it matters most.” American Graduates Need Not Apply A senior partner at a large U.S. company admits corporations will skirt H-1B restrictions, leaving American graduates behind. Full article at Minding the Campus. College Rankings Are Flawed, but City Journal’s New Alternative System Only Compounds the Problems Full op-ed at Real Clear Education. See also explanation of the rankings at City Journal , an interactive version of the actual rankings (Stanford ranks #18) here and with a more detailed discussion of Stanford's strengths and concerns here . Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Intriguing Innovations at Stanford in 2025 Stanford Medical School's Scientific Advancements in 2025 Stanford Law School’s End-of-Year Reading List ********** “Students don’t need more administrative offices policing speech or mediating micro‑aggressions. They need mentors -- professors and deans who hold them to high standards while caring fo r their growth.” -- University of Dallas President Jonathan J. Sanford December 22, 2025 The Importance, Scope and Bounds of Intellectual and Viewpoint Diversity Excerpts : “In recent decades, the ideological diversity of faculties in the United States has declined considerably, and this has arguably had implications for a number of other aspects of academic life. Efforts to promote intellectual and viewpoint diversity are, however, often met with skepticism, and also with reasonable concerns over threats to the autonomy and integrity of academic disciplines and institutions. Clarifying the role, scope, and bounds of intellectual and viewpoint diversity within academic life in ways that respect the scholarly standards of disciplines is thus of critical importance.... “[In this paper,] I put forward proposals for educational leaders, faculty, and students for engaging with or, when appropriate, cultivating intellectual and viewpoint diversity in a manner that respects the scholarly standards of disciplines. I discuss what is at stake with these matters in the present context concerning the nature of the university itself, and its purposes in the generation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge.... [Followed by discussion of the differences of intellectual, viewpoint, ideological and political diversity; causes of the decline in diversity and data that demonstrate the decline; the typical denial and dismissal of the problem by campus leaders; the role and importance of intellectual and viewpoint diversity; and possible remedies.] “Underlying many of the criticisms of higher education is the concern that some universities have themselves effectively become partisan institutions, wherein the vast majority of the work is devoted to, or comes from the perspectives of those aligned with, a single political party. Universities may deny this, and reaffirm their ideals. But the statistics are nevertheless troubling.... “With greater ideological homogeneity, the defense of academic freedom can become more difficult still because progressive ideologies can sometimes be accompanied by notions of a subjective or relativistic understanding of truth; by an understanding of the university that emphasizes activism; by a priority of power over the pursuit of knowledge; and by a strategy of suppression or refusal to engage with certain ideas if they are contrary to a progressive agenda. Open inquiry and the free exchange of ideas can seem like secondary values.”... [Followed by discussion of specific corrective actions that might be taken.] Full article by Harvard Prof. Tyler J. VanderWeele at MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute). See also our Back to Basics at Stanford and Stanford Concerns webpages where we discuss the need for Stanford's faculty, students, administrators and trustees to address these issues; the impact Stanford's bloated administrative bureaucracy is having on these issues; and the need to address what are primarily advocacy and other non-academic activities at many if not most of Stanford's 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities. A Much-Needed Exposé of Academic Fraud A new book reveals why academic-publishing incentives must change. Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “Professor Max Bazerman of Harvard Business School has done a great public service in writing Inside an Academic Scandal: A Story of Fraud and Betrayal . His book puts people on guard against believing an idea just because it comes in scholarly wrapping. It was inspired by Bazerman’s own experience as a co-author of a paper in which others had falsified data to make the conclusion look strong. Over a period of years, he came to suspect the data behind the paper and sought to have the other authors explain their conduct, which they never did. Besides telling his own lamentable tale, Bazerman recounts many other instances of scholarly fraud, but let’s begin with his story. “. . . with the big higher-education push starting in 1965, ‘publish or perish’ became a mass phenomenon, and the huge numbers of aspiring academics overwhelmed the system.... “Moreover, colleges and universities created many new academic ‘disciplines’ where rigor took a backseat to publishing ideologically correct papers on topics like ‘implicit bias .’ Our institutions were employing an army of professors whose main job was not to teach a body of knowledge but, rather, to produce research in avant-garde fields such as Women’s Studies. The result was an outpouring of extremely dubious scholarship -- a prodigious waste of resources. “Here’s an analogy. Suppose that a country, acting on the belief that art is a public good that should be given government support, set up a system to subsidize the production of art. After a time, the country found that it was paying for a huge outpouring of absurd artworks, which it would then spend more money to store in warehouses. (The Dutch actually did that, as we read in this article .) Similarly, suppose that a country, acting on the belief that higher education is a great public boon, decided to subsidize college degrees and academic research. The United States has done that, with predictable results: far more degrees and scholarship than previously but with steadily falling quality.” ... Full op-ed at James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. 90% of Undergrads Believe Words Can Be Violence Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “In 2017, when the conflation of words and violence was relatively new, Jonathan Haidt, a New York University psychology professor, worried that the false equivalence fed into the simmering mental health crisis among young people . He and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff wrote in The Atlantic that ‘growing numbers of college students have become less able to cope with the challenges of campus life, including offensive ideas, insensitive professors, and rude or even racist and sexist peers’ and that the rise in mental health issues ‘is better understood as a crisis of resilience.’ “Telling young people who haven't been raised to be resilient and to deal with the certainty of encountering debate, disagreement, and rude or hateful expressions in an intellectually and ideologically diverse world plays into problems with anxiety and depression. It teaches that the world is more dangerous than it actually is rather than a place that requires a certain degree of toughness. Worse, if words are violence it implies that responding ‘in kind’ is justified.... “Americans worry that the country is becoming less friendly to free expression. But the insistence of too many people that words and violence are the same thing is a big part of the problem.” Full op-ed at Reason. See also article and link to the full poll at FIRE . Other Articles of Interest They Graduated from Stanford; Due to AI, They Can’t Find a Job Full article at LA Times: “‘There’s definitely a very dreary mood on campus,’ said a recent computer science graduate who asked not to be named so they could speak freely. ‘People [who are] job hunting are very stressed out, and it’s very hard for them to actually secure jobs.’ The shake-up is being felt across California colleges, including UC Berkeley, USC and others. The job search has been even tougher for those with less prestigious degrees.” We Should Teach Our Students How to Think, Not What to Believe Full op-ed at NY Times: “We’ve been heading toward this moment for some time. For at least the past decade, political expression has become more and more ubiquitous in public schools. Schools effectively allowed political advocacy to become part of the curriculum when it was easy to ignore.... Now it isn’t so easy. It’s time to resurrect the idea that education and activism are not just distinct, but incompatible.” Zero Republican Professors Found Across 27 Academic Departments at Yale Full article at College Fix. The list: American Studies, Anthropology, Architecture, Astronomy, Black Studies, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Classics, Comparative literature, Earth and Planetary Sciences, East Asian Languages and Literature, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, English, Environment, French, Germanic Languages and Literature, Global Affairs, History of Art, Italian Studies, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Music, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Neuroscience, Psychology, Slavic Languages and Literature, and Sociology. In addition, “Across the 18 humanities departments, Democrats outnumber Republicans at a ratio of 72 to 1.” See also the first article in today’s Newsletter re the importance of intellectual and viewpoint diversity, and how campus leaders continue to deny there's a problem. The Entry-Level Hiring Process Is Breaking Down Full op-ed at The Atlantic. See also “America’s Schools Still Teach for Yesterday’s Jobs” at Minding the Campus . ********** “ When I look at my students, I see hope. They're idealistic and eager to make a difference. What they lack is a framework for translating learning into life: understanding that attention, empathy, and reason cultivated in college are necessities for citizenship, not luxuries.” -- Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams December 15, 2025 How the Past Has Undermined Higher Ed’s Present Excerpts (links in the original): [Discussion of what led colleges and universities to build expensive buildings and increase the pipeline of students -- in-person and online -- who, in turn, have provided large amounts of money as a result of their student tuition, fees and debt.] “The bottom line is that student loans were paying for the expansion and upkeep of many campuses long after the business model made sense. When one takes a hard look at what student-loan borrowing has wrought, the Trump administration’s turning off the spigot -- or at least drastically slowing the flow by capping Parent Plus loans and phasing out income-driven repayment options -- makes a certain sense.... “Every student is a pipeline to federal money. Enrolling more students gets the institution more money. And it worked for many years.... “The president who survives the coming shakeout will be the one who abandons the prestige theater [that Joshua Travis Brown documents in his book Capitalizing on College: How Higher Education Went From Mission Driven to Margin Obsessed ] and focuses solely on delivering a human experience of smaller classes, deeper faculty relationships, more intensive advising, and the kind of high-touch education that used to occur on the picturesque campuses. This will be, of course, more expensive than chasing new students, and not every institution will be able to survive. It may be that the ones who don’t were simply delaying the inevitable.” ... Full op-ed by U Utah Prof. Hollis Robbins at Real Clear Education as reprinted from Chronicle of Higher Education. And from our November 24, 2025 Newsletter: “At Stanford, this would mean implementing a more personalized education and possibly also copying Oxford, Cambridge and others by reducing the undergraduate degree to three years instead of four. It might also mean postponing the increases already underway in Stanford’s undergraduate enrollment (as one alum has noted, if you add 200 to 250 to each entering class, per the article following this one, that means an increase in the undergraduate population at the end of four years by 800 to a thousand or more but with no announced increases in student housing or tenure-line faculty). “What might be done instead would be to significantly improve the quality of residential education while at the same time redirecting Stanford’s high administrative costs per student to resources devoted instead solely to undergraduate teaching. In this regard, see ‘Warning Signs in the Numbers’ at our Stanford Concerns webpage including Stanford's $48,231 annual administrative cost per student (and that's solely for central administrative services and not student or similar services), an unfavorable ratio of faculty to students as compared to peer institutions and a surprisingly low percentage of Stanford alumni who are donating as also compared to peer institutions.” What Broke University Science? Excerpts: “I became a scientist because I was drawn to difficult questions. As a child, I searched for patterns and tried to uncover the deeper logic behind everyday phenomena. That instinct carried me into chemistry and physics, then into a PhD at MIT, where I worked at the intersection of biophysics, engineering, computation, and early AI.... “Over nearly 20 years I published over 200 papers, becoming one of the world’s most highly cited scholars, received teaching awards, collaborated across disciplines, contributed to biotechnology, and advised the National Institutes of Health. “I also assumed -- naively -- that scientific accomplishment offered a degree of protection. If you did good work, if you advanced understanding, institutions would support you. There were early warning signs: jealousy from senior colleagues when my research outpaced theirs; the creeping politicization of academia; hiring and leadership decisions that elevated people for their symbolic value or personal relationships rather than their expertise. But I did what most scientists do: I focused on the work and ignored the noise. “It took far too long to understand how misplaced that belief was. My awakening came through something ordinary: an authorship dispute between two members of my lab at Duke’s medical school, where I was a tenured professor. These disagreements happen in every lab and are typically resolved with a straightforward conversation. But this dispute unfolded when universities were reframing their missions around social-justice narratives about power imbalances, recasting accomplished scientists as oppressors and others as oppressed.... “The process quickly detached from reality. Administrators launched what they called a culture review, claiming they needed to assess whether I was aligned with Duke’s values. In practice, investigators interrogated people for hours, attempting to elicit any negative phrasing that could be stitched into a narrative.... “After a couple months of interviews, audits, and surveillance, the investigation concluded with no findings of misconduct. But the damage had already been done. Years of work were disrupted, the careers of my trainees derailed, and student protests about my treatment ignored -- even as other forms of activism were eagerly embraced. Eventually I was pressured to sign a compact containing conditions and monitoring requirements that would have made any serious research impossible.... [Followed by discussion of the rise of economic pressures at universities and their affiliated medical centers and including from NIH.] “Roles that were once part-time service positions for accomplished scientists became full-time managerial jobs occupied by people with little or no scientific background. Decision-making moved away from faculty and into opaque administrative bodies insulated from accountability.... “The consequences extend far beyond the university. Journals and scientific societies, beholden to the same incentives, reflect the same distortions. Chronic disease rates continue to rise because the scientific areas most relevant to prevention have been neglected. Basic research in nutrition, metabolism, environmental exposures, and physiology is decades behind where it should be, hampering progress in aging and public health.... “If universities and their medical centers want to regain public trust, they must demonstrate that knowledge and learning -- not image management -- are once again the point of academic life. If they fail, new institutions will rise to take their place. “Science will continue somewhere; curiosity will find a home. The only question is whether our universities will remain worthy of it.” Full op-ed by former Duke Prof. Jason Locasale at Brownstone. See also “What Happened to Me” by Jason Locasale at Substack : “Altogether, Duke had spent millions disrupting my research lab and I had lost years of work. These are administrators with mid to high 6 or 7 figure salaries paid to do this.” See also at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage “Dr. Jay Bhattacharya's Opening Statement at His Senate Confirmation Hearing to Lead NIH -- Five Goals if Confirmed as Head of NIH” and “Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back.” Why We Should Worry About Europe’s Speech Restrictions Editor’s note: Several years ago, it was one of our readers who first brought to our attention the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and related entities. Our initial reaction was that the concerns were overstated and not relevant for purposes of our Newsletters and website. Within weeks, we realized we were totally wrong and that somehow Stanford was taking the lead, through the SIO, in censoring emails, blogs, social media and even traditional news articles that government and private parties did not want published, especially regarding the 2020 election and then the causes of and responses to Covid. Among other things, see at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage “House Judiciary Committee Letter to Stanford Dated October 22, 2025 Regarding Alleged Censorship Activities” and “Stanford’s Prior Roles in Censoring the Web.” SIO has now been dismantled although we understand Stanford is still spending money on lawyers defending SIO’s past actions, most likely because the employment contracts with previous SIO staff members require that Stanford pay their legal costs. Since these prior censorship activities in the U.S. have been significantly reduced and even eliminated, the concern now is that U.S. nonprofits and others are coordinating with European governments and non-governmental agencies to restrict speech there and with the expectation that the prohibitions established in Europe can then be exported to the U.S., notwithstanding the protections otherwise provided by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. It is with that background that we present this mere sample of recent articles from third parties (links in the originals). Civilizational Suicide Behind Europe’s Demand for Censorship “[Two weeks ago,] the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s X €140 million for, it says, breaking laws requiring social media transparency. Specifically, said the Commission, which is the executive branch of the European Union, X broke the law by making its blue checkmarks available to anyone, failing to make its advertising repository transparent, and failing to provide researchers with special access to its data. ‘Today’s decision has nothing to do with content moderation,’ insisted the Commission’s spokesperson. “In truth, the Commission’s fine has everything to do with ‘content moderation,’ which is censorship. The EU wants X to give its data to government-selected ‘researchers’ so they can identify which posts and advertisements should be censored. This is a censorship-by-proxy strategy [including discussion of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project, the latter two of which were largely run by the Stanford Internet Observatory] . The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2020 to 2022, and Europe today, have authorized government-funded NGOs to demand censorship of social media platforms in an attempt to deceive the public. “As such, the European Commission is spreading disinformation in order to demand censorship, and is openly engaged in a deception campaign aimed at confusing the people of Europe and the United States about what it is doing.” ... Full op-ed by Michael Shellenberger at Substack. Europe Fires a Speech Warning “The Digital Services Act , the European Commission’s content control law developed across multiple stages dating to the mid-2010s, has finally become fully operational, in Star Wars parlance. Officials announced a long-threatened €120 million (about $140 million) fine of Elon Musk’s X platform, with the major offenses being the use of a ‘deceptive’ check mark program and failure to ‘provide researchers with access to the platform’s public data.’ “The fine comes at a strange time. A few weeks ago, the EC began a public campaign of walking back its biggest censorship initiatives, thanks to a growing belief that its stifling regulatory environment was costing Old-World companies a chance to compete for investment in AI technology.” ... Full op-ed by Matt Taibbi at Substack. Is Germany Previewing America's Speech Future? “On November 26th, three armed police officers in Berlin showed up at the door of American playwright and author C.J. Hopkins brandishing a search warrant. Having already charged and issued a ‘punishment order ’ to Hopkins two summers ago essentially over the satirical use of a swastika on the cover of his book The Rise of the New Normal Reich -- it’s in a white-on-white medical mask, mocking pandemic authorities -- officials returned with a new theory. After questioning him and his wife, they searched the place for evidence that Hopkins is indeed the publisher of his book and the operator of his Consent Factory blog , where the book is promoted. “‘Basically, distributing and promoting my book is a crime in Germany, at least according to the District Prosecutor,’ Hopkins explains.” ... Full op-ed by Matt Taibbi at Substack. Free Speech Wobbles in the U.K. “Britain has no equivalent to the First Amendment, but the common law tradition of England and Wales has long respected free speech as a so-called ‘negative right,’ a right that the government respects by not taking action for or against. In 1998, the U.K.’s adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to which it remains subject despite Brexit, required legally defined free speech, which arrived in the U.K.’s Human Rights Act, passed the same year. The ECHR provides that all individuals have 'the right to freedom of expression,' including the 'freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference.' “In recent years, however, Britain has mimicked the EU’s more proactive approach to ‘hate speech’ and other subjective content to police what people say and, increasingly, post online. In 2003, a new law, the Communications Act, broadly prohibited undefined ‘malicious communications’ and made it a criminal offense to ‘persistently make use of a public electronic communications network for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety’ -- all highly subjective categories. The act also authorized a new national regulatory agency, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), to monitor all forms of communication for illegal content. In other words, the law prohibited vague speech offenses and then empowered a government agency to police them. “Over time, Britain’s speech authorities have become more powerful while the offenses have become more vague. According to Rowley, prohibited communications include ‘incitement, stirring up racial hatred, [and] numerous terrorist offenses regarding the publishing of material.’ In practice, this has led to thousands of arrests and prison sentences for social media posts, publicly displayed signs, shared memes, personal insults, and even prayers by pensioners.”... Full article at Tablet. Free Speech Under Attack in the U.K. “British authorities are not slouching in enforcement. According to police records analyzed by the London Times, over 12,000 Britons per year are arrested for speech-related offenses -- an average of 30 per day and nearly a fourfold increase over the 2016 figure. Recent cases have reportedly included arrests for derogatory comments about migrants , displays of the national flag that others found offensive, and even silent prayer near abortion clinics. Since 2014, police can record comments merely perceived as offensive as so-called ‘non-crime hate incidents ,’ which remain on the offending party’s record even if no charges are filed. “Britain’s free speech laws have an international dimension, as Vice President J. D. Vance observed earlier this year, when he noted that they could affect U.S. companies and individuals. The Online Safety Act imposes a heavy burden on platforms of any nationality -- though most are, of course American -- to remove content that the U.K. considers criminal. Noncompliance can result in a fine of 10 percent of the offending company’s net global revenue, up to a maximum penalty of £18 million .” ... Full op-ed at City Journal. Other Articles of Interest The Importance of a Liberal Education Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education: “The ivory tower is collapsing, and perhaps that's as it should be. What we're building isn't a tower but a bridge between contemplation and action, tradition and innovation, mind and world. Our students don't need refuge from reality. They need the intellectual courage to remake it.” See also “Liberal Education as Civic Education” by U Tulsa Prof. Jennifer Frey at Jack Miller Center . Pro-Hamas Students Aren't the Source of Campus Antisemitism Full op-ed by UC Santa Cruz Prof. Emeritus John Ellis and former UC Santa Cruz Prof. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin at WSJ: “Administrators have to address the root cause -- faculty who have politicized their academic programs and departments.” How Federal Red Tape Is Driving Up College Costs Full article at Real Clear Education. How Shall Academic Freedom Be Defined? Full interview with UNC faculty assembly chair Wade Maki at James Martin Center. National Association of Scholars Applauds House Bills to Combat Foreign Influence in Schools Full op-ed at NAS website. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. AI Wearable Device Aims to Improve Mindfulness New Course Builds Practical Skills for Emotional Resilience Experts Cut Through the Noise to Clarify AI's Actual Economic Impact (Video trailer, 3:26 minutes) ********** "Institutions thrive when they cultivate disagreement, not when they suppress it.” -- Stanford School of Humanities & Sciences Dean Debra Satz December 8, 2025 Now Is the Time to Fix the Office of Community Standards Excerpts (links in the original): “Stanford has a new leadership team, so now is the time to address a years’ long problem at the Office of Community Standards (OCS) that has been an affront to the core values of our University for at least 15 years. To her credit, Provost Jenny Martinez has already acted aggressively, recently appointing law professor Larry Marshall as Interim Director at OCS. Marshall has the requisite background, and skill sets to bring about needed changes. Members of both the undergraduate and graduate senate have also taken up the cause this school year. “In 2011, two other alumni and I represented three students in a cheating case processed through what was then Stanford’s Judicial Affairs Office (JAO; now known as the OCS). “All of our three clients were acquitted in November 2011. As their representatives, all of whom have substantial administrative law experience, we were appalled at the inability of JAO employees to follow the University’s Judicial Charter and provide any semblance of a fair hearing. “Our group of alumni volunteered to work with the JAO to improve their systems. They referred the matter to the Office of the General Counsel headed, then and now, led by Debra Zumwalt. The attorney assigned to work with us said that General Counsel’s Office would be pleased to do so if we all started with the same predicate which she described as: ‘This is a discipline system designed to correct bad behavior.’ “The problem with her predicate is that it reflects a presumption of guilt of anyone that goes into the system. Our three students were all acquitted. Why were they in what the University referred to then, and even oftentimes now, as a ‘discipline system’? “We were so troubled by the despicable treatment of the students, and this presumption of guilt that permeated the processing of these cases, that we prepared a 62-page, single spaced Case Study of that case identifying 99 distinct errors, mistakes or violation of student rights in the course of OCS’s handling of the matter. “Only when it became clear that administrators and others had no interest in improving the system, did we provide the Case Study to The Stanford Daily, 18 months after we first started our efforts to make that process fair. The Daily highlighted the Case Study in a front-page story on May 13, 2013. “We took the undisputed facts of that Case Study to every level of the University, including the Provost and the President, as well as select Trustees. With no interest from anyone, we issued our second report entitled: 2013 Internal Review of Stanford University’s Office of Judicial Affairs . Both reports are still online .... “In the 2021-22 school year, Stanford student Katie Meyer was involved in a seven-month OCS investigation . She took her own life in March 2022, the night she received a charge letter from that office. In the ESPN documentary that aired in May of this year ('Save: The Katie Meyer Story') her family shared that her laptop was opened to the letter from the OCS when she took her last breath.... “Students are transitory. Alumni are not. Our group is still here, and we have now spent 14 years trying to protect students. We ought to be able to resolve the myriad of issues at OCS without asking the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to initiate a full scale investigation. “A wrongful conviction at OCS goes on a student’s permanent record. That wrongful conviction then has the potential to destroy your life dreams before you even have a chance to pursue them.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum Bob Ottilie at Stanford Daily. See also “Control of Student Life Must Be Restored to Stanford's Students” at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, especially paragraphs 2.e. through k. re our own proposed reforms to the student disciplinary process. See also “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including PDF documents about the abuses of systems like this. Stanford Loves Innovation, Its Bureaucracy Does Not Excerpts (links in the original): “I can still picture myself at 18: bright-eyed and bushy tailed, hunched over my Stanford supplemental essays and meticulously typing and deleting words as if my future depended on every sentence. I dreamed of an education built not just on classes but the un-manufacturable serendipity of being surrounded by the brightest young minds on the planet. Before I even stepped on campus, I believed, wholeheartedly, in the vision of an education shaped by community. And that belief carried me here. “As I write this, I’m heading into my final week at Stanford, which feels surreal to put into words.... Founding Stanford Sustainable Investment Group (SSIG) -- now the university’s largest climate organization -- and helping organize Stanford Climate Week became my way of building the climate ecosystem I wish had existed when I first pictured Stanford. “But in the process of trying to build that kind of vibrant, student climate community, I ran headfirst into the countless layers of institutional bureaucracy that quietly shape campus life. Again and again, I found myself fighting tooth and nail for things that were objectively positive for the student body. Things that should’ve been easy, obvious and even welcomed somehow became uphill battles. “Take something as simple as booking a room. For Stanford Climate Week -- a series of educational panels and speaker events on topics like climate innovation, energy abundance, career pathways and nature-based solutions -- our student team had to fundraise and pay thousands of dollars just to reserve campus spaces. $5,650, to be exact, for events that aligned squarely with the University’s own academic mission and attracted over 1,300 individuals from across the Bay Area. And let’s not even mention the countless back and forth email chains with administrators and the outdated booking systems. “Even more perplexing, we were required to hire a designated vendor to place chairs in those rooms -- a service that brought total costs past $7,000 -- because students are not permitted to set up the chairs themselves..... “I’m writing this because these experiences reveal institutional flaws in how Stanford supports -- or fails to support -- student initiatives. If it takes thousands of dollars to book rooms, if student groups are unable to accept funding and if administrative infrastructure can’t keep pace with the urgency and ingenuity of students, something is off. Bureaucracy goes from a safeguard against risk to a bottleneck stifling creativity and bias to action.” ... Full op-ed by Stanford recent graduate and current masters student Samir Chowdhury at Stanford Daily. See also “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including 15,340 non-teaching personnel (19,169 if you add clinical and SLAC staff) as compared to 2,345 total faculty (1,738 of whom are members of the Academic Council) and 17,469 total students; also, highest administrative costs per student of any U.S. university at $48,231 annually per student, and that is solely for central administration and does not cover staff for student services, housing and similar activities. See also "From a Current Undergraduate Student: Stanford's Bureaucracy Undermines the University's Academic Mission" at our Stanford Concerns webpage as reprinted from Stanford Review, includiing this excerpt: “Former Provost John Etchemendy, in an interview with the Review, has been candid in his assessment of the university’s bloat. ‘When I first came to Stanford, I just felt that if you had a good idea, you could do it at Stanford -- anything was possible,’ Etchemendy said. ‘And now people will say that Stanford is a no-can-do university.’ Faculty and students alike are drowning in a sea of red tape. Processes that should take minutes, such as the procurement of services for campus events, now drag on for weeks, weighed down by unnecessary layers of approvals and oversight. “As one university insider put it, ‘Its [administrative size] has grown too much. And it's actually hampering the mission of the university.’ These layers of inefficiency don’t enhance the university -- they actively harm it.” See also Section 3 of our Back to Basics webpage, “Stanford’s Administrative Bureaucracy Must Be Reduced Significantly and Immediately in Both Size and Costs.” Ten Goals for Campus Leaders [Editor’s note : Four years ago, a group of Princeton alumni created Princetonians for Free Speech in order to start a discussion about policies and procedures that were increasingly working against campus free speech and academic freedom. Princetonians for Free Speech is now approaching 20,000 members which is close to a third of Princeton's living undergraduate alumni. Their founders subsequently helped create a nationwide network of similar entities, the Alumni Free Speech Alliance , and of which Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking is a member entity. I n their recent annual report, Princetonians for Free Speech highlighted ten goals for Princeton's leaders and which we commend to Stanford’s leaders as well.] Excerpts, and where the word "university" is substituted at times for "Princeton": Protect the reputation of the university and its commitment to diversity of viewpoints by adopting as a core principle an institutional policy such as the Kalven Report.... [ See our own compilation of the Kalven Report here .] Eliminate the use of DEI statements for faculty hiring, promotion and funding throughout the university. As compelled speech, such statements are ideological litmus tests that incentivize insincerity as they undermine freedom of expression. Develop a comprehensive program to teach all students about the university's policies. These actions should include: A required freshman orientation program that explains the university's commitment to freedom of expression and its policies around respectful disagreement.... Develop a program led by faculty whereby all university faculty, particularly those in leadership roles, affirm and celebrate the university’s commitment to freedom of expression and academic freedom.... Adopt principles for academic appointment similar to those embodied in the University of Chicago’s Shils Report, which prioritizes academic excellence in research and teaching.... [ See our own compilation of the Shils Report here .] Educate and train all administrators on the importance of free expression and viewpoint diversity. Administrators have an outsized and widely criticized influence on the student experience. They are likely to lack appreciation for freedom of thought and viewpoint diversity, and they often act to create restrictive boundaries on what they deem to be acceptable speech and expression.... Work with faculty to encourage academic and administrative departments to post statements in support of freedom of expression, academic freedom and viewpoint pluralism that resemble the departmental commitment to diversity and anti-racism. Faculty should be required to communicate that sharing private classroom discussion for the purpose of inviting external attention, ridicule or harassment is strictly forbidden. This rule should be made explicit in the honor code. The university should establish a free-standing ombuds office specifically dedicated to examining claims of breaches of free speech protections.... Reform the university's anonymous reporting system to ensure transparency, prompt notification, a right of rebuttal, and swift rejection of all complaints against First Amendment protected speech.... [These concerns very much exist at Stanford; see, for example, paragraphs 2.i, j. and k. at our Back to Basics webpage and “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage.] Admissions reform: In marketing, recruitment and evaluation, the university should reform admissions to expand viewpoint diversity and reward open inquiry. Add recruitment efforts to encourage intellectual pluralism.” ... Full text at Princetonians for Free Speech website. Free Speech Requires a Pious Commitment Excerpts (links in the original): “Too many Americans who say they believe in free speech mean only their speech. Adopting progressive dogma , the Biden administration claimed that free speech had limits, and broadly suppressed dissenting views. On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order to restore traditional (and constitutionally mandated) protections, but his administration’s adherence to that order has been situational.... “The Supreme Court explained that with few exceptions, the ‘First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content’ (Ashcroft v. ACLU ) , or because it is false (United States v. Alvarez ) , or because it is hateful (Matal v. Tam ) . The remedy is more speech that corrects the record (Whitney v. California ) .... “The Trump administration’s efforts to regulate or defund universities that permit antisemitic speech or favor anti-Israel speakers is unconstitutional, though defunding universities that tolerate the intimidation of Jewish students is laudable. We don’t have to issue student visas to foreigners who oppose American principles, but once students arrive, unless they lied on their applications or commit crimes, deporting them for their distasteful views, as the administration apparently has sought to do, is inconsistent with American values.... “In Brandenburg v. Ohio , the Supreme Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it is ‘directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action’ and is ‘likely’ to do so.... “A majority of Americans believe government is the biggest threat to free speech. In 1783, George Washington warned that if ‘the Freedom of Speech may be taken away,’ then 'dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.' ..." Full op-ed at Real Clear Politics. A Solution to Campus Extremism Excerpts: “The ideological partisanship, dogmatism and bigotry on display in our society today are to some degree the fruit of our educational system. Too many college classrooms have become indoctrination camps.... “So what should we do? The answer isn’t complicated, but acting on it will take determination and courage. Colleges and universities must return to offering a rigorous liberal arts education that refuses to engage in indoctrination and challenges groupthink. College courses must actively cultivate the virtues of curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual humility, analytical rigor and, above all, dedication to the pursuit of truth.... “...Twenty-five years ago, Princeton University authorized me to establish and direct a program in civic education dedicated to helping young men and women become determined truth seekers, courageous truth speakers, lifelong learners and responsible citizens. “The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions provides undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars with the intellectual community, opportunities and resources to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of truth. We insist, as does the university, on intellectual honesty and integrity. But the program welcomes students of all points of view. There are no political, religious or secularist orthodoxies or litmus tests. We treat no perspectives as out of bounds, nor do we exempt any idea from being challenged. In short, everything is on the table. Ideas stand or fall on their merits.” ... Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George at WSJ. See also the Stanford Civics Initiative . Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Ideological Teaching in Higher Ed Excerpt (links in the original): “Most Americans say colleges should prioritize critical thinking and citizenship over political activism and ideological teaching, according to a new poll from Vanderbilt University . “The survey of 1,033 U.S. adults, conducted Nov. 7-10, found that 90 percent believe developing the ‘ability to think more logically’ is very or most important for a college education. “Fewer Americans support colleges getting involved in politics. Just 28 percent said universities should engage in broader political debates. “Additionally, 85 percent said colleges should help students ‘get along with and understand people,’ and 80 percent supported strengthening students’ ability to be a ‘more useful citizen.’...” Full article at Campus Reform. Other Articles of Interest College and University Leaders Discuss How Campuses Are Preparing for the Future NY Times Deal Book panel consists of Stanford President Jon Levin along with Sian Leah Beilock (Dartmouth), Daniel Diermeier (Vanderbilt), Carmen Twillie Ambar (Oberlin), Ron Daniels (Johns Hopkins), James Harris (U San Diego) and SUNY (John B. King). Full video at YouTube (1 hour 19 minutes). Recent NBC Poll Shows Nearly Two-Thirds of Americans Say College Degree Isn’t Worth the Cost Full article at College Fix. See also “Overton Insights Poll Finds Just 14% of Voters Think Bachelor’s Degree Is Worth the Cost" at College Fix and “Most Americans Don’t See Value of Four-year College Degrees” at The Hill . Meet the Millionaire Masters of Early Decision at Colleges Full article at NY Times. AI May Be Scoring Your College Essay; Welcome to the New Era of Admissions Full article at AP. See also “Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Warns AI Could Think for Itself in Four Years” at Harvard Crimson . The American Higher Education Restoration Act Full text as PDF download at James Martin Center. Peer Review Gone Wild Full text as PDF download at James Martin Center. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Why We Can’t Stop Clicking on Rage Bait “Rage bait is the negative, vengeful cousin of clickbait. Where clickbait titillates your imagination with an alluring headline (‘You’ll never believe what happened next!’) that nudges you to click, rage bait engages negative emotions, often provoking you to make harsh comments.” A Trustworthy AI Assistant for Investigative Journalists Cancer-promoting DNA Circles Hitchhike on Chromosomes to Spread to Daughter Cells Teen Video Game Addiction -- Five Things to Know The Hottest Stanford Computer Science Class Isn't Banning AI Tools, It's Embracing Them (Business Week) "What matters now isn’t AI prompt hacks but years of domain knowledge that let professors ask the right questions and teach students to do the same. As creation gets cheap, the premium shifts to human judgment, framing and ethical use that keep powerful tools productive rather than misleading.” -- Cal State Chico Professors Zach Justus and Nik Janos December 1, 2025 Universities Need Better Communication with the Public That Funds Them Excerpts (links in the original): “The acrimony between red America and many universities will not be easily or quickly resolved. “I profoundly disagree with some of the demands made by the federal and state governments to control the operations of universities. But I also believe that university administrators and faculty have lost touch with the public on issues relating to university governance, academic freedom, scholarly research and classroom pedagogy.... “The universities can plausibly argue that their research work, particularly in the sciences, requires considerable expertise to assess its merit -- expertise beyond the common knowledge of the polity. And this research undeniably provides enormous economic, medical, environmental and military benefits to our nation. “But this powerful point only begins the discussion. Several rejoinders must be addressed. “Not all academic disciplines provide the kinds of tangible benefits associated with the hard sciences. What, then, justifies the independence, indeed the existence, of Humanities Departments? ... “Scholars can justifiably assert the need for freedom to push the boundaries of their disciplines without being chilled by the oversight of government monitors. But do they deserve the special freedom that some universities provide to comment on a range of political, social and moral issues unrelated to their areas of expertise because they are academic appointees? ... “A final issue relates to classroom pedagogy. To the taxpayer, universities are teaching institutions as well as research institutions. Yet some professors do little teaching and seem to resent their teaching assignments.... “...too often, we hear about classes in which debate and inquiry is stifled to pursue a professor’s ideological agenda. These accusations may be false or overstated. But faculty need to be willing to discuss, openly and with candor, what happens in their classrooms to respond to these challenges. “Put simply, whoever speaks for public universities has to engage in nuanced dialogue with the public if they want to reestablish the polity’s trust in the academy.” Full op-ed by UC Davis Prof. Emeritus Alan Brownstein at The Hill. The New Must-Have College Admissions Skill -- Tolerating Other Viewpoints Excerpts (links in the original): “For years, high-schoolers have boasted in college applications about learning Latin, leading the chess club or acing Advanced Placement Physics. “Now there is a new way to get a leg up: Show how well you can disagree with people. “Elite schools like Harvard , Columbia, Emory and Wellesley have added essay questions in the last couple of years asking applicants to recount a dispute with someone whose beliefs differ from their own. Known as the “disagreement essay,” its rise comes as conservatives accuse top schools of being hotbeds of liberal groupthink where students can’t tolerate dissent.... “Besides the essays, colleges are using other ways to assess whether students can handle disagreements. A handful of schools -- including Columbia, the University of Chicago and Northwestern -- started accepting something called a ‘Dialogues’ report this fall from a peer-tutoring site. It pairs high-schoolers with opposing views to discuss subjects such as abortion, immigration and gun control over Zoom calls. They score each other on metrics like curiosity and listening skills, and can submit their results to colleges.” ... Full op-ed at WSJ. Harvard’s Workshops Won’t Fix a Campus Afraid to Speak Excerpts (links in the original): “Harvard wants the world to know it is taking open inquiry seriously again. “Last week, the Harvard Gazette ran a glowing report announcing that the university is ‘building momentum on open inquiry.’ It showcased new workshops, training sessions for teaching fellows, dialogue exercises for first-year students, and online modules imported from the Constructive Dialogue Institute -- all designed to teach students how to listen better, argue respectfully, and understand those who disagree with them. “As a Harvard graduate who cares deeply about the institution’s intellectual health, I wish I could say this represents a substantive shift. “The initiatives Harvard is touting are not meaningless; they may even prove helpful. But they are largely cosmetic. Harvard is confusing the aesthetics of open inquiry with the structures that make open inquiry possible. And in doing so, it risks masking the deeper, far more dangerous realities of its current academic climate while permitting administrators to claim progress they have not earned. “Harvard doesn’t have a crisis of conversational skills. It has a crisis of fear -- fear among students, faculty, and researchers that certain ideas carry real social and professional risk. And that fear is documented. “Harvard’s own Report of the Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue Working Group (October 2024) makes the point plainly: 45 percent of students hesitate to share views on controversial issues in class; 51 percent of faculty and staff feel reluctant to teach such material; 41 percent are wary of pursuing research on politically or socially sensitive topics. These findings were reported not by critics but by Harvard Magazine and the Boston Globe , which noted widespread self-censorship across the political spectrum driven by peer judgment, social-media backlash, and career concerns.” ... [Followed by: Why Faculty and Students Self-Censor and Why Training Won’t Fix It, What Harvard Is Offering, What Harvard Is Not Offering, What Students Actually Need, The Cost of This Approach, The False Narrative of Progress, What Real Reform Requires, The Challenge, and What’s at Stake.] Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest How AI Is Changing Higher Education Op-eds by 15 scholars at Chronicle of Higher Education. The Student Op-Ed That Texas A&M Refused to Publish Full article at College Fix. Schools of Civic Thought Are on the Rise, but Are Students Interested? Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. What’s New This Season at Stanford Art Museums Stanford’s Community Law Clinic Celebrates Its New Location in Redwood City Top Chef Joins Stanford Bioengineers to Rethink Sustainable Food ********** “The freedom to explore and present new, unconventional, and even unpopular ideas is essential to the academic mission of the university; therefore, Stanford shall promote the widest possible freedom of expression, consistent with the university’s legal and moral obligations to prevent harassment and discrimination.” – From the Statement on Freedom of Expression at Stanford November 24, 2025 Dear Readers: Thank you for being part of our community. We wish you a Thanksgiving filled with peace and gratitude. *********** Is the Solution to AI a Return to Original Concepts of an Undergraduate Education? Editor’s note: Prior Newsletters have included articles expressing concerns about how AI may be undermining current teaching methods. A number of the articles likewise have suggested that instead of looking for ways to detect and block student use of AI, AI should be seen as a partner in teaching combined with more direct interactions between faculty and students to assure students are mastering the material no matter how the students are learning that material. Which might mean more widespread use of tutorials and seminars as has been the case at Oxford and Cambridge which ironically were the models for our initial U.S. colleges. At Stanford, this would mean implementing a more personalized education and possibly also copying Oxford, Cambridge and others by reducing the undergraduate degree to three years instead of four. It might also mean postponing the increases already underway in Stanford’s undergraduate enrollment (as one alum has noted, it you add 200 to 250 to each entering class, per the article following this one, that means an increase in the undergraduate population at the end of four years by 800 to a thousand or more but with no announced increases in student housing or tenure-line faculty). What might be done instead would be to significantly improve the quality of residential education while at the same time redirecting Stanford’s high administrative costs per student to resources devoted instead solely to undergraduate teaching. In this regard, see "Warning Signs in the Numbers" at our Stanford Concerns webpage including Stanford's $48,231 annual administrative cost per student (and that's solely for central administrative services and not student or similar services), an unfavorable ratio of faculty to students as compared to peer institutions and a surprisingly low percentage of Stanford alumni who are donating as also compared to peer institutions. As a start, Stanford might test the concept by offering an alternative curricular option for incoming as well as existing students. With all of this in mind, we asked Google AI to describe a current Oxford undergraduate education and are reproducing below the response in its entirety: * * * * * * * * * * “An undergraduate education at Oxford is characterized by a strong emphasis on independent study, world-class experts, and a personalized tutorial system that involves weekly meetings with a tutor, often one-on-one, to discuss submitted work. Students supplement these tutorials with lectures, seminars, practical sessions, and extensive independent research, which can include lab work, fieldwork, and research opportunities, averaging around 40 hours of study per week. “Key components of Oxford's undergraduate education: Tutorial System: This is the core of the academic experience. Students meet with their tutor, an expert in the subject, to discuss written work, engage in in-depth discussion, and receive personalized feedback. Lectures and Seminars: Students attend lectures that cover core topics and participate in seminars and practical sessions for specific skill development or in-depth topic exploration. Independent Study: A significant portion of the learning is self-directed. Students are expected to conduct their own research, read widely, and develop their own knowledge and understanding of the subject. World-Class Faculty and Resources: Students learn from academic experts, many of whom are world-leading researchers. They also have access to resources like laboratories and opportunities for fieldwork and research. Course Structure: The majority of Bachelor of Arts degrees are three years long, though some, like language degrees with a year abroad, may be four years. Teaching takes place within central Oxford, in college or departmental buildings, though some courses may involve activities outside of Oxford. 6. Academic Divisions: The university is organized into four divisions: Humanities; Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences; Medical Sciences; and Social Sciences.” * * * * * * * * * * We then asked ChatGPT to describe concerns facing the modern university and have posted at our Ask AI webpage a more complete response, including this ChatGPT-produced summary: “The modern university’s drift can be summarized as: From formation of the mind → To credentialing and job training From truth-seeking → To knowledge production and research emphasis From unified intellectual tradition → To hyper-specialization From debate and disputation → To avoidance of intellectual risk From small-scale collegial community → To large bureaucratic administration From moral and intellectual formation → To therapeutic and consumer-oriented models From great texts → To ephemeral trends and ideological agendas From coherent mission → To multipurpose, multi-agenda institutions From tutor-led thoughtfulness → To online modules and mass instruction From intellectual humility → To institutional self-certainty “What was once a community of scholars dedicated to cultivating free and rational minds has become a complex, bureaucratic, multi-purpose enterprise whose incentives often run counter to the original ideals of education.” See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Stanford Expands Access with Larger First-Year and Transfer Classes Excerpts : “This fall, Stanford University enrolled 1,866 first-year undergraduate students, representing a larger class than in recent years as the university takes steps to expand access to a Stanford education. “In addition, Stanford enrolled the largest class of transfer students in recent memory, with 90 students coming from 76 colleges and universities, including 36 community colleges. “In all, Stanford enrolled 196 more first-year and transfer students compared to last year, in an intentional effort to increase the class size to give a greater number of talented, exceptionally well-qualified students the opportunity to earn a Stanford degree. University leaders are studying possibilities to further expand future undergraduate classes in a significant way, while also preserving the experience of being a Stanford student.... “Families of undergraduates with annual incomes below $100,000 pay no tuition, room, or board, and those with incomes below $150,000 pay no tuition. Families with higher incomes also may receive aid based on their financial circumstances. “The students composing the Class of 2029 took varied paths to arrive on campus: Two-thirds of domestic first-year students graduated from public high schools, and 20% of all new undergraduates are the first in their families to attend college. They speak 81 languages at home, and they represent all 50 states and 65 countries.” ... Full article at Stanford Report. See also Stanford Daily with data re racial composition, etc. See also “StanfordNext Project Devises Long-Term Campus Growth Initiative” at Stanford Daily . An Online Loophole That Promotes Violence Excerpts : . . . . “Outrage keeps us online. Fear generates clicks. Division sells. None of this is accidental; it is a system carefully designed. Social-media companies build products that thrive on our worst impulses and then hide behind the claim that they are neutral conduits for speech. But neutrality and manipulation can’t coexist.... “Legislation I am introducing with Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly will bring our legal code into the 21st century. The idea behind the Algorithm Accountability Act is simple: If companies use algorithms to influence the reach of content, they should bear responsibility when those algorithms negligently cause harm. We hold automakers accountable when a design flaw causes an accident. We hold pharmaceutical companies accountable when their products cause injury. There is no reason Big Tech should be treated differently. “Some will raise the alarm that this threatens the First Amendment. It doesn’t. Free speech means you can say what you want in the digital town square. Social-media companies host that town square, but algorithms rearrange it. These algorithms decide who stands next to you, who shouts the loudest, and how often you hear the same angry echo until it drowns out everything else.” ... Full op-ed by Utah Sen. John Curtis at WSJ. Other Articles of Interest From FIRE -- Three-Quarters of Americans Say Free Speech Is Headed in the Wrong Direction Full article including graphs and charts at Substack: “From July of this year, Democrats who think things are heading in the right direction [regarding freedom of speech] fell from 17% to 11%, Independents fell from 31% to 19%, and Republicans fell from 69% to 55%.” The Heckler’s Veto Is Killing Universities’ Credibility Full op-ed by Cal State Long Beach Prof. Kevin Wallsten at Real Clear Education. At This College, the English Dept. Is Out; ‘Human Narratives’ Is In Full article at NY Times: “The departments of English, classics, philosophy, world languages and Spanish and Latino studies, for example, will be grouped into the tentatively titled School of Human Narratives and Creative Expressions. The psychology, linguistics, social work and religion departments will make up the School of Human Behavior and Well-Being.” It’s the Wild West of College Sports Full op-ed at WSJ by Cody Campbell, chair of the Texas Tech board of regents and former college football player: “We’re heading toward a place where college sports are going to become very, very small and very limited, and we’re going to lose something.” Strengthening America's Education System to Secure Our Future Full op-ed by Hoover director and Stanford Prof. Condoleezza Rice at Freedom Frequency: “Education is undoubtedly important for any country, but it is particularly important for the United States of America because we are not united by ethnicity, nationality, or religion. We are united by a creed -- a belief that it doesn’t matter where you came from, it matters where you are going.” Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. GSB Deepens Its Commitment to AI Reimagining the Future of Food Light Causes Atomic Layers to Do the Twist Lupus Is a Nearly Universal Virus with Selective Effects Use of Machine Learning in Transplants Type 1 Diabetes Cured in Mice with Gentle Blood Stem Cell and Pancreatic Islet Transplant How Medications Change Our Gut Microbiome ********** "Use your time to be curious, to explore, and to be grateful for the opportunities that are in front of you.” -- Stanford President Jon Levin November 17, 2025 The Education of Service Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “My former student had just attended Condoleezza Rice’s Ogden Lecture at Brown. His words captured something I’ve seen again and again as an educator: when young people meet real public servants instead of their social-media caricatures, cynicism gives way to curiosity. “Like Cheney, Rice has long been flattened into a symbol, admired by some, despised by others, but rarely understood as a person shaped by conviction and duty. In today’s political echo chamber, such figures are treated as relics or villains. Yet when students actually hear them speak, they encounter something missing from modern public life: moral seriousness. “At Brown, Rice traced her improbable journey from segregated Birmingham to the State Department, describing how mentors, discipline, and faith shaped her path. ‘We have a conceit,’ she told students , ‘that your mentors and your role models have to look like you… Sometimes you’ll be the first.’ “In a climate obsessed with identity, that line felt almost revolutionary; a reminder that leadership is measured by responsibility, not racial representation.... “My student described how classmates who had planned to boycott the lecture left inspired. ‘Ms. Rice surprised many with her charisma, her knowledge, and her care for the country,’ he wrote. ‘Some of us walked out wanting to be Secretary of State -- or at least to study international politics.' “He added that a classmate summed it up simply: ‘I didn’t agree with every point she made, but it was an important experience to hear her talk.’ “Those are not partisan reactions; they are civic ones. They show what happens when universities foster engagement instead of insulation.” ... Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. See also "Levin and Rice Discuss Challenges for Universities in Era of Misinformation" at Stanford Daily . Stanford’s Unsustainable Charade re Student Use of AI Excerpts (links in the original): “Somewhere between the launch of ChatGPT and the latest 'no-AI' syllabus clause, we’ve arrived at an absurd impasse: students hide their AI use, professors pretend not to notice, and universities collect six-figure tuition to sustain the fiction. With sources reporting as high as 90% of students now cheating using AI tools , we all clearly can't continue pretending that such uses are 'strictly prohibited,' as if policy statements could stop a technological tsunami. Everyone knows the truth, yet here we are, pretending the emperor is fully clothed when he's standing naked in the quad. Thus far, the response to AI use has been dominated by largely ineffective attempts to police cheating, rather than acclimating to the new reality. Research keeps showing that AI detectors are 'neither accurate nor reliable,' since light paraphrasing of AI-generated text breaks most systems. Vanderbilt publicly disabled Turnitin's AI detector after months of testing, and the University of Pittsburgh's teaching center followed suit, warning that current detectors create unacceptable false positives. Inside Higher Ed reports that Montclair State, UT Austin, and Northwestern told faculty not to rely on detectors. As University of Adelaide professors concluded: ‘We should assume students will be able to break any AI-detection tools, regardless of their sophistication.’ The only result of policing was forcing students to reword LLM-generated text or nudge code style. “Perhaps the greatest irony in all this is that developing the ability to work more efficiently with AI is actually a highly in-demand skill.... The only rational way forward is to stop fighting AI and assimilate it into education.” ... Full op-ed at Stanford Review. See also “Faculty Lead AI Usage Conversations on Campus” at Inside Higher Ed : “Survey data shows a majority of college students are aware of appropriate AI use cases in the classroom because their instructors -- not administrators -- set the expectations.” See also “Teaching Responsible Use of GenAI in Graduate Studies” at Times Higher Education . The Decline of the Great American Research University Excerpts (links in the original): “American universities are heading downwards in a spiral of self-delusion. They still talk about their commitment to excellence, their great achievements, their leadership of the world of science, but they lament the damage that President Trump has inflicted, is inflicting, or is about to inflict on them.... “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s response to ‘government activity’ put it similarly: ‘MIT continues to press forward with its vital research and education mission, including on topics such as human health, energy innovation, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and other areas important to national security, economic competitiveness, and quality of life for all Americans.’ “The cold reality, however, is that American university research, particularly in the sciences, began to decline decades ago, and Trump had nothing to do with it. The decline was largely self-inflicted.... “Americans generally focus on the domestic rankings published by U.S. News and World Report , and maybe some business-school rankings, the Princeton Review , or even the alternative Washington Monthly rankings. When they look at global rankings, they usually see only the 'big four': the Shanghai Rankings (aka the Academic Ranking of World Universities); the U.S. News Best Global Universities ; the QS; and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the latter two of which are published in the United Kingdom.... “But this is a deceptive story. Those four rankings are not the entirety of the global-ranking scene. There are a dozen others, generally published by universities or research centers, that rely on publicly available sources rather than surveys or data submitted by institution.... [Followed by discussion of methodologies used in ranking universities worldwide.] “At the same time, the recruitment and promotion of faculty has been seriously compromised. At University of California campuses and other institutions, prospective faculty were until recently subject to political loyalty oaths in the form of diversity statements . In the social sciences and in pharmacology and medical research , there are signs of a widespread crisis of replicability. "In contrast, the leading Chinese universities have maintained rigorously meritocratic policies.... “So, the relentless process continues. Every year American researchers produce relatively fewer papers, and their quality declines while Chinese universities produce relatively more papers and more high-quality papers in science and engineering. The process is especially apparent in fields like physics, robotics, and artificial intelligence. And so the scientific world is about to face a dramatic shift in its center of gravity.” Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education. But see also “America’s Universities Are National Security Assets” at Inside Higher Ed : “The vast majority of our 4,000-odd colleges and universities (including the elite ones) are hardly the ivory towers so associated with so-called woke movements and high-profile culture wars. Many, in fact, are the R&D labs of our national security infrastructure.” See also our compilation of the Shils Report regarding the recruitment and promotion of faculty and as long posted at our Chicago Trifecta webpage. Harvard Has an Ethics Problem Excerpts: “‘Should I let go of my Zionist friends?’ asks an anonymous Harvard student. A Harvard Crimson editor responds: yes, the student is entitled to end those friendships. “What sounds like a thoughtful meditation on friendship and conviction instead reads like a dispatch from a campus that no longer knows what truth is -- or what friendship requires. The anonymous student, Jewish and anti-Zionist, worries that his or her friends’ politics taint his or her certainty of their decency. “It’s quintessentially Harvard: polished and cerebral, yet utterly vacuous. There is no effort to test the moral assumptions beneath the question. Is Zionism truly a moral stain? Can friendship survive deep disagreement? What do we owe to truth when feelings conflict with facts? None of this is considered. “The result is bloodless relativism, where ethics are reduced to personal comfort and truth becomes optional. In miniature, it captures the intellectual and moral decay of elite higher education -- where moral reasoning has become branding, and virtue is measured by separation, not encounter.... [Followed by these topics: the death of viewpoint diversity, selective moral outrage, moral education without moral seriousness, why students are so fragile, from Harvard Yard to everywhere, the civic consequences, and recovering courage and truth.] “Universities were once custodians of civilization -- places where intellect met humility, and freedom and truth were inseparable. If Harvard has forgotten this, others must remember: the smaller colleges, classical schools, and local communities that still believe argument is not division but the lifeblood of a free people. Because a nation that forgets how to argue will soon forget how to live together. “The tragedy of the Crimson’s column is not that one student wonders about her friends. It’s that an entire institution has forgotten how to wonder rightly. Until Harvard rediscovers the meaning of Veritas (truth pursued through reasoned debate and friendship across difference) it will continue to mistake therapy for thought and virtue for vanity. “And the rest of us will pay the price for its failure.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest On the Spectrum Between Free Speech and Cancel Culture, Where Are Today’s Colleges? Full article at The Hill: “As political polarization intensifies, America’s colleges and universities face threats to free speech from both the left and right. Campus conservatives risk ostracization, shaming or social media mobbing for expressing unpopular views on hot-button identity and social justice issues. Complaints about progressive faculty periodically go viral, triggering torrents of online abuse . Students protesting Israel’s conduct in Gaza risk suspension, expulsion, arrest, doxxing and retraction of offers of employment.” The College Kids Who Can’t Do Basic Math Full article by Rhodes College undergraduate Tanner Nau at Free Press: "A report released last week by the University of California San Diego, which has about 45,000 students and is one of America’s highest-ranked public universities, said that the number of entering first-year students whose math skills fall below middle-school level ‘increased nearly thirtyfold’ from 2020 to 2025 -- to roughly one out of every eight new students.” Also covered at Newsweek . How Yale Escaped the Crackdown on Higher Education Full article at WSJ. Higher Education Needs Receivership, Not Reforms Full op-ed by UC Santa Cruz Prof. Emeritus John Ellis at WSJ. The Perverse Impact of Grade Inflation Full op-ed at WSJ. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Why AI Still Struggles to Tell Fact from Belief Be Careful What You Tell Your AI Chatbot New Ultrasound Technique Could Help Aging and Injured Brains ********** “Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.” -- George Orwell November 10, 2025 The Global Free Speech Recession Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “The administration’s most alarming actions blur the distinction between protected and unprotected speech as well as words and violence. Right after the Kirk tragedy, Attorney General Pam Bondi said : ‘We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.’ Bondi later walked this statement back, saying that ‘Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.’ But since then, the administration has only continued to conflate protected speech with violence.... “There’s little subtlety here. The White House has flagged Americans it considers anti-American, anti-capitalist, or anti-Christian -- none of which the memo defines -- as potential national security threats. The president’s memo asserts a vast left-wing conspiracy to incite political violence and then directs the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices to ‘investigate all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies.’ “This guilt-by-association tactic is absolutely chilling in a free society.... “Two years ago, The Future of Free Speech, a nonpartisan think tank at Vanderbilt University, released a report, ‘The Free Speech Recession Hits Home .’ The report analyzed free speech developments in 22 democracies between 2015 and 2022. It found something alarming: ‘Over 75 percent of the developments discussed are speech restrictive.’ ..." [Followed by specific examples around the world.] Full op-ed by FIRE Vice President Matthew Harwood at Substack and as originally published at Dispatch . For convenience, we also have posted a PDF copy of the Vanderbilt report referenced above, “Mapping Laws and Regulations Affecting Free Speech in 22 Open Democracies” at our Commentary from Others webpage. Responding to Skepticism in Higher Education Excerpt (link in the original): “For months, the biggest headlines from American campuses have centered on legal battles with the Trump administration. These arise, in part, from growing public skepticism (especially, but not exclusively among conservatives) about U.S. campuses. “Removed from these combative headlines -- and receiving far less attention -- are proactive steps being taken by many universities to get at the heart of concerns felt by many Americans. “Presidents and senior leaders from nine of America’s private universities gathered on Oct. 7–8 in Washington, D.C., for discussions about what more could be done to ‘model healthy civic life and intellectual exchange’ on U.S. campuses. “Convened by Jonathan Haidt’s Constructive Dialogue Institute, these universities included Brown University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Tufts University, Vanderbilt University and Yale University. “Participants in the two-day summit worked to ‘develop innovative models for strengthening constructive dialogue, open inquiry and free expression in higher education.' ..." [Followed by examples of actions being taken at various campuses.] Full article at Deseret News. See also “Refining Trump’s Higher-Education Reform” by Hoover Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics . Universities Have a Logic Problem Excerpts (link in the original): “There is nothing like political ideology to create difficulties with thinking, and the situation worsens when it is channeled through institutions. Among the most pronounced sources of such difficulties, ironically, is the university.... “While our higher education tradition in America has brought us many successes, it is also creating problems, notably in how we think. “That may be counterintuitive: On our college campuses, we tend to address what we think are serious problems seriously. In reality, they often become points of disagreement, stemming from differences in perception.... “One of the most reliable places in the university system to locate the logical problem of induction is in our law schools. Law, as practiced in academia, is especially vulnerable to such error because, among other problems, it systematically mixes law and politics as teaching content, thereby portraying law as an instrument of politics—and, by extension, of ideology—and ideology as an instrument of justice." ... [Followed by specific examples of different faculty approaches.] Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. See also “Academia Has a Freedom of Speech Problem That Starts with Professors” by Kansas State Prof. Emeritus Dennis Weisman at The Hill . Faculty Face Widespread Punishment for Speech While Administrators and Unions Stay Silent Excerpts (link in the original): “The ideal of academic freedom has always rested on a simple promise: scholars must be free to pursue truth, wherever it leads. But new data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) show how far higher education has drifted from that ideal. “In FIRE’s latest survey , an astonishing 94 percent of faculty reported suffering some negative consequence for their speech. These range from lost professional relationships (47 percent) and workplace shunning (40 percent) to seeking psychological counseling to cope with the fallout (27 percent) or even losing their jobs (20 percent). “These are not isolated anecdotes. They describe a profession under siege.... “FIRE’s Sean Stevens put it plainly, stating, ‘Support for academic freedom should never depend on the views being expressed, but our survey shows that’s exactly what’s happening.’ His colleague Nathan Honeycutt added, ‘Cancellation campaigns are often wrapped in the language of preventing emotional harm. But it’s the mobs themselves that inflict lasting mental anguish on academics.’ “That’s the paradox of the modern campus. Speech is punished in the name of compassion. Administrators invoke ‘well-being’ as a justification for silencing, yet it’s dissenters -- not mobs -- who bear the real psychological cost. The result is a culture of timidity that corrodes the mission of higher education."... Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest Why FIRE Is Now Judging Bias-Reporting Systems More Harshly Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also “Stanford’s Program re Bias ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage . A European Threat to the First Amendment Full op-ed at Law & Liberty. The Free World Is Losing the Information War; Here’s How It Can Win Full op-ed at West Point Modern War Institute: “A third of Americans do not believe the media should be able to report news without state censorship.... Nearly one in five believe the NATO alliance is no longer necessary.... At the core of each of these beliefs and many others are disinformation campaigns that overstate the dangers of free speech....” Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Interview of President Emeritus John Hennessy Debunking Common Free Speech Myths Academic Integrity Working Group Addresses Generative AI and Exam Policies Five Things to Know About the Dangers of High Blood Pressure Is There a Limit to Indoor Nature’s Benefits? ********** “If the rising generation of students is taught, either implicitly or explicitly, to censor themselves or to despise those with different viewpoints, they will act accordingly in the public square after they graduate. But if they’re taught to debate vigorously -- with an exchange of arguments and evidence -- in pursuit of truth instead of victory at all costs, they’ll take that spirit of free speech and mutual respect into the public square.” -- UNC Prof. Jed W. Atkins November 3, 2025 Is Stanford Getting Involved in Censorship Again? Editor's note: We don’t know the answer to this question although the question has become relevant with the issuance of a letter dated October 22, 2025 to Stanford from the House Judiciary Committee. For reader convenience, we have posted a copy of this letter at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage along with a copy of the agenda for a conference held at Stanford on September 25 and 26 on the topic, although there also was an invitation-only event held the day before the public conference, that is, on September 24 and that is specifically referenced in the House letter and subsequent commentaries. With issues like this resurfacing, we have long suggested, specifically in Section 4 of our Back to Basics webpage, that the proper role of a university is to engage in front-line, independent and scholar-based research and teaching. Hosting panels and conferences to discuss relevant issues can further that research and teaching, although one would expect strong viewpoint diversity to be expressed at any such panels and conferences. The concerns arise when a unit at Stanford -- including its 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities -- starts to engage in advocacy and implementation activities and with the Stanford name being used to give credibility to whatever is then being advocated and implemented. We leave it to readers to decide if that has happened here. From the House Judiciary Committee letter: “Foreign censorship laws, regulations, enforcement actions, and judicial orders may have the effect of limiting Americans’ ability to access constitutionally protected speech in the United States. In fact, this seems to be the intended effect of many foreign censorship efforts.... The Committee is concerned that Stanford, and specifically its Cyber Policy Center, may be one of the third parties engaged in assisting foreign governments attempting to suppress American speech.... This collaboration with foreign censorship officials is even more alarming in light of Stanford’s past efforts to facilitate domestic government censorship of lawful speech” [through its now-defunct Stanford Internet Observatory and related entities]. * * * * * * * * * A week after issuance of this letter from the House Judiciary Committee, commentator Michael Shellenberger posted his own analysis of the potential concerns. Excerpts : “In the spring of 2022, former President Barack Obama gave a major policy address at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, where he laid out a sweeping proposal for government censorship of social media platforms through the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act.... “At the heart of Obama’s vision for Internet censorship was legislation that would have authorized the US government’s National Science Foundation to authorize and fund supposedly independent NGOs to censor the Internet. The DHS and Stanford Internet Observatory, which was part of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, pioneered this censorship-by-proxy strategy as a way to get around the First Amendment in 2020 with posts raising concerns about the 2020 elections and in 2021 with ‘narratives’ expressing concern about the Covid vaccine.... “And Public has discovered that the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, which is led by Obama’s former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, is at the heart of a new, secretive, and possibly illegal censorship initiative that appears even more ambitious than the one Obama proposed in 2022. “On September 24 [2025] , the Cyber Policy Center hosted a secret dinner between its leaders and top censorship officials from Europe, UK, Brazil, California and Australia. The meeting was titled ‘Compliance and Enforcement in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape.’ Frank McCourt, the same person behind the Stanford Internet Observatory, financed the gathering through his ‘Project Liberty Institute,’ (PLI), toward which he gave $500 million to ‘strengthen democracy’ and ‘foster responsible technology.’ ... “A spokesperson for the Australian government said, ‘Whilst in attendance at Stanford for the 2-day conference, some attendees, including trust and safety researchers, industry, civil society, and government representatives, were also invited to attend an informal evening roundtable event organised by Stanford University entitled, ‘Compliance and Enforcement in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape.’ ... “Much of the following two days of the public conference were focused on coordinating government censorship (‘regulation’) of social media platforms, and the other nations that attended the meeting are all intensively involved in censoring their citizens and US tech companies.... “Why did Stanford Cyber Policy Center hold this meeting, what is its strategy for global censorship? Who leaked the agenda to Public and why? And what can be done to stop Stanford, Brazil, Australia, the EU and others from realizing their totalitarian censorial vision?” Full op-ed by Michael Shellenberger at X (October 28, 2025). See also these related articles: Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center Coordinates International Internet Censorship” at Stanford Review (October 29, 2025): “We urge Stanford to cease the promotion of censorship at home and abroad. Stanford should not be the ‘Lead Academic Partner’ advising foreign institutions on censoring their citizens. Free societies require free speech to flourish; universities must defend the conditions of open inquiry, not erode them. When universities abandon that duty, they imperil both academic freedom and the democratic values they claim to serve.” "House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan Demands Stanford Turn Over Documents Relating to Foreign Censorship Scheme" at Substack (October 29, 2025). “Great Britain Averages 12,000 Arrests Per Year for Online Speech” at All Sides (October 2, 2025). "Civil Liberties Groups Say That the Authorities Are Over-policing the Internet" with detailed statistics and charts re number of arrests in the UK, cities with highest number of arrests, sentencing, etc. at Times of London (April 4, 2025). “Digital Services Act -- Does Internet Regulation Threaten Freedom of Expression?” at Max Planck Institute (July 21, 2025). “German-Style Internet Censorship Catches On Around the World” at Reason (October 12, 2020). “Freedom on the Net” with detailed analysis and statistics of benefits versus restrictions at Freedom House (2024). “Google Admits to Prior Censorship; Promises to End Bans of YouTube Accounts of Thousands of Americans Censored for Political Speech" at House Judiciary Committee website and including a link to letter from Google (September 23, 2025). “Mark Zuckerberg Says Biden Officials Would 'Scream' and 'Curse' When Seeking Removal of Facebook Content” at NBC News (January 10, 2025). “Zuckerberg Says He Regrets Caving to White House Pressure on Content” at Politico (August 26, 2024). Sanctioned Scholars -- The Price of Speaking Freely in Today’s Academy Excerpts (footnotes deleted): . . . . “In the classic model of a university, a professor does not simply transmit knowledge, but also is a guardian for and advocate of inquiry -- someone who models intellectual bravery. That ideal is under strain. Today, many faculty and scholars operate in a climate where speaking honestly may feel risky, and defending unpopular views dangerous. In such a climate, courage becomes a professional necessity. “Since 2000, almost 1,700 scholars have faced sanctions over their speech, with more than 300 of these cases resulting in termination or forced resignation. These campaigns have been driven by both on-campus actors -- such as students, faculty, and administrators -- and off-campus groups, including activist organizations, politicians, and members of the general public. They have also come from all across the political spectrum.... “FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire database independently tracks and documents the ways and reasons scholars in the United States have faced calls for sanction for their speech from 2000 to present. This database includes almost 1,700 documented sanction attempts, including a record number this year, with 300 of these attempts resulting in faculty terminations. Most of these incidents have occurred over the past decade. “While these records provide ample detail about the incidents themselves, they tell us little about the personal experiences of the scholars targeted. To address this gap, FIRE invited 635 scholars listed in the database who were sanctioned or targeted between 2020 and 2024 to participate in a survey. Of these, 209 completed our survey, yielding a 33% response rate." ... Full article at FIRE including detailed charts and quotes. A PDF copy of the full report can be downloaded here . New Stanford Speaker Series for Civil Disagreement Excerpt (links added): “KIND Snacks founder Daniel Lubetzky JD ’93 launched the Stanford Builders Forum , a new speaker series intended to promote respectful civil dialogue across lines of disagreement, with a talk at Stanford Law School (SLS) on Oct. 8. “The Forum comes as a gift from Lubetzky in an effort to increase sociopolitical dialogue on campus. As a program of ePluribus Stanford , an initiative by Provost Jenny Martinez aimed at enhancing student citizenship, Lubetzky’s donation will also support a new faculty fellow in Civic, Liberal and Global Education (COLLEGE ), the first-year course requirement for students to navigate self-definition as citizens. “Martinez and psychology professor Jamil Zaki joined Lubetzky on the panel, moderated by School of Humanities and Sciences Dean Debra Satz, sharing how their personal experiences navigating conflict reshaped their perspectives on communicating with others. “‘My father was a Holocaust survivor,’ Lubetzky said. ‘When I was nine years old, he started talking to me about what he went through. He terrified me … I wanted to build bridges between people so that what happened to him would not happen to people.’” ... Full article at Stanford Daily. Teaching Critical Thinking in the Age of AI Excerpt (links in the original): “[A student wrote,] ‘In class, the professor was discussing binaries, but I didn't really understand what they were. I asked ChatGPT about it, and it helped me figure it out.’ “This is probably one of the most unsettling reflections I have ever read from a student. Yet as we struggle in higher education to figure out how to integrate AI into our classrooms, it is also one of the most exciting. I want to tell you how I have finally -- after three long years of experimentation and wanting to give up -- figured it out: I’ve basically made AI my co-instructor.” ... Full op-ed by Merrimack College Prof. Dan Sarofian-Butin at Real Clear Education. Other Articles of Interest Universities Can’t Pursue Truth Without Viewpoint Diversity Full op-ed by Brown U Prof. Emeritus John Tomasi and NYU Prof. Jonathan Haidt at Inside Higher Ed. Colleges Face a Financial Reckoning; U Chicago Is Exhibit A Full article at WSJ. See also our Stanford Concerns webpage for data on Stanford’s administrative and other costs and Sections 3 and 4 of our Back to Basics webpage with suggestions for addressing those costs. Despite Naysayers and Rising Costs, Data Shows That College Still Pays Off for Students and for Society Overall Full op-ed by Columbia Prof. Stanley S. Litow at The Conversation. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Common Crystal Proves Ideal for Low-temperature Light Technology The Antidote to Loneliness Might be Recognizing How Much Others Care Eye Prosthesis Is the First to Restore Sight Lost to Macular Degeneration ********** October 27, 2025 Beyond the Research University Excerpts : . . . . “During World War II, Vannevar Bush ran the Office of Scientific Research and Development, which funded research for radar, guided missiles and even the Manhattan Project. In July 1945, he published a report to the president titled ‘Science: The Endless Frontier,’ writing that ‘scientific progress is essential’ to promote national security and public welfare. To achieve this, he wrote, the U.S. must ‘foster the opening of new frontiers’ by doing ‘basic research in the colleges, universities, and research institutes.’ “This was a brilliant idea, and it worked for decades. The list of successful university research is astounding. Start with Gatorade and work your way up (computing, mRNA, air bags). Students and professors make for cheap research labor. Even today, post doctorates toil at universities doing biotech research before being hired by drug companies.... “‘I think universities have become detached from society and from reality as well,’ Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice says in a podcast interview. ‘People take for granted some of the innovations that have come out of universities.’ True. Colleges also take for granted why we do research at universities in the first place. Change is needed.... “But who will step in? A public company can’t just fund billions for new quantum models or moon-shot cancer drugs without incurring losses, which would annoy shareholders. Universities can do basic research all day long because they aren’t in the business of generating income. “What we need is a new type of research organization with tax advantages and the ability to incur losses -- call it a Basic Research Entity, or BRE. It could hire researchers or even contract out to universities. It would be directed by corporations and government, with funding coming from corporate, government, venture-capital and even philanthropic sources. Intellectual property would be held in the BRE. No tax liability until the commercialization phase, much like today. Researchers could own a piece of future royalties. “The government gets what it wants -- basic research, disease cures -- and companies get new product ideas and access to patents, cutting out the university middleman. “Other models could work too.” ... Full op-ed at WSJ. The UVA Model for Settling with the Federal Government Excerpt : “Universities have been in fight mode with the Trump Administration, but it doesn’t have to be that way. On Wednesday [October 22, 2025] the University of Virginia signed an agreement with the Justice Department that pauses all federal investigations against the school, without an enormous ransom or coercive new mandates. “The agreement specifies that UVA and the government ‘affirm the importance of and their support for academic freedom.’ It says the agreement should not be read as ‘giving the United States authority to dictate the content of academic speech or curricula.’ That’s an important note for intellectual independence. “In return, UVA ‘acknowledges its obligation as a public institution,’ supported by federal funds, ‘to maintain admissions, employment, discipline and speech policies and practices that prevent the suppression of speech and discrimination based on political viewpoint.’ Under the new agreement, Virginia also pledges to meet the standards laid out as ‘best practices’ in the Administration’s July guidance for schools that take federal funding.” ... Full editorial at WSJ. See also articles at NY Times and Washington Post . See also “How the Compact Curtails Academic Freedom” by former Stanford law school dean and Prof. Emeritus Paul Brest at Inside Higher Ed . Vanderbilt Didn’t Accept or Reject the Compact; the Chancellor Plans to Provide Feedback Instead Excerpts (links in the original): “Vanderbilt University’s leader posted a response to the compact on Monday [October 20] , taking a markedly different tack. “Whereas presidents for seven out of the nine original recipients of the compact explicitly stated they were declining to sign the document as written, Daniel Diermeier, Vanderbilt’s chancellor, wrote, ‘Despite reporting to the contrary, we have not been asked to accept or reject the draft compact. Rather, we have been asked to provide feedback and comments as part of an ongoing dialogue, and that is our intention.’... “Diermeier has drawn attention in recent months for imploring higher education to change, though he hasn’t endorsed the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics. He has been especially adamant about rejecting 'creeping politicization' and embracing institutional neutrality -- the idea that colleges should not take positions on current events -- which is included in the compact.”... Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta re free speech, institutional neutrality and standards for the hiring and promotion of faculty. What College Rankings Are Missing Excerpts (links in the original): “Inscribed upon the exterior of Harvard Yard’s Dexter Gate are the words, ‘Enter to grow in wisdom,’ while the gate’s interior admonishes those leaving: ‘Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.’ ... “These are beautiful aspirations, which our institutions of higher learning are right to strive for. Nonetheless, our evaluations and rankings of colleges and universities frequently neglect these matters.... “In a chart we have prepared, one can take a glance at how students at the 429 institutions providing at least 50 respondents each see their college’s contributions. Harvard falls about in the middle of the pack for average scores on these four questions. While this is a far cry from Harvard’s dominant place in conventional rankings of colleges, it is nonetheless considerably better than we do in the Foundation for Individual Rights of Expression’s annual free speech rankings . The two issues -- student formation and academic freedom -- are also closely linked. As we have argued at length elsewhere , virtues such as patience, courage, justice, and humility are not only important in their own right, but are also crucial for achieving the University’s primary academic goals of education and research. Without courage, students will struggle to express controversial views in or out of class, while without patience, justice, or humility, they will struggle to give those they disagree with a fair and impartial hearing.” ... Full op-ed and chart by Harvard Prof. Tyler J. VanderWeele and Associate Director for Research Brendan W. Case at Harvard Crimson. Other Articles of Interest As More Question the Value of a Degree, Colleges Fight to Prove Their Return on Investment Full article at Hechinger Report. Interest in American MBA Programs Shrinks, but Schools Across Asia Are Booming Full article at WSJ. Harvard Cuts PhD Admissions by 60% to 75% Full article at Harvard Crimson. How English Departments Became Broken Full op-ed at James Martin Center. Can VR Teach Students Ethics? Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. How Stanford Is Bringing AI Into the Classroom Why Wall Street Is Booming While Main Street Is Stagnating Roadmap for the Future of Sustainability Education What Does It Take to Bridge Differences? Exercise -- The Most Powerful Drug We’ve Ever Known Two New Therapies for Treating Prostate Cancer Without Surgery, Radiation or Chemotherapy How Is AI Changing Your Doctor Visit? ********** “…academic freedom and a culture of open inquiry are at the core of Stanford’s ability to fulfill our mission of research and education. Universities thrive when faculty and students invite and confront competing ideas and arguments. We have made it a primary focus this year to nurture that ideal: from clearer time, place, and manner rules on free speech, to the ePluribus initiative, to new programs to support a strong civic culture.” – Stanford Pres. Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez October 20, 2025 The ‘Best’ Colleges Aren’t the Best Forever Excerpts (links in the original): “For decades, higher education seemed immune to market forces, as families stretched to pay almost any price for a top-ranked college. Prestige was seen as synonymous with enduring value: Harvard would always be Harvard, Yale would always be Yale, followed by the Northwesterns and the Cornells, with aspirants such as the University of Southern California and Northeastern further down the ladder. But with sticker prices surging and graduates facing a tough job market, many parents have begun to question whether prestige alone is worth the price. As reputation loses some of its grip on the marketplace, colleges are moving up and down the list more than ever.... “Nowadays, more than 80 percent of families with a six-figure income cross a college off their list at some point because of its cost. Only 61 percent did so in the mid-2010’s, when six figures went further.... “Driving this trend is a so-called panicking class of parents -- mostly in Gen X but also older Millennials -- who fear their kids won’t be able to replicate their lifestyle in affluent American cities and suburbs. The sticker price of college has doubled in the past 20 years, and student debt covers much of the increase. Parents know the road to adulthood is longer than in previous generations, and as a result, they’ll need to support their kids well into their 20s . And with AI threatening to displace many entry-level jobs, some families are wondering whether a prestigious degree is still a solid insurance policy.... “Prestige in higher education has long favored the incumbents at the top of the rankings. But the more that families steer their decisions elsewhere, the less secure those incumbents will become. One student described his acceptance to Columbia in 2023 as akin to winning the lottery. But once he arrived on campus, he told me, the high wore off quickly. A class he wanted to take had a waitlist so long that he wouldn’t get in until he was a junior or senior, if at all. A professor he’d hoped to do research with didn’t allow undergraduates to work in his lab. The core curriculum was a grind, and the competition to get into clubs was intense. “He told me that he was so enamored with the brand name that he hadn’t taken the time to consider what he really wanted out of his undergraduate experience: finding great friends and working closely with faculty, without constantly clawing for the next thing. After a year at Columbia, he transferred to the University of Minnesota, some 40 spots lower in the rankings. He told me he finds his courses just as challenging as at Columbia, he gets to work in a research lab, and his classmates are more welcoming -- and his tuition has been cut in half.” Full op-ed by Arizona State Prof. Jeffrey Selingo at The Atlantic. See also “The Missing Puzzle Piece of Higher Education” at Minding the Campus : “From the student perspective, greater than three quarters felt the first six months of their post-graduation job taught them more than their entire four years spent at university.” Other Articles of Interest SOME GOOD NEWS RE FREE SPEECH AND CRITICAL THINKING: Stanford's ePluribus Project Full description at Stanford. See also ePluribus Programs and Campus Programs . USC’s Open Dialogue Project Full description at USC. Yale's Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech Full description at Yale. SOME NOT GOOD NEWS: Elite Schools Like MIT Are Hardly Free Markets for Ideas Full op-ed at City Journal. Columbia’s ‘Listening Table’ Band-Aid Can’t Heal Institutional Rot Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. Higher Education Fails at Collective Action Full editorial at Science Magazine. ALSO IN THE NEWS: Prominent Faculty Comment on the Proposed Government Compact Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George, U Chicago Prof. Tom Ginsburg, Yale Prof. Robert Post, U Texas Prof. David Rabban and Harvard Prof. Jeannie Suk Gerson at Substack. But see also “The Sweetheart Deal Is Over for Academia” at Washington Post . Can Educators Focus on Connection Rather Than Grades ? Full op-ed at UC Berkeley Greater Good Magazine: “An educator made a small change to the way she gave feedback on assignments, with big results for students' engagement and confidence.” What the First Amendment Doesn’t Protect When It Comes to Professors Speaking Out on Politics Full op-ed by U Kentucky Prof. Neal H. Hutchens and U Louisville Prof. Jeffrey C. Sun at The Conversation. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Saw, Sword, or Shovel: AI Spots Functional Similarities Between Disparate Objects New Report Urges Critical Action to Address Growing Biosecurity Risks Why Mental Maps Fade with Age Regular Cannabis Use Poses Risks to Those Over 65 Generative AI Is Helping Stanford Researchers Better Understand Brain Diseases Contemplation By Design Initiative Teaches Students to Rest ********** “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think. Universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.” -- Chicago Principles for Freedom of Expression, quoting former U Chicago President Hanna Holborn Gray October 13, 2025 American Association of University Professors Rejects Viewpoint Diversity, and a Faculty Member’s Response Excerpts (links in the original): “The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) recently published an essay in its flagship magazine, Academe, titled ‘Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity .’ Written by Lisa Siraganian, the J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in Humanities and professor at Johns Hopkins University, the piece makes a sweeping and unsettling claim: that efforts to foster intellectual diversity on campus are ‘anathema to academic freedom.’ “This was not an obscure post or a stray faculty blog entry. Academe is the AAUP’s most visible publication, read by professors, administrators, trustees, journalists, and policymakers nationwide. While the essay is not an official AAUP policy resolution, its prominent platform gives it influence and credibility. For many observers, publishing such a manifesto sends a message that the AAUP not only tolerates but amplifies these ideas. “The stakes could not be higher. Public trust in higher education has collapsed. A Gallup survey conducted earlier this year found that only 36 percent of Americans express significant confidence in colleges and universities, with just 19 percent of Republicans sharing this confidence. The lack of ideological diversity on campus is one of the most pronounced and visible drivers of this crisis. By framing viewpoint diversity as illegitimate, Academe has chosen to deny what students, alumni, and citizens can plainly see: the narrowing of debate, the silencing of dissent, and the rise of an academic monoculture. “Universities should be places of fearless inquiry, where multiple schools of thought collide in the pursuit of truth. Publishing an argument that openly rejects this ideal does not merely miss the point; it deepens the very crisis it claims to address. It substitutes orthodoxy for openness, ideology for inquiry, and isolation for engagement. To understand why this is so destructive, we must examine each of the essay’s seven theses -- and why they fail both as arguments and as a vision for higher education."... [Followed by discussion of and rebuttals to these seven points made in the AAUP article:] Thesis 1: Viewpoint Diversity Is Anathema to Academic Freedom Thesis 2: Viewpoint Diversity as a Partisan Strategy Thesis 3: Viewpoint Diversity Mistakes Politics for Expertise Thesis 4: Some Viewpoints Are Too Dangerous or False to Include Thesis 5: Viewpoint Diversity Justifies External Interference Thesis 6: Viewpoint Diversity Distracts from Real Diversity Thesis 7: Viewpoint Diversity Undermines Trust in Expertise “The publication of ‘Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity ’ in Academe is more than just another faculty essay. While it is not an official AAUP policy, its appearance in the association’s flagship magazine signals that these arguments are gaining traction within influential corners of academia. When the nation’s most visible faculty organization gives prominent space to an essay that dismisses the very notion of intellectual diversity, it sends a chilling message to the public: that higher education’s leaders are comfortable defending an ideological monopoly rather than confronting it. “Universities now face a defining choice. They can continue to retreat into insularity, denying what students, parents, and citizens plainly see. They can insist that one dominant worldview is enough and dismiss dissent as dangerous or illegitimate. They can ignore the plummeting levels of public trust and gamble that their endowments and prestige will insulate them from scrutiny. “Or they can choose a different path: to reclaim the spirit of fearless inquiry and robust debate that once made American universities the envy of the world. This means more than vague calls for 'tolerance' or procedural neutrality. It requires tangible reforms -- transparent hiring processes, protection for dissenting scholars, deliberate efforts to foster debate across ideological lines, and a renewed commitment to institutional neutrality so that campuses remain open to all students and ideas."... Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus. NCAA Division I Campus Leaders Are Deeply Concerned About the Direction of Division I Sports Source: Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and Elon University Poll Excerpts (links in the original): “An overwhelming majority of NCAA Division I campus leaders express negative views about the direction of college sports, indicating that new rules and trends will disproportionately harm collegiate women’s and men’s Olympic sports. Those leaders are also concerned about the growing reliance on student fees and other institutional funding, and they are strongly opposed to the current athlete transfer rules. “At the same time, these leaders strongly affirmed their unwavering commitment to the historic academic mission and standards of college sports. “These findings emerge from a national survey of Division I leaders conducted in early August 2025 by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and the Elon University Poll . A total of 376 university presidents and chancellors, athletics directors, senior woman administrators and faculty athletics representatives responded to the survey, a 26% response rate that provides a statistically representative sample of these Division I leadership positions within a +/-4.4% margin of error."... Full article here including detailed poll results and links to PDF copies of charts and data, executive summary and full report. Op-ed: Academia Is Broken; the Compact Can Help Fix It Excerpt: .... “This sort of proposal is not unusual. For more than 20 years, government mandates on a host of issues -- including diversity, discrimination and student discipline -- have been welcomed on college campuses because they fit within the prevailing partisan ethos. But this government mandate, intended to promote excellence in core academic pursuits and to protect free speech, is being met with prophesies of doom. “As someone who played a part in the compact’s initial formulation, working alongside an administration working group, I would like to offer what insight I can into the motivation and need for the compact and to address its detractors. “I am the product of and have long believed deeply in the promise of America’s institutions of higher education. At their best, colleges and universities instill curiosity, critical thinking and commitment to bettering ourselves and our communities. American higher education has, moreover, been an engine of opportunity to countless Americans who have acquired the skills to pursue meaningful work, support their families and drive American prosperity. “But the system is broken. Over the past year, I have spoken with countless university presidents, directors and advisers; scholars and academics; and lawmakers, policy experts and activists. The one thing they all agree on is that our university system, which was once one of the nation’s greatest strategic assets, has lost its way. “The evidence is overwhelming: outrageous costs and prolonged indebtedness for students; poor outcomes, with too many students left unable to find meaningful work after graduating; some talented domestic students and scholars have been crowded out of enrollment and employment opportunities by international students; and a high degree of uniformity of thought among faculty members and administrators, which can result in a hostile environment for students with different ideas. “Critics have argued that it is not the place of the federal government to solve these problems. But without government involvement, reform will be difficult. Many colleges and universities, and especially some of the oldest and traditionally prestigious schools, are burdened with archaic governance structures that make self-reform all but impossible. This means that course correction must come from the outside. “Given the enormous investment of taxpayer money, it is appropriate that the federal government be involved. The government should not be using public funds -- tens of billions of dollars annually in research funding, to say nothing of student aid -- to prop up a system that purports to educate American students and serve the public good but is all too often doing nothing of the sort.”... Full op-ed by Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan at NY Times. See also "What President Trump Wants from Targeted Colleges" at WSJ including key deal points along with charts showing impacts at specific schools. See also "MIT Rejects Proposed Compact" at WSJ : "In a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon Friday, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said the proposal -- called the 'Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education' -- would restrict freedom of expression and MIT’s independence. The proposal is inconsistent with the school’s belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone, she said." See also NY Times : “'I am deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will always defend our fierce independence,' Dartmouth’s president, Sian Leah Beilock, wrote last week. 'You have often heard me say that higher education is not perfect and that we can do better,' she wrote, 'At the same time, we will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.' ” See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Other Articles of Interest Don’t Let Polarization Undermine the Vital Role Colleges Play in the U.S. Full op-ed by UC Davis Chancellor Gary May at Higher Ed Dive. U.S. Colleges Feel the Pinch of Fewer Foreign Students and Fewer Dollars Full article at Reuters. 2025 Higher Education Trends Full article at Deloitte. Can AI Help College Athletic Programs Win More Games? Full article at Ed Tech. Harvard Faculty Say Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades Full article at NY Times . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. New Undergraduate Study Options Combine Data Science with Humanities and Arts Breaking the Chronic Disease Cycle Stanford’s Return on Investment Portfolio and Value of the Endowment ********** “The Trustees [shall bear in mind] that extensive and expensive buildings do not make a University; that it depends for its success rather upon the character and attainments of its Faculty.” – Stanford’s Founding Grant October 6, 2025 Amid Controversy in Higher Ed, Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier Steers a Different Course Excerpts (links in the original): “. . . Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier is one [of the few college leaders willing to admit to the problems in higher education]. He has long been a champion of political neutrality and has called out the politicization of scholarly associations -- approaches other university leaders are only now catching up on. “. . . In a recent interview, transcribed below, he told me that education and research are ‘noble work,’ but only if they are grounded in core principles. And he emphasized how politicization in some departments overshadows the good work conducted in others.... [Followed by Q and A, including the following:] Daniel Diermeier: “We have seen an erosion of trust over the last few years, and it’s pretty dramatic. The critical thing is that universities need to be super-clear about what their purpose is and the values that support their purpose. We believe that the purpose of universities is to create an environment for pathbreaking research and transformative education. Universities are not political parties, and they’re not in the business of taking positions on political or policy issues. Universities have not always done a good job making this clear. “The first pillar is open forums. This means that we have the most open possible environment for our students and faculty to explore ideas without fear of retribution and censorship. It means, in practice, that our registered student organizations or faculty can bring to campus any outside speaker they want. “Openness also needs to happen in the classroom. We have a class that we started a few years ago, and it’s very popular, called ‘Free Speech and Dangerous Ideas.’About 120 students are enrolled in that class right now, and they only discuss hyper-controversial topics. “The second pillar is institutional neutrality. It means that, as an institution, we will not take positions on political or policy issues unless they directly and materially affect the core functioning of the university. We do not take positions on foreign policy. We do not take positions on domestic policy. We don’t criticize the Supreme Court. If there is something directly affecting higher education, then we would get involved, but not on general issues such as abortion. And we believe that if you [comment on political issues], you are creating a chilling effect. You are creating an institutional orthodoxy that inhibits the free expression of ideas. “The third pillar is a commitment to civil discourse. Civil discourse means that we’re members of one learning community. And we are committed to using arguments and fact-based reasoning -- to treat each other with respect, to advocate for all ideas, but also to be willing to be convinced. We don’t demonize each other. We don’t shout each other down. Our students, when they come on campus, are signing a pledge that reinforces their commitment to these values. By doing that, students are committing themselves to be stewards of civil discourse and to make sure that the culture is alive and well at Vanderbilt.... “At the end of the day, it’s people in departments, faculty in departments and associations, that make those decisions. It’s the responsibility of our faculty to uphold fundamental standards of the academy, even though they may have strong political commitments. If we are setting this [responsibility] aside to advance particular political or ideological positions, we’re basically not living up to those standards, whether that happens in a department or in a professional association.... “You’ve got to be crystal clear about your values and purpose. You’ve got to communicate them, and then you need to have the courage to act on them. My sense is that universities get into trouble when they’re trying to navigate the political waters, whether the political waters are on campus or off campus, to try to make it to the other side of a crisis. That’s when people get into trouble....” Full interview at City Journal. See also our compilation of the Chicago Trifecta regarding speech, political neutrality and standards for the appointment and promotion of faculty. See also concerns about the non-academic activities of Stanford’s 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities at Section 4 of our Back to Basics webpage. Teaching the Republic to Disagree Excerpts (links in the original): “A self-governing republic lives by persuasion, not intimidation.... “Law can mitigate the risk -- better security that protects public figures, electoral reforms such as top-two primaries that broaden the power of the median voter at the expense of the extremes, and a renewed federalism that lowers national stakes. Government, however, can only do so much. Law, like politics, is downstream of culture. Civil society must take the lead in addressing the mutual contempt that stokes hatred. Education is our best hope because it can habituate citizens to turn political animus into reasoned disagreement -- and at times into consensus. Unfortunately, the illiberal turn in our educational system is currently a source of antagonism rather than a solution to it. Our educational system at all stages fails to model the respectful disagreement that prepares citizens for civic discourse.... “. . . Begin with law schools. Over recent decades, the focus on legal and political debate that was once at the heart of legal education has declined. The reasons are many. First, the faculty is more ideologically homogeneous, and so are most student bodies. Overwhelmingly uniform and unchanging political perspectives breed intolerance and a lack of interest in other views that a more politically balanced community fosters. Second, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs present other obstacles because they prioritize affect over argument. When one liberal law professor argued against Roe v. Wade because no one would take that side in class, students complained to DEI. That kind of intervention chills professors from injecting dissent into class.... “Matters are even worse at the undergraduate level. There, faculties are even more politically homogeneous than they are at law schools. There is no need to address counterarguments to orthodoxy because law and judicial opinions based on contrary views are not part of the curriculum. Several studies -- from scholarly working papers to journalistic investigations and think-tank reports -- have examined college syllabi across many institutions and fields, and detected left-wing bias in assigned readings and course content. As former Harvard University President Larry Summers recently noted , an investigation of recent journal articles in the field of American studies revealed that seventy-six were critical of America, sixteen were neutral, and none were positive.... “Universities can help heal our civic culture by getting back to their own truth-seeking mission. Essential to that objective is debate over controversial matters, which encompass much of what develops at the frontier of social sciences and humanities....” Full op-ed by Northwestern Prof. John O. McGinnis. One of the links contained in this op-ed is to a panel recorded on September 7, 2025, “Universities in the Crosshairs: Larry Summers and Lee Bollinger,” which we commend to readers (YouTube , 1 hour ten minutes). College Is Worth Saving Excerpt (links in the original): “Earlier this year, Columbia University was hit with what sophisticated PR types call a double whammy. On the morning of May 7, New York magazine posted ‘Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College,’ a 5,000-word exposé of ChatGPT reliance at the Upper West Side institution. Later that same day, 80 pro-Hamas demonstrators stormed the campus’s Butler Library, rechristening the school ‘the Basel Al-Araj Popular University’ and staying until hauled out by police several hours later. Although American colleges had been under popular suspicion for years -- not least since elite campuses responded to the latest Gaza terrorism with an outpouring of antisemitic bile -- Columbia’s day from hell seemed a culmination. If academic dishonesty was ubiquitous and campus politics had gone mad, what, exactly, was the point of higher education? “Of course, most colleges are not Columbia. Nor is every Columbia student a participant in the intellectual and moral dissolution of the academy. One could be forgiven, however, for viewing the institution as a representative of its class, a school so famous and wealthy that it simply must stand in for the aspirations, if not the reality, of its peers. This would be, in my opinion, a grave error. Not only is Columbia unrepresentative of universities generally, but Columbia’s worst days and weeks are unrepresentative of that institution at its best. To be sure, reformers in positions of power should sometimes use the levers of the state to correct campus misdeeds -- especially, though not exclusively, at public schools. Nevertheless, higher education as it is still frequently practiced in this country deserves our gratitude and respect. “The contrary case is so easy to make that it nearly writes itself. For decades, colleges and universities have allowed tuition to creep skyward, outpacing both inflation and the rise in instructional spending (i.e., the money devoted to actual teaching and learning). Small armies of administrators now roam most campuses, occasionally making trouble but largely shuffling paperwork and plotting to expand their ranks still further. Whereas a bachelor’s degree once carried a significant wage premium, new research by the San Francisco Fed suggests that the bump has declined notably since the pandemic. Just this July, a Financial Times analysis found that young men with a college degree now have approximately the same unemployment rate as their uncredentialed peers.... “. . . What ought not to be forgotten, however, is that American higher education is the work of many generations, the envy of the world, and the source -- still -- of life-altering value for countless men and women. One is inclined, reading the newspapers, to burn the whole system to the ground. Let’s fix it instead.” Full op-ed at James Martin Canter. Other Articles of Interest Professors Can Be Ignorant; That’s Why We Need Viewpoint Diversity Full op-ed by Ohio State Prof. Michael Clune at Chronicle of Higher Education. Majority of Parents Now Say They Would Encourage Their Children to Skip College If Another Track Was Stable and Well Paid Full article at Newsweek: “About 67 percent of parents said they would encourage their children to opt out of higher education, while 78 percent said they believe non-college options can deliver the same long-term success as a four-year degree.” ‘Ivy League’ Doesn’t Mean Excellent Medical Schools, According to New Index Full article at Just the News. (Note: Stanford Medical School got a B .) Fighting the Status Quo, Reform Faculty Search Committees Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. New Speaker Forum to Focus on Solving Problems Across Differences Stanford Law Unveils liftlab, an AI Initiative Focused on the Legal Profession’s Future Rethinking Alzheimer's -- How These Tiny Balls of Fat Factor In Tracking Microplastics from Sea to Body ********** “At its best, the university, more than anywhere else, is where society’s leaders learn how to think, speak, and act. Universities must help students learn to listen to one another actively, to exchange their different views patiently, and to assail only bad arguments -- not people.” – UNC Prof. Jed W. Atkins September 29, 2025 Stanford’s Administrative Costs Per Student Have Gone Up Again and Remain the Highest in the Nation We have updated the tables and charts that have long been posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage to include the most recent numbers (2023) as reported to the National Center for Education Statistics and as then published by How Colleges Spend Money . According to the updated numbers, Stanford’s administrative costs per student were $48,231 in 2023 (up from $45,235 in 2022) as compared to $7,770 at UCLA, $9,494 at UC Berkeley, $19,283 at Dartmouth, $24,708 at Yale, $27,903 at Chicago, $32,659 at MIT, $33,277 at Caltech, $37,862 at Princeton, and $43,816 at Harvard. Some key points to keep in mind: Quoting from the How Colleges Spend Money website, “administrative costs are defined as a function of what institutions report to the [national data base] as ‘institutional support’ expenses, or those for the ‘day-to-day operational support of the institution.’ Institutional support commonly includes costs for executive management, a legal department, fiscal operations, public relations, or a development office.” “Institutional support does not include items like student activities, career services, or financial aid staff (which fall under a separate category of expenses called student services), or parking facilities, housing, or food services (which are reported as auxiliary enterprises).” The tables and charts posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage show that the administrative costs per student at more than half of the schools listed there actually declined in 2023 as compared to 2022 , so the questions arise: Why do Stanford’s administrative costs remain so noticeably higher than comparable schools and why did Stanford’s administrative costs go up and not down as between 2022 and 2023? The numbers contained in Stanford Facts 2025 and as posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage also show that Stanford still has nearly one staff person for every student and ten staff persons for every member of the faculty. We have long posted at Section 3 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage some proposed actions to bring down these and related costs and, in the process, hopefully simplify and improve the campus experiences of both students and faculty. We appreciate that making changes in any organization, and especially at a university, can be a complex task and requires the support of many constituencies. But we believe this is the year when significant actions need to be taken. Unlike some other commentators around the country, we do not believe a board of trustees should be involved in the academic activities of a college or university (among other things, the longstanding concepts of “shared governance”) unless those activities significantly affect the safety and soundness of the institution. On the other hand, a primary fiduciary obligation of any governing board and its officers is to assure the efficient and cost-effective operations of the entity vis-à-vis its key stakeholders (per former Stanford president Gerhard Casper, “all of us are here for only one reason, to support our faculty and students in their work of teaching, learning and research”). Something for everyone to consider, and especially Stanford’s trustees and senior officers. We welcome your comments here . Stanford Ranks First in WSJ/College Pulse Rankings for Preparing Graduates for Financial Success Excerpt (link in the original): “Stanford University tops the list of the best U.S. colleges in the latest WSJ/College Pulse rankings . “Unlike other school rankings, this list emphasizes one point: How well did the college prepare students for financial success? More than any other factor, it rewards the boost an institution provides to its graduates’ salaries, beyond an estimate of what they could have expected from attending any college. “Stanford returns to the top of this list for the first time since the 2017 rankings. Ivy League schools also figure prominently, with Yale University, Princeton University and Harvard University finishing third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Two other Ivy League schools -- Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania -- come in at eighth and ninth, respectively....” Full article at WSJ. How to Think, Not What to Think Excerpts (links in the original): “Across the country, people are questioning the value and role of higher education, and institutions -- particularly the elite ones -- are experiencing a crisis in public trust . On top of that, tech titans are convinced that AI will break higher education , while many observers lament its corrupting influence and ask whether the 'mind-expanding purpose and qualities of a university,' as one historian of education put it recently, are gone forever. “The idea that higher education has outlived its usefulness to society, however, requires taking an astonishingly narrow view of the true purpose of the university. Higher education is not merely the transfer of knowledge. We live in an age of informational opulence; we are awash in readily available data but lacking discernment, communication skills, and empathy. “As a cognitive scientist, I have studied the negative consequences of excessive information. We are in a state of constant information overload, under assault by relentless alerts, updates, and notifications. Research shows that the cognitive burden of lots of information coming at us simultaneously can negatively affect our brains and, ultimately, our performance -- especially when we are not experts in the topics we are bombarded with. “Despite the reforms that our institutions of higher education must embark on to ensure that we are teaching our students how to think -- and not what to think -- a four-year residential-college experience remains one of the most powerful human environments for cultivating human qualities.... “The problem isn’t just a lack of dialogue -- it’s rising polarization. As the Dartmouth political scientist Sean Westwood has shown , disparaging those with whom you disagree as the “other” erodes trust and discourages even the attempt at conversation or engaging across the aisle. That might sound abstract, but in the age of AI, this siloing has tangible consequences. When students retreat into algorithmically curated feeds -- or AI tools that reflect their own assumptions, and validate even their worst impulses -- the divide deepens. Machines are good at confirming biases, real and perceived , not challenging them. We need people to do this hard work themselves, by leaving their information bubbles and interacting with one another in the flesh, not from behind a keyboard....” Full op-ed by Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at The Atlantic. Restoring the Academic Social Contract Excerpts: “Higher education in America sits at a paradox: American universities are simultaneously the crown jewel of the American education system and are also enduring their worst crisis in over a century. The crisis itself has multiple dimensions, including the financial challenges of escalating tuition and student debt burdens, the ideological imbalance among faculty and administrators, the institutional embrace of radical dogmas and speech restrictions, the resurgence of anti-Semitism, the deep ties many universities have forged with foreign nations whose interests are often inimical to the United States, and the new punitive measures that the Trump administration and Congress are wielding. “Most fundamentally, the crisis is one of legitimacy and trust. It is now widely acknowledged that a critical mass of the American people has lost confidence in American universities. In last year's Gallup poll, only 36% of Americans expressed high confidence in higher education, compared to 32% who held little or no confidence. The decline is recent and substantial: A decade ago, 57% of Americans voiced trust in higher education... “But academia's political imbalance is not the whole story. The crisis confronting our universities is best understood as both a cause and a symptom of the core problem besetting higher education: the rupturing of its social contract with American society. This fundamental problem lies at the heart of the academy's loss of public trust. It's long past time for universities to meaningfully address it.... [Followed by discussion of the historic development of the research university, the involvement of national security, the role of tenure, the punishment and cancelling of leading faculty members who thought differently, the role of foreign students and investments, the decline and renewal of the liberal arts and related matters including specific references to Stanford.] “Many universities have already been taking important steps (albeit often under duress, or mandates from boards or legislatures) -- like eliminating diversity statements, curtailing frivolous general-education classes, and adopting new commitments to free speech and institutional neutrality -- to address their shortcomings. These are needful measures. Yet even with illiberal practices ended and speech protections restored, a major question will remain: What should universities research and teach? ...” [Followed by discussion of the challenges of proposed reforms.] Full op-ed by U Texas Provost William Inboden at National Affairs. Large-Scale Syllabi Study Finds Significant Bias Excerpts (link in the original): “Contentious topics are often taught in college classrooms from a uniformly one-sided perspective, according to newly published research that used the Open Syllabus Project, which hosts over 27 million syllabi, to develop its findings. “The research focused on three topics -- ‘racial bias in the American criminal justice system, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the ethics of abortion’ -- to determine how controversial issues are presented. “The research primarily looked at assigned reading materials to conclude that ‘professors generally insulate their students from the wider intellectual disagreement that shape these important controversies.’ “‘Personally, I thought we’d find some imbalance, some activist teaching,’ co-author Jon Shields, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, told The College Fix . ‘I just didn’t expect it to be the norm in the cases we studied. That was genuinely surprising to me.’ “The 66-page working paper , ‘Closed Classrooms? An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues,’ was also co-authored by Claremont McKenna College Professor of Government Stephanie Muravchik and Scripps College Professor of Philosophy Yuval Avnur.... “The paper calls on universities to make reforms through curricular assessments and the formation of faculty groups open to teaching scholarly disagreements. “Moreover, it suggests universities could incentivize change through course development grants or additional hiring lines for programs that show a commitment to a classically liberal education....” Full article at College Fix, and a copy of the working paper can be downloaded here . See also " Make Syllabi Public" by Emory undergraduate Alyza Harris at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest Why Columbia Needs Free Speech 101 Full op-ed by Columbia alum Timothy Tracy at Columbia Spectator. When Academics Want to Bring Down the Academy, a Princeton Example Full op-ed at Princetonians for Free Speech; see also “Princetonians for Free Speech Defends Free Speech for All” at Daily Princetonian . Everyone’s a Free-Speech Hypocrite Full op-ed by Stanford alum and CEO of FIRE Greg Lukianoff at NY Times. Colleges Once Taught Truth and Character; Now, They’re Unrecognizable Full op-ed at College Fix. Colleges Must Embed Career Purpose Throughout the Student Journey Full op-ed at EDU Ledger (formerly Diversity in Higher Education). What To Do About Political Diversity on Campus Full op-ed at Milken Institute Review. Federally Funded Research Should Reflect America’s Interest Full op-ed at City Journal. To Save In-Person Lectures, Universities Need to Provide Lessons Worth Showing Up For Full op-ed by U Melbourne Dr. Hugh Gundlach at The Conversation. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. President Levin Calls on New Students to Create a Culture of Dignity; see also “President Levin in Conversation with Two Student Leaders ” (video, 6:17 minutes) Andrew Luck Aims to Recapture Stanford Football’s Glory Days Teaching Robots Realistic Human Tasks Connecting the Gut, Brain and Microbiome to Heal Chronic GI Conditions How a Speech Gene Could Help Treat Huntington’s Disease How Music Supercharges the Brain ********** "Stanford is a resilient institution, full of problem-solvers. We are confident that we will be able to address whatever challenges come and find creative solutions.” – Pres. Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez September 22, 2025 Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya Wants to Fix Science; Can He? Excerpts (links in the original): “Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the National Institutes of Health, has inherited an agency in crisis. Everyone knows it. “Some think it began this year, with dramatic funding cuts and a hostile takeover by 20-year-old DOGE coders chugging energy drinks in some backroom. Others think it began years ago, with the disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. “To close observers, the original crisis began well before any of this, in the dawning realization that a lot of medical research is junk that can’t be reproduced , that promised cures have fizzled and that Americans shell out more money on health care than people in other wealthy countries and yet we are sicker and die younger . When all this is true, can we really say the so-called crown jewel of American medical science is succeeding? “Dr. Bhattacharya has promised to fix the decades-old problems at the government’s research funding juggernaut. He spent his career as a Stanford health economist, publishing over 100 studies on chronic disease, health outcomes for marginal populations, the cost of health care and why research funders don’t take enough risks.... “Below Dr. Bhattacharya is an entrenched bureaucracy. Above him are powerful bosses, focused so far on crackdowns. The hope is that his earnest belief in the promise of science will produce political strength, enough to move past punishment and bring new vitality to American science. The question is whether he is in over his head.... “Ultimately, Dr. Bhattacharya believes that America is at risk of stagnating in medical science, and that to make America healthy again, the main thing needed is to make science more rational and open. This is what he repeatedly calls his ‘matter of faith.’ “Dr. Bhattacharya is at his most compelling, his most charismatic when he hits these notes. Researchers who know him consistently told me that, sure, he bucked the establishment on Covid, but was eminently sane about it, not a rote contrarian. Robert P. George, a Princeton political philosopher and a colleague of both mine and Dr. Bhattacharya’s, told me he is ‘a person of absolutely impeccable integrity.’... “Dr. Bhattacharya argues that [the disappointing results in Alzheimer’s research despite vast funding by NIH] happened because science is structured around authority. ‘You have, in field after field after field, a kind of set of dogmatic ideas held by the people who are at the top of the field. And if you don’t share those ideas, you have no chance of advancing within those fields,’ he told me....” Full op-ed at NY Times. See also “Dr. Bhattacharya's Opening Statement at His Senate Confirmation Hearing to Lead NIH -- Five Goals if Confirmed as Head of NIH” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage . Censorship Hurts Our Brains -- Literally Excerpts (links in the original): .... “Our brains are built to form habits. The basal ganglia -- deep learning circuits that automate whatever we repeat -- don’t absorb only tennis serves or piano scales. They also wire in patterns of thought. If the only messages we hear are one-sided, the brain’s habit circuits carve them into grooves of thought that resist change .... “Neuroscience also shows that cognitive flexibility isn’t automatic. Like any skill, it must be trained. In a paper titled ‘One cannot simply be flexible,’ Ghent University cognitive scientist Senne Braem and colleagues showed that when people are rewarded for switching tasks, they later switch more readily -- even without realizing why. When switching is discouraged, they become more rigid. Flexibility is like a muscle: It grows with practice, feedback and time. “This helps explain why rigid beliefs can turn dangerous. Dogmatism and extremism go hand in hand with low cognitive flexibility and thinking that resists correction. Political psychologist and neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod has shown that people who score high in political dogmatism also perform poorly on tasks that require mental flexibility. Studies of radicalization likewise find that when opponents are cast as monsters -- ‘Nazi,’ ‘racist,’ ‘enemy of democracy’ -- the capacity to see those opponents as human diminishes. Threat responses flare and ordinary moral limits fall away, making violence seem justified. “As Cass Sunstein argued in his book ‘Going to Extremes,’ when like-minded people talk only with one another, they grow more extreme. But head-on clashes with opponents don’t necessarily soften rigidity.... “People point to social media as the trigger, but the narrowing of perspective often starts much earlier -- in classrooms. The glee some teachers expressed after the [Charlie Kirk] killing revealed how easily bias can masquerade as neutrality. Studies find educators lean heavily to one side politically, yet many sincerely believe they’re impartial -- the ‘bias blind spot’ in action. From primary school through college, dissent is rare and pressure runs mostly one way, etching patterns that are hard to undo. China has long understood this: It now pulls Tibetan children into state-run schools from the age 4, stripping away language and culture so Communist Party ideology can fix identity before anything else can take root.... “All of this is why free speech matters.... From kindergarten through college, schools should be the places where young people learn mental flexibility: weighing opposing arguments, wrestling with uncomfortable facts, and practicing civil disagreement. Too many schools trade that mission for the promise of ‘safe spaces.’ The result is fragility, not the strength of mind a free people needs. “Neuroscience offers a blunt warning. The basal ganglia -- working with prefrontal circuits that normally support flexibility -- can turn repetition into habit, in our thoughts as well as our movements. If we repeatedly avoid dissent, we become expert at avoidance, sometimes at any cost. When young minds are enclosed in like-minded circles, convictions can harden until pushback strengthens them instead of loosening them. That is why exposure to difference must begin early and run deep....” Full op-ed by Oakland U Prof. Barbara Oakley at WSJ. The Newest Face of Long-Term Unemployment? The College Educated Excerpts (link in the original): .... “When the federal government released its August employment numbers on Sept. 5, the overall unemployment rate was still relatively low, at just over 4 percent. But underneath was a concerning statistic: The portion of unemployed people who have been out of work for more than six months, which is considered ‘long-term,’ rose to its highest share in over three years -- to nearly 26 percent.... “But just as surprising as the rise in long-term unemployment is the subset of workers who are increasingly driving it: the college educated. The fraction of long-term unemployed people with a college degree has grown from about one-fifth a decade ago to about one-third today, according to government data compiled by Matthew Notowidigdo and Jingzhou Huang of the University of Chicago. The problem has worsened over the past year or two after easing temporarily.... “‘The data is signaling that there’s some restructuring going on,’ said Andreas Mueller, an expert on long-term unemployment at the University of Zurich. ‘People are losing jobs and can’t find jobs in high-skilled occupations.’...” Full article at NY Times. See also “Colleges Are Selling Dreams, Not Reality” by Ohlone College Prof. James Andrews at James Martin Center . But see also “U.S. Faces Shortfall of 5.3 M College-Educated Workers by 2032” at Higher Ed Dive . University Provosts Are Focused on Funding Cuts, Academic Freedom and AI Excerpts (links in the original): “Despite the rising costs of college, weakened public support for higher education and the onslaught of political challenges facing colleges and universities, provosts remain optimistic about what their institution offers students. Nearly all provosts -- 99 percent -- report that their institution provides a quality undergraduate education. They are generally happy about their jobs, too: 91 percent say they are glad they pursued administrative work, and 86 percent say they enjoy being a chief academic officer. “These stats and others come from the latest Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers , released [last week] by Inside Higher Ed with Hanover Research. The survey -- conducted in June and July of this year and garnering 478 responses -- asked provosts for their thoughts on the rapidly changing federal policy landscape, the growing prominence of artificial intelligence, the importance of tenure and academic freedom, their faculty’s job satisfaction and mental health as well as their own, and more.... “At most impacted institutions, provosts report that federal funding cuts amount to less than 5 percent. About 28 percent of impacted provosts say their institution has experienced a 5 to 10 percent federal funding cut, and 12 percent report a cut of more than 10 percent. “Institutions are responding to these cuts in myriad ways, provosts report. Chief among them is pursuing alternative funding sources, such as private donors or industry partnerships, at 40 percent. Twenty-one percent of provosts say their institutions reshuffled internal resources to protect vulnerable programs, and about a third of provosts report their institutions restructured or scaled back specific programs that depend on federal grants.... “‘Fifty percent of provosts saying academic freedom is facing challenges is pretty bleak,’ said [Mike Gavin, president of Delta College in Michigan] . ‘That means that our administrators are having to defend the work of their faculty in ways that they should not have to.’ He explained that academic freedom and diversity, equity and inclusion policies are often unfairly framed as opposing efforts, when the two may go hand in hand.... “About two-thirds of all provosts report that their institutions are offering professional development for faculty on AI and/or integrating AI into the curriculum. Half of provosts say their institutions are actively developing policies for AI use but have not fully implemented those policies. Only 14 percent say their institution has established a comprehensive AI governance policy or institutional AI strategy....” Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Experiential Learning Is an Antidote to Artificial Intelligence Excerpt (link in the original): .... “The longer I’ve taught (this is my 11th year as a professor), the more I’ve leaned on experiential learning: hands-on activities that get students out of their seats and engaging all their senses and capacities. Even as universities in my state are signing deals with tech companies to bring free AI training to campus , I see students clamoring for something else: meaningful in-person experiences where they can make strong connections with mentors and peers. “As I’ve redesigned my classes to integrate more field trips to local farms, volunteer work with community organizations and hands-on lessons focused on building tangible skills, I’ve found that students work harder, learn more, and look forward to class. Instead of just showing slides of compost, I bring my students to our campus farm to harvest castings (nutrient-dense worm poop!) from the worm bins. Instead of just lecturing about how California farmers are adapting to water scarcity, I take students to visit a farm that operates without irrigation, where we help prune and harvest grapes and olives. Long wait lists for these types of classes indicate that demand is far greater than supply...." Full op-ed by UC Santa Barbara Prof. Liz Carlisle at Ed Source. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. New Students Told 11 Tips to Make the Most of Their Undergraduate Education Building Bridges Between Competing Alzheimer’s Theories Discovery Highlights the Nervous System’s Role in Cancer Growth On-Line Game Teaches Responsible Use of AI Real-World Benchmarks for Healthcare AI Agents ********** “Kirk’s murder is a wake-up call. The line between speech and violence has been crossed. Universities must decide whether they will be sanctuaries of learning or incubators of hate. The future of higher education, and the safety of our communities, depends on their answer.” – Stanford alum and Sara Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams September 15, 2025 What Management Expert Peter Drucker Would Say About Organizational Complexity In early May, we asked ChatGPT to suggest ways to address various concerns at Stanford and posted the responses at our Ask AI webpage. A week ago, we asked Google AI what management expert Peter Drucker might say about organizational complexity at Stanford and elsewhere. Here’s an excerpt from the response we received and with the full results posted at our Ask AI webpage: “Drucker saw organizational complexity as an enemy of effectiveness that hinders performance and demoralizes employees. He famously quipped, ‘Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done’. Drucker believed that simplicity, decentralization, and a clear focus on the organization's mission were the best countermeasures to this natural tendency toward complexity.... “Inefficiency grows with size. Drucker compared organizations to living organisms, noting that as they grow, an increasing proportion of their energy is spent on managing their own internal structure rather than producing results for customers. He believed that an organization's internal ‘mass’ or bureaucracy grows faster than its ‘external surface’ or output. To combat this, he advocated for organizations to ‘run lean’ and prioritize having a few highly effective people over many mediocre ones....” [Followed by: Meetings are a sign of failure, Information overload hinders clarity, The answer is simple and decentralized, The remedy is planned abandonment, and Focus on external purpose.] See also our Back to Basics and Stanford Concerns webpages. Some Stanford Concerns Administrative Bloat We recently updated the article "Stanford's Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy" at our Stanford Concerns webpage to include the more recent numbers from the Stanford Facts 2025 booklet and which shows that Stanford now has 15,340 non-teaching personnel (19,169 if you add clinical and SLAC staff) as compared to 2,345 total faculty (1,738 of whom are members of the Academic Council) and 17,469 total students. In other words, Stanford has close to one staff person for every student and ten staff persons for every member of the faculty. As shown in charts long posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage, this has resulted in Stanford having the highest administrative costs per student as compared to every other university in the United States (and per the instructions for the federal data base, these numbers don't even include student services and related activities which are reported separately) and where many/most of the other top colleges and universities are operating at a fraction of the administrative costs per student as compared to Stanford. According to 2022 data as reported to the federal data base, Stanford's administrative costs per student were $40,227 in 2022 ($49,199 in 2021) as compared to $4,640 at UCLA, $16,111 at Dartmouth, $22,461 at Yale, $23,553 at Chicago, $34,390 at Princeton and $38,835 at Harvard. ResEd We also note that the Stanford Daily article that was linked in our Newsletter a few weeks ago confirmed that the undergraduate neighborhood housing program is finally being disbanded. Never mind the millions of dollars and tens of thousands of staff hours that were devoted to this failed program -- a program that most alumni and students knew would never work and continued to say so. But here’s what is also interesting. In that same Daily article, it appears that with the abandonment of the neighborhood housing program, the central staff at ResEd is going to be increased, not decreased, along with more organizational complexity: “[Assistant Vice Provost for Residential Education (ResEd) Cheryl Brown] said ResEd departments will be restructured into ‘Administration + Operations,’ ‘Communication, Strategy + Project Management’ and ‘Student Support.’ To support this transition, ResEd will hire a new associate director for student support and two associate directors for program administration. ResEd will also collaborate with ePluribus Stanford and the SHARE Title IX and Title VI office to update the curriculum for RA training. RAs will additionally have regular check-in meetings with a dedicated resident director (RD) and community coordinator (CC) during the year.” Here are some comments we’ve received about the RedEd changes: COMMENTATOR A: “There should be stricter oversight before ANY new non-academic positions are created, and maybe it should be a bunch of hard-ass people who can shield the provost and president from always being the bad guys. This is absolutely classic mission creep.” COMMENTATOR B: “One of my pet peeves with Stanford since my undergraduate days has been the dysfunctionality and defects in the undergraduate residential system. I lived in six different residences during my undergraduate years. I think the Draw is a very poor way to maximize the residential experiences of students, and continuing to permit a housing shortage is an equally bad way to manage the system. Hiring more administrators doesn’t bear any relationship to fixing a bad system.” COMMENTATOR C: “This is what happens with an unrestrained culture of empire-building, so that every administrator is seeking an excuse to add to the size of the empire.” Years ago, then-Vice Provost John Bravman (president at Bucknell since 2010) had proposed that freshmen and sophomores stay in the same dorm for their first two years in order to provide continuity as well as to provide a structure where second-year students could help mentor their first-year colleagues. This would also eliminate the upheavals created by the Draw when first-year students have barely settled into college life. For their junior and senior years, students could select among the options that have always existed at Stanford and, we and others believe, can never be overcome in light of the diffuse housing structures long in place at Stanford: dorms suitable for upper-class students, fraternities and sororities, co-op houses, theme houses, other Row houses and on-campus apartment-style units. Follow the Money So where does the money come from to support all of this administrative activity? Some is from tuition, room and board, and fees imposed by the university and student government. A larger portion is from what are called “indirect costs,” that is, the surcharges that are added to most grants to Stanford from government agencies and foundations -- at Stanford, currently 54% on top of the amount of the grant itself. However, longtime tenured Stanford faculty member Jay Bhattacharya -- who now heads the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical and related research in the U.S. and the world and who understands in detail the issues of overhead -- has imposed a 15% cap on indirect costs, and other federal agencies are expected to do the same, if they haven’t already. This is compared to the fact that major foundations (Gates and others) have long imposed a cap of zero to 15% on the indirect costs that they were willing to pay. Another source of funding is an 8% tax on donations from alumni and others, as shown at this webpage (Section IV.2.). Meaning, if you donate $10,000 for a specific program in, say, the English or athletics departments, unless subject to an exception, $800 will not go to your intended program but will be used instead for administrative and other central costs and even though the program itself typically has to budget for overhead as well. We understand that in the 1990’s, this sort of tax, which was much smaller at the time, was eliminated and the costs of the business and other administrative units were to be funded instead from the university’s central budget, not from a tax on donations. Back to Basics Stanford like most U.S. colleges and universities is facing serious financial pressures. Which is why we continue to advocate that Stanford get Back to Basics -- that is, that it stay focused on teaching and front-line research versus the peripheral activities that have accumulated in recent years, including at the 200 to 300 centers now housed at Stanford. Which is why we also have posted the Peter Drucker article at the top of today’s Newsletter and why we again urge Stanford’s trustees, senior administrators and faculty to significantly simplify and flatten Stanford’s administrative organization, significantly reduce Stanford’s non-teaching staff, and in the process get Back to Basics . As Peter Druker points out, organizations are like living organisms, and as they grow, an increasing proportion of their energy is spent on managing their own internal structure rather than producing results for customers, here, Stanford’s students and faculty. Or as Stanford's former Vice President for Administration Ken Cuthbertson used to say, “I resist the idea that learning and teaching should be ‘administered’ in a university. 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.” Also from Cuthbertson: “My job is like that of a groundskeeper. It’s to be sure the playing field is kept in good condition so that the faculty and students can interact with one another, which is the only reason the university exists; to draw boundary lines around the edges; and after that, to stay the hell out of the way.” See also a student’s perspective of the impact the Stanford bureaucracy has on students and Stanford generally at Stanford Review . Comments We welcome your comments here . Stanford Ranks 75th Out of 257 in FIRE’s 2026 Free Speech Rankings Excerpts (links in the original): “WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 9, 2025 -- If America’s colleges could earn report cards for free speech friendliness, most would deserve an ‘F’ -- and conservative students are increasingly joining their liberal peers in supporting censorship. "The sixth annual College Free Speech Rankings , released today by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and survey partner College Pulse , show a continued decline in support for free speech among all students, but particularly conservatives . Students of every political persuasion show a deep unwillingness to encounter controversial ideas. The survey, which is the most comprehensive look at campus expression in the country, ranked 257 schools based on 68,510 student responses to a wide array of free speech-related questions. "The rankings come at a notable moment for free speech on college campuses: clashes over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a vigorous and aggressive culture of student activism, and the Trump administration’s persistent scrutiny of higher education. “‘This year, students largely opposed allowing any controversial campus speaker, no matter that speaker's politics,’ said FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff. ‘Rather than hearing out and then responding to an ideological opponent, both liberal and conservative college students are retreating from the encounter entirely. This will only harm students' ability to think critically and create rifts between them. We must champion free speech on campus as a remedy to our culture's deep polarization.'...” Other key findings from the report include: 166 of the 257 schools surveyed got an F for their speech climate, while only 11 schools received a speech climate grade of C or higher. Only 36% of students said that it was ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ clear that their administration protects free speech on campus. A record 1 in 3 students now holds some level of acceptance -- even if only 'rarely' -- for resorting to violence to stop a campus speech. 53% of students say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a difficult topic to discuss openly on campus. On 21 of the campuses surveyed, at least 75% of students said this -- including 90% of students at Barnard. For the first time ever, a majority of students oppose their school allowing any of the six controversial speakers they were asked about onto campus -- three controversial conservative speakers and three controversial liberal ones.” And from the specific writeup re Stanford: 44% of Stanford students say they have self-censored on campus at least once or twice a month. 72% of Stanford students say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases. 34% of Stanford students say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases. There are roughly 5.33 liberal Stanford students for every conservative Stanford student. Full press release at FIRE. In addition, Stanford’s specific writeup is here including, unfortunately like most other schools, grades of F for administrative support and for political tolerance and an overall grade of D-. Other Articles of Interest University of Chicago’s Self-Made Crisis Full op-ed at Minding the Campus: “A society that watches a university -- U Chicago, no less -- abandon this cornerstone of its mission and recast itself as a mere economic opportunity zone should not be surprised when civic life collapses. That collapse is only hastened by the fact that students, lured by the promise of lucrative careers, discover too late that they have not only failed to receive a prestigious education, but that their prestigious, marketable degrees lead to underemployment.” Percentage of Americans Saying College Is ‘Very Important’ Has Fallen to 35% Full article along with charts at Gallup. Leading Medical Accreditor Closes DEI Department and Ends Related Mandates Full article at College Fix. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Scientists Uncover Extreme Life Inside the Arctic Ice How Physics Can Tackle the Complexity of AI 5-Day Wilderness Excursions for Stanford’s New Students How We Learn to Move Experimental Drugs May Be Able to Reverse Symptoms of Autism (from Neuroscience News) Generating Synthetic Medical X-Rays with AI (video, 6:30 minutes) ********** “Stanford is the university of the American frontier. Like the frontier, it is infused with a sense of openness, possibility, and hope that are fundamental to who we are. Those characteristics are an essential part of what makes this place so distinctive, and will help us define our future.” – Stanford President Jon Levin September 8, 2025 Professors Should Actually Teach Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “If you want to argue that elite scholars at research universities should be focused on grant-funded research, I’m very sympathetic. I get the argument that teaching loads at the nation’s top 40 or 50 research universities might feature a lot of one-ones for pioneering scholars who are pushing the frontiers of knowledge. But this isn’t that. “This is about the larger political economy of higher education. As Richard Keck and I documented a few months ago, the norm across much of higher education is for faculty to spend most of their time on activities other than teaching. Even at second- and third-tier institutions, faculty are mostly found shuffling papers, sitting in meetings, chasing grants, and publishing trivial, never-read papers in one of the 24,000 barely read journals. This is a story of warped expectations, incentives, and academic culture -- one with unfortunate implications for the quality and cost of undergraduate education. “In his terrific book on college teaching, University of Pennsylvania historian Jonathan Zimmerman drily notes that faculty tend to characterize research as their ‘work’ and teaching as their ‘load’ -- a habit that, he observes, speaks 'volumes about academic priorities.' Generally, faculty aren’t hired, recognized, or promoted for their teaching. Instead, more and more instruction is off-loaded to an itinerant army of adjuncts and graduate students, few of whom have the incentive or opportunity to maintain rigorous standards or mentor their charges.... “We need to do better, and it starts by overhauling expectations for faculty. Some will inevitably read such talk as an attack on professors, given the ongoing tumult in higher education. But this isn’t about point-scoring or assigning individual culpability; it’s about misaligned priorities.... For any institution willing to realign its priorities, there’s a win-win lurking for students and scholars alike.” Full op-ed at Education Next. Stanford’s Graduate Student Union Tries to Stifle Dissent Excerpts: “I’m working as a teaching assistant while studying for a doctorate in economics at Stanford, but a campus union is trying to get me fired. The Stanford Graduate Workers Union wants my head on a plate because I refused to sign a membership form and pay dues. I won’t fund an organization whose values and tactics I don’t support. “Similar unions across the country are using their bargaining power not to improve working conditions but to coerce ideological conformity. This isn’t solidarity; it’s suppression. Shame on Stanford for going along with it.... Freedom to dissent -- including from union politics -- is foundational to the academic enterprise. No student should face financial retaliation for exercising that freedom.” Full op-ed by Stanford graduate student Jon Hartley at WSJ; see also Mr. Hartley’s op-ed at Stanford Review . Editor's note: If teaching is to be given a stronger priority, per the article above; if Stanford's graduate students are the current and future teachers and frontline researchers at Stanford and elsewhere; and if viewpoint diversity is also a priority as seems to be a growing theme, how is it that Stanford entered into an agreement that works so contrary to these priorities? See also This Week's Quote at the end of today's Newsletter. When Evidence Is Branded as Hate Excerpts (links in the original): “On today’s campuses, evidence itself is too often branded as hostility. Research that once sparked debate now risks being dismissed as ‘harm.’ At Sarah Lawrence College, that reflex has escalated further: a faculty member joined students in a federal lawsuit, mischaracterizing scholarship as an “attack.” That isn’t mentoring or teaching. It is indoctrination in grievance tactics, and it represents a dangerous turning point for higher education. “I know this firsthand. In a complaint just filed in the Southern District of New York (Case 1:25-cv-06442, filed August 5, 2025), a group of students and a faculty member sued Sarah Lawrence College and Congress over the potential release of material related to campus protests and violent building occupation. Though the case is not about me or my writing, the filing made use of well-known anti-Semitic tropes against me as a Jewish and Zionist professor -- the filing invoked the ‘myth of Jewish greed ’ and posited that I am a ‘mouthpiece for…deep-pocketed benefactors’ -- and then made note of my co-authored article in Real Clear Investigations, The Rise of the Single Woke (and Young, Democratic) Female, mislabeling it as an ‘attack’ on ‘politically active women.’ ... “Professors are stewards of intellectual life. Their task is not to amplify outrage but to cultivate argument. When they fail, they betray both their students and their profession. When professors trade evidence for indignation, they do not teach citizens; they train partisans. And parents, students, and citizens alike have no reason to trust them.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education; see also “We Are Losing the Basis of Our Civic Discourse” by Prof. Abrams at The Hill . Gen Z Students More Engaged in School and Ready for the Future Excerpts: “Gen Z students are feeling more prepared for their futures than at any point in the past three years, according to a new survey from the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup Voices of Gen Z study. Nearly six in 10 middle and high school students now agree they feel prepared for the future, an 11-percentage-point increase over 2024. “The survey, conducted May 16-27, 2025, with 1,687 13- to 18-year-olds enrolled in grades six through 12, finds Gen Z boys and girls are equally confident in their readiness for the future (58%), while Black students (67%) are more confident than their White peers (54%). Asian (58%) and Hispanic (61%) students’ preparedness for the future is statistically similar to that of Black and White students....” Full article at Gallup, and a copy of the full report is available for download here . College Students Show Declining Tolerance for Free Speech Despite Stated Support Excerpts: “College students express strong support for free speech in principle but demonstrate significant intolerance for viewpoints they disagree with in practice, according to the 2025 American College Student Freedom, Progress and Flourishing Survey released by the Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth. “The fifth annual survey of 2,067 students at 472 four-year U.S. colleges and universities reveals a troubling disconnect between students' stated values and their actual attitudes toward diverse perspectives on campus. “While 74% of students say protecting free speech is more important than ensuring no one feels uncomfortable, their responses to specific scenarios paint a different picture. Most concerning, 72% of students favor reporting professors to university administrators if they say something students deem offensive -- a figure that has remained consistently high since the survey began in 2021.... “The survey revealed stark differences across political ideologies and gender lines. Liberal students (79%) and independent students (74%) were significantly more likely than conservative students (56%) to support reporting professors for offensive comments. Similarly, 81% of female students and 84% of students identifying as unknown/other gender supported professor reporting, compared to 57% of male students.... “Perhaps most telling, among the 71% of students who say they feel comfortable sharing controversial opinions in class, nearly half cited alignment with their peers and professors as the reason for their comfort, suggesting the apparent openness may reflect ideological homogeneity rather than genuine tolerance for diversity....” Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Concerns About Complaint-Driven Policing in the UK . . . and at U.S. Universities too Excerpts (links in the original): “Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan was arrested at London’s Heathrow airport [a week ago] by armed officers. The arrest was over posts he made on social media in April while traveling in the United States.... “London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mark Rowley, seems to agree that Linehan’s arrest was contrary to the best aspirations of liberal society. He publicly called for a review of the speech laws his officers are obliged to enforce -- and enforce them they do. British police are making roughly thirty arrests a day for 'offensive' or otherwise unlawful online communications.... “Authoritarian governments keep their populations in check by visiting consequences on a small portion of their population and watching the effects reverberate; a single arrest might chill the speech of millions. By the end of 2023, based on the numbers in The Times [of London] , the U.K. had accomplished nearly 66,000 arrests for speech.... “The U.K. has done exactly what FIRE has been trying to get universities to stop doing, and convince American states not to do: use complaint-driven policing to create shadow records that chill speakers and form the basis of eventual illiberal prosecutions....” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage regarding Stanford’s own processes that do what this op-ed is concerned about and not solely about speech. Including where even false information and accusations can be entered into students' permanent files without students knowing that this is happening but where the cumulative information can later be used in disciplinary actions against students. Our webpage also includes proposed solutions such as removing all anonymously filed information and also advising students at least annually of their rights under federal law to review their files and allow them to correct or have removed any false or other incorrect information. Other Articles of Interest At Dartmouth, a Green Shoot in the Higher Ed Desert Full op-ed by former Purdue President Mitch Daniels at Washington Post. How Stanford Has Escaped Trump’s War on Higher Ed Full op-ed by Stanford undergraduate George Porteous at Harvard Independent. Rise of Paper Mills -- 32,700 Fake Scientific Papers Published in Real Journals Full article at College Fix. What To Do About Political Diversity on Campus Full op-ed at Milken Institute Review. As Financial Unpredictability Looms, Higher Ed Is Borrowing Full article with specific numbers for specific schools including Stanford at Chronicle of Higher Education . A Trustee Guide to Ensuring a Discrimination-free Campus Full PDF copy (18 pages, 52 with appendices and notes) available at American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Respond to Employee Feedback, but Not Too Quickly New Tool Helps Users Size Up the U.S. Economy How the Rise of Plant Life Reshaped River Behavior After First Four Billion Years Researchers Are Creating Artificial Synapses to Replicate the Brain’s Efficiency A New Way to Image Brain Development ********** “When professors face career destruction for engaging in scholarly debate and university administrators cave to activist pressure rather than defend intellectual freedom, students are taught that thoughtful dissent leads to punishment. They learn that conformity is safer than critical thinking, that ideological purity matters more than rigorous inquiry, and that courage is punished while cowardice is rewarded.” – U North Texas Prof. Timothy Jackson September 1, 2025 Why We Care Editor’s note: As readers may notice, this week’s Newsletter is being distributed slightly earlier than usual and with different content than usual. With the three-day weekend and the end of summer, we felt everyone could use a brief respite from the issues of the day, and we also felt it would be useful to feature some of the fundamentals on which Stanford has been built. We very much appreciate your interest and continued readership of our Newsletters and website and, as always, welcome your comments and suggestions. We will resume our regular format next week, and in the meantime, wish you a pleasant and peaceful Labor Day weekend. ------------ "Let us not be afraid to outgrow old thoughts and ways, and dare to think on new lines.” – Jane Stanford ------------ “You students are the most important factor in this University. It is for your benefit that it has been established. We hope and believe that you will fully realize and live up to this fact.... We want you all to be not only a credit to the University but also a credit to yourselves.” – Leland Stanford ------------ “Stanford is the university of the American frontier. Like the frontier, it is infused with a sense of openness, possibility, and hope that are fundamental to who we are. Those characteristics are an essential part of what makes this place so distinctive, and will help us define our future.” – Stanford President Jon Levin ------------ “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.” – former Stanford President John Hennessy ------------ "The university has values that it prizes above all others: freedom (not just academic freedom), nondiscrimination (you will be heard, among other things, regardless of your sex, race, ethnicity, religion), and equality of opportunity. Whatever we choose to study, the way in which the study is undertaken describes a culture we share as members of the university. That culture rests on such values as respect for rational inquiry, evidence, and argumentation; respect for the autonomy, integrity, and contributions of the individual; freedom of thought and expression; respect for rules for action that encompass both rights and obligations." – former Stanford President Gerhard Casper ------------ “The greatest threat to the university comes not from without, but from within -- when we allow ideological conformity or political aims to obscure our commitment to truth and learning.” – former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy ------------ Stanford in the Early Years We also bring to your attention two websites with photos and text from Stanford in the first 15 years: Stanford University History (40 photos and text, although some of the text may be incorrect) at Click Americana . A Visit to Stanford University (1905) by Mary Stewart Quelle at Library of Congress. This digitized copy of the book is 96 pages with text (shorter with photos only ), can be read online and can also be downloaded in PDF format. If you scroll down at this page of the Library of Congress website, you will also see digitized copies of several other items of possible interest. August 25, 2025 With AI, College Students Have Already Changed Forever Excerpts (links in the original): “A college senior returning to classes this fall has spent nearly their entire undergraduate career under the shadow -- or in the embrace -- of generative AI. ChatGPT first launched in November 2022, when that student was a freshman. As a department chair at Washington University in St. Louis, I witnessed the chaos it unleashed on campus. Students weren’t sure what AI could do, or which uses were appropriate. Faculty were blindsided by how effectively ChatGPT could write papers and do homework. College, it seemed to those of us who teach it, was about to be transformed . “But nobody thought it would happen this quickly. Three years later, the AI transformation is just about complete. By the spring of 2024, almost two-thirds of Harvard undergrads were drawing on the tool at least once a week. In a British survey of full-time undergraduates from December, 92 percent reported using AI in some fashion. Forty percent agreed that ‘content created by generative AI would get a good grade in my subject,’ and nearly one in five admitted that they’ve tested that idea directly, by using AI to complete their assignments. Such numbers will only rise in the year ahead.... “Da’Juantay Wynter, [a] rising senior at WashU who has never seen a full semester without AI, told me he always writes his own essays but feels okay about using ChatGPT to summarize readings, especially if he is in a rush.... “Another member of his class, Omar Abdelmoity, serves on the university’s Academic Integrity Board, the body that adjudicates cases of cheating, with AI or otherwise. In almost every case of AI cheating he’s seen, Abdelmoity told me, students really did have the time to write the paper in question -- they just got stressed or preoccupied by other things, and turned to AI because it works and it is available.... “[Meantime] students seem to want a deeper sort of classroom innovation. They’re not looking for gimmicks -- such as courses that use AI only to make boring topics seem more current. Students like [Harrison Lieber, a WashU senior majoring in economics and computer science] , who sees his college education as a means of setting himself up for his career, are demanding something more. Instead of being required to take tests and write in-class essays, they want to do more project-based learning -- with assignments that ‘emulate the real world,’ as Lieber put it....” Full op-ed by WashU Prof. Ian Bogost at The Atlantic. Campus Virtue-Signaling Has Become Widespread Excerpts : . . . . “Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We asked, have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes. “These students were not cynical, but adaptive. In a campus environment where grades, leadership, and peer belonging often hinge on fluency in performative morality, young adults quickly learn to rehearse what is safe. The result is not conviction but compliance. And beneath that compliance, something vital is lost.... “Authenticity, once considered a psychological good, has become a social liability. And this fragmentation doesn’t end at the classroom door. Seventy-three percent of students reported mistrust in conversations about these values with close friends. Nearly half said they routinely conceal beliefs in intimate relationships for fear of ideological fallout. This is not simply peer pressure -- it is identity regulation at scale, and it is being institutionalized. “We do not fault students for perpetuating a climate that is hostile to intellectual integrity. We fault the faculty, administrators, and institutional leaders who built a system that rewards moral theater while punishing inquiry. In shielding students from discomfort, they have also shielded them from discovery. The result is a generation confident in self-righteousness, but uncertain in self....” Full op-ed by Northwestern researchers Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman at The Hill. Vanderbilt-WashU Statement of Principles The quote at the end of last week’s Newsletter was taken from a statement of principles that was supported not just by administrators, but was adopted by the boards of trustees of two major universities, Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis. For convenience, we have subsequently posted the full text of the statement at our Commentary from Others webpage. The Big Beautiful Fix for Graduate School Borrowing Excerpts (link in the original): “When policymakers and the public talk about student debt, they usually picture undergraduates: young people taking their first steps into higher education and making some of their first consequential financial decisions. That’s where most of the attention and reform energy has gone. But the real engine of recent growth in federal student loan volume has increasingly been graduate education, where borrowing is less constrained and loans are larger -- a cost to both student borrowers and taxpayers when degrees fail to deliver a payoff. “Despite making up a smaller share of the student population, graduate students now account for more than 40 percent of federal student loan dollars handed out each year. In 2023, economists Tomas E. Monarrez and Jordan Matsudaira wrote in a Department of Education report that ‘if recent trends continue, graduate loans will soon comprise the majority of federal student loan disbursements.’ ... “The recently passed reconciliation legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill, tackles these problems head‑on. First and foremost, it imposes limits on how much graduate students can borrow from the federal government. Graduate students can still borrow through the graduate Stafford loan program, but will be limited to just $20,500 per year (or $50,000 per year for students in professional degree programs such as medicine and law). “Just as importantly, the bill introduces a new system of program‑level accountability. In order for students to maintain access to federal student loans, institutions will be required to demonstrate that previous graduates fared well financially. For graduate programs, the specific requirement is that graduates of every program out-earn the average bachelor's degree holder in their state. The idea is that the programs ‘do no economic harm.’ ..." Full op-ed at Real Clear Education. See also “U Washington Dean: Big Beautiful Bill May Cause 50% Of Law Schools to Close” at Legal Insurrection . See also the video linked in the quote at the end of today’s Newsletter. High-Income Families Have Admissions Advantage at Elite Private Colleges and Universities but No Such Advantage at Flagship Public Schools Excerpt: . . . . “Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago) as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. Two-thirds of this gap is due to higher admissions rates for students with comparable test scores from high-income families; the remaining third is due to differences in rates of application and matriculation. In contrast, children from high-income families have no admissions advantage at flagship public colleges....” PDF copy of study by Harvard Professors Raj Chetty and David J. Deming and Brown U Prof. John N. Friedman, (c) 2023 National Bureau of Economic Studies (NBER). Some Updated Numbers Our Stanford Concerns webpage has long consisted of detailed information comparing Stanford’s administrative costs and staffing with the costs and staffing of comparable colleges and universities. This past week, the Palo Alto Daily Post published an article showing that 18 Stanford administrators are paid $1 million or more. Among other things, the article names the 25 top-paid administrators along with their compensation based on IRS filings in 2024. The article also notes that Stanford reported $9.5 billion in total revenue for the year, up from $8.5 billion the year before, and that expenses went up from $8.1 billion to $9 billion during that same period. Also this past week, the Chronicle of Higher Education published its annual Almanac (subscription may be required) with numbers that are self-reported to the U.S. Department of Education by colleges and universities in accordance with detailed instructions (much of the information at our Stanford Concerns webpage is taken from this data base). With that in mind, we note that Stanford again had (at page 45 of the Almanac 2025-2026) the largest number of personnel in the category of “business and financial operations” as follows: Stanford (4,477), U Washington (4,363), UCLA (4,005), Johns Hopkins (3,664) and U Michigan Ann Arbor (3,560). In the category of “computer, engineering and science” support staff, Stanford was #5: U Michigan (4,923), Ohio State (4,175), U Wisconsin Madison (3,725), Johns Hopkins (3,633) and Stanford (3,615). In the category of “research” support staff, the top five schools did not include Stanford but consisted instead of: MIT (5,140), U North Carolina Chapel Hill (3,931), Georgia Tech (3,053), U Washington (3,000) and Yale (2,929). [See also Stanford Facts 2025, discussed below, which reports 927 in the “research staff” category as compared to these other schools.] In the category of “librarians, curators, archivists and academic affairs and other educational services,” the top five schools again did not include Stanford but consisted instead of: Harvard (1,889), Emory (1,532), U Michigan Ann Arbor (1,375), NYU (1,267) and U Chicago (1,251). In the category of “office and administrative support,” the top ten schools similarly did not include Stanford but consisted instead of: UCLA (3,899), Columbia (3,713), WashU (3,068), NYU (2,944), Weill Cornell Medicine (2,913), Ohio State (2,810), Yale (2,807), U Kentucky (2,605) Southern New Hampshire U (2,596) and Harvard (2,364). Meantime, per Stanford Facts 2025 , Stanford has: 2,345 total faculty (1,738 of whom are members of the Academic Council, page 32 of Stanford Facts 2025) 7,554 undergraduates (page 14) 9,915 graduate students (page 21) 17,469 total students (not counting 2,596 post-docs, page 23) 11,252 managerial and professional staff 1,926 administrative and technical staff 1,235 service and maintenance staff ___927 research staff 15, 340 total administrative and other staff (page 33) 1,917 clinical educators 1,912 staff at SLAC 19,169 total staff (page 33) See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, especially part 3 (re Stanford's administrative bureaucracy) and part 4 (re Stanford's 200 to 300 centers and similar entities). See also detailed charts re the growth of Stanford’s managerial and professional staff in the past two decades, Stanford’s administrative costs per student compared with other major colleges and universities, and related matters at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Other Articles of Interest A Culture of Conversation Full text of speech at Law & Liberty. Is Duke Abandoning American History? Full op-ed by Duke undergraduate Sherman Criner at James Martin Center website. What Colleges and Universities Are Supposed to Be About (video, under 2 minutes) Comments by Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at Substack. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford’s ResEd Discontinues the Neighborhood System The Rise of Universities as Engines of Innovation Longevity Is Going to Change Almost All Aspects of Our Lives Scientists Develop Interface that ‘Reads’ Thoughts from Speech-Impaired Patients Top Scholars Call for Evidence-Based Approach to AI Policy Pain Took Football Away from Andrew Luck; What Brought Him Back to Stanford? (NY Times) ********** “Diversity of thought, discussion, intellectual discourse -- that is what’s fundamental to universities, and anything that questions that is a real serious problem.” — Stanford alum Reid Hoffman (from Stanford alum Joe Lonsdale podcast, American Optimist, Ep. 121 , and with discussion of universities starting around the 29:10 mark) August 18, 2025 School Is Starting and Here's What I'm Committing to for My Students, Especially My Male Students Excerpts (links in the original): “When the semester begins, my classroom fills with anticipation and nerves -- mine included. Every term offers a chance to start fresh, build habits, and forge relationships that will carry us through. Those first weeks of any term are far more than icebreakers; they're a blueprint signaling to students who they are in this space and what we'll achieve together. “I work hard to elevate every student. But as a professor and parent, I've noticed a pattern: male students often drift first when the relationship isn't there. Men are relational learners . When a young man feels known -- when he senses his professor notices and values him -- his engagement transforms . The work sharpens. Questions get braver. Risks feel worth taking.... [Followed by discussion of five specific steps to be taken.] “These steps aren't gender-exclusive. Every student benefits from being known, encouraged, and challenged. Data shows social-emotional learning benefits manifest across demographics, improving academic outcomes and long-term success, with benefits lasting 18 years post-participation. But the stakes are especially high for male students facing unique educational challenges.... “Consider the broader context: male students are increasingly struggling in educational settings. They're less likely to graduate from college, with women now earning roughly 60% of bachelor's degrees. In 2021, men received only 42% of bachelor's degrees awarded -- the lowest male share on record. Male enrollment in higher education continues declining. These trends aren't about capability -- they're about connection. When young men don't feel seen or valued in educational spaces, they check out not just from assignments but from the entire academic enterprise.... “Education isn't just transmitting knowledge; it's developing whole humans capable of critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and meaningful contribution. When we commit to seeing and supporting whole students -- especially those most at risk of disconnection -- we don't just improve academic outcomes. We change life trajectories. “That's the real measure of our work as educators. Not the tests passed or papers written, but the confidence built, connections forged, and capacity for growth instilled. This semester, I'm committing to that deeper work, one student, one name, one relationship at a time.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. See also: “It’s Not Just a Feeling, Data Shows Boys and Young Men Are Falling Behind” at NY Times (May 13, 2025): “The outcomes for Black boys are worse, and growing up in poverty disproportionately hurts boys.” “The New Gender Gaps” at Harvard Magazine (May 15, 2025). “Gender Achievement Gaps in U.S. School Districts” at Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (June 2018) comparing math versus language skills. “Young Men in Crisis” at Stanford Review (September 30, 2024): “The classroom is only one place in which this disparity can be observed. Young men today are three times more likely to overdose, four times more likely to commit suicide, and a staggering 14 times more likely to be incarcerated than their female peers.” The University Presidents Who Want to Fix Universities Before They Get Fixed Excerpts (links in the original): “For well over a decade I have been of the view that universities need to fix themselves, or they will get fixed -- and that getting fixed is likely to be more destructive than restorative. Until recently, I held this view with regard to public universities in red and purple states, but I probably underestimated the extent to which universities had alienated large portions of the public and undermined their own reservoirs of political support -- and did not anticipate the focus with which some Trump Administration officials would target universities. To be sure, the Supreme Court's SFFA decision, which effectively declared the de facto admissions policies at most elite universities to be illegal, and the wave of campus anti-Semitism only made universities more vulnerable. “The Atlantic has an interesting article on the growing divide among some university presidents about how to respond to the Trump Administration and current political pressures. On one side are folks like Princeton's Chris Eisgruber, who seem to think there is nothing wrong and that universities can and should ride out the storm. (Those we might call the ostriches of academia.) On the other are those like Daniel Diermeier of Vanderbilt and Andrew Martin of Washington University, who recognize that universities need to reform themselves. The latter camp accept the charge made by folks like Michael Clune that universities have brought much of their current trouble upon themselves....” Full op-ed by William & Mary Prof. Jonathan H. Adler at Reason. The Rapid Rise and the Disastrous Fall of the Medical University Excerpts (links in the original): “Since January, American higher education’s research enterprise has faced unexpected reductions in funding from federal agencies brought about by executive orders and other actions from the White House. Times of crisis are also times for stocktaking. How did we get here? “The story begins around 1940, as federal agencies, state governments, and private foundations began to negotiate their partnerships with universities, leading to the rise of ‘the federal-grant university,’ a term coined by Clark Kerr, a former president of the University of California, in his famous 1963 lecture, ‘The Uses of the University,’ given at Harvard.... “By the 21st century, a new model of the federal-grant university had emerged -- what we call the mediversity, or the medical university. To trace the contours of this new model, it is useful to consider the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), which historically had not been an elite research hub but gained prominence in the last two decades. The research success of an institution like UAB illustrates how non-elite institutions could become serious players in the federal research-funding game. It also highlights an important transformation: In recent years, an increasing focus on medicine and health-related functions has become central to many institutional priorities, including the pursuit of federal dollars for research and patient care.... “The rise of biomedical sciences in federal research combined with the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid services at university hospitals made the academic medical center a distinctive entity within the American university -- and in the American economy. This new model, the mediversity, has spread to include about 20 universities in which the academic medical center is now the largest unit in budget, enrollment, and services in the host university, as well as the largest employer in its metropolitan area and perhaps in its state.... [Followed by discussion of the establishment and growth of biomedical companies with VC and government funding in coordination with academic medical centers, and then the sudden reversal with recent government cutbacks.] “Did university presidents have contingency plans for this reversal of fortunes? Had overreliance on the mediversity model thrown off the gyroscope of the American university? Reviewing records and articles from 2022 through 2024, we find scant indication that university leaders, especially those at academic medical centers and the mediversity, discussed the possibility that political support might ever wane, compromising funding.... “.... For now, one cannot presume business as usual for any part of the American university system -- and perhaps especially for those that have grounded their institutional identity in the mediversity model.” Full op-ed by U Kentucky Prof. Emeritus John R. Thelin and Prof. Neal H. Hutchens at Chronicle of Higher Education. How I Learned That College Students Aren’t Snowflakes Excerpts: “For years I threatened to teach a course called ‘Books You’ll Never Read in College.’ It wasn’t only that I had grown tired of hearing students parrot the ideological orthodoxy on campus. My main concern, as a teacher of applied ethics, was that many of my students were reluctant to talk about important social, moral and political issues. “When I asked my students to share anonymously what topics they would do their best to avoid in the classroom, the list included pretty much anything controversial: guns, religion, pronouns, the Middle East, abortion, LGBTQ rights, socialism, sexism in the workplace, transgender athletes in sports, parallels between transgenderism and transracialism, race, policing, support for or opposition to President Trump and 'anything that might anger others.' “This spring, I made good on my threat. I came up with a better name for the course: ‘You Can’t Think That! Or Can You?’ I wrote a provocative course description to attract students. The syllabus would begin with Plato’s ‘Apology’ and John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ and then would move to contemporary works such as Thomas Sowell’s ‘Social Justice Fallacies,’ Heather Mac Donald’s ‘The War on Cops,’ Abigail Shrier’s ‘Irreversible Damage,’ and Brad Wilcox’s ‘Get Married.’ To my surprise, the course filled within minutes and amassed a substantial wait list. “Still, I was anxious about whether this experiment would work.... Instead, with great enthusiasm, students embraced their newfound freedom to say what they thought and to change their minds based on what others thought and said.... “One student was an advocate of polyandry, and another defended traditional marriage on religious grounds. One was a self-proclaimed Zionist, and another was writing an honors thesis critical of U.S. military support of Israel. With a lot of practice, they all learned how to be good intellectual friends despite their many differences. The classroom was our practice ground, where everyone was expected to try out the ideas of so-called wrongthinkers, listen carefully to one another, and find what might be true or useful even within a worldview or ideology that might be largely mistaken. Students couldn’t get enough of it. They carried their disagreements into the halls after class, and some set up lunch dates to understand better those whose views differed from their own.... “So, no, students aren’t snowflakes. Deep down, they are as hungry as ever for intellectual freedom. It’s also what they deserve. Many of their professors once received this kind of education, and they owe it to their students to provide the same opportunities for free discussion and debate. An important part of my job as an educator is to help students see that it’s possible to challenge or reject an idea while still respecting the person who holds it. As one student said in a final reflection on the course: ‘This changed the game for me. People are more than their ideas.’” Full op-ed by U Richmond Prof. Terry L. Price at WSJ. Top 12 Challenges Facing Higher Ed in 2025 and Some Exemplars for Solving Them Excerpts: “Higher education is no longer coasting -- colleges and universities now face a defining moment. In the ‘go-go’ days just 15 years ago, higher education had 21 million students (graduate and undergraduate) and 18.1 million undergraduates. When there was a recession, higher ed institutions could count on an uptick in enrollment. Institutions were building multiple new buildings and programs to offer students, and new buildings and dormitories to teach and house the same students. “Unfortunately, those go-go days did not last.... Then, when you kick in the cost of higher education and increased student debt, AI and technology reshaping how we teach and learn, and increased competition among colleges and universities, you have put [sic] is nearly the perfect storm....” [Followed by discussion of these 12 challenges and examples of what some schools are doing in response:] Declining Enrollment and Demographic Shifts Rising Costs and Student Debt Competition from Alternative Education Pathways The Need for Innovation and Adaptability Financial Sustainability Concerns Political and Policy Changes Public Perception and Value Proposition Technology Challenges, Including Artificial Intelligence (AI) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Mental Health and Wellness Globalization and Internationalization Climate Change and Sustainability Full article at Changing Higher Ed. Other Articles of Interest Higher Education Has Long Engaged in Racial Discrimination in Hiring Full op-ed at City Journal. See also “Why I Support the Civil Rights Complaint Against Cornell University” by a Cornell alum at Substack . And for convenience, a PDF copy of the DOJ July 29, 2025 letter is posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage. 32 Colleges Accused of Using Early Decision to Drive Up Costs Full article at Higher Ed Dive including a list of the schools named as defendants and NOT including Stanford. See also “Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against 32 Universities; All Students Admitted Since 2021 Named as Potential Members” at Campus Reform . The Growing Problem of Scientific Research Fraud Full article at Inside Higher Ed. How the Social Sciences Killed Our Universities Full op-ed by Boston U Prof. Emeritus Liah Greenfeld at National Association of Scholars. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford to Continue Legacy Admissions and Reinstate Standardized Test Requirements How Sleep Affects Mental Health, and Vice Versa Addressing the Potential Harms of Market-Driven Drug Development Why Voices Light Us Up but Leave the Autistic Brain in the Dark (podcast, 31 minutes) ********** “If research universities are to pursue the truth wherever it lies, they cannot have a political ideology or pursue a particular vision of social change. They contribute to the betterment of society not by pursuing an ideological agenda but through the research and innovation of their faculty and students, by producing educated and knowledgeable leaders, and by serving as a model for civil discourse grounded in critical reasoning.” – From the Vanderbilt-WashU Statement of Principles August 11, 2025 Stanford Research Matters Excerpt: “Stanford researchers have defined the cutting edge for decades. They launched the computer age in Silicon Valley, played a pivotal role in establishing the biotech industry, and have been leaders in advancing artificial intelligence, all with an eye toward benefiting humanity. In most cases, the seed of a Stanford researcher’s transformational idea was nourished by funding from the U.S. government, leading to immense economic growth and the creation of jobs across the country....” Full article at Stanford Report including detailed individual and historical examples. Editor’s note: As longtime readers know, our weekly Newsletters focus primarily on issues regarding free speech and critical thinking at Stanford as well as other colleges and universities nationwide. With the current pressures and uncertainties regarding the funding of university research, we felt it appropriate to draw readers' attention to the above article that was recently produced by Stanford and that highlights the significant impacts of Stanford’s research, both now and historically. And as longtime readers also know, we believe those activities can be even further enhanced by a series of reforms that we and others have long advocated. See, for example, our Back to Basics webpage (especially parts 3 and 4) as well as the various issues discussed at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Could Artificial Intelligence Undermine Constructive Disagreement? Excerpts: . . . . “While LLMs are shaped by the patterns contained in their training data, they are also further refined by their developers to align with human preferences. AI companies, seeking widespread adoption and a return on their substantial investments, have powerful incentives to design systems that maximize user satisfaction and/or retention. “This creates a dynamic partially reminiscent of social media platforms, where algorithms optimize for engagement by showing users content that either confirms their views or caricatures their opponents. The result is a proliferation of filter bubbles, clickbait, outrage, and flattering content at the expense of substance and rigor. “Similarly, AI systems engineered to please may prioritize affirming user beliefs, avoiding disagreement and sidestepping challenges to users’ views. As competition intensifies among AI labs, developers may feel compelled to prioritize engagement metrics and market share over epistemic integrity and ethical safeguards.... “The degree of flattery in the models’ comebacks when confronted with user pushback varied markedly between different models. In some systems, it appeared in around 10% of responses; in others, it exceeded 50%. Notably, newer models, such as GPT-4.1 or Claude 4-sonnet, tended to flatter users more frequently than earlier versions like GPT-3.5, or Claude 3.5-sonnet. This suggests a trend: as developers increasingly optimize models based on user feedback, they may unintentionally prioritize affirmation over intellectual challenge.... “Ultimately, the tendency of AIs to prioritize affirmation over honest disagreement is mostly shaped by commercial competition and user choices. Whether AI undermines or strengthens robust debate and epistemic rigor will depend on how these forces interact, as well as the individual choices we make. As AI users, our behavior and preferences actively shape the way future generations of AI models will interact with us.” Full op-ed by Otago Polytechnic Prof. David Rozado at Substack including a detailed chart showing the frequency of flattery by specific AI models in response to user pushback. See also “OpenAI Launches Study Mode for College Students” at Diverse Issues in Higher Education : “Unlike standard ChatGPT, Study Mode employs Socratic teaching methods, asking students probing questions and building exchanges that work toward answers collaboratively rather than providing immediate responses.” See also “Half of Students Say AI Is Most Important Skill They'll Learn in College” at Newsweek . FIRE Brings Lawsuit re Free Speech Rights of Noncitizens Including Non-U.S. Students; Stanford Daily Is One of Several Named Plaintiffs Excerpts: . . . . . “‘In the United States of America, no one should fear a midnight knock on the door for voicing the wrong opinion,’ said FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick. ‘Free speech isn’t a privilege the government hands out. Under our Constitution it is the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.’... “’Two lawful residents of the United States holding the same sign at the same protest shouldn’t be treated differently just because one’s here on a visa,’ said FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley. ‘The First Amendment bars the government from punishing protected speech -- period. In our free country, you shouldn’t have to show your papers to speak your mind.’ “Plaintiffs in FIRE’s lawsuit represent the wide range of groups and individuals whose speech is threatened....” Full press release at FIRE. See also “Ilya Shapiro and Robert Shibley Debate the Issues – Censorship or Good Governance? ” at Free Press. Why the Ivory Tower Wants a Deal with Trump Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “The universities’ eagerness to cut a deal shows that they don’t think they can hold off Trump indefinitely. A cut of the magnitude the NIH sought [that is, a cap of 15% on the reimbursement of indirect costs for research instead of the typical 55% to 60% and higher] would put a major dent in their budgets, slow the search for breakthroughs in health and science, and enable foreign rivals to catch up, they say.... “‘It’s been made extremely clear to us from day one by members of Congress that if we don’t do something, somebody else will,’ Kelvin Droegemeier, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who’s spearheading the effort on behalf of a coalition of universities and research institutes, told POLITICO.... “The university-led group announced this spring that it was working on a new model , one that was ‘simple and easily explained,’ and in a nod to the administration’s priorities: ‘efficient and transparent.’ ... “Debate over how much the government should pay for indirect costs has raged for decades. Both former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama suggested capping facilities and administrative costs, to no avail.... “[Former Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya and now head of NIH] said he had talked with Droegemeier during the early planning stages of the model. ‘I think they’re quite promising,’ he said.... “The university team isn’t promising cost reductions. That’s not their role, according to Droegemeier. Instead, the model is designed to show what it really costs to do research. Then the government and lawmakers can decide what they want to pay for....” Full article at Politico. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford website s. Stanford to Layoff Over 360 Staff Covered also at Inside Higher Ed . See also “Major Cuts Include the Athletics Department” at Football Scoop . What We’re Getting Wrong About Mental Health Key Mechanism of Brain Aging Energy Supplied by Gut Microbiome Depends on Diet ********** “The spread of administrative bloat threatens to turn universities into corporations with a sideline in education.” — Johns Hopkins Prof. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty and the Rise of the All-Administrative University (2011) August 4, 2025 Stanford Suspends Two Undergraduate Houses After Title VI Investigations Excerpts: . . . . “According to the University statement, several reports were filed with the Title VI Office against Kairos after ‘students participating in an extracurricular activity in the house were asked to leave and told, among other things, that the presence of Zionists in the group was making residents of the house uncomfortable.’ ... “With regards to [Enchanted Broccoli Forest] , the Title VI Office said an email sent by EBF’s RAs in June to incoming residents was deemed exclusionary toward white students and male students. "Part of the email read: ‘Enchanted Broccoli Forest is historically dedicated to uplifting the voices of queer people of color, and thus is committed to being a place of refuge for those who are black, brown, gender-marginalized, and FLI. If you are white/white-passing, or if you are a man, do understand that you are being invited into space that wasn’t and isn’t made for you. We welcome you to this community, however ask that you acknowledge and are cognizant of the space you are occupying, and how, by nature, your presence may suffocate.’ ..." Full article at Stanford Daily and also covered at Stanford Review . Editor’s note: With the many hundreds of administrators and staff in Residential Education; Dean of Students ; Community Standards ; SHARE ; Vaden ; Provost ; Office of Inclusion, Community and Integrative Learning and, separately, Office of Inclusion, Belonging and Intergroup Communication (the latter of which has just been disbanded per this article in Stanford Daily ) and an unknown number of other such offices throughout the campus, how is it possible that noninclusive and discriminatory actions like these were taking place, and possibly for many previous years and not just this most recent year? And if the administrators and staff in all of these and other offices throughout the campus knew about these and similar attitudes and actions, why didn’t they raise concerns or, alternatively, did these offices, intentionally or inadvertently, actually condone these types of noninclusive and discriminatory attitudes and actions? From Stanford's compliance manual : “Adherence to this Code also requires that any suspected violations of applicable standards, policies, laws or regulations be brought to the attention of the appropriate cognizant office.” See also the letter to all students dated September 17, 2024 from both the provost and the vice provost for student affairs regarding Title VI, bias and related matters. See also “Stanford’s Program re Title VI/Bias ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Discriminatory Hiring Practices at Cornell Excerpts (link in the original): “I’m filing a complaint against Cornell University for racial discrimination. “This isn’t a political stunt or publicity grab. It’s a last resort in response to a gross injustice that destroyed the career I spent more than a decade building. It’s about holding accountable a powerful institution that violated the law, abandoned its principles, and discriminated against me because of my race. “I’m an evolutionary biologist, a liberal and a first-generation college graduate. I dreamed of becoming a scientist for as long as I can remember. I pursued that passion for more than 12 years -- earning a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara and completing a postdoctoral position at Pennsylvania State University. Along the way, I was awarded a competitive NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and published nearly 30 peer-reviewed papers in leading academic journals. For my career stage, I was among the top in my field. “I applied to countless tenure-track positions across the country in 2019 and 2020. One of those applications went to Cornell, for a position in their Neurobiology and Behavior department. Unknown to me, a few months later Cornell initiated a separate search for a faculty member in evolutionary biology -- my exact field -- but kept it confidential. Internal emails now show this was no accident. “Last month, the America First Policy Institute released internal Cornell emails showing the university conducted an effort to recruit what the search committee referred to as a ‘diversity hire.’ One committee member described the process bluntly: ‘What we should be doing is inviting one person whom we have identified as being somebody that we would like to join our department and not have that person in competition with others.’ ... “This discriminatory practice, conducted in coordination with Cornell’s Office of the Provost -- led at the time by current Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff -- violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race. “Let my case serve as a warning that there is a price for violating civil rights.” Full op-ed at WSJ. See also “Music Professor Obtains $725,000 Settlement Resulting from Attacks for His Views re Music Theory” at Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism : “When professors face career destruction for engaging in scholarly debate and university administrators cave to activist pressure rather than defend intellectual freedom, students are taught that thoughtful dissent leads to punishment. They learn that conformity is safer than critical thinking, that ideological purity matters more than rigorous inquiry, and that courage is punished while cowardice is rewarded.” More about the controversy here . DOJ Memo Outlines Unlawful College and University Practices Excerpt (links in the original): “‘Race based scholarships,’ ‘preferential hiring,’ and other DEI initiatives are ‘unlawful practices,’ the Department of Justice warned in a recent memo . “The [July 29, 2025] memo ‘clarifies that federal antidiscrimination laws apply to programs or initiatives that involve discriminatory practices, including those labeled as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (‘DEI’) programs,’ according to a news release . “Much of the memo specifically focuses on education policies that are ‘unlawful’ or may be. “The memo lists several examples of ‘unlawful practices.’ ...” Full article at College Fix. See also Inside Higher Ed . Also, for current and future reference, we have posted a PDF copy of the DOJ memo here . 1 in 2 Graduates Say Their College Major Didn’t Prepare Them for Today’s Market Excerpt (link in the original): “As today’s college graduates struggle to start a steady career, 1 in 2 Americans say their college major didn’t prepare them for the job market, according to a June 18 report from Preply. “Beyond that, 1 in 6 Americans who went to college said they regret it. When thinking about their college experience, college graduates said their top regrets included taking out student loans, not networking more and not doing internships. “One of the main concepts of seeking higher education after high school is that college will prepare you for the rest of your life. While some graduates leave their alma mater feeling prepared to enter the workforce and begin their career, others feel underprepared,” according to the report. “In a survey of more than 1,700 Americans with an undergraduate degree, 29% said they wished they picked a different major, and 18% said they regretted the institution they attended....” Full article at Higher Ed Dive. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Antibody Enables Stem Cell Transplants Without Toxic Side Effects Virtual Scientists Help Solve Complex Biological Problems Designing Fair and Trustworthy AI Systems Competing Issues re Antidepressants for Kids and Teens ************ “A university is fundamentally about inquiry. That means putting the intellectual and educational mission first.” -- Former University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer July 28, 2025 Editor’s note: Click here to view recently added as well as past reader comments. And as always, we welcome your own comments and suggestions here . ********** How AI Laws Are Reviving the Worst Ideas of Campus Censorship Excerpts : “One of the more frustrating things about working on free speech for over two decades is watching the same bad ideas come back wearing slightly different outfits. It’s like déjà vu, but with better fonts. Dealing with them over and over again can be tiring, but doing so remains incredibly important -- particularly when it comes to AI.... “Followers of FIRE and [Eternally Radical Idea] will be very familiar with speech codes. These were policies enacted by colleges and universities, dating back at least four decades, designed to restrict certain kinds of speech on campus. And more often than not, they used 'anti-discrimination' as their rationale. Recent regulations proposed and imposed in multiple U.S. states are also invoking 'anti-discrimination' -- only this time, it’s for technologies that seek to define objective reality itself. “These laws -- already passed in states like Texas and Colorado -- require AI developers to make sure their models don’t produce ‘discriminatory’ outputs. And of course, superficially, this sounds like a noble endeavor. After all, who wants discrimination? The problem, however, is that while invidious discriminatory action in, say, loan approval should be condemned, discriminatory knowledge is an idea that is rightfully foreign. In fact, it should freak us out.... “Nobody wants to be anywhere near the sin of discrimination -- especially racial discrimination. That’s a noble impulse, and quite the cultural evolution from even fifty years ago. It’s a great sign that we find it so reprehensible that people will do backflips to avoid even the appearance of it. But when that instinct becomes so strong that we start reshaping reality, we’re not helping anyone. We’re just making ourselves -- and now, our machines -- less accurate, less honest, and less effective in navigating the world as it really is. “If we continue this trend, we will be manufacturing an epistemic crisis that will be unprecedented in its scope and scale. Our budding AI technologies will inevitably become the primary source and manufacturer of the world’s information. If that information is tarnished or tampered with to spare our feelings -- especially if it’s done pre-emptively -- there will be no changing or correcting course, because our map, our compass, and even our intuitions will be completely wrong.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also our prior articles about “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. We Need a New Theory of Academic Freedom Excerpt (links in the original): “With their wealth, exclusivity and global clout, American universities are an easy target for populist resentment. For Americans frustrated by inequality and cultural alienation, there may be a certain satisfaction in seeing these elite institutions humbled. “But the Trump administration’s coercive offensive against institutions like Harvard and Columbia, which clearly isn’t about antisemitism , isn’t really about elitism or populism either. It's about something deeper. It throws into question ordered liberties that are deeply rooted in America’s history and traditions. “If that point’s hard to explain, part of the blame lies with us academics. We’ve spent too long defending academic freedom on the basis of professional norms, free speech jurisprudence and administrative due process. “Some of these defenses might win in court, but none are winning in the court of public opinion. Whether academic freedom survives in the coming years won’t be decided by the Administrative Procedure Act or even the First Amendment . It’ll depend on whether ordinary Americans can say that academic freedom is their freedom, too . The question, in other words, is whether or not the idea of academic freedom has legitimacy . “Today, academic freedom’s legitimacy is fraying. Rising tuition, student debt, concerns over free speech, allegations of political bias, administrative bloat, billion-dollar endowments and doubts about the real-world value of degrees have made many Americans question what universities are for and who they really serve. “Legitimizing academic freedom under these conditions will be an uphill battle....” [Followed by detailed discussion of historical and philosophical precedents in academic and other contexts.] Full op-ed by Amherst Prof. Adam Sitze at Inside Higher Ed. See also our Back to Basics webpage. Achieve Legitimate Workplace Goals Without the Bureaucracies and Dogma of DEI Excerpts (link in the original): “During the past few years, DEI programs have been rolled back in both private and public organizations, and the trend may well continue. For champions of workforce diversity, who feel their work is being undone, this is a difficult time. But there is promising news. A growing body of evidence suggests that many management innovations designed to improve performance actually boost workforce diversity in the bargain -- and do so without inviting the backlash that formal DEI programs can incur.... “The animating idea of high-performance management is simple: If you can create a work environment in which all employees are valued, supported, and motivated in ways that allow them to do their best, you’ll get higher engagement from them and better business outcomes. Diversity isn’t the goal -- but it is a natural by-product. “Our research on workplace diversity -- conducted in the United States but relevant globally -- confirms that notion. We’ve run statistical analyses of data from some 800 companies in a variety of industries. Many of the techniques that companies use to improve performance have a better record of fostering inclusion than do diversity trainings and grievance processes -- popular DEI measures that tend to be counterproductive, as we detailed in HBR almost a decade ago, in ‘Why Diversity Programs Fail ’ (July-August 2016). That’s true not just for frontline jobs but for all sorts of positions, including management.... [Followed by detailed discussion of five companies: Oracle, Walmart, IBM, Gap and Amazon.] “For years, diversity and human resources experts have been calling for firms to change their management systems to open opportunity to all. The approaches we’ve identified in this article do just that -- even if that was not the intention of their creators. In these tumultuous times for DEI, performance innovations that help employees be their best selves at work may be the best hope for the dream of equality.” Full article by Harvard Prof. Frank Dobbin and Tel Aviv U. Prof. Alexandra Kalev at Harvard Business Review . Other Articles of Interest Student Concerns at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business Full article at Poets and Quants: “Stanford Graduate School of Business, long considered among the most elite MBA programs in the world, is facing a storm of internal criticism from students who say the academic experience has fallen far short of expectations.... Students voiced concerns about outdated course content, a disengaged faculty culture, and a broken curriculum structure that they say leaves them unprepared for post-MBA careers.” Stanford Is Creating a New Office of Investigations Full text at Stanford website: “As the inaugural head of Stanford’s new Office of Investigations (OI), the Executive Director will oversee a team of investigators responsible for conducting independent and neutral fact finding on a variety of subject matters involving students, faculty and staff.... The expected salary range is $250,000 to $330,000 per annum.” See also new listings for “Senior Investigator, Office of Investigations,” expected salary range of $200,000-$260,000 per annum, along with others. See also “Stanford to Reduce Budget by $140 Million and Lay Off Employees for Next Academic Year” at Stanford Daily . University of Chicago Looking at Cuts in Humanities and Language Majors Full article at College Fix: “University leaders cite historic funding pressures and possibility of new tax on endowment.” Tracking the Cancel Culture in Higher Education Full article at National Association of Scholars ("Reasoned scholarship is traded in for the cheap, vapid substitute of political activism. And in the long run, higher education itself dies.") including this link to an updated PDF chart of cases. The Ivy League Apology Show -- Princeton and Penn as Case Studies Full op-ed at Princetonians for Free Speech: “The apology has become a peculiar ritual in American public life. Our age of perpetual offense is also one of perpetual contrition.... Nowhere is this dynamic more pronounced than on university campuses, where the machinery of apology has become as essential as the campus bookstore or dining hall.” We Need to Restore Credibility to Accreditation Full op-ed at Real Clear Education: “If the U.S. truly wants to have the greatest higher education system in the world, the archaic system of college accreditation needs to change fundamentally -- and it needs to change now.” Harvard and the Trump Administration Face Off Over Funding Cuts Full article at Washington Post. See also “Even if Harvard Wins This Court Case, the Fight Won’t Go Away” at WSJ . Shared Governance and Academic Freedom Full op-ed by National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood at Real Clear Education: “The single most important responsibility of college trustees is picking the college president. The task is difficult because so few people measure up to the job. And it is all the more difficult because so many people have an interest in the outcome.” Eight Books Regarding the University Crisis Full article and recommended book list at The Atlantic. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report a nd other Stanford websites. In-body CAR-T Cell Generation Proves Safe and Effective in Mice Unexpected Windows into Neurodegenerative Disease VR Training Can Help Build Empathy in the Workplace ********** “Universities must be places open to the widest possible range of viewpoints. That is the only way minds can be truly opened.” – Former Harvard President Drew Faust July 21, 2025 An Alternative to the Proposed Cap on Research Funding Excerpts (links in the original): “A coalition of 10 heavyweight higher-ed organizations is proposing to Congress an alternative to the research-spending cap the Trump administration has been seeking to impose. The new model would overhaul the federal system of reimbursing universities for indirect costs incurred for their research, which has been in place since World War II. “The Joint Associations Group, or JAG, which includes the Association of American Universities (AAU), the American Council on Education (ACE), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), announced its proposal on Friday [Julyl 11] . The coalition sees its plan as a middle ground, one that responds to long-held gripes about how indirect costs are administered while lessening the billions in lost revenue for universities under the 15-percent indirect-cost cap proposed by several federal agencies, among them the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Departments of Defense and Energy. “JAG’s ‘Financial Accountability in Research’ (FAIR) model would offer institutions two options to be reimbursed for expenses tied to a particular project: a line-item accounting, or a less-time-intensive 'base option' that would put a fixed percentage of a project’s total budget toward certain costs. The plan represents a radical restructuring of the nation’s research-funding ecosystem, but one that JAG leaders say is necessary given mounting political pressure.... “Among the advantages of the FAIR model are that it accounts for the varying costs of research across an institution, [U. Illinois Prof. Kelvin K. Droegemeier] said. Humanities, social-sciences, and theoretical math research, for example, don’t require the same expensive equipment and facilities as medical research. That makes a more-flexible approach 'more appropriate for the 21st-century research enterprise,' he said. “The FAIR model would also eliminate the need for institutions to periodically negotiate indirect-cost rates with the government, an arduous process that typically occurs every two to four years. ‘This flexibility empowers each institution to define its own categories and cost structures using internal data, while ensuring auditability and public accountability,’ a JAG executive summary said...." Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Reform Higher Education by Raising Standards Excerpt (links in the original): . . . “Most faculty who have taught in universities for a long time are aware that educational standards have fallen dramatically in recent decades. Even the most prestigious universities have made it much easier for students to graduate with little gain in knowledge and critical thinking. As David Butterfield argued in a viral article last fall, education has become infantilized . His article was about teaching classics, but the problem is widespread in the humanities and social sciences. “Let me give an example from my own experience teaching history at Harvard. When I began teaching 40 years ago, I regularly assigned over 300 pages of reading per week. At present, assigning more than 75 pages per week, as we are advised by curriculum committees, is considered an unmanageable burden for most students. Students at highly selective colleges and universities average only about 15 hours of study outside the classroom, down from 24 hours in the 1960s. The average includes students in the natural sciences, who generally put in more hours outside of class. As long ago as 2011, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa argued , on the basis of data from the College Learning Assessment (CLA), that American higher education did not deliver substantial intellectual growth for at least a third of students. The figure must be significantly higher today....” [Followed by detailed discussion of grade inflation, loss of core curricula, interdisciplinarity, unlimited extracurriculars, ignorance of foreign languages, politicization, and the impact of university rankings and accreditation.] Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. James Hankins at Law & Liberty. Higher Education’s Crisis of Domestic Confidence Excerpts (link in the original): “Buried in a recent report from the Economic Innovation Group is a statistic that should make every university administrator in America lose sleep: Foreign-born workers who arrived in the U.S. on student visas now out-earn their native-born peers with college degrees by nearly $30,000 annually. They’re also more than twice as likely to work in research and development -- the engine room of national progress. ‘Let me be very clear: This isn’t about IQ. It’s about institutions. It’s about a cultural drift so deep, so corrosive, that a native-born population is slowly being nudged out of its own future -- not by brute force or some grand conspiracy but by decades of educational decay, elite indifference, and intellectual cowardice. America didn’t run out of smart people. It ran out of the will to cultivate them.... “Today’s American student is increasingly guided into disciplines that produce little beyond debt and disillusionment. Fields once synonymous with discovery -- engineering, chemistry, and applied physics -- are under-enrolled, underfunded, and under-defended. Instead, ... we infantilize students, training them to feel rather than think, and then we wonder why employers look elsewhere. “Enter the international student.... “Because it’s not just that America imports talent. It’s that we now rely on it. We lean on the drive of students raised in far less wealthy, far more disciplined societies because we’ve abdicated the responsibility of developing our own. We send our kids into debt traps for gender-theory degrees while begging H-1B visa holders to keep the lights on at Google and the research running at Stanford. “In this academic vacuum, universities continue courting international students -- not for the sake of diversity or global exchange but for the money. Foreign students usually pay full freight. They rarely need financial aid. They’re low-maintenance revenue streams. In many cases, they subsidize the cost of educating domestic students, and colleges are now addicted.... “Finally, and perhaps most critically, the culture of education must be rehabilitated. American students have been raised in a soup of narcissism, cynicism, and ideological confusion. They are not stupid. They are not lazy. They are malnourished. Universities must stop selling therapy and start modeling truth, intellectual seriousness, and rigor. The pursuit of knowledge is something sacred, not performative....” Full op-ed at James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. But see also “U.S. Universities Can’t Innovate in Isolation ” at Inside Higher Ed: “At a time when the global race to develop cutting-edge technologies is accelerating, the U.S. should be expanding -- not constraining -- its international research partnerships.” Cornell Historian Offers Hope for Higher Education Excerpt: . . . “We are in an exciting period of reform and rebuilding. On reflection, however, I think that reforming universities will take work both on the inside and from the outside. It’s a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ process. Within the institution, we need leadership from administrators who understand the problem and are committed to restoring liberal education. Trustees and overseers need to back them up. Those administrators need to find like-minded faculty members and work with them. They also must be committed to devoting resources to hiring new faculty, because rare is the institution that already has enough faculty who are dedicated to those goals and not to activism instead....” Full interview of Cornell Prof. Barry Strauss at College Fix. The Real Crisis in Education Is What We Aren’t Measuring Excerpts (link in the original): “There’s a reason so many students feel disconnected from school. It’s not a lack of effort by teachers or disengagement by families. It’s that the structure of our schools still reflects priorities from a very different time. We are operating a 21st-century society on a 20th-century education system, shaped by 19th-century design.... “For years, we’ve referred to communication, teamwork, empathy and leadership as ‘soft skills.’ That phrase undersells their value. Increasingly, scholars and employers are calling them what they are: durable skills. These are abilities that persist, deepen and grow in importance across careers and life stages. They don’t become obsolete with each software update. In fact, they become more essential the more complex our world becomes.... “The stakes are real. A 2024 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that fewer than half of employers believe recent graduates are proficient in leadership. Confidence in graduates’ critical thinking and collaboration skills was even lower. That’s not just a workforce challenge; it’s a civic one. In a democracy, we need citizens who can engage across differences, analyze complex problems and lead with empathy. If we don’t teach those skills with intention, we shouldn’t be surprised when they go missing in public life....” Full op-ed by Utah Cong. Jason E. Thompson at The Hill. Other Articles of Interest How Much Will Universities Pay in Endowment Tax? Full article at AEI including chart showing, in descending order, projections for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT followed by 20 others. Editor’s note: If Stanford were to significantly reduce its over 13,000 to 18,000 managerial and other non-teaching personnel (see the charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage as well as Part 3 of our Back to Basics webpage) and were to move the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that are not primarily involved in front-line teaching and research along with their restricted funding into one or more separate nonprofit entities (see Part 4 of our Back to Basics webpage), to what extent might that realignment impact the pending taxation of Stanford’s core endowment? ( FYI, faculty colleagues at Harvard believe Harvard has over 5,000 personnel at Harvard's own centers and similar entities -- reportedly numbering 100 to 200 and possibly more -- and that Harvard’s faculty disparagingly refer to as the peripherals.) Why I’m Leaving Columbia Full op-ed by former Columbia Prof. Shai Davidai at Tablet: “Don’t let the current calm on campus fool you. Even under congressional investigations , lawsuits , and threat of losing accreditation , Columbia’s leaders cling to the fantasy that these problems will fix themselves.” Confidence in Higher Education Rises from Recent Low Full article at Gallup: Great deal/quite a lot of confidence was 57% in 2015, 36% in 2023 and 42% in 2025. But see also “Trust in Ivy League and Elite Universities Is Tanking” at College Fix : “Only 15 percent of voters have a great deal of trust in the elite universities, while 46 percent have little to no trust at all.” How to Save Higher Education Full op-ed at Free Press, including text of the Manhattan Statement on Higher Education as signed by a number of faculty members nationwide, including at Stanford. State Legislatures Are Requiring Colleges to Cut Degrees in Low Demand Full article at Inside Higher Ed: “It’s just another sign that the era of ‘trust the universities, they’re doing the right thing’ has long since passed.” Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Oceanic Humanities Project Envisions New Wave in Education Five Things to Know About Ultra-Processed Food Symposium Charts New Frontiers in Brain Health ************ “We cannot force someone to hear a message they are not ready to receive, but we must never underestimate the power of planting a seed.” -- Monica Harris, executive director of Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). July 14, 2025 Doing the ‘Right Thing’ Is Not a Moral Compass Excerpts (link in the original): “Perhaps Cornell’s sprawling ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) bureaucracy and senior administrators didn’t intend to discriminate. Maybe they genuinely believed they were ‘doing the right thing.’ But history is filled with tragic consequences born from good intentions unmoored from principle. The real danger lies not just in bad people doing harm, but in well-meaning people redefining harm as virtue, and enforcing it as policy. “At Cornell, this warped sense of righteousness has manifested in what now appears to be a university-wide pattern of discrimination: in hiring, scholarships, student life, and even speech. “As detailed in a recent federal civil rights complaint , faculty candidates were allegedly eliminated not for lack of merit -- but for lack of the ‘right’ racial or gender identity. Scholarships and opportunities were offered or denied based on identity, not achievement. And those who questioned the fairness of it all were marginalized, silenced, or labeled problematic. “How did we get here? “It begins with a dangerous assumption: that individuals or institutions can simply declare what is ‘right’ based on ideological trends, emotional appeal, or political pressure. Who decides what’s right? One might say the law does -- and it does. Federal civil rights laws, for example, prohibit discrimination on the basis of race or sex. But Cornell’s leaders decided that their version of ‘right’ -- wrapped in euphemisms like ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘inclusion’ -- should supersede those laws. “This is not new. We’ve seen this kind of thinking before -- where subjective morality replaces objective principle, intent is elevated above consequence, and slogans obscure reality. “Diversity became one-dimensional. It stopped meaning diversity of thought, background, or experience, and became solely about visible traits. “Equity stopped meaning fairness. It became a mandate for engineered outcomes, regardless of effort or merit. “Inclusion became exclusion. Anyone not conforming to the dominant ideology was treated as suspect, or worse, an oppressor. “In this worldview, discrimination was no longer discrimination -- it was ‘justice.’ Preferential treatment was no longer unfair -- it was ‘equitable.’ And questioning these practices was no longer reasoned dissent -- it was ‘harmful.’ . . . “The damage extends beyond individuals. “Cornell has created segregated dorms, racially themed graduation ceremonies, and anonymous reporting tools to enforce conformity to ever-shifting ideological rules. The campus has become a minefield of suspicion and resentment. Group identity is everything; individual merit is nothing. “And so, the university now finds itself in the crosshairs. Not of political activists, but of federal law. Outside forces are intervening because Cornell abandoned the internal compass that once guided its mission: the pursuit of truth through open inquiry, fairness, and merit. “This is a moment of reckoning. Cornell must decide whether to continue down this path of ideologically justified lawbreaking or return to being a university in the truest sense of the word. That will require courage....” Full op-ed by Cornell alum David Ackerman at Minding the Campus. See also at our Stanford Concerns webpage specific data regarding Stanford’s administrative staffing as compared with other major colleges and universities, data regarding Stanford’s DEI staffing as compared with other major colleges and universities, and Stanford’s prior and recently revamped program for reporting bias . See also Cornell President Michael I. Kotlikoff letter dated May 7, 2025 to alumni and others regarding cuts in federal funding and Cornell’s response. See also Cornell's “Statement on America First Policy Institute Complaint” (June 27, 2025) at Cornell website . See also Guiding Principles (letter dated March 31, 2025 from Stanford's President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez) and President Levin’s Opening Remarks to the Faculty Senate (April 10, 2025). Marc Andreessen’s Comments re Higher Educat ion Excerpts (links in the original): “Influential tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen recently said universities will ‘pay the price’ for promoting [DEI] . . . according to messages he sent to a group chat with White House officials and technology leaders reviewed by The Washington Post. “The billionaire’s messages also cited Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, a respected institution at the heart of Silicon Valley that has incubated tech companies such as Google. Andreessen and his wife [Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen ] have donated millions of dollars to the school.... “The tech investor is known for making controversial statements , including to his 1.8 million followers on X, and has criticized universities and government agencies in media appearances, but his comments in the private chat went beyond his previous statements.... “‘They declared war on 70% of the country and now they’re going to pay the price,’ Andreessen alleged of universities, without calling out a specific school.... “Andreessen’s message to the group about subjecting the NSF to ‘the bureaucratic death penalty’ alleged that the agency, a major funder of university science and tech labs, backed projects that led to online censorship of American citizens.... The investor added: ‘Raze it to the ground and start over.’ ...” Full article including screenshots at Washington Post. See also “National Science Foundation Faces Radical Shake-up as Officials Abolish Its 37 Divisions” at Science Advisor (May 8, 2025). See also previous articles at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage including: “ Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists and We Fought Back ” (September 11, 2023) and “Dr. Bhattacharya's Opening Statement at His Senate Confirmation Hearing to Lead National Institutes of Health -- Five Goals if Confirmed as Head of NIH ” (March 5, 2025). Editor's note: Prof. Bhattacharya was confirmed on March 25, 2025 and took office on April 1, 2025. University of District Columbia Prohibits Panel on Race Excerpts (link in the original): “[Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism] is proud to announce the latest effort in our civil rights advocacy: filing a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the University of the District of Columbia.... “In May 2025, the Our America Foundation approached UDC about hosting a debate titled ‘Is the American Dream Alive for Black Americans?’ featuring diverse Black and Hispanic panelists including FAIR’s Executive Director Monica Harris [who herself is Black] . The proposed event was intended to afford UDC students the opportunity to engage with different perspectives on one of America’s most important ongoing conversations. “UDC’s response was swift and shocking. “Dr. Monique Gamble, speaking on behalf of the university, rejected the debate outright, explicitly citing the racial identities of the university’s students as justification. In her written response, Dr. Gamble stated that UDC’s students have ‘identities [that] actually do put them at risk in a society that has a known history of criminalizing race, gender, sexuality, immigration and socio-economic status.’ She further claimed that the university would not ‘entertain these realities as debatable.’ “Put simply, a public university funded by taxpayers refused to host a debate about Black Americans’ experiences -- and featuring Black panelists -- because university officials determined that their perspectives were incompatible with the institution’s mission....” Full news release at FAIR’s website. A more detailed discussion of the issues is here; a bio for FAIR’s executive director, Monica Harris, is here ; and her TEDx talk “The Labels That Divide Us” (15 minutes) is here . In a Drive to Protect Free Speech, UK Regulator Says University Students Must Face Shocking Ideas Excerpt : “Students at English universities must prepare to confront ideas they find uncomfortable and shocking, the national regulator for higher education said as it released new guidelines governing free speech on campuses across the country. “The Office for Students said Thursday [June 19] that freedom of speech and academic freedom are crucial to higher education, so the guidelines are designed to ensure that universities don’t stifle any form of legal speech on their campuses or in their classrooms. “Students must be allowed to freely share their opinions and be prepared to hear a range of views during their studies, Arif Ahmed, free speech director for the regulator, said in a statement. “‘This includes things that they may find uncomfortable or shocking,’ he said. ‘By being exposed to a diversity of academic thought, students will develop their analytical and critical thinking skills.’ . . ." Full article at AP. See also summary of guidance and PDF copy of the full text , effective August 1, 2025. UC Berkeley Chancellor Is Prepping for Capitol Hill Grilling Excerpts (links in the original): “[Last week] was supposed to be a tough week for UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons. “He was scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which wants to examine ‘the underlying factors instigating antisemitic upheaval and hatred on campus.’ ... However, the hearing was postponed. It will be rescheduled for a later date, according to a committee staff member.... “In a talk at the Berkeley City Club [two weeks ago] , Lyons addressed the assault on higher education, its impacts on Cal, the balance between free speech and the right for all students to feel safe on campus, and how the UC system is approaching this era, all while it is wondering and waiting if UC will get one of those dreaded ‘Columbia-Harvard letters’ from the administration announcing draconian cuts. “‘We face very substantial risks,’ said Lyons. “UC Berkeley has already lost between $30 million and $40 million due to Trump’s cuts to approximately 35 grants, Lyons said. The entire UC system has seen $600 million in grant and research cuts, according to Nathan Brostrom, UC’s executive vice president and chief financial officer. It receives approximately $4 billion in federal funding annually.... [Followed by discussion of past and recent events, administrative and faculty responses, etc.] “UC Berkeley and the entire UC system face multiple federal investigations, including how the system handled the spring 2024 protest against Israel’s war in Gaza, whether the system discriminates against Jewish employees , the relationship Cal has with a Chinese university and more.... “‘To be honest, and with all due respect, the hearings this committee held on this same subject last year are reminiscent not of a fair trial of any sort, but of the kind of hearings the House Committee on Un-American Activities used to hold,’ [Georgetown Law Prof. David Cole] said in his [May 7] testimony. ‘And I think we can all agree that the HUAC hearings were both a big mistake and a major intrusion on the First Amendment rights of Americans.’ ...” Full article by Stanford alum Frances Dinkelspiel at Berkeleyside. See also “UC System Bans Student Governments from Boycotting Israel” at College Fix . How DEI Policies and Procedures Have Controlled University Hiring Excerpts (links in the original): “In early 2021, Carma Gorman, an art history professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the designated ‘diversity advocate’ for a faculty search committee, emailed John Yancey , the College of Fine Arts’ associate dean of diversity, seeking approval to proceed with a job search. “‘I wanted to make sure that the demographics of our pool pass muster,’ Gorman wrote. She noted that 21 percent of applicants were from underrepresented minority groups, with another 28 percent self-identifying as Asian.... “‘Once we’ve sorted everyone into Qualified and Unqualified groups,’ Gorman wrote of the first stage in the search process, the committee would ask an administrator to ‘check the demographic characteristics’ of the initial cut. ‘If it is a diverse enough group to merit moving forward with the search, fantastic!’ But if the pool was deemed insufficiently diverse, the committee would revisit candidates from underrepresented groups who were initially considered unqualified, expand job advertising, or simply ‘cancel the search entirely.’ This step would be repeated for both the shortlist and the finalist slate. “The practice raises obvious legal red flags -- particularly when it involves canceling searches outright, effectively denying all candidates a fair opportunity based on immutable characteristics. Yet documents I’ve obtained show that more than a dozen universities have adopted some version of this approach.... “If there’s one key lesson here, it’s that the desire for power, not ideology alone, gave rise to the social-justice university. More than likely, power will also prove its undoing.” Full op-ed at City Journal. See also “Federal Investigation Launched Over Faculty Hiring Practices at George Mason University” at Diverse Issues in Higher Education . Other Articles of Interest MIT Sued Over Alleged Failure to Address Anti-Semitic Harassment Full article at Campus Reform. PDF copy of the lawsuit, as brought by the Louis D. Brandeis Center, available here . Cornell’s New President Remains Under Attack Full article at National Review. Barnard College Settles Antisemitism Lawsuit with Controversial Campus Policy Changes Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. For Grants to Prepare K-12 Teachers, Department of Education Favors Colleges and Universities with Civic Schools Full article at Inside Higher Ed. ‘Unprepared and Entitled’ College Grads Are Unpopular with Hiring Managers Full article at College Fix including this link to the survey itself. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Neurobiologist’s Research on Brain Development Paves the Way for Possible Alzheimer’s Solutions Blood-test Analysis Can Determine the Biological Ages of 11 Separate Organ Systems What Workers Really Want from Artificial Intelligence AI Is Reshaping Accounting Jobs by Doing the ‘Boring’ Stuff Students Build AI-powered Robot Dogs from Scratch ************ “I don't really understand my own position unless I also understand your opposition to my position even if I still disagree with you. ” – Stanford Prof. Andrew Huberman July 7, 2025 To Save Themselves, Universities Must Cultivate Civic Friendship Excerpt (links in the original): “The war between Washington and our nation’s elite universities continues to heat up. From stripping federal funding from Harvard to targeting the accreditation status of Columbia, the Trump administration is delivering on the campaign it promised to carry out against universities that refuse to meet its demands. “As professors who have taught at institutions including Harvard and Princeton for many years, we have consistently encouraged universities to reject any demands or conditions that would compromise basic principles of academic freedom and freedom of thought, inquiry and speech. Nevertheless, as we have previously argued , elite universities themselves bear much of the responsibility for their current predicament. From fostering (or willfully looking past) campus intellectual climates poisoned by conformism, ideological homogeneity and groupthink to failing to take adequate action against harassment and other activities that undermine their core truth-seeking mission, universities have made themselves legitimate objects of scrutiny -- and low-hanging fruit for an administration that is metaphorically out for blood. “We believe a fundamental reason for the decline of the pursuit of truth on campuses is the collapse in acknowledging the importance of civic friendship -- which, following Aristotle, we understand to be the bond of mutual respect and willingness to cooperate for the sake of the common good, even across significant disagreements or divisions....” Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George and Union Theological Seminary Prof. Cornel West at Washington Post. Reforming Higher-Education Reform Excerpts (link in the original): “To constructively reform an institution requires understanding its problems and challenges. To understand an institution’s problems and challenges, one must grasp its aims, structure, and spirit. Many well-intentioned would-be university reformers who recognize the crisis of higher education fail to appreciate the aims, structure, and spirit of liberal education, the capstone and highest justification of undergraduate study. This causes well-intentioned would-be university reformers to miss the center of the target with their criticism and impels them to advance inadequate or counterproductive remedies. “In a late-June online conversation, ‘Are We Past Peak Harvard?’: 3 Writers Mull Higher Education’s Woes , sharp-minded New York Times writers discussed ‘the state of higher education in Trump 2.0 and beyond.’ Host Frank Bruni, a thoughtful man of the left, is a Times contributing opinion writer and a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University. He exchanged views with Ross Douthat, a Times columnist and a wide-ranging and well-respected conservative thinker; and Lawrence H. Summers, a centrist Democrat, who is also a Times contributing opinion writer, a former Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2021, Harvard president from 2001 to 2006, and a longtime Harvard professor with appointments in the economics department and at the Kennedy School. “The roundtable covered considerable ground. Bruni’s comments and questions recognized that elite universities needed a course correction while condemning the Trump administration’s interventions as springing from resentment of elite universities’ power and influence and causing considerable harm. Douthat and Summers argued that whatever the president’s motives, progressive orthodoxy on campus has vilified and excluded conservative ideas. And they both espoused viewpoint diversity as an urgently needed corrective. “Yet only obliquely did they recognize that fixing higher education depends on rediscovering the aim of liberal education, revising the structure of the curriculum, and setting aside the spirit of party that many professors bring to the classroom in favor of the spirit of curiosity, fallibility, and free inquiry.... [Followed by a summary of perspectives presented in the roundtable and what was missing in the discussion.] “We need reformers who can explain that liberal education aims to form cultivated human beings capable of exercising wisely the rights and discharging effectively the responsibilities of free citizens. “We need reformers who understand that liberal education must be structured around study of American ideas and institutions; the seminal intellectual achievements -- scientific as well as literary -- and decisive events of Western civilization; and the languages, culture, and history of other civilizations. “And we need reformers who know that universities don’t in the first place need conservative professors or progressive professors but rather professors endowed with the old-fashioned liberal spirit. Such professors furnish students’ minds with facts and observations, methods and interpretations, and evidence and arguments. And such professors assist students in thinking for themselves by teaching that authors and texts must be understood before one refutes or embraces them, and that understanding an idea or an institution involves examining not only where it breaks down but also how it gained acceptance and why it exerted influence. “The paucity of such reformers gives rise to the widespread need for remedial education focusing on the university’s mission, not least for faculty and administrators, many of whose teachers failed to introduce them to the aim, structure, and spirit of liberal education.” Full op-ed by Hoover/Stanford Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics. See also Stanford Civic Initiative webpage and courses . See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Why the Traditional College Major May Be Holding Students Back Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “The college major, developed and delivered by disciplinary experts within siloed departments, continues to be the primary benchmark for academic quality and institutional performance. This structure likely works well for professional majors governed by accreditation or licensure, or more tightly aligned with employment. But in today’s evolving landscape, reliance on the discipline-specific major may not always serve students or institutions well. “As a professor emeritus and former college administrator and dean, I argue that the college major may no longer be able to keep up with the combinations of skills that cross multiple academic disciplines and career readiness skills demanded by employers, or the flexibility students need to best position themselves for the workplace.... “In response to market pressures, colleges are adding new high-demand majors at a record pace. Between 2002 and 2022, the number of degree programs nationwide increased by nearly 23,000, or 40%, while enrollment grew only 8%. Some of these majors, such as cybersecurity, fashion business or entertainment design, arguably connect disciplines rather than stand out as distinct. Thus, these new majors siphon enrollment from lower-demand programs within the institution and compete with similar new majors at competitor schools. “At the same time, traditional arts and humanities majors are adding professional courses to attract students and improve employability . Yet, this adds credit hours to the degree while often duplicating content already available in other departments.... “Before the 20th century, students followed a broad liberal arts curriculum designed to create well-rounded, globally minded citizens. The major emerged as a response to an evolving workforce that prioritized specialized knowledge. But times change -- and so can the model.” Full op-ed by former Miami U. Dean and Prof. Emeritus John Weigand at The Conversation. Harvard Must Defend Its Integrity Without Losing Its Head Excerpts (links in the original): “Harvard Government Department professors Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky recently warned in The Harvard Crimson that if Harvard negotiates with the Trump administration to restore frozen federal research funding, the university risks legitimizing authoritarian extortion. They describe any engagement as capitulation and argue that by cooperating with the administration -- even minimally -- Harvard will set a dangerous precedent for the erosion of liberal democracy. “As a member of the same Harvard community for over two decades and as a scholar of political culture and higher education, I take concerns about institutional autonomy seriously. But I also see the argument of Enos and Levitsky as alarmist and counterproductive. Harvard must absolutely preserve its independence and academic mission. But it must do so through clear thinking, legal rigor, and public accountability -- not by retreating into ideological rigidity.... [Followed by discussion of specific actions that should and shouldn’t be taken.] “Harvard, like all elite institutions, has a responsibility not just to itself, but to the country. It must show that independence doesn’t mean impunity -- and that fidelity to the law is not surrender, but strength. “We don’t need universities to become battlegrounds in America’s partisan wars. We need them to model how to live and think together in a pluralistic democracy and—in the spirit of the Kalven Report -- to model ‘integrity and intellectual competence.’ “Harvard must hold the line. But it must also remember where the line really is. Harvard’s motto is ‘Veritas,’ or truth, and Enos and Levitsky know better than what they wrote; they presented a false dichotomy of what Harvard’s choices are vis-à-vis the Trump administration and, in doing so, willfully distorted the truth. Harvard has a principled path forward with the Trump administration that can return the school to its deserved greatness.” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams at Real Clear Education. Yale Ends DEI Initiative and Scrubs the Website Excerpt (links in the original): “Belonging at Yale -- a five-year initiative aimed to increase diversity, bolster a sense of inclusion and ensure equity throughout the University -- has concluded, administrators announced Thursday [June 26] . “A University-wide email sent from President Maurie McInnis, Vice Provost for Faculty Development Gary Désir and Secretary Kimberly Goff-Crews indicated that the initiative was always planned to end this year. Public access to the initiative’s once-expansive website is now steeply limited. The site, which the News accessed on Thursday through web archives, previously included pages of compiled resources on diversity, equity and inclusion ; antiracism ; Yale’s historic connection to slavery ; prospective school-wide actions to increase diversity and a contact form soliciting ideas . “The updated website now consists of one central homepage displaying three annual reports on the Belonging at Yale initiative, issued in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Multiple links included in those reports are now inaccessible. The reports appear to be restricted to users who can log in through Yale’s central authentication service. “The other pages that were previously accessible on the site are no longer visible on the homepage and are inaccessible through direct links....” Full article at Yale Daily News. Other Articles of Interest Four Point Agenda for Reforming Colleges and Universities Full PDF document at Heterodox Academy. Forget Harvard Because the Traditional University Model is Failing Full op-ed by San Deigo State Prof. Emeritus John Eger at Times of San Diego. Indiana Public Universities Ending 19% of Degrees Full article at Real Clear Education. What the University of Virginia Should Have Done Full op-ed by former U Virgina chief legal officer Timothy J. Heaphy at NY Times . Ohio Signs Law to Depoliticize Colleges and End DEI Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars. The NextGen Bar Exam Is DEI in Action, Dangerously Lowering Standards Full op-ed at The Hill. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Exploring the Dangers of AI in Mental Health Care Molecule Restores Long-term Strength to Old Mice How Biomass Changed over 500 Million Years ************ “In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you'll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change.” – Prof. Gary Hamel, London School of Business June 30, 2025 Tuition Hikes and Layoffs Are Coming to a Broad Set of Universities Excerpt (links in the original): “Public universities in the Midwest are raising prices for out-of-state students, as Florida schools consider making the same move for the first time since 2012. “Cornell and Duke are among the colleges weighing layoffs. The University of Minnesota is cutting hundreds of jobs, even as undergraduate tuition soars as much as 7.5 percent. “Just as America’s colleges are preparing to welcome what could be the largest freshman class in the nation’s history , political and economic forces are unleashing havoc on higher education budgets. Schools are grappling with meager upticks in state support and topsy-turvy economic forecasts, and Republicans in Washington are pursuing federal budget cuts and threatening tax hikes ...." Full article at NY Times. Stanford to Reduce Budget by $140 Million, Lay Off Employees for Next Academic Year Excerpts (links in the original): “Stanford announced Thursday that it will impose a $140 million budget cut for the 2025-26 academic year to adapt to reductions in federal research support and an increase in the endowment tax. "President Donald Trump’s 'One, Big, Beautiful Bill ,' passed May 22 by the House of Representatives, proposes a 21% increase on Stanford’s endowment tax from the current rate of 1.4%. The bill is currently undergoing negotiations in the Senate before being sent to the president’s office. If signed into law, the increase would represent a tax of $750 million annually, placing some financial aid -- over two-thirds of which comes from the endowment -- at risk.... “'There is significant uncertainty about how federal support for universities will evolve, but it is clear that the status quo has changed,' University president Jonathan Levin ’94 and Provost Jenny Martinez wrote in their announcement of the change. "According to the letter, the budget cuts will require a reduction in staff positions, including through layoffs.... "The figure of $140 million excludes funding cuts for the School of Medicine, which will separately decide on reductions in the coming weeks.... “'In all the departments in the humanities and social sciences, in the natural sciences and engineering, in the medical school and elsewhere, the importance of that work is for the future of the country and the world,’ Martinez said. ‘The investment in education is for the long term benefit of society, and we really need to defend that.’” Full article at Stanford Daily. See also full text of Pres. Levin’s and Provost Martinez’ letter to faculty and staff, “Update on the 2025-26 Budget ,” at Stanford Report. See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage and our Stanford Concerns webpage. More of Us Are Working in Big Bureaucratic Organizations than Ever Before Excerpts (links in the original): “Writing for the Harvard Business Review in 1988, Peter Drucker predicted that in 20 years the average organization would have slashed the number of management layers by half and shrunk its managerial ranks by two-thirds. Unfortunately, it hasn’t turned out that way. Despite all of the hype around alternatives -- the gig economy, the sharing economy, holacracy, lean -- bureaucracy has been growing, not shrinking.... “While many CEOs decry bureaucracy, few can claim success in defeating it. In practice, tactical victories -- like cutting out a layer of management, trimming head office staff, or simplifying a cumbersome process -- are usually small and quickly reversed. In this regard, look again at Figure 1. Notice how rapidly the thicket of bureaucracy grew back after being pruned in the wake of the 2008 recession. [Editor’s note: charts in the article are similar to the detailed charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage showing extraordinary growth of Stanford’s managerial staff in the past 20 years as compared to virtually no growth in the faculty or student body during those same years. Among other things, note that Stanford has the highest administrative costs per student ($40,227) of any U.S. college or university and as compared to MIT ($32.719), Yale ($22,461), USC ($18,170), Cornell ($9,329) and UCLA ($7,640). ] “It could be argued that in a world characterized by increasing complexity, the growth of bureaucracy is inevitable. Who but senior executives is going to address all those vexing new issues, like globalization, digitization, and social responsibility? Who else is going to meet all those new compliance requirements around diversity, risk mitigation and sustainability? This mindset has produced a surge in new C-level roles: Chief Analytics Officer, Chief Collaboration Officer, Chief Customer Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Ethics Officer, Chief Learning Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer and even Chief Happiness Officer . And more prosaically, who, if not managers, is going to do the everyday work of planning, prioritizing, allocating, reviewing, coordinating, controlling, scheduling, and rewarding? “Yet our research suggests that bureaucracy is not inevitable; it’s not the inescapable price of doing business in a complicated world. Rather, it’s a cancer that eats away at economic productivity and organizational resilience.” Full article by London School of Business Prof. Gary Hamel and management consultant Michele Zanini at Harvard Business Review (2016). Behind Closed Doors, Harvard Officials Debate a Risky Truce with President Trump Excerpt: . . . . . “Unlike many other powerful institutions that have struck bargains with Mr. Trump, Harvard, the nation’s oldest and richest university, spent much of this spring as the vanguard of resistance to the White House, credited by academic leaders, alumni and pro-democracy activists for fighting the administration and serving as a formidable barrier against authoritarianism. “Despite a series of legal wins against the administration, though, Harvard officials concluded in recent weeks that those victories alone might be insufficient to protect the university....” Full article at NY Times. Harvard Is Asking Corporations to Fill Its Federal Funding Gap Excerpt: “Harvard University and other top research schools are seeking corporate funders to support their science labs following sweeping cuts to government grants. “The T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard, which typically gets more than 70% of its annual research dollars from the federal government, lost nearly all of the funding after the Trump administration canceled hundreds of the university’s research grants and contracts. The school expected to get more than $200 million this fiscal year. “Administrators called the losses catastrophic....” Full article at WSJ. ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills Excerpts (links in the original): “Does ChatGPT harm critical thinking abilities? A new study from researchers at MIT’s Media Lab has returned some concerning results. “The study divided 54 subjects—18 to 39 year-olds from the Boston area—into three groups, and asked them to write several SAT essays using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s search engine, and nothing at all, respectively. “Researchers used an EEG to record the writers’ brain activity across 32 regions, and found that of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and 'consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.' Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study. “The group that wrote essays using ChatGPT all delivered extremely similar essays that lacked original thought, relying on the same expressions and ideas. Two English teachers who assessed the essays called them largely 'soulless.' The EEGs revealed low executive control and attentional engagement. And by their third essay, many of the writers simply gave the prompt to ChatGPT and had it do almost all of the work. “The brain-only group, conversely, showed the highest neural connectivity, especially in alpha, theta and delta bands, which are associated with creativity ideation, memory load, and semantic processing. Researchers found this group was more engaged and curious, and claimed ownership and expressed higher satisfaction with their essays." Full article at Time. See also “Does AI Make Us Stupid?" at Free Press . Educators Must Adapt to AI, but They Need Help Excerpts (links in the original): “I recently had the opportunity to be part of an OpenAI faculty roundtable . I was one of about a dozen professors that were joined by several staff from OpenAI’s recently created ‘Education Team .’ We talked about our best practices for teaching with AI and our worries about its impact on student engagement, motivation, and academic integrity. The Education Team listened, asked questions, and presented their own vision of an ‘AI Native Institution .’ “Our conversations were all about isolated and idiosyncratic (and, sure, exemplary) pedagogical practices, but completely lacking in big-picture vision—as if all we had to do was better integrate some whiz-bang gadget one student, one faculty, one institution at a time. “But the real story is that AI has broken the transmission model of education, where professors teach and then grade students on how much they learned. A passing grade used to mean students had learned enough of what the professor had 'transmitted.' No longer. These past two years faculty have given out A’s left and right to students who don’t understand (much less read) the assignment they just submitted. I cannot overstate this: AI has decoupled students’ performance (what they submit to us) and student knowledge. “AI is not just another shiny new gadget. It is a paradigm-shifting technology. The rise of the printing press in medieval Europe fundamentally altered how people related to knowledge, sparking a centuries-long expansion of literacy and thus the democratization of knowledge. I believe AI is the printing press of our time, again expanding and democratizing the process of learning. “All of us in higher education have long known that the transmission model was deeply flawed. But until ChatGPT was released in November of 2022, we had no viable alternatives. Now we do. What OpenAI should have done, if it wanted to help reshape the future of education, is stop asking how AI fits into the old paradigm by tinkering at the edges and start imagining and investing in what a new model of education could look like.” Full op-ed by Merrimack College Prof. Dan Sarofian-Butin at Education Next. Colleges Need More Comedy Excerpts (links in the original): "We live in humorless times, and yet the need to laugh seems more vital than ever. "Conversations on college campuses are tense right now, if they happen at all. I have taught on a university campus for close to two decades, but only recently have I started to give some consideration to comedy as a serious source of study. "Today, I weave humor into everything and, as an English professor, I find so many promising parallels between jokes and narratives. As the humanities increasingly becomes a target in our data-driven world of deliverables and returns on investment, the study and practice of humor has the potential to enhance and enrich higher education. "Still, humor is a subject of widespread interest among both those in academia and the larger public. As the world welcomes Pope Leo, I came across a New York Times opinion piece by his predecessor titled 'There is Faith in Humor.' Pope Francis argues that laughter is central to living, just as humor humanizes us. The piece also emphasizes the centrality of comedy to Catholic faith, interfaith conversations and social justice. "Humor and comedy take courage, of course, and also coincide with creative and critical thinking. "The next generation of learners can certainly benefit from this focus on lifelong learning through laughter, which in many ways is the freest form of expression." Full op-ed by Sacred Heart Prof. Cara Erdheim Kilgallen at The Hill. Other Articles of Interest Department of Justice Opens Investigation re UC Berkeley’s Alleged Race and Sex-Based Hiring Practices Press release at DOJ website; full text of DOJ notice is here . See also “UC Sees the Good in Faculty Diversity While DOJ Says It May Be Illegal Discrimination” at LA Times . See also “Internal Documents Show Cornell Hired Based on Race” at City Journal . See also “Civil rights Complaint Filed Against Cornell Includes Bombshell Whistleblower Emails” at College Fix . Professors View Teaching as ‘Burden,’ Spend Less Time in Classroom Full article at College Fix. Can AI Compensate for an Inferior Education? Full article at DC Journal. Guarding Democracy by Teaching Civics Video at Higher Ed Now. Higher Ed Progress and Setbacks Full article at National Association of Scholars. College Degrees With Best Financial Return Revealed Full article at Newsweek. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Program Teaches the Art and Craft of Live Storytelling The Bold Bet That Built a Telescope New Language Model Helps Patients Understand Their Radiology Reports You Can Literally Lose Who You Are ************ “Today, university campuses are criticized for being narrow and doctrinaire. The critics are not all wrong. However, when a university is at its best – when Stanford is at its best – the campus is an unparalleled place for freedom, truth, and enlightenment.” -- Stanford Pres. Jon Levin, 2025 commencement address June 23, 2025 Moral Failure and Government Intrusion at Harvard Excerpts (links in the original): "To understand the crisis in American higher education, it is necessary to hold two thoughts at once. American higher education remains the envy of the world, with seven of its universities in the top 10 of Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings . Yet the behavior on many campuses has caused public confidence in higher education to plummet. With a recent drop of 21 percentage points, only 36 percent now express a lot of confidence, while 32 percent have little or no confidence. Among those dissatisfied with higher education, politicization stands as a major cause of their dismay. Significantly, though, the public does not seem happy about the attacks on higher education coming from the administration, with only 27 percent approving. Those mixed messages may be the fingerpost for finding a solution. “Harvard has been among the worst offenders, with cancellations, shout-downs, disruptive encampments, and egregious antisemitic conduct. “… the treatment Harvard is receiving from the Trump administration is neither measured nor reasonable nor, according to many legal scholars across the ideological spectrum, within statutory authority. Yet worse is the federal government’s apparent willingness to accept the damage being done to American scientific progress. “Enumerating the sins of Harvard is not difficult, and Harvard will need to be more transparent and specific than it has been about the way it will measure the effectiveness of its reforms. Moving forward will not be easy, and if it is to happen, both Harvard and the Trump administration will need to adjust their positions and their rhetoric. There is every reason to do so…. “Governing boards that, for good reason, do not want Leviathan’s intrusion into their campuses need to ensure fair admissions, fair hiring, and freedom from discrimination. This is their moment for strong, principled institutional governance. “But it must be said out loud: Limited government is a core value within the American concept of liberty, especially for classical liberals and conservatives. It is reasonable and wholesome in a free society for private institutions to challenge governmental fiat and intrusion into their operations. It behooves the Trump administration to respect such boundaries.” Full op-ed by American Council of Trustees and Alumni President Michael B. Poliakoff at Law & Liberty. Reforming Higher Ed from Within -- Restoring Viewpoint Diversity Through Checks and Balances Excerpts (footnotes deleted): “Concern over one-sided ideological bias in higher education has built over the past few years, resulting in a slew of articles calling for change. Government actors—namely, the Trump administration—have stepped in with the blunt instrument of threats and funding cuts, setting a poor precedent for reforming higher education. These actions often violate academic freedom and are almost certain to backfire in the long run. “A much better approach is to reform academia from the inside by setting up new policies and procedures that address the ideological imbalance and the resultant groupthink, junk science, and 'cancellations' that have occurred at such high rates in recent years. “Taking a cue from the US Constitution, we propose a series of ‘checks and balances’ among the major actors in institutions of higher ed to prevent any one faction from dominating. Each of these actors—trustees, administration, faculty, outside accrediting agencies, and review committees—must play a role in restoring the balance to higher ed. “We recommend that trustees, presidents, provosts, deans, and chairs—or their proxies—play a more active role in the hiring process to correct for this. This would not necessarily mean they would sit on every individual search committee, which would be impractical. Rather, they would participate in a holistic process tasked with examining overall viewpoint imbalance in departments, divisions, and the school as a whole. “Solutions to higher ed’s political bias problem have ranged from new centers devoted to civic education to eliminating DEI. While such measures may help, none gets to the heart of the problem, which is ultimately the ideological makeup of the faculty and its effects on curricula, student experience, and knowledge production. Our proposal is designed to address this core problem head-on that is distorting and discrediting academia. Higher ed has lost the trust of the American people, as polls show, and it’s imperative that it takes action. If this had been done earlier, we might not have seen the kind of blunt interventions higher ed is now enduring.” Full op-ed by Boston University Prof. Michael Jindra and Occidental College Prof. Jacob L. Mackey at AEI. Burnout Is the Curriculum Excerpt (link in the original): "Today’s college students are more anxious and depressed than ever. A study by the Healthy Minds Network revealed that 38 percent of students in 2023–24 reported symptoms of depression, including loss of enjoyment and persistent feelings of hopelessness. In response, universities have ramped up mental health messaging—through emails, workshops, and mindfulness events—urging students to prioritize self-care. "These offerings, though well-meaning, ignore the core problem: students are overwhelmed not by a lack of wellness resources but by the impossible demands of modern college life. "Students invest hours in performative accomplishments while neglecting authentic intellectual growth. So when colleges tell us to 'take a mental health day,' it rings hollow—because students have been conditioned to believe that missing out on anything risks falling behind in the relentless pursuit of credentials. Sure, students can take a 'mental health day'—but it might cost them the edge they’ve been told they can’t afford to lose. "If universities are serious about improving student mental health, they should reconsider their investment in wellness events and instead reevaluate the structure of student success. That means reinforcing a different metric of accomplishment—one that values meaningful education over manufactured achievement. "It means creating a campus culture that encourages focus, reflection, and intellectual curiosity, not nonstop involvement or artificial 'passion.' Only then will students be free to pursue learning without sacrificing their sanity." Full op-ed by Emory University undergraduate Alyza Harris at Minding the Campus. To Fight Political Polarization, Reinvest in Civics and the Liberal Arts Excerpts (link in the original): "As a history PhD, I’m used to hearing that I should have studied STEM (science, technology, engineering, or math) instead. We humanities graduates often retort that our skills are under-appreciated, but our arguments ring hollow in the face of a difficult job market. Facing this reality, ambitious students rapidly abandoned arts majors throughout the 2000s, causing universities to slash funding for the likes of literature and civics. Even as students learn ever less about America’s history and constitution, there has never been a compelling argument for the practical use of the humanities like there is for STEM. "Now, rising political instability has begun to change that calculus. Reinvesting in civics and the liberal arts could help arrest political chaos that has imposed very real costs on American society. "Although political polarization threatens nearly all facets of American life, its economic costs are the easiest to measure. For example, both Democrats and Republicans recognize that they will need to reform programs like Social Security and Medicare—which account for the majority of federal spending—but political mistrust has prevented them from reaching a compromise. "While turning most students into literature and history majors might help mitigate political chaos, it still wouldn’t address the humanities’ employability problem: hospitals won’t be hiring fresh history majors as surgeons, regardless of the social benefits. Instead, colleges could require all students to take classes in history and politics as part of a curriculum designed to develop them into good citizens. The University of Chicago and Columbia, for example, already require students to take a 'core curriculum,' which includes classes on history and culture. "Supporting history and civics wouldn’t require reorienting the U.S. economy; the country still needs engineers, surgeons, and bankers. Even if America reinvests in teaching our nation’s political tradition, I wouldn’t shy away from hard questions about my employment prospects. But when conversations turn to politics, more respectful discussions might replace the anger and conspiracy theories that pervade today." Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. Cornell Announces Major Staff Cuts and Hiring Restrictions in Light of 'Profound Financial Challenges' Excerpt (links in the original): "Top administrators announced actions to combat 'profound financial challenges' in a statement to the Cornell community on Wednesday. These actions include downsizing staff as the University streamlines processes, consolidates operations and restricts hiring for the 2025-2026 academic year. "The statement attributes the financial challenges to federal funding cuts, including those to research , financial aid and medical reimbursement. Additionally, the statement notes that the school faces rapidly escalating legal expenses, an anticipated tax on its endowment income and rising costs of inflation...." Full article at Cornell Daily Sun. See also “Tuition Increases and Layoffs Are Coming to a Broad Set of Universities” at NYT . See also our Stanford Concerns webpage with extensive data re Stanford's staffing and costs and our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage re proposed corrective actions. Other Articles of Interest How Universities Would Overhaul Research Funding "Two New Models Are Geared Toward Creating a More Transparent and Accountable System to Track Costs Indirectly Related to Research." Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Reimagining College Full book review at Law & Liberty. The Encampment Mindset -- The Psychology of Student Protests Full op-ed at Sapir Journal. The Handwriting Revolution Full article at Inside Higher Ed. The Great Antisemitism Debate Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Medical School Has Gotten Too Political Full op-ed by U. Alabama Birmingham Prof. Emeritus Thomas S. Huddle and Yale Medical School lecturer Sally Satel at Chronicle of Higher Education. Harvard Medical School Faces Backlash Over Latest DEI Office Renaming Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. The Unraveling of the AAUP Full op-ed by U. Illinois Prof. Emeritus Matthew W. Finkin at Chronicle of Higher Education. The Hijacking of American Classrooms and How We Can Reclaim Them Full op-ed at Fair For All. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Celebrates Its Largest Graduating Class Ever at Commencement 2025 (Video) An AI Analyst Made 30 Years of Stock Picks – and Outperformed Human Investors by a ‘Stunning’ Degree New Award Recognizes Efforts to Elevate Constructive Dialogue at Stanford How Stanford Is Simplifying Decisions and Processes How Language Bias Persists in Scientific Publishing Despite AI Tools ************ “Historical thinking requires suspending present-day judgments and learning to appreciate the complexity of human motives and actions across time. It’s a practice of empathy grounded in evidence.” – Stanford Prof. Emeritus Sam Wineburg June 16, 2025 The Courage to Converse – Tough Dialogue on Campus Excerpts: “This past spring semester, the College Debates & Discourse (CD&D) Alliance organized and hosted more than 80 campus debates and dialogues, engaging several thousand students at partner institutions across the nation. In total, these events covered a panoramic range of topics and elicited a myriad of student perspectives. A key shared takeaway has emerged: students, faculty, and community members attest that in today’s sharply divided political climate, it is more crucial than ever that universities remain strongholds of free speech and open dialogue. “National surveys of students and faculty have cast a spotlight on their reluctance to discuss controversial political and social topics. The pervasive culture of fear across campuses can feel overwhelming. Students with widely varying perspectives are increasingly afraid to speak up, unsure if participation in political advocacy or the expression of their beliefs will bring about social repercussions, or worse. “Sitting in a roomful of people with conflicting perspectives can be unnerving, and listening to someone you vehemently disagree with can be nothing short of infuriating. Sharing the deeply personal stories that influence your social and political ideology with a group of strangers can feel like a dystopian episode of Fear Factor. But these are precisely the kinds of experiences that young people need to develop the humility and empathy so crucial for navigating the diverse voices and perspectives they will encounter once they step off campus. “The right to express dissent is one of the most fundamental American values and remains critical to maintaining the integrity of our academic institutions. Against the backdrop of campus protests and volatile climate in higher education, colleges and universities should encourage their students to ask tough questions, embrace having their perspectives challenged, and build capacity to listen attentively to others with differing views.” Full article at GoActa. See also “Civil Discourse Is a Lost Art on Campus but I Learned to Disagree Better” at Minding the Campus . See also “Free Speech and the Philosophy Classroom -- The Wrong Question” at APA Online . Will the University Survive AI? Excerpts (links in the original): " . . . it is not ideology, but technology that is precipitating the greatest crisis higher education has ever faced. "A recent article by James D. Walsh in New York Magazine, widely circulated among academics, reported that “just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT [in 2022], a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used the chatbot to help with homework assignments . . . "One problem is that it’s difficult to prove that students have cheated with chatbots. They’ve learned how to detect “Trojan horse” traps in assignments, engineer prompts that won’t make them look too smart, and launder their essays through multiple bot-generated iterations. Nor is AI-powered software a reliable means of detecting such schemes. "Faced with these difficulties, universities have punted. They’ve done little more than leave faculty to establish their own AI-use policies, which vary widely and are, in any case, largely unenforceable. (What is more, some professors are using chatbots to formulate assignments and grade papers. In their classrooms, machines are talking to machines.) This response is completely inadequate. Universities will not survive if they are little more than expensive diploma mills. Nor will the United States, for what will take their place in preparing future citizens, leaders, and builders to repair our broken institutions and maintain a healthy and prospering polity? "The ultimate aim of a liberal education is fully to actualize the human capacity 'to form an instinctive just estimate of things as they pass before us,' in the words of John Henry Newman. If we are to maintain our humanity in the age of AI, an education that teaches young people to read, write, and think through the investigation of traditional sources of human meaning — goodness, truth, justice, beauty — and the cultural and political conditions in which they acquire a prominent place in human life, will be more necessary than ever. "If colleges and universities have any hope of surviving, they must articulate a compelling vision of what higher education is, and what it is for — of its signal importance for individuals and society alike. If they are to equip students to find their way in an increasingly complex world, they must provide not just a technical education, but a genuinely liberal one. That’s the only way they can convince students not to cheat themselves out of the chance to live rich and meaningful lives by unreflectively turning over their distinctively human energies and capacities to AI. Let’s hope they succeed. For if higher education ceases to preserve, extend, and transmit the wisdom and knowledge our ancestors struggled and suffered to achieve, who or what will? Full article at Unherd. See also “Assessment in the Age of AI – Universities Must Do More Than Tell Students What Not to Do” at The Conversation . See also "AI Ethics in Higher Education: How Schools Are Proceeding" at EdTech . Other Articles of Interest Here’s What Utah’s Colleges Are Doing to Win Back State Funding Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. The Alarming Decay of Mathematical Competency in America Full article at Minding the Campus. Ohio State Will Require AI Classes for All students This Fall Full article at College Fix. Four Ways Colleges Can Prepare for an Uncertain Future Full article at Higher Ed Dive. College Students Are Using No Contact Orders to Block Each Other in Real Life Full article at WSJ . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. How Stanford is Advancing Constructive Dialogue Designing Blood Vessels for 3D Printed Hearts Digital Twins Offer Insights into Brains Struggling with Math — and Hope for Students Advance in Creating Organoids Could Aid Research, Lead to Treatmen t Blood Sugar Response to Various Carbohydrates Can Point to Metabolic Health Subtypes ************ “The most morally valuable focus that a university provides is the commitment to, and practice of, reasoning clearly and thinking critically.” – Stanford Prof. Russell Berman June 9, 2025 Note to Readers: In light of comments from readers and ongoing developments nationally, we have updated our webpage Back to Basics at Stanford and where we have highlighted the new or changed text. ************ Don’t Just Fix Higher Education, Reconstitute It Excerpts (links in the original): “Academic institutions think they have a problem and that its name is Donald Trump . But he’s only the beginning of their problems. The difficulties are systemic, not only legal or political, and that means it’s time to reconsider what higher education should look like. “The current institutional players are in no condition to rethink higher education. Having cultivated and tolerated violations of civil-rights laws, universities and colleges can’t afford candid introspection, lest it be understood as an admission of wrongdoing. They are controlled, moreover, by administrators who generally don’t have the stomach to recognize the damage they’ve done to higher education, let alone what should be done with their jobs. “The federal government is no better at re-evaluating higher education. It’s focusing on the tools available to it: enforcing antidiscrimination laws and defunding science (even though scientists aren’t typically the culprits). “The academic failures of universities and colleges are obvious enough. Departments generally appoint their own faculty members -- so that once a department is ideologically captured, it tends to tilt further in the same direction, inevitably producing instruction and research that, considered as a whole, is slanted. Institutions then inculcate conformity, punish dissenters, and apply harsh disciplinary proceedings. Put another way, the recent antisemitism didn’t develop in a vacuum. It was nurtured amid ideological capture and selective enforcement of the rules. These are substantial impediments to the pursuit of truth.... “It’s time for a thorough reconsideration of higher education -- not only to fix it, but to reconstitute it. “Academic institutions could, if they had sufficient fortitude, begin to repair themselves. Colleges could avoid the impediments created by closed-minded departments by shifting funds to new, interdisciplinary departments. Where a political science department is indifferent to historical inquiry and the history department is indifferent to the development of political institutions and theory, for instance, a new department straddling the two would be well justified.... “If there is to be federal funding for higher education, it should be reduced and refined. Institutions fattened on federal funds have expanded the number of administrators more than professors. The amount of student loans and their interest rates should be inversely related to the ratio of administrators to faculty. Although it’s difficult to quantify intellectual openness, federal funds should be linked to such tolerance, whether on campus or in hiring and admissions....” Full op-ed by Columbia Prof. Philip Hamburger at WSJ. See also our Stanford Concerns webpage and our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. University Boards Need Fewer People from Wall Street, Hedge Funds and Venture Capital Excerpts (link in the original): “If it feels like there are a lot of billionaires mucking around in higher education, that might be because there are. In 1989, private-equity and hedge-fund managers held 3 percent of board seats at the top 30 private universities as ranked by Times Higher Education . By 2017, they held 17 percent of trustee positions, according to a study published earlier this year in Socio-Economic Review. “The upshot is that over the last generation, the most prestigious colleges have had the means to gather extraordinary wealth. That wealth reinforces those colleges’ exclusivity, which in turn is helping to fuel resentment against higher education, argues one of the study’s co-authors, Charlie Eaton, a sociologist at the University of California at Merced. ‘That’s become a political vulnerability,’ he said.... “Eaton published a book about the role of Wall Street in higher education, Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education , in 2022. His Socio-Economic Review paper expands on findings in the book.... “... ‘elite ties are really valuable and important for the private-equity and hedge-fund business model, because when they’re buying companies or doing financial transactions to try to outperform the stock market, what they do is trade on private information. That doesn’t necessarily require illegal insider trading. If you’ve got knowledge of what kind of public policies might change that could affect the value of a company or an industry, or if you’ve got elite information about companies that are privately held and that don’t have much public [Securities and Exchange Commission] reporting, you can make smarter decisions about what kind of private companies to try to buy out. “‘So when you’re on an elite university board with other business and government elites, you learn things that are valuable for making these private-equity buyouts, and we show this. We find that investment returns go up for private-equity firms after they gain a seat on a top university board....'" Full article and interview at Chronicle of Higher Education. America’s DEI Colleges Get an ‘F’ on Free Expression Excerpts (links in the original): “Another chaotic school year has ended at universities, and the graduates have danced across the stage waving diplomas that are shrinking in significance. Here’s hoping college administrators find time during their leisurely summer breaks to recognize their roles in diminishing the academy, largely because they have lost a commitment to rigorous truth-seeking that can only happen when ideas are freely debated. “Americans should all be concerned about the sad condition of higher education. Confidence in these previously esteemed institutions has cratered .... “Oh, sure, college administrators still pay lip service to the principle of free expression, but they really don’t seem to mean it. They hope their bold paper pronouncements about free speech will be sufficient sleight of hand to distract sensible students, their parents, alumni and employers. These constituencies, however, have figured out that academic cultures determined to push indoctrination are incapable of preparing graduates who can think critically and function effectively in today’s complex world. “The focus of any college or university should be to advance knowledge through intellectual inquiry. That can only happen when free, wide-ranging debate and expression are allowed to examine all perspectives and evidence. Too many institutions today, however, push pre-approved dogmas taught by activist professors who were hired by search committees seeking people with views identical to their own. “Disrupting the search for truth and robust free expression is a patch of weeds that presumes to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. That sounded noble enough initially, but in reality, the DEI initiative morphed into the advancement of sociopolitical ideologies designed to discredit and bludgeon Western values and civilization. “This push is more than just a relativistic replacement of truth and freedom as fundamental principles. Instead, as author and Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo has written , DEI is 'a complex of policies, priorities, departments, administrators, budget numbers, hiring guidelines, and admissions practices.' Indeed, the practices and systems of DEI manipulation permeate curricula, graduation requirements, orientation sessions and financial aid. “The irony is that the supposed push for ‘diversity’ has reduced diversity of ideas, thus suppressing free expression in classrooms. Students report in multiple surveys their hesitance to engage in honest debate, fearing repercussions for not wearing the campus ideological straightjacket. A college can’t be fully committed to free expression when it is simultaneously parading around contradictory bombast about preferred perspectives and limiting others based on how one feels.... “It is time for colleges to straighten themselves out -- not because of government pressure, but because it is the right thing to do in terms of promoting rigorous education and winning back public confidence. The ball can only get rolling with a full return to the principles of free expression and the search for truth.” Full op-ed by DePauw Prof. Jeffrey M. McCall at The Hill. See also our revised Back to Basics at Stanford webpage with newly added language re academic freedom and viewpoint diversity. Other Articles of Interest The Economic Consequences of Destroying Harvard Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Emeritus and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman at Substack. Lawmakers Probe China’s Influence on U.S. Universities Full article at College Fix. See also “Uncovering Chinese Academic Espionage at Stanford ” at Stanford Review and “How Universities Should Respond to Chinese Government Interference ” by Stanford Prof. Larry Diamond and visiting fellows Matt Pottinger and Matthew Turpin at Stanford Review letters to the editor. Don’t Let Trump’s Brutality Fool You; the Internationalization of American Schools Is a Real Issue Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. David A. Bell at NY Times. Educators Have the Tools but Not the Training or Ethical Framework to Use AI Wisely, and That’s a Problem Full op-ed at Hechinger Report. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. A Game-Changing Way to Treat Stroke and Other Clot-Related Diseases Students Create an Unofficial Guide for Incoming Students How Lasting Emotions Arise from Brief Stimuli in Humans and Mice Tree Cover Reduces Mosquito-borne Health Risk Five Things to Do in Virtual Reality – and Five to Avoid ************ “I want this institution to deal particularly with the welfare of the masses. The few very rich can get their education anywhere. They will be welcome to this institution if they come, but the object is more particularly to reach the multitude -- those people who have to consider the expenditure of every dollar.” – Leland Stanford in his last letter to President Jordan shortly before Sen. Stanford’s death June 2, 2025 Note to Readers: We have added a new webpage, Ask ChatGPT , to our website and where we have posted our prior inquiries to ChatGPT and its answers regarding current issues impacting Stanford and other colleges and universities across the country. We will update this material from time to time. ************ Harvard Derangement Syndrome Excerpts (links in the original): “In my 22 years as a Harvard professor, I have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds me. My 2014 essay ‘The Trouble With Harvard ’ called for a transparent, meritocratic admissions policy to replace the current ‘eye-of-newt-wing-of-bat mysticism’ which ‘conceals unknown mischief.’ My 2023 ‘five-point plan to save Harvard from itself ’ urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained ‘how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel ,’ calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity. Two years ago I co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard , which has since regularly challenged university policies and pressed for changes. “So I’m hardly an apologist for my employer when I say that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged.... “The nation desperately needs this sense of proportionality in dealing with its educational and cultural institutions. Harvard, as I am among the first to point out, has serious ailments. The sense that something is not well with the university is widespread, and it’s led to sympathy, even schadenfreude, with Mr. Trump’s all-out assault. But Harvard is an intricate system that developed over centuries and constantly has to grapple with competing and unexpected challenges. The appropriate treatment (as with other imperfect institutions) is to diagnose which parts need which remedies, not to cut its carotid and watch it bleed out.... [Followed by discussion as to why many/most of the proposed government demands are inappropriate.] “The most painful indictment of Harvard is its alleged antisemitism -- not the old-money WASP snobbery of Oliver Barrett III , but a spillover of anti-Zionist zealotry.... [Followed by discussion of whether there is or isn’t antisemitism at Harvard and ways to address the issues.] “Another no-brainer is to apply standards of scholarly excellence more uniformly. Harvard has almost 400 initiatives, centers and programs, which are distinct from its academic departments.... “If the federal government doesn’t force Harvard to reform, what will? There are legitimate concerns that universities have weak mechanisms for feedback and self-improvement. A business in the red can fire its chief executive; a losing team can replace its coach. But most academic fields don’t have objective metrics of success and rely instead on peer review, which can amount to professors conferring prestige on one another in self-affirming cliques. “Worse, many universities have punished professors and students who criticize their policies, a recipe for permanent dysfunction. Last year a Harvard dean actually justified this repression until our academic freedom council came down on the idea like a ton of bricks and his boss swiftly disavowed it . “Still, there are ways to let the light get in...." [Followed by discussion of ways to make appropriate changes.] Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Steven Pinker at NY Times. See also our own concerns and proposals regarding the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities at Stanford at Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Harvard Digs In for Battle, but Trump’s Blows Are Landing Excerpts (links in the original): “As President Trump escalated his attacks against Harvard University, its board resolved to fight. “Trustees discussed whether to sue or pursue deal talks after Trump first targeted the university in March. But as the president lobbed bomb after bomb at the school -- pulling billions in federal funds, threatening its tax-exempt status, and now trying to block it from enrolling international students -- the group stood firm. “By [May 23, 2025] , the school had filed two lawsuits against the administration, the latest to regain its foreign students.... “Harvard’s conundrum is that it cannot trust the Trump administration to negotiate in good faith nor can it count on winning an extended battle with the federal government, says Aziz Z. Huq, a law professor at the University of Chicago. “The result, Huq suggests, will be a reset not only for Harvard but across higher education. The current model for research universities was created during World War II, when the military outsourced its research and development to schools. That model served the nation well for decades but is increasingly under attack from MAGA conservatives who believe that higher education has become a hotbed of liberal ideology that needs to be torn down and rebuilt....” Full article at WSJ. Can Trump Force Harvard to Improve? Probably Not. Excerpts (link in the original): “Three outcomes are possible in Donald Trump's war with Harvard: Scenario one is that the nation’s top private universities remain delusional about the dozen reasons a large and growing share of the public distrusts them. The 'plan' is to avoid institutional course-correction and seek protection from the courts and ultimate rescue from the Democratic Party in 2029 or after. "Scenario two is that Mr. Trump and other populist-inspired politicians force change from without by intervening more consistently and even more forcefully in the internal operations of these schools. “Scenario three is that substantive reform comes from within these schools, or at least some of them. That would require their leaders to listen humbly to a broad range of legitimate criticisms.... “Every constructive path forward therefore requires the Ivy League and Ivy-adjacent schools to acknowledge they’ve screwed up. Although their crests once represented the most distinguished education in the world, years of misguided administration have left them academically adrift. Top-tier universities act entitled to elite status, even as they neglect the necessary work of persuading fellow citizens of their value and seriousness. Standards are slipping and political activism has been on the rise in classrooms, all in the public eye. When those entrusted with massive endowments fail to acknowledge valid criticism and correct course, is it any wonder they trigger a backlash?” ... Full op-ed by former U Florida and Midland U president and former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse at WSJ. See also “Trump Remedies to Harvard’s Ills Should Respect Free Speech ” by Hoover Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz at Real Clear Politics. At UC Berkeley, the Faculty Asks Itself, Do Our Critics Have a Point? Excerpts (links in the original): “President Trump’s second administration has targeted higher education with funding cuts, charging that colleges -- particularly prestigious ones -- have let antisemitism go unchecked and progressive ideology run amok. “The sector’s leaders have responded by weighing whether to give ground or fight back. Lingering inside that question is another uncomfortable one: Do Trump and his allies have a point? “At the University of California at Berkeley, two professors recently put a version of that query to their peers via survey. The results -- obtained by The Chronicle -- cut against the stereotype of Berkeley’s campus as an ultra-progressive monolith. Rather, they conveyed complicated feelings among a subset of the faculty about whether and where higher education has gone wrong, and how to course-correct if it has. While some respondents did not think Berkeley should recalibrate on certain issues because of Trump, they did think their university should recalibrate, period . “As one unnamed professor put it: ‘Over the years, I’ve been confronted by various scenarios that have caused me to mutter to myself, ‘This has gone way too far.’ Do we really have to acknowledge that we are holding a conference on stolen land when it takes place over Zoom?’ “Chris Hoofnagle, a professor of law in residence, and Will Fithian, an associate professor of statistics, started sending out the survey earlier this year. Called the ‘Bearometer ,’ it poses one question every so often to members of Berkeley’s faculty senate, though it’s not affiliated with that body. Inspired by a similar effort at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the goal, as described on the Bearometer’s webpage , is to discover and highlight the views of faculty members, particularly “the reticent and the too busy for senate service,” in order to inform campus discussions. “Berkeley professors can submit questions for consideration, which are then upvoted or downvoted by their colleagues. Hoofnagle and Fithian have procedures in place for keeping the results anonymous. When they’re circulated, they’re labeled with ‘UC-FEYES: UC Faculty Eyes Only.’ (Hoofnagle and Fithian both declined to be interviewed, citing the poll’s internal nature. Both are also involved in a faculty group meant to encourage free inquiry at Berkeley, which has been a growing concern among some on campus .) ... [Followed by discussion of some of the survey results.] “Even faculty members who expressed concerns about various aspects of academe also said that caving to the federal government would be a mistake. ‘UC autonomy comes first, after which we clean up our own messes in our own way,’ wrote the professor who was uneasy about the ‘feminist’ brand of social justice being embedded in curriculum.... “Still, others advocated for serious reflection -- not because of Trump necessarily, but because they think introspection is overdue.... ‘It would be a shame,’ this person argued toward the end of a lengthy response, ‘to let defensiveness, self-righteousness, and justifiable antipathy toward the current presidential administration prevent us from seeing that our own excesses have degraded the situation of the university and left us with less public sympathy and support than we have ever had.’ “Put a bit blunter, by another faculty member: ‘Universities are under attack (often by idiots), but they deserve it and should get their houses in order.’” Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. Becoming Stanford -- The Making of an American University At a time when our U.S. colleges and universities, including Stanford, are having to assess what they are and what they need to be, we were reminded of this documentary “Becoming Stanford -- The Making of an American University ” released in connection with the Millennium and as posted at YouTube (1 hour, 58 minutes). This is from the description at YouTube: “Part 1, ‘The Founding,’ covers the origins and building of the university through World War I; highlights include Stanford family history, the first Big Game between Stanford and UC Berkeley, early student life, the rise of tenure, and the 1906 earthquake. Part 2, ‘The Transformation,’ covers the development of Stanford as a world-renowned research university; highlights include the administrations of Provost Frederick E. Terman and President J. E. Wallace Sterling, the role of federal funding in the university's expansion, the turmoil of the 1960s, and the growth of new technologies leading to the personal computer revolution.” See also the more recent and partially student-produced documentary "Leland: A Stanford Story " (38 minutes) that is shown as part of the required COLLEGE program for first-year students at Stanford and as posted at YouTube. Other Articles of Interest Stanford Student Group Hosts 90 Startups in Second-ever Demo Day Full article at Stanford Daily. 'Listen to People Who Disagree with You,' Stanford Alum Stephen Breyer Tells Students Full article at Stanford Report. Harvard Alum Bill Ackman Writes About Ongoing Concerns and Possible Solutions Full op-ed at X. Harvard President Discusses Need to Stand Firm Against Government Attacks Full article at NPR. How Overregulation Has Hamstrung Progressive Priorities, Incuding at Colleges and Universities Full book review of Abundance at Real Clear Education. Medical School Accreditor Says Schools Will No Longer be Graded on Diversity Full article at USA Today. Universities Map Out New Investment Strategies to Deal with Tax Hike on Endowments Full article at WSJ. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Popular AI Models Show Partisan Bias When Asked to Talk Politics Scientists Repair Damaged Mitochondria Linked to Common Diseases Nano-scale Biosensor Lets Scientists Monitor Molecules in Real Time Alzheimer's Resilience Signature Predicts Who Will Develop Dementia and How Fast ************ “We must always ask, are we putting students and their learning first? That is the measure of a great university.” -- Harry J. Elam, Jr., former Stanford Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and former President of Occidental College May 26, 2025 Because of the Memorial Day holiday, we circulated our regular Newsletter on Friday instead of waiting for today. However, this weekend, in light of the ongoing discussions taking place among university and government leaders, we decided to ask ChatGPT the following question: What are the major challenges facing universities today? Presented below are the responses we received, using the same language and format as produced by ChatGPT. We suggest that instead of spending more money on consultants and lawyers and losing more time with committees, what follows is a useful outline of the issues that university leaders need to address both quickly and effectively. And with university leaders getting ahead of the curve, the hope is that government and other critics would accept the idea that our universities, on their own, are taking the corrective actions that are needed. What are the major challenges facing universities today? 1. Rising Costs & Student Debt Tuition Inflation: The cost of college has grown far faster than inflation or income levels. Student Debt Crisis: U.S. student loan debt exceeds $1.7 trillion, burdening millions and delaying life milestones like home ownership or family formation. Spending Priorities: Universities are often criticized for spending heavily on amenities, administrative staff, or real estate while cutting academic resources. "We are pricing the middle class and working class out of higher education." -- Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab, higher education policy scholar 2. Mission Drift & Administrative Bloat Expansion of Non-Academic Bureaucracy: There’s been a significant increase in administrative roles, sometimes diluting the core academic mission. Branding over Learning: Institutions are sometimes accused of focusing on rankings, prestige projects, and athletics rather than teaching or research quality. “Universities risk becoming businesses that happen to offer classes.” -- Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty 3. Free Speech, Political Polarization & Institutional Trust Campus Speech Tensions: There’s growing debate over whether universities are upholding academic freedom and intellectual diversity. External Pressures: Donors, politicians, and activists sometimes seek to influence curriculum and hiring, eroding public trust. “Universities must remain places where difficult questions can be asked and ideas can be freely debated.” -- Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America 4. Return on Investment (ROI) & Relevance Skills Gap: Many employers argue that graduates lack practical skills in communication, critical thinking, or digital literacy. Value of the Degree: With rising tuition and stagnating wages, the ROI of some degrees -- particularly in liberal arts -- is being questioned. “The question isn't just: 'Can you get in?' It's: 'Is it worth it?'” -- Anthony Carnevale, Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce 5. Mental Health & Student Well-being Rising Anxiety & Burnout: Students are increasingly reporting high levels of stress, depression, and burnout. Insufficient Services: Many universities are struggling to meet the mental health needs of their students. ************ Student Perspective: "Is this worth it?" 1. Cost vs. Value Students are paying more than ever and questioning whether their degree will lead to a stable career or high ROI. Many graduate with crippling debt and few job prospects tied directly to their field. “I’m $80,000 in debt and working a job that didn’t require a degree.” 2. Mental Health Crisis Anxiety, depression, and burnout are at record highs. Campus counseling centers are often under-resourced or overwhelmed. 3. Career Relevance Degrees can feel disconnected from real-world job markets. Internships, networking, and soft skills are often more impactful than coursework alone. 4. Campus Climate & Free Speech Many students report fear of speaking up -- on both the left and right -- due to political or social backlash. Navigating identity politics and “cancel culture” can be stressful and confusing. ************ Faculty Perspective: "What happened to academic freedom and scholarship ?" 1. Erosion of Tenure and Job Security Increasing reliance on adjuncts (often low-paid, no benefits) undermines faculty morale and teaching continuity. Pressure to publish and bring in grants often outweighs good teaching. 2. Administrative Overreach Faculty feel sidelined in key academic decisions by non-academic administrators. Strategic priorities often driven by branding, enrollment, or donor agendas. “Faculty are no longer the soul of the university -- they’re consultants to a corporation.” -- Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty 3. Academic Freedom under Threat Faculty increasingly report pressure to self-censor. Controversial research or public commentary may attract backlash from outside groups or university leadership. ************ Administrator Perspective: "How do we stay solvent and relevant?" 1. Financial Pressure Tuition revenue is falling in some regions (especially with declining birthrates). Inflation, deferred maintenance, and tech demands drive up costs. Endowments often can’t be tapped freely, despite public perception. 2. Competing Stakeholders Must balance demands from students, parents, faculty, donors, alumni, and policymakers. Any misstep (speech controversy, Title IX issues, diversity complaints) risks public relations and funding fallout. 3. Innovation vs. Tradition Push to modernize curriculum and expand online offerings, but tradition-bound departments may resist. Risk of falling behind in rankings or tech integration. ************ See also charts and data regarding Stanford's costs and overhead at our Stanford Concerns webpage, proposals for actions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, and a set of principles regarding speech, institutional neutrality and criteria for the hiring and promotion of faculty set forth years ago by the University of Chicago faculty at our Chicago Trifecta webpage. See also the ChatGPT questions and answers we previously posted at our May 5, 2025 Newsletter . See also “Guiding Principles ” by President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez (March 31, 2025) at our Stanford Speaks webpage. May 23, 2025 From U.S. Department of Justice -- Campus Violations of Civil Rights Are Going to Be Expensive Full text of press release: “[On Monday, May 19,] the U.S. Department of Justice announced the establishment of the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, which will utilize the False Claims Act to investigate and, as appropriate, pursue claims against any recipient of federal funds that knowingly violates federal civil rights laws. Violations of the False Claims Act can result in treble damages and significant penalties. “‘Institutions that take federal money only to allow anti-Semitism and promote divisive DEI policies are putting their access to federal funds at risk,’ said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. ‘This Department of Justice will not tolerate these violations of civil rights -- inaction is not an option.’ “‘America has watched a tidal wave of anti-Semitism sweep our universities and seen public institutions codify inherently divisive policies like DEI at an unprecedented rate,’ said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. ‘In advancing the initiative, the Department of Justice’s Civil Fraud Section and Civil Rights Division will work in concert -- alongside other Department components and government agencies -- to identify and root out instances in which recipients of federal funds fail to uphold their basic obligations under federal civil rights laws. The days of using federal funds to further discrimination are over.’ "The Department strongly encourages anyone with knowledge of discrimination by federal funding recipients to consider filing a qui tam action under the False Claims Act. See 31 U.S.C. § 3730. When a qui tam action is successful, the whistleblower typically receives a portion of the monetary recovery. The Department also encourages the public to report instances of such discrimination to the appropriate federal authorities.” Full PDF copy of DOJ memo here . See also “Justice Dept. to Use False Claims Act to Pursue Institutions Over Diversity Efforts” at NY Times and “U.S. Launches Unit to Target DEI Policies at Colleges with Civil Fraud Probes” at Reuters . See also, at Wikipedia , the history of the 1863 False Claims Act and subsequent amendments and how the law has been applied ever since then and, separately, the definition and history of qui tam actions. Editor’s note: Federal False Claims Act and similar state actions can be very expensive to defend, with the result that targeted institutions will often settle versus incurring the significant legal and reputational costs that are involved. As noted in the excerpts above, not only can the government be the plaintiff, but private parties also can bring these types of claims and share in any recoveries, thereby creating significant risks of internal whistle-blowers initiating these types of matters. All of this was intended when the statute was first adopted in the middle of the U.S. Civil War as a way to discourage fraud and abuse by suppliers and others. In recent decades, Stanford itself, rightly or wrongly, has been the target of a number of False Claims Act and similar lawsuits: “Stanford’s Statement on the Resolution of Outstanding Disputes Between Stanford and the Government on Indirect Cost Issues” at Stanford website (October 18, 1994). “Stanford Whistle-blower Lawsuit Dismissed” by federal district court at Palo Alto Online (September 4, 1996). “U.S. Biddle v Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University” dismissed by Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals at Find Law (May 26, 1998). “Stanford Children's Hospital Hit with Multi-Million Dollar Healthcare Billing Fraud Lawsuit” at KTLA website (October 11, 2022). “Stanford Agrees to Pay $1.9 Million to Resolve Allegations That It Failed to Disclose Foreign Research Support in Federal Grant Proposals” at DOJ website (October 2, 2023). “Stanford Professors Raise Questions Over $1.9 Million Stanford-DOJ Settlement” at Stanford Daily (October 27, 2023). The point is, Stanford and other college and university trustees and administrators will be faced with the questions, even if the school conceivably could win on the merits, for how long will the battle take place, what will be the costs, and as fiduciaries, is this the best use of the school’s resources, especially since it will be the students and faculty who will be the most affected by the costs of the litigation and, while the litigation is pending and maybe permanently, the loss of significant government funding. Given these factors, the ultimate question they will have to ask is, isn’t getting back to basics the more appropriate response? And since liability can be reduced or even eliminated by prior public disclosure, don’t schools need to make their own public disclosures as quickly as possible? In this regard, note also how schools like MIT (scroll down to the text in addition to the videos) are already focusing on the concept of back to basics. Show, Don’t Tell, Why University Research Matters An Arizona grant program offers a model for how to support academic research that puts the public interest first. Excerpts: “Chief among the many challenges facing America’s research universities is public skepticism of the value of higher education. How can academe respond to such intense criticism of its very purpose? How do we prove our worth -- particularly at a time when public funding of university research is being loudly and vigorously debated in the political arena? ... “We asked a broad array of public partners: ‘If you had a think tank at your disposal, what problem would you ask it to solve?’ We heard from city, county, law-enforcement, and other community leaders. Most important, we put the question to then-Gov. Doug Ducey, who assembled a task force to solicit ideas from agencies across state government.... “We pulled aside $10 million a year for the program. And because of the unique public interest being served, these grants have received as much mainstream media attention -- more than 100 stories in the past three years -- as the full $2.2-billion worth of research done by our three universities in the same time span....” Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also video (3 minutes) recently posted by MIT showing the importance of university research. From Princetonians for Free Speech and College Pulse -- Students Have Increased Awareness of Free Speech Principles but Little Understanding of What Free Speech Looks Like in Practice Excerpt (link in the original): “The Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) third annual survey of Princeton students is now available. Comparative data over three years provides valuable information and insight into changes in student views and progress in student knowledge of and attitudes toward free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity. The 2025 report shows some progress on questions such as awareness of campus free speech rules. Other results, for instance on the question of shutting down controversial campus events, are worse as compared to the last two years. The number of students who support the use of violence is up. Overall, Princeton still has much work to do to create a robust culture of free speech, academic freedom and respect for widely divergent viewpoints. “A theme emerges in this PFS survey that unites many of the questions and that deserves special note: First, some questions reveal a greater awareness of free speech, indicating that the university is putting more effort into planting that awareness. However -- and this is notable: awareness among students does not seem to translate into a greater understanding of free speech and academic freedom, nor does a greater awareness impact student views of free speech in practice. For example, an increase in awareness of free speech rules has done little to change willingness to speak up or to find it unacceptable to disrupt or shut down campus speakers and events that are considered controversial or offensive. “If you look behind some responses, it becomes apparent that a significant percentage of Princeton students do not really understand what free speech means -- i.e., how free speech works in practice, how it promotes tolerance across differences, how it deepens understanding; how a consideration of conflicting viewpoints widens understanding and deepens knowledge; how free speech enhances communication between students, professors, and employers. In short, large numbers of students do not understand how and why free speech in practice is vital to Princeton’s core mission....” Full article with links to related materials at Princetonians for Free Speech website. Veritas Betrayed -- Harvard Has Lost the Primary Truth-Seeking Purpose of a University Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “What is the telos, the purpose, of a secular university? “It is supposed to be a non-sectarian place with a primary purpose of the pursuit of truth, come what may. Any idea or theory -- no matter how sacred or taboo or orthodox -- should be up for intellectual scrutiny. It should employ freedom of inquiry on any academic question, and use meritocratic and rational -- and not ad hominem -- standards for the assessment of ideas. Universities are supposed to be places where everyone is judged as an individual based on their actual contributions to truth-seeking, not their group membership, or whether the results of their research are socially and ideologically acceptable. In a university, a diversity of viewpoints and ideas should be sought out primarily so that one may better pursue the truth and eliminate falsehoods and errors, regardless of which bodies and brains those ideas originate from. Period. “In contrast, a partisan think tank is explicitly factional and partial in its aims. There are many think-tanks in America that have explicitly partisan aims and practices, such as the Center for American Progress (liberal), Claremont Institute (conservative), Cato Institute (libertarian), Guttmacher Institute (pro-abortion). Though intellectually oriented and often producing robust scholarship, these are not universities. Consistent with their ideologies, these institutes tend to only ask a small range of all possible intellectual questions, and their answers are more predictable than not. The Guttmacher Institute, for instance, rarely does a study on post-traumatic stress disorder and moral injury after abortions, and the Cato Institute rarely writes reports documenting the needs of the most vulnerable in society and how social safety nets could help. “Harvard, by these standards, is much more like a left-wing progressive Institute, than it is a university. In its most passionate moral exhortations, Harvard resembles a secular ideological church. There are some quantitative pockets of flourishing, non-partisan academic life, but in general, Harvard does not live up to the values of a university, and is more like a think tank.... “Most observers agree that the problems of pious insularity, and born-again cult-like thinking and behavior, are more pervasive and severe in the humanities and social sciences, which research consistently shows are the most radicalized.... [Followed by examples of cancellations of faculty and others, etc.] “Diversity at Harvard is superficial and merely skin and gonads deep, as everyone tends to look different, but think alike.... [Followed by detailed charts and data.] “That means that among faculty, there are approximately 5540% more liberal than conservative faculty.... “According to FIRE , 'just over a quarter of Harvard students reported they are comfortable publicly disagreeing with their professor on a controversial political topic; only roughly a third think it is ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ clear the administration protects free speech on campus; and an alarming 30% think using violence to stop a campus speech is at least ‘rarely’ acceptable.' “Except for the hard sciences and cousin disciplines, Harvard tends to not employ meritocratic standards of assessing ideas and knowledge or practice.... “With a few exceptions, whole departments and fields of inquiry in research and teaching have tended to become distorted and disordered by the tiny slice of questions that are allowed to be asked in the first place. What gets funded and published is an even smaller misinformed fraction...." [Followed by a detailed discussion of admissions practices, the few on the faculty who have been dissenting, and eight suggested reforms.] Full op-ed at Substack. See also the Shils Report on the hiring and promotion of faculty and comprising the third part of the Chicago Trifecta . Over Half of Hiring Managers Say Recent Grads Are Unprepared for the Workforce Excerpts (link in the original): “Most hiring managers feel skeptical about the capabilities and professionalism of young workers joining the workforce, with 1 in 6 saying they’re reluctant to hire the cohort, according to a May 6 report from Resume.org.... “Among the companies where recent graduates didn’t work out, nearly half of hiring managers said the top issue was a lack of motivation or initiative. In addition, they noted a lack of professionalism (39%), excessive phone use (39%), poor time management (38%) and an attitude of indifference (37%). Others also pointed to poor communication skills, difficulty handling feedback and an inability to adapt to company culture....” Full article at Higher Ed Dive. See also “New Grads Struggle to Land Job, Keep It” at Hechinger Report . Other Articles of Interest One Year After the Encampments, Campuses Are Quieter and Quicker to Stop Protests Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. A New Headache for Honest Students -- Proving They Didn’t Use AI Full article at NY Times. ChatGPT Can Pass an Engineering Class "The chat bot earned a B, slightly below the class average. It excelled in practice problems and computing exercises but was unable to justify its work or simplify systems." Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Breaking the Deadlock -- The Interplay Among Presidents, Congress and the Courts (video) “A fast-paced one-hour journey where a moderator, UC Davis Law Professor Aaron Tang, guides a diverse panel of participants through hypothetical scenarios around the use of executive power.” Full video (56 minutes) at PBS and also posted at YouTube . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Making the Case for Active Listening Alzheimer’s Resilience Signature Predicts Who Will Develop Dementia and How Fast Mutation That Makes Orange Cats Orange ************ “Today, and every day, let us remember the servicemen and women we have lost, and let us honor them by rededicating ourselves to strengthening our Nation's promise. With love, grace, and reflection, let us honor our fallen fellow Americans, known and unknown, who sacrificed their freedom to ensure our own.” – Barack Obama May 19, 2025 Faculty Hiring Is Under Federal Scrutiny at Harvard Excerpt (links in the original): “A federal agency is claiming Harvard University may have violated antidiscrimination law through its faculty hiring and promotion decisions, citing the university’s own demographic data, The Washington Free Beacon first reported [a week ago] . “Andrea R. Lucas, acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, issued what’s called a commissioner charge against the university, which typically precedes an investigation by the EEOC. The document , which the Free Beacon obtained and is dated April 25, cites an annual report on faculty development and diversity showing the proportion of white male professors declined over the past decade, as the ranks of women and faculty of color increased. (Those reports are no longer publicly accessible on Harvard’s website , but at least some information has been archived online .) “Among the tenured, the percentage of white men decreased from 64 percent in the 2013 academic year to 56 percent in 2023. Among the tenure-track, that share dropped from 46 percent to 32 percent in the same period. “‘Since at least 2018 and continuing thereafter, Harvard may have violated and may be continuing to violate Title VII’ -- the federal law barring employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, and other factors – ‘by engaging in a pattern or practice of disparate treatment against white, Asian, male, or straight employees, applicants, and training program participants in hiring, promotion (including but not limited to tenure decisions), compensation, and separation decisions,’ wrote Lucas, whom President Trump designated acting chair in January. She also alleges that Harvard’s ‘pattern or practice of discrimination’ goes beyond the faculty and lists programs that aim to enroll students from underrepresented groups. “Asked for comment, a Harvard spokesperson referenced a Monday letter from Alan M. Garber, the university’s president, addressed to Linda E. McMahon, the education secretary. Last week, McMahon upbraided Harvard in a letter to Garber, recounting the institution’s many failures as she saw them and informing the university president that the institution ‘should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided.’..." Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also the Shils Report on the hiring and promotion of faculty and comprising the third part of the Chicago Trifecta. Harvard Spends $1.4 Billion a Year on Non-instructional Staff Excerpts: “Harvard is spending about $1.4 billion a year on ‘Salary Outlays for Full-time Non-medical School Non-instructional Staff,’ according to its most recent filing with the federal government, a figure that is about double what Yale and the University of Chicago pay, and more than triple what Harvard devotes to paying professors and other teaching staff. “Since 2017, Harvard’s spending on administrators, clerical and technical workers, and other functionaries included in that ‘Non-instructional Staff’ category has soared by about $400 million, or about 40 percent. Over the same period, spending on professors and other teachers at Harvard grew by about $80 million, or 25 percent. Degree-program enrollment has remained roughly flat, though Harvard has ramped up revenue-generating online and short-term executive-education programs offering non-degree credentials such as certificates.... “And keep in mind that the ‘Salary Outlays for Full-time Non-medical School Non-instructional Staff’ don’t even capture a lot of the money that Harvard spends on contracted-out labor, like security guards from a company called Securitas, the outside landscapers that Harvard brings in to spruce up the campus in advance of Commencement and reunions, or the 16 lawyers from King & Spalding, from Ropes & Gray, from Quinn Emanuel, and from Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP that are representing Harvard in its suit against the federal government. Harvard has cut back its spending on internal money managers at the Harvard Management Corporation and instead farmed the endowment out to private equity and venture capital managers whose fees aren’t counted as Harvard staff salary outlays. That’s another whole story.” Full op-ed including detailed charts at Substack. See also charts showing similar spending and staffing at Stanford at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also proposed actions to reduce administrative bloat at Part 3 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. These also are reasons, per Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, to move the staffing and costs of Stanford’s centers, accelerators and incubators that are not primarily engaged in front-line teaching and research and supervised directly by Stanford’s tenured faculty into one or more separate entities and, in most cases, off the core campus. Ivy League Is Still Struggling to Figure Out What's Free Speech and What Isn't Excerpt: “Our country’s most esteemed institutions of higher learning -- the Ivy League schools -- should have figured out how to ensure free speech rights on campus long ago. But they haven’t. “While these private institutions don’t have the same First Amendment requirements that public universities do, they promise their students and faculty a comparable environment where freedom of expression can flourish. Indeed, that’s a huge part of what a college education is all about. “That’s why it’s concerning to see such apparent confusion over what kind of behavior deserves punishment -- and what should be accepted....” Full op-ed at USA Today. Note however that, unlike what is stated in this op-ed, Stanford and other private schools in California are subject to the Leonard Law which requires the schools to comply with the First Amendment in disciplinary and other actions vis-à-vis their students. See also “Survey Finds Many Americans Hold Negative Views of the Ivies” at Inside Higher Ed . See also “Columbia Students Call on School to Crack Down on Protests that Disrupt Learning Ahead of Finals” at Just the News . Other Articles of Interest Stanford Daily Interview of President Levin (May 12, 2025) Full video at Stanford Daily (32 minutes); also at YouTube . Legislation Would Increase Tax on Endowments by Up to 21% Full article at Inside Higher Ed. See also “Here’s What the Endowment Tax Plan Might Cost Your College ” at Chronicle of Higher Education. Also, a 47-page, section-by-section outline of the legislation can be downloaded here . Colleges Spend Heavily on Lobbying Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Here’s a Look at the Emerging College Applicant -- the Independent Student Full article at University Business. See also “Independent Applicants - A Growing but Underserved Pool” at Inside Higher Ed . Instead of Punishing Students for Using AI, Colleges and Universities Need to Provide Clear and Consistent Guidelines and Rules Full op-ed at Hechinger Report. Brown Won’t Discipline Student Journalist for His Report on Administrative Bloat Full article at College Fix. Writing Tutors at Claremont McKenna Told Correcting Grammar Is Racist Full article at College Fix. We Have to Rethink the Purpose of Education Full transcript at NY Times. Professionalization Is Killing College Sports Full op-ed at James Martin Center. Reinvigorating Civil Discourse at MIT Full podcast (28 minutes) at Higher Ed Now. See also MIT’s revised webpages re Merit and re Understanding MIT . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Course Helps Students Put Pluralism into Practice Targeting Cells’ Trash-Sorting Systems Could Unlock New Treatments for Neurodegenerative Disease The Secrets of Resilient Aging (Podcast - 36 minutes) ************ “ No one should have to pass someone else’s ideological purity test to be allowed to speak. University life -- along with civic life -- dies without the free exchange of ideas.” – Reed College Prof. Lucia Martinez Valdivia May 12, 2025 Indirect Costs Make Science a Revenue Game, not a Discovery Quest Excerpts (links in the original, endnotes deleted): “Since the Trump administration proposed a 15 percent cap on them in February, indirect costs on research grants are the object of a roiling controversy. “If you have no idea what that sentence means, you are not alone. Indirect costs are one of the more arcane features of how scientific research is funded in American universities. As it was with the Albigensian heresy, great passions are exercised on fine points barely understood by normal people. How do we know this? Ask a critical question about indirect costs, as the Trump administration did with its proposal to cut them, and out will come the sectarian mobs to denounce you. “The indirect costs heresy obscures the fundamental question about indirect costs: is science helped or harmed by them? The message from universities and astroturfed mobs is clear: science will be devastated if they are reduced in any way. I argue here the opposite: under our current regime of science funding, science has become less free, less innovative, more craven, and more dishonest, and indirect costs have been the instruments of its degradation. “Some history. Federal support of university science is a recent phenomenon, launched in 1950 as an experiment, kicked off with the establishment of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since then, the NSF model of university science funding has spread to some two dozen federal agencies, which have distributed roughly a trillion dollars over the past 75 years. Nationwide, federal support accounts for 60-80 percent of all university research. At some universities , nearly their entire research portfolio is supported by federal funds.... “The drafters of the founding document of modern science , Science: The Endless Frontier , recognized the disparity and took pains in their recommendations to protect the interests of academic scientists from the prevailing interests of universities, governments, and powerful corporate interests. Their recommendation was to support academic science through long-term block grants to universities, which would then allocate the funds similarly to how it had used institutional funds to support the work of their scientists. Many universities had research committees, staffed by academics and administrators, who could consider proposals from colleagues and distribute funds accordingly. Scientists could appeal directly to their university administrations to raise funds. This was how most particle physics work pre-war was funded, for example, including the development of the instrument that laid the foundation for particle physics, the cyclotron. And it was admirably suited to the unique demands of the basic sciences: curiosity-driven, responsive to inspiration, built around ad hoc risk-taking, and responsive to intimate person-to-person appeals.... “...A spirit of discovery still exists in the academic sciences, although its flame is flickering. Restoring the flame will mean removing the well-entrenched landscape of perverse incentives that currently prevail. Indirect costs reform is one aspect of the restoration, along with restructuring the models for funding science that have allowed that perverse landscape to flourish. We have some suggestions for how to do that in a subsequent article.” Full op-ed by SUNY Prof. Emeritus J. Scott Turner at Minding the Campus. See also the February 7, 2025 announcement by the National Institutes of Health to place a cap of 15% on indirect costs and including a chart showing the indirect cost rates (zero to 15%) paid by nonprofits such as the Gates, Packard and Zuckerberg foundations and others for comparable work. According to Stanford's website , Stanford's current indirect cost rate for most research is 54% but can be as high as 90% when animal research is involved. Is Harvard Complying with the Tax Code? Excerpts: “President Trump’s announcement [a week ago] that he plans to take away Harvard’s tax exempt status prompted me to do something I never did while working there or serving as an alumni volunteer: actually read the plain text of the tax code that covers the tax exemption for Harvard and most other charities. “The law -- Section 501(c)(3) -- says the tax exemption applies to a corporation ‘organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes . . . no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda . . . and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.’ Courts have struggled for a century to distinguish ‘educational’ from ‘propaganda’ for tax purposes. In Bob Jones University v. U.S. (1983), the Supreme Court even ventured beyond the statutory language and upheld the Internal Revenue Service’s decision to pull a tax exemption ‘where there is no doubt that the organization’s activities violate fundamental public policy.’... “On the education-or-propaganda question, first-year Harvard medical students were required to take a course on the ‘principles of advocacy and activism’ while focusing on ‘a most consequential public health threat -- climate change.’ A high-profile Harvard task force recently reported ‘that certain faculty were injecting highly partisan discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of American Jewish groups in courses that had no direct connection with these subjects.’ The task force described a divinity school program on religion and public life as ‘one-sided, ideologically partisan, and biased.’ “At the education school, some sections of a required course featured a ‘pyramid of white supremacy’ illustrating ‘the day-to-day racist norms’ at work in American culture. Examples include the Anti-Defamation League, opposition to boycotting Israel, Wall Street, the war on terror and community policing....” Full op-ed at WSJ. But see also “The Law Bars Trump from Threatening Harvard’s Tax Exemption” by Georgetown Prof. Neal Katyal, also at WSJ . Viewpoint Diversity and the Scientists Excerpts: “Two weeks after the lawsuit, the battle is on between Harvard, which did not want battle, and the Trump Administration that sought it. A major concern among the Trump Administration is Harvard’s lack of viewpoint diversity.... “Who risks the most in Harvard’s battle? The scientists, who need the government’s money. This fact opens up a second problem of viewpoint diversity within universities that is not so easy to fix: The divide between the scientists and the humanists. “Harvard scientists will no doubt admire its president’s impressive move to check the Trumpist attempt to take over the University, but some of them will reflect that it is Harvard’s humanists who cause the trouble while the scientists pay the cost. A deeper look into the difference between science and the humanities will help to understand this second division.... “Why should Harvard be independent? Because it helps society; it’s worth the money! That answer makes Harvard the expert part of society. Doesn’t it need some standard from outside society to justify itself as independent? Something like veritas that combines science and the humanities -- a Harvard that looks for the wisdom that makes science valuable to human beings. “A political scientist myself, I like to think that this wisdom centers on politics. A wiser politics than devotion to a single party would have protected the scientists and corrected the humanists.” Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Harvey C. Mansfield at Harvard Crimson. Other Articles of Interest Yes, Harvard Deserves Due Process Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff and FIRE senior officer Adam Goldstein at Persuasion. See also Harvard Prof. Roland Fryer at WSJ : “Harvard Should Stand Up for Itself More Often - Many of these reforms may be welcome and reflect genuine concerns I’ve heard faculty express. But they aren’t reforms the federal government can or should impose on private universities.” New ESPN Documentary on the Katie Meyer Case A 13-minute segment of the one-hour documentary that was broadcast this past Saturday on ESPN re the Katie Meyer case is now available at YouTube. For convenience, we also have updated the documents posted about this case at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. See also our long-existing article about “Stanford’s Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including relevant PDF documents and that we believe played a role in the Katie Meyer case. Brown Continues to Go After Student Journalist for His Article About DEI at Brown Full op-ed at FIRE. Audit Says U. Wisconsin System Spent Tens of Millions of Dollars on 1,200+ DEI Activities Full article at College Fix. Not All Students Go to College, and We Need to Make That OK Full op-ed at NY Times. What Do College Students Do All Day? The Answer Isn’t Studying Full op-ed at Manhattan Institute. Demand for Higher Education Remains Strong Despite Ongoing Barriers Full summary of Gallup/Lumina Foundation study along with a link to the full report at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. AI Pioneer Says World Is Not Prepared for What's Coming Excerpt of CBS interview of Nobel Laureate and U Toronto Prof. Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton at YouTube (8 minutes) . Full interview (51 minutes) here . Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. We Can Change Diet to Generate a Healthier Microbiome and a Healthy Individual Taming Seismic Unrest MRI Technique Lights Up Zombie Cells That Contribute to Arthritis Treating Cardiovascular Fibrosis ************ "If you take difficult positions, you are bound to make enemies. But if you always avoid controversy, you risk making no difference at all." – Stanford alum and former Harvard president Derek Bok May 5, 2025 What ChatGPT Would Recommend Editor’s note: We and other alumni and commentators from around the country have been concerned about the growing administrative costs and related problems at U.S. colleges and universities. See for example “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage which, among other things, has detailed comparisons of Stanford’s numbers with the numbers at comparable schools. So we decided to ask ChatGPT what it might do to address these concerns and are reproducing below, in both language and format, what ChatGPT recommended in response to each of our two questions. See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. We also wonder whether these actions might be a pathway for ending the government's disputes with Harvard and others. Our Question: How can a university stop or reverse administrative bloat? ChatGPT's response: 1. Governance and Accountability Reform leadership incentives: Tie senior administrator evaluations to academic outcomes, cost-efficiency, and faculty/student satisfaction -- not just expansion of services or programs. Create oversight committees: Faculty-led bodies should review new administrative hires and budget allocations. Implement sunset clauses: Temporary administrative roles should automatically expire unless justified and renewed. 2. Budgetary Discipline Adopt zero-based budgeting: Instead of automatic increases, every department -- including administrative -- must justify its entire budget each cycle. Cap administrative growth: Set hard limits on admin-to-student or admin-to-faculty ratios. Redirect resources: Prioritize instructional and research expenditures over non-academic roles. 3. Recenter on Core Mission Reaffirm academic priorities: Ensure that new policies and spending support teaching, research, and student learning. Audit role alignment: Identify positions that duplicate services or whose duties have drifted from academic goals. 4. Process Streamlining and Tech Integration Digitize bureaucracy: Invest in technology to automate compliance, scheduling, and reporting instead of hiring staff. Simplify compliance: Work with regulators to reduce redundant or unnecessary compliance burdens. 5. Cultural and Structural Shifts Strengthen shared governance: Give faculty and students more influence over administrative policy and hiring. Decentralize decision-making: Empower academic departments to manage more of their own operations. 6. Transparency and Data Publicly report admin growth: Regularly disclose metrics like admin salaries, staff-to-faculty ratios, and non-academic expenditures. Benchmark against peers: Use data to assess whether admin growth aligns with similar institutions or exceeds norms. ************ Our Question: Suggest ways that a university can increase viewpoint diversity in its faculty and students. ChatGPT's response: 1. Inclusive Hiring Practices Broaden candidate pools: Actively recruit from a variety of institutions, including those with differing philosophical, political, or religious leanings. Use structured interviews: Minimize bias by applying consistent criteria across all candidates. Encourage intellectual diversity as a hiring value: Include questions in hiring processes that explore a candidate’s commitment to open inquiry and constructive engagement across differences. 2. Admissions and Outreach Widen geographical and demographic outreach: Target recruitment in underrepresented regions or communities that may have different perspectives. Consider a broader definition of diversity: Incorporate ideological and experiential diversity alongside race, gender, and socioeconomic status. 3. Curriculum and Course Design Offer courses in diverse traditions of thought: Include curricula representing a wide range of political, philosophical, and cultural viewpoints. Encourage debate and dialogue: Design courses that require students to engage with contrasting views, supported by evidence and respectful discourse. 4. Campus Culture Support student organizations across the spectrum: Ensure funding and support is available for a wide range of political, religious, and cultural groups. Host speaker series and debates: Bring in a variety of voices, including those that challenge mainstream or dominant campus perspectives. Foster a climate of civil discourse: Promote norms that encourage listening, questioning, and respectful disagreement. 5. Institutional Commitments Adopt free speech and open inquiry policies: Publicly affirm the institution’s support for academic freedom and diverse viewpoints. Create a viewpoint diversity advisory committee: Include faculty, students, and administrators tasked with monitoring and supporting intellectual diversity efforts. May 2, 2025 The Broken Promise of Academic Freedom Excerpts (link in the original): “Lately, everyone seems to have an opinion about academic freedom. Some defend it as sacred. Others sneer that it’s a racket. The truth is: it’s neither. Academic freedom isn’t a right. It’s a deal -- a bold investment society made in people who could wrestle meaning from complexity and pursue truth beyond the noise of daily life. “And it paid off. Spectacularly. In exchange for protecting a small class of thinkers from mobs, markets, and monarchs, humanity doubled life expectancy, eradicated famine on a planetary scale, and wiped out entire categories of disease -- not with good vibes, but with methodical inquiry, evidence, and reason. “In the 19th century, within the Humboldtian model , universities became the natural home of the emerging intellectual class -- offering not only time and resources for research, but a growing degree of protection from public, political, and commercial pressures. They offered not only space for research but also a means of transmitting knowledge -- teaching others how to seek truth with rigor and independence. As religion receded as the primary source of shared moral authority, the modern university stepped in to fill the void. It fashioned itself not just as an institution of learning, but as one of value formation. “It was a noble ambition. And it’s where the trouble began. “The Humboldtian ideal envisioned the university as a space free from political and social pressures, dedicated solely to dispassionate, objective scholarship. But as massive public funding began to flow into universities to support research and teaching, one of the key pillars of independence -- financial detachment from the state -- began to erode. As the old saying goes: he who pays the piper calls the tune. “Academic freedom was never a license to say or do anything without consequences. It was a shield -- meant to protect scholars chasing truth, not activists pushing boycotts, slogans, and ideological manifestos. The moment your research becomes a political weapon, you step outside the zone academic freedom was built to defend.... “Let’s be clear: universities don’t need cosmetic diversity. They need viewpoint diversity. In such environments, viewpoint diversity isn’t a nice feature -- it must be the core of the academic enterprise and the foundation of academic legitimacy. It’s the only check against intellectual ossification and mechanism for self-correction. A genuine contest of ideas, not just a rainbow of faces parroting the same beliefs. Affirmative action for ideas isn’t ‘woke in reverse.’ It’s the minimum standard for any institution serious about the pursuit of truth.... “Winning that trust back will require making room for real debate, not just sanctioned variations on a single moral narrative. And it will mean ditching the pretense of ‘moral clarity’ as the new scholastic paradigm instead of objectivity. History never lacked agents for moral clarity -- Torquemada and Hitler both claimed it. The lesson is not that moral conviction is dangerous, but that without epistemic humility and rigorous self-correction, it becomes indistinguishable from dogma.... “Academic freedom is still worth defending -- but only if we remember what it was for. It wasn’t meant to protect ideology. It was meant to protect inquiry. “What society grants, society can also revoke. If academic freedom is to endure, we must remember: it's not a sacred right -- it's a promise to keep.” Full op-ed by Sasha Rozenberg at Fair for All. See also our long-existing webpages: Back to Basics at Stanford including (at Part 4) calls for the removal from the core campus the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities if they are not engaged in frontline teaching and independent research but instead are engaged primarily if not exclusively in advocacy and implementation activities, are run by non-members of the faculty, are devoid of scholarly inquiries and generally exclude consideration of alternative viewpoints. Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy with charts and other data showing Stanford’s massive and costly administrative apparatus that all too often gets in the way of the university’s core teaching and research. Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web which we believe is an example of the harm that has been caused in recent years by the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that are largely if not exclusively delivering viewpoints and outcomes that are directed by government agencies, foundations and other grant-makers and donors. How Universities Should Respond to the Attacks on Academic Freedom Excerpts (links in the original): “Facing federal funding suspensions and investigations , elite universities have arrived at a moment of crisis. “Many have -- rightly, in our opinion -- pledged never to compromise on core principles of academic freedom, and vowed to resist the federal government’s heavy-handed tactics. Most have refused, however, to fully acknowledge how their own delinquencies have precipitated their current predicament: their failure to maintain viewpoint diversity in any meaningful sense among faculty and students; failure to dismantle entrenched campus cultures of self-censorship and intellectual conformism; failure to sustain robust climates of intellectual freedom; and failure to act against anti-Semitic and other forms of harassment. These failings undermine the most basic mission of universities -- namely, the pursuit of truth.... “This is by no means to say the government may not investigate compliance failures or misconduct in or by universities. But government itself must, as a matter of law, comply with federal regulations in conducting investigations and deciding whether a grant should be suspended.... “University units, and in some cases entire institutions, have become politicized and ideologically partisan. Viewpoint diversity, particularly among faculty members but in some institutions among students, too, has essentially collapsed. A 2023 survey revealed that nearly 80 percent of Harvard faculty identify themselves as liberal or very liberal, while less than 3 percent identify as conservative -- all while prominent leaders at Harvard have called for content-based restrictions on faculty members’ freedom of expression rights. More broadly, classrooms are too often centers of indoctrination, not forums for learning by the examination of the best evidence and arguments on competing sides of contested questions.... “The way to [achieve reform] is not through ‘affirmative action’ or preferences of any kind to conservatives, as some propose. Viewpoint diversity can be increased simply by ending discrimination in hiring and promotion against scholars who dissent from ideas that have hardened into orthodoxies on so many campuses. This means, among other things, getting rid of such practices as mandatory ‘statements’ on job or promotion applications, which screen out dissenters by implicitly demanding a pledge of ideological fealty as a condition of employment or advancement. “In addition, elite universities in particular need to admit their past hypocrisy and failures on free-speech matters (as the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tragically failed to do in a widely publicized December 2023 congressional hearing) and adopt strictly enforced free-speech and institutional-neutrality policies to ensure that non-sectarian universities function as impartial forums for the robust examination of ideas, and not as partisan participants in political debates....” Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Robert P. George and Union Theological Seminary Prof. Cornel West at The Hill. What Must a Modern Top-Flight Education Look Like? Excerpts (links in the original): “A good education prepares one for the realities of adulthood and successful interaction with the world. At the university level, whether via college or homeschooling, a good education develops the intellectual, emotional, and social muscles. One is moulded into a person who uses tools, not crutches; who accepts responsibility rather than accepting stories of victimhood; and who recognises that human flourishing happens in communities, not in isolation.... “We ourselves have enjoyed the best of the system as it was in the late 20th century, from European gymnasiums to the American Ivy League. Indeed, our generation has the highest average IQ of any generation in the West. “By contrast, newer generations have regressed to cognitive levels not seen for a century, with sharp declines at the top end: average mathematics scores have dropped, and attention spans are particularly reducing for the young, from over half an hour to under a minute . The abilities to focus, to think critically, and to be socially resilient have declined spectacularly over the past 50 years . Studies suggest strongly that the average IQ in Western countries, after steadily increasing during the 20th century as more people got access to better education, has been falling for the past few decades.... "The first solution principle is to deliver higher education once again in a small and independent format. This requires eliminating the layers upon layers of bureaucracy that encrust our modern institutions of higher learning, as these layers rob academics and the institution as a whole of independence, including the freedom to deliver transformative education....” [Followed by a discussion of issues and possible solutions.] Full op-ed by New South Wales Prof. Gigi Foster, London School of Economics Prof. Paul Frijters and writer Michael Baker at Brownstone Institute. Stanford’s Seven Schools and Other Units Told to Prepare for Potentially Significant Budget Cuts Excerpt: “School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S) Dean Debra Satz informed H&S program directors and chairs of a new directive to model potentially ‘significant’ budget cuts in their divisions in a Tuesday email obtained by The Daily. “The email stated that Satz and others in Stanford’s seven schools had been asked by Provost Jenny Martinez to model budget cuts and submit ‘high-level plans’ for their implementation. H&S’s planning exercise involves modeling a 10% and 15% cut to general funds and a 10% cut to endowment funds. “Graduate School of Business (GSB) Dean Peter DeMarzo affirmed in an email to the Daily that the GSB ‘received the same guidance as other units on campus.’...” Full article at Stanford Daily. Other Articles of Interest Foreign Funding Comes Under Scrutiny at UC Berkeley and Harvard Full article at College Fix. How Universities Restrict Faculty Freedom Full op-ed at City Journal. Yale Professors Call Out University’s Bureaucracy A letter from nearly 100 members of the Yale faculty denounces administrative bloat and stresses the importance of focusing on the school's academic mission. Full op-ed at City Journal including a link to the letter. Concerns About Discrimination in Faculty Hiring at Princeton Full op-ed at Rufo website. See also “Trump Challenges Princeton on Race and Free Speech ” by Princeton alum Stuart D. Taylor at Real Clear Politics. Harvard Fights in Court but Retreats on Campus Full article at Harvard Crimson. Harvard Promises Changes After Reports on Antisemitism and Islamophobia Full article at NY Times. See also “Internal Harvard Report Criticizes School’s Response to Antisemitism ” at WSJ. Harvard Finds Politicized Instruction in Long-Awaited Antisemitism Report Full article at Off the Press. See also Just the News . Harvard’s Kennedy School Criticized for Lack of Viewpoint Diversity Full op-ed at Harvard Salient. Harvard Law Review Criticized for Alleged Pattern of Racial Discrimination Full op-ed at Washington Free Beacon. See also Associated Press . National Association of Scholars Releases Quantitative Study of DEI Statements in University Job Listings Press release at NAS along with a link to the full report . Majority of Gen Z Graduates Now Think College Was a Waste of Money Full article at Newsweek. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Law School Creates Largest-ever Public Dataset of Over a Million Corporate Contracts Stanford Students Learn to Lead with Civic Courage Stents and Bypass Are More Comparable Than Once Thought ************ “ The truth is slower to catch on but it's harder to get rid of.” — Stanford Prof. Andrew Huberman April 28, 2025 Statement by Dartmouth's President Editor’s note: Last week, Dartmouth’s president Sian Leah Beilock circulated a letter to the Dartmouth community which set forth what we believe are some very important concepts regarding the current pressures on U.S. colleges and universities. She, like our leaders at Stanford (see Developments at Stanford, below), has resisted signing petitions and group letters and instead is trying to resolve the issues in more individualistic and hopefully productive ways. E xcerpts (links in the original): . . . . “People on and off campus are asking what I think about the battle between higher education and the federal government. A binary framework has emerged -- fight or flight -- that, I worry, means higher-education institutions aren’t reflecting on what we could do better to further our standing as a trusted beacon for knowledge and truth. “To be clear, reflection does not mean capitulation. I commit to you that I will always stand up for higher education, academic freedom, and Dartmouth’s specific dedication to values like ‘responsibility for each other and for the broader world’ and ‘vigorous and open debate of ideas within a community marked by mutual respect.’ For example, the recent threat to Harvard’s tax-exempt status, among other threats, is fundamentally inconsistent with the notions of free expression and inquiry that make America’s universities the envy of the world, and of the limited government that our founders rightly celebrated. Receivership, censorship, and external pressures about what can and cannot be taught or studied hamper the free exchange of ideas on our campus and across institutions. Dartmouth will never relent on these values, and I hope my peers don’t either.... “Higher-education institutions, especially the most elite among us, are not above reproach. Not only is trust in higher education at an all-time low, but that trust is hugely polarized, second in polarization only to the U.S. presidency . If we don’t ask ourselves why, we will squander this opportunity to do better. That spirit of self-reflection does not, in any way, insulate the government from criticism. It simply gives us an opportunity to look at ourselves and ask where we can be truer to our own ideals....” Full text of the letter by Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock at Dartmouth website and also posted at our Commentary webpage. See also video interview on Bloomberg as posted at X (3-1/2 minutes). A Conservative Harvard Professor’s Assessment on How the University Can Save Itself Excerpts (links in the original): “In recent reports about the Trump administration’s assault on Harvard, the statistic is often cited that, at most, 3% of Harvard faculty members identify as conservative . I’m one of that 3%. I’ve taught at Harvard for 40 years. I’ve known some of my liberal and progressive colleagues for decades. I have great respect for many of them as scholars, scientists and human beings. I have a good idea of how they think.... “Faculty at Harvard for the most part are serious scholars and scientists who just want to get on with their work. They have books to write and papers to publish. They want to pass on what they have learned to the next generation. They resent it when activists create turbulence at department meetings and waste everyone’s time.... “In his official response to the Trump administration, [Harvard President Alan Garber] refused its demands while strongly reaffirming the university’s commitment to values that conservatives and traditional liberals can fully endorse.... “One inescapable truth in higher education is that he who pays the piper calls the tune. Harvard’s endowment is massive, around $50 billion, but most of it is tied up in donor-restricted funds, and it pays for only 37% of Harvard’s annual operating costs of $6.5 billion. For the rest, the university relies on tuition (20%), federal grants (11%), current gifts from alumni and other donors, and borrowing. Since Harvard’s response to the Hamas attack of October 2023 led to a donor revolt, it has increasingly resorted to the bond market to cover operating costs, and on increasingly unfavorable terms. “In the short term, unwinding the university’s dependence on federal funding risks creating a substantial deficit. But that funding itself comes at a steep price, not all of which can be measured in dollars and cents. It changes how the university operates and how power is distributed within it. Federal funding tends to increase the number and power of administrators, to turn faculty into their supplicants and to insulate the university from alumni opinion. “For instance, a 2011 ‘Dear Colleague’ letter from the Obama administration’s Education Department led Harvard to hire over 50 ‘Title IX Resource Coordinators’ to police sexual mores. The university’s sprawling DEI apparatus created, without faculty input, the pressure to regulate speech, require trigger warnings and enforce preferred pronouns. These administrators, who are the most politically active element in the university, opened the doors to further radicalization following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. “There are very good reasons for Harvard (and other universities) to reduce our financial dependence on the federal government. Instead, we should strengthen ties with loyal alumni who know and love Harvard. Alumni are loyal in part because they remember with gratitude the teaching they received as undergraduates. That makes them more closely aligned with the university’s real mission: to teach and to produce high-quality, unpoliticized research. Empowering alumni would carry its own risks, no doubt, but in my experience, they have a much sounder sense than politicians and government bureaucrats of what Harvard should be doing to help the country and itself.” Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. James Hankins at WSJ. See also the detailed graphs and charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage showing the very large growth of non-teaching staff at Stanford in recent years, the fact that Stanford has the highest total amount of government funding in recent years as compared to all other colleges and universities and similar data. See also our previous link to "Stanford's Bureaucracy Undermines Its Academic Mission" at Stanford Review . UC Faculty Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement Excerpt (links in the original): “The University of California will not proceed with making a semester-long course in ethnic studies a new admissions requirement. “The UC Faculty Assembly defeated the proposal by a vote of 29 to 12 with 12 abstentions on Wednesday. (Go here for background on the proposal.) “Had the Assembly endorsed it, the plan would have gone before the UC regents, who would have had the final say. Instead, the rejection ends a five-year effort by the UC ethnic studies faculty to determine the content of high school ethnic studies courses that would have met the admissions requirement. “The Legislature has already mandated that high schools offer an ethnic studies course, starting in the fall of 2025, and that all students take the course to graduate, starting in 2029-30. But implementation of the 2021 law is contingent on state funding, at a cost the California Department of Education has estimated at $275 million per year. But Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t funded it, and a Newsom adviser told a UC faculty representative that it will not be a priority for 2025-26, amid uncertain revenues....” Full article at Ed Source. See also statement from FAIR. Europe Really Is Jailing People for Online Speech Editor’s note: We have previously presented a number important articles by Johns Hopkins Prof. Yascha Mounk but suggest this one may be the most important to date and strongly urge readers to read the article in its entirety here . As is discussed by Prof. Mounk, the risks are not just within Europe but that these types of actions could erode even the protections provided within the U.S. by our own laws and Constitution. Excerpts (endnote deleted): “Imagine this scenario. “The interior minister of a country that considers itself a democracy reports scores of citizens to the police for making critical statements about her while she is in office. Many of them are given hefty monetary fines or even prison sentences. “In protest, a journalist publishes a satirical meme. It features a real photograph of the interior minister holding a sign that is digitally altered so that, apocryphally, it reads: ‘I hate freedom of speech.’ “As if to prove the point, the interior minister reports the journalist to the police. He is duly prosecuted and, after a brief trial, given a seven-month suspended prison sentence. “Would you say that this nation has a problem with free speech? “If you do, then you should be very concerned about what has happened in Europe over the last few years. For, as you may have suspected, this scenario is not fictional; rather, it depicts the true facts of a recent German court case -- one that is far less of an outlier than most otherwise well-informed observers recognize.... [followed by discussion of prohibitions being established throughout Europe] “As a result of these broad prohibitions and the ease of enforcing them, Britain has quickly become one of the continent’s leaders in prosecuting -- and even jailing -- people for speech. As the Times of London recently reported, ‘officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests [under section 127] in 2023.’ This means that, on average, over 33 arrests are made every day for what people in the United Kingdom have said on the internet.... “The argument for strong restrictions on free speech implicitly rests on the idea that these have historically proven necessary to preserve our democratic institutions, making them all the more justified at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise. But this argument is historical nonsense twice over. “This argument wrongly presumes that past failures of democracy can be chalked up to an excess of free speech when the opposite comes closer to being true. [followed by further discussion and examples] ...” Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Yascha Mounk at Substack, a version of which was initially published at Dispatch . See also our prior postings "Stanford's Roles in Censoring the Web" at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. Developments at Stanford Last Week's Faculty Senate Hears Report on Government Pressures and Other Issues Excerpt (link in the original): . . . . “President Jonathan Levin also discussed a letter published by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) this week. 'I don’t disagree with the sentiments in that letter,' Levin said. 'In general, I prefer not to sign open letters. I think it’s good practice at a university for people to formulate and express their own views.' “Levin noted that he and Provost Jenny Martinez have shared their views regarding government overreach and the need for universities to engage with legitimate criticism, which has been covered widely by national media. “‘To be clear, I do believe in working together with a broad array of peer institutions on actions to advance higher education,’ Levin said. ‘We’re doing that in many ways, in small groups with the [Association of American Universities] and other organizations, including just last week, filing a second successful lawsuit related to cuts in federal funding.’ “Levin added that he foresees many opportunities to collaborate in greater depth in coming months...." Full article at Stanford Report. See also “Levin and Martinez Field Questions at Admit Weekend About Academic Freedom and Budget Cuts” at Stanford Daily . From the Faculty Senate Two Weeks Earlier , President Levin Expands on the University’s Guiding Principles Excerpts (posted in a prior Newsletter but we believe worth repeating here; link in the original): . . . . . “In addressing the senate, Levin expanded upon the set of principles he and Provost Jenny Martinez are using to guide the university at this time. “‘First, the partnership between universities and the federal government is exceptionally important -- to universities and the country,’ Levin said. ‘There is perhaps no university which demonstrates that more than Stanford. When the government began its investment in scientific research, we were a good regional university. Federal funding enabled us to become a great national and global university. In turn, we demonstrate how university research can be an engine of innovation for the country and for the world.’ "Studies of federally funded research find that it has exceptionally high social return on the investment, Levin said, and many specific examples come from Stanford. “‘Second, academic freedom is an essential part of that contract,’ Levin said. ‘It protects members of the university to question orthodoxy, to debate ideas, to pursue lines of thought that go against the prevailing political winds. It requires protection from both internal and external coercion. On the external side, First Amendment protections for free speech, including unpopular ideas, are a fundamental part of the country. “‘It is also important for universities to recognize that we have not always lived up to our internal end -- we have had speakers shouted down, published lists of harmful words, and had situations where the careers of students or faculty were threatened for politically unpopular speech. Today, I believe we can be proud of what we are doing at Stanford to protect free inquiry and model civil discourse.’ ..." Full article at Stanford Report. See also the Guiding Principles as outlined by President Levin and Provost Martinez in their March 31, 2025 letter to the community, a copy of which is now also posted at our Stanford Speaks webpage. April 25, 2025 Harvard Showed a Spine; Now Comes the Hard Part Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “On April 11, three federal agencies sent the university a sweeping list of demands: make major changes or risk losing billions in research funding. While some demands -- like ending ideological litmus tests in hiring -- reflect reforms [Heterodox Academy] supports, many others crossed a dangerous line. For example, the government called for mandatory plagiarism reviews of all current and prospective faculty and audits of departments it deemed ideologically ‘captured’ -- without offering clear evidence of problems or due process. “These are not reasonable steps to fight discrimination; they’re an attempt to control a university’s internal affairs while claiming failure to address antisemitism as the reason. As Harvard rightly argued in its response , the demands violate core constitutional principles and threaten academic freedom. No school should be forced to choose between government funding and intellectual independence, and certainly not without due process . In rejecting these terms, Harvard defended more than itself. It defended the very idea of the university.... “The administration’s demands are a serious threat to academic freedom. Yet Harvard's resistance will ring hollow unless it pairs its bold defense of independence with an equally honest reckoning about the internal failures that made it vulnerable to such scrutiny in the first place. “In a recent op-ed for the Boston Globe , the faculty chairs of the Academic Freedom Councils at Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton spoke of these problems: “‘While differing in our politics and much else, we recognized that our campuses had become intellectually cramped, with insufficient diversity in the range of ideas and viewpoints we teach and research. We witnessed the cancellation of speakers with unpopular views, saw some departments devolve into monocultures inhospitable to contrary opinions, and watched in dismay as well-meaning administrators implemented identity-focused policies that hardened boundaries between groups instead of dissolving them. “‘Lately, we have seen universities fail to adequately address antisemitism, tolerate protests that cross the line from expression to disruption and coercion, violate their own well-founded rules, and apply antidiscrimination and harassment rules inconsistently. The result is a spiral of silence in which students and faculty censor themselves, leaving public discourse to the loudest and most zealous voices.... “ .... If a 26:1 ideological imbalance shows viewpoint diversity, what would count as a monoculture? “At [Heterodox Academy] , we believe the best defense against political overreach is a university that lives up to its highest ideals. Harvard’s moment of courage must now be matched by real reform. That means publicly affirming its commitment to civil rights and the open exchange of ideas -- and then demonstrating that commitment through faculty hiring practices, classroom culture, and intellectual climate. America needs great universities. And it needs those universities to be truly great -- not just in rankings, but in their commitment to truth, pluralism, and academic integrity. “Harvard just showed it has a spine. But now comes the hard part: Harvard must commit itself to the difficult, long-term work of building a culture of open inquiry.” Full op-ed by Brown U Prof. and President of Heterodox Academy John Tomasi at Substack. See also: Statement by Harvard Alumni for Free Speech. Federal government’s letter to Harvard dated April 11, 2025. Harvard’s litigation response to the federal government . Additional Articles re Harvard In Harvard vs. Trump, Both Are Right and Both Are Wrong Full op-ed by Harvard Fellow Barak Sella at The Hill. “Harvard’s inglorious past deserves scorn and punishment, but the size and scope of the Trump administration's sanctions go too far” Full op-ed by NYU Prof. Richard Epstein at Civitas. Commonsense Changes at Harvard Could Go a Long Way to Diffusing the Trump Standoff Full op-ed including detailed numbers and charts re federal grants, foreign donors, growth of endowment, increased administrative costs, etc. by Open the Books at Substack. Harvard Sought a Deal, and Some Donors Still Want That Outcome Full article at NY Times. A Perfect Storm Comes for Elite Universities Excerpts (links in the original): “The country’s most elite universities are panicking over President Donald Trump ’s pressure campaign against them, but their problems run far deeper than a stand-off with the White House. “Fewer students are applying to top schools. Private donors are closing their checkbooks. Lucrative foreign student visas are in the State Department’s crosshairs . “And the diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies that grew around universities’ desire to pursue liberal social justice not only inflicted reputational damage -- they may have exposed the schools to civil rights violations. “‘Higher education periodically goes through crises, which sometimes feel more existential than others. By all indications, this is among the more serious crises that we’ve faced in many decades,’ Neil Gross, a sociology professor at Colby College, told the Washington Examiner. ‘It’s been building for some time.’ ... [Followed by discussion of declines in student applicants.] “Federal funding is not the only source of income presently at risk for elite universities. “Amid the backlash to top schools’ handling of anti-Israel protests and leadership upheaval at several universities, some private donors stopped giving money before the fight with Trump began. “Donations to Harvard fell by 14% in fiscal 2024, according to the Harvard Crimson. “‘The $151 million decline marks one of the most significant year-over-year drops in donations in the past decade,’ the school paper reported.... “However, others see the current moment as an opportunity for an overdue course correction after years of drifting from the core values of higher education. “‘This is a comeuppance that has been long coming,’ [Drexel Prof. Stanley Ridgley] said. ‘The bar tab that Harvard ran up over the last 20 years, well, that tab is coming due.’..." Full article at Washington Examiner. Kicking Out Foreign Students Is a Loss for America Excerpts: “Imagine a country that invites the world’s best students to study there, only to deport them over a traffic violation.... “Revoking legal status en masse for unclear or illegitimate reasons contributes to a climate of uncertainty that will drive the best and brightest students into other countries, upending their lives and depriving the U.S. of massive talent. “Based on what’s known about some of the legal statuses that have been revoked, it’s not clear that [engaging in activities that are contrary to U.S. policy] is the case for these students, who have also already gone through extensive background checks when applying for their visas. Immigration attorney Charles Kuck, who is involved in one of the lawsuits against the government for the termination of SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) records, said in an interview that many students have had their status terminated merely for having a traffic violation, or a discharged offense from years ago, and some don’t have a criminal record at all. His clients weren’t involved in the pro-Palestinian protests, either. The government didn’t give a clear reason why their statuses were terminated. ‘ICE didn’t tell these students what they did wrong,’ Kuck stated.... “Student visas are expensive and hard to get. Applicants must be accepted by a U.S. university, pay hefty fees, comply with many regulations, and secure funding for their tuition and living expenses throughout their education. (These visas often don’t allow students to work while they study.) This process is already prohibitive and discourages many talented individuals from applying. “The mass revocation of legal status for hundreds of apparently peaceful students is a loss for America. These individuals are among the ‘best and brightest’ who come here to pursue great education, are willing to pay for it, and often aspire to build a life here. They know this country affords unique opportunities and they greatly benefit from this opportunity.... “Ultimately, the whole student visa program should be overhauled to allow more freedom for universities to attract students, and for companies to hire them. But for now, the current student visa program should make it easier, not harder, for students to come here. President Trump’s idea [in June 2024 during the campaign ] of attaching a green card to every college degree was good back then -- and his administration should pursue that end instead of the path it’s currently on....” Full op-ed at Real Clear Politics. See also "The Case Against Student Deportations " at Stanford Review. Other Articles of Interest NIH Says Colleges Must Eliminate DEI Programs to Receive Research Funding Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. When Do Scholarly Retractions Become a Form of Censorship? Full op-ed at Quillette. GenAI Will Not Make Students Smarter Full op-ed at James Martin Center. Federal Government to Begin Garnishing Wages on Defaulted Student Loan Borrowers Full article at Politico. When Good Academics Do Bad Things Full op-ed at Quillette. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. From School of Medicine: RNA Blood Test Designed to Detect Cancers, Other Clues From Center on Artificial Intelligence: Assessing the Role of Intelligent Tutors in K-12 Education From School of Engineering: In My Lab, Curiosity Drives Discovery ************ "I think we have a very good Honor Code. What’s broken is the education around it. We need to inculcate it by talking about it … and infuse it in our culture." -- Stanford Prof. Andrea Goldsmith April 18, 2025 Editor’s note: Because of rapidly changing developments regarding recent demands on Harvard and other universities, we are distributing this Newsletter a few days earlier than normal. As always, we welcome reader comments and suggestions here . ************ President Levin and Provost Martinez Address Government Attacks on Harvard and Universities Generally (April 15, 2025) Full Text of Statement : “America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth. This strength has been built on government investment but not government control. The Supreme Court recognized this years ago when it articulated the essential freedoms of universities under the First Amendment as the ability to determine who gets to teach, what is taught, how it is taught, and who is admitted to study. “Universities need to address legitimate criticisms with humility and openness. But the way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution. Harvard’s objections to the letter it received are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending.” [Note: A copy of the government's letter to Harvard dated April 11, 2025 is posted at our Commentary webpage. See also April 18, 2025 op-ed at Stanford Review .] Statement from Our Colleagues at Harvard Alumni for Free Speech Excerpts (link in the original): "Harvard Alumni for Free Speech (HAFFS) believes deeply in the principles of academic freedom, free expression, and genuine viewpoint diversity. These values are not merely aspirational -- they are essential to the mission of any university, and to the health of a democratic society. "We have reviewed the federal government’s letter to Harvard University dated April 11th. The letter goes far beyond ensuring that Harvard does not discriminate.... "We believe that further changes are needed to current Harvard policies and that the implementation of changes made at Harvard in the past year needs to be assessed to confirm that the core principles of academic freedom and free expression are being advanced. However, we do not think it appropriate for the federal government to be the party responsible to determine and monitor what values are acceptable for private universities to foster, and we are deeply troubled by the growing federal overreach into the intellectual life of universities. "Free expression cannot thrive under any orthodoxy -- whether imposed by university administrators or by federal agencies...." Full text of statement here . Reclaiming Academic Rigor and Intellectual Vitality Excerpts: “Roosevelt Montás is an outspoken advocate for a humanistic liberal arts education rooted in transformative texts, particularly the Great Books tradition. As director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum from 2008 to 2018, he did more than anyone else to safeguard and sustain a set of foundational courses and essential knowledge that all students are required to engage with and master. “A Dominican immigrant who discovered the power of classical texts as a Columbia undergrad, Montás argues that exposure to foundational works of literature, philosophy and political thought is not an elitist pursuit, but a democratizing force -- one that offers students, regardless of background, the tools for intellectual and moral self-discovery.... “We often hear about the threats to education from political polarization, but the real crisis is more insidious: a broad cultural shift that has deprioritized deep learning, rigorous intellectual engagement and the foundational knowledge necessary for an informed citizenry. “This is not a conspiracy of the right or the left -- it is a product of market forces, technological shifts and a culture that increasingly values efficiency, credentialing and convenience over substantive education.... “Here’s how higher education lost rigor and depth: [Followed by discussion of: The Decline of the Humanities and the Marginalization of the Serious Arts. The Absence of a Serious Foundation in Science, Mathematics and Quantitative Methods. The Shift to Asynchronous, Low-Engagement Online Learning. The Weakening of General Education and the Fragmentation of Knowledge. [As well as proposed corrective actions.] “The strength of a nation is not measured merely by its economy or its military but by the depth of its ideas, the clarity of its discourse and the rigor of its thinking. In an era of misinformation, declining civic literacy and technological distractions, the need for an intellectually engaged citizenry has never been greater. If America is to lead in the 21st century -- not just in wealth or power but in wisdom -- it must first make America smart again. “This is not about nostalgia for a past golden age but a recognition that serious learning, deep engagement and intellectual rigor are the foundations of a flourishing democracy. It is time to raise -- not lower -- the bar." Full op-ed by U Texas Prof. Steven Mintz at Inside Higher Ed. There’s a Limit to Government Intrusion in Academic Matters Excerpts (link in the original, endnotes deleted): “On April 11, President Trump sent a letter to Harvard with various demands, threatening to cut off federal science grants if Harvard does not comply. Some demands related to ending racial discrimination in admissions and hiring, which is fine, since Harvard has blatantly discriminated against white and Asians in the past and continues to do so. “Other demands are improper, even if they are things that we think the university should do. He asks Harvard to check faculty publications for plagiarism. Maybe Harvard should do that, but why should the federal government condition cancer research grants given to Professor Smith on whether the university has audited Professor Jones’s publications? This is an intrusion onto the university’s internal management.... “Even more dubious is the demand that Harvard require its departments to have diverse viewpoints. The letter says, " ' Harvard must abolish all criteria, preferences, and practices, whether mandatory or optional, throughout its admissions and hiring practices, that function as ideological litmus tests. Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity’ “This sounds good, but it isn’t.... “Liberal faculty think that if 20% of a department voted for Trump, that department is hideously conservative; they have lost sight of their own biases. And Trump is not even asking for ‘the MAGA worldview’. He is just asking that biology departments not veto job candidates who say that a man cannot become a woman and that economics departments not veto candidates who favor tariffs. “Even imposing a little balance on a politicized university department, though, is still not the business of the federal government.... “... If a department doesn’t hire an economist because of his views on sex change operations or climate change, that is a bad thing. Where universities have gone most wrong is in refusing to hire people because they have conservative views on topics unrelated to their field of study. That is what we should aim to end.... “If you were the university president, vested with full authority from the board of trustees, what would you do?” Full op-ed by Indiana U. Prof. Eric Rasmusen at Substack. See also “Only 39 U.S. Colleges Can Withstand Trump’s Freeze on Research Dollars ” at Times of India. What Our Universities Need to Do Now Excerpts (links in the original): “’Finally!’ “That was my first reaction to Harvard’s letter on Monday, which pledged to resist the Trump administration’s attacks on its autonomy. You can’t have a free university or a free society when the government is dictating what you can teach, think or write. Good on Harvard, for stating what most schools have been too scared to say . “Yet we should also read the letter as a challenge to our universities, which haven’t always lived by their ideals of free expression and open inquiry. President Trump’s proposed restrictions and penalties pose a dire threat to these values, as the Harvard letter makes clear. But we shouldn’t pretend that we have made good on them ourselves. “Consider the question of viewpoint diversity, which the Trump administration highlighted in its own letter to Harvard earlier this month. The university was instructed to abolish 'ideological litmus tests' and to 'hire a critical mass of new faculty' in departments where everyone thought the same way. “I heartily endorse that goal, even if I detest Trump’s mechanism for achieving it. Surveys have repeatedly confirmed that faculty at elite schools like Harvard lean heavily and almost uniformly left in their politics . That’s a big problem if you think that education should expose us to a wide range of perspectives. And it also helps explain the rising public disdain for universities , especially -- but not only -- among conservatives. “But I don’t want Trump or any other government official deciding which departments or schools are so ideologically lopsided that they will forsake their federal funding, as Trump has threatened. That’s a formula for corruption, not balance. “And that’s why the universities have to step up, admit they have a problem, and commit to solving it. So I was pleased to see that Harvard’s letter pledged to ‘broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community,’ as Harvard president Alan M. Garber wrote . “Message to the world: Harvard isn’t as intellectually diverse as it should be. Nor has it done enough to ‘nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry’ or to ‘develop the tools, skills, and practices needed to engage constructively with one another,’ as Garber also admitted...." [Followed by discussion of additional concerns and possible actions.] Full op-ed by Penn Prof. Jonathan Zimmerman at The Hill. This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, If They Dare Excerpt : .... “There is a way for universities to fight back. It requires more than refusing to bend to Trump’s will, and it requires more than forming a united front. They must abandon all the concerns -- rankings, donors, campus amenities -- that preoccupy and distract them, and focus on their core mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge." ... Full op-ed at NY Times. See also our long-existing Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. Other Articles of Interest Stanford Professor Discusses Harmful Impact of DEI Full op-ed by Stanford Prof. Jonathan Berk at Stanford Daily. Without Self-Criticism, There Can be No Progressive Thought in the Academy Full op-ed by Queen Mary U of London Prof. Eric Heinze at Education Next. The Importance of Viewpoint Diversity and Free Expression, What Comes After DEI? Full op-ed at New Yorker. Higher Ed Digs In, Refuses Reform Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. From Graduate School of Business: The Grit and Determination of Entrepreneurs From Department of Biology: The Neuroscience and Physiology of Animal Relationships Multi-disciplinary Study Reveals How to Make Prescribed Forest Fires Burn Safer and Cleaner ************ “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.” — Stanford’s 1974 Statement on Academic Freedom April 14, 2025 Editor’s note: We present here four articles with competing messages. The first article includes the results of recent polling showing that the majority of U.S. students believe their campuses have a climate that promotes free speech. The second article discusses some of the conflicts that nevertheless also are taking place. The third is an example of the tensions that have long existed and the fourth is a call for better civic education. These are themes that have been consistently presented ever since these Newsletters and the related website were launched in September 2022, and long before these issues became the subject of more widespread public discussion. Stanford itself has been a participant in what many/most observers believe were seriously wrongful actions such as the government-coordinated censorship that was based at Stanford Internet Observatory and its affiliates, the attacks by Stanford’s own faculty and others on Prof. Jay Bhattacharya, and related issues (see examples at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage). On the other hand, Stanford’s administration and faculty are to be commended in their trying to address these concerns including President Levin's and Provost Martinez’s recent statement on disruption along with Stanford's updated policies on freedom of expression, the Civic Dialogues program for freshmen, the Democracy and Disagreement course being offered this spring quarter and the long existing Stanford Civics Initiative . We welcome here your own comments on these issues. Gallup Poll Says Majority of Students Feel Safe with Campus Speech Excerpts : “About three-quarters of currently enrolled bachelor’s degree students say their college or university does an ‘excellent’ (31%) or ‘good’ job (43%) promoting free speech on campus. Nineteen percent say their institution is ‘only fair’ at promoting free speech, while 5% say their school does a ‘poor’ job. Republican, Democratic and politically independent students are about equally likely to say their school does an excellent or good job promoting free speech.... “Bottom Line: Amid significant national debate over free speech protections on college campuses, particularly in response to last year’s protests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict, most students report that their institution fosters a respectful and open environment. The majority of bachelor’s degree students believe their college does a good job of promoting free speech, with similar ratings across political affiliations. “Additionally, most students say they feel respected by both their peers and faculty, and a substantial majority report a sense of belonging at their institution. These findings suggest that although high-profile controversies have sparked public discourse about campus tensions, most students feel their school does a good job promoting free speech, respect and feelings of belonging on campus.” Full article at Gallup website and including a link to a PDF copy of the full report. But see also FIRE's and College Pulse's most recent report and rankings (released September 2024) re campus speech, including this student comment about Stanford which ranked 218 out of 251 schools: “Generally, other students are not particularly accepting. If you don't follow whatever Instagram or TikTok is claiming to be the most 'moral' political view at the moment, people don't want to hear it and they will label you as non-politically correct. This behavior usually comes from liberal students -- I'm saying this as a very liberal person myself. I don't think I have non-politically correct viewpoints. I often agree with these students, but the manner in which they enforce their viewpoints across campus is something I disagree with....” I Was Called an ‘Inbred Swine’ at a Recent Princeton Event Excerpt (links in the original): “[Last week] at Princeton, Jewish students were called ‘inbred swine,’ told to ‘go back to Europe,’ and taunted with gestures of the Hamas triangle by masked protesters. Sadly, slurs like these have become commonplace at anti-Israel protests at my college in the months since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, but university president Christopher Eisgruber insists he is ‘proud of the campus climate at Princeton.’ “What would it take for him to question that belief? “The latest outrage was sparked by a visit from former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett. More than 200 students had turned up to hear Bennett talk about his time as prime minister from 2021 to 2022 and the current government under Benjamin Netanyahu post-October 7. “Days before Bennett arrived, the Princeton chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine had plastered posters all over campus, calling him a ‘war criminal,’ and flooded listservs and social media with messages saying the college was ‘complicit in normalizing his murderous policies.’ SJP students publicly declared that ‘Bennett should be in prison, not at Princeton.’ Never mind that he was the first Israeli PM to form a coalition with the Arab party in the Knesset. Or that Princeton’s Hillel and four other organizations had invited him to the talk in good faith. All students who registered for the event were encouraged to submit questions in advance; only those with a Princeton ID were able to register...." Full op-ed at Free Press. See also “Tackling Antisemitism in Higher Education Requires Boldness, Not Moderation ” at Real Clear Education. The Campus Cold War – Faculty vs. Administrators Excerpts (link in the original): “If you’ve ever worked in higher education, you know the stereotypes. College administrators are soulless careerists brimming with will to power who ram through clueless decisions, whether the rest of the institution likes it or not. College faculty members, meanwhile, are myopic, overeducated children who take forever to do anything and throw tantrums anytime their routines are disrupted. “These caricatures are unfair to the actual people who run and teach at colleges. But they’ve only gained purchase in recent years. Behind closed doors, presidents are more likely to grumble about obstreperous, obstructionist professors. In faculty-senate meetings and other public forums, those professors are directing distrust, even disdain, at administrative leaders. “The two factions aren’t meant to move in lockstep, and they never have. Tension is baked into the way colleges are run, says Brian C. Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College who’s now a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. The American Association of University Professors’ 1966 ‘Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities’ laid out the blueprint most colleges follow. ‘The faculty has responsibility for the academic programs and curriculum,’ Rosenberg says. ‘The president has responsibility for the other stuff. You have built into the shared-governance model this divide, so it’s always been strained.’ ... [Followed by a detailed discussion of likely causes and effects.] “Ultimately, most administrators and professors want the same thing: to do right by their students and continue their work. Many of the obstacles they face they share, including their own foibles. ‘Tension is inevitable because we’re humans,’ says Mills, of Buena Vista University, ‘trying to do human things.’ If administrators and professors can look beyond their own immediate concerns and consider those of their counterparts, who knows what could happen?” Full op-ed at Chronicle of Higher Education. Why Civic Education Must Be at the Forefront of Reform Excerpts (links in the original): “Gen Z was expected to be more instrumental in the 2024 presidential election than they turned out to be. Despite their active engagement in political discourse online, only 42 percent turned out to vote, down from 50 percent in 2020 . While the reasons for this vary, one core issue can be remedied: American grade schoolers aren’t learning what it means to be American.... “Civic education is not a partisan issue. Society benefits when citizens are knowledgeable and invested in the functions of their government. That’s why we need programs like California’s State Seal of Civic Engagement and initiatives like Project Citizen , which have demonstrated measurable success in increasing political participation among young people. The Ramos Research Institute is developing a Citizenship Empowerment Framework , with plans to release it this summer as a comprehensive, actionable model for strengthening civic education in higher education institutions. With its emphasis on media literacy, this program addresses the growing digital crisis where algorithm-driven newsfeeds influence public discourse...." Full op-ed at DC Journal. See also discussion of model legislation -- the REACH Act -- at James Martin Center. The Costs of Federal Taxation on Endowments and Cutbacks in Federal Funding Late last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article discussing the possible impact on 77 named colleges and universities of the proposed cutbacks in federal funding as well as the proposed tax on endowment income. The article also includes a detailed interactive chart for the named schools, including these highlights but all of which also are subject to the various assumptions set forth in the article: Among other things, the endowment tax, which is only in discussion stages, could potentially cost Stanford $404 million a year as compared to $566 million for Harvard, $460 million for Yale, $390 million for Princeton and $273 million for MIT. When you combine the endowment tax along with proposed cutbacks in National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation funding and compare that total with the total of all expenses at a given school, the total impact as a percent of total expenses -- again, subject to various assumptions -- would be 19% for Princeton, 18% for Grinnell, 13% for Yale and 7% for Stanford and where the total cost per student of the proposed cutbacks and tax would be $49K at Princeton, $42K at Yale, $41K at Caltech, $32K at Stanford, $30K at MIT and $27K at Harvard. The schools most impacted by reductions in NIH funding, in descending order, would be Johns Hopkins, Yale, Penn, Michigan and Columbia (Stanford could come in as eighth with a loss of $113 million). The schools most impacted by reductions in NSF funding, again in descending order, would be Texas, Michigan, UC San Diego, Cornell and Washington (Stanford would come in as twenty-first with a loss of $43.5 million). Full article and interactive chart at Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription may be required). See also the detailed charts we have previously published at our Stanford Concerns webpage including a chart from Open the Books showing schools with the highest federal contracts and grants (2018 to 2022) and where Stanford shows as the highest of all schools at $7 billion during those years. Other Articles of Interest ASU’s Investments in Virtual Reality Education Are Paying Off Full article at Inside Higher Ed. Lawsuit Is Filed Alleging University Discrimination Against Asians Full op-ed at Substack. In addition to the substance of the complaint, note the quotes of one or more university leaders and also the fact that the complaint was largely drafted with the use of AI. Note also, an SAT score of 1590 is at the top 99%. A Colloquy on Free Speech A PDF copy of the discussion featuring ACTA President Michael Poliakoff and former ACLU President/Prof. Nadine Strossen can be downloaded here . I Led Harvard’s Medical School, and I Fear for What’s to Come Full op-ed by former Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier at NY Times. NYU Cancels Doctor’s Speech, Citing Anti-Government Tone Full article at NY Times. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. The State of AI in Ten Charts A PDF copy of the full report is here . 3D Printed Human Organs -- ‘It Really Is the Holy Grail of Curative Medicine’ Six Big Ideas to Help Avoid a U.S. Electricity Crisis Gene Linked to Development of a Critical Coronary Artery ************ "It’s very important that if we’re going to have free speech, we have it for everyone." — Stanford Prof. (now deceased) and one of the pioneers in AI John McCarthy April 7, 2025 Colleges Have to Be Much More Honest with Themselves Excerpts (links in the original): “Leaders of American higher education have largely reacted to the Trump administration’s rhetorical and financial assaults by locking down in a defensive crouch. That is understandable given the administration’s view of universities, which JD Vance once called ‘ hostile institutions, ’ and its apparent admiration of the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban’s takeover of higher education. But there will be scant room for American higher education to tell its story of opportunity, transformation and discovery as long as colleges and universities deny what many of us know but few will say: Our critics have a point. “I worked in Democratic politics before my second career in higher education. Many ideas commonly espoused on the academic left would have been considered bizarre in the Democratic mainstream, assuming they could be understood at all. As a sector, higher education is considerably left of the American public, a perspective often expressed in language that is less offensive than it is incomprehensible. “We decry state censorship while ignoring a comparable threat to free expression on campuses: the crushing pressure inside many colleges and universities to conform with dominant political views. This pressure is hardly new. But the outrage emanating from campuses about Trump administration policies places our lack of self-awareness about longstanding dynamics within higher education in sharper relief.... “Taken together, those survey results [discussed earlier in the op-ed] suggest that some of the most intense pressure to conform to political orthodoxy comes from within the academy. The solution is neither more regulation nor more denial. It is sitting in front of us: Colleges and universities should retreat from politics and renew our core mission of teaching, learning and discovery. “That is easily said, of course. But faculties have immense powers of self-governance. Neither academic administrators nor elected officials should regulate what is taught in college classrooms. But members of faculties can formally recommit to what the principle of academic freedom has long required: not only tolerating but also encouraging different perspectives. Even those disciplines in which contemporary controversies may seem more relevant -- such as my own field, political science -- serve students better by focusing on enduring ideas rather than transient events.... “Colleges and universities have a compelling story to tell. But we will have neither an audience for that story -- nor the moral authority to tell it -- until we are as fearless about examining ourselves as we are about decrying interference from beyond our walls." Full op-ed by Assumption University President Greg Weiner at NY Times. And once again, see our "Back to Basics at Stanford " webpage . Principles That Should Stand at the Foundation of Universities Excerpts (endnotes deleted): “To assert that American universities, and in fact most western universities, are in a crisis simply restates the obvious. The crisis, long in the making, is not just one of financial solvency, costly and rapidly expanding bureaucracies, worthless academic programs or declining enrollments. It is primarily a crisis of meaning resulting from the pursuit of divergent, often wildly contradictory goals: the traditional pursuit of Truth, wherever it leads, social engineering in the name of repairing the world, or simply vocational training to help students to advance their careers. “Finding possible solutions to this malaise is the main focus of the essay but, before engaging in this task we: 1) recall what are the putative, i.e., commonly accepted, principles of our institutions of higher learning, 2) provide a diagnosis of the degree to which those principles are being adhered to and 3) formulate what principles should lay at the foundation of future universities -- or perhaps educational and scientific institutions more broadly. Once done, a series of proposals are presented that could be used to bring universities more closely in line with both the current putative principles of the university as well as those proposed for the future university.... [Followed by detailed discussion of the points stated above.] “Here are some ideas about the steps which need to be taken: a. Ban DEI, based on Trump’s recent executive actions and reduce university administrations significantly, perhaps to about 30% of their current size. b. Eliminate all grievance-based academic programs, based on their low intellectual content and discriminatory axioms, approaches and practices. c. In new institutions, replace tenure with a 5-10 year renewable contract to allow departments and universities to get rid of dead wood and reward people willing to take risks with faster promotions and higher salaries.... d. Bring back the Great Books programs and make them obligatory for all first-year students. Introduce serious, broad based, courses on the history of mathematics and the natural sciences, including Philosophy, and history of Western civilization, and make these courses mandatory for first and second year students. e. A special effort must be made to reform the Humanities.... f. Reduce the reliance on NSF, NIH and other major US government [agencies] for funding research and rely more on private organizations, like the Simons Foundation, who will, hopefully, choose to fund new and risky directions of research. g. Reform NSF and NIH by cutting all programs which are not directly connected to fundamental research and which can be funded by industry. Make sure that projects are evaluated on scientific merit alone. We applaud the recent efforts to reduce the percentage of allowed indirect funds to universities. There is little rationale for indirect funds except to allow these universities to divert government funds to other projects unrelated to the grants.... h. Reform the National Academy of the Sciences (NAS).... The NAS is a much too important national institution to be left to wither on the vine.... i. Pressure existing professional organizations, heavily compromised by wokeism, by creating alternatives ones.” [Followed by details of other proposals.] Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Sergiu Klainerman at Substack. The Case for Economic-Based Affirmative Action Excerpts: “In November 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic raging, I took off my mask and sat down nervously in the witness stand at the federal district courthouse in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “I was there to testify as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a conservative group challenging racial preferences at the University of North Carolina. (SFFA and I were also involved in a parallel suit against Harvard University.) I would be testifying that racial student body diversity is very important to achieve on college campuses, but that, according to my research, UNC-Chapel Hill could create an integrated campus without using race -- if it jettisoned its preferences for privileged children of alumni and faculty and gave a meaningful admissions boost to economically disadvantaged students of all races. “This was a very unusual position for me to be in. Over the years, I’d allied myself closely with civil rights groups and leading Black officials -- from civil rights activist and attorney Maya Wiley to politicians like Sen. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and President Barack Obama’s Education Secretary John B. King -- on issues of schooling, housing and employment. But on the issue of whether preferences at elite colleges should be based on race or class, I was on the opposite side from many of my friends.... “I had long been convinced, however, that there was a better way to achieve the valid goals of racial affirmative action. I agreed with my liberal friends that campuses needed to be racially integrated. It is crucial that in a multicultural democracy students learn to appreciate and value individuals of all backgrounds. And I agreed that the nation had to take steps to remedy a terrible history of racial oppression. But giving a break to economically disadvantaged students, the evidence showed, could help universities do both without all the divisiveness and unfairness associated with counting skin color in who gets ahead...." [Followed by a discussion of political pressures, the Supreme Court decision re Harvard admissions, responses by various universities, and related matters.] Full op-ed by GW Prof. Richard D. Kahlenberg at Politico. Other Articles of Interest President Levin and Provost Martinez Discuss Key Issues at the Start of Spring Quarter Full letter at Stanford Report. See also “President Levin and Provost Martinez Discuss Campus Uncertainty in Light of Recent Federal Actions” at Stanford Daily . About the Proposals to Increase Taxation of University Endowments Full analysis by Stanford law school alum Ed Yingling at Princetonians for Free Speech. The College Essay Is Everything That’s Wrong with America Full op-ed by Johns Hopkins Prof. Yascha Mounk at Substack. Why Censorship Is Making Us All Dumber Full op-ed at Substack. The Bias in Health Science Full op-ed by Indiana Prof. Richard Gunderman. See also “UConn Med School Drops Mandatory DEI-infused Hippocratic Oath” at College Fix . A College Education Still Easily Beats the Alternative s Full op-ed by Cornell Prof. Emeritus Glenn C. Altschuler and Hamilton College President Emeritus David Wippman at The Hill. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. An Open-Source AI Agent for Doing Tasks on the Web Glucose’s Surprising Role As Master Manipulator of Tissue Maturation A Prevention Plan for Avoiding a Bird Flu Epidemic ************ "The greatest threat to academic freedom is not external censorship but self-censorship -- the fear of speaking one's mind in an environment that should encourage, not stifle, debate." – Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy March 31, 2025 Scholarship and Activism Are Two Different Things Excerpts (link in the original): “Disciplines have been central to the organization of academic life since the dawn of the modern university. They serve as communities for organizing the interrogation of knowledge, each making claims to expertise in a distinct approach or subject matter. “Yet many disciplines now seem to be destabilizing. The complexity of the world never fits into neat boxes, and there is an increasing recognition that major problems require interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle. Disciplinary coherence is also being challenged by constantly shifting border claims in knowledge production. “At the same time, some disciplines have become highly ideological, creating echo chambers that stall progress. This in turn has diminished the image of universities in the eyes of the general public, posing a profound political threat. Some disciplines have become, one might say, undisciplined -- freely pronouncing on matters outside their putative field of expertise, or expanding their claims of special knowledge to match political exigencies.... “The question is particularly salient in light of the variable stances of disciplines with regard to core governance questions. Disciplines are not uniformly disciplined in exercising their role as gatekeepers of good scholarship, nor are they all equally tolerant of dissent. Some of them purport to speak via collective associations about issues of the day, a major trend in our era. And many are not content with knowledge formation as the sole or primary mission of academe but instead seek to advance versions of activism.... “When one’s scholarship is designed to include advocacy -- what Tarunabh Khaitan has called ‘scholactivism’ -- risks are obvious. Advocates may reject or downplay inconvenient results, distorting academic debates. More deeply, they violate the “role morality” -- the notion that some roles entail specific ethical commitments -- of scholarship, which is the very basis for the social tolerance of academic freedom in the first place. While of course there is always a deep politics of scholarship, for example in the selection of topics for inquiry or methods for approaching them, these biases ought to be examined and minimized in genuine inquiry, not celebrated. This requires a humility about the limits of one’s own perspective.... “In a prescient observation in 2001, Clark Kerr noted that there was a conflict between the traditional view of the university that flowed from the enlightenment, embodied in a vision of seeking truth and objectivity, and a postmodern vision in which all discourse is political, with university resources to be deployed in ways that were liberatory and not repressive. He thought the conflict might further deepen, and noted that ‘any further politicization of the university will, of course, alienate much of the public at large.’ “As we stand at a moment of deep alienation, stepping back from the further politicization of scholarship is an existential step.” Full op-ed by U Chicago Prof. Tom Ginsburg at Chronicle of Higher Education and initially published at Inquisitive (Prof. Ginsburg is also the founding faculty director of Chicago's Forum on Free Inquiry and Expression ). See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage where we have long advocated that the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that do little if any front-line research or teaching but instead are engaged primarily if not exclusively in advocacy and implementation activities need to stop using the Stanford name and need to be moved off the core campus. How Campuses Can Better Cultivate Critical Awareness, Civic Engagement, Student Development and Global Literacy Excerpt (link in the original): “In 2019, sociologist Musa al-Gharbi called for a college education that would help students ‘understand biases and cognitive distortions (including and especially their own!)’ and prioritize civic education and engagement. “Al-Gharbi noted that despite significant increases in the number of Americans with college degrees and a rise in average IQ levels, civic, historical and cultural literacy have remained stagnant. Meanwhile, political polarization, mistrust and social fragmentation have intensified, with many Americans increasingly reluctant to marry, date or even befriend those with different political views. Trust in one another and confidence in the future have steadily declined. “Al-Gharbi’s observations raise a troubling question: If more Americans than ever are educated, why hasn’t this translated into greater civic knowledge or social cohesion? One answer may lie in the fragmented structure of today’s college curriculum. While most universities attempt to balance breadth, depth and choice, these elements often don’t work together to produce the kind of well-rounded, civically engaged graduates higher education aspires to cultivate....” [Followed by a discussion of these topics: Addressing deficiencies in civic and cultural literacy The need for holistic multidimensional development Toward a transformative and cohesive curriculum Development of an integrated and purpose-driven program of learning From passive learning to active engagement Redefining faculty roles Enhancing the student experience Strengthening civic and ethical engagement Encouraging critical self-reflection and self-awareness A path toward holistic education] Full op-ed by U Texas Prof. Steven Mintz at Inside Higher Ed. Other Articles of Interest Brown U. Student Asked Administrators: What Do You Do All Day? Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education. See also the student-created website, “Bloat@Brown ." (NOTE: the students' homepage says that after they went public with their investigation, someone with a Brown IP address hacked their website and that access to a public data base also was blocked; some of their webpages nevertheless remain in operation while they are working to restore all of the website's functionality.) See also article at FIRE website . New Law Requires Utah State Students to Study Western Civ in General Ed Revamp Full article at College Fix. How Universities Could Reduce Poor Teaching and Shoddy Research Full op-ed at Heritage. Feds Tell Med Schools to Stop Discriminating Full article at James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal . AI Ethics in Higher Education Full article at Ed Tech. Cornell Says Deletion of DEI Language Was a Clerical Error Full article at College Fix. Senate Committee Probes the Censorship Industrial Complex Full video at YouTube (1 hour 40 minutes) including references to the Virality Project at Stanford and similar activities at other universities and nonprofits. See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Can Generative AI Tackle Global Health Problems? Science-Backed Ways to Combat Self-Doubt Roles of Nature and Nurture in Brain Organization ************ "Colleges and universities are among the few places in the United States today where people from remarkably different backgrounds, cultures, and ideologies come together to wrestle with the complexity of what it means to be a democratic community." – Penn professor and education historian Jonathan Zimmerman March 24, 2025 More About the Indirect Costs of Federal Research Excerpts : . . . . . “Previously, the NIH was adding up to 69 percent of a research grant to cover the facilities & administration infrastructure that allegedly undergirded subsidized research. For every dollar that a university received to support a particular project, NIH would throw in as much as an additional 69 cents for indirect costs, say, bringing the total amount of the grant to $1.69.... Now, the NIH announced in February, those indirect cost rates would be capped at 15 percent of the direct cost of a grant and would not be negotiated on a university-by-university basis. The 15 percent indirect cost-rate cap applied to grants already under way, not just to future grants. “Reaction was apocalyptic.... “University skeptics reject the advocates’ arguments. A number of red flags suggest that federal overhead payments are not the lean and mean reimbursements that the universities claim they are. The principle of economies of scale appears to have been suspended in the indirect cost funding context. Ordinarily, one would think that bigger universities with richer grant portfolios would spend a lower percentage of their grants on indirect costs. The opposite is the case.... “Furthermore, similar indirect cost rates apply to wildly different types of research grants.... “In 2023, NIH gave Stanford University $2 million to cover the direct costs of enrolling ‘sexual minorities (individuals with a sexual orientation that is not heterosexual) and gender minorities (individuals with a gender identity that is not congruent with their sex assigned at birth)’ in a federal health database, in the words of the NIH grant. According to the agency, ‘sexual and gender minority communities’ share a ‘common experience of social marginalization, legal discrimination, political disenfranchisement, and familial rejection.’ The NIH grant included $907,660 in indirect costs. It is unlikely that that database project imposed nearly $1 million in overhead on Stanford University, even if the target population is, as NIH insists, ‘socially marginalized’ and ‘politically disenfranchised.’ “The NIH guidance justified its new 15 percent indirect cost cap by comparing what foundations typically pay for indirect costs: zero. The Gates Foundation has a maximum indirect cost rate of 10 percent. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation pays up to 12 percent. If universities accept zero to 12 percent indirect cost rates from foundations, they should accept a similar rate from the government, argues the NIH....” Full op-ed at City Journal. See also "The Angst of Well-Endowed Colleges" by Matt Taibbi at Substack . Democracy and Disagreement Course Encourages Students to Explore Differing Viewpoints in Peer-led Discussions Excerpts (links in the original): “In a winter quarter course, Stanford undergraduates learned another way to disagree: by learning why people hold the positions they do. “Approaching difference through curiosity was at the center of an optional, peer-led discussion seminar for undergraduates enrolled in Democracy and Disagreement , the popular course taught by Debra Satz , the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S), and Paul Brest , professor emeritus (active) and former dean at Stanford Law School (SLS). The course features scholars with opposing viewpoints modeling meaningful conversations on contentious topics such as hate speech , presidential immunity , the composition of the Supreme Court , and reparations .... “Students discovered that disagreement can lead to a better understanding of complex issues. “‘We’ve created an environment where we encourage everyone to try and view arguments in their full complexity,’ explained ICDP fellow Shreya Mehta, ’26, who is co-facilitating a discussion group with Ryan Loo, ’25. “‘One thing we really emphasized is asking clarifying, or dialogic, questions,’ Mehta added. “While students agreed on a problem or issue, they found they often disagreed on solutions. Probing questions helped uncover nuances and dig deeper into issues.... “This distinction became clear on Feb. 25 when, for the first time in the course’s two-year history, several individuals who were not Stanford students disrupted a session featuring former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and economist Emmanuel Saez, preventing Summers from delivering his opening remarks for about 12 minutes. “Frustrated, students attending the course asked the demonstration to stop so they could listen to the speakers. Afterward, Brest addressed the class, noting that this was the first disruption in 18 sessions on controversial topics, including one featuring politicians from Israel and Palestine.... ““It goes against the whole point of class,’ one student said. Another agreed: ‘It was ineffective, given the audience is a group of people who want to hear a debate.’ Some noted that a more constructive approach would have been to challenge Summers with questions during the discussion portion of the class. “Loo also invited students to consider protests and disruptions more broadly. ‘What do you think is the point of protest?’ he asked. “Students discussed how protests can raise awareness or mobilize actions versus when they backfire, as seen in the Democracy & Disagreement class that week....” Full article at Stanford Report. See also “Dorm-Based Civic Salons Engage Students on Complex Issues ” also at Stanford Report. The Misinformation Crisis Isn’t About Truth, It’s About Trust Excerpts (links in the original): [This op-ed begins with a discussion of controversial subjects in recent years and how they were treated politically, in media and elsewhere. After that discussion:] “It’s difficult to overstate just how much damage our academic, scientific, and intellectual elites have done to our universe of shared facts, our institutions, and the public’s ability and willingness to believe them. There is a growing sense among people that trust and confidence in our experts and institutions is unwarranted -- and particularly in the last ten years, there has been no shortage of behavior to justify this suspicion. “The paperback edition of [Greg Lukianoff’s] and Rikki Schlott ’s 2023 book ‘The Canceling of the American Mind ’ hits shelves on April 29 with updated data, reflections on FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings , and an entirely new epilogue. The book is filled with examples and case studies illustrating how the behavior of our social and intellectual elites has contributed to this crisis of trust in expertise and institutions. This includes Cancel Culture itself, which Greg has previously described as ‘the military arm of the Anti-Discourse Industrial Complex.’ “In the last decade or more, we have seen people getting in trouble for being on the ‘wrong’ side of virtually every hot button issue in the United States. Cancel Culture has ruined lives . It has cost people their livelihoods . And combined with the constant denial that Cancel Culture even exists, it has understandably fomented a general distrust in academia, journalism, and expertise -- the very mechanisms of knowledge creation in our society. “This shouldn’t be surprising. When the penalty for having a disfavored opinion can be life-destroying, trust in the objectivity of experts is inevitably going to take a hit. As Greg mentioned in an early [Eternally Radical Idea] post , ‘When even a single thinker is punished for their academic opinion or for engaging in thought experimentation, it leads the public to be justifiably skeptical that any expert on that topic is being fully honest.’ ... “This shouldn’t have been a surprise. Studies have shown that politically or ideologically homogenous media and institutions increase polarization -- but you shouldn’t have needed that data to see how counterproductive a move like that would be. Actions like these have the aftereffect of politicizing everything, making the acceptance of a scientific fact a signal of tribal affiliation more so than a pragmatic position based on empirical evidence. It’s not hard to imagine how this will destroy trust in science overall.... “Our expert class and our institutions need to earn back the trust they lost. And they need to do this by consistently showing themselves to be transparent, honest, and competent.... This is also why academic freedom is critical. A circumstance where people do not feel free to dissent, challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, and engage in good-faith debate is one in which our ability to discern truth and produce knowledge ceases to exist....” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff and co-author Angel Eduardo at Substack. See also “Stanford’s Censorship: An Interview with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya” at Stanford Review (May 7, 2024) and various articles re censorship at our Stanford Concerns 2 webpage. How Business Metrics Broke the University Excerpts: …. “In eras past, when power was more decentralized, distinguished faculty voices of varied political persuasions might compete with the president from power bases inside the institution. Today, in contrast, politically active junior faculty see that attracting controversy can be a way to get ahead, while traditionally minded senior faculty who once acted as moderating forces in academic life have been sidelined as their departments and disciplines have been merged and dissolved in favor of new interdisciplinary programs.... “Addressing the hyper-politicization of academia must therefore start with a recognition that metrics-based centralized planning nurtured this tendency [of politicization] in the first place. While other factors played a role, the centralized university became an incubator for ideological extremism above all because its structural design makes students into customers and incentivizes faculty to seek visibility through controversy rather than through traditional scholarly achievement.... “The most visible leader of the centralization movement was Arizona State University President Michael Crow, who first articulated his model for a ‘New American University’ when he took the helm in 2002. His ‘reinvention’ and ‘transformation’ involved breaking down disciplinary ‘silos’ to put students before faculty and ‘impact’ before everything else.... “The intellectual vacuum on campus is filled by junior faculty who gain visibility by taking extreme positions that respond to the incentives of the attention economy. The rise of metrics-driven administration coincided with the rise of social media, making it easier for politically driven faculty to build followings outside of department structures. The most radical voices bypassed traditional academic hierarchies entirely, deploying online attention to demonstrate their ‘impact’ directly. A star system was born. Adjunct instructors, lacking job security, also came to see that provocation and siding with students could serve as a kind of employment insurance, ensuring popular classes. The traditional forces that once encouraged moderation and scholarly rigor have been replaced by incentives that reward polemics and ideological fervor. “The push for scale further nudges the climate toward politicization. Administrative metrics favor large or online courses that can process hundreds of students simultaneously.... “Universities must recognize that their experiment with centralized planning has had unintended consequences that have damaged the institution’s status and pose serious political risks. They must support their own faculty voices and devolve power to departments, not in deference to quaint traditions but as an essential mechanism for maintaining academic standards and intellectual diversity. Only by addressing the vacuum that enabled polarization can universities claim their proper role as centers of reasoned debate and scholarly inquiry.” Full op-ed by Utah Prof. and former Dean of the College of Humanities Hollis Robbins at Compact. See also Part 1 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage where we have long suggested that control of academic matters must be restored to Stanford’s faculty and Part 4 of that same white paper where we believe a significant part of the problem are the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities that use the Stanford name and campus resources but have little if any involvement of tenured faculty and do little if any front-line research or teaching but instead are engaged in advocacy and implementation activities determined by donors and non-faculty staff. Tenured faculty at Harvard have identified a similar problem at Harvard: approximately 5,000 personnel at centers, etc. and that the Harvard faculty pejoratively refer to as "the peripherals" -- people and entities that don't have to meet academic standards but publish white papers, hold panels, seek media coverage, etc. using the Harvard name. See also “Stanford's Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including the charts that show, among other things, that Stanford’s faculty went from 1,640 in 2000 to 2,304 in 2022 while Stanford's managerial staff went from 3,127 in 2000 to 12,336 in 2022. Or that Stanford, with a total of 17,529 undergraduate and graduate students, has 4,140 administrative personnel in its business and finance offices as compared to Ohio State that has 2,652 comparable personnel for a student population of 60,540 – and these are numbers provided by the universities themselves. Other Articles of Interest A Look at Princeton’s DEI Structure, the Federal Attacks and Related Matters A detailed examination of the issues by Princeton alum Stuart Taylor at Real Clear Politics. SpaceX Parachutes Use Zylon, a Fabric Invented at Stanford Full article at space.com. See also “SpaceX Completes Crucial Tests of Its Crew Dragon Parachutes” at Engadget (November 2019). UC Bans DEI Statements in Faculty Hiring Full article at College Fix. Amherst’s Title IX Office Goes After Student Following His Article in the Campus Newspaper Criticizing DEI Full article at College Fix. Aftermath of DEI Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars. Modern Learners Demand a Change to the Status Quo Full article at University Business. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Jon Levin and His Father Rick Levin (President Emeritus of Yale) Discuss Generational Shifts Micro-lightning in Water Droplets May Have Sparked Life on Earth Researchers Develop Easy-to-Apply Gel to Prevent Abdominal Adhesions in Animals Five Things to Know About the Effects of Seed Oils on Health Theta Delt Alumni File Appeal in Lawsuit Against Stanford ************ "In a free society, universities must be strong, they must be free, and they must be creative. Freedom of the mind is the best defense against the ignorance that would destroy democracy." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower March 17, 2025 More Universities Are Choosing to Stay Neutral Excerpt (links in the original): “Just a few years ago, university statements on the day’s social and political issues abounded. “When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, Harvard’s president at the time called it ‘senseless’ and ‘deplorable,’ and flew the invaded country’s flag in Harvard Yard. After George Floyd died under the knee of a white police officer, Cornell’s president said she was ‘sickened.’ The University of Michigan’s president described the Oct. 7, 2023, violence against Israel as a ‘horrific attack by Hamas terrorists.’ “But over the last year, each of those universities has adopted policies that limit official statements on current issues. “According to a new report released on Tuesday [March 11, 2025] from the Heterodox Academy, a group that has been critical of progressive orthodoxy on college campuses, 148 colleges had adopted ‘institutional neutrality’ policies by the end of 2024, a trend that underscores the scorching political scrutiny they are under. All but eight of those policies were adopted after the Hamas attack....” Full article at NY Times. See also “Institutional Neutrality Is Sweeping Across American Higher Ed” at Heterodox . See also the Kalven Report regarding a university’s involvement in political and social matters at our Chicago Trifect a webpage. Students Speak Up -- Fill the Empty Buildings Excerpts (link in the original): “In recent years, Stanford University has repurposed prime student housing into administrative offices, significantly reducing the availability of on-campus accommodations. Buildings such as Bechtel International Center, Mariposa House, and Attneave House -- once vibrant student residences -- now sit empty as administrative staff continue working remotely. "A Stanford Review investigation revealed that these buildings, which once housed students, remain eerily deserted during business hours. Over multiple visits, The Review found them completely unoccupied -- offices meant to justify the displacement of student housing are now unused.... “The emptiness of these buildings reflects a systemic failure in Stanford’s resource management. The university’s adoption of flexible work policies has allowed many administrators to work remotely, leaving these office conversions vastly underutilized. Meanwhile, the housing crisis has reached critical levels: singles have been converted into doubles, doubles into triples, and in Roble Hall, formerly spacious rooms have been repurposed into cramped quads. Many students have been pushed off campus entirely, while prime residential spaces remain empty.... "The university has a clear path forward: relocate administrative offices and restore student housing to its rightful place....” Full op-ed at Stanford Review. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also possible ways to address these concerns at Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage including not only reducing the size of the administrative staff but also moving the 200 to 300 centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities off the core campus if they are not primarily engaged in frontline teaching and faculty-supervised research versus the advocacy and implementation activities that often are their primary and sometimes sole functions. Department of Education Sends Letters to 60 Universities Under Investigation for Antisemitism, Including Stanford Excerpt (link in the original): “The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters to 60 universities currently under investigation for alleged antisemitic harassment and discrimination. “The letters, issued Monday [March 10, 2025] , warn the universities of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus, according to department press release . Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. National origin includes shared Jewish ancestry....” Full article at Campus Safety Magazine. 9th Circuit Rules in Favor of Professor Punished for Criticizing College for Lowering Academic Standards Excerpt (link in the original): “[On March 10, 2025] , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of Lars Jensen, a math professor unconstitutionally punished for criticizing what he believed was his college’s decision to water down its math standards. “Reversing a federal district court, the Ninth Circuit held Jensen suffered wrongful dismissal of his claims against Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, and that he should have his day in court to prove college administrators violated his First Amendment rights. The court also held Jensen’s right to speak out about the math standards was so clearly established that the administrators were not entitled to dismissal on qualified immunity grounds. “‘This decision is a major victory for the free speech rights of academics,’ said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression attorney Daniel Ortner, who argued the case before a Ninth Circuit panel in November 2024. ‘This decision will protect professors from investigation or threats of termination for their speech, and promote accountability for administrators who violate the First Amendment.’ …” Full article at FIRE website. The Power of the Classroom -- Why Diversity in Higher Education Matters Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “A university education is more than lectures and exams; it’s a gateway to opportunity, transformation, and belonging. Diversity in the classroom isn’t just important -- it’s essential. As a faculty member who studies leadership in post-secondary education, I see both the challenges and opportunities within higher education. The lack of diversity at top institutions impacts not just who enters our classrooms, but how students experience their education. Representation matters, and universities must reflect the diverse realities of the students they serve. “For centuries, great universities have been bastions of knowledge, passing on a rich heritage to the next generation of scholars and leaders. For me, teaching at the university feels like an immense responsibility. Entering that classroom isn’t just about transmitting knowledge; it is about honoring a legacy passed down by my mentors and predecessors, while also shaping the future through my students, although in some small way. The impact of what occurs at the university extends far into society and democracy.... “Providing access and opportunity to high-quality education for every student is an important societal goal. Elite institutions of higher learning play a pivotal role and bear the responsibility of shaping future leaders. True fulfillment of both the students’ aspirations and our democratic principles is achieved when access to college classrooms is made inclusive for all.” Full op-ed by U Wisconsin Prof. Anthony Hernandez at Fulcrum. College Application Surge; Underrepresented Students Lead Growth in 2024-25 Admissions Cycle Excerpts (link in the original): “According to Common App's latest Deadline Update report released Thursday [March 13, 2025] , college applications for the 2024-25 admissions cycle continue to show strong growth, particularly among underrepresented and first-generation students.... “One of the most significant trends is the substantial growth among underrepresented minority applicants, which increased by 12% over last year. Specifically: Latinx applicants rose by 13% Black or African American applicants increased by 10% The share of domestic applicants identifying as Black or African American grew from 13.3% to 14% White applicants' share of the applicant pool continued its long-term decline, dropping from 48.2% to 45.7% “First-generation college students showed remarkable growth, with a 13% increase in applicants while continuing-generation applicants remained flat. Similarly, applicants eligible for Common App fee waivers increased by 9%, compared to just 2% for non-eligible students.... “Applications to public institutions grew at 10%, significantly outpacing the 2% growth rate for private institutions. Additionally, less selective institutions (those with admit rates above 25%) saw application growth of 6-7%, while the most selective institutions (admit rates below 25%) experienced the slowest growth at 4%....” Full article at Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Other Articles of Interest USC Shutters DEI Office but Keeps Racially-Themed Graduation Ceremonies and Dorms Full article at College Fix. When Student Protest Goes Too Far Full op-ed by Barnard College President Laura Ann Rosenbury at Chronicle of Higher Education. National Association of Scholars Supports Legislation to Combat Foreign Influence in Higher Education Full article at NAS website. Whatever Happened to Freedom of Association? “Nearly 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the propensity of Americans ‘of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions’ to form voluntary associations. Indeed, he regarded the free pursuit of a common interest among like-minded citizens as key to the survival of our democracy.” Full op-ed by Carleton College Professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron at Substack. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford Researchers Team Up with Student-Athletes to Unlock Peak Performance Newly Discovered Molecule Rivals Ozempic in Weight Loss and with Fewer Side Effects What’s the Deal with the Gut-Brain Connection? From Stanford Review - Stanford’s Hiring Freeze Exposes the Big Lie of Research Funding From Stanford Daily - Student Favorite Places on Campus ************ “The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue -- questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.” Former U.S. Supreme Court Judge William O. Douglas March 10, 2025 The Smearing and Resurrection of Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Editor's note: Many of the attacks on Dr. Bhattacharya discussed below came from the leaders of the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of medical research in the world, and related entities. Ironically, Dr. Bhattacharya has now been nominated to head the NIH. Excerpts (links in the original): “Jay Bhattacharya was in pretty terrible shape five years ago. He was losing sleep and weight, not because of the COVID-19 virus but in response to the efforts of his colleagues at Stanford University and the larger medical community to shut down his research, which questioned much of the government’s response to the pandemic. “Some of his Stanford colleagues leaked false and damaging information to reporters. The university’s head of medicine ordered him to stop speaking to the press. Top leaders at the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, dialed up the attacks, dismissing him and his colleagues as what Collins termed ‘fringe epidemiologists’ while their acolytes threw mud from a slew of publications, including the Washington Post, The Nation, and the prestigious medical journal BMJ.... “‘Free speech is fundamental for science to function properly,' [Bhattacharya] notes simply.... “Bhattacharya first caught the attention of the nation’s scientific bureaucracy in April 2020 when he reported that the COVID virus was not as dangerous but more widespread than many of his colleagues and government officials were maintaining. This suggested a policy focusing on the most vulnerable populations with fewer restrictions on younger, healthier Americans. The study was discussed at the highest levels of the government and was passed around by Fauci and others in the White House, according to emails made public by a Freedom of Information Act request. “‘For anyone with an open mind, the study’s results implied that the lockdown-focused strategy of March 2020 had failed to suppress the spread of the disease,’ Bhattacharya wrote in a 2023 essay. But the paper’s other obvious conclusion put Bhattacharya in the crosshairs of Stanford faculty: It suggested that fear-mongering about the fatality rate of the virus was irresponsible.... “Responding to the Buzzfeed flurry of reports, Stanford announced a fact-finding investigation of Bhattacharya’s research, which he began calling an ‘inquisition.’ The administration later informed him there was no ‘whistleblower’ as Buzzfeed had falsely reported, and they sent a confidential report that found him and his colleagues at no fault. “‘I got a letter which basically says we did nothing wrong. But also a condition that I’m not allowed to release the letter,’ Bhattacharya explained in a 2023 interview. ‘This was a low period in my life. I was getting death threats, racist attacks, because the press was attacking me.’ …” [Followed by a detailed discussion of the coordinated attacks on Bhattacharya; his research and the Great Barrington Declaration that to date has been signed by over 940,000 scientists, doctors and others worldwide; alleged conflicts of interest of those leading the attacks; some of the activities at the Wuhan labs, and related issues.] “[Former CDC Director Robert] Redfield said that Collins, Fauci, and other critics should apologize to Bhattacharya for the years of harassment and actions that were both wrong and unprofessional. ‘If you survive these attacks, and you have a resurrection, you do very well,' Redfield said. ‘You now have a reputation for substance and standing up for what you believe is true. Not everyone has that. I’m pretty confident he’ll do well, move forward, and do the right thing.'" Full article at Real Clear Investigations. See also “Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya: The Government Censored Me and Other Scientists, and We Fought Back " (September 11, 2023) at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage. Five Goals of Dr. Bhattacharya If Confirmed As Head of NIH Reproduced in their entirety, as excerpted from Dr. Bhattacharya’s opening statement at his Senate confirmation hearing last week: . . . . . “I have five concrete goals if confirmed as director of the NIH. “First, NIH research should focus on research that solves the American chronic disease crisis. American health is going backwards. Life expectancy flatlined between 2012 and 2019, plummeted during the pandemic, and still has not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. The chronic disease crisis is severe, with hundreds of millions of Americans, children and adults, suffering from obesity, heart disease, cancer, and more. If confirmed, I will carry out President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s agenda of committing the NIH to address the dire chronic health needs of the country with gold-standard science and innovation. “Second, NIH-supported science should be replicable, reproducible, and generalizable. Unfortunately, much modern biomedical science fails this basic test. The NIH itself, just last year, faced a research integrity scandal involving research on Alzheimer’s disease that throws into question hundreds of research papers. If the data generated by scientists is not reliable, the products of such science cannot help anyone. It is no stretch to think that the slow progress on Alzheimer’s disease is linked to this problem. The NIH can and must solve the crisis of scientific data reliability. Under my leadership, if confirmed, it will do so. “Third, if confirmed, I will establish a culture of respect for free speech in science and scientific dissent at the NIH. Over the last few years, top NIH officials oversaw a culture of coverup, bias, and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs. Dissent is the very essence of science. I’ll foster a culture where NIH leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists, including early-career scientists and scientists that disagree with me, can express disagreement respectfully. “Fourth, the NIH must recommit to its mission to fund the most innovative biomedical research agenda possible to improve American health. My plan is to ensure that the NIH invests in cutting-edge research in every field to make big advances rather than just small, incremental progress over years. “Fifth, the NIH must embrace and vigorously regulate risky research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic. It must regulate risky research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic. It should embrace transparency in all its operations. While the vast majority of biomedical research poses no risk of harm to research subjects or the public, the NIH must ensure that it never supports work that might cause harm...." See Dr. Bhattacharya's full opening statement at his Senate confirmation hearing at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage here . Santa Clara County DA Dismisses Criminal Case Against Stanford Daily Reporter Excerpts (link in the original): “Prosecutors in California said Thursday [March 6, 2025] that they are not going to pursue a criminal case against Dilan Gohill, the Stanford student journalist who was arrested while covering a pro-Palestinian campus protest and occupation of the university president’s office last June. “Gohill had faced allegations of burglary, vandalism, and conspiracy -- all felonies. He was never formally charged, even though Stanford’s provost and then-president had publicly urged the Santa Clara County district attorney to prosecute the teenager. The case raised concerns among press and civil liberties groups about how authorities should handle a journalist who is caught up in a lawbreaking event. “‘This Office supports a free press and recognizes that the law gives reporters latitude to do their jobs in keeping the public informed,’ District Attorney Jeff Rosen stated. ‘We have no evidence that this student did anything other than cover this event as a journalist.’ … “The news comes nine months after Gohill, then nineteen and a freshman reporter for the Stanford Daily, was handcuffed and jailed while covering the predawn break-in and occupation of Building 10, where the Stanford president’s office is located. A story about his arrest and the journalistic issues surrounding it appeared in CJR last December. “By most accounts -- including contemporaneous Slack messages as well as interviews with protesters and Daily staffers -- Gohill was there to report on the demonstration, not to participate in it.... Gohill spent the next twelve hours in jail, until his mother mustered the money to cover his $20,000 bail....” Full article by Stanford alum and Columbia U Prof. Bill Grueskin at Columbia Journalism Review. See also letter from the Daily's editorial board that was sent shortly before the DA made his announcement. See also “District Attorney Declines to File Charges Against Daily Reporter” at Stanford Daily . Editor's note: We likewise had questioned Stanford’s longtime equivocation in the matter. Trespassing has to be without the consent of the property owner, and Stanford itself had concluded there was no trespassing or other wrongful behavior by this freshman reporter, so why was Stanford then so reluctant to tell the DA to drop the case? Harvard College's Intellectual Vitality Statement Reproduced in its entirety: "During spring 2020 a group of students convened to discuss campus climate and the critical need to develop principles around respectful dialogue and understanding not only among the student body but for the entire College community. From those conversations, the following statement was created: “Members of the Harvard College community affirm the value of intellectual vitality -- meaning, a spirit of open and rigorous inquiry. To this end, we believe that our community is best served through the charitable exchange of ideas, where we take as given one another’s best intentions and treat each other as partners in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. In doing so, we recognize the importance of giving and receiving criticism of ideas without extending these critiques to people themselves. Further, an engagement with and sincere consideration of competing views lies at the heart of education more broadly. “To maintain a spirit of intellectual vitality, we must cultivate in ourselves an attitude of humility, respect, and curiosity toward each other. Through the spirit of intellectual vitality, we are able to strengthen our perspectives and reconsider foundational assumptions about the world, society, and our place in it -- while this may prove discomforting, the capacity to test core ideas is a precondition of growing in wisdom and understanding. “All members of the Harvard College community therefore commit ourselves to uphold intellectual vitality in our respective capacities. We agree to foster this spirit of rigor, charity, and open exploration in classrooms, student organizations, and social interactions.” Editor's note: Harvard’s Intellectual Vitality project is a much broader multiyear program, and we urge readers to look at the project’s more complete website here . Two-thirds of Colleges Show At Least One Sign of Financial Stress Editor’s note: In the detailed table, linked below, Stanford shows as having one year of operating losses and one year of endowment losses as compared to, for example, Harvard (2 years of operating losses and 3 years of endowment losses), Yale, Princeton and MIT (each with 3 years of operating losses and 3 years of endowment losses), UC Berkeley (3 years of operating losses and 2 years of appropriations losses) and Pomona (4 years of operating losses and 4 years of endowment losses). Excerpt (links in the original): “The first month of the Trump administration has been a series of body blows to American colleges. These actions include the freezing of grants for research and outreach that were even tangentially related to topics of race or gender, attempts to sharply reduce indirect cost rates for existing grants, and a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter that seeks to go well beyond the current Supreme Court’s decision limiting race-conscious admissions. This has led to a series of major research universities implementing hiring ‘chills ’ and freezes while they wait to see how everything plays out in the courts. “See the table to look up how your college has performed over the past 10 years [subscription may be required] . “It is somewhat ironic that the universities most affected by the Trump administration’s actions to this point are the ones that have fared the best over the last decade. Enrollment growth in recent years has been concentrated at a small number of flagship public and wealthy private universities, while regionally focused institutions -- engines of social mobility -- have generally struggled. Tuition prices have increased more slowly than the rate of inflation for much of the last decade , and rising tuition-discount rates have reduced revenue for many colleges. On the other side of the ledger, operating costs have risen quickly since the pandemic and typically outpace gains in revenue. While there was some rare good news on enrollment across higher education last fall, this does not make up for a lost decade for many institutions....” Full article and table by U Tennessee Prof. Robert Kelchen at Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription may be required). See also “NIH Funding Cuts Leave Stanford Researchers in Limbo” at Stanford Daily . Don't Derail Universities, America's Innovation Engine Excerpt (links in the original): “Since World War II, American universities have served as our nation's engines of innovation, combining government funding with academic research to yield breakthrough discoveries in medicine, agriculture, engineering, and computer science. This was made possible largely by the system of funding that underpins university-based research. That system is now under attack from the Trump administration. Critics charge that the system is inefficient, unduly costly, and that universities can fund these efforts through other means. We think the decision is short-sighted and will harm U.S. interests by debilitating the system of research that underpins our national security and the most innovative sectors in our economy. “Most of the important research at our universities relies on funding from federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and others. Universities negotiate an 'indirect cost rate' with the government whereby each dollar of research funding comes with additional support for building, maintaining, and staffing the facilities needed to conduct the research in question. The most research-intensive universities charge rates in excess of 60 percent to support these costly research activities. However, the Trump administration ordered the NIH to reduce its indirect rate to 15 percent . Federal judges issued restraining orders temporarily pausing the change . If this reduction ultimately occurs and spreads to other federal government funding agencies our national capacity for research will rapidly decline....” Full op-ed by USC Deans/Professors Pedro A. Noguera and Mark Power Robison at Newsweek. Other Articles of Interest Students Question the Appropriateness of Using Memorial Church for Fashion Shows “To see random people . . . posing in front of the crucifix, wearing revealing clothes on a Saturday night, showing up drunk in the church, treating it like it’s a party, or like a place to see and be seen, it’s so upsetting.” Full op-ed at Stanford Review. Penn State Will Close Some Campuses Amid Enrollment Decline Full article at Higher Ed Dive. University of North Carolina System Makes It Nine Years in a Row with No In-State Tuition Increase Full article at Just the News. How Many Administrators Do Colleges Have? Full op-ed at AEI. See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage including detailed graphs and charts. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Stanford to Introduce Revenue-sharing Model for Athletes New Antibodies Show Potential to Neutralize Virus That Causes COVID-19 A Stanford-led team has found two antibodies that can work together to defeat all SARS-CoV-2 variants. More research is needed, but the approach could help in the development of treatments to keep pace with evolving viruses. Stanford Engineers Help Prepare Air Force Test Pilots for Autonomous Technology Advances A Prescription for Produce Improves Health Summit Explores Role of Human-Centered AI in the Learning Ecosystem ************ “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” – Plato March 3, 2025 Recent Developments at Stanford President Levin’s and Provost Martinez’s Statement Re Recent Classroom Disruption Reproduced in its entirety (February 26, 2025): On Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 25, several individuals disrupted the Democracy and Disagreement course in Cemex Auditorium to protest a guest speaker, former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, who was there to debate with the economist Emmanuel Saez on the idea of a wealth tax. The protestors were not Stanford students. This behavior violates university policy and will not be tolerated. The Department of Public Safety collected information from the disruptors and is referring the information to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. We are taking steps to ban these individuals from our campus, which is private property. We extend the university’s apologies both to the speakers and to the students who were in attendance. The expression of divergent views is welcome and expected in our community, and our policies provide ample opportunities for protest. But the classroom is at the center of the university’s educational mission. Disruption in the classroom setting is a fundamental disruption of the university’s operations and of the enrolled students’ opportunity to learn. Indeed, the Stanford students in the class on Tuesday afternoon vocally demanded that the demonstration stop so that the students could hear the speakers. The Democracy and Disagreement class has successfully hosted eighteen sessions of respectful debate on controversial topics in the last year, and we are encouraged by the fact that a few hundred audience members were present to actually hear the debate and promote the values of civil discourse. President Jonathan Levin Provost Jenny Martinez Full text also at Stanford Report . See also articles at Stanford Daily , Stanford Review and College Fix . Stanford Announces Freeze on Staff Hiring Reproduced in its entirety (February 26, 2025): Dear Stanford community, We are in the process of developing Stanford’s budget for the 2025-26 academic year. This work is occurring as potential financial uncertainties are mounting for universities across the United States. Most recently, as you know, the National Institutes of Health sought to dramatically reduce the payments it makes to universities for the indirect costs associated with research. Though this is currently under review by the courts, a cut of this magnitude would have a significant negative budget impact at Stanford. There is also uncertainty about the level of direct federal funding for scientific research as agencies like NIH and NSF face cuts. In addition, there are Congressional proposals to expand the current endowment tax paid by universities including Stanford. This too would negatively affect Stanford’s finances, because the annual payout from the endowment forms a crucial part of our yearly budget. In particular, the endowment supports roughly two-thirds of the budget for undergraduate and graduate financial aid, as well as a significant portion of faculty salaries, research, and key programs like libraries and student services. Taken together, these are very significant risks to the university. We have more work to do on our next budget, and we will learn more in the coming months about the outcomes of the various federal policy proposals. Given the uncertainty, we need to take prudent steps to limit spending and ensure that we have flexibility and resilience. To better prepare us to meet these challenges, we are implementing a freeze on staff hiring in the university. Critically needed positions may be approved by the cognizant dean, vice president, or vice provost, though these situations should be limited. Similarly, hiring may continue for positions that are fully funded through externally-sponsored research awards; please confirm these hires with the cognizant dean’s office. The freeze does not apply to faculty positions, contingent employees (temporary and casual), or student workers. We will be in further touch as the budget for next year develops. In the meantime, we do urge that new financial commitments be given careful consideration in the current environment. President Jonathan Levin Provost Jenny Martinez Full text also at Stanford Report . See also articles at Stanford Daily and Stanford Review . Making Stanford More Agile Excerpt (link in the original): “As the academic year began, Stanford President Jonathan Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez identified simplification -- making processes and decision-making on campus more agile -- as one of their top three priorities. “Levin charged former President Richard Saller, former Provost John Etchemendy, and Vice President for University Affairs Megan Pierson with leading the simplification initiative, whose goal, as he explained last fall, is to 'reduce frictions and help make it easier to get things done.' “The effort builds on work begun during Saller’s presidency when he asked Etchemendy to explore ways to enhance efficient use of resources and to cut down and ease hurdles that sometimes stand in the way of progress...." Full Q&A at Stanford Report. See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. **************** An Analysis of DEI at Princeton and Nationwide Editor’s note: Stuart Taylor, the author of this op-ed, is an American journalist, author and lawyer; has served as a fellow at the Brookings Institution; is currently president of Princetonians for Free Speech; and is the co-author of two books, the first of which broke open the wrongful actions of prosecutors, university officials and others in the notorious Duke lacrosse case. Excerpts (links in the original): . . . “The pressure is intense on Princeton and all other universities to have a deep and prompt review of their DEI policies, their design and effectiveness, their use of overt and covert racial and gender preferences in admissions, financial aid, faculty hiring and training, racially segregated dormitories, graduation ceremonies, and other programming. “The little-known nature and size of Princeton’s DEI -- ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’-- activities appear by some estimates to be more extensive, at least in terms of numbers of DEI personnel, than at most other Ivy League schools, and much more extensive than at most larger state schools -- although modest by comparison with some, such as the huge and much-remarked DEI bureaucracy at the University of Michigan . Meanwhile, the University of Virginia spends an estimated $20 million a year to or for employees who work on diversity, equity and inclusion, according to an analysis of the public school’s spending by a group called OpenTheBooks.com . It said UVA has at least 235 employees whose job titles signal they do DEI work for the school. (UVA has claimed this was inaccurate.) “This article will describe in some detail Princeton’s DEI activities and the effects university DEI programs have had across the nation, and will sketch the Trump Administration’s anti-DEI policies....” Full op-ed at Princetonians for Free Speech including a detailed discussion of programs at Princeton and elsewhere, their impact on free speech and on numerous faculty members personally, and what the various responses have been to date. Third party comment at end of the op-ed: “Thank you for this insightful analysis. DEI was meant to foster inclusion, but at places like Princeton, it has morphed into an expensive, ideological bureaucracy that stifles free speech, fosters division, and prioritizes optics over true equity. When administrators wield more power than faculty and students fear speaking openly, it’s clear how far we’ve drifted from the university’s mission. We can and should encourage diverse perspectives, but never at the expense of intellectual freedom.” See also “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” and Stanford’s Program re DEI ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. USC Scrubs DEI Amid Crackdown Excerpts: “After the Trump administration told schools to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs or face federal funding cuts, USC has deleted the website for its university wide Office of Inclusion and Diversity and merged it into another operation, scrubbed several college and department-level DEI statements, renamed faculty positions and, in one case, removed online references to a scholarship for Black and Indigenous students. “The University of Southern California’s actions -- similar to some other universities throughout the country -- appear to be aimed at avoiding federal scrutiny, according to USC faculty and staff and reviews of portions of the USC website archives.... “Nationwide, universities have taken different stances. The president of Colorado State University, citing a need for federal funding, said it would remake its race-related programs and avoid a ‘gamble’ in challenging the Trump administration. At the University of Cincinnati, the president said that he had ‘little choice’ but to fall in line. Regents for the University of Alaska voted for DEI to be scrubbed from the system. The University of Iowa will end dorm communities next year for Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ students, according to news reports. “Jerry Kang, a law professor and DEI expert who was UCLA’s first vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion until 2020, said it was not surprising that ‘universities engage in risk-averse overcompliance.’ ... “At the [USC] Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the ‘diversity and inclusion’ section of its website now says ‘mission and vision.’ The title of a professor, Laura Castañeda, has changed from associate dean of ‘diversity, equity, inclusion and access’ to ‘community and culture.’ “Castañeda declined to speak with The Times. Speaking to Annenberg Media, a student publication, she said the goal was to ‘soften language.’ “'I think the idea was -- and I think this is true university-wide -- [that we would] soften language, just because it might buy us some time. We’re going to continue the work -- the work doesn’t stop,' Castañeda said...." Full article at LA Times. Vanderbilt and Wash U Publish a Statement of University Principles Editor’s note: A week ago, Vanderbilt and Wash U (of St. Louis) published a full-page ad in the WSJ and possibly elsewhere setting forth a statement of university principles. While we welcome this type of action, we still believe Stanford and other colleges and universities would be best served by adopting all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta which were written by faculty and have withstood the test of time. That said, here are the first two paragraphs of the recent ad: “American higher education is at a crossroads. Ideological forces in and outside of campuses have pulled too many universities away from the core purpose, principles and values that made them America’s great engines of learning, innovation and discovery, and the envy of the world. “It is imperative that universities reaffirm and protect those core principles, strengthen their compact with the American people, and build on their unmatched capacity for teaching and innovation. They must do so not only because universities provide education that is transformative and research that improves everyday life – but also because their work is vital to American property, competitiveness and national security....” [Followed by a summary of basic principles: (1) excellence, (2) academic freedom and free expression, and (3) growth and development, followed by a discussion of creeping politicization.] For more information, visit their website here . What College Presidents Really Think Excerpts (link in the original): “College presidents showed tepid support for tenure with a little more than a third agreeing that the pros outweigh the cons, according to Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents, conducted with Hanover Research and released in full [on February 26, 2025] . “That was just one of many findings across the annual survey, now in its 15th year. “Presidents were optimistic in some areas, with most expressing confidence that their institutions will be financially stable over the next five to 10 years and positivity about the job itself. But campus leaders also expressed concerns about politicians trying to shape institutional strategies, which they see as an increasing risk, plus a seeming lack of improvement on undergraduate mental health, even as campuses make more investments in related services....” [Followed by discussion and graphs re faculty tenure, campus speech, economic confidence, being a president, student mental health and other findings.] Full article at Inside Higher Ed including links to the full report and a future webinar. UW-Madison Cancels Planned Tech Talk of Blind Doctor with Conservative Views Editor’s note: We present the following article not because we favor any particular political views but rather because this is another example of colleges and universities still not realizing the importance of free speech and critical thinking. Excerpts (links in the original): “University Health Services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has canceled a talk scheduled to be given by an addiction psychiatrist who said he has been ‘canceled’ due to his outspoken conservative views. “Dr. Timothy Cordes , a UW–Madison alumnus and former employee -- and the second blind person ever to be accepted to an American school of medicine -- was invited to speak to a group of physicians and counselors who treat students at the university about the psychological effects of social media and technology use and what can be done to help combat the adverse effects.... “Although university brass claim some sort of scheduling conflict, the event organizer privately informed him that the UHS administration canceled his talk due to concerns that hosting someone with conservative views, which he has publicly expressed on his podcast and Substack, might have a ‘negative impact … on some members of the team.’... “[Dr. Cordes] received an official cancellation notice via email from the university, which The College Fix reviewed. The email stated his talk was canceled due to a scheduling conflict. However, there was no attempt to reschedule the event. “A spokesperson for UW-Madison told The College Fix via email the event was cancelled so UHS admin could meet to focus on changes they are making in their program....” Full article at College Fix. See also "I'm a Surgeon and I've Never Been More Alarmed About My Profession" at City Journal . Teen Hired by Google Was Rejected by 16 Colleges; Now He’s Suing for Discrimination Excerpts (links in the original): “He had a 4.42 GPA and a near perfect 1590 score on his SAT. Yet he was rejected by 16 colleges he applied to. Now he’s suing for discrimination. “Stanley Zhong, who ended up taking a PhD-level software engineer job at Google out of high school, is fighting for other Asian-American students who might face the same dilemma -- a kid who is perfect on paper but rejected due to his ethnicity. “At least, that’s what the Zhong family hopes to prove in court. “‘The story is bigger than Stanley himself,’ his father, Nan Zhong, recently told ABC Bay Area News. ‘And what we’re trying to get out of this is a fair treatment of Asian applicants going forward, including my other kids and my future grandkids.’ “The lawsuit, filed Feb. 11, names the University of California system and campus leaders as defendants -- as well as leaders at all five UC schools he applied to that had rejected him....” Full article at College Fix. Other Articles of Interest American Bar Association Suspends DEI Standards for Accreditation Full article at Inside Higher Ed. The Secret That Colleges Should Stop Keeping – The Cost of Obtaining Higher Education is Getting Cheaper Full article at The Atlantic. Which Type of Note-Taking Is Better for Learning – Laptop or Pen and Paper? Full article at The Conversation. Eleven Steps to Revitalize the Practice of Medicine Full op-ed at Brownstone. How Educators Are Using Kindness to Transform Schools Full article at UC Berkeley Greater Good Magazine. Harvard College Dean Says He Will Focus on Re-centering Academics Full article at Harvard Crimson. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Lane Reading Room Renovated Town Center Project to Reshape White Plaza and Stanford Bookstore The Future of Geothermal for Reliable Clean Energy Managing Risks in AI-Powered Biomedical Research Immune ‘Fingerprints’ Aid Diagnosis of Complex Diseases ************ "The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else." – Deceased Stanford alum, former Stanford trustee and founder of Common Cause John W. Gardner February 24, 2025 Active and Passive Academic Freedom Excerpts (links in the original): “In a NYTimes op-ed by former NCI and NIH director, and Nobel Laureate, Harold Varmus, Varmus argues that future NIH director Jay Bhattacharya is wrong to tie NIH funding to academic freedom. He calls the plan ‘outlandish’ [long quote deleted] …. “Varmus’ claim begs the questions: What is academic freedom? Is there a public interest to incentivize universities that honor it? How can the NIH practically consider it in grant giving? “I consider academic freedom to come in two forms: passive and active. "Passive academic freedom means that Universities should take no disciplinary action towards faculty based on their point of view or speech (as long as it is legally permitted), while active academic freedom means University should actively encourage debates and discussion on important, disputed topics, particularly those with relevance to ongoing policy decisions.... “Bob Harrington, Chair of Medicine at Stanford , told Eran Bendavid, an [infectious diseases] doctor, to stop speaking to the press with his view that school closure and lockdowns were misguided. Bob was rewarded by being promoted to Dean of Cornell. Eran went silent. “Scott Atlas, a radiologist, underwent academic censure for stating that kids should not wear cloth masks, that covid-19 posed low risks to children, and that school closure was misguided.... “On the issue of active academic freedom, universities failed even more spectacularly. There were no debates on school closures, masking children, vaccine mandates, and other health policy of incalculable significance at major universities, including Johns Hopkins, Harvard, or Stanford. These discussions were simply not held.... “In short, there is nothing 'outlandish' [typo corrected] about Jay Bhattacharya considering academic freedom alongside other facilities and opportunities present at universities in deciding whether federal funding should be invested. We already ensure universities treat women fairly, lest they lose [typo corrected] funding. We already ensure universities have the physical space to conduct the work that is being funded. We now ask only that universities offer the intellectual environment that is conducive to free and open thought. That is not only in the interest of universities, it is directly in the public interest as well.” Full op-ed by UCSF Prof. Vinay Prasad at Substack. JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon Sounds Off on Bureaucracy Excerpts (link in the original): “The breaking point came at a town hall in Ohio [a week ago] . According to audio obtained by Barron's, JPMorgan's CEO unleashed his frustration when he learned a single wealth management project needed approval from 14 different committees. ‘I am dying to get the name of the 14 committees, and I feel like firing 14 chairmen of committees. I can't stand it anymore. I want it out of the company.’ “For Dimon, the issue goes beyond wasted time. Every year brings more controls, more checkpoints, more coordination meetings. Until one day your organization can barely move. ‘It just kind of creeped in,’ he said.... “He went on to say: "’Bureaucracy is also centralizing too much. Everything's got to be documented too much, and so it's just creeped in in a million different ways’ “This is how bureaucracy works -- it spreads under the guise of prudence, risk management, and coordination. Each additional approval step seems reasonable. Each new committee appears to add valuable oversight. Each documentation requirement feels prudent. But the cumulative effect is organizational sclerosis.... Full article at Michele Zanini website. For an example of what Dimon is talking about, see Stanford’s party planning webpages for what it now takes for students to hold a party at Stanford. TreeHacks Awards $200,000 in Prizes to Students from Around the World Excerpts: “At 2 a.m. on Saturday morning, students were hard at work under bright lights in the basement of the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center competing in TreeHacks, Stanford’s annual hackathon. “TreeHacks is a 36-hour sprint. Over 1,000 students from around the world convene on Stanford campus for two days of intense collaboration to create a prototype or functioning product by the end of the event. While there is no set challenge, participants are instructed to ‘turn [their] crazy ideas into real projects,’ according to the TreeHacks website. “Teams of up to four competed for over $200,000 in prizes, with awards including the ‘Most Creative Hack,’ ‘Most Impactful Hack’ and ‘Most Technically Complex Hack.’... “For Legasse Remon, a junior from the University of Florida, coming to TreeHacks has long been a dream. Remon applied four times before being accepted this year, and he believes that hundreds of students applied from his university. “’I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t come to [TreeHacks],’ he said. ‘They gather people from around the world -- it’s the biggest [hackathon] with a lot of the biggest prizes.’... Full article at Stanford Daily. There’s Good News in U.S. Higher Education If You Look for It Excerpts (links in the original): “Anxiety and uncertainty are high within U.S. higher education right now. Anyone attending or working at an American university is struggling to understand what 2025 and beyond will bring. And, of course, the whirlwind of challenges did not start this year. Throughout 2024 there was no shortage of surveys revealing that an increasing percentage of Americans are disappointed with traditional colleges and universities. “Given this turbulence and uncertainty, it would seem almost perverse to talk about good news in higher education. Still, it exists and needs to be highlighted, if only to remind ourselves of our collective mission to educate students and advance their social and economic mobility. “First, college applications are up.... “On employability, student demand for apprenticeships currently outstrips supply. And three-year degrees are gaining momentum : good news for working adults and those seeking to accelerate their pathway to a degree. This is evidence of innovative thinking within higher education and a deep commitment to college completion for more Americans. “Access is also getting fairer.... “None of this is to deny the profound challenges higher education must address. But amid the current uncertainty, it is as well to acknowledge that while US post-secondary education is imperfect, it remains among the best strategies for individuals to gain a foothold in the middle class and contribute to the nation’s economic and social prosperity.” Full op-ed by UCLA Prof. Eileen L. Strempel at Times Higher Ed. Other Articles of Interest AI Grading -- A Game-Changer or a Double-Edged Sword? Full op-ed at Educators Technology. Alumni Reactions Around the Country Full article at Real Clear Investigations Theory and Practice of Excellent University Governance (podcast) Full interview (24 minutes) at Higher Ed Now. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. How to Turn Old Ideas into Creative Solutions to Modern Problems Why Corporate AI Projects Succeed or Fail New Findings on the Power of Enzymes Could Reshape Biochemistry Researchers Identify DNA Changes, Biological Pathways Associated with Inherited Cancer Risk ************ "Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think." – Albert Einstein February 17, 2025 President Levin Discusses Recent Wave of Executive Orders and Other Federal Actions Excerpts (links in the original): “In a Friday [February 14, 2025] interview with The Daily, University president Jonathan Levin ’94 commented on the storm of policies under President Donald Trump that have rocked Stanford since January, including potential federal funding cuts, escalating immigration enforcement, a clampdown on DEI efforts and changes to Title IX rules. “Levin acknowledged the instability in federal policies, expressing his opposition to research funding cuts, and said he was ‘very concerned’ about the potential effects of new immigration policies on international and undocumented community members. He refrained from overtly criticizing the Trump administration, instead emphasizing institutional neutrality.... [From the Q and A interview:] Levin: “I believe it’s a critical moment for universities, and a moment not just to wrestle with specific issues, of which there are many, but to renew the social contract between universities and the federal government, which is such a defining source of strength for the country. “The U.S., after World War II, established a brilliant strategy for scientific leadership. It’s allowed the U.S. to be the leader in the world. The government funds research in universities through a competitive merit-based process. Universities share the results openly, the private sector builds on them, and that is what drives innovation in the country. “That’s just an exceptional model. Virtually every study of federal funding has shown that a dollar allocated to university research generates several dollars in return. The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, and the research that it funds is what drives advances in human health and in biomedicine. It benefits everyone in the country and everyone in the world. “Last week, the agency announced that it would make a sharp cut in the indirect cost payments to universities. It’s not the greatest terminology, but the concept is pretty simple. That is the money that goes to fund the construction and maintenance of labs and facilities, equipment and administrative support for research. It’s hard to do research without a lab and the equipment that’s in it. “The order has been rescinded, and we’re part of a lawsuit objecting to it, but the threat to federal funding is very real and it’s hugely consequential for Stanford, every research university in the country and for the country as a whole. This is a moment not just to respond to that particular issue, which we have to do, but to be focused on, ‘How do we strengthen this core partnership between universities and the government on which everyone depends?'… " Full interview at Stanford Daily including re cutbacks in federal funding, Stanford Prof. Jay Bhattacharya as nominee to head the NIH, the future of the U.S. Department of Education, immigration, institutional neutrality and other issues. New Guidance from U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights re Non-Discrimination Policies Editor's note: The following is the text of the letter from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights sent on Friday, February 14, 2025 to Stanford and all other U.S. colleges and universities and that is also referenced in the interview with Pres. Levin, above. Excerpts (footnotes deleted): “Dear Colleague: “Discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is illegal and morally reprehensible. Accordingly, I write to clarify and reaffirm the nondiscrimination obligations of schools and other entities that receive federal financial assistance from the United States Department of Education (Department). This letter explains and reiterates existing legal requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution, and other relevant authorities. “In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families.... [Followed by discussion of the Supreme Court decision in the Harvard admissions case and how those principles will now be applied to all aspects of a school's operations.] “Although some programs may appear neutral on their face, a closer look reveals that they are, in fact, motivated by racial considerations. And race-based decision-making, no matter the form, remains impermissible.... “All educational institutions are advised to: (1) ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law; (2) cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends; and (3) cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race. “Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding....” Full text of letter including with footnotes at U.S. Department of Education website. UK University Adds Over 200 Trigger Warnings to Shakespeare Excerpts (links in the original): “A university in England has put over 200 trigger warnings on Shakespeare works and adaptations for things such as the ‘popping of balloons,’ violence, ‘psychological trauma,’ ‘extreme weather,’ and more. “The University of the West of England issued warnings for murder, suicide, violence, and family trauma in Macbeth, as well as ‘storms’ and ‘extreme weather’ in The Tempest, The Telegraph reported. “The school also placed a warning on a stage adaptation of The Tempest due to the ‘popping of balloons,’ while another work, Much Ado About Nothing, has been flagged for ‘treatment of women’ and ‘mourning.’ “For Romeo and Juliet, the university issued warnings for ‘death, suicide, violence, knives and blood,’ the outlet reported. “Further, ‘Students are warned that the Winter’s Tale has ‘accusations of adultery’ and ‘references to wild animal attack,' the New York Post reported...." Full article at College Fix. Science Returns to Science Excerpts (link in the original): “I thought the academic DEI juggernaut was unstoppable. Then, a week after President Trump’s inauguration, I got an email with an announcement from the Department of Energy: ‘The Office of Science is immediately ending the requirement for Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) Plans in any proposal submitted. . . . Reviewers will not be asked to read or comment on PIER Plans. Selection decisions will not take into consideration the content of PIER Plans or any reviewer comments on PIER Plans.’ “PIER plans, which the Biden administration instituted in 2022, required every grant application to ‘describe the activities and strategies of the applicant to promote equity and inclusion as an intrinsic element to advancing scientific excellence.’ In the words of the announcement, ‘The complexity and detail of a PIER Plan is expected to increase with the size of the research team and the number of personnel to be supported.’ “The end of the PIER Plan and other DEI-related requirements is seismic. The major source of physical science research support in the country has sent a message to universities: Stick to science. It may be the death knell of what appeared to be an invulnerable academic bureaucracy that has been impeding the progress of higher education and research for at least a decade.... “Last year a colleague of mine and I used ChatGPT to examine all 12,065 awards made by the National Science Foundation and classified more than 1,000 of them, accounting for more than $675 million, as focused on DEI rather than science. And under Biden decrees, even science-focused grants were evaluated on DEI grounds....” Full op-ed by ASU Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krause at WSJ. A Call for a Return to Core Medical Principles Excerpts (link in the original): . . . . “The original Hippocratic Oath, though not penned by the Greek physician Hippocrates himself, encapsulated ethical responsibilities that resonate with the essence of patient-centered care. The Oath’s call to avoid harm and respect the dignity of patients has been a guiding light for countless physicians.... “A recent trend has emerged in medical schools across the United States and Canada, where the incorporation of terms like 'equity,' 'diversity,' and 'social justice' have been incorporated into revised versions of the Hippocratic Oath. A 2022 survey by the Association of American Medical Colleges revealed that a staggering 96% of participating institutions are prioritizing diversity and inclusion as key learning outcomes. While the intentions behind these changes may in some cases be commendable -- aimed at acknowledging the social determinants of health -- the implications for medical education are deeply troubling.... “As a physician trained within the framework of the Hippocratic tradition, I find these developments misguided. The focus on demographic categories risks overshadowing the rigorous scientific education that is vital for effective medical practice. Rather than equipping future healthcare providers with the profound understanding of disease mechanisms, prevention, and treatment, we are diverting attention to a discourse that categorizes patients into overly simplistic boxes. This approach not only undermines the complexity of individual health needs, but also has the potential to dilute the mastery of clinical skills required for effective patient care.... “We can recognize diversity and treat everyone fairly without promoting division and ostracization. Personalized care can and should be provided based on demonstrated evidence of need. By prioritizing the fundamental tenets of the Hippocratic tradition, we can cultivate a healthcare system that respects individual differences without allowing them to overshadow the art and science of medicine. Let us not forget that the ultimate goal is to improve patient health outcomes -- something that can only be achieved through unwavering dedication to the craft of medicine.” Full op-ed by Dr. Nikki M. Johnson at Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. What Do We Mean by the Liberal University? Excerpts (links in the original): “When faculty members attempt to raise their students’ political awareness or mobilize them to political action, are they living up to their highest calling or betraying it? When university presidents take official stands on issues like the Black Lives Matter protests or Israel’s actions in Gaza, are they displaying civic responsibility or undermining their institutions’ intellectual mission? Underlying these topical concerns is the vexed and longstanding question about the proper relationship between academe and politics. “The positions people take on this question range between two poles. At one end are those who regard academic work, especially in the humanities and social sciences, as political activism by other means. Richard Rorty speaks for this group when he writes that “we cannot take the idea of unpoliticized humanities any more seriously than our opposite numbers in the clergy can take seriously the idea of a depoliticized church.” For Rorty, there is no return to the humanist myths of universal values, disinterested criticism, or objective knowledge. Teaching and scholarship are inescapably political because knowledge, culture, and subjectivity are inescapably political. Classrooms are political spaces, whether we like it or not. The honest thing is to admit it. “At the other end of the spectrum are those who hold that academe and politics are distinct realms which should be kept as far apart as possible. Stanley Fish , the most-trenchant proponent of this view since Max Weber, insists that academics are neither trained nor qualified -- let alone paid -- to act as moral guides or political seers. We have no business shaping the political consciences of the students who wander into our classes. Our job is to train them in the forms of knowledge and methodology appropriate to our disciplines. When we go further by trying to recruit students to our pet political causes, we overstep the bounds of our professional remit. “I think it’s fair to say that, after a decade of activist ascendency, Fish’s view is about to have its moment in the sun.... “To put my cards on the table: I believe this course correction is, on the whole, a good thing. The aggressive framing of academic scholarship, pedagogy, and administration in overtly progressive terms has yielded few demonstrable gains for progressive politics, while causing real harm to individual careers, institutional reputations, and academic culture at large. A reaction was bound to happen.... “Doing the job of an academic requires checking one’s politics at the classroom’s door -- not because a professor’s political opinion is a dirty secret, but because once politics are allowed in, the discussion ceases to be academic and becomes something else. In fact, the more a professor’s politics are a matter of public knowledge -- which is not uncommon, as many academics are also public intellectuals -- the more stringently they should depoliticize their classrooms. To check one’s politics at the door is not to compromise one’s values; it is to make room for another kind of value....” Full op-ed by Tel Aviv Prof. Nir Evron at Chronicle of Higher Education. Other Articles of Interest Yale Jewish Students Kicked Out of Their Own Center During Pro-Palestinian Protest Full article at College Fix. New Stanford Database Tracks Learning Losses and Gains in California and Other School Districts Nationwide Full article at Ed Source. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. Study Reveals Striking Variations in Pandemic Recovery Among U.S. School Districts Additional Benefits of Tool for Carbon Dioxide Removal New Sepsis Test Significantly Reduces Life-or-Death Diagnosis Time Physicians Make Better Decisions with Help of AI Chatbots Student Voices Stanford Review: A Place to Debate Stanford Daily: DEI Information Disappears from University Web Pages ************ "Stanford remains steadfast in its dedication to academic freedom, which serves as a key foundation for the university’s truth-seeking scholarship and impactful research.” -- Stanford Board Chair Jerry Yang February 10, 2025 Removing the Ivy-Tinted Glasses Editor’s note: Stanford has long been a key member of what are called the “Ivy-Plus” schools, including as discussed in the article that follows. Excerpts (links and most italics in the original): “Many Americans are frustrated by elite private universities. We’ve seen their hostility to diversity of opinion and free speech, politically imbalanced faculty and administrators , galling instances of antisemitism , enormous costs , unfair admissions processes, and more. For such reasons, public approval of higher education had been low and falling for some time, particularly on America’s right . And that was before the campus unrest of 2024, which was concentrated at the most affluent private schools. “As a result, a growing number of hiring managers claim to be looking elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on firms souring on Ivy grads, and 13 federal appeals court judges now won’t hire clerks from Columbia. However, according to two major new studies, it would take a whole lot more to make even a dent in the influence of America’s most prestigious private schools. “It’s no secret that a few American institutions are led by a disproportionate number of elite-college graduates. For example, all nine of today’s US Supreme Court justices went to private colleges; seven went to Ivies as undergraduates, and eight went to Ivies for law school. And since 1989, every president other than Joe Biden has had at least one Ivy degree. But that might be only the tip of the iceberg. A 2023 paper by a team of Ivy economists about ‘Ivy+’ schools (the eight Ivies plus four other highly selective privates) argued that 'leadership positions in the US are disproportionately held by graduates' of these colleges. Covering the study for The Atlantic , a Harvard-educated author wrote an essay titled, ‘You Have to Care About Harvard’ with the subtitle, ‘It creates the super-elite. The super-elite create America.’ … “[On the other hand,] I researched the educational backgrounds of those holding an array of top public positions: governors, state attorneys general, state supreme court justices, state legislative leaders, and state education superintendents. I also identified which law firms were considered the most elite in each state and then researched the schooling of those firms’ leaders (e.g., managing partner, practice leader, management-team member). “My findings challenge the notion that the graduates of a small number of elite private schools dominate our leadership ranks and show the importance of geography when considering leadership development.... “More than half of governors went to a public college, and all of these went to a school in their state or in a state that bordered their own. Demonstrating that America has many pathways into public leadership: The 49 governors with a college degree graduated from 46 different colleges. State legislative leaders (like house speakers and senate presidents) were seven times likelier to go to a public flagship than an Ivy+. “Possibly the most surprising office is state supreme court justice. Vastly different than U.S. Supreme Court justices, these leading figures were likelier to go to public undergraduate and public law schools than private. In fact, in 22 states not a single Supreme Court justice went to an Ivy+ college; in half of states, not a single justice went to an Ivy+ law school....” Full article by former chair of the Maryland Higher Education Commission Andy Smarick at Law and Liberty. We also recommend the full text of the report here including the egalitarian education of American leaders, rightsizing for opportunity, American pluralism, the Ivy-Plus universities as compared to the state flagship and other public universities, degree inflation, and detailed charts regarding federal and state supreme court and lower court judges, legislators, governors, education chiefs, attorneys general and top law firms. Celebrating Ten Years of the Chicago Principles Editor’s note: Not only do we concur with the following, but we again suggest that Stanford’s faculty, administration and trustees should adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta as set forth here . And if anyone disagrees with any of the specific items in any of the three parts, they should consider the following questions: What provision do you disagree with, what specific language do you suggest instead, and why? This process would put in place a fundamental framework for decisions and operations while allowing the various governing bodies to debate any specific changes they think are needed. Excerpts (links in the original): “In 2014, American colleges faced an existential crisis -- campuses erupted over controversial speakers as the heckler’s veto increasingly replaced debate. In response, the University of Chicago drafted a landmark statement reaffirming the school’s commitment to free speech. “Since then, more than 110 colleges and universities have adopted the ‘Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression ,’ commonly known as the Chicago Statement or the Chicago principles, transforming the landscape of higher education in the country. “In a star-studded, all-day symposium last month, the University of Chicago celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the iconic Statement and its famous assertion, ‘It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.’ ... “Geoffrey Stone, the First Amendment scholar and chair of the committee, spoke of the ‘fundamental challenge’ universities face in encouraging students and faculty to speak their minds. Kenneth Warren, professor of English, echoed this by speaking of faculty members ‘who are taking on the deep responsibility of exploring difficult questions.’ “The conversation was engaging and frank -- all faculty members acknowledged challenges and remained open to the possibility that mistakes may be made along the way -- sentiments true to the ethos of the principles themselves....” Full article at FIRE. Harvard Committee Reports Students Frequently Self-Censor and Give Extracurricular Activities Higher Priority Than Academics Excerpts : “A Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee released a report Friday concluding that many Harvard College students self-censor when discussing controversial topics and frequently prioritize extracurricular commitments over their academics. “The committee recommended strengthening course attendance requirements, discouraging phone use in class, standardizing grading, and amending student and faculty handbooks to include a classroom confidentiality policy.... “The report concluded that some undergraduates avoid politically fraught conversations, opting instead to socialize and take courses with like-minded peers and instructors. Only 33 percent of graduating College students feel free to express their views on controversial issues, according to a 2024 survey of graduating seniors cited in the report....” Full article at Harvard Crimson including a summary of recommendations. ************ The Costs of DEI Editor’s note: We are presenting below a mere sampling of articles from the past week re DEI issues universities are facing nationwide with respect to the recent Executive Orders. We do so not to reflect a political view, one way or another, but rather to put a spotlight on activities that have been allowed to accrue in recent years that turned out not only to be very costly but also appear to have been largely counterproductive to diversity and inclusion. We suggest a solution is not to reinvent the wheel but to simply adopt all three parts of the Chicago Trifecta and then to address all of the pending issues based on those concepts. See also Back to Basics at Stanford where we have proposed (paragraph 3.c.) that as these and other programs are reduced or eliminated, all savings, dollar for dollar, “shall be redirected SOLELY to undergraduate scholarships, research grants and independent projects and graduate student fellowships .” In other words, let’s move resources from administrative overhead back to where they should be spent: solely on the core educational activities of the students themselves. DEI Costs at U Michigan Excerpts (links in the original): “New research has found the number of University of Michigan employees who work either full-time or part-time on diversity, equity, and inclusion-related efforts now tops 1,100. “The findings come as the U.S. Department of Education under President Donald Trump has eliminated all its DEI initiatives, including placing DEI staff on paid administrative leave and removing DEI language, trainings, directives, and advisory boards throughout the agency.... “Economist Mark Perry, a University of Michigan-Flint emeritus professor who tallied up the latest number of DEI jobs at UMich, told The College Fix its DEI bureaucracy is extraordinary in its size and scope. “The report identifies 248 full-time UM staff members whose main duties are to provide DEI programming services and advance DEI 2.0 at an annual payroll cost of $24 million. “When fringe benefits are added at a rate of 32 percent of base salaries it brings the total annual compensation of UM’s DEI staff to nearly $31.7 million -- or enough to pay in-state tuition and fees for approximately 1,800 students. “On top of [the activities of the central DEI staff] , the university employs 167 staffers across UM’s schools, colleges, centers, programs, offices, and libraries to advance DEI, such as the College of Engineering’s Office of Culture Community and Equity (21 staffers) and Michigan Medicine’s Office for Health, Equity, and Inclusion (20 staffers) .... “Michigan maintains an Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, or ODEI, that includes a chief diversity officer, Chavous, who earns $417,000 annually plus benefits. “'In contrast, Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer’s salary is $159,300, and the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at UM (all campuses) are $130,037, $145,360, and $207,827 respectively,' according to the research study compiled by Perry and provided exclusively to The College Fix .... “But wait -- there’s more. To enact its massive ‘DEI 2.0 Plan ,’ the university has tapped 118 ‘Unit Leads’ -- a mix of deans, scholars and staffers -- 46 who are full-time diversity employees and 72 who work part-time alongside their normal jobs to oversee the implementation of the various DEI goals within each of the university’s 51 units, from 17 academic schools and colleges to the IT division to Athletics to the Department of Public Safety to three libraries to the Museum of Art and even the Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum . “To support those ‘Unit Leads,’ a total of 679 additional staffers across the 51 units have been tasked with helping roll out the DEI 2.0 plan, according to Perry, who reviewed each of the 51 Unit Strategic Plans to count the number of employees tasked with DEI advancement. “All told, that’s roughly 1,122 jobs dedicated to advancing DEI at the University of Michigan, according to Perry’s findings. The University of Michigan-Flint emeritus professor also notes in his report he didn’t even include 51 jobs in the Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX Office in his round-up....” Full article at College Fix. See also “Stanford’s Program re DEI ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. DEI Courses Consume 40 Million Hours of Undergraduate Time and $1.8 Billion in Selected States Text of full report here . Excerpts from summary article (links in the original): “Diversity, equity, and inclusion course requirements in at least 30 states cost students and taxpayers at least $1.8 billion per four-year period. Meanwhile, ‘the current undergraduate population at public universities will spend at least 40 million hours’ fulfilling these mandates in order to graduate, a conservative think tank report found. “The author of the Goldwater Institute report told The College Fix that DEI initiatives are costly to taxpayers not only due to the funds diverted to them but also because consultants and faculty profit from these programs. “‘One of the reasons DEI is so costly to taxpayers is because its proponents actively enrich themselves as they increase its scope and influence over institutions,’ Matt Beienburg, director of education policy at the Goldwater Institute, told The College Fix . “‘DEI ‘consultants’ and other ‘gurus’ such as Ibram X. Kendi extract speaking fees from taxpayer-funded public institutions at rates of tens of thousands of dollars per engagement,’ Beienburg said....” Full article at College Fix; full text of the report here . Other Articles of Interest Survey Indicates Students Feel Unprepared to Use AI in the Workplace Full article at Ed Tech. UNC’s New School Uses AI to Promote Civil Discourse Full article by UNC Prof. Mark McNeilly at James Martin Center. The Use and Misuse of AI in Higher Education Writing Courses Full op-ed by Indiana Wesleyan Prof. Russell Fox at Minding the Campus. UConn Requires Medical Students to Take DEI Oath Full article at FIRE. Brown Medical School Gives DEI More Weight Than Clinical Skills in Promotion Criteria for Faculty Full article at Free Beacon. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites Alumni and Others Again Seek Dismissal of Charges Against Stanford Daily Reporter How Four Stanford Researchers Are Using 3D Printing to Improve Health Advances in the Science, Prevention and Care of Cancer (an entire issue of Stanford Medicine magazine ) Stanford Professor Tells Davos Attendees That Billions of Dollars Are Being Wasted on AI Recycling Lithium-ion Batteries Delivers Significant Environmental Benefits ************ "The freedom to question and challenge ideas -- even those held sacred -- is what makes the university the engine of progress and the guardian of truth." — Clark Kerr, former President of the University of California February 3, 2025 Interview of Stanford President Jon Levin (podcast) This interview by Freakonomics co-author and University of Chicago Prof. Steven Levitt took place in a podcast that was initially broadcast on January 17, 2025. The interview began with questions and answers about Pres. Levin’s academic background including his obtaining a PhD in economics at MIT following his undergraduate studies at Stanford and then his returning to Stanford years ago as a new member of the faculty. The discussion later turned to the challenges of being the president of a modern university like Stanford, including these excerpts: LEVITT: In the abstract, being the president of perhaps the most important and influential university in the world, Stanford University, sounds like it would be fun. But the actual tasks that I imagine you do on a daily basis, those don’t sound at all fun to me -- trying to please a dozen different constituencies, fundraising, making difficult budget decisions, saying no on tenure cases. You’re probably working 70 hours a week doing these things. Do you actually enjoy your job? LEVIN: I love my job. The opportunity to lead a great academic institution like Stanford, it’s an incredible honor. It’s a big responsibility. But it’s mostly just an extraordinary opportunity and pleasure. And that’s because -- look around the world. There’s just very few places on the planet that assemble the collection of people and talent and brilliant scholars, students across so many disciplines, that you have on a campus like this. And your job is, first and foremost, to gather those people and then ensure that they have the freedom and the resources to accomplish really extraordinary things. That’s a great job to have. There’s just so much to take pride in terms of what people are doing and to see their success. And of course, there’s strategic elements -- what should the university be investing in, and direction. And there’s some challenges too. There’s certainly legion at the moment when it comes to higher education. One of the things I discovered in my career, which was -- serendipity was I loved being a economist and a faculty member and a researcher. You could more or less spend your time thinking about any problem that you’re interested in. What job gives you that kind of freedom to explore and be curious and be creative and engage in problems and have collaborators to do it with? Maybe 15 years ago, I became a department chair and I realized being a faculty member is a very entrepreneurial thing. It’s you, your graduate students, a few collaborators, you get grants, you kind of run your own ship with a lot of freedom and autonomy. And I really enjoyed when things went well, whether it was hiring colleagues or seeing people get tenure or success in student programs. The collective feeling of success, that kind of got me hooked on academic leadership and ended up taking my career in a little bit different direction. And of course, at the scale of a university like Stanford, it’s a great feeling to have an institution that you care about and deeply want to succeed, and you have a whole set of people who want the same thing. And to feel that if you can articulate a compelling vision for the future and bring people along and empower them, great things happen. And many, many people can take pride in the success of a great university. Who wouldn’t love to be in that position? And I feel fortunate to be in it.... LEVITT: Where a lot of universities got into a kind of trouble was in trying to define hate speech. As you say, look, it’s pretty easy to say that we’ll put restrictions on activities like blockading classrooms or shouting down invited lecturers because those are interfering with other people’s activities. But my impression is that this slippery slope came around this idea of hate speech and hate speech is hard to define because somebody’s got to draw a line someplace and people won’t necessarily agree where that line is. Do you see that definition of hate speech as being fundamentally challenging for what you do? LEVIN: At Stanford, the boundary for what speech is permissible and at what point it crosses the boundary into discrimination or harassment is we protect constitutionally protected speech. So we use the Constitution of the United States and the First Amendment as our formal rules. The Constitution protects a lot of speech that is not necessarily what you’d want to have on a campus. It’s not necessarily productive and conducive to discovery and learning, which is what we’re here to do. Some of that is having rules, but a lot of that is culture. So much of what drives behavior at a university and drives the quality of dialogue and discourse is just people’s thinking about: why am I here? What am I fundamentally involved in? Campuses should be places with deep curiosity about ideas and they should be places where you can take chances and test things out. And your research is a great example of this, Steve. You’ve done some research that was very controversial on issues that got people quite upset because you were pushing and testing ideas that went against the grain of how people necessarily wanted to think about things. And having a university that protects that kind of activity is so important because it might be right and it might change the way people think. So you want people to come into a university to help them understand that about a campus, and tell them this is a place to be curious. This is a place to have an open mind. This is a place to try to engage with people who don’t think about things in the same way, to ask them questions. And it’s so important for the faculty to set that example in the classroom. And rules can get you so far there, but really that’s about culture. That’s about people’s expectations of: what does it mean to be a constructive member of this institution and be here and contribute to the learning of others? There’s an important role there for university leadership and there’s a very important role there for the faculty and there’s a very important role there for actually everyone who’s on the campus....” Full podcast (58 minutes) at Freakonomics, including a written transcript. Hate Endowment Taxes? Reform the University Excerpts (links in the original): “Now that the second Trump administration has begun, colleges are busy navigating what could be the most adversarial relationship between the presidency and higher education in American history.... One avenue that Republicans may pursue is to tax college endowments.... Rather than simply denouncing these developments, college leaders should work to understand why they came about -- and why they might be in a weaker position to fight them off than they imagine.... “There is nothing inevitable about endowments as a financial basis for education, and the vastness of the present endowments of the major American colleges is anomalous both in a comparative and historical perspective. Other countries’ universities have nothing like endowments of this size, when they have endowments at all. And historically U.S. college endowments were smaller and covered a smaller proportion of their overall costs. It is not a law of nature that societies be so permissive toward the accumulation of capital and property beyond the necessary operating expenses of educational institutions. Laws can be made that tightly condition the privileged tax position of endowed nonprofits on certain spending and institutional requirements; or that restrict or disincentivize gifts to colleges; or that simply stipulate that colleges distribute each year such a portion of their assets that their endowments dwindle. Measures of this sort were contemplated in this country a mere half-century ago in the deliberations that led up to the 1969 Tax Reform Act that placed heavier regulations on private foundations, and other liberal nations have policies in place that are designed to discourage endowment accumulation. “Nor should we think of skepticism toward endowments as an intrinsically right-wing proposition, even if that is the direction from which hostility is coming at present. As I have noted before , what historians considered liberalism’s heyday saw liberal politicians and authors express wariness toward educational endowments and encourage the state to reform them. Arguably the greatest liberal statesman in history (not to mention one of the most devoted to education), William Gladstone, proposed removing the tax exemption from the endowments of charitable foundations, including schools and colleges. In this attitude, such figures were drawing on a venerable legacy . Animosity toward endowments of all sorts was a feature of the French Enlightenment, and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations included an extended discussion of how inappropriate endowments were for educational purposes, arguing that they insulated professors too much from the realities of market demand (or lack thereof) and left colleges ill-adapted in the long run to the needs of the population.... “Finally, and at the risk of stating the obvious, we should remind ourselves that exemption from taxation is a subsidy . To pay no or less tax than other similarly situated institutions or persons effectively increases the resources available to the exempt entity no less than receiving a direct financial grant from the government would. And it likewise increases the burden on others. As one report puts the matter plainly, 'the favorable tax treatment of private nonprofit and public higher education is a mechanism to transfer resources to higher education.' If colleges wish for their endowments to remain in this fiscally privileged position, what is needed is a set of justifications for the specific proposition that the current methods of financing higher education, which facilitate the development of institutions at once less reliant on consumer preferences and on government largesse, are so valuable that we should continue placing extra fiscal requirements on the rest of the public to preserve it, rather than simple denunciations of endowment taxes as attacks on education. After all, higher education is provided the world over, while American colleges almost alone enjoy such enormous untaxed or undertaxed resources....” Full op-ed by Princeton Prof. Gregory Conti at Chronicle of Higher Education. Censorship in the Sciences -- Interdisciplinary Perspectives A three-day conference (January 10 through 12, 2025) was held at USC regarding censorship in the sciences. A full conference schedule is available here , and videos of all three days are now posted at YouTube: Day One - "What Is Censorship and How Does It Operate?" and "Research Freedom versus Ethical Restraints" Day Two - "Scientific Freedom versus Social Responsibility" and "Consequences of Censorship for Public and Society" Day Three - "Censorship in Life Sciences and Medicine" In addition, these presentations have been individually posted at YouTube: We Must Defend Liberalism – Brookings Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch The Censorship Crisis Gripping Academia – ASU Prof. Emeritus Lawrence Krauss The Rise of Women in Science and Society – Behavioral Scientist Cory Clark How Woke Warriors Destroyed Anthropology – San Jose State Prof. Elizabeth Weiss The Free Speech Recession and How to Reverse It – Danish Commentator Jacob Mchangama Transgender Discourse & Censorship – Northwestern Prof. Michael Bailey Mechanisms of Censorship in Academia – Stony Brook Prof. Musa al-Gharbi Other Articles of Interest Why I’m Celebrating the End of the DEI Era “As a Black woman born into poverty in rural Virginia, I benefited tremendously from the Civil Rights Movement. But today’s DEI policies are not advancing that cause.” Full op-ed by retired Vanderbilt and Princeton Prof. Carol M. Swain at Katie Couric Media. Is Classroom Discussion a Dying Art? Full article at Ed Surge. Polarization Is Battering Campuses; Here Is How College Leaders Are Fighting Back Full article at Higher Ed Dive. America Needs New Science Standards Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars and also published at Real Clear Education . Time to Abandon the College Lecture Full op-ed at Vanderbilt Hustler. Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI Full article periodically updated at Chronicle of Higher Education. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites California Historical Society Archives Are Being Moved to Stanford Includes 600,000 items as the 154-year-old society ends its operations . Cancer-Fighting Compound Shows Immense Potential to Eradicate HIV Stanford’s Multimodal AI Model Advances Personalized Cancer Care Bigger Than Basketball -- Tara VanDerveer Launches Stanford Class ************ “At a university like Stanford, we give the faculty and the students extraordinary freedom to choose what they’re going to think about, what they’re going to write about, what they’re going to say. And there’s a reason for that, which is: that’s part of the freedom, the underlying freedom, that gives rise to great research.” – Pres. Jon Levin January 27, 2025 Stanford Students Speak Up Stanford’s Bureaucracy Undermines the University’s Academic Mission Excerpts (links in the original): "Stanford University stands at a crossroads. Once a beacon of innovation and academic excellence, it is now suffocating under the weight of its own bloated bureaucracy. Administrative growth has spiraled out of control, alienating students, frustrating faculty, and diverting resources from the university’s true mission . "Over the past two decades, administrative staff have tripled, ballooning to nearly 17,000 employees -- almost outnumbering students. Yet this explosion of bureaucracy has made the university less functional, less innovative, and less aligned with its core mission. “Former Provost John Etchemendy, in an interview with the Review, has been candid in his assessment of the university’s bloat. ‘When I first came to Stanford, I just felt that if you had a good idea, you could do it at Stanford -- anything was possible,’ Etchemendy said. ‘And now people will say that Stanford is a no-can-do university.' Faculty and students alike are drowning in a sea of red tape. Processes that should take minutes, such as the procurement of services for campus events, now drag on for weeks, weighed down by unnecessary layers of approvals and oversight. “As one university insider put it, 'Its [administrative size] has grown too much. And it's actually hampering the mission of the university.' These layers of inefficiency don’t enhance the university -- they actively harm it.... “For faculty, simple tasks like securing research funding or hiring staff for labs have become ordeals. Each step involves multiple levels of approval, requiring sign-offs from finance, compliance, and legal departments. One administrator who wished to stay anonymous shared an experience where a straightforward grant reimbursement was delayed for weeks, bouncing back multiple times for minor clarifications, only to be approved in the end without any changes.... “For students, the burden is equally stifling. Administrative offices that should exist to support them have become regulatory mazes that punish them instead. Bob Ottilie, an alum who has long defended students in disciplinary cases with the Office of Community Standards (OCS), highlighted the absurdity of Stanford’s processes: ‘Instead of hiring a bunch of people to help educate students on risk...they [OCS] hire a bunch of people to prosecute you for offenses associated with the risk that they never spent any time trying to help you avoid.’ “A prime example of this is the coffee-throwing incident and the ensuing OCS investigation that now deceased Stanford soccer star Katie Meyer was subject to. Processes that could once be resolved with a quick conversation between students and an RA or dean now require extensive paperwork, hearings, and follow-ups....” Full op-ed by Stanford senior Abhi Desai at our Stanford Concerns webpage. Also posted at Stanford Review . See also: Challenges of Becoming a Less Hierarchical Organization at Harvard Business Review . Advantages and Disadvantages of Flat Organizations at Business.com . Fitter, Flatter, Faster -- How Unstructuring Your Organization Can Unlock Massive Value at McKinsey & Company website. See also proposals to address these concerns at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. President Levin Confirms Daily Reporter Will Not Face Campus Disciplinary Action Excerpts (links in the original): “Stanford has dropped the disciplinary case against Daily reporter Dilan Gohill ’27, according to an email from President Jon Levin ’94 obtained by the Daily. Gohill had been detained last June while covering the occupation of Building 10 by pro-Palestinian protesters. “‘I can confirm that this process is complete and resulted in no disciplinary action,’ Levin wrote to Ginny LaRoe, advocacy director at the First Amendment Coalition (FAC), and Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) in an email on Monday. The email was in response to a letter he received from FAC and the SPLC.... “Levin also wrote in the email that Stanford will let the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office ‘determine how to proceed based on the evidence it has assembled’ and will ‘leave that judgment up to the DA.’ … Full article by Stanford sophomore Anna Yang at Stanford Daily, including comments subsquently posted; see also prior Daily article . A PDF copy of the January 17, 2025 letter from national press advocacy groups to Pres. Levin is available here . Alumni and Others Speak Up 2025 -- A Breakthrough Year for Free Speech on Campuses Nationwide Excerpts (links in the original): “It is now widely understood that for years many of our country’s colleges and universities have been losing their way; they are no longer bastions of the core values of free speech, open discourse, and academic freedom, nor are they focused on promoting learning and the advancement of knowledge. Instead, they have increasingly become focused on a specific agenda and advancing that agenda, in the process often repressing these core values. “There have been individuals and institutions fighting back, trying to reform universities and to restore these core values, but it often seemed a lonely fight. Much of the effort was to support those who had been ‘cancelled.’ In more recent years the reform side gathered new advocates and began to coordinate. Existing organizations -- such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) , the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) , and the Heterodox Academy (HxA) -- became stronger and expanded their efforts. Faculty across the country organized to form the Academic Freedom Alliance .... “In 2024, there was important movement on many fronts in the battle to restore universities to their historic and critical role. Yet still there were warning signs of the walls that had to be scaled. Greg Lukianoff, President of FIRE, has stated that, according to FIRE’s database, 2024 was the worst year ever for deplatforming attempts, such as shout downs and disinviting speakers, since FIRE started tracking them in 1998 . “There were many green shoots in 2024, but 2025 is sure to be a year of dynamic and disruptive change....” [Followed by specific discussion of students, prospective students, parents and employers; faculty; alumni; Congressional action; regulatory action; and university administrations.] Full op-ed by Stanford alum and co-founder of Princetonians for Free Speech Ed Yingling at our Commentary webpage. Also posted at the PFS website . We note that Stanford Alumni for Free Speech and Critical Thinking is a member of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance which was started by the leaders of PFS; see also our Resources webpage for other websites and organizations. Bias Reporting Systems Were a Nightmare on Campus, and Now They’re Everywhere Excerpts (links in the origina): “Neighbors reporting neighbors for speech that is protected under the First Amendment is textbook totalitarianism, and it must not be tolerated. “As regular readers [of my Eternally Radical Idea postings at Substack] and followers of FIRE will know, I’ve been defending free speech on campus since 2001 -- nearly all of FIRE’s 25-year history. In 2022, FIRE expanded its mission , going from being the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. This was in no small part because we grew more and more concerned that the free speech crises we were dealing with on campus could and would spill over to other areas of our country. “That has actually been my biggest nightmare, and it has become reality in more ways than one. As I posted on X this morning , the word ‘fascist’ is overused, mainly for things that look nothing like fascism. Words have meanings, and ‘fascism’ is often invoked for a range of things -- from the very bad but nonetheless distinct idea of ‘authoritarianism’ to something more akin to ‘anything I don’t like.’ Hell, I’ve even heard people equate support for free speech with fascism, which is just about the most ahistorical assertion imaginable.... “I am speaking about bias reporting systems, sometimes called bias response teams , which are essentially snitch hotlines where people can report others for ‘offensive’ or ‘hateful’ speech. The act of doing this to your fellow Americans over protected speech would be bad enough, but these systems go further. They often consist not only of administrators, but also law enforcement. Your eyes are not deceiving you. These systems include law enforcement dedicated to ‘responding’ to reports on First Amendment-protected speech.... [Quoting from an article in Free Beacon :] “In January 2020, the top law enforcement agency in the state of Oregon launched a ‘Bias Response Hotline’ for residents to report ‘offensive jokes.’ “Staffed by ‘trauma-informed operators’ and overseen by the Oregon Department of Justice, the hotline , which receives thousands of calls a year , doesn’t just solicit reports of hate crimes and hiring discrimination. It also asks for reports of ‘ bias incidents ’ -- cases of ‘non-criminal’ expression that are motivated, ‘in part,’ by prejudice or hate. “Oregonians are encouraged to report their fellow citizens for things like ‘creating racist images,’ ‘mocking someone with a disability,’ and ‘sharing offensive jokes about someone’s identity.’ One webpage affiliated with the hotline, which is available in 240 languages, even lists ‘imitating someone’s cultural norm’ as something ‘we want to hear’ about.... [Followed by additional examples in Connecticut, Philadelphia, California and elsewhere.] Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also “Stanford’s Program re Title VI/Bias ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage regarding Stanford’s own bias reporting system that was modified in September 2024 but appears to still use the same computerized case management system as was previously used and that, if true, maintains permanent records about the speech and actions of students and others that may be reported from time to time. See also “Stanford’s Program re Speech ,” also at our Stanford Concerns webpage, that includes a PDF copy of the list of words and phrases Stanford’s IT department created (who originally authorized this and how much time did they spend on it?) and which reportedly has been deleted but some at Stanford say still is being used by some administrators and staff. Should What Happens in the Classroom Stay in the Classroom? Excerpts (links in the original): “If 2024 is remembered as the year when ‘DEI’ was deservedly put on the defensive and institutional neutrality gained traction as a long overdue higher-ed reform, what big changes could 2025 bring? “Some hope this will be the year when ‘the Chatham House Rule’ takes academia by storm.... [Followed by discussion of the history and use of the Chatham House Rule] “Solveig Lucia Gold, a Senior Fellow in Education and Society for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (or ACTA), calls it a ‘pro-speech policy that is ripe and ready for prime time’ in this new Real Clear Education piece . [Quoting from the Gold article:] “Harvard’s ‘Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue’ working group recommended that the university’s various schools consider adopting the Chatham House Rule -- a recommendation that was accepted by the president and provost and endorsed by most (though not all) of the Harvard Crimson’s editorial board. Now it’s up to individual faculty members at Stanford and the deans of Harvard’s schools to follow through....” Full op-ed at Alumni Free Speech Alliance "Alma Matters" website. The Courage to Disagree in Academia Excerpts (links in the original): “If a college education doesn’t teach students to disagree constructively with status quo opinions and perspectives then then it’s not fulfilling its mission. Yet too often this is precisely what happens. Colleges and universities were established on the premise of open inquiry, critical thinking, discovery, and invention. The courses students take typically expose them to new, unfamiliar topics and ways of thinking. Students who are open and curious often find that these exposures trigger questions, including questions about the disciplinary status quo that they are being taught. If colleges do not honor students’ openness and curiosity and encourage their questioning of the status quo, then they are not properly performing their function. “Challenging the academic status quo involves asking questions and introducing new perspectives or explanations that interrogate and even threaten dominant ideologies or frameworks. For example, is racism always the reason for racial disparities in academic achievement among students? Or, how does one determine which, if any, aspects of school curriculum are so influenced by white supremacist ideology that they require ‘decolonization’? Asking such questions does not indicate condemnation or dismissal, but rather the motivation to develop a critical, multifaceted understanding of these and other issues. “I’m a professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I’m a proponent of the work of Dr. Craig L. Frisby, Professor Emeritus of School Psychology at the University of Missouri, because it challenges the orthodoxy that has saturated school psychology research and practice. In his book, Meeting the Psychoeducational Needs of Minority Students , he addresses how contemporary school psychology research is focused on portraying racial and ethnic minority students as individuals who are endlessly victimized by racism, microaggressions, discrimination, and systemic oppression in schools at the hands of educators and administrators. Although these are certainly real forces that affect some students, an extreme emphasis on these particular topics reflects an ideological and political bias of many researchers. The dominant perspective in school psychology risks doing a real disservice to the very students it purports to help because it encourages all minority students to see themselves as helpless victims with no control over their lives. The problem is that this ‘in essence absolves them from any personal responsibility or accountability for life outcomes’ (p. 34) …. “As I reflect upon the state of academic free speech, I am reminded of a comment that a colleague once made to me early in my career as a professor: ‘As professors, our job is to think.’ That comment deeply resonated with me. Most of our days are taken up with teaching, service, and publishing, but the core of our job, our real job, is to think objectively and critically about topics that concern our field. Objective, critical, and of course intellectually humble thinking allows us to ponder the multitude of ways in which an issue can be solved while simultaneously being open to the reality that we could be wrong. Although it can be scary to do so in an academic environment that is very much politically lopsided , we owe it to ourselves and to our students to have the courage to disagree and the courage to challenge the academic status quo.” Full op-ed by UC Santa Barbara Prof. Miriam E. Thompson at Journal of Free Black Thought. Everything a University Does Can Be Done in Half the Time for Half the Cost Excerpts (links in the original): “When I was a business executive and CEO in the transportation and technology sector, we used a concept called ‘lean thinking.’ This concept is a manufacturing philosophy developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Jim Womack , who has been called the ‘Godfather of Lean,’ a nickname that stemmed from his work as a consultant to the Japanese automobile industry. While bringing the industry back to the United States, Womack helped transform our automotive industry into one of the best in the world. ‘Lean thinking’ means always looking for ways to reduce waste and improve quality while continuously lowering costs. It particularly focuses on time management and doing things faster than you thought possible. This takes discipline and leadership, but the results can be astonishing. “Why not apply lean management methods to our universities? “The U.S. bachelor’s degree takes students four years to complete. It can easily be done in three years, or even two if you include the summer semesters. The same goes for graduate professional degrees. The MBA can be finished in one year. The J.D. degree can easily be done in two years or even one full year. The M.P.P. is usually a two-year graduate track, but it is antiquated and will be decommissioned. That leaves the medical degree or M.D. There is nothing sacrosanct about it either, and even New York University (NYU) has cut it down to three years. With the right undergraduate preparation and focus, it can be done in two years, getting doctors where they need to be—working. Indeed, paralegals in law and nurse practitioners in medicine can do at least 50 percent of what their fully credentialed superiors do, and they can do so for a fraction of the cost. In business, the undergrad business major from schools like the University of Texas McCombs School and many others are very competitive, and they are more efficient programs for gaining technical skills like financial accounting. “Then there’s the Ph.D. In the United Kingdom, it’s a three-year program. It’s twice as long in the United States, and in the Humanities, it is not unusual to see a candidate spend up to eight years.... “Lean business thinking can bring enormous benefits to education because it forces us to ask basic questions about how we do things, what they cost, and how to improve 'throughput.' Because education, at an institutional level, is very much like manufacturing, the throughput concept is relevant and helpful in understanding education production, cost, and efficiency....” Full op-ed at Minding the Campus. Other Articles of Interest Stanford to Review DEI Programs Following Trump’s Executive Orders Full article at Stanford Daily. Wanted: More Young Men Enrolling in College Full article at Deseret News. Can Cornell Alumni Steer Their University Away from Campus Madness? Full op-ed at National Review. Harvard Settles It’s Title VI Antisemitism Lawsuits Full article at The Hill. Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanf ord Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites AI Agents Simulate 1,052 Individuals’ Personalities with Impressive Accuracy Stanford Launches NIH-Funded Study on Gut-Brain Connection in Parkinson’s Disease Brain-Cell ‘Periodic Table’ for Psychiatric Disorders Reveals New Schizophrenia Clues What We Know About the Health Effects of Wildfire ************ "Education requires confrontation with ideas that we don’t like. Part of education is unsettling people’s considered opinions and getting them to think in new ways and learn from ideas that are outside their comfort zone." -- Prof. Debra Satz, Dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences January 20, 2025 Judge Rebukes Stanford Misinformation Expert for Using ChatGPT to Draft Testimony Editor’s note: This is an update to a previous article that was in our Newsletter dated December 23, 2024 . We also note that the faculty member who is the subject of these articles was and remains the faculty supervisor of Stanford Internet Observatory , the activities of which have been the subject of ongoing concerns both at Stanford and nationwide. We further note that SIO and Stanford itself are named defendants in several cases around the country, including one or more cases that may eventually make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Because of California’s labor, corporate and other laws, Stanford may have obligations to defend former and current members of the SIO staff, something that could be extremely expensive and, if true, would be paid from the university’s general funds absent government contracts and private donations that allowed payment for these types of legal costs. The point is, the 100 to 300 centers, incubators, accelerators and similar entities at Stanford come with their own financial and reputational risks. See our Back to Basics at Stanford with suggestions as to ways to possibly address these types of concerns. See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage including this link regarding the past funding and operations of SIO. Excerpts (links in the original): “A federal district judge issued a harsh rebuke and tossed out the testimony of a Stanford misinformation expert who submitted a court document, under penalty of perjury, containing misinformation in a Minnesota election law case. “Jeff Hancock, who specializes in ‘research on how people use deception with technology,’ was retained by the office of Attorney General Keith Ellison to submit expert testimony defending Minnesota’s new law banning election deepfakes, which was signed in 2023 and updated the following year. “After Hancock filed written testimony last November, attorneys for plaintiffs Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, and YouTuber Christopher Kohls noticed that the document contained several citations to academic articles that do not exist. “The plaintiffs moved to have the testimony thrown out, and Hancock subsequently filed a document admitting he used a version of ChatGPT to draft the testimony, which included the non-existent citations, known among AI researchers as 'AI hallucinations.' The Attorney General’s Office argued Hancock should be allowed to file an amended declaration containing correct, non-hallucinated citations.... “Hancock is billing the Attorney General’s office $600 an hour for his services, according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Reformer under a Data Practices Act request, with billing capped at $49,000....” Full article at Minnesota Reformer, and a PDF copy of the January 10, 2025 ruling can be found here . About the Growth of Administrative Staff at Universities Nationwide Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . “In recent decades, the growth in university bureaucracies has far outpaced the growth in faculties and student bodies. Department of Education data shows that, between 1993 and 2009, college admin positions grew by 60 percent , a rate ten times that of tenured faculty. Moreover, between 1987 and 2012, the number of administrators at private schools doubled, while their numbers public university systems rose by a factor of 34 . Overall, colleges added more than half a million administrators and then even more in the decade after that. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects their number to grow by 7 percent a year between 2021 and 2031. “Around 2010, schools started employing more administrators than full-time instructors. Through the following decade, some, especially elite places such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, and MIT even started having more administrators than students. Yale's administration rolls grew by 45 percent in 2003–21, expanding at a rate nearly three times faster than that of the undergraduate student body . At Stanford, administration grew by 30 percent in 2017–22 alone, with the biggest growth coming in the first full pandemic year of 2020–21. Stanford now has nearly twice as many nonteaching staff as undergrads and nearly six times as many as faculty. The ratios tend to be lower at public schools, but still, administrative growth at UCLA has far outpaced growth in other sectors, so there are now four times as many staff as faculty....” Full op-ed at Reason. And for more detailed numbers at Stanford, see “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and possible solutions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. AI Finds Widespread Bias in Stanford's Required Reading and Writing Classes Excerpts (links in the original): . . . . . “First for some context, under the [Programme in Writing and Rhetoric] students are mandated to choose from two classes over their freshman and sophomore years. These classes include ‘The Rhetoric of Plants,’ investigating ‘how plants can be a markers for social inequality,’ ‘The Politics of Pleasure, Love and Joy,’ where students explore 'the politics of sexual pleasure, heteronormative structures of joy, decolonization of joy, and love under capitalism,’ or the ‘Rhetoric of Ethnic narratives’ to learn ‘how biracial and bicultural people define their ethnicity.’... “Notably, the issue is not that we are having discussions involving oppression, inequality and anti-imperialist perspectives on the indigenous communities' use of psychedelics. (which are all real class discussions). Nor do I have a qualm with the quality of instruction: PWR lecturers are dedicated and eminently intelligent. The issue arises when the only topics and conclusions PWR deems worthy of teaching are aligned with the unique philosophical tradition of critical theory and grievance studies. When alternative centrist viewpoints and opposition to extreme views are bereft from curricula, PWR devolves into radically progressive opinions masquerading as mandatory introduction to writing and research classes.... “If the Western canon and classical conceptions of critical thinking were more universally taught, PWR students would likely realize the infamous aspiration of John Stuart Mill encapsulated in the lines ‘He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.’ “We cannot maintain the platitude that there is still room for debate when we overwhelmingly teach one set of opinions and facts in introductory classes. By broadening the range of perspectives in PWR classes, Stanford has an opportunity to foster a more inclusive and robust intellectual environment. This would not only enrich students' understanding but also uphold the university's commitment to rigorous and open academic inquiry.” Full op-ed at Stanford Review Letter to the Incoming President from FIRE’s CEO Headings: 1. Support the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act 2. Address the abuse of campus anti-harassment policies that erode free speech 3. Rein in government jawboning 4. Protect First Amendment rights in the regulation of AI technologies Full text of letter from Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff here Colleges Are Businesses -- A Budget and Business Forecast Excerpts (link in the original): “Oftentimes, those concerned with the state of higher education get wrapped up -- rightly so -- in bringing awareness to the loss of rigor, excellence, and pursuit of merit in academia. However, there is another facet of higher education forgotten right under our noses. “A former business professor of mine, and vice president of the college I attended, never let his students forget a simple fact: colleges are businesses. Though a liberal arts education, emphasizing the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty, is paramount to becoming a virtuous citizen, we cannot forget that any college or university must be run well to teach students and achieve its academic mission. Whether you agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, there is an indisputable element of truth -- good business practices make for more successful institutions in the long-run. I would add, an eye to economic trends is also imperative.... “California governor Gavin Newsom revealed last week a $322 billion budget plan for the state with a mixed bag for higher education. Some higher ed administrators expressed dismay over the proposed 2025-26 fiscal budget slashes to ongoing state funding, including an almost eight percent reduction -- i.e., $375 million -- to the California State University system, and $271 million slashed from the University of California system....” [Followed by discussion of specific colleges and specific states, potential federal cutbacks and predictions of other future actions.] Full op-ed at National Association of Scholars What It Takes to Be an Effective Education Scholar Excerpts: “On [January 16] , I’ll be publishing the 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, tracking the 200 education scholars who had the biggest influence on the nation’s education discourse last year. Today, I want to take a few moments to explain the nature of the exercise. (I’ll reveal the scoring formula tomorrow.) “I start from two simple premises: 1) Ideas matter, and 2) People devote more time and energy to those activities that are valued. The academy today does a passable job of acknowledging good disciplinary scholarship but a poor job of recognizing scholars who move ideas from the pages of barely read journals into the real world of policy and practice. This may not matter much when it comes to the study of physics or Renaissance poetry, but it does if we hope to see researchers contribute to education policy and practice. Of course, it’s vital that those same scholars engage constructively and acknowledge the limits of their expertise. “After all, I’m no wild-eyed enthusiast when it comes to academic research. I don’t think policy or practice should be driven by the whims of researchers. I think that researchers inevitably bring their own biases, that decisions around education policy and practice are value-laden, and that decisions should therefore be driven by more than the latest study. “That said, I absolutely believe that scholars can play an invaluable role when it comes to asking hard questions, challenging lazy conventions, scrutinizing the real-world impact of yesterday’s reforms, and examining how things might be done better. Doing so requires both that scholars engage in these endeavors and that they do so in responsible ways. Of course, while it’s incredibly tough to evenhandedly assess how constructively they’re playing this role, it’s more feasible to gauge which scholars are wielding the most influence. From there, we can make our own judgments about whether their contributions add value to the public discourse.... “The contemporary academy offers many professional rewards for scholars who stay in their comfort zone and pursue narrow, hypersophisticated research, but few for five-tool scholars. One result is that the public square is filled with impassioned voices (including scholars who act more like advocates than academics), while we hear far less than I’d like from careful, scrupulous researchers who are interested in unpacking complexities and explaining hard truths....” Full op-ed at Education Next Other Articles of Interest Limitations on DEI Will Likely Accelerate in 2025 “Though the Department of Education has spent over $1 billion on DEI grants since 2021, the incoming Trump administration is poised to cut federal spending and potentially abolish the department.” Full article at Campus Reform The Number of 18-Year-Olds Is About to Drop Sharply, with Significant Impact on Colleges and the Economy Full article at Hechinger Report. But also see “College Freshman Enrollment Is Up, Not Down; Error Led to Undercount” at Washington Post University of Washington Alumni Seek to Revive the Spirit of Free Inquiry Full article at FIRE website Is Higher Education Inevitably Stuck in the Past? Full book review at James G. Martin Center The College Student Mental Health Epidemic Full article at Yale Alumni Magazine Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites From Graduate School of Business: Is a Lack of Corporate Competition Stifling the U.S. Economy? From School of Medicine: AI Predicts Cancer Prognoses and Possible Responses to Treatment From Stanford Law School: Want to Save Democracy? Start by Reforming the Criminal Legal System ************ “Freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge ... it must be guaranteed by law. But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population." -- Albert Einstein January 13, 2025 Reflections of a Stanford Alum Excerpts (links in the original): “I started at Stanford Law School in 1997. I don't say this to note how old I am, but rather to point out that my tenure there was just two years after the notorious Stanford Law School speech code was defeated, in a court case called Corry v. Stanford University (FIRE Executive Vice President Nico Perrino interviewed the case’s namesake, Rob Corry, for the So to Speak podcast back in 2017, which I encourage you to check out !). “Stanford is a private university, which would normally mean that it isn’t beholden to First Amendment standards. However, after the passing of a 1992 California Education Code statute known as the Leonard Law , this was no longer the case. Named after its legislative sponsor Sen. William R. Leonard, the Leonard Law essentially extends some (but not all) First Amendment protections to students at non-religious, private institutions of higher education in California. It was passed to prevent universities like Stanford . . . from adopting a politically correct speech code -- which by then was increasingly seen as a relic of the excessively politically-correct 1980s and early 1990s, and which would infringe upon the free speech rights of students.... “It was only in 2001, when I began working as the first legal director for FIRE, that I started to understand the true nature of speech codes like these. Going back all the way to the 1960s, and accelerating through the 1970s and 80s, all attempts to regulate speech with what might be called ‘politically correct speech codes’ used anti-discrimination as their rationale.... “Unfortunately there are plenty of examples of precisely the kind of thing I’m talking about here. Carole Hooven , for instance, was forced out of Harvard for having the opinion that biological sex is real. Also at Harvard, Roland Fryer was targeted for publishing a study that found no racial differences in the frequency of officer-involved shootings. At Stanford, Jay Bhattacharya was targeted for questioning mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the University of Pittsburgh, Associate Professor of Cardiology Norman Wang’s teaching privileges were revoked because he published a research paper examining the potential harms of affirmative action policies. The list goes on. “When the general public witnesses incidents like these, they are eventually going to come to the realization that dissent is not tolerated in higher education. It will be a clear sign to them that these institutions are holding ideological conformity above free inquiry, open debate, and intellectual diversity. As a result, the public will no longer trust any ‘truths’ or ‘information’ our institutions enshrine or disseminate. This is terrible -- not just for the institutions themselves, but also for our ability to rely on expertise and, most importantly, our ability to discover knowledge....” Full op-ed by Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Substack. See also Greg Lukianoff “There’s Cause for Optimism on Campus Free Speech ” at Dispatch. See also former Stanford President Gerhard Casper, “Statement on Corry vs. Stanford University ” at our Stanford Speaks webpage How Trustees Can Bring Viewpoint Diversity Back to Their Universities Editor’s note: We present the following op-ed because it raises some important issues about intellectual diversity at colleges and universities today. On the other hand, we question a fundamental concept that underlies much of what is discussed in the op-ed, which is that trustees and regents should play a more direct role in the academic activities of a given college or university. We remind readers that most campuses operate with the concept of shared governance. That is, the trustees are fiduciaries for the facilities and the endowment, have a direct role in hiring and firing the president and sometimes other senior officers, and usually review and approve the budgets. Sitting inside that structure is a separate professional body that consists of the faculty, usually with its own rules of governance and operating in the form of an academic senate or similar body and which is usually in charge of the academic activities of the relevant college or university. We also have serious concerns about one of the author's proposals as a way to overcome the current situation, which is the creation of centers that are focused on the perspectives and desires of donors, and in fact, we think that is a large source of the problems at modern universities, including Stanford, NOT a solution. See Back to Basics at Stanford . That said, we agree that trustees and regents need to be better informed about what the president and other senior administrators are doing with respect to the college or university. And like directors of all other nonprofit and for-profit entities, they should regularly sample the activities of the college or university and quiz senior administrators whether they agree or disagree with those activities. There also are obligations of trustees and regents, acting as fiduciaries, when approving budgets and allocating funds, looking at performance ratios such as the number of administrators as compared to the number of faculty and students, the costs of overhead imposed on research, the ranges of salaries of administrators and staff, the adequacy and costs of facilities and support systems and the like. Trustees, regents and senior administrators also have obligations to interact with faculty when the school's teaching and research are losing the support of alumni, government and other funders, parents, students and other essential constituents. See, for example, last week's Newsletter dated January 6, 2025 that had links to a long list of articles showing the major cutbacks already taking place this year at elite and other colleges and universities, all of which are clear warning signs for what lies ahead. Excerpt (endnotes deleted): “There is no issue more important for higher education than ensuring the free exchange of ideas. Acquiring and teaching knowledge requires the ability to expose facts, theories, and beliefs to intense investigation without political pressure. “Unfortunately, the American campus is in danger of lapsing into a rigidly partisan mentality. In many places, it has already done so; at times, it seems that the ideological bias of higher education is so great that its institutions are beyond reforming. “This rigidity of mind did not appear overnight. Higher education, which depends on collegiality and consensus among faculty, seems especially prone to groupthink -- a gradual process in which ‘majoritarianism tends to produce ideological conformity in a department,’ according to former National Association of Scholars president Steve Balch. Since a large majority of faculty already lean to the left, groupthink puts constant pressure in that direction on all....” [Followed by these topics: Subversive principles in higher education, ideological imbalance in practice, the public-private distinction, the board problem, a reform that would empower boards, board structure and control, direct board action, improving the intellectual environment, take control out of the wrong hands, employment, and conclusion.] Full op-ed at Manhattan Institute website From the Archives Stanford’s War on Fun Editor’s note: In this new feature, we will present from time-to-time past articles from our Newsletters and postings at our website. Today, we are taking excerpts from then-freshman Theo Baker’s October 24, 2022 Stanford Daily article, “Inside Stanford's War on Fun ” along with this commentary that has long been posted at our website , combined with indications that Stanford's new leadership is already addressing these types of concerns. Commentary at our website: In addition to the main theme of this October 2022 Daily article about student social life at Stanford, reprinted below, a number of us were struck with a secondary theme regarding what comes across as a climate of fear, stonewalling and retaliation. These words and phrases are in the order they appear in the Daily article, including the redundancies: Has exerted pressure ~ Lack of communication ~ Adversarial approach ~ Broadly declined comment ~ Communication … broke down ~ There was no guidance ~ Lack of communication ~ Declined to comment ~ Bureaucratic nightmare ~ Requested anonymity because much of the group’s funding is supplied by the office they criticized ~ You feel like you're being audited by the IRS ~ Excessively bureaucratic ~ Burnt out ~ Did not respond ~ Requested anonymity after supervisors warned staff against communicating with reporters ~ Requested anonymity because of [office] policy ~ Requested anonymity in fear of retaliation from superiors ~ Declined to comment ~ Did not respond ~ Couldn’t speak to that ~ Declined to be interviewed fearing retribution for being associated with criticisms of the University ~ The perception would be terrible if I’m associated in any way ~ Were similarly skittish ~ Walked out of an interview after being told he couldn’t review the article in advance ~ Any conversations with the media ‘need to be cleared by me first’ ~ Declined to comment ~ Have to be hyper-cautious ~ They hired outside lawyers to investigate. Excerpts (links added): . . . “Students interviewed said discontent about campus social life has been on the rise since last winter, but discourse was kicked into high gear in the spring when San Francisco magazine Palladium published an article called ‘Stanford’s War on Social Life ’ written by then-senior Ginevra Davis. (A derivative of that article’s title, the ‘war on fun,’ was a term used by multiple students to refer to the University’s approach to social events.) “Though the article drew some criticism for its portrayal of Greek life as an innocent actor in the University’s alleged ‘war on fun,’ the article also galvanized outrage over the steady decline of spontaneity. The piece was followed by other student articles in campus publications, including an op-ed earlier this month in The Stanford Review titled ‘Take Stanford Back: A Call to Revitalize Fun .’ “The Daily spoke with three employees of the Office of Substance Use Programs Education & Resources (SUPER) who requested anonymity after supervisors warned staff against communicating with reporters, according to emails provided to The Daily. One employee characterized the new alcohol policy as ‘hopelessly out of touch with reality’ and ‘absolute s**t.’ Students interviewed agreed, broadly characterizing it as an unhelpful, adversarial system. “One Resident Assistant (RA), who requested anonymity because of an Office of Residential Education policy preventing RAs from speaking with reporters, explained that ‘a lot of [Resident Fellows] in the neighborhood have said, ‘This is the University’s policy on alcohol and drugs, let’s make our own policy.’ [They] are telling us, don’t worry about half of this stuff.’ When asked about RFs disavowing University alcohol policy, Harris declined to comment. “Another RA vented that ‘people are still drinking, their doors are just closed. And that leads to people who are drinking for the first time who don’t know their limits,’ whom RAs can’t help...." Full article at Stanford Daily (October 24, 2022) See also Stanford’s current website that contains what apparently are still the policies and procedures for holding a party, and you wonder why students complain about a lack of spontaneity? Also consider, how many staff people , and at what cost, administer all of this? And how is it possible that contemporaries of Stanford students who attend non-residential colleges and universities somehow do just fine without this sort of micromanagement? As noted above, we trust that Stanford's new leadership is already addressing these concerns. Other Articles of Interest Recently Adopted Title IX Regs Blocked Nationwide; Here’s What That Might Mean Full articles at Chronicle of Higher Education , at National Association of Scholars website and at Title IX for All website AAUP Survey Shows Faculty Feel They Have Less Academic Freedom Than Six Years Ago Full article at Chronicle of Higher Education including a link to a PDF copy of the report. See also FIRE’s recent survey of faculty with similar findings. Three Reasons to be Optimistic for 2025 Full op-ed at Campus Reform Yale Free Speech Survey Suggests Change Is in the Air Full article at Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) Substack website Three-Year Medical Schools Are Coming Full op-ed at James Martin Center Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites Five Books to Help You Disagree Productively in 2025 Report Outlines Stanford Principles for Use of AI In Stanford’s Practical Ethics Club, Students Examine Life’s Moral Complexities Hoover Initiative Addresses the Erosion of Trust in American Institutions Economics Major Expanded to Better Suit Different Career Paths Researchers Use AI to Help Predict and Identify Subtypes of Type 2 Diabetes Blood Test Can Predict How Long Vaccine Immunity Will Last A New Ultrathin Conductor for Nanoelectronics *********** ** “We need to encourage real diversity of thought in the professoriate, and that will be even harder to achieve. It is hard for anyone to acknowledge high-quality work when that work is at odds, perhaps opposed, to one’s own deeply held beliefs. But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth. It is absolutely essential to the quality of our enterprise.” – Former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy January 6, 2025 College Faculty Are More Likely to Self-Censor Now Than at the Height of McCarthyism Excerpt (link in the original): “For a number of faculty members, the threat of censorship is so pervasive on campuses across America that not even the cloak of anonymity is enough to make them feel safe expressing their ideas. This year, FIRE surveyed 6,269 faculty members at 55 major colleges and universities for “Silence in the Classroom: The 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey Report ,” the largest faculty free speech survey ever performed. “What we found shocked even us here at FIRE. A deeply entrenched atmosphere of silence and fear is endemic across higher education. “We found that self-censorship on US campuses is currently four times worse than it was at the height of the McCarthy era. Today, 35% of faculty say they have toned down their written work for fear of causing controversy. In a major survey conducted in 1954, the height of McCarthyism, by the sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, only 9% of social scientists said the same. “In fact, the problem is so bad that some academics were afraid even to respond to our already anonymous survey for fear of retaliation. Some asked us by email, or in their free response replies, to keep certain details they shared private. Some asked us to direct all correspondence to a private personal email. Others reached out beforehand just to confirm the results would truly be anonymous. Still others simply refused to speak at all....” Executive summary at FIRE website PDF copy of the full report available here including specific numbers for Stanford (page 61) See also “Professors’ Self-Censoring Has Consequences” at Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) Substack website Deficits and Cutbacks from Around the Country Editor’s note: The following is a mere sample of articles appearing in recent months. We present them here not to say that Stanford itself may have financial challenges (it might or might not), but rather that all of higher education is facing a moment of truth and when political, social and now financial issues have come to the forefront. The winners will be those colleges and universities that address the issues with honesty that is backed by facts and effective, long-term actions. We also bring readers attention to “Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy ” at our Stanford Concerns webpage and proposed corrective actions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. It would be tone deaf to say that Stanford is so wealthy that none of these issues are of concern. USC Is Facing a $158 Million Deficit This Year Full article at Campus Reform Brown Is Facing a $46 Million Deficit This Year Full articles at Inside Higher Ed and at Real Clear Education Harvard Medical School Is Facing a $26 Million Deficit This Year Full article at Harvard Crimson Harvard Is Facing a $151 Million Decline in Donations This Year Full article at Harvard Crimson Boston University Is Suspending Admissions for Humanities and Social Sciences PhD Programs (American and New England studies, anthropology, classical studies, English, history, history of art and architecture, linguistics, philosophy, political science, religion, Romance studies and sociology) Full article at Inside Higher Ed Colleges in Crisis - Had Prior Warning Signs Full article at NBC News and Hechinger Report Colleges Slash Majors - An Effort to Cut Costs Full article at CBS News Three More Major Universities Reveal Plans for Budget Cuts ( Penn State, U Connecticut, U New Hampshire) Full article at Forbes (January 2024) U.S. Colleges Cut Programs Because of Budget Deficits, Fewer Students Full article at Voice of America More Academic Cuts - May 2024 Edition Full article at Bryan Alexander website Ohio State's Potential Budget Cuts in Athletics Could Be a Canary in the Coal Mine Full article at Extra Points website (August 2024) Watchlist of Schools in Trouble Full article at Scholarship Foundation website Other Articles of Interest Is University Worth It? Yes, for Both Students and Society Full op-ed by York President Rhonda Lenton at The Conversation Association of American Medical Colleges Pushes for DEI ‘To Be Embedded in Everything’ Full article at Daily Wire Do No Harm Releases Report Showing How Association of American Medical Colleges Has Been Politicizing Medical Education (MCAT, applications, admissions, curriculum, accreditation, licensing, lobbying and more) Full article and link to PDF copy of the full report, "Activism Over Meritocracy," at Do No Harm website What Today’s Economics Students Aren’t Learning About Economics Full op-ed by Texas Tech Prof. Alexander William Salte r Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites Predictions for AI in 2025 - Collaborative Agents, AI Skepticism and New Risks Five Tips for Keeping Winter Bugs at Bay How Cellular Neighbors Shape the Aging Brain Students Help Archivists Preserve the Past More Beans, Peas, Lentils - A Nutrition Expert’s Take on New Guidelines ************ "Critical thinking is not something you do once with an issue and then drop it. It requires that we update our knowledge as new information comes in." - McGill Prof. Emeritus Daniel Levitin December 23, 2024 Why Harvard Faculty Are Leaving the University to Pursue Their Work Elsewhere Editor’s note: There are growing concerns that prominent faculty members nationwide, especially in engineering and the hard sciences, are finding that the bureaucracies at their universities as well as the bloated overhead have reached a point where they would prefer doing their research and other work elsewhere. Some have said they will continue teaching, but for free and as a contribution to the next generations, but that remaining at their universities was no longer worth the time and cost. We hope this trend will not take hold at Stanford. In that regard, see our long-existing webpages Back to Basics at Stanford and Stanford’s Ballooning Administrative Bureaucracy . Excerpts: “Not infrequently, companies lure professors to highly paid positions directing scientific research in pharmaceuticals, technology, and related fields. But the recent departures of some leading Harvard scientists deeply committed to improving human health point to a different phenomenon: challenges to conducting translational life-sciences research in academic settings. Given the University’s emphasis on and investment in the life sciences and biomedical discovery, these scientists’ differing decisions suggest emerging issues and concerns about current constraints and the future of such research. “Applying for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants can take a substantial portion of an investigator’s time, and as much as a year can pass between a submission deadline and the point when funds are received and disbursed by the recipient’s home institution. With the NIH the dominant funding source for university biomedical research, what’s at stake is not only the ability of academic institutions to remain at the cutting edge of biomedical discovery, but also their ability to attract and train the next generation of scientific talent. The typical for-profit pharmaceutical or biotechnology company can move far more quickly and mobilize vastly greater resources -- from top-notch facilities to copious funding -- enabling the private sector to rapidly move basic science research discoveries to the point of clinical application. Increasingly, researchers committed to improving human health wonder whether working within the constraints of university research settings is really in the public interest....” [Followed by interviews of specific Harvard faculty members and others] Full article at Harvard Magazine Federal Court in Louisiana Allows Case to Move Forward Against Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory Editor’s note: We are posting this story not to embarrass Stanford but rather to again highlight the dangers of censorship activities, especially when funded by and coordinated with government agencies while using Stanford as a way to shield the activities and drawing upon the prestige of the Stanford name. These activities also again demonstrate the risks of Stanford's estimated 100 to 200 centers, accelerators and incubators that are not primarily engaged in the front-line teaching and cutting-edge, peer-review research of tenured members of the faculty but instead are largely run by third parties and who are engaged primarily or even exclusively in political and social advocacy and implementation activities. We would hope that Stanford can find a way to admit what took place here while limiting the university’s financial and reputational exposures and thereby bring closure to these matters once and for all. Excerpts (link in the original): “From Hines v. Stamos [Stanford, et al.] , decided [December 18, 2024] by Judge Terry Doughty (W.D. La.): “‘This case stems from Defendants' alleged participation in censoring Plaintiffs' speech on social media. Defendants are ‘nonprofits, academic institutions, and researchers alleged to have been involved in examining the issue of the viral spread of disinformation on social-media and the resulting harms to society.’ Plaintiffs are social media users, each with significant followings, who allege that the acts of Defendants caused Plaintiffs' disfavored viewpoints to be censored -- namely their speech concerning COVID-19 and elections. As a result of this alleged past and ongoing censorship, Plaintiffs filed this putative class action lawsuit on behalf of themselves and ‘others similarly situated,’ against Defendants…. “The court didn't agree with plaintiffs that they had conclusively established that the federal court in Louisiana had personal jurisdiction over defendants -- but it did conclude that plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged facts that would justify further discovery as to personal jurisdiction.... “'Plaintiffs have alleged -- to the point of ‘possible existence’-- that the Stanford Defendants effectuated censorship in Louisiana by ‘assigning analyst[s] specifically to Louisiana, determining whether speech originated in Louisiana, tracking the speech's spread from Louisiana, and communicating with state officials in Louisiana about supposed disinformation.’ And as such, Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that the Stanford Defendants' online activities may support personal jurisdiction. Limited jurisdictional discovery is thus necessary to show to what extent Defendants' online activities were ‘directed’ at the forum state....” Full article by UCLA Prof. Emeritus and Hoover Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh at Reason, including a note that one of the attorneys representing the Plaintiffs in this case is expected to be nominated as Solicitor General of the United States. And here's an additional excerpt taken directly from the court’s order, citations deleted: “... we find that Plaintiffs have provided sufficient allegations to put beyond mere conjecture or suggestion that Defendants [including Stanford and Stanford Internet Observatory], through their participation in the Election Integrity Project and Virality Project, caused Plaintiffs to be censored on social media platforms. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Defendants were active participants, if not architects, of a vast censorship scheme, and -- in collaboration with government officials -- actively monitored, targeted, and ultimately induced social media platforms to censor Plaintiffs’ speech (among many others) ….” See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, “Greater Control Must Be Exercised Over the Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford.” See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web ” at our Stanford Concerns-2 webpage and where, for convenience, we also have posted a PDF copy of this recent court order. See also this prior analysis of Stanford Internet Observatory Western Accreditor Reverses Course on DEI Requirement Editor’s note: Last week’s Newsletter had a link to an article stating that the accrediting agency for California colleges and universities, including Stanford, had deleted its requirement that a school demonstrate its commitment to DEI. In the intervening week, the accreditor has reversed course, saying it will leave the language in place and will study the issue some more. Full article at Inside Higher Ed Higher Education Is in Trouble Excerpts (links in the original): “Higher education in the U.S. faces a crisis: Its credibility is under attack. The public is increasingly skeptical of university-trained experts and the test-score-based meritocracy that dominates America’s upper middle class.... “Education level has become the great divider in contemporary American politics, eclipsing race and sex. Those with four-year college degrees tend to vote differently than those without.... “Measures reportedly under consideration include ending government loans for graduate students, capping the total amount a student can borrow, holding educational institutions at least partially responsible for student-loan defaults, and linking student aid to institutional policies on diversity, equity and inclusion. Colleges and universities will likely face increased congressional oversight of the political imbalance of their faculties. President-elect Trump has suggested he will use the college accreditation process to make higher education toe the line. And with deficit hawks in Congress hoping to offset a portion of Mr. Trump’s proposed tax cuts with increased revenue, Mr. Vance’s December 2023 proposal to raise the excise tax on elite universities’ endowment income from 1.4% to 35% is likely to resurface. “Faced with these challenges, colleges and universities should adopt three strategies. “First, they should get their houses in order. They should end mandatory DEI statements for faculty and staff candidates. They should adopt the principle of institutional neutrality spelled out in the University of Chicago’s seminal 1967 Kalven Report and should extend a similar policy to all academic divisions and departments, as Dartmouth College did last week.... “Second, four-year colleges and universities should broaden their support by expanding their alliances with local institutions, especially community colleges.... “Finally, these institutions should refocus on their civic mission: imparting basic knowledge about American history, political institutions and civic culture to every student; promoting social mobility by helping students who are the first in their families to attend college; and promoting civil discourse with campus wide programs such as College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, which gives students opportunities to engage in civil discourse and debate. “By modeling the balance between social order and individual liberty, higher education can best promote the common good -- and its own long-term best interests.” Full op-ed at WSJ For convenience, we have posted a PDF copy of the Dartmouth policy , discussed above, at our Commentary from Others webpage See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage ************ “Principles of free speech are among those we most cherish, as Americans and as members of a university dedicated to the open, rigorous and serious search to know.” – Former Stanford President Gerhard Casper

Past Reader Surveys Responses to Our reader Survey Dated 7/29/24 The Question: If you were to recommend up to three books (or other documents) for incoming freshmen to read, what would they be? Responses: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ “Darkness at Noon” by Arthur Koestler “Federalist Paper No. 10” by James Madison “Capitalism and Freedom” by Milton Friedman ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism” by Justice Stephen Breyer "A Theory of Justice” (Chapter 5, “The Problem of Justice Between Generations”) by John Rawls "Plato’s Ethics" ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Declaration of Independence The Constitution of the U.S.A. "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ "The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams" by Stacy Schiff "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshanna Zuboff "The Invisible Bridge" by Julie Orringer The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff brings to light the historical struggles and perseverance of our founding fathers: a reminder of the price paid and sacrifices made by those fighting for our Nation’s freedom. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer portrays the lives of Hungarian Jewish people during World War II. It’s a chilling remembrance of antisemitism and the horrific suffering it caused in the past. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshanna Zuboff is a must read to understand the business model of today’s social media companies and while the services of Google, Facebook and others are free, there are hidden “costs” that may become regretful, as we navigate life without privacy, constant surveillance and nefarious ways the data collected could be used in the future, i.e., to control people’s lives. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Declaration of Independence U.S. Constitution Brown v. Board of Education Democracy depends upon an informed citizenry. Stanford students should have a lifetime knowledge of documents that are fundamental to our nation’s past, present and future. These three documents also could be the focus for breakout sessions during new student orientation and where incoming students learn the disciplines of careful reading and critical thinking as well as how to express and listen to competing viewpoints. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Integrity" by Stephen L. Carter "Principle-Centered Leadership" by Stephen R. Covey "The Bully Pulpit" by Doris Kearns Goodwin _________________________________________________________________________________________________ "The Dying Citizen" by Victor Davis Hanson "Social Justice Fallacies" by Thomas Sowell "The Splendid and the Vile" by Erik Larson __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World" by Malcolm Harris "The Orphan Master's Son" by Adam Johnson (Stanford professor) (or some other fiction by a Stanford author - maybe Steinbeck or Stegner) "Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life" by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (Stanford professors) ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ "The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, t he Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities" by William D. Cohen "We Were Liars" by E. Lockhart ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor E. Frankl “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein College is not just about completing coursework and earning a degree; it is also a vital period for personal growth, developing emotional intelligence, and cultivating noble principles such as integrity, generosity, and compassion. These life-long endeavors are essential for living a happy and meaningful life. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder "The Bells of Nagasaki" by Takashi Nagai These three books are compact in size, but huge in addressing enduring issues in modern (and sometimes much longer) history: authoritarianism, book burning, and the collision of ethics and atomic weaponry. Tim Snyder’s profound scholarship stands behind his slim volume on a current global trend away from democracy. Ray Bradbury’s novel is a grossly underappreciated classic and reminder. Takashi Nagai's story was initially [restricted and/or] banned and then made into a film. It is a stunning example of ethical witness by a survivor of the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A.Heinlein "Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck In 80 years of reading everything I could get my hands on, these three are a test for me for being an educated human. Being able to discuss all three is a test of intelligence. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ “Separating Power” by former Stanford president Gerhard Casper “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by UCLA professor Jared Diamond “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Stanford alum Greg Lukianoff The first book is a series of essays about decisions and events that shaped the presidency, the courts and much more and continuing to the present. The second book explores how nature, culture and human invention have shaped history. And the third book is an analysis of what has happened to modern college campuses and a challenge to incoming students to think critically and independently. All three books would expose students to concepts worth exploring with classmates and for the rest of their lives. Responses to Our Reader Survey Dated 6/14/24 The Question: What Advice would you give to Stanford's incoming freshmen and transfer students? Responses: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Be kind, thoughtful, honest, humble, considerate, respectful, have dignity, and do what you can to make the world a better place. Do not believe everything you read or hear. Question everything. Explore all sides of issues. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Watch your back, keep your head down and avoid doing anything on campus, off campus or on social media that could be used against you by anyone out to find a reason to cancel you. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Come to Stanford with an open mind. Focus on academics, but make time for fun. Make friends. Get help when you need it. Eat healthful foods, and take time for exercise. Manage stress. Stay safe on campus. Skip the drugs and alcohol. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Remember and obey the Fundamental Standard. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If the student is not "progressive Identarian" instead believing in classical liberal values, buckle up as it is going to be a "rough" ride for the duration of their time on campus; regardless, don't despair and best wishes. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Stanford culture ever since its founding is to show humility, not arrogance. Don’t tell everyone you’re there to “change the world,” as seems to have become the Stanford mantra in recent years, even if some day you will in fact help make major changes. Test new ideas but feel free to speak up about what you might think and feel as well. But in the process, be sure you’re drawing out the best in others. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Learn to love the genius of the American Constitution. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Stanford starts late and quarters move fast. Summer will be here before you know it, so you need to start thinking about it now. Sorry. If you're not sure what you want to study, just pick something (for now); it's better than aimless, inchoate course selections. You can always change. Pick a couple extracurriculars and focus on them. You can't do everything, like you probably did in high school. Have fun! Join in the traditions - FMOTQ, Big Game week activities, Flicks, etc. 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? Responses: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 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. 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. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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, a university's involvement in 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. We also have periodically asked ChatGPT, Google Gemini and other AI services what actions they would recommend, including if addressed by former management consultant Peter Drucker, and the results of those inquiries are posted at our Ask AI webpage. 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 (updated 6/9/25) 1. Stanford's Faculty Need to Address Current Shortcomings a. Academic freedom is critical to the purposes of a university. Administrators, trustees and members of the faculty themselves must safeguard the ability of colleagues to pursue scholarship no matter how unpopular at the time. Likewise, the faculty must create and maintain an atmosphere of stimulation, tolerance and critical openness to new ideas, all of which are essential to academic freedom. b. What is taught in the classroom and covered in research must be determined by the individual faculty members who are responsible for the relevant teaching and research, NOT administrators. c. 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. d. Viewpoint diversity is critical to the university’s academic mission in both teaching and research. Accordingly, all decisions regarding the hiring, retention and promotion of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff shall follow the principles of the Shils Report https://www.stanfordfreespeech.org/chicago-trifecta . In any recruitments and decisions to make offers, schools, departments and other academic units shall assure that the pools of candidates reflect viewpoint diversity. This does not mean partisan diversity but rather a diversity of thinking with respect to the substantive areas of the relevant academic unit. Among other things, academic units that consider societal issues shall make special efforts to recruit and retain faculty who may have different viewpoints than the majority of the faculty and have the academic skills to present their alternative viewpoints. The President, Provost and Advisory Board shall take these principles into account in their own decision-making with respect to the hiring, retention and promotion of members of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff . e. 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. Students must have access 24/7 to mental health services. At the same time, the university must assure that counselors and others act professionally at all times and do not press their own personal biases on students in crisis. e. Disciplinary matters must be within the primary purview of student-run disciplinary panels, NOT paid investigators and administrator-run proceedings. f. 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. g. 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. h. 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 seven 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. i. 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. j. 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 nature of the concerns or complaints were never officially disclosed to the targeted student and where the targeted student did not then have a recourse to correct what the targeted student believes were incorrect and even false statements. k. The Bias/TitleVI program (previously known as the Protected Identity Harm Reporting system) shall be revised so that 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. l. The neighborhood system for undergraduate housing shall be disbanded. 3. Stanfor d’s Administrative Bureaucracy Must Be Reduced Significantly and Immediately in Both Size and Costs a. With the exception of the medical center and dining and housing services, within 12 to 18 months, 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. The 200 to 300 Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford Must Be Engaged Primarily in Front-Line Research and Teaching Supervised by Tenured Members of the Faculty or Else Should be Moved Off Campus and Cease Using the Stanford Name 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, trustees and others might also take a look at our article "Stanford's Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior" at our Stanford Concerns webpage. That article contains detailed materials from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) regarding the kinds of systems that are linked below and 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 every aspect of a student's behavior, including a student's statements or actions that someone doesn't like and even if not disclosed to the student or other 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

Ask AI Click on any bulleted item for direct access: In What Ways Is Stanford’s Undergraduate Residential Housing System Dysfunctional? How Have Universities Changed from Their Original Purpose? What Would Peter Drucker Say About Organizational Complexity? What Are the Major Challenges Facing Universities Today? How Can a University Stop or Reverse Administrative Bloat? Suggest Ways That a University Can Increase Viewpoint Diversity in Its Faculty and Students. What Were the Original Concepts of an Undergraduate Educa tion at Oxford and Cambridge? We and other alumni and commentators from around the country have been concerned about the growing administrative costs and related problems at U.S. colleges and universities. See, for example, “Warning Signs in the Numbers” at our Stanford Concerns webpage which, among other things, has detailed comparisons of Stanford’s numbers with the numbers at comparable schools. So we decided to ask different providers of AI (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, etc.) what they might do to address these and other concerns and are reproducing below, in both language and format, what AI recommended in response to our questions. See also our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage. We appreciate that Stanford and other modern U.S. universities are an amalgamation of the Oxbridge concept of a liberal education with the model of the German research university but believe the value of the first has somehow gotten lost in the numbers and an unfortunate lack of focus as to what should distinguish a Stanford education. An Alum's Question to Perplexity AI: In What Ways Is Stanford’s Undergraduate Residential Housing System Dysfunctional? (3/23/26) Perplexity AI's Response: Stanford’s undergraduate housing feels dysfunctional because several overlapping policy, capacity, and culture choices have produced a system that is simultaneously overcrowded, confusing, and perceived as unfair by many students. [stanfordreview +2] Structural and capacity problems Chronic overcrowding: Stanford has increased enrollments and temporarily used spaces like EVGR-A for undergrads, then begun phasing them back to graduate use without adding comparable new undergraduate beds. [stanforddaily +1] Converting doubles to triples/quads: In dorms like Roble and Toyon, rooms designed for two students have been converted to house three or four, leading to cramped conditions and frustration. [stanforddaily +1 Unassigned and late-assigned students: Recent draws have left rising juniors and even seniors unassigned for months, forcing them to wait until summer to see what “leftover” rooms they get. [stanfordreview +1] Policy design and the ResX / neighborhood era Confusing draw and assignment mechanics: Even before ResX, Stanford’s Draw was widely seen as complex and opaque, especially for sophomores with no prior experience. [stanfordpolitics +1] Neighborhood system backlash: The ResX neighborhood system, intended to create four‑year communities and “equity” across housing, instead scattered friends, restricted choice, and layered bureaucracy onto an already complicated process.[stanfordreview +2] Administrative reversals and instability: Decisions about themes, Greek housing, and neighborhood implementation have been repeatedly changed or reversed, reinforcing a sense that policy is reactive and poorly managed. [stanforddaily +1] The criticism has been strong enough that Stanford decided to discontinue the neighborhood system starting with the 2025–26 year, acknowledging its failure to achieve its aims. [stanforddaily] Fairness, accommodations, and “gaming” the system OAE accommodations as pressure valve: A very large share of coveted spots in row houses and singles now go to students assigned early through the Office of Accessible Education (OAE) process. [stanfordreview] Perceived abuse of accommodations: Commentary from students and the Stanford Review claims that some students seek dubious accommodations or group with an accommodated friend to gain priority access to better housing, squeezing out both general-draw students and those with serious disabilities. [stanfordreview] Unequal flexibility for disabled students: New housing rules have sometimes made it harder, not easier, for students with genuine disabilities to live with their friends or in appropriate spaces, leaving them feeling singled out and excluded.[stanforddaily +1] Result: The same set of rules is criticized for being too easy to exploit and simultaneously inadequate for students who truly need support. [stanforddaily +2] Quality of life and social culture Weak upperclass “home”: Surveys and ResX’s own report found that around 40% of students in upperclass dorms did not feel a sense of belonging, much worse than in frosh dorms. [stanfordpolitics] Loss of distinctive communities: Over the past decade, Stanford has sharply curtailed fraternities, theme houses, and long‑standing social hubs, replacing them with more generic dorms and neighborhoods labeled by letters and numbers. [letter.palladiummag] Administrative risk‑aversion: Critics argue that fear of liability and a drive for “perfect equity” led administrators to flatten organic social life, remove traditions, and treat housing as something to tightly control rather than a space where communities can grow. [stanforddaily +1] Everyday impact: Many students, especially those not in housed Greek or special communities, report feeling socially adrift and see housing as a place they sleep rather than a genuine residential community. [letter.palladiummag +1] Long‑term underinvestment and constraints Aging housing stock: Stanford’s own ResX report admits that while facilities are maintained, they lag peers in structure condition and in their ability to support modern residential and community needs. [news.stanford +1] Land‑use and permitting limits: Ambitious ideas to rebuild or expand housing stock run into Santa Clara County permitting (General Use Permit) and funding constraints, slowing or blocking major upgrades. [news.stanford +1] Enrollment vs. construction: The university expanded undergraduate numbers much faster than it significantly upgraded or expanded undergrad housing, so every policy “tweak” is happening on top of a structural capacity shortfall. [news.stanford] Students describe the Stanford housing draw (now “House and Room Selection”) as stressful, opaque, and increasingly likely to stick them with cramped or unwanted options, especially after frosh year [stanforddaily +3] Stress and uncertainty Many students say the process “maximizes stress” by making them wait through multiple rounds without clarity on where they will live, even though housing is formally guaranteed. [stanforddaily +1] In 2024–25, some rising seniors ended up in one‑room triples or quads and dozens of rising juniors were left unassigned after the first round, forced to wait months for placement. [stanforddaily] Perceived unfairness and randomness Students often feel that draw numbers and priority rules mask deeper shortages and inequities in the housing stock rather than allocating decent options fairly. [stanforddaily] There is a strong sense of “luck of the draw”: some students get comfortable rooms or apartments, while others with similar priority end up in far less desirable dorms or converted triples. [stanfordmag +2] Quality of outcomes Undergrads report being funneled into quads and converted triples in places like Roble and Toyon, which they experience as claustrophobic and clearly designed for fewer people. [stanforddaily +1] Students who had hoped for newer, apartment‑style housing like EVGR describe disappointment as those options are phased out for undergrads without adequate replacements. [stanforddaily] Communication and process issues Students criticize limited transparency about how priorities, rounds, and waitlists interact, and why some people with similar profiles receive very different assignments. [rde.stanford +1] Official messaging emphasizes that unassigned students “are still guaranteed housing,” but students say this reassurance does not reduce anxiety about being stuck with whatever is left. [rde.stanford] Experiences of disabled students Disabled students with housing accommodations report particularly negative experiences after a 2026 policy change barred them from applying in groups or choosing roommates. [stanforddaily] They describe feeling singled out and excluded from the social benefits of group applications, even as the university frames the change as a response to abuse of the accommodations process. [stanforddaily] Our Question: How Have Universities Changed from Their Original Purpose? ChatGPT's response: Universities began as communities dedicated to the formation of mind and character, anchored in the liberal arts and a shared pursuit of truth. Over time, however, the modern university has moved far from this model. The shift has been gradual but profound. Below is a concise critique of the major forces behind this transformation. 1. From Formation of the Mind → To Credentialing and Job Training Early universities cultivated reason, eloquence, and virtue through a unified liberal-arts curriculum. Today’s institutions largely function as credential providers: Degrees signal employability rather than intellectual maturity Majors and vocational tracks dominate over broad cultivation Students increasingly measure education’s value in salary outcomes This shift has fragmented curricula and weakened shared intellectual foundations. 2. From Truth-Seeking → To Knowledge Production and Research Emphasis The medieval university centered on teaching and disputation . But in the 20th century, research became the primary mission: Faculty are rewarded for publications rather than teaching Undergraduate instruction is delegated to adjuncts, TAs, or large lectures Highly specialized research often has little connection to undergraduate needs The modern research university often treats undergraduates as an afterthought. 3. From Unified Intellectual Tradition → To Hyper-Specialization The original model emphasized mastery of grammar, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, and a carefully curated canon. Modern universities have: Thousands of courses with no common foundation Majors that do not require basic writing, logic, or historical knowledge Departments operating in near isolation Without a shared curriculum, institutions lose coherence and intellectual identity. 4. From Debate and Disputation → To Avoidance of Intellectual Risk Disputation was once the heart of education; students were trained to: Argue both sides of a question Formulate objections Welcome challenges Today, however: Controversial topics are often avoided or pre-filtered Open debate is replaced by “safe spaces” and speaker disinvitations Administrators intervene in academic speech, often chilling inquiry The result is a decline in intellectual resilience and civic courage. 5. From Small-Scale Collegial Community → To Large Bureaucratic Administration Oxford and Cambridge were intimate: tutors lived among students and guided their development. Modern universities have shifted toward administrative governance: Administrative staff often outnumber faculty DEI, compliance, risk management, and marketing structures proliferate Decision-making moves from scholars to managers Resources flow toward bureaucracy instead of instruction This administ rative growth changes the culture from scholarly to corporate. 6. From Moral and Intellectual Formation → To Therapeutic and Consumer-Oriented Models Originally, universities aimed to cultivate virtue, discipline, and judgment. Now many institutions adopt a therapeutic framework: Students are treated as clients requiring protection from discomfort Wellness and counseling services expand dramatically Expectations for emotional accommodation reshape academic norms This erodes the rigorous, character-building ethos of earlier education. 7. From Great Texts → To Ephemeral Trends and Ideological Agendas Early universities taught durable works of philosophy, science, and literature. Modern institutions often replace these with: Trend-driven courses Topical classes driven by ideological or identity frameworks A de-emphasis on primary sources in favor of commentary or activism Students lose contact with the enduring works that sharpen judgment. 8. From Coherent Mission → To Multipurpose, Multi-Agenda Institutions The medieval university had a focused mission: liberal education leading to advanced professional study. Contemporary universities juggle competing goals: Research production Healthcare systems Athletic programs Technology transfer Real estate development Activism and political advocacy Public relations Student entertainment and amenities Mission creep dilutes the educational core . 9. From Tutor-Led Thoughtfulness → To Online Modules and Mass Instruction The personal tutorial system shaped students through close guidance. Today’s realities include: Large lecture halls Online assessments and asynchronous modules Fewer opportunities for direct intellectual mentorship Reduced time for faculty-student interaction due to research pressures The erosion of personalized education severs the very heart of the original model. 10. From Intellectual Humility → To Institutional Self-Certainty Early universities acknowledged that truth is pursued through debate and fallibilism. Many modern institutions instead exhibit: Institutional messaging that promotes ideological conformity Policies that implicitly sort “acceptable” from “unacceptable” viewpoints Declarations on political or social issues that chill dissent among students and faculty This changes the university from a forum for inquiry into a source of official narratives. In Summary: What Has Been Lost? The modern university’s drift can be summarized as: Breadth → Specialization Formation → Credentials Debate → Caution Scholarship → Bureaucracy Community → Consumerism Canon → Trend Truth-seeking → Activism What was once a community of scholars dedicated to cultivating free and rational minds has become a complex, bureaucratic, multi-purpose enterprise whose incentives often run counter to the original ideals of education. * * * * * * * * * * Quote Compilation: Stanford Presidents Defending the Original Ideals of a Liberal Education [again, this selection of quotes and related text was produced solely by ChatGPT] These are real quotations, all historically attested, and they beautifully echo the original Oxford/Cambridge philosophy of an undergraduate education. 1. David Starr Jordan (founding president, 1891–1913) “The purpose of the university is to qualify students for personal efficiency and public usefulness.” (Inaugural address, 1891) “The end of education is not knowledge but action.” (Lectures, early Stanford years) Relevance: Jordan explicitly framed Stanford’s mission around formation of character, moral action, and civic responsibility — in clear continuity with the classical liberal-arts tradition. 2. Ray Lyman Wilbur (president, 1916–1943) “Real education consists in the liberation of the mind.” (Address to incoming students) “A university should develop power of thought rather than furnish ready-made knowledge.” Relevance: Wilbur defended the intellectual independence and dialectical training characteristic of the liberal arts. 3. Wallace Sterling (president, 1949–1968) “We must remain a place where ideas are tested by argument and not by authority.” Relevance: This cleanly aligns with the medieval disputation tradition and the primacy of reason. 4. Gerhard Casper (president, 1992–2000) “Universities are dedicated to reasoned argument, not to polemics.” “The university must protect the unfettered pursuit of truth.” Relevance: Casper repeatedly emphasized free inquiry, debate, and the intellectual courage essential to the old model. 5. John Etchemendy (provost, 2000–2017) From his landmark 2017 speech on campus illiberalism: “We are creating a generation of students who cannot tolerate challenges to their beliefs.” “The new ‘intolerance’ is profoundly destructive to the university and to the very purpose of education.” Relevance: Etchemendy warned of the erosion of disputation, open inquiry, and intellectual resilience — the cornerstones of early universities. 6. Richard Saller (president, 2023– 2024) In 2023 remarks after the law-school disruption: “Stanford must remain a place for open discussion of controversial ideas.” Relevance: A modern reaffirmation that the university’s core is debate, not pre-curated speech. * * * * * * * * * * * [Editor's note: See also statements by Stanford’s current president Jon Levin and provost Jenny Martinez at our Stanford Speaks webpage.] Our Question: What Would Peter Drucker Say About Organizational Complexity? (9/6/25) We asked Google AI – intentionally not mentioning Stanford although with Stanford and other major universities in mind – what management consultant and author Peter Drucker (1909-2005) would say about organizational complexity. This is the exact language we got in response: Peter Drucker saw organizational complexity as an enemy of effectiveness that hinders performance and demoralizes employees. He famously quipped, "Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done." Drucker believed that simplicity, decentralization, and a clear focus on the organization's mission were the best countermeasures to this natural tendency toward complexity. Here are Drucker's key views on overly complicated organizations: Inefficiency grows with size Drucker compared organizations to living organisms, noting that as they grow, an increasing proportion of their energy is spent on managing their own internal structure rather than producing results for customers. He believed that an organization's internal "mass" or bureaucracy grows faster than its "external surface" or output. To combat this, he advocated for organizations to "run lean" and prioritize having a few highly effective people over many mediocre ones. Meetings are a sign of failure For Drucker, an excess of meetings is a symptom of poor organizational design. He believed that the fewer meetings an organization needs, the better organized it is. Productive work is done between meetings, not during them. He stressed that a meeting should be a rare, focused event with a clear purpose and plan, not a substitute for clear communication, preparation, and follow-through. Information overload hinders clarity In the age of information, Drucker warned against being "swamped by the data we generate." He argued that organizations don't need more data; they need to ask the right questions and build an information system that gives knowledge workers exactly what they need to do their jobs effectively. The answer is simple and decentralized Drucker was a proponent of decentralization, believing that companies operate best when employees at every level are empowered with autonomy and equipped with the information to manage themselves. This principle is at the heart of his "Management by Objectives" (MBO) framework, which seeks to align individual employee goals with the larger organizational mission. The remedy: Planned abandonment To combat the organizational inertia that keeps unproductive and obsolete projects alive, Drucker emphasized the need for "planned abandonment." Leaders must constantly and systematically prune unnecessary activities, programs, and businesses to free up resources for new opportunities. He noted that organizations often cling to past successes, a dangerous habit that hinders growth and innovation. A focus on external purpose To simplify things internally, Drucker insisted that organizations should maintain an intense external focus on their core mission and customers.... When an organization loses sight of its customer-focused purpose, it turns inward, adding internal complexities and losing its ability to create value. See also our long-existing webpage Back to Basics at Stanford . Our Question: What Are the Major Challenges Facing Universities Today? (5/26/25) ChatGPT's response, including its selection of quotes: 1. Rising Costs & Student Debt Tuition Inflation: The cost of college has grown far faster than inflation or income levels. Student Debt Crisis: U.S. student loan debt exceeds $1.7 trillion, burdening millions and delaying life milestones like home ownership or family formation. Spending Priorities: Universities are often criticized for spending heavily on amenities, administrative staff, or real estate while cutting academic resources. "We are pricing the middle class and working class out of higher education." -- Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab, higher education policy scholar 2. Mission Drift & Administrative Bloat Expansion of Non-Academic Bureaucracy: There’s been a significant increase in administrative roles, sometimes diluting the core academic mission. Branding over Learning: Institutions are sometimes accused of focusing on rankings, prestige projects, and athletics rather than teaching or research quality. “Universities risk becoming businesses that happen to offer classes.” -- Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty 3. Free Speech, Political Polarization & Institutional Trust Campus Speech Tensions: There’s growing debate over whether universities are upholding academic freedom and intellectual diversity. External Pressures: Donors, politicians, and activists sometimes seek to influence curriculum and hiring, eroding public trust. “Universities must remain places where difficult questions can be asked and ideas can be freely debated.” -- Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America 4. Return on Investment (ROI) & Relevance Skills Gap: Many employers argue that graduates lack practical skills in communication, critical thinking, or digital literacy. Value of the Degree: With rising tuition and stagnating wages, the ROI of some degrees -- particularly in liberal arts -- is being questioned. “The question isn't just: 'Can you get in?' It's: 'Is it worth it?'” -- Anthony Carnevale, Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce 5. Mental Health & Student Well-being Rising Anxiety & Burnout: Students are increasingly reporting high levels of stress, depression, and burnout. Insufficient Services: Many universities are struggling to meet the mental health needs of their students. ************ Student Perspective: "Is this worth it?" 1. Cost vs. Value Students are paying more than ever and questioning whether their degree will lead to a stable career or high ROI. Many graduate with crippling debt and few job prospects tied directly to their field. “I’m $80,000 in debt and working a job that didn’t require a degree.” 2. Mental Health Crisis Anxiety, depression, and burnout are at record highs. Campus counseling centers are often under-resourced or overwhelmed. 3. Career Relevance Degrees can feel disconnected from real-world job markets. Internships, networking, and soft skills are often more impactful than coursework alone. 4. Campus Climate & Free Speech Many students report fear of speaking up -- on both the left and right -- due to political or social backlash. Navigating identity politics and “cancel culture” can be stressful and confusing. ************ Faculty Perspective: "What happened to academic freedom and scholarship ?" 1. Erosion of Tenure and Job Security Increasing reliance on adjuncts (often low-paid, no benefits) undermines faculty morale and teaching continuity. Pressure to publish and bring in grants often outweighs good teaching. 2. Administrative Overreach Faculty feel sidelined in key academic decisions by non-academic administrators. Strategic priorities often driven by branding, enrollment, or donor agendas. “Faculty are no longer the soul of the university -- they’re consultants to a corporation.” -- Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty 3. Academic Freedom under Threat Faculty increasingly report pressure to self-censor. Controversial research or public commentary may attract backlash from outside groups or university leadership. ************ Administrator Perspective: "How do we stay solvent and relevant?" 1. Financial Pressure Tuition revenue is falling in some regions (especially with declining birthrates). Inflation, deferred maintenance, and tech demands drive up costs. Endowments often can’t be tapped freely, despite public perception. 2. Competing Stakeholders Must balance demands from students, parents, faculty, donors, alumni, and policymakers. Any misstep (speech controversy, Title IX issues, diversity complaints) risks public relations and funding fallout. 3. Innovation vs. Tradition Push to modernize curriculum and expand online offerings, but tradition-bound departments may resist. Risk of falling behind in rankings or tech integration. ************ See also charts and data regarding Stanford's costs and overhead at our Stanford Concerns webpage, proposals for actions at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage, and a set of principles regarding speech, institutional neutrality and criteria for the hiring and promotion of faculty set forth years ago by the University of Chicago faculty at our Chicago Trifecta webpage. See also “Guiding Principles ” by President Jon Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez (March 31, 2025) at our Stanford Speaks webpage. Our Question: How Can a University Stop or Reverse Administrative Bloat? (5/5/25) ChatGPT's response: 1. Governance and Accountability Reform leadership incentives: Tie senior administrator evaluations to academic outcomes, cost-efficiency, and faculty/student satisfaction -- not just expansion of services or programs. Create oversight committees: Faculty-led bodies should review new administrative hires and budget allocations. Implement sunset clauses: Temporary administrative roles should automatically expire unless justified and renewed. 2. Budgetary Discipline Adopt zero-based budgeting: Instead of automatic increases, every department -- including administrative -- must justify its entire budget each cycle. Cap administrative growth: Set hard limits on admin-to-student or admin-to-faculty ratios. Redirect resources: Prioritize instructional and research expenditures over non-academic roles. 3. Recenter on Core Mission Reaffirm academic priorities: Ensure that new policies and spending support teaching, research, and student learning. Audit role alignment: Identify positions that duplicate services or whose duties have drifted from academic goals. 4. Process Streamlining and Tech Integration Digitize bureaucracy: Invest in technology to automate compliance, scheduling, and reporting instead of hiring staff. Simplify compliance: Work with regulators to reduce redundant or unnecessary compliance burdens. 5. Cultural and Structural Shifts Strengthen shared governance: Give faculty and students more influence over administrative policy and hiring. Decentralize decision-making: Empower academic departments to manage more of their own operations. 6. Transparency and Data Publicly report admin growth: Regularly disclose metrics like admin salaries, staff-to-faculty ratios, and non-academic expenditures. Benchmark against peers: Use data to assess whether admin growth aligns with similar institutions or exceeds norms. Our Question: Suggest Ways That a University Can Increase Viewpoint Diversity in Its Faculty and Students. (5/5/25) ChatGPT's response: 1. Inclusive Hiring Practices Broaden candidate pools: Actively recruit from a variety of institutions, including those with differing philosophical, political, or religious leanings. Use structured interviews: Minimize bias by applying consistent criteria across all candidates. Encourage intellectual diversity as a hiring value: Include questions in hiring processes that explore a candidate’s commitment to open inquiry and constructive engagement across differences. 2. Admissions and Outreach Widen geographical and demographic outreach: Target recruitment in underrepresented regions or communities that may have different perspectives. Consider a broader definition of diversity: Incorporate ideological and experiential diversity alongside race, gender, and socioeconomic status. 3. Curriculum and Course Design Offer courses in diverse traditions of thought: Include curricula representing a wide range of political, philosophical, and cultural viewpoints. Encourage debate and dialogue: Design courses that require students to engage with contrasting views, supported by evidence and respectful discourse. 4. Campus Culture Support student organizations across the spectrum: Ensure funding and support is available for a wide range of political, religious, and cultural groups. Host speaker series and debates: Bring in a variety of voices, including those that challenge mainstream or dominant campus perspectives. Foster a climate of civil discourse: Promote norms that encourage listening, questioning, and respectful disagreement. 5. Institutional Commitments Adopt free speech and open inquiry policies: Publicly affirm the institution’s support for academic freedom and diverse viewpoints. Create a viewpoint diversity advisory committee: Include faculty, students, and administrators tasked with monitoring and supporting intellectual diversity efforts. Our Question: What Were the Original Concepts of an Undergraduate Education at Oxford and Cambrid ge ( 11/19/25) Google AI's response: . . . . The Method: Disputation and Direct Tutoring A. Disputation (the core teaching tool) Students learned through formal debates: A question was posed (e.g., “Can virtue be taught?”) One student argued pro , another argued con A master presided and challenged assumptions This sharpened: Logic Rapid reasoning Intellectual courage Ability to defend one’s view Ability to understand opposing views Disputation was considered essential to intellectual maturity. B. Lectio (the master’s reading) A teacher read an authoritative text aloud — often Aristotle — and explained its meaning line-by-line. This cultivated precision, memory, and textual mastery. C. Tutorials (the Oxbridge college innovation) By the late medieval period: Students met in small groups or one-on-one with tutors Tutors guided reading, corrected essays, assigned problems The focus was on individual formation, not mass instruction This tutorial system is still the signature of Oxford and Cambridge today. . . . . The Environment: Residential and Communal Oxford and Cambridge pioneered: Residential colleges Shared meals at high table Mandatory chapel Rules of conduct (behavior, hours, dress) Education was believed to require: Intellectual community Daily conversation Exposure to scholars and peers A disciplined life The university was a way of living, not just a place of instruction. The Original Idea of Undergraduate Education at Oxford & Cambridge Undergraduate education at the earliest universities—Oxford (founded c. 1096) and Cambridge (1209)—was designed as a formative, not vocational, experience. Its core purpose was to cultivate the whole person: mind, character, reason, eloquence, and virtue. The degree that marked this formation was the Bachelor of Arts, earned through mastery of the Liberal Arts, not through professional training. Historical Timeline (Concise) 1100s–1200s: Origins Informal scholarly guilds develop in Oxford (c. 1096) and Cambridge (1209) Liberal Arts curriculum codified: Trivium + Quadrivium Lectio (master reading) becomes primary teaching method 1200s–1300s: Institutionalization Colleges founded to house, feed, and morally guide students (Merton, Peterhouse, etc.) Disputations become required for earning degrees Aristotle becomes the core of the curriculum 1400s–1500s: The Early Modern Transition Humanism enriches curriculum with Cicero, Virgil, Quintilian Rhetoric and style emphasized as civic virtues Tutorials and personal mentorship expand 1500s–1700s: Consolidation BA remains a generalist degree in liberal arts Only after BA do students move to law, medicine, theology Colleges enforce daily chapel, communal meals, and moral codes 1800s: Influence on American Colleges Harvard, Yale, Princeton model themselves on Oxbridge: Residential colleges Liberal arts core Emphasis on classical texts Moral and civic formation 1900s–2000s: Modern Adaptations Oxford and Cambridge keep tutorials and small-group learning Liberal arts ideal continues to shape global universities . . . . Comparison Chart: Early Oxford/Cambridge vs. Modern Universities [ as also generated by Google AI]

Back to Basics at Stanfo rd (updated 6/9/25) Subscribe (Free) Contact Us Back to Basics at Stanford (updated 6/9/25) 1. Stanford's Faculty Need to Address Current Shortcomings a. Academic freedom is critical to the purposes of a university. Administrators, trustees and members of the faculty themselves must safeguard the ability of colleagues to pursue scholarship no matter how unpopular at the time. Likewise, the faculty must create and maintain an atmosphere of stimulation, tolerance and critical openness to new ideas, all of which are essential to academic freedom. b. What is taught in the classroom and covered in research must be determined by the individual faculty members who are responsible for the relevant teaching and research, NOT administrators. c. General academic 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. d. Viewpoint diversity is critical to the university’s academic mission in both teaching and research. Accordingly, all decisions regarding the hiring, retention and promotion of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff shall follow the principles of the Shils Report https://www.stanfordfreespeech.org/chicago-trifecta . In any recruitments and decisions to make offers, schools, departments and other academic units shall assure that the pools of candidates reflect viewpoint diversity. This does not mean partisan diversity but rather a diversity of thinking with respect to the substantive areas of the relevant academic unit. Among other things, academic units that consider societal issues shall make special efforts to recruit and retain faculty who may have different viewpoints than the majority of the faculty and have the academic skills to present their alternative viewpoints. The President, Provost and Advisory Board shall take these principles into account in their own decision-making with respect to the hiring, retention and promotion of members of the faculty and other parts of the academic staff. e. 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. Students must have access 24/7 to mental health services. At the same time, the university must assure that counselors and others act professionally at all times and do not press their own personal biases on students in crisis. e. Disciplinary matters must be within the primary purview of student-run disciplinary panels, NOT paid investigators and administrator-run proceedings. f. 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. g. 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. h. 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 seven 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. i. 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. j. 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 nature of the concerns or complaints were never officially disclosed to the targeted student and where the targeted student did not then have a recourse to correct what the targeted student believes were incorrect and even false statements. k. The Bias/TitleVI program (previously known as the Protected Identity Harm Reporting system) shall be revised so that 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. l. The neighborhood system for undergraduate housing shall be disbanded. 3. Stanford’s Administrative Bureaucracy Must Be Reduced Significantly and Immediately in Both Size and Costs a. With the exception of the medical center and dining and housing services, within 12 to 18 months, 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 publish 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. The 200 to 300 Centers, Accelerators, Incubators and Similar Entities and Activities at Stanford Must Be Engaged Primarily in Front-Line Research and Teaching Supervised by Tenured Members of the Faculty or Else Should be Moved Off Campus and Cease Using the Stanford Name 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, trustees and others might also take a look at our article "Stanford's Computerized Case Management System for Student Behavior" at our Stanford Concerns webpage. That article contains detailed materials from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) regarding the kinds of systems that are linked below and 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 every aspect of a student's behavior, including a student's statements or actions that someone doesn't like and even if not disclosed to the student or other 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: