STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

June 3, 2024

 

President Saller’s Remarks About Recent Demonstration at Stanford

 

Editor’s note: On Monday, May 20, per the Stanford Daily and other news sources, a number of demonstrators entered Mechanical Engineering Building 570 and reportedly disrupted activities in the building. At the Faculty Senate meeting four days later, President Saller made the following remarks.

 

Full text:

 

“On Monday evening, as part of a protest march on campus, a group of individuals entered an engineering building where students were present and working in labs. The marchers who entered the building blocked entryways with constructed barricades they had brought with them and furniture from the building, and vandalized an interior wall and door with spray paint.

 

“We have learned that students who were at work in the building were frightened by the intrusion and were concerned for their research and lab equipment as well as their personal safety. A faculty member whose lab is in the building shared that the research in that lab was sensitive and dangerous to those unfamiliar with the safe operation of the equipment.

 

“The individuals who entered the building dispersed once public safety officers entered. Nevertheless, the actions that occurred on Monday evening threatened the health and safety of our community. The peaceful expression of viewpoints, which we value, can and should occur within the university's time, place, and manner provisions, without vandalism, and without jeopardizing the safety of our community members.

 

“Over the last three days, the university and the Department of Public Safety have been investigating what occurred and collecting evidence. We are beginning disciplinary proceedings based on the evidence collected, which included items left behind such as personal identification, hardware associated with the barricades, a respirator mask, and other items that indicated an intention to occupy the building. The investigation also is continuing. We will respect the privacy rights of those involved. However, I want to be clear that students responsible for actions that threaten the safety of our community, such as those that occurred on Monday, will face immediate suspension and the inability to participate in Commencement based on the president's authority in cases of threats to community safety. In addition to being referred to the Office of Community Standards conduct process, they may also be subject to criminal charges.”

 

At Reason Magazine and also at Campus Report

 

See also “Outgoing President Richard Saller Reflects on a Turbulent Year” interview at Stanford Daily (June 2, 2024). 

 

See also “Stanford Starts Disciplinary Referrals but Allows Encampment to Remain,” “Pro Palestine Students Want University to Drop Charges," "Some Campus Buildings Now Require ID” and "Some Students Felt Trapped" at Stanford Daily.

 

Harvard Will Refrain from Controversial Statements About Public Policy Issues

 

[Editor’s note: Subject to further clarification, the Harvard faculty report and related Q&A, linked below, leave unanswered to what extent Harvard departments, centers and similar entities can take official positions in the names of those entities and even publicize those positions as being official positions, as opposed to circulating or posting research and other papers as signed by individual faculty members. We believe the faculty report and related Q&A also seem to misunderstand that the University of Chicago's Kalven Report (now being adopted by colleges and universities nationwide, see our compilation here) has always upheld the concept that a university can take official positions on issues that go to the core of the university’s functions, such as admissions, standards for tenure, etc.]

 

Excerpt (link in the original):

 

“After months of grappling with a campus fractured by a polarizing debate over the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard announced on Tuesday that the University and its leadership will refrain from taking official positions on controversial public policy issues.

 

“The University’s new stance followed a report produced from a faculty-led 'Institutional Voice’ working group, which advised leadership to not ‘issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.’ Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 wrote in an email that he accepted the working group’s recommendations, which were also endorsed by the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.

 

“‘There will be close cases where reasonable people disagree about whether a given issue is or is not directly related to the core function of the university,’ the report stated. ‘The university’s policy in those situations should be to err on the side of avoiding official statements.’

 

“The policy will apply to all University administrators and governing board members, as well as deans, department chairs, and faculty councils, according to the working group....”

 

Full article at Harvard Crimson

 

A Q&A about the faculty report is here and includes a link to full text of the report itself.

 

See also Harvard Crimson editorial, “Harvard Must Learn Its Lesson; Institutional Neutrality Is Step One”.

 

UC Regents Again Postpone Vote on Policy re Statements on Department Homepages

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“The University of California’s board of regents on Thursday [May 16] again postponed a vote on a controversial policy to restrict faculty departments from making opinionated statements on the homepages of university websites. The regents could next consider the policy at their July meeting in San Francisco.

 

“The proposal was initially introduced after some faculty departments, such as the ethnic studies department at UC Santa Cruz, posted statements on their websites criticizing Israel’s invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas assault in Israel. The potential adoption of the policy comes as pro-Palestinian protests and encampments have popped up across the system’s 10 campuses, with arrests of hundreds and, at UCLA, a violent counter-protest....

 

“Faculty across UC have criticized the policy, arguing that it would infringe on academic freedom and questioning how it would be enforced. But supporters of the policy, led by regent Jay Sures, say it is needed to ensure that the views of faculty departments aren’t misinterpreted as representing UC as a whole. Sures could not be reached for comment Thursday about why the item was delayed again.

 

“Under the latest version, political and other opinionated statements would not be allowed to appear on the homepages of departmental websites. They would be permitted elsewhere on those websites, but only with a disclaimer stating that the opinions don’t represent the entire campus or university system....”

 

Full article at Ed Source  

 

Stanford and the Rise of the Censorship Industrial Complex

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“This summer the Supreme Court will rule on a case involving what a district court called perhaps ‘the most massive attack against free speech’ ever inflicted on the American people. In Murthy v. Missouri, plaintiffs ranging from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to epidemiologists from Harvard and Stanford allege that the federal government violated the First Amendment by working with outside groups and social media platforms to surveil, flag, and quash dissenting speech -- characterizing it as mis-, dis- and mal-information -- on issues ranging from COVID-19 to election integrity.

 

“The case has helped shine a light on a sprawling network of government agencies and connected NGOs that critics describe as a censorship industrial complex. That the U.S. government might aggressively clamp down on protected speech, and, certainly at the scale of millions of social media posts, may constitute a recent development....

 

[Followed by discussion of and links to what have become known as the Censorship Files and the Twitter Files.]

 

“If there is one ever-present player in this saga, it is the storied institution of Stanford University. Its idyllic campus has served as the setting over the last 70-plus years for a pivotal public-private partnership linking academia, business, and the national security apparatus. Stanford's central place, particularly in developing technologies to thwart the Soviet Union during the Cold War, would persist and evolve through the decades, leading to the creation of an entity called the Stanford Internet Observatory that would serve as the chief cutout -- in critics' eyes -- for government-driven censorship in defense of ‘democracy’ during the 2020 election and beyond....

 

[Followed by discussion of alleged interactions of Stanford with government agencies and companies including the creation and use of Stanford Research Institute after WWII and the more recent roles of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, Graphika, DARPA, the Atlantic Council and others.]

 

“As RCI [Real Clear Investigations] previously reported, the project had two main objectives:

 

“First, EIP [Election Integrity Partnership] lobbied social media companies, with some success, to adopt more stringent moderation policies around 'content intended to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters as to election processes, or delegitimize election results without evidence.' …

 

“Second, EIP surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts for content that might violate the platforms' moderation policies. In addition to identifying this content internally, EIP also collected content forwarded to it by external ‘stakeholders,’ including government offices and civil society groups. EIP then flagged this mass of content to the platforms for potential suppression....

 

“Among those targeted by the government for silencing, and who social media companies would censor, in part for his opposition to broad pandemic lockdowns, was Stanford's own Dr. Jay Bhattacharya -- one plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri (Dr. Bhattacharya and [Matt] Taibbi were recipients of Real Clear's first annual Samizdat Prize honoring those committed to truth and free speech). As he sees it, the Virality Project helped ‘launder’ a ‘government … hit list for censorship,’ which he finds ‘absolutely shocking’ and at odds with Stanford's past commitments to academic freedom and general ‘sort of countercultural opposition to government overreach.’ …

 

Full article at Real Clear Investigations

 

See also “Stanford’s Roles in Censoring the Web” at our Stanford Concerns webpage. See also Part 4 of our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage regarding the need for better oversight of the various centers, accelerators, incubators and similar entities and activities at Stanford.

 

A Black Man's Concerns About DEI

 

Excerpts:

 

“Am I not good enough to compete? Am I being hired because I'm Black and fulfill some quota, or do I stand out from the crowd because of my competency? …

  

“I understand the motivation for wanting to help people that some feel are disadvantaged by ensuring a fairer environment for everyone, no matter their ethnicity, sex, or sexuality. But the problem with DEI is that in practice, it is inconsistent with the message that discrimination is bad because it engages in discriminating against some to elevate others. And in so doing, they aren't setting an equal playing field for all but skewing the field to create an ideologically satisfying outcome. And no one likes it when there are favorites in a competitive market, including the people who didn't ask to be anointed....”

 

Full op-ed by Adam B. Coleman at Newsweek

 

Alternative viewpoint: "I Saw the Importance of Affirmative Action at My Ivy League University Firsthand" at Truthout.

 

Former President Casper on the Purposes of the University

 

Excerpts (from statement dated October 4, 1995 re affirmative action):

 

“... Let me begin by speaking about what Stanford has stood for since its founding. When Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane, lost their 15-year- old only child, Leland Jr., in 1884, they decided to use their wealth to do something for ‘other people's’ sons and daughters. This sentiment led to the founding of our university.

 

“In a 1902 address, which formally amended the Founding Grant, Jane Stanford stressed that the moving spirit of the founders was ‘love of humanity and a desire to render the greatest possible service to mankind.’ I quote: ‘The University was accordingly designed for the betterment of mankind morally, spiritually, intellectually, physically, and materially. The public at large, and not alone the comparatively few students who can attend the University, are the chief and ultimate beneficiaries of the foundation.’ The university's ‘chief object’ was to be ‘the instruction of students with a view to producing leaders and educators in every field of science and industry.'

 

“The university's initial policy of not charging tuition was adopted, I again quote Jane Stanford, to ‘resist the tendency to the stratification of society, by keeping open an avenue whereby the deserving and exceptional may rise through their own efforts from the lowest to the highest station in life. A spirit of equality must accordingly be maintained within the University.’ I point out that Stanford admitted women when many of its peers would not even have considered the possibility....

 

“This evocation of our institutional purposes is helpful in reminding us that it would be exceedingly narrow-minded to assume that the pursuit of the university as envisioned in the founding documents calls for a one-dimensional approach in choosing those to whom we give the opportunity to study at Stanford. As we look for the leaders of tomorrow, if all we considered were capacities measurable on a scale, without taking into consideration other aspects of being ‘deserving and exceptional,’ we would be betraying the Founders. We would be betraying the Founders if we disregarded their stated concern about ‘the tendency to the stratification of society.’” …

 

Full text at Stanford website

  

Other Articles of Interest

 

The Battle Over College Speech Will Outlive the Encampments

Full op-ed at NY Times Magazine 

 

We Argue About Campus Free Speech Because We Forget What the University Is For 

Full op-ed at Washington Examiner

 

Private Thought and Public Speech

Full op-ed by Yale Prof. David Bromwich at Compact Magazine

 

Samples of Current Teaching and Research at Stanford

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Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites. 

 

Stanford Lab Introduces Students to Cutting-Edge Biomedical Research Tools

 

Stanford Researchers Study the Role of Plankton in Regulating Natural Systems

 

Stanford-Led Study Links School Environment to Brain Development

 

Humans Use Counterfactuals to Reason About Causality. Can AI?

 

Meditations on a Meaningful Education