Newsletter
"To Be True To The Best You Know" -- Jane Stanford
October 7, 2024
Stanford’s New President Is Hitting the Right Notes
Excerpts (links in the original, boldface added):
“Attending Stanford over two decades ago was a privilege. I was surrounded by brilliant faculty, bright peers, and a great basketball team. But I relish my time at Stanford because I was often intellectually uncomfortable. I had my views challenged and my norms questioned; I had to be introspective and ready to explain ideas and practices which were a given. I also had to accept difference and tried to understand new values, traditions, and narratives that were previously quite foreign to me; I had to be open and address my own ignorance. That discomfort helped shape me into an empathic, inquisitive scholar and prepared me to effectively contribute to the community and my future students.
“I moved west to Stanford as a religious Jew from the East Coast and found myself in an extremely different world -- one that was far more racially and ethnically diverse than home and was very religiously secular. While a student, I had my views and biases challenged in class, in the dorms, and in the dining halls; I did not understand other cultures, beliefs, or traditions, so I asked questions. Many did not understand my cultural upbringing, and fellow students approached me, asking about my values, my history, and my worldview. We engaged with each other inside and outside of the classroom, and we started to gain insight into cultures different than our own. Disputes and differences became heated at times, but this is the essence of a liberal educational experience....
“Stanford has changed in recent years. There have been several well-known cases of shouting down speakers and administrative overreach to control ideas and speech.
“With the appointment of economist Jonathan D. Levin as the school’s 13th president, however, Stanford placed at its head a president who is committed to open debate, discourse, viewpoint diversity, and institutional neutrality and has boldly shown the higher education community what a liberal education should look like.
“In his first remarks as President of Stanford, Levin gave an inspiring speech referencing former President Casper. President Levin noted that Casper was taken with the idea of freedom in a university and worked to ensure that while he was president, he understood the school’s motto -- 'The wind of freedom blows’ -- to mean that there was ‘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” for ‘these freedoms nurture the conditions for discovery and learning.’ [followed by quotes from Levin’s inauguration address]
“Levin is correct on every point. While only time will tell how well these ideas will play out on campus, Stanford is showing the world what higher education can be. The students are quite fortunate to have such principled leadership now, and the higher education world should be looking west for principled and authentic leadership from President Levin.”
Full op-ed by Stanford alum and Sarah Lawrence Prof. Samuel J. Abrams
See also article at Campus Reform
Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein Delivers Free-Speech Lecture at Princeton
Excerpts (boldface added):
“‘Universities should follow the First Amendment, period. That’s it. That’s the framework.’ ...
“Sunstein emphasized that the First Amendment is a solid foundation to underpin universities’ free speech policies. ‘Building a building from the ground up is really hard and people are going to disagree about how many doors and how many windows. To say, ‘we are following the first Amendment’ makes life far more manageable.’
“He maintained that his proposition is not as simple as free speech absolutism. Universities occasionally must enforce content-neutral restrictions if speech impedes upon their educational mission. Some of these restrictions, he explained, are simple and unobjectionable. Universities need not tolerate speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment. Speech must pass the ‘clear-and-present-danger test’ -- that is, if speech is likely to incite imminent lawless action, it should not be allowed on college campuses....”
Full article at Daily Princetonian. Sunstein's book “Campus Free Speech – A Pocket Guide” is available at Amazon.
UNC Aims to Create a Free-Speech Culture at Its New School of Civic Life and Leadership
Excerpts (boldface added):
“Why American politics in the 21st century is marred by incivility and mistrust is the subject of more books and essays than any normal person would wish to read. The premise underlying most of them is that it’s a left-right problem: The right hates the left and the left hates the right, only the reasons for the hatred vary according to the author.
“But what if it isn’t a left-right problem at all? What if the acrimony and loathing that animate our politics have more to do with class than ideology, more to do with educational status than any set of views on culture and policy? ...
“An awareness of this state of affairs recently led the trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- among the nation’s top public universities -- to imagine a way forward. In January 2023 the board voted 12-0 to create a School of Civic Life and Leadership. Its purpose, according to an official statement, is to prepare students ‘for the responsibilities of citizenship and civic leadership by fostering a free-speech culture’ dedicated to the ‘human search for meaning and developing the capacities for civil discourse and wise decision-making.’ ... [followed by comments by Jed Atkins, dean of the new School of Civic Life and Leadership]
“‘The civic crisis,’ Mr. Atkins says, using his term for Americans’ inability to engage civilly on political subjects, ‘is downstream from the crisis of meaning.’ A properly liberal education of the sort UNC’s new school aims to foster ‘asks students to rise above their partial viewpoints and perspectives to consider questions that transcend their own time and place, and to do that together.’
“What sort of questions? ‘What is the best political form? What is the best economic form? Does history have a direction and purpose? How do we reconcile liberty and our responsibilities to society? Is there a God? Maybe more particularly to the American regime: The foundational principles of the Declaration, liberty and equality -- are they universal?’ ...
“Mr. Atkins speaks frequently about his students coming to appreciate the complexity and fluidity of their own social and political views, and by extension the recklessness of judging the views of others too easily. ‘There’s a humility that comes with recognizing how complicated the world can be,’ he says. We don’t often hear about students at top-rated universities learning and exhibiting the virtue of humility. Maybe, in time, we will.”
Full article at WSJ. See also our posting of the WSJ op-ed three years ago by former Duke Prof. John Rose, “How I Liberated My College Classroom.” Prof. Rose is now the director of a similar program at UNC.
See also Prof. Rose’s comments at the free speech conference at Stanford in November 2022 (starting at the 22-minute mark and continuing for ten minutes, including “Half of America is missing from the college classes at elite universities,” and followed by an audience Q&A).
Commitment to DEI a Requirement in Increasing Numbers of Mental Health Degree Programs
Excerpts (boldface added)
“For twenty years, Suzannah Alexander functioned as a wife and mother with four children as well as a community volunteer. Then her vision for her entire world imploded. Her marriage ended and she realized she needed to begin her life all over again. Ms. Alexander decided helping others to heal would be the best way to get back on her feet. She decided to enter the counseling profession and soon attended the University of Tennessee’s Clinical Mental Health Counseling Master’s program....
“The faculty told the students that the classroom was a ‘brave space’ and a safe place to share ideas and feelings. Ms. Alexander believed them. As a practicing Buddhist, in class, she shared some of her meditation practices to help others maintain control over their emotions during difficult future counseling sessions and view clients with more compassion. Unexpectedly, her professors warned her to stop.
“The course lectures soon turned to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). One professor introduced Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies. Ms. Alexander learned she was a privileged White person and marginalized persons must work at tolerating her whiteness. After one such class, she told her professor she believed this type of thinking promoted ‘tribalism and hostility.’ ...
“Ms. Alexander was soon told, that despite excellent grades, she would not be moving forward in the program with the rest of her cohort....” [followed by discussion of the major accreditation agencies now demanding acceptance of DEI by people seeking a mental health counseling degree, versus studies at ASU and elsewhere showing the negative impacts of these types of requirements]
Full op-ed at Substack
Other Articles of Interest
A Radical Idea to Save College Football
"A group of disruptive sports executives has unveiled a vision for a breakaway by the biggest programs, promising collective bargaining for student players, a salary cap and a cascade of new TV money." Full article at WSJ
New Yale Law School Center Seeks to Safeguard and Promote Academic Freedom and Free Speech (Full article at Yale Law School website)
The Two Fiduciary Duties of Professors (Full op-ed by Heterodox Chair and NYU Prof. Jonathan Haidt at Heterodox Academy website)
Freedom of Speech Isn't Just a Legal Right, but a Way of Life (Full transcript of speech by Matt Taibbi at Substack)
Harvard Alum Bill Ackman Publishes an Analysis of Harvard as an Entity to Buy, Sell or Hold? (PDF copy of slides at Pershing Square Foundation website)
At Yale Listening Sessions, Students Largely Oppose Institutional Neutrality, Faculty Split on the Issue (Full article at Yale Daily News. See also our compilations of the Chicago Trifecta including the Kalvin report on a university’s involvement in political and social matters).
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books (Full article at The Atlantic)
Harvard Issues Report on Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialog (Download PDF copy of the report here. See also Harvard Crimson).
Alternative Viewpoint - Institutional Neutrality Doesn’t Go Far Enough (Full op-ed by San Diego State Prof Peter C. Herman at Inside Higher Ed, including a discussion of Stanford’s antisemitism report from last spring. See also “Depoliticizing the University” at Law & Liberty. See also "Committees on Antisemitism and Islamophobia Find Widespread and Pernicious Bias, Restricted Speech and Harassment on Campus" at Stanford Daily).
Building a Free Speech Culture (video) (Full interview of Stanford alum and FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff at Big Think website (32 minutes)
Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford
Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites
Stanford Education Scholar Uses AI to Help Medical Students Hone Diagnostic Skills
Creating a Culture of Civic Engagement
The Science of Mental Time Travel and the Brain's GPS System
"A society that fails to teach its young people the basics of democracy and civic engagement is at risk of losing the very values and principles on which it was founded." – Stanford alum and former Harvard President Derek Bok