BY JOHN K. WILSON Last week, Stanford Law School announced that it had suspended Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, in the wake of the outrage over the disruption by protesters of a Federalist Society speech by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan. Stanford must end this suspension immediately. Stanford’s suspension of Steinbach is…
BY JOHN K. WILSON A conference on academic freedom being held this weekend at Stanford has spurred controversy over its perceived conservative bias and closed format. A group of more than fifty Stanford academics signed “A Closed Conference on Academic Freedom is a Contradiction,” a statement denouncing the conference for its lack of public access.…
BY HANK REICHMAN A group of 177 Stanford University professors from more than 40 departments, most in the physical and natural sciences, today made public a September 8 letter they sent to US Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for an end to a Trump administration program that sought to uncover alleged Chinese spies in American…
BY HANK REICHMAN Last week I posted to this blog a statement from Stanford University students, faculty and alums that called out the Stanford College Republicans (SCR) for instigating the widely publicized and controversial firing of a recent Stanford graduate by the Associated Press because of social media posts she had made that were pro-Palestinian. …
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement in support of fired Associated Press reporter Emily Wilder (Stanford ’20), signed by over 500 Stanford University students, faculty, staff and alums, was published May 24 in the Stanford Daily. A link to the petition form is here. To see the full list of signatories go here. As…
BY JOHN K. WILSON In an extraordinary attack on academic freedom, three fellows from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution–Scott Atlas, Niall Ferguson, Victor Davis Hanson–are demanding censorship of faculty and the student newspaper in order to silence criticism of themselves. They write in an article at the Stanford Review (a conservative student publication), “as individuals we…
BY HANK REICHMAN On Monday, Stanford University issued the following statement concerning Trump adviser, “herd immunity” advocate, and Hoover Institution fellow Scott Atlas: The university has been asked to comment on recent statements made by Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who is on leave of absence from that position. Stanford’s…
BY JOHN K. WILSON California’s Leonard Law, passed in 1992, is unique in the country: It requires private universities to protect some elements of the First Amendment just like a public university. Last month, the Stanford Daily wrote about the Leonard Law controversy on campus, focusing on the Stanford College Republicans and their claim that…
BY HANK REICHMAN A well-known feature of American higher education, especially among large privates and public “flagships,” is the regional rivalry, mostly athletics-based. You know, Ohio State-Michigan, Harvard-Yale, Alabama-Auburn, or UCLA-USC. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area there’s Cal-Stanford (for anyone who may not be aware, Cal — short for California — is the…
The rise of China’s influence in the world includes its connections with American universities. And the Chinese government’s attacks on free speech make this a troubling development for academic freedom. Bloomberg reports on how China is funding Confucius Institutes in America, and seeking to limit academic freedom. When China demanded that a Stanford professorship it…