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 position on managing the pandemic in our community is clear. We support using masks, social distancing, and conducting surveillance and diagnostic testing. We also believe in the importance of strictly following the guidance of local and state health authorities.
Dr. Atlas has expressed views that are inconsistent with the university’s approach in response to the pandemic. Dr. Atlas’s statements reflect his personal views, not those of the Hoover Institution or the university.
The statement was both long overdue and, in the opinion of at least one faculty member, “insipid and spineless.” It followed Atlas’s now-notorious tweet from the day before calling on citizens of Michigan to “rise up” in resistance to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s mask policy. But it came long after a September 9 letter signed by 110 Stanford medical school faculty members and an open letter signed by 123 university faculty members calling on the university to condemn Atlas’s irresponsible statements and to subject its relationship with the Hoover Institution to “careful renegotiation.”
Atlas was on the faculty of Stanford’s medical school from 1998 to 2012, but he is now only a fellow at Hoover without formal affiliation with any university department. Moreover, his public statements and visible role in the Trump administration’s non-response to the COVID-19 pandemic are but the most visible examples of partisan and nonscholarly work being produced by the Institution’s fellows. In March, for example, Richard Epstein, a conservative law professor at New York University with an appointment as a Hoover fellow, downplayed the pandemic with an article projecting that the U.S. would suffer only 500 deaths from the coronavirus. Soon after that, he claimed that the figure had been placed “erroneously” in the article, and he meant to write “5,000.” Of course, as I write, the toll has topped 250,000 and is climbing more rapidly than ever.
At an October 22 meeting of the university’s academic senate top administrators responded to pointed questions about Atlas and Hoover posed by faculty members. According to an account on the university’s own news site,
David Spiegel, the Jack, Lulu and Sam Willson Professor in Medicine and associate chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, in his question suggested Atlas was the “latest member of the Hoover Institution to disseminate incorrect and unscientific information about the coronavirus pandemic.”
He said, “Atlas’ conduct is not merely a matter of expressing an opinion – it is a violation of the American Medical Association’s Code of Ethics.” Spiegel also believes Atlas’ actions may violate the Stanford Code of Conduct, which holds each member responsible for “sustaining the high ethical standards of the institution.” Further, he has charged that Atlas has inappropriately leveraged his relationship to Stanford to assert a health care expertise he does not have.
In response, provost Persis Drell appealed to Stanford’s policies in defense of academic freedom. Those policies should surely protect Atlas’s views as a citizen, but faculty members were suggesting that Atlas was, in fact, abusing his position to imply that, as a medical professional (he is a radiologist, not an expert in either infectious disease or epidemiology) he was claiming to speak within his disciplinary expertise. And while, as the AAUP has noted, extramural expression rarely is relevant to determining a faculty member’s fitness for a position, expression within one’s field may indeed be so relevant. So, is Atlas’s field “medicine” or simply “radiology?”
That’s not for me to say, of course, but the controversy brings up a different issue, one that rightly concerns many Stanford faculty members — the university’s relationship with the quasi-independent Hoover Institution, physically located on campus but organizationally distinct. The Institution was founded by Herbert Hoover, a member of Stanford’s first graduating class, in 1919, before his ill-fated presidency but after he had accumulated considerable wealth in the mining industry. It boasts a world-class library and archive, with specialization in the history of revolutions and socialism (I researched much of my PhD dissertation there), and a respected publishing operation. But its connection to Stanford, other than its location in the center of the sprawling campus, is problematic. Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik (who, by the way, is almost always worth reading) posed the issue this way:
The Hoover Institution’s relationship with the university was codified in 1959 through a “constitution” drafted by Hoover and accepted by the university trustees that defined the institution, rather vaguely, as “an independent Institution within the frame of Stanford University.”
The university president formally recommends institution appointments, promotions and budget to the Stanford board of trustees, but academic committees are cut out of the process.
The institution’s “purpose,” as Hoover defined it in 1959, “must be, by its research and publications, to demonstrate the evils of the doctrines of Karl Marx — whether Communism, Socialism, economic materialism, or atheism — thus to protect the American way of life from such ideologies, their conspiracies, and to reaffirm the validity of the American system.”
That purpose is supported by an independent funding stream with conservative and libertarian sources such as the Koch family and the petroleum and chemical industries listed among its donors.
If nothing else that “purpose” should raise red flags, and indeed it has among many faculty members. “There’s a huge difference between a partisan think tank whose mission is to promote free markets and small government — that constructs knowledge that undergirds a particular message — and a research institution that is committed to free inquiry and objectivity,” David Palumbo-Liu, a Stanford professor of comparative literature, initiator of the faculty open letter, and AAUP member, told Hiltzik. “A lot of what comes out of the Hoover gets marketed as coming from Stanford, which is only geographically true,” Palumbo-Liu said. “The Hoover in some ways is leaning on Stanford’s reputation as a research university with a commitment to science and facts in order to smuggle in very partisan and factually inaccurate pieces of information.”
At the October 22 senate meeting provost Drell responded that “In the somewhat distant past, Hoover has been very disjointed from the rest of Stanford. But over the past decade, Hoover has become much more integrated into Stanford.… In a very real sense, and I think this is important to keep in mind, they are, in fact, us.”
However, “they are not ‘us,’ nor do they wish to be, judging by the disdainful comments about Stanford’s academic programs made over the years by Hoover fellows and officials,” theater professor Branislav Jakovljevic responded in the pages of the Stanford Daily. “When I signed up to teach at Stanford, I was not told that part of my job would be to serve as a living shield for the Hoover Institution. I refuse to be used in that way. I am not them.”
“People at the Hoover, like Dr. Atlas, do not go through the same vetting for scholarly merit that the rest of us do, but they’re treated with the same degree of deference, which may or may not be warranted,” law professor Michele Dauber told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s a right-wing think tank. That’s fine, but it should not be an arm of the university,” she said. “Stanford should separate itself from the Hoover Institution.”
If the appointment of Hoover fellows is not subject to review by Stanford faculty in a manner similar to appointments to university departments and programs, Jakovljevic is absolutely correct. Moreover, I would add that it was precisely institutions like Hoover that the AAUP’s founders had in mind when in the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure they discussed “proprietary school[s] or college[s] designed for the propagation of specific doctrines prescribed by those who have furnished its endowment”:
It is evident that in such cases the trustees are bound by the deed of gift, and, whatever be their own views, are obligated to carry out the terms of the trust. If a church or religious denomination establishes a college to be governed by a board of trustees, with the express understanding that the college will be used as an instrument of propaganda in the interests of the religious faith professed by the church or denomination creating it, the trustees have a right to demand that everything be subordinated to that end. If, again, as has happened in this country, a wealthy manufacturer establishes a special school in a university in order to teach, among other things, the advantages of a protective tariff, or if, as is also the case, an institution has been endowed for the purpose of propagating the doctrines of socialism, the situation is analogous. All of these are essentially proprietary institutions, in the moral sense. They do not, at least as regards one particular subject, accept the principles of freedom of inquiry, of opinion, and of teaching; and their purpose is not to advance knowledge by the unrestricted research and unfettered discussion of impartial investigators, but rather to subsidize the promotion of opinions held by the persons, usually not of the scholar’s calling, who provide the funds for their maintenance. Concerning the desirability of the existence of such institutions, the committee does not wish to express any opinion. But it is manifestly important that they should not be permitted to sail under false colors. Genuine boldness and thoroughness of inquiry, and freedom of speech, are scarcely reconcilable with the prescribed inculcation of a particular opinion upon a controverted question.
The authors of the 1915 Declaration thought such institutions, mainly religious, were rare, but they certainly did not think that such institutions would not only persist but end up housed within otherwise prestigious universities, public or private, and by doing so be able, in their words “to sail under false colors.” For that is what the Hoover Institution, for all intents and purposes, does. And that is what Stanford faculty are rightly protesting.
But the problem goes well beyond Hoover. For at a growing number of colleges and universities private funding is being employed to fund quasi-independent institutes and programs with avowedly political or ideological aims, albeit not always so stridently posed as Hoover did back in 1959. I discussed such institutes, including those sponsored by the donor network of oilman Charles Koch, at some length in chapter 5 of The Future of Academic Freedom. There I argued that critics of the political content of research conducted by externally funded and ideologically motivated research centers are within their rights to voice criticisms of the research and publications that come out of those centers and to subject them to scrutiny. But insofar as academic freedom is concerned, the issue is not so much the viewpoints being advanced or the quality of the scholarship, but whether donor funding agreements are fully transparent, the university maintains its autonomy, and the faculty’s rights to both academic freedom and collective control of research efforts are properly upheld. There is much to suggest that such principles do not govern Stanford’s relationship with Hoover, and that is deeply problematic.
In a now iconic academic freedom case, in 1901, Stanford fired sociologist Edward Ross, at the request of Jane Stanford, for his controversial support of trade unionism. The case is often claimed to have helped give rise to the founding of the AAUP. Now, over a century later, Stanford has gone the other way by acceding to the existence on its campus of a quasi-independent institution dedicated not to free inquiry but to “the propagation of specific doctrines.” In both cases politics and ideology trump scholarship.
The Stanford senate is scheduled to take up the issue of the university’s relationship with Hoover again in February. It is difficult, however, to conceive how Stanford might appropriately restructure that relationship. But it is equally difficult to disagree with the conclusion of the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board that “the impression of a Faustian bargain is inescapable. Headed by Condoleezza Rice, a former Stanford provost and secretary of state under George W. Bush, Hoover has given Stanford clout in this and other presidential administrations. For that the university appears willing to bear the high reputational and moral price of its association with the likes of Atlas and the reckless policies he endorses.”
Pingback: Response to Julia Reuben | ACADEME BLOG
I strongly disagree with some points here. Hank argues, “while, as the AAUP has noted, extramural expression rarely is relevant to determining a faculty member’s fitness for a position, expression within one’s field may indeed be so relevant. So, is Atlas’s field ‘medicine’ or simply ‘radiology?’”
Extramural utterances are protected the same whether or not they are within one’s field. The standard of fitness refers not to the quality of ideas, but to professional misconduct (“clearly demonstrates unfitness”). So, extramural utterances that reveal a professor has committed plagiarism, falsified data, fabricated credentials, or similar acts of fraud would be punishable. Extramural utterances that reveal misconduct in abusing the rights of students (for example, lowering their grades if they claim that masks protect people), research subjects, staff, and colleagues would also be punishable. But merely being wrong about a topic is not punishable. Fitness is not the same as correctness. When you are hiring or promoting a professor, you consider both fitness (lack of misconduct) and qualifications (the excellence of one’s ideas, where being wrong can be a disqualifying factor). But punishing a professor involves fitness alone, and that’s why extramural utterances are rarely relevant. Merely being wrong about something–even if it is in your field, and even if your influence leads to this wrong idea killing people–is not unfitness.
It is hardly surprising that my friend and colleague John Wilson disagrees with me about this, given our longstanding agreement amiably to disagree on the extent to which academic freedom protects individuals rather than the profession. This is a long and ongoing conversation, but a couple of points in rejoinder:
1) Insofar as Atlas was speaking as a citizen, my post acknowledged, academic freedom “should surely protect” his views. But I noted that Stanford faculty were suggesting that he was doing more than that. Whether that is true, I added, “that’s not for me to say.” Indeed, Atlas has come to the attention of Stanford faculty not for his writings or expression (on Fox News) about “herd immunity,” which mostly attracted little attention at first, but for his subsequent actions as a policy maker, which at minimum, I would suggest, may straddle the border between extramural expression and professional work.
2) More central, John argues that “fitness” should be limited to misconduct of the sorts he recites, but should not include “being wrong about a subject.” He is entitled to that opinion, but that is not the position that the AAUP has defended for decades. (I discuss this at some length in both chapter 3 of The Future of Academic Freedom and again in my forthcoming Understanding Academic Freedom, especially with reference to definitions of fitness made by the AAUP investigating committee in the 1970 Angela Davis case.) Moreover, the choice is not between misconduct and correctness, as John poses it. The issue is not about being wrong, but about conforming to the standards of one’s discipline. Admittedly this will vary by discipline. Many disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences, of necessity must provide extremely wide latitude for varied and dissenting, sometimes even quirky, opinions — although not all such opinions. But in the sciences and also the professions it is somewhat different. If a medical professor advocates quack cures such advocacy would be both incorrect and misconduct. And in both categories this may be relevant to a determination of fitness. In such a determination the opinion of medical professionals should be controlling. I will leave to others to decide whether Dr. Atlas has prescribed a quack cure; so far at least, he has not gone so far as to suggest we all inject bleach.
3) A comparison might be made between Atlas and John Yoo, a tenured law professor at Berkeley whose work in the Bush White House justifying torture led to many calls for his dismissal. Such calls have been rightly rejected, but like Atlas, Yoo was doing more than engaging in expression. Still, as a tenured faculty member both his ideas and his activities are and should be protected by academic freedom, no matter how much I and others find them objectionable. On the other hand, had the California bar moved to disbar Yoo or had the American Bar Association in some manner condemned his actions as violating professional standards, then would not the Berkeley Law School have grounds to consider dismissal, with Yoo, of course, entitled to the full protections of academic due process? I would add, of course, that neither the Stanford faculty members whom I quote nor I have advocated disciplinary action against Atlas in violation of his academic freedom. However, if Atlas is entitled to academic freedom he is not entitled to immunity from criticism and condemnation by his colleagues. Rather than testing the limits of Atlas’s individual academic freedom, Stanford faculty members have called for Stanford to more strongly disassociate itself from his views and actions and to reconsider its relationship with the Hoover Institution. I think those are reasonable requests.
I strongly disagree with David Palumbo-Liu’s belief that an academic unit must meet a standard of “objectivity.” And if there is a “high reputational and moral price” to Stanford from being linked to a controversial thinker like Atlas, that is the price to be paid for academic freedom. The Hoover institution’s mission statement from 1959 is troubling indeed, but is there any evidence that this is actually enforced on anyone now? (The current mission statement removes the part about Marx, https://www.hoover.org/about/missionhistory.)
Hank argues that having a quasi-independent institution on campus is “problematic.” I don’t think it necessarily is. Many presidential libraries operate in this way, and yet I think it’s good for them to be connected to a university. No one has a right to have an independent institute; in 2011, conservatives created the Alexander Hamilton Center and wanted it to be linked to Hamilton College while refusing to let faculty have control over it. As I noted here (https://academeblog.org/2011/10/31/the-danger-of-thought-policing-by-donors/), the faculty were perfectly within their rights to object to this.
But once an independent institute such as Hoover is established and linked to a university, the controversial speech by its fellows should never be grounds for its banishment. There is nothing wrong with a university serving as an umbrella for various independent institutions that might be deemed “proprietary” (student organizations are the best example). Nor is it a concern that appointments are not evaluated by faculty committees. College departments routinely hire adjunct instructors and fellows (and even professors) without consulting external faculty committees. When people want Stanford to disassociate from the Hoover Institution because of its controversial thinkers, that’s a disturbing idea.
“Nor is it a concern that appointments are not evaluated by faculty committees. College departments routinely hire adjunct instructors and fellows (and even professors) without consulting external faculty committees.” Perhaps, but in a well-run university (I’ll leave it to others to decide whether Stanford is well-run) even such hires are made by the faculty involved, not by administrators, as happens at Hoover. Moreover, the delegation of hiring decisions to departments should itself be a policy about which the faculty as a whole have a say. Stanford faculty have zero input into not only hiring but other academic decisions taken by the Hoover administration. That is what is problematic.
I also find it strange that John seems to argue that while faculty can reject an independent institute at the start, once it is established they cannot question it. As I wrote above, Stanford faculty are not seeking dismissal or discipline for Atlas in violation of academic freedom, but they are asking for reconsideration of the university’s relationship with Hoover. Again, a perfectly reasonable request. I agree that if “people want Stanford to disassociate from the Hoover Institution because of its controversial thinkers, that’s a disturbing idea.” But that’s not the same as wanting to reconsider that association (no one, I think, realistically expects a total divorce) so that Hoover is more subject to shared governance by Stanford’s faculty or that its independence is given greater clarity. That such reconsideration is prompted by the increasingly extreme and at times reckless actions of some Hoover associates is understandable. After all, we don’t usually subject normal academic programs to intense scrutiny if it appears that all is well there, even if periodic review is a good governance practice, which, by the way, I suspect does not occur with Hoover or, for that matter, many other externally funded institutes.
Lastly, I simply cannot agree that the presence of what the AAUP founders called “proprietary” institutions within universities is generally a good thing. A think tank is a think tank, a university is a university. The two should not be confused, but increasingly that is happening to the detriment largely of universities. I disagree with the politics of the Cato Institute and am more sympathetic with the viewpoints coming out of, say, the Progressive Policy Institute, but in my view neither belongs in a university.
Hoover’s “problem” in this case, seems to be that they are on the wrong side of the ideological divide.