Stanford tries to forget a March of misery: ‘Things will improve’
Jeremiah Poff
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March 2023 turned out to be a month to forget for Stanford University as the prestigious school weathered a series of controversies that garnered national media attention and raised questions about the institution’s commitment to freedom of speech.
On March 9, a group of Stanford Law School students settled into their seats to listen to a lecture by Kyle Duncan, a federal judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, on the “conversation” between the Supreme Court and the 5th Circuit on COVID-19 restrictions and gun laws.
WATCH: STANFORD STUDENT TELLS CONGRESS COLLEGE ADMINISTRATORS ‘DESTROY’ FREE SPEECH
But the event didn’t last long. A group of protesters and the law school’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach disrupted the judge’s lecture, and overnight, one of the nation’s most famed law schools found itself at the center of a national free speech controversy.
But Stanford’s troubles were just beginning.
In the aftermath of Duncan’s disrupted lecture, law school Dean Jenny Martinez and university President Marc Tessier-Lavigne issued a written apology to Duncan. On the next class day, Martinez weathered a storm of student protesters who blanketed her classroom whiteboard with signs that read, “Counter speech is free speech,” and urged her to withdraw her apology to Duncan. Later, she would issue a 10-page memo announcing that Steinbach had been placed on administrative leave, and the entire school would be required to undergo a mandatory program on freedom of speech.
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Meanwhile, amid the law school’s freedom of speech fiasco, university employee Jennifer Gries, 25, was charged with two counts of felony perjury and two misdemeanor counts of inducing false testimony in connection to a rape allegation she had made last August. That allegation had spurred a series of protests on campus, and it drew its own national media attention.
And through all of the controversy, Tessier-Lavigne has been weathering accusations that he fabricated a study on Alzheimer’s disease that he published in 2009, before he became the president of the university.
Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told the Washington Examiner in a statement that the problems at Stanford are a blatant example of universities failing to provide students with an education. Instead, she said, a cohort of bureaucrats has directed the university to push a political agenda hostile to what a true education should look like.
“The chaos at Stanford epitomizes a larger problem: higher education isn’t actually focused on education,” DeVos said. “An incessant build-up of non-teaching bureaucrats has unsurprisingly led to an agenda-focused culture on campuses. Principles like free speech, due process, and intellectual rigor aren’t partisan — they’re fundamental ideals to a functioning university.”
DeVos, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, highlighted the case of Gries’s perjury charge and said it was a teachable moment for the Department of Education to consider the importance of due process while adjudicating Title IX complaints.
“Manufactured accusations like this aren’t common, and they shouldn’t deter us from doing everything reasonably possible to protect students from assault,” DeVos wrote. “But they also should serve as a reminder of why the goal of Title IX must be to find the truth, not re-engineer campus life.”
But despite the avalanche of controversy the elite California school has faced, two Stanford students see the college as a place that can offer students a valuable education.
Luke Schumacher, a student at Stanford Law School, told the Washington Examiner that he was “heartened” and not at all surprised that Martinez had spoken out forcefully against those who had sought to silence Duncan’s speech.
“Dean Martinez’s memo was a manifesto that should be celebrated,” Schumacher said. “But I’m not surprised she had to write it. For years, law schools have admitted students who plainly stated they were more interested in transforming, even dismantling, the law than they were in learning, interpreting, and applying the law. Small wonder that some of those students evince little appreciation for the law and tried to silence one of nation’s chief [interpreters] of the law.”
Nevertheless, Schumacher says he urges prospective students to come to Palo Alto, California, for their legal education.
“I’ve had several admitted students reach out to me expressing their concerns with the state of affairs at Stanford Law,” he said. “[But] I’ve assured them that Stanford Law is the best place to get a legal education, filled with serious, professional, thoughtful students and faculty. And I’ve assured them that things will improve here. I hope I’m right. Unlike my friends trying to dismantle institutions that need reform, I do not believe this law school is somehow irredeemable. Good institutions are worth fighting for, restoring, and reforming.”
For Josiah Joner, an undergraduate student at Stanford and the executive editor of the Stanford Review, the California university has been a source of blessing and opportunity, and he hopes students will do their part in pushing for a cultural change at the university.
“In this culture right now, you got to be willing to stand up for your beliefs and share it, even if it’s not a popular opinion,” Joner told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “We need people who are willing to stand up and speak freely and engage in debate. But then we’re going to also have to have students who are willing to respect other ideas and debate freely.”
Last month, Joner testified before the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, where he discussed at length the difficulties students have with speaking out on college campuses. And while he sees that there is a problem in Stanford’s culture, he thinks students should give the school a look.
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“I think that despite these recent incidents, Stanford still remains one of the top institutions in the country that is engaging in this exchange of ideas and does have the ability and the resources and the opportunities to bring scholars and students together,” Joner said. “I still think Stanford’s a great institution where there’s so much potential to affect change and be a leader in the world. And despite what we’ve seen recently, it can still be a place where you can engage in discussion and conversation and really be part of leading the change that you want to see.”
Stanford did not respond to repeated requests for comment.