Opinions – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Fri, 15 Mar 2024 19:04:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Opinions – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 From the Community | A parent’s perspective on protests during Family Weekend https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/15/from-the-community-parents-weekend-2024/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/15/from-the-community-parents-weekend-2024/#respond Fri, 15 Mar 2024 07:25:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1244815 "On a university campus, one known globally for its wide-ranging academic pursuits and creative expressions, some of my fellow parents chose to verbally abuse someone else’s children," Bartol writes.

The post From the Community | A parent’s perspective on protests during Family Weekend appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Protest and activism at Stanford are deeply linked. Both have a long and powerful history that can be revisited by perusing Stanford Libraries’ “Activism” online site. Having witnessed both protests and activism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was vital to see crucial issues of our time — apartheid, racial discrimination, the Western Civilization curriculum, diversity in faculty representation — actively debated and acted upon by Stanford students, faculty and administrative officers.

Some protests were civil, others not, but President Kennedy and faculty eventually engaged with concerned and affected students. Conversations happened, regardless of how ugly it looked or difficult it got.

Yet now, given recent protests at Stanford’s Parents Weekend (reported, I would add, accurately in the pages of The Stanford Daily), the University is straying from the legacy of activism today’s students are embracing. The winds of freedom, it seems, still blow, albeit maybe only in one direction.

As an alum and parent of a Stanford student visiting almost three weeks ago, we expected to see growing dissatisfaction over the University’s position on Israel. Its investment choices, its stance on Israel’s war with Hamas and the plight of the tens of thousands of innocents dying unnecessarily in the conflict were common discussions with my student in the previous weeks.

We knew about the sit-in in White Plaza. We expected student protests all weekend. We hoped that President Saller and his peers would critically address the concerns of students both for and against the protests.

What I saw on parent’s weekend was both impressive and unexpected. Impressive, because of the ingenuity, persistence and non-violent actions of the students that made their points about their deep distress at Stanford’s possible ties to Israel’s current administration.

Unexpected, because of the reactions of many parents in attendance. These parents felt the right response to these protests was to shout down the demonstrators. Yells of “boos,” “shut up,” “go away,” “we don’t care” and applause by those same parents accompanied the students’ departure. Those reactions were simply sad, uncalled for and not the sentiment I expected from anyone associated with Stanford. Why belittle students earnest in their intentions and efforts, students who want to believe their chosen university could be something more?

It is easy to understand how those parents might come to those views and actions. For some, it was their first time on campus and their first time visiting their child in a place that, rightly, has changed them. Some clearly traveled great distances for the event. Still others expected an idyllic weekend to match the sunny weather and warm welcome. Maybe they did not agree with the reason for and target of the protests. Perhaps they did not like how the students’ points were being made, or maybe they just felt like this event was “their time” and should be free of disruption.

On a university campus, one known globally for its wide-ranging academic pursuits and creative expressions, some of my fellow parents chose to verbally abuse someone else’s children. All because those young adults were practicing one of the fundamental rights this country affords, essential to any credible institution of higher learning. It is a moment of powerful imbalance I cannot ever recall seeing in an academic setting.

With the words from the on-stage panel about fostering a civil and respectful discourse still ringing in the room, adults chose not to be the more mature, considered and compassionate example. Instead, in word and action, students were shown their concerns were worthless, that their beliefs do not matter.

And — perhaps more shockingly — President Saller, Provost Martinez and several deans sat on stage and watched. When presented with a chance to engage in a very real and honest way, they leaned back.

When there could have been a moment to show both rude parents and anxious students how to de-escalate and connect, they chose to look at their notes. By the administration’s performance that afternoon, it is not hard to believe students who say the past four months have been ones in which the University would not substantially engage, meaningfully speak or actively listen. No wonder students took to MemAud to make a stand.

It is not hard to grasp why the President and the Provost took little action. Since October, college campuses have been deeply and controversially embroiled in protests focused on every side of this conflict.

Ill-timed or poorly handled reactions by college leaders have cost at least two university presidents — one a Stanford alum — their positions by factions that would polarize and weaponize the ripples of this conflict to their own ends.

It is all too easy to believe Stanford’s leaders are exhausted by the tightrope that they must walk. But it is also a moment that desperately calls for engagement, discourse and intelligence in the face of disruption and disagreement.

To the student groups protesting the Israel-Gaza conflict, seeking to be heard and seeking real change from the University, know that the history of protest at Stanford does bend toward justice. 

You are doing what we should expect from brilliant, enthusiastic young minds on a college campus: making your voices heard, working to make our world better. You are seen and you are heard.

You continue a tradition I hope all students, faculty, administrators and — hopefully, someday — parents can come to respect. Perhaps not enjoy, but certainly understand its necessity.

To you, and on behalf of the parents and friends of the University that understand this moment, I would tell you this: Keep going.

John Bartol ’92 is a Stanford parent.

The post From the Community | A parent’s perspective on protests during Family Weekend appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/15/from-the-community-parents-weekend-2024/feed/ 0 1244815
Editorial Board | What is an education without honesty? https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/14/editorial-board-what-is-an-education-without-honesty/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/14/editorial-board-what-is-an-education-without-honesty/#respond Thu, 14 Mar 2024 07:00:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1244761 "It’s time for us to confront the obvious: The long-standing Honor Code, Stanford’s institutional mechanism to combat academic dishonesty, has failed," writes The Daily's Editorial Board.

The post Editorial Board | What is an education without honesty? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Cheating at Stanford has become rampant in recent years. After seemingly every CS 106A exam and major assignment, students flood Fizz with posts asking how effective the CS department’s plagiarism detector is and whether they will get caught for receiving inappropriate help. Students circulate completed problem sets to copy and submit as their own work without giving credit.

It’s time for us to confront the obvious: The long-standing Honor Code, Stanford’s institutional mechanism to combat academic dishonesty, has failed. 

The Editorial Board believes that the Faculty Senate’s reinstatement of in-person proctoring is a positive step. However, proctoring alone does not address the bulk of the problem. 

The Vice Provost of Student Affairs established the Committee of 12 or “C-12” in 2022 to address the proliferation of academic dishonesty. C-12-led focus groups with students uncovered informal confessions about academic dishonesty on assignments beyond exams. Students told the committee that many violations, like plagiarism and unpermitted aid, such as unapproved cheat sheets or using the Internet — persist at Stanford.

Faculty hold the unique power to restructure courses to alleviate cheating. Upholding academic integrity is a shared responsibility between students and faculty members. Our recommendations allow faculty members to respond to cheating enabled by new technologies. 

To understand why this burden falls on faculty, we must consider how the Honor Code and student behavior have evolved. 

How did we get here? 

The Honor Code was established in 1921 and maintained its stance on proctoring until 2023. Prior to 2023, it compelled faculty to create “confidence in the honor of its students by refraining from proctoring examinations.” In turn, students assumed the responsibility to monitor and report violations by their peers. 

Students, however, have failed their side of the bargain. Out of the 720 total Honor Code violations reported between 2018-2021, only two came from students. In the past three years Honor Code violations have increased: 136 in 2018-19, 191 in 2019-20, and 393 in 2020-21. 

Largely in response to this trend, the C-12 proposed changes to the Honor Code last May to allow in-person proctoring, reversing a longstanding norm. These changes triggered a torrent of student dismay and anger. 

It is clear to us, a year after the Faculty Senate’s decision, that the proctoring policy would simply put a bandage over one wound, while more nebulous, common forms of cheating fester.

Why has cheating become such a widespread issue at Stanford? 

Certainly, there are substantial incentives to cheat; one factor is post-graduation opportunities. Whether it be graduate school or an interview at McKinsey, each seems to sport a daunting GPA cutoff, and students may feel tempted to use any means to keep those doors open — a pressure acknowledged by the C-12. 

When cheating becomes a widespread campus norm, the stigma attached to academic dishonesty erodes. Cheating becomes viewed as acceptable — or even necessary — to achieve success amid students who also cheat to stay afloat. Students may assume when exam scores are curved up, they are disadvantaged when they don’t cheat.

Furthermore, grade inflation contributes to an environment where an A is the expectation, and less is failure. 

An A should mark exceptional achievement in a course. In an academic climate where Bs are commonplace, perhaps a poor grade on one test would feel less like an outcome so bad that you should risk academic integrity to prevent it. 

The unrelenting pace in the quarter system also contributes: Seemingly never-ending midterms span weeks three to nine and the pressure to cram for several final exams and papers induce the temptation to cheat.

Stanford’s academic environment has transformed into a pressure cooker, exacerbated by technological change the University has precipitated. In our view, this enabling climate, rather than some generational increase in dishonesty, is responsible for much of Stanford’s current cheating problem. Students under pressure will cheat if given the chance, and that chance has exponentiated with the internet, ChatGPT, and workarounds to plagiarism detectors. Technologies outpace detection in many contexts, with some efforts even leading to false accusations.

How can we move forward?

The new environment around academic dishonesty needs intervention beyond codified rules, it necessitates a reimagined approach to exams, assignments, and their evaluation. In addition to proctoring exams, we recommend that faculty implement the following changes:

1) Phase out take-home examinations, especially ones graded solely on correctness, in favor of in-person exams and papers.

2) Allow for cited collaboration on homework — it happens anyway. 

3) Eliminate “reflection” assignments to assess attendance or completion of readings, as they’re easily completed by ChatGPT. If instructors believe reflection is crucial, it is most effective to evaluate through discussion sections, argumentative assignments requiring original thought or in-class assessments.

4) Emphasize why academic honesty is important, not only to avoid disciplinary action, but to realize academic learning goals. A speech from instructors early in the quarter, particularly in introductory courses, would reaffirm normative goals underlying policies designed to uphold academic honesty.

Academic dishonesty is a structural problem at Stanford, driven by new technologies and student culture. Changes that do not address this reality will fail to solve the problem.

If the honor code has broken down, it is because the trust between faculty and students has broken down. While we believe students are wrong to oppose the proctoring changes, we understand that the withdrawal of trust hurts. But faculty are justified in their desire to respond.

Academic dishonesty is immensely harmful — widespread cheating degrades the University’s purpose, community and institution. A widespread culture of cheating not only ruins the curve for honest students, but undermines a Stanford degree’s academic capital. 

We urge the faculty to seriously reimagine the responsibility to cultivate an environment supportive of academic integrity. There are no malicious professors in this regard — no one wants their students to cheat. 

We urge students to support faculty to create an academically honest classroom. Prioritizing shiny results over effort curtails students’ ability to gain a genuine education. The value of Stanford classes is the cumulative knowledge we obtain from them, not the collection of letter grades.

The post Editorial Board | What is an education without honesty? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/14/editorial-board-what-is-an-education-without-honesty/feed/ 0 1244761
From the Community | Instead of attacking critics of Israel, explain why we shouldn’t https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/instead-attacking-critics-israel-explain-why-we-shouldnt/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/instead-attacking-critics-israel-explain-why-we-shouldnt/#respond Thu, 14 Mar 2024 04:09:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1244439 "To attack critics of Israel with the label 'antisemite' also carries its own dangers — it not only evacuates the term of its legitimacy and power, it also distracts our attention from authentic antisemitism, which must be fought," Palumbo-Liu writes.

The post From the Community | Instead of attacking critics of Israel, explain why we shouldn’t appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
As someone accused of being one the “worst racists” on campus (“Ph.D. student testifies before Congress on antisemitism at Stanford”), the Daily reached out to me for comment but scarcely used anything I gave them in response. So I asked to be able to more fully represent my reaction in this opinion piece.

From the Community | Instead of attacking critics of Israel, explain why we shouldn’t

In his testimony to Congress, Mr. Figelis cited one of my social media posts, which reads, “When Zionists say they don’t feel ‘safe’ on campus I’ve come to see that as they no longer feel immune from criticism of Israel.”  His testimony for Congress included this question: “Should any professor be allowed to celebrate the lack of safety of any student, regardless of how that student identifies?”

Feigelis distorts my statement in two ways. First, I do not “celebrate” any student’s lack of safety — my comment specifically regards a student’s “feeling” of lack of safety. Second, I am not even “celebrating” that feeling of lack of safety: I am saying that if one feels “safe” only when unchallenged in defending Israel and, conversely, “unsafe” because more and more people — not just at Stanford, and not just in the U.S., but globally — are vociferously criticizing what the International Court of Justice determined to be Israel’s “plausible case of genocide,” then one might want to brace oneself for more discomfort, because world opinion is changing. In the recent advisory hearings at the ICJ, only one country of the 50 that spoke asserted that Israel’s occupation was legal, and that country was not even the United States — it was Fiji. 

To attack critics of Israel with the label “antisemite” also carries its own dangers — it not only evacuates the term of its legitimacy and power, it also distracts our attention from authentic antisemitism, which must be fought. Bernie Steinberg, executive director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010 wrote:

Let me be clear: Antisemitism in the U.S. is a real and dangerous phenomenon, most pressingly from the alt-right white-supremacist politics that have become alarmingly mainstream since 2016. To contend against these and other antisemitic forces with clarity and purpose, we must put aside all fabricated and weaponized charges of “antisemitism” that serve to silence criticism of Israeli policy and its sponsors in the U.S. As a Jewish leader, I say: Enough.

Rather than using the occasion to sling mud at me in absentia before the Congressional choir, Mr. Feigelis might have attempted a more challenging task. If he believes critics of Israel deserve to be denounced and silenced as “antisemites,” then does it not behoove him to explain why Israel should not be criticized?  In today’s political environment, denouncing criticism of Israel as “antisemitism” is like shooting fish in a barrel. The Ph.D. students might more usefully spend their time elaborating a defense of Israel’s killing of over 30,000 Palestinians, including 12,000 Palestinian children, some 8,000 Palestinian women and 10,000 men, by means of bombing, shooting and starvation. He should explain why such atrocities are acceptable to him.

The bottom line is this: it doesn’t matter who is perpetrating the genocide that is unfolding before our eyes — it is not only our right, it is in fact our obligation to criticize them in the strongest terms possible. The charge of “antisemitism” seeks to deflect attention to the criminality of the State of Israel, and it is rapidly losing traction.

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and comparative literature professor at Stanford.

The post From the Community | Instead of attacking critics of Israel, explain why we shouldn’t appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/instead-attacking-critics-israel-explain-why-we-shouldnt/feed/ 0 1244439
Cu | Stanford must rename the Asia-Pacific Research Center https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/05/stanford-must-rename-aparc/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/05/stanford-must-rename-aparc/#respond Wed, 06 Mar 2024 07:09:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1244042 "When I heard that the namesake of the Center helped gentrify and destroy San Francisco’s Manilatown, I was heartbroken," Cu writes. "Isn't it ironic that Stanford’s sole dedicated space for Southeast Asian scholarship is housed within a center named after a man who destroyed a Southeast Asian community?"

The post Cu | Stanford must rename the Asia-Pacific Research Center appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
In 1968, President of Milton Meyer & Company Walter H. Shorenstein bought the San Francisco International Hotel with the intention of evicting its residents and replacing the building with a multi-level parking garage. Predominantly occupied by elderly Pilipinos, Shorenstein had no issue with evicting this Manilatown residence because, as he put it, he was just “getting rid of a slum.” 

Following public pressure and community criticism, Shorenstein gave the Manilatown community a moment of hope with a three-year lease. However, he would later secretly sell the International Hotel (more commonly known as I-Hotel) to the Four Seas Investment Corporation, who would continue to work with him. Milton Meyer & Company continued to “act as the hotel’s property manager” and collect rent, even after the transferring of ownership.

Despite an almost decades-long struggle with the efforts of student activists, local community members, and the tenants themselves, the elderly residents were evicted in the late 1970s. By the 1980s, the hotel and many other Manilatown businesses and residences were demolished.

“He could have interacted with us positively, but he chose not to. And we got evicted,” said Jeanette Gandionco Lazam, the last living tenant of the I-Hotel. “And if you sincerely believed that Walter Shorenstein was going to give us housing after the eviction, that never happened,” Lazam told The Daily.

Manilatown no longer exists due to the aspirations of predatory landlords like Shorenstein.

More than two decades later, in 2005, Stanford would rename the Asia/Pacific Research Center to the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). Housed under the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the Center acts as Stanford’s hub for contemporary Asia studies. APARC facilitates research about the Asia-Pacific region, fellowship and training opportunities, public speaker events and publications. 

“I think that it’s about time that some of these people whose names are on these hotels and schools are looked at in terms of their history in the development of San Francisco and what they did to communities of color and working class communities,” Lazam said.

According to the Center’s 30th anniversary program, the name change was made in recognition of APARC’s “greatest benefactor.” The Center celebrates Shorenstein for his significant contributions to Stanford’s Asia-Pacific research, ranging from his $15 million lead gift to his introduction of former U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and Japan Michael H. Armacost to APARC. According to a University of California, Berkeley report, Shorenstein said he began campaigning for Asia Pacific issues at Stanford when he “became aware that the future destiny of San Francisco and the Bay Area would be pretty much connected with the Pacific Rim.”

However, the Center neglects to mention that this “patron saint” of APARC is the same man who initiated the gentrification of San Francisco Pilipino American communities just decades before.

“Shorenstein’s reputation has always been one of a progressive because he was aligned with the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party … people don’t look at what he did to contribute to the redevelopment push in San Francisco to make this the Wall Street of the West,” Lazam said.

Among the tenant activists, students from San Francisco State College and UC Berkeley joined the fight to prevent the gentrification of Manilatown and the demolition of I-Hotel. It is our job to preserve the legacy of both these student activists and the tenants, ensuring that history does not repeat itself. Therefore, the University and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) must remove Walter H. Shorenstein’s name from APARC in order to honor the Pilipinos and other Asian Americans that were wrongfully removed from their communities. 

When I first heard about APARC’s Southeast Asia program, I was excited for the opportunity to finally engage with active research on the Philippines. When I heard that the namesake of the Center helped gentrify and destroy San Francisco’s Manilatown, I was heartbroken.

Isn’t it ironic that Stanford’s sole dedicated space for Southeast Asian scholarship is housed within a center named after a man who destroyed a Southeast Asian community? This is an irony that cannot continue, especially considering the University’s strong Pilipinx and Pilipinx American community.

Panahon na, Stanford. Don’t recognize Shorenstein, recognize Manilatown.

The University, FSI and APARC did not respond to comment requests.

The post Cu | Stanford must rename the Asia-Pacific Research Center appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/05/stanford-must-rename-aparc/feed/ 0 1244042
From the Community | ‘Sustainability Science and Systems’ is ambiguous corporate lingo https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/25/sustainability-science-systems-name-change-opinion/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/25/sustainability-science-systems-name-change-opinion/#respond Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:44:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1243239 "The proposed move towards 'sustainability' represents a worrying trend away from the natural sciences in exchange for vague corporate lingo," write the Earth Systems Student Advisors

The post From the Community | ‘Sustainability Science and Systems’ is ambiguous corporate lingo appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
On Nov. 8, all earth systems majors received an email from the faculty director of the earth systems program asking for input on a proposed name change. The survey listed rankable options but didn’t include the current major name, inciting community backlash; we personally spoke to dozens of majors who were unhappy and even angry with the change, and did not hear student voices excited about a name change. 

We are the 2023-24 earth systems student advisors and we are against the proposed name change of earth systems to “sustainability science and systems.” The Doerr School has failed to incorporate student feedback, and is making this proposal in spite of our continued protests. The larger Stanford community, and the Faculty Senate Committee on Review of Undergraduate Majors (C-RUM), who will vote on this proposal soon, should hear our perspective and concerns as this decision is made.

In response to student concern, the Doerr School and Earth Systems Leadership organized a town hall and focus group to solicit further feedback from students, both of which occurred during Week 10.  We subsequently sent a letter to Doerr School Dean Arun Majumdar synthesizing the perspectives of the Earth System’s cohort and created a petition against the change which was ultimately signed by 115 students and alumni. However, on Jan. 16, the Doerr School announced that the name “Sustainability Science and Systems” would be sent to C-RUM for approval. This name had not appeared in the original survey, town hall or feedback group, and thus has received no backing from students. Furthermore, the proposed name directly rejects the most resounding feedback expressed repeatedly by the student body: to preserve the word “earth” in the name and to avoid emphasizing the word “sustainability.” To ignore these two critical requests is to ignore the very people at the core of this major. 

In defense of ‘earth systems

The earth systems program’s success and popularity is due in part to its foundation as an “interdisciplinary environmental science” degree that uses a systems thinking approach to address planetary issues. The major name, earth systems, reflects this in a decades-old program with a tight-knit community encouraging students to “investigate complex environmental problems.”  If the Doerr School is truly concerned with expanding this legacy, earth systems is the only acceptable name. It is essential that the current name of the major encapsulates the interdisciplinary nature, scientific foundations, and systems-thinking central to the earth systems program. Additionally, “earth” is the foundation of the current name, and it is what unites us within the major. We are all in this major because we were drawn to a degree that emphasizes protecting, learning from, and celebrating the Earth. Removing “earth”  from the name reshapes what direction the degree will take, the faculty that will be hired, and the classes that will be taught. 

The problem with ‘sustainability sciences and systems

The proposed name centers the term sustainability. While learning about sustainability is a part of the earth systems curriculum, its core components are “science, economics, and policy,” which exist beyond the scope of sustainability. 

As with most corporate lingo, “sustainability” lacks a universal definition. The Doerr School of Sustainability has yet to offer a clear definition themselves. Even sustainability department coursework reflects this vagueness: a debate about the definition is an introductory element of SUST 210: “Pursuing Sustainability: Managing Complex Systems.” This ambiguity is dangerous, especially in situations where our degree precedes us. Potential employers and curious future students will be left to interpret the degree themselves, with the buzzword of “sustainability” changing in connotation every day. Furthermore, the newly announced Environmental Social Sciences Department is developing a new undergraduate degree program that could satisfy the Doerr School’s interest in sustainability sciences, once again rendering a name change unnecessary. 

Stanford does not have a conventional environmental science degree. Stanford’s bachelor of science in earth systems is the closest equivalent. Peer institutions offer comparable degrees: environmental sciences (Berkeley), environmental science and public policy (Harvard), and environmental science (Columbia). Earth systems is a clear analogue to these degrees. Sustainability science and systems is not, which could turn away a large pool of current and future undergraduates looking for such an education. The Doerr School claims that the future name is “easily understandable and recognizable to prospective students and high school families.” They’ve offered nothing to support this claim, which runs counter to the experiences of many current students. The proposed move towards “sustainability” represents a worrying trend away from the natural sciences in exchange for vague corporate lingo. 

The town hall and focus group feedback strongly opposed the use of “sustainability” in the major’s name due to its narrowed scope and worrying ambiguity, yet the SDSS Faculty Governance group explicitly ignored this feedback, adding the terms “science” and “systems” in an apparent attempt at compromise. However, the injection of “sustainability” and complete removal of “earth” from the name shows the Doerr School’s failure to genuinely consider student perspectives.

A lack of transparency 

After the feedback process, the Doerr School continues to push the proposed name change. One should question what motivates this charge, especially given the Doerr School’s acceptance of fossil fuel funding. Stanford flaunts its students as leaders, and yet this change comes with minimal student involvement and no true student agency. This proposed change does not come from the earth systems community, but rather from departmental administrative superiors who have failed to attend our feedback initiatives or listen to the clear and direct support of the current name. The Doerr School touts a “five-year timeline of community engagement” in this decision, yet student involvement made up just a few weeks of that process.

The next steps

The final opportunity to prevent this change from taking place is the C-RUM approval process, which is ongoing this quarter. Faculty and students on C-RUM should take these student concerns into account, and make a decision that supports student interest and agency, rather than one motivated by opaque processes and empty language. Earth systems’ 32-year legacy as a community of students and faculty who truly care about the Earth should not be rhetorically erased.

Laney Conger, Nazli Dakad, Calvin Probst, Julia Donlon, Terachet (Drive) Rojrachsombat, and Sky Chen are the 2023-24 earth systems student advisors.

The post From the Community | ‘Sustainability Science and Systems’ is ambiguous corporate lingo appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/25/sustainability-science-systems-name-change-opinion/feed/ 0 1243239
From the Community | The health harms of fossil fuel research funding https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/22/health-harms-fossil-fuel-research-funding/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/22/health-harms-fossil-fuel-research-funding/#respond Fri, 23 Feb 2024 01:23:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1243194 "If the Doerr School accepts funding from the fossil fuel industry without guardrails, history has taught that industry interests will prevail over the mission of the school to solve the climate crisis," community members from the School of Medicine write.

The post From the Community | The health harms of fossil fuel research funding appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
As health professional students, staff, faculty, and alumni across Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford Health Care, and Stanford Children’s Health, we support establishing the strongest possible guardrails in the University’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry. Our support for these guardrails stems from our extensive historical experience in medicine with the role of unchecked industry influence on honest scientific inquiry. Climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels is also profoundly a crisis of health and equity. Without guardrails, the University essentially signals to the fossil fuel industry that business as usual is acceptable. Business as usual is already harming the health of our patients and communities, and stands to grow worse without a significant course correction in our emissions.

Climate change is the greatest threat to global health of the 21st century. The science is clear: we need a rapid transition off fossil fuels to avert the worst impacts of climate change and to protect our health and our future. We are already seeing more pregnant individuals experiencing premature birth due to extreme heat exposure, more children arriving with respiratory complaints from poor air quality days, more episodes of cardiovascular events like strokes and heart attacks from both heat and wildfires, and a worsening mental health crisis in part driven by climate change and understandable concern about the future. All of these health impacts are deeply inequitable. In the United States they most impact low-income communities and communities of color. Globally they most impact the developing countries which did the least to contribute to the problem.

Pollution from fossil fuels (e.g., exhaust from cars and trucks, emissions from gas stoves) is also a significant source of air pollution that is making our patients sick right now. Twenty percent of premature deaths globally — that’s 1 in 5 — are attributable to exposure to air pollution caused by combustion of fossil fuels. This pollution disproportionately affects poorer communities and Black and Hispanic communities, contributing to the long history of environmental racism in the U.S.

The fossil fuel industry continues to slow progress on climate solutions and to sow doubt about climate change. The State of California recently filed a lawsuit against Chevron, Exxon, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Shell cataloging how long industry leaders have known about the dangers of fossil fuels, how these companies suppressed this information from the public and policy-makers, and how they have historically and continue to fund misinformation campaigns to slow the transition off fossil fuels.

As the Doerr School of Sustainability seeks to fulfill its mission of developing “high-impact solutions to pressing planetary challenges”, accepting funding from fossil fuel companies will stymie rather than facilitate this aim. As health professionals, we’ve seen a very similar situation before with Big Tobacco, which heavily influenced research to achieve pro-industry results prior to the enactment of strict regulations and guardrails. When the science became clear on the links between tobacco and lung cancer, Big Tobacco engaged in a campaign to cast doubt on the science. The same is true for the pharmaceutical industry, where evidence shows that pharmaceutical industry funding of clinical researchers is strongly associated with pro-industry results as well as evidence of trial design and publication bias. Companies like Exxon followed a similar playbook. This likely occurs through multiple mechanisms, including subtle favoritism and overt “ghost management” of studies. If the Doerr School accepts funding from the fossil fuel industry without guardrails, history has taught that industry interests will prevail over the mission of the school to solve the climate crisis.

With the future existence of humanity itself on the line, we must ensure every dollar spent toward seeking solutions for the climate crisis is used in an ethical and productive manner. To protect health, we support the plan for basic guardrails forwarded by six graduate students at Stanford who have varying opinions on industry dollars but agree that rules should be in place to protect the integrity of research. At a minimum, this requires ensuring that companies who provide research dollars are adhering to credible transition plans off fossil fuels, are making the data for their transition transparent and available, and are not engaging in or funding anti-renewable or misinformation campaigns. Big Oil companies have stated that they stand ready to address the crisis. We have the ability to hold them to their promises by not providing false cover in the form of academic partnerships with elite institutions like Stanford.

If we are to solve the climate crisis and protect the health of this generation and the generations to come, we need to act with a clear moral compass on the path forward. We call on leaders at Stanford to act, understanding that the health of current and future generations is on the line. 

Dr. Michele Barry is the Director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health, a Professor of Medicine and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute.

Dr. Desiree LaBeaud is a Professor of Pediatrics (Infectious Diseases), a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute, a Professor by courtesy of Epidemiology and Population Health, and a Professor by courtesy of Environmental Social Science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

Dr. Lisa Patel is a Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics and the Executive Director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health

Jonathan Lu is the Co-Director of Stanford Climate and Health and a fifth-year student at the Stanford School of Medicine

Dr. Debra Safer is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Dr. Wendy Bernstein is an Adjunct Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Science

This letter was endorsed by an additional 86 signatories.

The post From the Community | The health harms of fossil fuel research funding appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/22/health-harms-fossil-fuel-research-funding/feed/ 0 1243194
From the Community | Stanford’s climate action plan needs to think bigger https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/20/climate-action-plan-think-bigger/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/20/climate-action-plan-think-bigger/#respond Wed, 21 Feb 2024 07:59:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1242989 "It is not enough for Stanford to simply make its own campus sustainable," Burk writes. "It must leverage its unique resources and expertise to take action where it is needed most, and create future sustainability leaders."

The post From the Community | Stanford’s climate action plan needs to think bigger appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century. I tend to use some variation of that to open most of my job applications. I don’t claim it’s a good intro — it’s incredibly cliché, and it doesn’t say anything people don’t know — but I think we forget it too easily. In 2022, over a third of Pakistan flooded, displacing millions of people. In Florida last summer, water temperatures reached over 100℉, bleaching vast swaths of coral reefs. We hear this discourse so much that we have almost become numb to it.

It is in this context that Stanford is developing its new climate action plan, which is scheduled to be released this summer. The previous plan was released in 2009, and has helped push the University to become the relatively sustainable institution that it is today. There are more steps Stanford could take, but the University has reduced, or is set to reduce, its direct emissions about as much as it can. So what should this new climate action plan seek to do? 

I would urge the University to focus on making broader change, not just on campus, but also beyond the Farm. Stanford is not just any university — it is a world-leading institution with outsized power, resources and influence. This gives it both the capability and responsibility to serve as a key player in the clean transition. It is not enough for Stanford to simply make its own campus sustainable. It must leverage its unique resources and expertise to take action where it is needed most, and create future sustainability leaders.

One major area of need is at the local government level. These jurisdictions are often severely limited in their capacity and funding, meaning that although many need or want to take steps to lessen their emissions, they simply cannot. Here, Stanford could provide services in a few ways. For one, it could serve as a direct research and analysis service, opening a structured online forum where governments could submit technical questions about the feasibility of certain sustainability measures, or how to take advantage of existing programs and funding. University researchers and staff could then use Stanford’s resources to provide a straightforward and actionable answer, allowing these governments to make an informed decision while saving time and money.

Alternatively, Stanford could utilize the funding it allocates to carbon offsets to help facilitate real projects on the ground in communities. Offsets have been a subject of scandal in recent years, and such projects would allow Stanford to better monitor its emissions impacts while also helping entities who may be struggling to transition. Finally, where it makes sense, Stanford can help establish and support additional internship opportunities in local governments to increase capacity while providing useful job experience and perspective for students. 

Next, I would urge a deeper focus on sustainability in Stanford’s career resources. To meet the needs of combating climate change, even just here in California, will require thousands of trained workers across all sectors of the economy. There is room for a focus on climate mitigation in every field, and students should consider the impact they can have within their chosen career path. These opportunities must be made prominent, whether in discussions with advisors, on department websites, or in career-planning resources. Stanford should also create a new Ways requirement in sustainability, where students can learn about climate solutions and options to tie this into potential careers. The world’s economy needs to change significantly to actually combat the climate crisis, and Stanford must take the initiative to prepare students for this new economy and train future climate change mitigation leaders in all fields. 

Lastly, it is important to build a culture on campus informed about sustainability challenges and working toward solutions. Climate change is a global issue. It cannot be solved with a couple of small policy changes. Instead, sustainability will have to permeate throughout our lives and influence how we live, and how we view the world. Stanford should host more events highlighting decarbonization pathways, and provide people with ways to get involved around campus. Residences should host sustainability talks with new students to help people learn to live more sustainably and think about these issues in day-to-day life. Lastly, Stanford should continue its living lab fellowship program to give students more opportunities to be involved with campus sustainability efforts, while gaining good work experiences. 

If Stanford’s new plan doesn’t seek to make this higher-level change, it must at least target the major lingering sources of emissions — Scope 3 emissions. This is the hardest to abate category, encompassing things outside the direct control of the University, such as transportation emissions from students and faculty, embodied emissions in the products used around campus, waste and more. Stanford has a real opportunity to pioneer Scope 3 reduction mechanisms, but to make real progress, it must be broad in its accounting, and prioritize the most efficient reductions. 

To maximize its impact in the fight against climate change, Stanford must accept its role as a world-leading institution, and use its funds and unique capabilities to make lasting change beyond campus. Similarly, we cannot take the actions of the Doerr school to be a substitute for Stanford’s climate action — we need the full weight and power of the institution behind this transition. Stanford must be willing to reach out to and engage with stakeholders to make progress where it is needed most. It must work to build a culture that values sustainability, and one where people are willing to prioritize that in their lives and careers after Stanford. Finally, it must innovate, and be willing to push the boundaries in its climate mitigation measures on campus. These goals must be enshrined in Stanford’s climate action plan if it is to succeed. Climate action is too large a task for everyone to fend for themselves, and Stanford should use its resources not just to be a role model, but also to help others.

Camden Burk is a junior in the earth systems program.

The post From the Community | Stanford’s climate action plan needs to think bigger appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/20/climate-action-plan-think-bigger/feed/ 0 1242989
Strawser | Meeting the moment to double down on DEI https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/15/strawser-meeting-the-moment-to-double-down-on-dei/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/15/strawser-meeting-the-moment-to-double-down-on-dei/#respond Fri, 16 Feb 2024 07:17:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1242760 The next Stanford president should have the experience that signals a strong commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, Strawser writes.

The post Strawser | Meeting the moment to double down on DEI appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Stanford recently faced a scandal-ridden presidential resignation, selected a new provost and confronted resignations in critical roles in undergraduate education and student life. Throw a figurative stone at a Stanford office and it is likely you will hit one that is currently seeking or has recently sought new leadership.

Across all leadership searches at Stanford, the Presidential Search Committee’s work comes at a uniquely difficult time. Other prestigious universities are also holding presidential searches, with the work more scrutinized than ever before. Worries about the financial benefits of college, the Israel-Gaza conflict, ideological culture wars and navigating admissions following the end of explicit affirmative action have taken higher education by storm.

Stanford is confronting a series of leadership vacancies and a broader social context that strikes at the core of its educational mission. Unlike The Stanford Daily’s Editorial Board, I believe the person best qualified to serve as the next Stanford president would be someone with experience centered around a strong commitment to the values of and policy initiatives that advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

DEI traces back to the 1960s when a series of legislative victories pushed schools, workplaces and other institutions to prevent discrimination against protected classes, such as race, gender and age. DEI initiatives include “addressing discriminatory hiring practices, pay inequity or rectifying issues that cause poor employee retention rates among marginalized groups.” While DEI can look different across organizations, what remains constant is its efforts to go “beyond avoiding discrimination and to actively changing organizations so that they [are] more welcoming and more inclusive,” according to NYU professor Erica Foldy. 

Stanford’s very own Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity in a Learning Environment (IDEAL) initiative, for example, aims to represent all communities in the University’s “education and research enterprise,” ensuring a sense of belonging “regardless of [one’s] background, identity or affiliations” and giving everyone in the campus community “broad access to the opportunities and benefits of Stanford.” In furtherance of a vision of academic excellence that recognizes the value of every community and confronts the ongoing challenges posed by historic injustices, IDEAL serves as the “north star” of the University.

The right-wing zealots that want to rid education of DEI are having their way. States like Florida have shut down their LGBTQ student centers and issued a review on lessons that are “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.” The absence of DEI initiatives and curriculums tells marginalized communities that they do not belong in society, deserve no dedicated resources at school or in the workplace and have stories and struggles that ought to take second place to the placating of white guilt in this country. It is plain as day that DEI’s critics value white comfort more than any truthful retelling of U.S. history. They portray bringing minorities into the institutions they have historically been excluded from as a harm to white people.

There is a culture and policy war being waged against classroom discussions, student resources and the very ideologies that uplift society’s most marginalized people. That makes the stakes of the presidential search and Stanford’s broader leadership transition the most critical inflection point in its 133-year-long history. Stanford needs to be where DEI goes to thrive.

DEI is often made out to be an existential threat to what Stanford has professed an “unwavering commitment” toward: free speech. This concept was on full display when the Stanford Law School’s (SLS) then-associate dean for DEI disrupted the SLS-sanctioned event featuring a Trump-appointed federal appellate judge. Her disruption, after which she resigned in disgrace, caused her to become “a lightning rod for criticism of campus wokeness and suppression of free speech.” She used her University position to disregard free speech in the name of illustrating how the judge’s work “has caused harm” to marginalized communities. To undo the ways in which her actions have stained the reputation of DEI at Stanford, the University’s commitment to DEI should be viewed in ways that reflect its unyielding commitment to First Amendment principles. 

The core value of DEI — correcting for the ongoing impacts of historic discrimination and giving everyone the fair shot in society that they deserve — should be viewed in ways that do not degrade but instead embolden Stanford’s free speech values. After all, the Supreme Court issued what are now invaluable First Amendment decisions during the Civil Rights Movement. Garner v. Louisiana (1961) overruled the “disturbing the peace” charges levied against five African American college students for staging a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter. The Court also ruled in the 1963 case Edwards v. South Carolina that the forcible removal of peaceful protesters against segregation violated free speech rights that were being exercised in “their most pristine and classic form.” The gold standard institution for defending free speech, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), has even acknowledged the importance of those very cases in its First Amendment work. Empowering unpopular, oppressed voices in society birthed DEI during the 1960s, and it can continue to serve that kind of a purpose again at Stanford — nearly 60 years later.

The profound relationship between the values of DEI and free speech should be noted by the Presidential Search Committee and whoever it chooses to next lead Stanford. The next president will need to make their decisions in accordance with the Leonard Law, which holds Stanford accountable to most of the same First Amendment protections that any public college in California would need to comply with. This principle would require Stanford’s next leader to take a close look at cases like Garner and Edwards. For Stanford and its leaders, free speech is not something that needs to be seen as contradicting efforts to uplift marginalized communities but instead empowering them.

With that in mind, the search committee must not shy away from picking a president with profound experience in uplifting marginalized communities. This experience could take the form of promoting medical school curriculums that significantly reduce the often fatal healthcare errors that women and minorities face on a daily basis. It could include a nuanced policy background of combatting the discriminatory impacts of policies like redlining and the mark they have left on the racial wealth gap. It could involve efforts to stamp out biased hiring practices in the tech industry. Stanford’s next president having that kind of experience would signal their own strong commitment to the values of DEI. 
A Stanford president displaying this kind of commitment would best position the University to take bold policy action to strengthen Stanford’s DEI initiatives.

This commitment means financial support for the departmentalization of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE). This commitment means written support for graduate workers’ right to guaranteed protections on the basis of “race, gender, nationality, caste or disability.” This commitment means support for the UG2 workers currently being harmed by Stanford’s workplace culture of “surveillance, intimidation, favoritism and discrimination.” This commitment means support for faculty diversity so that the Stanford professoriate is more representative of the truly global society that the University serves. This particular moment calls for a president that emboldens Stanford’s commitment to DEI. DEI certainly stands to strengthen the free speech and academic excellence of the University.

The post Strawser | Meeting the moment to double down on DEI appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/15/strawser-meeting-the-moment-to-double-down-on-dei/feed/ 0 1242760
Editorial Board | Picking a president: What really matters https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/06/editorial-board-picking-a-president-what-really-matters/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/06/editorial-board-picking-a-president-what-really-matters/#respond Tue, 06 Feb 2024 08:47:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1241851 "The immutable characteristics — gender, race, sexuality among others — of a president or candidate are often overstated by both the proponents and detractors of DEI," the Editorial Board writes.

The post Editorial Board | Picking a president: What really matters appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Stanford is on the hunt for a president. We’re not the only ones: Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania are also scrambling to find a new leader to replace a recently ousted president. 

We certainly do not envy the presidential search committee in this difficult task. University officials and their decision-making are subject to more external forces than ever, from alumni to donors to the broader public unleashing their critiques through the Internet. Specifically, the recent resignation of Harvard’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, has raised questions surrounding the role of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in the search for presidential candidates. But to examine these questions, we must first define what qualifies somebody to be the president of Stanford University. 

What is the purpose of a university president? 

To be frank, we think many Stanford students just want an uncontroversial president who will give both a decent convocation and commencement speech. However, the role of university president is critical in many additional aspects of university life, and unique from other University leadership roles. 

In brief, Stanford’s president represents our values and excellence as an institution. This person must inspire confidence in Stanford’s potential to maintain relationships with, and solicit generous donations from, organizations, alumni and donors. In addition, they should work to advance the long-term progress and knowledge-seeking mission of our university.

Conversely, some factors that may appear to be within the purview of the university president are in fact the responsibility of other administrators. The Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and other administrators directly manage student life, and faculty and graduate students largely shape the education and research environment. 

What qualifies our president?

To that end, there are only a few strictly necessary qualifications for our future president:

  1. Strong research background and academic credentials, including significant leadership of a large organization and personal experience in generating and/or advancing knowledge within an institution.
  2. Commitment to Stanford’s mission — which includes educating students for lives of leadership, advancing fundamental knowledge, cultivating creativity, leading research and accelerating solutions — through teaching or administrative leadership.
  3. Integrity, empathy, self-awareness and a willingness to listen and collaborate with various stakeholders. This includes advocacy for academic freedom and free speech within the context of a diverse institution in which its members may sometimes hold conflicting opinions. 

What do we want from a president?

To return to the discourse around DEI, being uncontroversial does not mean that the president must continue Stanford’s trend of being a white man, simply out of concern that a “minority” (including a woman) president would create discontent among anti-DEI advocates.

Of course anyone’s identity shapes their life experience, and therefore how they develop as a leader. But while a candidate’s leadership skills and qualities may be rooted in their personal background, these qualities can and should be evaluated independently from the candidate’s immutable characteristics. 

The immutable characteristics — gender, race, sexuality among others — of a president or candidate are often overstated by both the proponents and detractors of DEI. For example, when President Joe Biden stated during his campaign that he would nominate a Black woman for the Supreme Court if given the opportunity, his words stirred up debate about the approach of deciding certain desirable immutable traits before officially beginning the selection process for an influential position. People on Biden’s shortlist and eventual Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson were unfairly and harshly judged as underqualified (through no fault of their own), and discourse around the nomination became clouded. While Stanford has not made any similar public commitments, the treatment of Justice Brown Jackson exemplifies the trend wherein candidates’ significant, laudable achievements are overshadowed by discussions about identity. In reality, there are dozens of distinguished academics from minority backgrounds who are well-qualified by their merit alone to lead Stanford, just as there are dozens from non-minority backgrounds. We are asking for the presidential candidate pool to be broad, and for the bar — outlined by the three criteria above — to be high and immovable.

While we don’t believe that the future president of Stanford ought to “belong to” or “represent” any certain groups, we also believe that it is important regardless of the president’s own identity that our university environment champions a diverse student body. A commitment to a diverse campus is independent of any political movements; it is simply necessary given the realities of our highly diverse country and globalized world economy.

While representation is meaningful for many, it is not possible to make all stakeholders happy, and we should not place such a heavy burden on the Presidential Search Committee. If some Stanford community members are hoping that the Committee will choose a President who will make everyone’s identity feel represented, they may be holding the Committee to an impossibly high standard. 

Amid the noise

Stanford University’s Presidential Selection Process must pursue a balanced, nuanced approach when tackling the multidimensionality of hiring a new President. At a school whose motto is “The Wind of Freedom Blows,” the freedom of an individual, or Presidential candidate to express or maintain their cultural identity, ought not to waiver in the face of external pressure.

When a group of people have the opportunity to appoint someone to a powerful position, we believe that it is unwise to definitively settle on a narrow list of immutable characteristics as criteria before the selection process even begins in earnest. This cuts both ways across the current political foment over DEI.

Amid so much noise, the presidential search committee ought to focus on what is most important: our university principles of academic excellence and integrity, and a record of great leadership. A misplaced emphasis on the demographics of our president can distract from these core qualities and the objective evaluation of candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. Only when we resist the fringe voices, who would boil this complex decision down to discrimination one way or another, can we truly make the best decision for Stanford.

The post Editorial Board | Picking a president: What really matters appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/06/editorial-board-picking-a-president-what-really-matters/feed/ 0 1241851
Letter from the Editors: Stanford, the institution https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/02/letter-from-the-editors-stanford-the-institution/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/02/letter-from-the-editors-stanford-the-institution/#respond Fri, 02 Feb 2024 09:13:13 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1241719 The 'equity' special issue examines "the power structures that form the lifeblood of the University," write Anne Li and Jacqueline Munis, the Vol. 264 equity project editors.

The post Letter from the Editors: Stanford, the institution appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
In early conversations about what we wanted an equity special issue to focus on, we kept coming back to the power structures that form the lifeblood of the University: the admissions process, the hierarchies of academia, the social capital, the various ways we learn to navigate this place. We chose to focus broadly on institutional equity. With this theme in mind, we challenged our writers to examine how Stanford, as an institution, shapes the lives of students, faculty and staff.

The Daily has routinely overlooked issues and communities on campus that fall outside of the mainstream. We signed on to edit the Equity Project with the hope of filling those gaps in our coverage. The Equity Project’s existence has in the past depended on the availability of interested editors. As we wrap up our tenure with this special issue release, we hope this kind of work continues at The Daily in a way that is fairly compensated and that digs deeper into the stories of those who often go unheard on campus, especially those left unexplored this volume.

This special issue includes the voices of the custodial workers who, in a fraught workplace environment, do much of the labor that keeps the University running. It explores the flow of fossil fuel money into sustainability research at Stanford. It highlights the stories of students who are finding their political voice while keeping each other safe in the face of threats like doxxing.

We reviewed Frank Sotomayor’s M.A. ’67 book “Dawning of Diversity: How Chicanos Helped Change Stanford University,” which reexamines the University’s racist history of anti-Mexican American admissions. We spoke to student-athletes about balancing the possibility of a lucrative NIL deal and the promise of a Stanford education. We shared the shock of dating as an international, queer student of color on campus. We continued to listen to student survivors of sexual assault, who bravely shared their stories with us. 

We hope these stories introduce you to new dimensions of what we collectively understand as the “Stanford experience.” We hope they inspire you to reflect on how Stanford, the institution, has shaped your time here.

Anne Li ’24 and Jacqueline Munis ’25
Vol. 264 Equity Project Editors

The post Letter from the Editors: Stanford, the institution appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/02/letter-from-the-editors-stanford-the-institution/feed/ 0 1241719
From the Community | Alumni commend Stanford’s historic sit-in to stop genocide https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/01/from-the-community-alumni-commend-stanfords-historic-sit-in-to-stop-genocide/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/01/from-the-community-alumni-commend-stanfords-historic-sit-in-to-stop-genocide/#respond Thu, 01 Feb 2024 12:00:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1240661 Students at the Sit-In to Stop Genocide have compelled the Stanford community to recognize the nature of the Israel-Gaza conflict and a collective complicity, several alumni write.

The post From the Community | Alumni commend Stanford’s historic sit-in to stop genocide appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
As a diverse group of Stanford alumni, many of us have been involved with the Palestine solidarity movement long enough to remember when it was an embattled, minority position. We are heartened to see the tradition of resisting injustice at Stanford continue during a time when Israel’s enterprise of occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid has never been more brazen. 

Many of us have continued the advocacy that began on campus when we were students. Whether it was Students Confronting Apartheid in Israel (SCAI), Coalition for Justice in the Middle East (CJME), Stanford University Students for UNICEF (SUSU) or Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine (SOOP), Stanford is a place where alumni who have become international leaders first developed and solidified their social justice advocacy. Conversations with peers in the classroom, around our dorms and across shared meals transformed us and shaped our ethical frameworks. Our opinions changed, our perspective broadened and our empathy deepened precisely because of the kinds of conversations that are taking place every day at the sit-in. 

We, the undersigned, are bound together by an understanding that the historic injustices of the 20th and 21st centuries were often dismantled because college students throughout the world chose to stand against them. We recognize that the Stanford Sit-In to Stop Genocide strengthens the tide of history, which is turning against Israel’s cruel and inhumane systems of oppression. Past protests of this nature, such as Stanford Out of South Africa (1985) and the Hunger Strike for Low Wage Workers (1994), have been pivotal in shaping Stanford into a more just institution, and the present sit-in furthers that legacy.

We lend our voices and support to the students in White Plaza who are playing a vital role in refusing to allow the public to look away as genocide takes place with the tacit complicity of Stanford’s endowment. Many alumni in this collective, some of whom are parents or siblings of participating students, have visited the sit-in, met with administrators to ensure the protestors’ safety, battled misinformation campaigns targeted toward participating students and insisted on the continued protection of free speech and the right to protest. 

Like many current Stanford students, we as alumni have been tremendously affected by the genocide in Gaza, as well as the ongoing raids, extrajudicial murders and kidnappings in the occupied West Bank. Most tragically, Dr. Rajaie Batniji ’03 M.A. ’03, a former class president, has had over 60 members of his family — men, women and children — murdered by the Israeli military in Gaza over the past three months. Dr. Sammy Abusrur’s ’09 first cousin, Anas Abusrour — the director of a youth center in Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp — was abducted by the Israeli military as he returned home to his newborn child and wife. In early December, he was sentenced to six months of “administrative detention,” an apartheid-style policy that allows the Israeli government to jail Palestinians without due process.

Other Stanford alumni have been at the forefront of human rights advocacy for Palestine. Omar Shakir ’07 J.D. ’13 has served as the Israel and Palestine Director for Human Rights Watch for the past seven years, despite being deported by the Israeli government in 2019. Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan ’06 is a pediatrician member of Doctors Without Borders and has volunteered in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Fadi Quran ’10 is the campaigns director for the global campaigning organization Avaaz. He is a Palestinian community organizer and youth leader who has been arrested multiple times for his human rights work. Shakir, Haj-Hassan and Quran have been interviewed by and/or written for numerous media outlets (CNN, ABC, Time Magazine and Al Jazeera) over the past few months, advocating for the rights of those affected by this unprecedented, ongoing tragedy. Meanwhile, many other alumni, faculty and staff at Stanford have eschewed the public eye and worked behind the scenes instead. Those who make this decision do so out of fear of negative repercussions to them, their families and their careers, a fear we have seen echoed in the dismissals of countless workers across all segments of society for publicly voicing their support of Palestine.   

This is why it is so essential we support the students involved in the Sit-in to Stop Genocide. We see our younger selves in these students occupying White Plaza, and we hope that this letter, in situating their efforts within a long legacy of activism, fortifies their spirits. 

Deep fissures are opening underneath the edifice of the U.S.-backed Zionist project that has displaced and oppressed the Palestinian people for more than 75 years. The weight of the Palestinian people’s demands — a permanent ceasefire and lifting of the siege on Gaza; the internationally recognized right of return for refugees ethnically cleansed by Israel in 1948, 1967 and thereafter; an end to apartheid against Palestinian citizens of Israel and an end to military occupation, annexation and illegal settlement building — becomes heavier and more urgent by the day. It is within this broader historical context that the International Court of Justice recently ruled — by a 15-to-2 vote — that the Israeli government must “take all measures within its power” to prevent and refrain from acts in violation of the Genocide Convention, and to desist from further killing Palestinian civilians.

The stakes for Palestine and the Palestinian people have never been higher. As Stanford alumni, our moral commitments require us to use our position to advocate not just for peace, but for justice. For these reasons and many more, Stanford students are sitting in. With their presence, they remind everyone on campus of the daily atrocities occurring in Gaza. Their movement inspires those of us who have since left campus to remain hopeful for the future. So, we thank the students for their tireless efforts. Furthermore, we extend our gratitude to the University and its administrators, who have chosen to protect the sit-in and safeguard the students’ free-speech rights. We urge them to continue this policy, and we welcome the university’s decision to establish a task force that will address the anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim hate on campus, which significantly increased after Oct. 7.

These students started their sit-in on Oct. 20, 2023, and have continued it throughout the winter break and into the new year, despite harassment, threats and inclement weather. In doing so, they have accomplished something historic: at 104 days and counting, it is the longest such action to date at Stanford. They have compelled the Stanford community to reckon with both our complicity in this genocide and our communal responsibility to act. As their efforts continue and evolve, we as alumni stand beside them and offer our endless solidarity.

This opinion was authored by a group of Stanford alumni supporting the sit-in efforts. While the initial draft was developed by a few authors, they circulated it among private networks to gather editorial feedback and support.

Maarya Abbasi ’16 M.A. ’17
Ziyad Abdelkhaleq ’11 M.S. ’12
Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi ’12
Olamide Abiose J.D. Ph.D. ’23
Sarah Abushaar ’23
Sammy Abusrur ’09
Firas Abuzaid ’13 M.S. ’15 Ph.D. ’22
Samra Adeni ’14
Zaid Adhami ’10 M.A. ’10
Neida Ahmad M.A. ’22
Mohammad Al-Moumen ’09 MBA ’14
Sanna Ali ’12 M.A. ’21 Ph.D. ’23
Ammar Alqatari ’19 M.S. ’22
Omar Amir M.D. ’12
Dian Andamari Rosanti ’09
Mea Anderson ’21
Diana Austria Rivera ’08
Ramah Awad ’17
Rajaie Batniji ’03 M.A. ’03
Kate Benham-Suk ’09
Lena Bississo M.S. ’03
Nicole Bonsol ’05 M.A. ’06
Lauren Border ’19
Devyn Brown ’09 M.A. ’10
Maya Nell Murungi Burke ’18
Jordan C. Peralta ’04
Kit Carmona ’13
James Carroll ’19
Eutiquio “Tiq” Chapa ’10
Lavanya Chekuru ’03
Geena Chen ’16
Janet Chen ’19
Calvin Cheung-Miaw ’03 Ph.D. ’21
Caroline Cohn J.D. ’19
Niza Contreras ’20
Stephanie Cruz ’08
Natasha Dar M.A. ’13
William David Rogers ’09
Joyce Dela Pena ’10
Anita F. Desai J.D. ’22
Joshua Dunn ’11
Neville Eclov ’09
Sierra Edwards ’23
Hamza El Boudali ’22 M.S. ’24
Amin El Gamal ’08
Abrahim El Gamal ’09 M.S. ’11
Omar El-Sadany MBA ’22
Rasha Elsayed ’13
Jonathan Engel ’17
Kelly Engel Wells ’05
Hassan Fahmy ’21 M.S. ’23
Ibraheem Fakira ’12
Willi Farrales ’08
Erica Fernandez Zamora ’12 M.A. ’13
Dominique B. Figueroa ’09
Mason Flink ’10
Shawna Follis postdoctorate ’23
Cindy Garcia Ward J.D. ’16
Amanda Gelender ’10
Najla Gomez ’14
Diana Gonzalez ’13 M.A. ’19
Aaron Grayson ’11
Laura Groenendaal ’14
Kerry Guerin J.D. ’23
Hialy Gutierrez ’07
Olivia Haas ’11
Rachel Habbert M.S. ’10
Tyler Haddow ’14
Tanya Haj-Hassan ’06
Sheena Hale ’07
Grant Hallee ’19 M.A. ’20
Rachel Hamburg ’10 M.A. ’11
Bilal Hamra El Badaoui M.S. ’10
Audrey Hannah ’04
Olivia Harewood ’09
Collette Harris M.D. M.S. ’09
Emma Hartung ’17
Nabeel Hasnain ’07 M.S. ’07
Fatima Hassan Ali ’09
Emily Hawley J.D. ’20
Bradley Heinz ’08
Mabrookah Heneidi ’05
Jay-Marie Hill ’10
Kuusela Hilo ’03
Daniel Hirsch ’09
Teresa Hofer ’08
Rebecca Hsu ’10
Nicholas Huang M.S. ’18
Adam Hudson ’10
Mariana Huerta ’07
Jack Hunt ’09
Tenah Hunt ’09
James Huynh ’15
Corina Iacopetti ’09
Nabill Idrisi ’09
Anna Maria Irion ’14
Osman Jamil Ph.D. ’22
Neli Jasuja ’14
Starr Jiang ’20
Ronak K Kapadia ’05
Jotthe Kannappan ’16
Farhan Kathawala ’13
Hind Katkhuda M.S. ’13
Ahlia Kattan ’09 M.D. ’13
Megan Koilparampil J.D. ’23
Paige Kumm ’09 M.A. ’10
Fatima Ladha ’17
David Lai ’08
Iris A. Law ’08
Vinney Lê ’11
Cody Leff ’15
C. Genai Lewis ’17
A.D. Lewis ’21
Owen Li ’03
Maryam Liaqat ’09
Jacqueline Lin ’17
Lisa Ndecky Llanos ’09
Skye Lovett ’18
Steve Lovett MFA ’72
Jacob Maddox J.D. ’23
Mario Madrigal ’09 MBA ’13
Dewan Majid ’07
Eric Manolito ’04
Ari Marcus ’18
Imran Maskatia ’97 M.S. ’98
Ashley McCullough Tough ’09
Claudia McKenzie ’18
Jessica McNally ’10 M.S. ’10
Haleema Mehmood Ph.D. ’15
Tina Miller ’14
Irteza Mohyuddin ’13
Mohit Mookim ’18 J.D. ’23
Melissa Morales ’09
Raya Musallam MBA ’19
Khaled Naim MBA ’13
Diana Nassar MBA ’20
Mehran Nazir M.S. ’11
Julia Neusner ’20
Seth Newton Patel ’01
Minh Nguyen ’20 M.S. ’22
Andrew Ntim ’22
Akua Nyarko-Odoom ’18
Kofi Ohene-Adu ’09
John Okhiulu ’21
Tracy Ngozi Okoroike ’09
Bijan Osmani ’09
Zeyne Oulmakki ’17
Swayam Parida ’21 M.S. ’23
Sanah Parvez ’08
Natasha Patel ’16
Siddharth Patel M.A. ’18 Ph.D ’19
Cuauhtemoc Peranda ’10
Jace Perry ’19
Jess Peterson ’13 M.S. ’15
Kristen Powers ’16
Amanda Prasuhn J.D. ’15
Fadi Quran ’10
Michaela Raikes ’10 M.A. ’11
Saraswati Rathod J.D. ’23
Mary Reagan ’18
Bronwyn Reed ’12
Elizabeth Reetz J.D. ’20
Jasmine Reid Ph.D. ’22
Rebecca Richardson ’11
Mia Ritter-Whittle ’19
Takeo Rivera ’08 M.A. ’09
Spencer Robinson ’20
Rebecca Roediger ’04
Lolita Roibal ’03
Mae Ryan ’09
Sammie Sachs ’09 M.A. ’10
Serena Saffarini J.D. ’20
Sarah Salameh ’16
Jessica Salinas ’11
Josh Schott ’14
Jessie Schrantz ’17
Jamie Senéy ’21
William Sherman ’09 Ph.D. ’17
Charlotte Silver ’09
Spencer Slovic ’18
Measha Ferguson Smith ’17
Max Sosna-Spear ’11 M.A. ’12
Rebecca Stellato ’10
Mohammad Subeh ’06 M.A. ’06 M.S. ’08
Frederick Tan ’18 M.S. ’22
Harya Tarekegn ’09
Luke Taylor ’10
Kenneth Tea ’17
Yvette Tetteh ’14
Mitali Thakor ’09
Lilian Thaoxaochay ’10
Manny Thompson ’15
Kat Townsend ’07
Eric Tran ’10
Co Tran ’17
Sarah Tran ’20
Kim Truong ’10
T. Mugabo Uwilingiyimana ’09
Sara Valderrama ’19
Adrien Wagner ’11
Emma Walker-Silverman ’17
Emily Wilder ’20
Disney Williams ’12
Sammie Ablaza Wills ’16
S. Wilson ’06
Alexa Wnorowski M.S. ’17 M.A. ’21 Ph.D ’21
Ma’ili Yee ’20 M.A. ’21
Rachel Yong ’08 M.A. ’09
Jamayka Young ’21
Tesay Yusuf ’18

The post From the Community | Alumni commend Stanford’s historic sit-in to stop genocide appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/01/from-the-community-alumni-commend-stanfords-historic-sit-in-to-stop-genocide/feed/ 0 1240661
Langevine | Navigating queer identity as an international student https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/31/langevine-navigating-the-queer-identity-at-stanford-from-an-international-lens/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/31/langevine-navigating-the-queer-identity-at-stanford-from-an-international-lens/#respond Thu, 01 Feb 2024 06:27:07 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1241403 Stanford's queer international students face complex and layered struggles due to the prevalence of "sexual racism," Langevine writes.

The post Langevine | Navigating queer identity as an international student appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
At the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford University stands as a beacon of progressive values. Many international queer students envisioned finding a utopian community — a place where the complexities of their identity would be celebrated, not just tolerated. For those who come from countries with restrictive or seemingly homophobic laws, Stanford appears as a haven, a dreamlike escape from the harsh realities back home. But the reality here is more layered and, in some ways, unexpectedly disorienting.

Upon arrival at Stanford, I expected a culture of inclusivity and acceptance. However, as days turned into weeks, months and then entire quarters, I started to grapple with new challenges that have reshaped my understanding of queer spaces. Back home, despite oppressive laws and societal norms, there was a sense of solidarity and authenticity in the fight for queer acceptance — a straightforward battle against external prejudices. However, at Stanford, the struggles are more complex, especially for those of us who identify as people of color.

At Stanford, fetishization and exoticization often became disturbing undercurrents in my romantic interactions. Whether through dating apps or in social spaces, I’ve noticed that aspects of my identity are often objectified, reducing the complexity of who I am to mere fantasies of my partner. More specifically, as a Black international student, my queer interactions often entail being reduced to the perceived size of my penis or being thought of as exotic.

This issue is not unique to me. A queer international student I spoke to said that, “Using dating and hookup apps on campus, and then being blocked by peers after sending a face pic, is truly one of the most humbling experiences one can endure. What’s worse is that my body is racially ambiguous in a way my face is not. So, people who initially express interest in my body often block me after seeing my face.” 

Another student shared a sad and embarrassing experience where their date admitted to not being genuinely interested in them. The date revealed having a preference only for Asian and white men. They commented that they only came on the date with them for amusement. 

The fact of the matter is that Stanford is no utopia. There exist deeply entrenched problems within its queer community — all of which are rooted in “sexual racism.”

Coined by Charles Herbert, sexual racism entails the exclusion, rejection and devaluation of individuals based on their race or ethnicity in romantic and sexual relationships. The queer community at Stanford is marked by implicit rules that deem certain races as more desirable than others. This establishes a racial hierarchy of attraction, where whiteness is seen as the highest echelon of attractiveness, thus making those who resemble this standard more favored.

While some queer international students possess Eurocentric features that allow them to be subservient to this racial hierarchy of attraction, many of us don’t. Accordingly, fetishism and exoticism have become the prevalent means by which we are included in the queer romantic space. And if we don’t align with the stereotypes associated with our respective racial identities, we are excluded. It is no surprise then to often find queer students of color actively combating sexual racism on their dating profiles. This reality for queer students of color, domestic and international alike, not only undermines the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion that Stanford claims to strive for, it also shows the internalized racial hierarchies that challenge the very notion of unity within the Stanford queer community. 

Mobile phone screenshot of a profile including personal info, including a bio that reads, "Please take your anti-blackness somewhere else."
Screenshot of a Stanford student’s Grindr profile protesting anti-blackness (Screenshot: SHERLOCK LANGEVINE/The Stanford Daily)

Research indicates that sexual desires are often influenced by larger social constructions of race, which make up the very foundation of American society. Therefore, I don’t think the sexual racism in Stanford’s queer community will end anytime soon. However, I do believe in being the change you want to see. Thus, to tackle sexual racism in Stanford’s queer community, I think that students should adopt the Kantwon Rogers approach, which entails the following three things: 

  1. Reflect. Reflect on your own racial biases. Think hard about their roots and how they might be unfairly grouping entire races and engage in much self-reflection. Also, look at your friend groups and ask whether they’re diverse. If not, what’s stopping them from being diverse? 
  2. React. React when you hear your queer friends and family say something that just doesn’t sit right, something that reeks of bias or racism — don’t hold back. Speak up and challenge them to think about the impact of their words.
  3. Remember. Constantly remind yourself about the harm your biases can cause, intentional or not. And I personally encourage this, because as a person of color, it is especially tough for us who face these issues every day. We shouldn’t be the only ones trying to change the narrative. As Rogers points out, the burden of enduring continuous “racial bullets” is immense. So, remind yourself: It’s on all of us — every one of us at Stanford — to be aware and actively work toward creating a more inclusive, respectful queer community.

I’ve reconciled with the idea that my Stanford experience is a lesson in the complexity of queer spaces. I do love the queer community here; however, I’ve come to understand that no community, no matter how seemingly progressive, is free from contradictions. Therefore, while the challenges queer international students might have faced at home were more overt, there still exist many problems that plague the queer community at Stanford. Our struggle transcends geographical and cultural boundaries, and because of this, regardless of where we are, we need to come together, stand united and strive for meaningful change. Knowing this has deepened my perspective on queer rights. It is up to us to change the way we approach each other.

Let’s step up and try to make a real difference.

The post Langevine | Navigating queer identity as an international student appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/31/langevine-navigating-the-queer-identity-at-stanford-from-an-international-lens/feed/ 0 1241403
From the Community | The tragedy of GSB students voting down a defense technology club https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/29/from-the-community-the-tragedy-of-gsb-students-voting-down-a-defense-technology-club/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/29/from-the-community-the-tragedy-of-gsb-students-voting-down-a-defense-technology-club/#respond Mon, 29 Jan 2024 09:06:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1241196 Innovation in defense technology is a vital step to securing the nation's future, and the GSB decision to reject a defense technology club marks tragic a step back, Szablowski writes.

The post From the Community | The tragedy of GSB students voting down a defense technology club appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
An elected group of my peers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business recently rejected our proposal to form a defense technology club. The rationalization sent to all denied clubs included scripted justifications of “not addressing an underserved need” nor having enough “potential contribution” to enhancing the school’s culture. 

To be clear, I’m confident these students were not ideologically fighting against the presence of national defense on campus. Rather, their decision was based on a bureaucratic priority ranking under fixed resources. Because Stanford University restricts external financial sponsorship, club funding is generated through default “student activities” fees alongside tuition.

New clubs either dilute the fixed funding-pool and lower all club budgets (not ideal), or Stanford raises student fees to maintain funding (also not ideal). Under this fixed constraint, my MBA peers were stewarding limited resources to best serve our community. A defense technology club was simply not ranked above the cutline as a prioritized, independent organization.

However, our peers did vote to approve an official Stanford MBA Pickleball Club. 

To me, this event serves as a microcosm of a broader tragedy that threatens our future national security. I firmly believe the students who voted against our proposal are not naive individuals at an elite, out-of-touch institution against defense; rather, my peers are brilliant individuals who simply do not feel urgency toward this area. The tragedy here isn’t “woke” resistance — it’s apathy. And, I argue that dismissal is equally as dangerous to our country’s future.

First, dismissing defense technology flies in the face of local history. Silicon Valley was built on a relationship with national security innovations. Many local inventions — microwaves, radar, transistors, circuitry, GPS and the internet — all originated from government grants targeting explicit military applications. Frederick Terman (popularly considered the father of Silicon Valley) spent his decade as University provost (1955-1965) purposely scaling our STEM departments to secure more funding from the Department of Defense. A relationship with the Pentagon runs in our school’s DNA: Defense technology ultimately enabled Stanford to become the powerhouse we enjoy as lucky students today. 

However, I am not solely focusing on the past to justify the formation of an independent defense tech club. I also want to highlight the urgency surrounding our current, critical moment in history. Amid the first major land war in Europe since 1945, conflict cascading across the Middle East beyond Gaza, rising tensions from a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan and democracy declining across the globe, Stanford students are graduating into this “decisive decade” with global uncertainties set to immediately shape our nation’s future.

In this consequential moment, our country’s defense leadership agrees that innovation is a vital step toward securing the nation’s future. However, most discussions automatically equate the concept of “defense innovation” with technological advancements, which I believe is incorrectly short-sighted. Any such consequential advancement in technology is veritably built on the hard work of individuals. Put simply, pushing the limit requires brilliance. Therefore, I argue that true defense innovation must first focus on capturing that foundation of human capital — attracting outstanding, young talent toward careers supporting our national interest.

At a campus where we glorify occupations in industries like technology, finance and consulting, I believe highlighting defense technology is an opportunity to redirect some of Stanford’s brilliance. This was the original motivation of the defense technology club — to promote alignment between our student population’s superb capabilities with careers supporting public service and/or national security. If we can get one student to consider a career in defense technology instead of dedicating their exceptional talent toward increasing advertising click rates, that is a win.  

We are pushing forward to build a movement here on campus advocating for defense technology. If you want to be involved with our “club,” please reach out — we would love to expand the community and show you opportunities that have real impact in securing our nation’s future.

Evan Szablowski is a former U.S. Army Officer and Rhodes Scholar pursuing his MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The post From the Community | The tragedy of GSB students voting down a defense technology club appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/29/from-the-community-the-tragedy-of-gsb-students-voting-down-a-defense-technology-club/feed/ 0 1241196
From the Community | Healthcare’s role in the ‘firearm epidemic’ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/25/from-the-community-healthcares-role-in-the-firearm-epidemic/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/25/from-the-community-healthcares-role-in-the-firearm-epidemic/#respond Thu, 25 Jan 2024 09:13:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1240966 Arusha Patil ’25 argues that physicians are key to preventing gun violence. "My generation is sick of nightmares about gun violence," she writes. "We're ready to dream."

The post From the Community | Healthcare’s role in the ‘firearm epidemic’ appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
This opinion is part of a larger collaboration with a coalition of 140+ student leaders in solidarity with gun violence prevention, representing 90 student groups across the nation. On Jan. 24, we published a student-written piece entitled “We will not wait for the next school shooting” in 50 student newspapers from across the country, all on the same day. 

A teacher once told me that his nightmares as a child were framed by the Cold War in the United States. His nightmares consisted of frantic dashes to bunkers and the ominous wait for a feared nuclear threat to dissipate.

In my generation of Americans, these nightmares are set in the familiar walls of our lecture halls. We hide behind desks and crawl on floors littered with shattered glass and bullet casings, as the ever-present specter of gun violence looms over our lives. 

Mass shootings, with their tragic immediacy and scale, naturally dominate our national discourse on gun violence. Yet, by focusing predominantly on these events, we risk neglecting other aspects of gun violence, including homicides, accidental deaths and, most notably, suicides. These dimensions of gun violence, frequently pigeonholed as criminal justice issues, demand a broader dialogue around mental health, overall well-being and firearm safety. 

Consider the deeply intertwined issues of mental health and firearm-related suicides. According to the Gun Violence Archive, 56% of the 43,000 firearm-related deaths in 2023 were attributed to suicide. Without a firearm, only 5% of suicide attempts are fatal. With a firearm, that figure jumps to 85%, making gun ownership — quite simply — a major risk factor for suicide. Alarmingly, a 2022 study found that around one third of people who reported symptoms of depression owned a firearm. 

These alarming statistics reveal that gun ownership is inexorably linked to physical and mental well-being. It is imperative that our healthcare system treats firearms as a significant risk factor and determinant of patient health. Medical professionals should routinely ask patients about firearm ownership and provide counseling on safe storage and handling practices.

However, firearm safety is a topic that many physicians are afraid to broach. Many physicians feel unqualified to provide advice on safe storage practices or temporary transfers of gun ownership. A study in Ohio involving primary care pediatricians revealed that only 39% of pediatricians felt they had received adequate training to counsel families about firearm safety. Despite 72% of pediatricians agreeing about having a responsibility to discuss firearm safety, the actual practice of screening for firearm ownership and providing counseling was rare. Yet, the safe storage and handling of firearms is particularly important in the pediatric setting, considering that guns are the most likely cause of death among children and teens.

In addition to doctors feeling ill-prepared to discuss firearm safety, patients often fail to see the relevance of such discussions. In a survey conducted by the University of Michigan School of Medicine, more than half of adult patients skipped a question about gun ownership on a questionnaire provided in the clinic waiting room. It is not a topic anyone is comfortable with. Addressing the genuine public health risks posed by firearms therefore necessitates a shift in how we approach doctor-patient conversations. 

This is precisely the aim of Team SAFE (Scrubs Against the Firearms Epidemic), an organization co-founded by Dr. Dean Winslow and Dr. Sarabeth Spitzer at Stanford University. Their mission is to equip healthcare providers with skills to advise their patients, communities and legislators on firearm use and ownership. With chapters in medical schools across the United States, Team SAFE is integrating firearm safety into medical curriculum via training on firearm-related injuries, firearm anatomy and patient counseling. Through these resources, Dr. Winslow “hope[s] that a doctor, psychiatrist or psychologist has the knowledge to inquire about firearms and encourage safe practices.”

Whether or not you are a current or aspiring healthcare professional, we are all bound together by our role as patients. These crucial dialogues represent more than just preventative measures: They can be life-saving interventions. Patient-doctor conversations around firearm safety can be uncomfortable, but that is exactly why they are necessary — they are a small price to pay to prevent more lives from being lost.

My generation is sick of nightmares about gun violence. 

We’re ready to dream instead.

Arusha Patil ’25 is a junior majoring in computer science.

The post From the Community | Healthcare’s role in the ‘firearm epidemic’ appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/25/from-the-community-healthcares-role-in-the-firearm-epidemic/feed/ 0 1240966
From the Community | On language, silence and the sit-in https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-on-language-silence-and-the-sit-in/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-on-language-silence-and-the-sit-in/#respond Fri, 08 Dec 2023 13:29:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1239471 "I am seized by the possibility that this sit-in, in addition to making clear students’ demands, also generates a signal of commitment to our shared humanity," writes Aracelis Girmay.

The post From the Community | On language, silence and the sit-in appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
With words of sacred scripture
I shield the oranges from the sting of phosphorous
and the shades of cloud from the smog.

I grant you refuge in knowing
that the dust will clear,
and they who fell in love and died together
will one day laugh.

  —Hiba Abu Nada (1991-2023)

Translated from Arabic by Huda Fakhreddine

In 2021, the Palestinian American poet, translator and doctor Fady Joudah wrote: “I’ve long been aware of the crushing weight that reduces Palestine in English to a product with limited features, a perverse irony that revolves around the violence that Israel and the United States, culture and system, launch against Palestinians.” And later: “The overlap zone with Palestine in Arabic is not small, but the empathy field in English is malnourished.” These weeks we have witnessed the starkest reminders of this devastating lack. 

In the United States, mainstream journalists use their English to obfuscate Israel’s crimes against a besieged civilian population in Palestine. Their English cloaks the perpetrators, making them invisible to every logic that would damn them. They suggest that Palestinians “die” while Israelis “are killed” and treat the occupied as terroristic and the occupier as reasonable and just. 

The atrocities of Oct. 7 are repeatedly framed in the context of hundreds of years of antisemitism. But Palestinians are not granted this historical view. Instead, people are chastised or worse when they mention the last 75 years of Israeli occupation or when they condemn U.S. support of the slaughter of Palestinians. 

Israeli officials wage war against “human animals” and “children of darkness,” familiar tropes meant to dehumanize. This genocidal language has gone largely unchecked by so many of our celebrated cultural and educational institutions. Rhetoric that should be met with denunciation and disavowal has instead been received with a cruel, festering, permissive silence — a silence that pledges its allegiance to one life and its disregard of another.

It feels absurd to write to you of language when hour by hour the people of Palestine face annihilation. But here we are, bereft of the widespread condemnation of these unambiguous horrors. Where is the fire-language of protection for our Palestinian, Muslim and Arab beloveds with whom we are in community? Where are the greennesses and blessings for the ones who speak, who fight?

For me, the ongoing student sit-in at Stanford is a language unto itself, a collaborative practice that makes visible a presence of resistance, education and outrage in the face of such silence. These brave students of conscience have sacrificed their comfort in order to call us into dialogue at a time when so many are afraid to speak. It seems theirs is a vision of effortful togetherness, a patchwork of tents, tables and resources — an evolving grammar of grappling and disruption. 

The words of poet Rasha Abdulhadi fly through me: “Let the soft animal of your body get in the way of the death machines. Let the soft animal of your body make some safety for other people. Let the soft animal of your body refuse and disobey.”

Protesters are rejecting the lie that all of our histories are unrelated and that this particular history is too complex to speak about if you support Palestinian rights and are not from the region. As Gwendolyn Brooks says, “We are each other’s business. We are each other’s magnitude and bond.”  

On this campus, I consider what the sit-in might mean to a range of students, staff and faculty who are themselves survivors of ethnic cleansing or genocide. While these histories of catastrophe are distinct, they also exist within an intricate web of relation. I am seized by the possibility that this sit-in, in addition to making clear students’ demands, also generates a signal of commitment to our shared humanity. 

***

The Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada — all blessings and wildflowers to her name — was killed by an Israeli airstrike within days of writing the poem excerpted in the epigraph above. With these words, in the last days of her life, she protects the oranges and the shades of the clouds. Elsewhere, she blesses the children. She writes a future when even the dead will one day laugh, and with her language makes a refuge, a refusal and a shield. These are the words I think of when I meet the students in White Plaza or see their tents from a distance as I walk to meetings. 

These weeks we have seen student protesters refusing the regimes of silence that threaten to normalize mass killings. With their discipline, they shield action from despair. They are a greenness in the heart of campus, calling us to life.

Aracelis Girmay is a poet and professor of English.

The post From the Community | On language, silence and the sit-in appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-on-language-silence-and-the-sit-in/feed/ 0 1239471
From the Community | Gaza: The war of the words https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-gaza-the-war-of-the-words/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-gaza-the-war-of-the-words/#respond Fri, 08 Dec 2023 13:29:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1239467 "Legal terms are twisted for emotional impact, and shouted chants replace civil discourse," writes Alan Fisher.

The post From the Community | Gaza: The war of the words appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
On Oct. 7, Hamas blew up sections of the border fence around the Gaza Strip. Its fighters entered nearby Israeli towns and farming villages with written orders to kill every civilian they could find — men, women, children and even babies — except for some to be captured as bargaining chips. They did as instructed, killing over 1,200 and taking over 240 hostage. The dead were later found raped, tortured, butchered and sometimes beheaded.

Caught by surprise, Israelis quickly regrouped, halting the rampage and clearing the invaders from their territory. They rescued survivors and brought medical care to the many gravely wounded. Israel then launched a counterattack, first with bombing, and then, after careful preparation, with a ground assault.

This conflict has brought a battle of words and slogans to Stanford and to campuses across the country. Most blame not the aggressor, Hamas, but its victim, Israel. President Richard Saller and his counterparts elsewhere have issued multiple statements and calls for dialogue, to little effect. Here I discuss examples in which the meaning of legal terms are twisted for emotional impact, and shouted chants replace civil discourse.

Prominently, signs on campus have called Israel’s actions “genocide,” a word I see as a hand grenade tossed as an inversion of the Holocaust. When Nazi Germany killed fully one third of all the Jews in the world, the word “genocide” was invented to describe this evil, an attempt to intentionally destroy an entire group of people. Israel, on the other hand, wants to kill Hamas’ fighters, and the killing of soldiers in an enemy army is expected and permitted in war. Israel is not trying to kill everyone in Gaza but to free its hostages and remove Hamas from power.

Protesters at Stanford deny Israel’s right to exist within any borders at all, calling its creation “settler-colonialism.” This concept may properly describe the English landing at Plymouth Rock. However, when applied to Israel, it is a loaded term that sweeps aside 3,200 years of Jewish history in which an indigenous people have re-established their ancient homeland after the invasions of successive empires, including one 1,400 years ago that brought Arabic and Islam from the Arabian Peninsula. Israelis’ and Palestinians’ long-standing claims to the land can be reconciled only by co-existence, but the chants we hear at demonstrations, including at Stanford, leave little room for that. “From the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea, Palestine will be free” translates to “it’s all ours” — no Israel, no Jews. How? “Globalize the intifada” provides an answer — violence, against Israelis and against Jews everywhere.

This assault of loaded words continues with accusations of Israeli “war crimes.” The laws of war include the rule of “proportionality,” which states that the legality of a military action depends on the balance between its objective and its means and consequences. Under prior law and the Rome Statute that governs the International Criminal Court, a “war crime” includes “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects … which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.”

Causing civilian deaths is not itself a war crime, nor does proportionality require that deaths on both sides must be roughly equal. Critics denounce Israel’s response as “disproportionate” and therefore a “war crime.” But to determine the validity of these accusations we must closely examine whether Israel has properly delineated what is “proportionate” from what is “excessive.”

Consider the battlefield. Hamas intentionally sited command centers, arms factories and weapons depots in crowded civilian areas. Many line their 300-mile network of tunnels, with fighters descending through access shafts hidden in homes and hospitals. Rockets are launched outside mosques and schools. A Hamas headquarters is being uncovered in tunnels under Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest. Hamas chose these strategic locations to protect itself behind human shields (which is itself a war crime). To achieve “military advantage” from attacking its hidden enemy while reducing “incidental loss of civilian life or injury to civilians,” Israel warned civilians to evacuate. 

Even so, there have been many deaths, as the critics properly point out. Hamas sources claim that Israel has killed about 16,000, without distinguishing civilians from combatants. By Israel’s estimate, the deaths include 5,000 or more Hamas fighters (over 30% of the total). Compare this to other urban battles, where combatants typically constitute only 10% of the dead. Of course, the dead care little for statistics. But once an attacker starts a war, the defender may do only what is necessary and proportionate to end the threat. In this ugly context, Israel has satisfied the test of proportionality and has undermined the protesters’ accusation of war crimes. 

Next, consider the demonstrators’ call for “an immediate ceasefire.” This slogan also makes fine emotional rhetoric but lacks critical context. The slogan overlooks the ceasefire that was already in effect on Oct. 6. Even as it was signed last May, Hamas was deep into planning this meticulous attack. That ceasefire was only a hudna, a temporary truce, to be broken when convenient.

Moreover, Hamas still holds over 130 hostages, and it is unlikely that Israel will get them back alive without military pressure. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar even threatened that Oct. 7 was “a rehearsal” for future attacks. This pattern has recurred every few years in a loop, like some bloody version of “Groundhog Day.” How could another ceasefire break this loop?

Israel now says the war will continue until all hostages are freed and Hamas is removed from its misrule of Gaza. Perhaps new, responsible leadership, under international supervision, will at last support the people of Gaza. Perhaps the Israeli government’s scandalous neglect of security before the attack will lead to an investigation, a new election and a new Israeli government too. The parties might then grope toward the dim light of co-existence, glinting in the distance at the end of this tunnel.

Finally, here at Stanford, loud rhetoric that offers more heat than light coarsens debate on campus. After this war, perhaps we will stop shouting offensive slogans and return to learning from one another through reasoned and informed dialogue.

Alan Fisher is a lead scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

The post From the Community | Gaza: The war of the words appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-gaza-the-war-of-the-words/feed/ 0 1239467
From the Community | A Muslim student’s perspective on the Palestinian-Israeli crisis https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-a-muslim-students-perspective-on-the-palestinian-israeli-crisis/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-a-muslim-students-perspective-on-the-palestinian-israeli-crisis/#respond Fri, 08 Dec 2023 13:29:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1236320 "Straw-manning our position as a defense of terrorism or antisemitism is intellectually dishonest and unconducive to progress," writes Hamza El Boudali.

The post From the Community | A Muslim student’s perspective on the Palestinian-Israeli crisis appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Over the past nine weeks, students showing solidarity with Palestine have been incessantly accused of supporting terrorism — I have received comments, emails and social media messages claiming that I support beheading babies.

As an American Muslim, these slanderous accusations are not new to me. In the spirit of open dialogue, I wish to respond with my personal view on the ongoing crisis in Gaza, shared by many other Muslim students who I have spoken with.

Despite what many Western media sources, including our student newspapers, The Daily and the Review, will have you believe, the ongoing violence in Gaza is not the fault of Islamist terrorists. Not only is this rhetoric one-sided and simplistic, it is also misused and abused by oppressive regimes around the world.

This rhetoric of terrorism is used by the Chinese Communist Party against the Uyghur resistance, the Indian government against the Kashmiri resistance and the Myanmar military against the Rohingya resistance. In all these cases, a state with a powerful military purports to be “fighting terrorism” as an excuse to brutally attack and oppress indigenous Muslim populations in their homelands. Israel uses the same strategy to ethnically cleanse Palestine by claiming to fight Hamas while bombarding all of Gaza.

In 2001, George W. Bush paved the way for the weaponization of this rhetoric when he declared his “Global War on Terror” to justify invading Iraq and Afghanistan. This is nothing more than a ploy drawing on the Islamophobic trope that Muslims are violent and barbaric.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, there is no internationally accepted definition of terrorism; however, “as a minimum, terrorism involves the intimidation or coercion of populations or governments through the threat or perpetration of violence, causing death, serious injury or the taking of hostages.” 

Terrorism is terrorism, whether it’s committed by a state or a stateless people. Terrorism is terrorism whether the U.S. government acknowledges it or not.

Israel is most deserving of the “terrorist” title in this conflict, especially given their lack of mitigating circumstances: they are not being occupied or blockaded, they have international support and they have advanced military technology capable of precise targeting. Why, then, are Muslim students asked to condemn Hamas, while advocates for Israel are not asked to condemn the IDF?

What is Israel’s excuse for leveling residential buildings? Or targeting refugee camps and schools with airstrikes? Or cutting off electricity, food, medicine and fuel to all of Gaza as collective punishment? Or dropping white phosphorus on civilians? Or ordering over a million Gazans to evacuate before bombing an evacuation route? Or murdering over 170 civilians in the West Bank, which is not governed by Hamas, while the world is distracted by grave risk of genocide in Gaza?

There is no excuse. The Israeli government is a terrorist organization.

Many on campus claim that supporting Palestinian resistance makes me a terrorist sympathizer. But then what does that make those who justify Israel’s crimes against humanity by saying, “Hamas is holding human shields” and “Israel has a right to defend itself”?

Was every one of the 14,000 Palestinians slaughtered so far a human shield? 

The strongest military in the Middle East had to butcher 4,000 kids and displace 1.5 million civilians to defend itself?

If there was a rumor Hamas was hiding inside an Israeli hospital, would that justify blowing up the hospital? How about an Israeli daycare center?

Those who misuse the rhetoric of terrorism center the conversation around Hamas, but the cause of this crisis is not Hamas. Palestinians have been decrying violence by Zionist militant groups long before Hamas existed. And, even aside from Hamas, anyone who has ever fought back against Israel was designated a terrorist.

You do not need to support Hamas to recognize this hypocrisy. Nor do you have to be Muslim or Arab. Many Jews and former Zionists have blamed Israeli apartheid for the recent violence because they understand where our focus should be

To those who criticize us for not condemning Hamas: We Muslims are tired of being spoken down to. We’re tired of moral grandstanding from Western people. We’re tired of condemning groups we’re not affiliated with. Those who arrogantly demand condemnations from Muslims should first condemn the Israeli government. Then, and only then, will you have earned the moral capital to demand condemnations from me.

As Americans, our tax dollars fund military aid to Israel, not Hamas. Stanford partners with Israeli companies complicit in the occupation, not with Hamas. Our administration condemned Hamas in their letter to the community but said absolutely nothing about Israel’s atrocities.

A truck was seen and photographed by Muslim students on campus with the following message written on it in Arabic: “Warning: Stay away 100 meters or you will be shot at.” Palestinian and Muslim students on campus have received threatening phone calls from strangers and alumni, been doxxed, defamed, regularly harassed (even by a professor) and assaulted. Many pro-Palestinians on campus don’t publicly comment because they fear these consequences. Anti-Zionist speech has always been stifled in this country.

All of this is why I choose to focus on Israel and not Hamas.

I condemn the racist ethnostate of Israel, and I condemn anyone who asks me to condemn Hamas without first condemning Israel.

As a Muslim, it is part of my faith to oppose the killing of innocent civilians. Any harm to innocent Israeli or Palestinian people is undoubtedly horrible and should not be condoned. My heart goes out to all the affected families who lost loved ones and are hurting on both sides.

To truly honor the lives of the victims and prevent this from ever happening again, we must stop the terrorist group directly responsible: the Israeli government.

This conflict did not start on Oct. 7. Palestinians have been getting slaughtered and displaced for 75 years

Israel’s government cannot slowly eradicate the Palestinian population and not expect a violent response. The international community cannot continue to support Israel or remain silent and not expect a violent response. The recent violence is the direct result of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. 

Killing civilians is not justified. But under these conditions, armed resistance against the Israeli military and police is justified. On Oct. 7, Palestinians and their allies were not celebrating the death of Israeli civilians; we were celebrating Palestinians breaking out of their prison and attacking military posts. I support armed resistance as Palestinians struggle to end Israeli terror, while simultaneously opposing deliberate harm to innocent civilians.

There are many historical cases of civilians being killed by an oppressed group that is using armed resistance to overcome their oppressor. We look back at these today and understand that we must focus on the root cause of the oppression. For example, Nelson Mandela’s paramilitary wing of the African National Congress, which was designated a terrorist organization by South Africa, the U.S. and the U.K., conducted several bombings that killed police officers and civilians. 

Yet when we talk about South African apartheid, we start and end the discussion with the injustice of apartheid. The same is true for the Algerian National Liberation Front’s attacks against the brutal French colonial government, slave revolts against American plantation owners and Native American attacks against European colonizers. 

This does not mean those civilian lives don’t matter — quite the opposite. It means their blood is on the hands of the colonizing, occupying and terrorizing force.

It’s important to not get stuck in an echo chamber. We hear pro-Israeli perspectives every day on CNN, Fox, MSNBC and other Western news outlets. We see an abundance of false propaganda spread by Zionists in mainstream media to stoke fear against Palestinians and Muslims. 

This is not a new phenomenon. In the 1990s, George H.W. Bush used false testimony of Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators to justify the American invasion of Iraq. In 2001, the “weapons of mass destruction” lie was used to invade Iraq again. Fear-mongering allows governments to manufacture consent and act on entire populations with impunity.

I encourage readers to be critical. Check sources. Demand explicit evidence. Keep in mind that Israel has a long history of lying about its crimes. The massacres in Gaza, on the other hand, are undeniable. Palestinians do not need to lie because the reality is far worse than is even imaginable.

As the great Malcolm X said, “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people being oppressed, and loving the people doing the oppressing.”

Many students like myself are happy to engage in respectful and productive dialogue. Straw-manning our position as a defense of terrorism or antisemitism is intellectually dishonest and unconducive to progress. 

Those willing to support the children of Gaza can help at these links. And to those Zionists who photograph, doxx and attempt to silence pro-Palestinian students: Feel free not to hire me. In fact, please don’t, I would never work for you anyway.

May God protect Gaza and all innocent people around the world.

Hamza El Boudali ’22 is a master’s student in computer science.

After editors introduced a change to align with linked substantiation, this article was updated at the author’s request to more accurately represent his perspective.

The post From the Community | A Muslim student’s perspective on the Palestinian-Israeli crisis appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-a-muslim-students-perspective-on-the-palestinian-israeli-crisis/feed/ 0 Piers Morgan vs Mohammed Hijab On Palestine and Israel-Hamas War | The Full Debate nonadult 1236320
From the Community | Antisemitism is alive and well at Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-antisemitism-is-alive-and-well-at-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-antisemitism-is-alive-and-well-at-stanford/#respond Fri, 08 Dec 2023 13:28:11 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1238532 “For the first time in my life, rather than the unabashed pride I have always felt as a member of the Stanford family, I feel ashamed,” writes Michael Weis.

The post From the Community | Antisemitism is alive and well at Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
While this letter is mostly about antisemitism at Stanford, my heart breaks for students like Abdulwahab Omira, who was targeted in a heinous hit and run attack on Nov. 3, and for all students who are targeted by hate, regardless of their race, gender, country of origin, religion or other protected status. We are all the worse for these unprovoked and destructive acts, and I send him my prayers for healing.

Ever since I tore open my acceptance letter to Stanford over 40 years ago, I had felt nothing but pride in my identity as a Stanford student and alumnus. But since the brutal Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 innocent Israeli men, women and children; took over 200 hostages and wounded thousands more, I no longer feel that way. Ironically, Hamas has relatively little to do with my change of heart. It’s what has been happening at Stanford that has left me feeling heartbroken and ashamed. 

In 2005, I had just arrived in Israel to begin my cantorial studies following the Gaza disengagement that left millions of dollars worth of productive infrastructure in place for the Palestinians and thousands of Israelis uprooted — many of them forcefully removed by the IDF — with no place to live. Though compensated by the state for their losses, many Israelis camped for months in protest outside the Prime Minister’s residence, which I passed each morning on my way to class. Most people that I knew, however, felt it was a necessary step toward peace with the Palestinians.

In return, Palestinian mobs destroyed most of what Israel left behind and began a relentless terror campaign consisting of tens of thousands of indiscriminately fired rockets from civilian areas toward non-combatants and non-military structures. Every single rocket — an ingeniously designed cluster bomb of war crimes — was carefully packed with thousands of ball bearings, nails and shrapnel to do one thing: terrorize as many innocent people as possible.

And so, to protect its citizens from this real and present threat on its border with Gaza, Israel instituted a blockade that continues to this day. To be clear: Palestinian terror preceded the blockade and has continued almost unabated ever since. 

For the most part, while the United Nations and most NGOs have endlessly decried the blockade as “illegal,” it has always been, in fact, wholly defensive (read: not illegal), and kept the southern border relatively safe. Until Oct. 7. 

When the ASSU voted to divest from Israeli companies but the University did not, I still felt pride. I didn’t like how misguided those students were who supported Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), but I felt like Stanford would still be a great place to send my children one day.

Even when Stanford admitted to using admissions quotas for Jews, I felt pride that the University was willing to shed self-critical light on its own dark past, make amends and take action to address its flaws.

Fast forward to today. Life experience taught me that the support Israel experienced immediately following the Oct. 7 massacre would only last a few days, and I was right. 

What I did not expect, though, was that Stanford students would side with terrorists who savagely butchered adults, women, children and babies. 

I did not expect Jewish Stanford associate professor of history, Mikael Wolfe, to expound upon common antisemitic, anti-Israel tropes — disparaging Zionism as a “settler-colonial project” and referring to Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing,” “collective punishment” and “illegal … blockade,” among others — in his Oct. 31 opinion.

Specifically, “The major element of Zionism that made possible the founding of Israel,” he asserts, “was the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes during the first major Arab-Israeli War in 1948.” While there are legitimate criticisms against Israel that are not considered antisemitic, Wolfe’s claims place the entire blame for the displacement of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 on Israel. This is so devoid of context that the best that can be said about it is that it was woefully irresponsible. 

I did not expect that The Daily would publish that opinion without fact-checking an “expert” who should know the history of his own people better. I also didn’t expect that The Daily would blithely publish student demonstrators’ propaganda about the 75-year “occupation” of Palestine without bothering to note that 75 years encompasses Israel’s entire existence. 

But most of all, I didn’t expect the University administration, led for the first time in its history by a Jew, to allow unbridled antisemitism in the form of anti-Israel propaganda (see 3 Ds Test below) to stampede its way through Stanford’s classrooms and public spaces. 

Israel isn’t perfect and deserves to be criticized. But if the U.N.-accepted working definition of antisemitism put forth by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is silent on whether criticism of Israel is antisemitic, how do we know when we’ve crossed the line from legitimate criticism to antisemitism? How do we know there even is a line at all?

Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident, human rights activist and one-time Chairman of the Jewish Agency, after a lifetime of observing modern day antisemitism around the world, proposed a very simple formula for recognizing when otherwise legitimate criticism of Israel devolves into antisemitism. He calls it the Three Ds Test

The first D stands for double-standards. 

Let’s start with one of the favorite canards of Israel’s detractors: genocide. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, genocide is defined primarily as including “violent attacks with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Guided by this internationally-accepted definition, can we build a case that Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinians or not? 

The Palestinian population in 1950 stood at 944,087. As of today, Palestinians number more than 5.4 million. While the suffering and devastation from the current conflict in Gaza are heart-rending, based on this stunning statistic alone, the charge that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians is completely counterfactual and patently absurd.

But real-world facts that challenge their hallowed narrative haven’t prevented the U.N., most NGOs, media outlets, governments around the world, academics, social justice activists of all stripes, celebrities and, yes, even our own Stanford students from incessantly declaring that Israel is committing genocide while they simultaneously ignore the very real genocides that have taken millions of innocent Ethiopian, Syrian, Sudanese, Rwandan, Yemenite lives and thousands more in recent years. Such charges are intellectually lazy, downright ignorant and evidence of an obvious and pernicious double standard toward Israel.   

The second D is for delegitimization. 

Israel has fought multiple defensive wars against existential threats and has been in a constant state of war with most of its neighbors since the day it was founded. In every case — 1948, 1967, 1973, 2023 —Israel was attacked first and responded in self-defense, winning each of those wars and gaining territory in the process. Yet Israel is expected to just give it all up, whether it be Gaza and the West Bank, the Golan or, indeed, the entire land of Israel. When you label Israel, a U.N. member nation, a settler colonial state and question Israel’s right to exist (whether on legal or moral grounds), you are guilty of delegitimization.

The final D is demonization. 

When Stanford students adopt terrorist slogans by chanting “long live the Intifada” and relentlessly accuse Israel of imperialism, settler colonialism, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid, they not only don’t know what those terms actually mean, they are demonizing Israel.

Double-standards, delegitimization and demonization: These are the three hallmarks of modern-day antisemitism masquerading as anti-Israel criticism. I honestly believe that many people who chant “from the river to the sea” are not antisemitic. They just really want peace. I would simply remind them that what happened on Oct. 7 is but a small taste of how their dream would devolve into an unimaginable nightmare if Israel were to lay down its arms.

It would be a real genocide, but not of the Palestinians. Of millions of Jews. Again.

To paraphrase the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from a keynote speech he delivered to the European Parliament in 2016 entitled “Understanding Antisemitism: The Mutating Virus,” it is not antisemitic to not like Jews. Nor is it antisemitic to not like Israel. But when anti-Zionists categorically deny the legitimate right of Jews to live as Jews in their own land, and lend their voices to those who actively seek the destruction of the Jewish state — especially when claiming to defend human rights — then they are, indeed, guilty of antisemitism. 

And so, for the first time in my life, rather than the unabashed pride I have always felt as a member of the Stanford family, I feel ashamed. I am ashamed of students who would threaten their fellow students and advocate for the destruction of the Jewish homeland and all its people, and I am ashamed of the University for allowing such blatant hate to proliferate on campus under the guise of legitimate public discourse and by hiding behind the Leonard Law. Most of all, though, I am ashamed of myself for not advocating on behalf of Stanford’s Jewish students sooner.

Stanford students deserve better than this.

Stanford students should be better than this.

Stanford University needs to do much better than this.

Cantor Michael Weis graduated from Stanford in 1986, and currently lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The post From the Community | Antisemitism is alive and well at Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/08/from-the-community-antisemitism-is-alive-and-well-at-stanford/feed/ 0 The Mutating Virus: Understanding Antisemitism | Rabbi Jonathan Sacks nonadult 1238532
Letter from the Editors: Bringing the arts into the spotlight in Intermission https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/06/letter-from-the-editors-bringing-the-arts-into-the-spotlight-in-intermission/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/06/letter-from-the-editors-bringing-the-arts-into-the-spotlight-in-intermission/#respond Wed, 06 Dec 2023 09:14:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1239151 Campus arts offer us respite from the career pressures, imposter syndrome and those CS problem sets that seem to absorb every waking hour. In this special issue, we inspire you to stop and notice the remarkable everyday creativity around you and meet some of the humans indispensable to those artistic experiences.

The post Letter from the Editors: Bringing the arts into the spotlight in Intermission appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Some say the unifying Stanford experience is CS 106A, a class that many will have taken during their student career. We say that it is the arts. 

A look at class enrollment data reveals the arts’ central position in student life. The Department of Music saw a total of 1,573 enrollments during this fall quarter, ranking seventh among undergraduate departments in terms of enrollment. Arts-leaning divisions combined — namely music, art history, dance, art studies, film and theater and performance studies — have 3,310 enrollments, surpassing all departments and divisions besides computer science.

The numbers tell us that most of us have been in an arts class, regardless of our field of study. We’d venture to say that almost all of us have created or consumed student art in some form or another — be it an a cappella show, a theater production or that student band concert at The Arbor you walked by on a Friday night.

Whether we realize it or not, the arts shape how we interact with others on campus. They offer us respite from career pressures, imposter syndrome and those CS problem sets that seem to absorb every waking hour. (In fact, CS problem sets even inspired a student-written theater show last year, inviting audiences to have a good laugh while reflecting on the role of technology in campus life.)

The arts give us a space to try for the sake of trying. They ask us to shoulder the looming possibility of failure while we experiment with methods of creative self-expression.

Simply check out some of Arts & Life’s past coverage to see for yourself. Last Friday’s “Breaking Ground” attracted 710 community members in celebration of 14 dance groups’ quarter-long work. Student organizers of On Call Café served 524 students over the first four hours of their opening night, creating a new space for students to simply be together. You may not even be aware of Stanford’s unofficial jugger team, which invites anyone from students to dining hall staff to join in weekly games reminiscent of capture the flag.

What is the overarching theme in these student performances, late-night get-togethers and club opportunities? It is that the arts and cultural events are crucial to creating a unique, safe space for us to relax, experiment and regroup as a student body.

Stanford would not be the community that it is without its artistic opportunities. And this is what we attempt to convey in this issue. “Intermission,” named after the weekly culture-centric newspaper that The Daily put out between 1989 and 2013, tries to bring the arts back to center stage. 

Departing from the original — which detailed campus goings-on, as well as personal stories and quirky advice columns — our “Intermission” special issue aims to spotlight hidden corners of campus arts and culture, those experiences that don’t make the headlines but scaffold our student experience. Insofar as an intermission is a pause, we want to inspire you to stop and notice the remarkable everyday creativity that surrounds us.

We especially hope to introduce you to some of the humans who are indispensable to making those essential experiences happen. They are your classmates and your professors; they are unsung heroes of campus music events, the educator behind Stanford’s beloved social dance classes, the costumed faces of Stanford Trees and so much more. We hope that you enjoy.

Linda Liu ’25 and Sofia Gonzalez-Rodriguez ’25 are volume 264 managing editors of the Arts & Life section.

The post Letter from the Editors: Bringing the arts into the spotlight in Intermission appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/06/letter-from-the-editors-bringing-the-arts-into-the-spotlight-in-intermission/feed/ 0 1239151
Strawser | The Faculty Senate and VPSA are keeping secrets at students’ expense https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/01/strawser-the-faculty-senate-and-vpsa-are-keeping-secrets-at-students-expense/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/01/strawser-the-faculty-senate-and-vpsa-are-keeping-secrets-at-students-expense/#respond Fri, 01 Dec 2023 10:37:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1238268 The Faculty Senate and VPSA's lack of transparency around nominations to the Academic Integrity Working Group harms student interests, Strawser writes.

The post Strawser | The Faculty Senate and VPSA are keeping secrets at students’ expense appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Since the Honor Code took effect in 1921, Stanford has expected students to report one another’s alleged cheating during exams, thus keeping instructors (i.e. professors and TAs) from proctoring exams.

This century-long policy changed last May following the work of the Committee of 12 (C12), which resulted in updated Honor Code language that made academic integrity “a community undertaking that requires students and instructors to work together to ensure conditions that support academic integrity.”

In addition to the updated Honor Code language, the C12 approved the commission of a multi-year study to assess the merits of exam proctoring and examine broader academic integrity concerns (e.g., mental health on campus, pressures to succeed). The aim of this study is to serve as the basis for future University academic integrity policies.

The committee tasked to lead this study — namely, the Academic Integrity Working Group (AIWG) — is being selected as we speak. It will be composed of four students, four faculty, one administrator from the Office of Community Standards and another from the Office of the General Counsel.

Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) leaders have been tasked to nominate the student members of the AIWG, with the Vice Provost of Student Affairs (VPSA) nominating its administrators and the Faculty Senate doing the same for its faculty. 

But unlike the ASSU, the Faculty Senate and the VPSA have approached this nomination process with zero transparency. Across all of its meetings this quarter, the Faculty Senate devoted no public discussion to its AIWG nominees. The VPSA has also failed to publicly discuss the AIWG’s administrative nominees.

Nothing excuses the Faculty Senate and VPSA from openly addressing this matter. I expect better from the Faculty Senate, which has the University president, provost and the deans of its seven schools sit in on its meetings. I expect better from VPSA, which reports directly to the provost. 

Due to the significance of AIWG’s work — particularly its implications on academic integrity, mental health and OAE accommodations — the lack of transparency concerning the nomination of its faculty and administrator members breeds mistrust among students. Secrecy causes students to speculate, despite having little basis, about the intentions of faculty and administrators.

A potential us-versus-them mentality and the negative perceptions surrounding the process could easily be avoided if the Faculty Senate and VPSA were more open with students about how it chooses its nominees.

Stanford students already maintain a level of mistrust towards the faculty and administration. The Faculty Senate previously threatened to unilaterally impose proctoring in a full circumvention of the ASSU Undergraduate Senate’s (UGS) opposition to proctoring. Senators Gurmenjit Bahia ’24 and Kyle Becerra ’24 described this as “a disregard for undergraduate student voices” and “the democratic process.”

Senator Amira Dehmani ’24 described the relationship of trust between them and faculty as “completely broken.” Students’ lack of trust in the University has been a long-standing issue. The lack of transparency at this stage therefore only serves to exacerbate these sentiments.

I believe that the Faculty Senate and VPSA should look to the ASSU on how to transparently conduct the AIWG nomination process. The ASSU has evaluated its AIWG nominees in detail, discussing their qualifications and experiences in public meetings. The UGS and Graduate Student Council (GSC) introduced the nominees in one meeting and voted to confirm them at their next meeting. The Faculty Senate and VPSA could follow the ASSU’s lead in adopting this approach, and this effort would certainly go a long way to rebuild trust between students and faculty and administration.

In order for students to trust the University again, I believe that students deserve more transparency. The ongoing presidential search process should take that seriously. The University addressing athletic accommodations as it moves to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) should take that seriously. Graduate students, in their fight for a more affordable Stanford, deserve to know about the decisions being made in their name. The AIWG nomination process is no exception to this. The glaring lack of transparency over this only serves to erode students’ faith in the University. The burden to remedy this, I believe, rests entirely in the hands of the Faculty Senate and VPSA.

The post Strawser | The Faculty Senate and VPSA are keeping secrets at students’ expense appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/12/01/strawser-the-faculty-senate-and-vpsa-are-keeping-secrets-at-students-expense/feed/ 0 1238268
From the community | What should a university stand for? https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/28/from-the-community-what-should-a-university-stand-for/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/28/from-the-community-what-should-a-university-stand-for/#respond Wed, 29 Nov 2023 06:39:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1238383 Platforming false and unsupported arguments is antithetical to the pursuit of truth and knowledge with integrity, MacKenzie writes.

The post From the community | What should a university stand for? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
In a recent article, a former provost lamented the loss in our university and society of “the ability to disagree, to dispute, to debate, without questioning our opponents’ fundamental dignity and humanity.” The cultivation of a space for respectful, rational debate is a noble goal and one that undoubtedly falls within the purview of a university. But within his argument, the former provost made a troubling claim, one that is unbecoming of someone who has filled such an important role for our institution: namely, the claim that “a university stands for nothing if not the free expression of viewpoints — true or false, supported or unsupported, agreeable or repugnant.”

A university is a place for the creation, preservation and sharing of knowledge. False and unsupported arguments are antithetical to the pursuit of truth and knowledge with integrity, which should be expected of everyone within our community. The post-truth political climate we currently inhabit, where disinformation and alternative facts abound, has its roots in the proliferation of these false and unsupported arguments. The “community of scholars, who approach even the most agonizing events with compassion and understanding — and a determination to find a solution” must be firmly rooted in the reality-based community. It is neither respectful nor rational to entertain false and unsupported arguments.

The story the former provost shared of his proudest day as a university leader is touching and holds important lessons for us, though perhaps not the ones that he highlighted. When the community came out in solidarity to protect fellow members from hateful speech and rhetoric, it wasn’t in order to disagree, dispute and debate with the Westboro Baptist Church. The false and unsupported ideology Westboro came to profess in itself denied the dignity and humanity of members of the campus community, which was countered by solidarity and affirmation of the humanity of our fellow community members. The happy resolution at the end of the story was not that Westboro Church members altered their viewpoint after rational engagement but that they chose to leave and not return to a place where false and unsupported arguments were not tolerated. That was only possible because “hundreds and hundreds” of community members responded, likely to the calls of dozens of dedicated organizers who made plans that the former provost neglected to credit.

A key tenet of a university is academic freedom to pursue topics that run counter to mainstream thought. Questions about which lens to use in approaching a problem and which tools are most effective to address a particular question are opportunities for rational, respectful debate. A diversity of viewpoints often strengthens the resulting product by introducing new lines of questioning. But academic freedom does not allow for eschewing academic responsibility — arguments must be grounded in truth and supported by evidence. 

The former provost concludes with a well-made point: we should “not … look to the university to assure us that our side is right.” A university does not exist to teach people what to think, but how to think. I was fortunate enough to obtain a Ph.D. in my time working at Stanford, which means I have been trained in critical thinking and analysis. That is why I cannot stand for false and unsupported arguments, nor the supposition that it is the duty of the university to platform them.

Tim MacKenzie Ph.D. ’18 is a postdoc in the genetics department and an alumnus of the chemistry department.

The post From the community | What should a university stand for? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/28/from-the-community-what-should-a-university-stand-for/feed/ 0 1238383
Editorial Board | Giving thanks at Stanford https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/24/editorial-board-giving-thanks-at-stanford/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/24/editorial-board-giving-thanks-at-stanford/#respond Fri, 24 Nov 2023 09:31:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1238073 This Thanksgiving, the Editorial Board suggests that Stanford students should reflect on and appreciate the work of service workers on campus. "Rather than focusing on the chaos of Wilbur’s long dinner lines or missing silverware, we ought to rally around what we do have and what we can be thankful for," the Board writes.

The post Editorial Board | Giving thanks at Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
I have three midterms this week. I slept two hours last night. Coffee doesn’t do anything for me anymore. We’ve all heard these phrases repeated ad nauseam by Stanford students — ourselves included. None of us are strangers to packed days and sleepless nights. The 10-week sprint every quarter forces us to constantly reevaluate social, academic and personal priorities to maximize utility: Do I go to bed early, or hop on my computer and apply to another internship? Or, screw it! Should I go out with my friends to KSig? 

The productivist ethos — the notion that “staying busy” is a virtue — permeates Stanford’s culture and is often equated with success. We constantly strive to make the most of every minute of our college experience, shunning all things we deem “unproductive.” Carpe diem, or “seize the moment,” quickly spirals into “seize every second.” This ceaseless pursuit of productivity, however, makes us so consumed in our own routines and aspirations that we cease to recognize the vagaries of life around us. More importantly, we can cease to appreciate the people who facilitate our education. 

When we look around campus, there are many examples of students leaving a mess in public spaces, reflecting an expectation that someone else will take care of their problems. During the move-in and move-out periods at either end of the year, the hallways are flooded with cardboard boxes and other debris from packing, even though signs clearly show where to dispose of trash and recyclables. 

Students frequently leave dorm room garbage and dirty dishes outside their doors, waiting for somebody else — custodial staff, presumably — to come pick them up. The unsanitary use of dorm showers and toilets makes one wonder whether we live with adults or toddlers. Stories abound about chefs and cleaners quitting Row houses due to lack of appreciation and disrespect of communal spaces by students (including rumors that people would urinate on the floor of the kitchen during parties at one fraternity).

The individualism of productivist culture, combined with the self-absorption required to achieve career and academic success, too often manifests in self-centered behavior. Rather than taking 20 extra seconds to hold the door for a stranger, we focus on opening doors for ourselves. In aiming to improve our own condition, we have abandoned the central Stanford call of improving the condition of others. 

At a university with a student body so ostensibly concerned with public good and moral righteousness, we must ask ourselves whether we champion the true meaning of these terms as they exist before us. Thanking the person who washes our plates, saying hello to the person keeping our hallways clean — these interactions of essential meaning can feel awkward and trite in the dog-eat-dog, fast-moving stochasticism that can be Stanford.

These considerations of our collective student behavior are distinct from the University’s relationship with workers; these are important issues that should be separately addressed. It falls on the student body to be upstanding in showing the emotional appreciation, human respect and dignity that service workers at Stanford have historically failed to receive. Rather than focusing on the chaos of Wilbur’s long dinner lines or missing silverware, we ought to rally around what we do have and what we can be thankful for.

Certainly, student frustrations about the gap between the steep price tag of our living arrangements and its sometimes subpar realities are understandable. At the same time, they should not be taken out on the chefs, dish washers, cleaners, drivers, librarians and other dedicated individuals who provide some of our university’s most essential functions. Our attitude toward services at Stanford, from employees at Tresidder to transportation, needs to respect and acknowledge the human being behind each and every one of these services on this campus. In doing so, we move beyond the often cyclical, withdrawn exercise of calling out privilege among our peers and identify and address our own “look away” privilege of passivity

As many of us spend the break away from campus, it is worth reflecting on and acknowledging the work of our entire community: How much is done for us students to have comfortable and convenient lives here, and how lucky we are to be able to focus on our own success and academic achievement. In reality, some of the most positive impact that we are able to create in the world during our time here is in making other people’s lives better. That starts with gratitude.

The post Editorial Board | Giving thanks at Stanford appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/24/editorial-board-giving-thanks-at-stanford/feed/ 0 1238073
Editorial Board | Revive Stanford’s student publications https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/13/editorial-board-revive-stanfords-student-publications/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/13/editorial-board-revive-stanfords-student-publications/#respond Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:04:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1236763 The Editorial Board revisits extinct student-run publications at Stanford and calls for the revival of Stanford's media landscape. "We want the whimsical, skeptical, curious spirit of Stanford to be enabled and elevated by our student-run publications, as they always have been," they write.

The post Editorial Board | Revive Stanford’s student publications appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Imagine it’s a sunny day at Stanford in 2018. You wake up and check your phone to see the latest FoHo newsletter drop in your email inbox — a Stanford medical student poisoned their classmates with formaldehyde?! At breakfast, you might pick up a copy of the Stanford Politics magazine in a dining hall and read its latest response to The Stanford Daily’s Editorial Board’s response to Stanford Politics’ critique of The Daily. Not to mention the Stanford Sphere’s or the Stanford Review’s commentary on the inter-newspaper drama. 

Today, only The Daily and the Review remain, leaving gaping holes in Stanford’s previously multifarious news media ecosystem. What happened to these publications, and what implications does their loss have on our community?

Once upon a time …

The Fountain Hopper (or FoHo as it was more commonly known) was an irreverent student-run tabloid whose anonymous newsletters were delivered directly to thousands of subscribers’ inboxes. It was the first publication to break the Brock Turner story and delivered great continuing coverage on the case and its aftermath at Stanford. FoHo also gained national attention for revealing how Stanford students could access their admissions files. Sadly, over COVID, its scoops dwindled, and today FoHo’s website no longer exists. 

FoHo occupied a unique place in our campus media landscape; without a high bar for fact-checking and sourcing, it could turn around breaking news before any facts were confirmed. These included stories about alleged crimes on campus, alleged misconduct by Stanford administrators and faculty and anecdotes about parties and student mischief. Although we don’t condone FoHo’s methods of uncovering and disseminating information, which revolved around anonymous and often unverified tips, we mourn the loss of such a widely-read media outlet. 

FoHo’s demise coincided with the rise of the social media app Fizz, an anonymous discussion forum app at Stanford and many other college campuses where anyone with a university email can post campus commentary, memes and odd requests. 

At first glance, it may seem like FoHo has been replaced by Fizz with its bulletin board-like discourse. However, Fizz lacks several defining features that lent FoHo its particular strength as a media outlet. Fizz is a free-for-all where any user can post any content without accountability. Without editors or writers who have a vested interest in maintaining and building the reputation of a breaking-news newsletter, Fizz seems to more closely resemble a campus-wide game of “telephone,” which can sometimes become a breeding ground for misinformation. In contrast, FoHo curated, chose and developed on the stories of most interest to the Stanford community to create its digests. 

FoHo is not the only student-run media outlet at Stanford that has ceased to exist. Most prominent among the rest was Stanford Politics, which was an invaluable source of high-quality, impactful investigations that sadly petered out in 2021. Their coverage was broad and unique in focus, ranging from an investigation into sorority life on campus to commentary on the Lebanese government to think-pieces on American criminal justice reform. Stanford Politics pieces were thoughtful, well-sourced and held to high standards, fostering deep investigations into Stanford issues and providing a platform for political discourse ranging beyond Stanford’s campus.

There was also the Stanford Sphere, a lesser-read but still rigorous publication whose left-wing editorials balanced out the Stanford Review’s conservative slant. The Review remains active and is today’s most prominent student publication after The Stanford Daily. Founded in 1987 by Peter Thiel and Norman Book, the Review’s primary output is op-eds, although it dabbles in news coverage and satire

Although the Review does not have as long of a history as The Daily nor match its publishing volume, the two papers play a critical role in facilitating campus discourse. The coexistence of the Review’s and The Daily’s Opinions sections allows for more spacious commentary on campus events. For instance, the two outlets have offered unique critiques on Hoover’s institutional decisions and policies.

The Review also provides perspectives that lack on-campus representation, such as its commentary on last Spring’s Judge Duncan controversy, where students continually interrupted a guest speaker. While none of The Daily’s writers opined about the issue, we applaud the Review’s timely position when other campus publications were quieter. We believe that the Review injects an integral dose of contrarianism into predominantly-liberal campus discourse — one that challenges students to question their existing beliefs and examine issues through a new lens. While we often differ from the conclusions and rhetoric of the Review, the Review’s contribution to the ideological diversity of Stanford’s media system deserves our recognition.

Paradise lost

Before COVID, the diversity of student-run media outlets dedicated to discovering stories created a healthy symbiotic relationship in our campus news ecosystem. FoHo curated the juiciest stories by parsing through hundreds of tips from on-the-ground sources, which The Daily would often investigate and publish with accurate facts and verifiable sources. Stanford Politics published long-term investigative projects and political commentary that went beyond the Stanford bubble. The Review and the Stanford Sphere filled out the spectrum of ideas and beliefs on campus, prompting open discourse and debate. This range of styles and competition for eyes kept more Stanford community members more informed, and constantly pushed publications to a higher standard of timeliness, engagement and impact.

Without a range of options for all reading appetites, many Stanford students have simply turned to Fizz for their news and entertainment, where there is little to no authority, trusted sources, accountability, nor the ability to follow up on stories or make corrections in a uniform and transparent way. 

What now?

The Stanford Daily, the Stanford Review and even Fizz can only write, report, analyze and elicit so much. Our reach and perspectives are limited. New outlets, forming a more vibrant Stanford press environment, will provide more forums of empowerment for all to participate in campus conversations. We want to see more different publications independently going after the truth, so that as a community we obtain better facts faster and avoid bias. We want to read an array of well-developed, accountable opinions across the political spectrum. We want to see publications in conversation, holding each other accountable and achieving greater heights of student journalism through competition. Most of all, we want the whimsical, skeptical, curious spirit of Stanford to be enabled and elevated by our student-run publications, as they always have been. We look forward to seeing the ghosts of publications past resurrected – or replaced.

The post Editorial Board | Revive Stanford’s student publications appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/13/editorial-board-revive-stanfords-student-publications/feed/ 0 1236763
An open letter to Jewish students at Stanford University https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/09/an-open-letter-to-jewish-students-at-stanford-university/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/09/an-open-letter-to-jewish-students-at-stanford-university/#respond Thu, 09 Nov 2023 10:00:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1236319 Jewish students should have the right to engage in civil discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without fear of physical harm or verbal abuse, a group of alumni write.

The post An open letter to Jewish students at Stanford University appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
We write to you as Stanford Jewish alumni who have been closely monitoring with great concern the discourse on campus regarding Hamas’ terror attack of Oct. 7 and Israel’s military response to those atrocities. We write to ensure you know that, as Jews who are part of the Stanford family, we stand in solidarity with you in these challenging times. 

As Stanford students, you should be able to count on finding supportive learning and living environments that prioritize your physical safety and mental well-being. If you choose to, you should be able to identify proudly as Jewish on campus, in class and in your dorms and houses. You should have the right, if you wish to exercise it, to engage in civil discussion about Hamas’ atrocities, Israel’s response to them, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Israel’s existence in general without fear of physical harm, antisemitic insults, bullying, dehumanization and social ostracization, whether from fellow students, faculty or staff. Stanford should be a place where all students — Jewish, Muslim, Christian or any group — are able to experience kindness, compassion, respect and understanding that we should all expect of one another.  

Where Stanford’s policies on campus discourse and its regulation of speech on campus fail to reflect these principles — or are applied inconsistently or unfairly — then they should be changed. Where Stanford fails to provide you with the resources you need to be safe from intimidation, threats and bullying, or to help you cope with what we can only imagine is an extremely difficult time to be Jewish on campus, then the University must act to ensure that Stanford remains a place where you can learn, grow and experience all that Stanford has to offer. Please know that many of us have already communicated our disappointment to the administration and that we will continue using our voices as alumni to advocate for you as Stanford students. 

In the days and weeks ahead, we encourage you to seek community or other support networks you want and need, whether that be through the Jewish (Hillel and Chabad), University (Office of Religious and Spiritual Life) and/or other resources on or off campus. You can also reach out to the Stanford Jewish Alumni Network if connecting with Jewish alumni might prove beneficial. Wherever you turn, please know that we have your back, will remain vigilant and will continue to monitor the campus conversation, in the hope and expectation that, in time, you are again comfortable calling Stanford your home away from home.

We are circulating this letter more broadly and expect the list of signatories to grow. We pray that you will find comfort and support as you deal with the horrific atrocities of Oct. 7 and all the events that have followed, including on our campus. As you find your own path forward, know that you are not only in our prayers, but also at the top of our minds.

Pamela Brewster MBA ’87

Cody Harris ’00 J.D. ’07

Dr. Tmirah Haselkorn Ph.D. ’04

Dr. Martin Kenigsberg ’74 M.A. ’74

Sharon Kenigsberg M.A. ’80

Robin Kennedy ’68 J.D. ’78

Steve Lazarus M.S. ’70 Ph.D. ’79

Zohar Levy ’22

Ethan Orlinsky ’86

Hovav Shacham ’00 Ph.D. ’05

Matan Shacham ’05

Robert Smith ’77

Michael Weis ’86

Jane Farkas Wolk J.D. ’91

Oded Wurman ’05 M.S. ’05

The post An open letter to Jewish students at Stanford University appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/09/an-open-letter-to-jewish-students-at-stanford-university/feed/ 0 1236319
From the community | What Stanford has lost https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/08/from-the-community-what-stanford-has-lost/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/08/from-the-community-what-stanford-has-lost/#respond Wed, 08 Nov 2023 10:48:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1236146 It is our responsibility as an academic community to engage in dialogue with compassion and respect, Etchemendy writes.

The post From the community | What Stanford has lost appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
As I walk around campus reading chalked messages and posters, and as I read The Stanford Daily, the Stanford Report and the Stanford Review, I am saddened. This is not the Stanford that once made me so proud to be its provost.

There were many occasions for pride during my years as provost: Nobel Prize announcements, wins at the Rose Bowl, student performances in MemAud. But for me, my proudest day at Stanford was Jan. 29, 2010. 

That was the day we were visited by the Westboro Baptist Church, a strange cult that traveled the country to spread their message of hate toward gays, members of the Armed Forces and, particularly, Jews. This stop on their tour was targeted at Stanford Hillel, where they planned to spew their deranged antisemitism toward members of the Stanford Community.

When word of their coming spread through campus, the president and I received many demands that we prevent them from demonstrating. We could have. We are a private university on private property, and we can prevent access to outsiders if we so choose. But we did not. We are a university, and a university stands for nothing if not the free expression of viewpoints — true or false, supported or unsupported, agreeable or repugnant.

Word spread that the university would not prevent the demonstration, that the Westboro “Church” would be allowed to chant their hate at Hillel’s front door. The University would of course physically protect the members of Hillel, but equally protect the unwelcome Westboro visitors.

Then the day arrived. No plans were made, no call went out, but the Stanford community responded on its own. Hundreds and hundreds of Stanford students, faculty and staff spontaneously arrived to surround Hillel in a community embrace. At the front of the Stanford crowd was the Muslim Student Awareness Network and the Islamic Society of Stanford, proudly showing their support for their Jewish counterparts.

Talisman showed up and led the crowd with songs of love and grace. Then from the edge of the throng a bagpiper played “Amazing Grace,” and we all joined in. Eventually, our Westboro guests packed up their signs of hate and quietly left campus. They never made Stanford a stop on their odious tours again.

As I said at the time, I have never been prouder of our university. Others agreed. But something has been lost, at our university and in our society at large, something we desperately need to get back: the ability to disagree, to dispute, to debate, without questioning our opponents’ fundamental dignity and humanity. In 2010, we did not have a DEI program to mandate diversity and inclusion. This was not because there was no strife or hatred in the world. The Intifada was a recent memory, and the U.S. was still responding to the events of 9/11. But we saw ourselves as a community of scholars, who approached even the most agonizing events with compassion and understanding — and a determination to find a solution.

Our current president and provost have received a great deal of criticism from students and alumni who want them to take a stand, to come down clearly and unequivocally in favor of their own preferred stance. But President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez have done exactly what a president and provost should do. It is their responsibility, above all, to maintain the potential for rational, respectful debate, even about the most tragic and divisive circumstances facing the world. It is our responsibility as an academic community to engage in this debate with compassion and respect for those with whom we disagree, not to look to the university to assure us that our side is right.

John Etchemendy served as the 12th provost of Stanford University from 2000 to 2017.

The post From the community | What Stanford has lost appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/08/from-the-community-what-stanford-has-lost/feed/ 0 1236146
From the community | Stanford must respect fellows’ right to unionize https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/07/from-the-community-stanford-must-respect-fellows-right-to-unionize/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/07/from-the-community-stanford-must-respect-fellows-right-to-unionize/#respond Tue, 07 Nov 2023 08:20:32 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1236021 The Stanford administration is acting hypocritically in denying fellows the right to participate in union bargaining, Beller writes.

The post From the community | Stanford must respect fellows’ right to unionize appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
On April 26, in a letter to the community, former President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and former provost Persis Drell wrote to graduate workers in explanation of why the administration refused to voluntarily recognize the Stanford Graduate Workers Union (SGWU) after a supermajority of us signed authorization cards signaling interest in forming a union:

“We believe that a secret-ballot election is a fundamental principle of democratic decision-making and is the most inclusive, fair and secure method by which to determine whether a majority of eligible graduate students wish to be represented by a union. We feel strongly that every graduate student should have the ability, free from undue influence, to make this decision on their own.”

Every graduate student except roughly 33% of us who are funded by fellowships, based on estimates from voter data provided to organizers by the University. In negotiations with the SGWU in preparation for the subsequent election, the Stanford administration refused to agree to allow fellows to participate in spite of the union’s push to include them. Of the 5000 graduate student-workers at Stanford, only 3400 were allowed to vote. After ignoring the evident interest of a supermajority of graduate workers in the name of “democracy,” the administration proceeded to disenfranchise a third of the electorate.

The Stanford administration is not interested in inclusive or fair democratic decision-making for graduate workers. They have made this clear before the unionization campaign, as they consistently ignored and disrespected our elected representatives on the Graduate Student Council. They have reiterated this antagonism to our interests as they moved to split our membership. They tell us that they are trying to promote our democratic will, but the exclusion of fellows from our bargaining unit is a clear effort to limit the power of our union (see union busting). Fewer workers in our membership means less power to bargain collectively for the interests of all graduate workers.

Stanford’s move to exclude fellows from union representation follows on the example of a number of private universities. The general logic behind the exclusion is that because of fellows’ distinct funding arrangement, they do not fall into the traditional labor relationship where compensation is provided to an employee in exchange for services rendered. A similar logic is evident in Stanford’s Graduate Academic Policies and Procedures, which states that fellowships are “awarded on a merit or need basis,” and “no service is expected in return for a fellowship.” 

These arguments and policies, however, misrepresent the reality of fellows’ day-to-day work. Just like workers funded by assistantships (whose status as employees is not disputed), fellows are expected to perform research and teaching responsibilities at the direction of their advisors and in accordance with their program requirements. The performance of these services translates into a direct monetary benefit for the University. Fellows author highly cited research papers that give our institution its prestigious name. Fellows teach University undergraduates, performing the educational service that Stanford is charging tuition for. And, fellows apply for and bring in grants, from which the University takes a huge cut in the form of “indirect costs” to fund broader operations. The labor of fellows is a direct source of revenue for the University.

Moreover, just like graduate workers funded by assistantships, fellows are subject to the working conditions set by Stanford. If a worker’s fellowship does not reach University minimums, Stanford tops up their compensation to ensure that these workers receive the minimum pay. Thus fellows have a vested interest in University pay rates. Additionally, workers funded by fellowships pursue the same grievance procedures when responding to harassment and discrimination, and share the common interest of graduate workers in securing fair, neutral arbitration of disputes. Fellows receive the same benefits as students funded by assistantships and struggle with the same issues of affordability that come with living in one of the most expensive regions in the country. Denying fellows their right to participate in negotiations for the betterment of their conditions is a callous choice coming from an administration that claims to be promoting our well-being.

Repeatedly throughout their tenure, our former president and provost spoke to us about their commitment to listening to graduate workers and supporting our needs. They repeated this refrain in their April 26 message:

As “Stanford leaders we greatly value the many contributions our graduate students make to Stanford’s mission of teaching and research. We will continue working to understand, appreciate and be responsive to the needs of our graduate students, so that we may foster their well-being throughout their time at Stanford.”

Graduate workers have spoken unequivocally on what our needs are. The membership of the SGWU recently ratified contract proposals calling for fellows’ inclusion in our bargaining unit. We have issued a petition alongside to collect signatures in support of this demand. We invite everyone in our broader community, graduate worker or otherwise, to sign and join us in solidarity in this call.

President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez: We invite you to break with the legacy of your predecessors. Demonstrate your intention to bargain with us in good faith by withdrawing the administration’s position that fellows should not be included in our bargaining unit. Voluntarily recognize all graduate workers, regardless of funding source, as members of our democratic union.

Ari Beller is a graduate worker in psychology and a member of the SGWU.

The post From the community | Stanford must respect fellows’ right to unionize appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/07/from-the-community-stanford-must-respect-fellows-right-to-unionize/feed/ 0 1236021
Strawser | Uplift undergraduate voices in the VPUE search https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/02/uplift-undergraduate-voices-in-the-vpue-search/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/02/uplift-undergraduate-voices-in-the-vpue-search/#respond Thu, 02 Nov 2023 09:26:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1235349 Both students and faculty must have an equal say in choosing the next VPUE, writes Strawser.

The post Strawser | Uplift undergraduate voices in the VPUE search appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
I am cautiously looking forward to the formation of the search committee tasked to find the University’s next Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education (VPUE). The committee, as announced by the Stanford Report on Oct. 20, is going to be “formed as soon as possible.”

Thinking of an administrative position that has more of a direct impact on undergraduates’ classroom experiences is difficult, to put it lightly. I would be surprised if there were any undergraduates that have not interacted with just some of the numerous offices and programs under VPUE: such as Academic Advising, Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR), Structured Liberal Education (SLE), Bing Overseas Study Program (BOSP), Frosh 101, Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing (WAYS) and Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE). Throw a figurative stone at any undergraduate-related office and you’ll likely hit one overseen, at least in part, by VPUE. 

The immense power that VPUE wields over undergraduates should serve as a loud wakeup call for those tasked with forming the VPUE search committee and, naturally, the people who will serve as its members. With three top University officials resigning over the past year, there is a clear opportunity to deeply re-examine the direction that Stanford is taking in its educational mission. Coupling that with the impacts the joining of the Atlantic Coast Conference will have on student athletes, as well as ongoing faculty discussions on how to best support undergrads more broadly, it is clear that undergrads deserve a real say in an office overseeing so much of their education.

To that end, a few stakeholder groups come to mind for me. The very legitimacy of the VPUE search committee, and therefore whoever it ends up choosing, depends on whether voices of the following groups (and much, much more) are heard in the search process: namely, first generation and/or low-income (FLI) students, international students, student athletes, religious students, frosh and students with disabilities. We should also expect the VPUE search committee to sufficiently consider the voices of students from a variety of majors and schools.

Ideally, every student stakeholder group would be empowered to send an undergraduate representative to serve as a committee voting member. I am more than willing to acknowledge, however, that this is unrealistic. After all, the president and provost search committees have had 20 and 12 members, respectively. Considering the need for faculty representation, voting representation cannot be guaranteed to every relevant group of student stakeholders. 

I believe it is more than fair to expect the VPUE search committee to consult undergraduate students during every step of its work, beginning with its formation. I believe a fair first step would be to ensure that the representation of undergrads on the search committee equals that of faculty. After all, shared governance, the recognition of students and faculty as co-equal partners in the educational experience at Stanford, is one of the University’s core beliefs.

The search committee itself must reflect the communities that the next VPUE is going to work with — students and faculty alike. Diversity of life experiences, classroom experiences and fields of study are of the utmost importance. 

I commend the current VPUE Sarah Church for her service to the undergraduate community and Stanford as a whole. With a stellar record that includes upholding equitable academic standards through the worst stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and improving academic accessibility for students from less-advantaged communities (and much more), her successor has incredibly large shoes to fill. 

I am calling on Provost Jenny Martinez to maintain a balance of power between students and faculty on the VPUE search committee, ensuring that both groups have an equal say in choosing the next VPUE. I am calling on her to ensure that offices including but not limited to the Office of Accessible Education, Disability Community Space, Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, Bechtel International Center, Fraternity and Sorority Life and Athletics bring student voices to the table. 

Furthermore, community centers like the Women’s Community Center, the Black Community Service Center, El Centro Chicano y Latino, the Asian American Activities Center, Hillel and Markaz ought not to be left out of the conversation. This kind of broad outreach is all the more urgent when Martinez spoke, rightfully, at the Faculty Senate about ensuring that Stanford remains committed to admitting students from all walks of life. 

Navigating the Stanford bureaucracy, for any reason, can be incredibly exhausting (something I have personally experienced). Now is the time for a major University search committee to finally start bringing concerns about navigating undergraduate education to the table. We need to welcome student voting representation with open arms in order to usher in a new, more student-friendly Stanford.

The post Strawser | Uplift undergraduate voices in the VPUE search appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/02/uplift-undergraduate-voices-in-the-vpue-search/feed/ 0 1235349
From the Community | On radical pro-Palestinian voices on campus https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/31/from-the-community-on-radical-pro-palestinian-voices-on-campus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/31/from-the-community-on-radical-pro-palestinian-voices-on-campus/#respond Tue, 31 Oct 2023 09:05:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1235143 Demonstrations on campus were not calling for co-existence, but the eradication of Jewish existence in the region, Horowitz writes.

The post From the Community | On radical pro-Palestinian voices on campus appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
These past three weeks have been, for me, the most stressful and painful weeks since I came to Stanford with my family in 2021. I grew up in Israel and lived there my entire life; my parents were born in the United States, which has always felt like a second home to me. The past three weeks of living here while keeping an alarmed, watchful eye on what is happening in Israel and Gaza — friends and family members agonizing and bereaving — have taught me a great deal about my place in the Stanford community. I discovered that the people whom I thought were sensitive, moral and thoughtful have chosen to remain silent in the wake of a dreadful war and the atrocities against my people. 

What I am referring to is hardly just my own personal feeling, but something that many of my Israeli friends on campus have experienced these past weeks. In the wake of the horrific events of Oct. 7 — namely, Hamas’ killing, rape and kidnapping of Israeli civilians in what has been considered the deadliest day in Jewish history since 1945 — what we had hoped to get from our peers and classmates was support and empathy. Some of us did receive that, and I cherish my friends and colleagues who reached out to me and proved that friendships can overcome ideological differences. Still many others were, and are, silent. These are people we go to class with, people we sit for coffee with, people to whom we nod every morning when we go to our labs or to our joint working spaces — and they have said nothing, offered no condolences and didn’t even check in. 

There were other smaller disappointments along the way. This newspaper, which I admire and read closely, ran a piece about a case involving a lecturer who, allegedly, made some disturbing remarks towards Jewish and Israeli students in class. The Stanford Daily, always keen on getting to the bottom of things, investigated the case, interviewed students who refuted the original account (which has since been picked up by nearly every media outlet in the United States) and was sure to include quotes about the wonderful and beloved lecturer. Imagine, for a moment, a semi-sympathetic piece written about a professor who berates an Asian American student in class. It is unimaginable.  While it is always important to thoroughly examine what is happening on campus, one cannot escape the sense that some stories are automatically believed and supported, while other stories — in this case, a story involving Jewish and Israeli students — are doubted, questioned and countered.

Then came the demonstrations. A demonstration on Friday, Oct. 20, included blatant, hateful speech, which explicitly called for an intifada, a violent resistance against Israelis. I should emphasize the fact that though I am writing this text in the (relative) comfort and safety of Green Library, had my children and I flown from San Francisco to Israel for the weekend of Oct. 7 to visit family or friends in the Negev, near Gaza, we would most likely have been killed or abducted. A speaker at the demonstration, who identified as an “anti-Zionist Jew,”  supported the atrocious acts of a militant group which the United States, the EU, Germany, Great Britain, Jordan and Egypt, among others, have denounced as a terrorist organization. Quite simply, they are supporting the killing and abduction of myself and my family. The speaker then moved on to indicate that it may be time to carry weapons on campus as well. The audience gleefully cheered. “Long live the intifada,” some of them yelled. This cannot be tolerated. No student should be walking around campus and hearing chants supporting the killing of their family. No faculty member should have to endure calls for an armed resistance against their loved ones. And, as members of the Stanford community, none of us should feel unsafe. 

Some people — too many, unfortunately — think that a clear and forceful condemnation of the heinous acts carried out by Hamas necessarily contradicts a vehement support of the Palestinian cause. These people demand that we pick sides — either you express your sorrow and shock over the evil, blood-thirsty slaughter of 1,400 innocent people, or you join forces with those who advocate for equality and self-determination in Israel and Palestine. This binary is false. Nothing in the world can justify Hamas’ monstrous crimes, and those who consider themselves moral people should stop and seriously think why is it that they are unable to condemn these crimes. I believe that one can wholeheartedly stand with Palestine and simultaneously acknowledge the horrific murder of innocent people in Israel. Contrary to what the extremists here and elsewhere are positing, decent and moral people can and must hold these views at the same time. 

My cards on the table: I am an Israeli leftist. I have opposed the policies of the Israeli government since the day I started reading about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which I have done extensively since I was a teenager. I support the end of the occupation and the self-determination of Palestinians, and I am deeply saddened and appalled by the devastating sights coming from Gaza right now, where thousands of innocent people are killed and hundreds of thousands are fearing for their lives. I have spent a good portion of my academic and writing career reading about my neighbors, trying to understand their pain and cultivating ways of thinking of a better future. This is how I raise my children, too — I explain to them that Israel and Palestine are the home of two peoples who must find ways, against all odds, to live together. The demonstration on campus was not calling for co-existence, but the eradication of Jewish existence in the region. That was Hamas’ self-proclaimed attempt on Oct. 7. That is Hamas’ objective, as stated in the Hamas Covenant. That is, inconceivably, what the radical, vocal pro-Palestinian voices on campus are expressing. We should stop and reflect on the shallow and distortive rhetoric that is being used. More importantly, we should stop and consider the human beings who work and live beside us, and the fact that they too have pains, feelings, dreams, convictions and hopes. 

Ariel Horowitz is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of comparative literature.

The post From the Community | On radical pro-Palestinian voices on campus appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/31/from-the-community-on-radical-pro-palestinian-voices-on-campus/feed/ 0 1235143
From the Community | Denying the history of settler-colonialism only perpetuates suffering in Israel and Palestine https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/31/from-the-community-denying-the-history-of-settler-colonialism-only-perpetuates-suffering-in-israel-and-palestine/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/31/from-the-community-denying-the-history-of-settler-colonialism-only-perpetuates-suffering-in-israel-and-palestine/#respond Tue, 31 Oct 2023 08:56:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234431 Israel and the U.S. must recognize the history of settler-colonialism the Palestinians have experienced in order bring justice and peace to Israel and Palestine, writes Wolfe.

The post From the Community | Denying the history of settler-colonialism only perpetuates suffering in Israel and Palestine appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Coming of age as a Jewish-American adolescent in the late 1980s, I had seen the U.S. media coverage of the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising) against Israeli occupation. I feel that the stakes of the current Israeli-Palestinian violence are much higher and scarier than anything else I’ve experienced since then. This is not only because the scale of civilian deaths since Oct. 7 on both sides is so much larger. It is also because there had been no serious peace process to try to end the more than century-long conflict for years before Oct. 7.

Yet largely absent from the debate on the conflict since Oct. 7 in most major U.S. media is acknowledgement of the conflict’s extreme asymmetry — a fact rooted in historical reality that the state of Israel was the creation of a settler-colonial project known as Zionism. There is no doubt that Zionism emerged in large part as a defensive response to centuries of virulent European antisemitism and the terrible oppression of Jews that culminated in the Nazi Holocaust, a horrendous genocide that wiped out 12 members of my great-grandmother’s family. This, however, does not negate the fact that Zionists, including their founding father Theodore Herzl, saw the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine through a European settler-colonial lens. 

Like their brethren in neighboring Ottoman provinces, who became nation-states after the First World War (i.e. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq), the indigenous Arabs of Palestine were forging a national identity when Herzl’s First Zionist Congress chose Ottoman-ruled Palestine as the site of a future Jewish homeland in 1897. Upon the demise of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, Great Britain imposed a mandate (temporary neocolonial rule) over Palestine. 

Unlike neighboring mandates, however, Palestine was promised to the Jews as a homeland in a letter from Britain’s then-Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to British Zionist leader Lionel Walter Rothschild. Known as the Balfour Declaration, the letter referred to the Arabs of Palestine, who had made up 90% of the Palestine mandate’s population, as “existing non-Jewish communities,” whose civil and religious rights should not be prejudiced. The letter also granted national rights exclusively to the 10% minority of Jewish settlers. Effectively, this “imperial edict” declared that there would be no independent state of Palestine for its majority indigenous Arab inhabitants.

Zionism was and is a complex ideology, movement and raison d’être of Israel as a nation-state. The major element of Zionism that made possible the founding of Israel was the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes during the first major Arab-Israeli War in 1948 — commonly known as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe in Arabic. After the second Arab-Israeli war of 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, along with the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula (the latter having been returned to Egypt in 1979). Since 1967, Israel has been steadfastly committed to Jewish settlement of the West Bank, and, until 2005, the Gaza Strip. Not only has this commitment continuously and forcibly dispossessed Palestinians of their land and water, it is also a gross violation of their internationally recognized sovereignty per dozens of U.N. resolutions. In 1976, an international consensus emerged on a two-state solution in a U.N. General Assembly report stating “that the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, in accordance with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, was a prerequisite for peace in the Middle East.” This Palestinian state was to be established in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, which consisted of 22% of historic Palestine.

The secular Palestine Liberation Organization joined this consensus, prompting Israel to support the precursor of Hamas in the late 1970s and 1980s as a counterweight to the more moderate PLO. This was a fateful decision that helped to create Hamas in 1987. U.S.-supported Israeli elites across the political spectrum have consistently rejected an authentic two-state solution in favor of settlement expansion into Palestinian-occupied territories, even during the long Oslo peace process of the 1990s. The current Netanyahu government is only the latest, although the most extreme, instantiation of this consistent policy. 

The persistent demand in the U.S. media and among politicians that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims condemn the war crimes of Hamas is rarely accompanied by a parallel demand that Jews in Israel and abroad condemn the illegality and brutality of the now 56-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the 16-year blockade of Gaza. The structural violence of the occupation often terrorizes Palestinians through collective punishment in flagrant violation of international law. The current punishment consists not only of indiscriminate bombing of densely populated urban areas in the tiny coastal enclave of Gaza, but also the issuing of an evacuation order that forced more than a million Gazans — 50% of whom are children — to immediately leave Northern Gaza, as Israel prepared to commence its major ground invasion. 

As former President Jimmy Carter, who presided over the landmark 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, has pointed out, Israel’s rule over Palestine clearly resembles South African apartheid in form and practice prior to 1994. And lest we forget, Nelson Mandela endorsed armed resistance against the structural violence inflicted by apartheid in South Africa and supported an authentic Palestinian state — one with borders along the pre-1967 border and with full sovereignty over its resources free of Jewish settlements.

Hamas is certainly not the moral equivalent of the African National Congress, but neither is the current government of Israel, whose defense minister after Hamas’ attack declared that “we are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly” in Gaza. Ignoring or downplaying the structural violence of occupation while dehumanizing its victims only ensures that the civilians of Israel and Palestine will continue to suffer. But it is Palestinian civilians, especially those in the besieged and bombarded Gaza, who will suffer exponentially more. Until Israel and its superpower U.S. backer recognize this and fundamentally change their decades-long status quo narrative, there will very likely be neither justice nor peace in Israel and Palestine for generations to come. 

This article was written by Mikael Wolfe, an associate professor of history at Stanford University.

The post From the Community | Denying the history of settler-colonialism only perpetuates suffering in Israel and Palestine appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/31/from-the-community-denying-the-history-of-settler-colonialism-only-perpetuates-suffering-in-israel-and-palestine/feed/ 0 1234431
Editorial Board | Keeping Stanford’s speech free https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/29/editorial-board-keeping-stanfords-speech-free/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/29/editorial-board-keeping-stanfords-speech-free/#respond Mon, 30 Oct 2023 03:47:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234147 The Editorial Board argues that the Stanford community must commit to allowing campus free speech within legal limits. “If we fail to do so, instead choosing to silence the voices of our opponents out of fear that their views will overwhelm ours, we will have lost all faith in our peers — and the future of our country,” the Board writes.

The post Editorial Board | Keeping Stanford’s speech free appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Stanford is again in newspaper headlines. Most notably, The New York Times recently published a column titled “The War Comes to Stanford,” highlighting students’ speech, banners and chalk messages around campus. Other universities have been under as much, if not more, scrutiny. This is not a new phenomenon; college students’ reactions to current events have long stoked heated debate.

As a Board, we are grateful to attend university in a country with the greatest free speech protections in the world. That scope of freedom includes the expression of beliefs that we may consider immoral, inflammatory or even factually incorrect, all in the shared interest of our own speech not being silenced for these very reasons.

We are also fortunate to be under the leadership of President Saller and Provost Martinez, who have come out strongly in defense of free speech within both legal limits and Stanford community guidelines — despite strong opposition from some. The alternative to ban, condemn or censor such speech would make Stanford the arbiter of acceptable speech, which is not a position that any leading research institution should take.

Vindictive retaliation to students’ political expression can dampen free speech on college campuses. To be clear, we do not believe that college students deserve any sort of special pass to speak without facing the associated consequences. However, students should not receive threats to their safety on the basis of their opinions. 

We believe that being held accountable means that our views may — and should — be questioned and criticized. Our ideas may be lambasted; they may be called unacceptable and disgusting. But recent years have seen targeted efforts to punish students by exposing personal information such as their email and home address, opening the gateway for online harassment and physical danger. These include doxxing trucks parading the names and faces of college students who voiced strong opinions on geopolitical issues, Turning Point USA’s “Professor Watchlist” which includes undergraduate students, harassment of student journalists and doxxing campaigns against professors and alumni. 

Such attacks do not constitute engagement with someone’s ideas, but rather an attempt to humiliate and punish those who take staunch stances on social and political issues. It is these threats — especially when issued by those who wield the power to realize them — that chill speech, as students rightfully fear for their safety and future prospects.

As a college student in this environment, is it better to be silent or to test your ideas? Either choice seems unacceptable according to social media, yet at least silence carries less risk. But our country’s educational institutions should be incubators of ideas, which requires us to engage with a diversity of interpretations. Students should be free to challenge and contradict their peers’ views, and even their own. This is how we learn about the world with nuance, change our minds and reinforce our beliefs. 

Some may say that such a view is nice in theory, but dangerous when words hold so much power to stoke hatred. It is undeniable that the modern world exists in a continual war of information and the presentation of that information. We must each acknowledge the weight of that responsibility: that our words have the real ability to harm and misinform others. Incitement that is likely to produce violence is, of course, unacceptable.

Despite these risks, the alternative of a quiet campus is far worse. As the Supreme Court has held over the ages, we must preserve a free market of ideas so that the best ones may prevail through trial and scrutiny. If we fail to do so, instead choosing to silence the voices of our opponents out of fear that their views will overwhelm ours, we will have lost all faith in our peers — and the future of our country.

The Editorial Board consists of Opinion columnists, editors and members of the Stanford community. Its views represent the collective views of members of the Editorial Board.

The post Editorial Board | Keeping Stanford’s speech free appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/29/editorial-board-keeping-stanfords-speech-free/feed/ 0 1234147
Letter to the Editor | Rising antisemitism on your hands https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/26/letter-to-the-editor-rising-antisemitism-on-your-hands/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/26/letter-to-the-editor-rising-antisemitism-on-your-hands/#respond Thu, 26 Oct 2023 07:03:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234573 The Daily's recent reporting has detrimentally impacted Jewish students on campus, writes Mandelshtam.

The post Letter to the Editor | Rising antisemitism on your hands appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Yesterday, The Daily did something unfathomable. As a publication by and for Stanford students, The Daily has great responsibility when reporting on students — especially when, like now, tensions on campus are running high. So it is especially concerning that yesterday The Daily published an article with unverified information accusing a Jewish student of assaulting one Palestinian, one “visibly Arab” and one hijab-wearing student on Oct. 15. The supposed assault occurred in White Plaza as the three students were taking down signs with pictures, names and ages of some of the over 200 Israeli civilians who were kidnapped by Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization. The article and its title make it sound like ripping off posters with pictures of Hamas hostages is business as usual, implying that it is an honorable thing to do.

In a statement to The Daily, the accused student testified that, “I simply asked them to stop destroying the posters. There was no altercation and I absolutely did NOT touch anyone. I have a witness who can verify that. This is a totally false and groundless accusation.” The article refers to a video that “depicts the suspect yelling ‘Shut the fuck up’ to an alleged victim before the students walked away from each other.” But, The Daily does not allege that the video has proof of physical violence. There is no evidence of physical assault. Though The Daily article made sure to note everything as ‘alleged,’ their quote from a Department of Public Safety spokesperson was definitive, making it seem like the assault did happen. 

Yesterday’s outrageous Daily article was not an aberration. Last Wednesday, The Daily published an alternative account of the antisemitic behavior of Ameer Hassan Loggins, a lecturer in Stanford’s mandatory course for frosh. As reported in a New York Times opinion, “A lecturer in one class that day asked Jewish students to raise their hands, then took one of the Jewish student’s belongings and told him to stand apart from everyone else, saying that was what the Israelis did to the Palestinians.” Another student reported: “he turned to an Israeli student and asked how many Jews died in the Holocaust. When that student said six million, the teacher replied, many more millions died in colonization, which is what he said Israel was doing to the Palestinians. He then asked all of the students to say where they were from and depending on the answer, he told them whether they were colonized or colonizer. When a student said, ‘Israeli,’ he called the student a colonizer.”

In sharp contrast to the Times’ article on the issue, the account published in The Daily appears to be written solely to defend Loggins’s actions. The Daily article goes to great lengths to paint Loggins’s actions as over exaggerated, implicitly accusing Jewish students of dishonesty. Two Stanford Israel Association board members spoke with the students who were targeted by Loggins and communicated the pain and discomfort that Loggins caused them. Rather than taking these expressions of the Jewish students’ experiences seriously, the article immediately proceeds to cite non-Jewish students, inappropriately calling into question the Jewish students’ experiences. For example, The Daily quotes a student who said, “as a class we all really loved having him as a professor.” Similarly, a student is quoted saying, “It was to be funny, [Loggins] was laughing.” The Jewish students who reported Loggins to the University clearly didn’t agree.

Per journalistic best practices, reporters should obtain as much relevant information as possible. The Daily does feature the testimony of students in the class, but they are neither Jewish nor Israeli. Since when is it acceptable for bystanders to tell victims how they’re supposed to feel? Such journalistic incompetence is unacceptable.

Ironically, at the same time The Daily minimized Jewish accounts of antisemitism, it also published “Hundreds call for University action in protest for Palestine,” which failed to mention what is easily interpreted as a direct call during the rally to take up arms against fellow Stanford students: “On college campuses, including this one, … People’s resistance is met through doxing, harassment and intimidation campaigns which endanger Palestinian life. What is there left to do but to take up arms?” 

Journalists have power. Since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack which killed 1,400 Israeli civilians and took over 200 hostages, Jewish and Israeli students have been targeted on the basis of their identities. They continue to encounter slogans calling for the destruction of their country and the concomitant genocide of their people chalked on the ground. Jewish and Israeli students have had to sit and listen as neighbors, classmates and friends justify the brutal slaughter of their friends and family. The Daily contributes to this campus climate, and must acknowledge that irresponsible and one-sided reporting impacts Jewish students. 

We condemn what is in our view The Daily’s repeated indifference to assaults on Jews and its promotion of libelous and antisemitic accounts. 

Signed,

The Stanford Israel Association

This article was written by Andrei Mandelshtam, co-president, and other members of the Stanford Israel Association.

The post Letter to the Editor | Rising antisemitism on your hands appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/26/letter-to-the-editor-rising-antisemitism-on-your-hands/feed/ 0 1234573
From the Community | Urging the president and provost to condemn atrocities in Gaza https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/16/from-the-community-urging-the-president-and-provost-to-condemn-atrocities-in-gaza/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/16/from-the-community-urging-the-president-and-provost-to-condemn-atrocities-in-gaza/#respond Mon, 16 Oct 2023 08:44:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1233540 The statement by the president and provost effectively exonerates the State of Israel by failing to acknowledge its role in the conflict, writes Palumbo-Liu.

The post From the Community | Urging the president and provost to condemn atrocities in Gaza appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
I was glad to read President Saller and Provost Martinez’s denunciation of the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas upon innocent Israeli citizens. They forcefully and unambiguously wrote in their Oct. 11 email to the Stanford community:

As a moral matter, we condemn all terrorism and mass atrocities. This includes the deliberate attack on civilians this weekend by Hamas. One of the advances in international law in the 20th century following the horrors of the Holocaust was the development of international humanitarian law prohibiting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Such crimes are never justified. 

Their statement aligns with the Oct. 10 communication of the Office of the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner, with the key exception that the UN is even-handed in its application of international humanitarian law:

The Commission has been collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes committed by all sides since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched a complex attack on Israel and Israeli forces responded with airstrikes in Gaza.

Reports that armed groups from Gaza have gunned down hundreds of unarmed civilians are abhorrent and cannot be tolerated. Taking civilian hostages and using civilians as human shields are war crimes.

The Commission is gravely concerned with Israel’s latest attack on Gaza and Israel’s announcement of a complete siege on Gaza involving the withholding of water, food, electricity and fuel which will undoubtfully cost civilian lives and constitutes collective punishment.

Lest there be any ambiguity with regard to collective punishment — “the prohibition of collective punishments is stated in the Hague Regulations and the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions.”

Israel is heaping yet more suffering on the people of Gaza in order to punish Hamas. This act of collective punishment goes directly against the international humanitarian law that Saller and Martinez invoke to condemn Hamas. 

This collective punishment is being meted out against a captive population, 80% of whom are refugees, 60% of whom are under the age of 18. In 2010 British Prime Minister David Cameron referred to Gaza as a “prison.” The Washington Post has reported the death count of Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinian civilians — 1,537 killed, including 500 children and 276 women. Human Rights Watch has reported Israel’s use of white phosphorus on the Palestinian population — “White phosphorus … has a significant incendiary effect that can severely burn people and set structures, fields and other civilian objects in the vicinity on fire. The use of white phosphorus in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, magnifies the risk to civilians and violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting civilians at unnecessary risk [emphasis added].” 

The illegality of collective punishment takes place within an illegal blockade that Israel has imposed for sixteen years, on top of an illegal occupation which has been in existence since 1967. Since Saller and Martinez predicate their statement on international humanitarian law, let us see what it says about Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

Not all occupations are illegal. There are settled conventions and protocols for how an occupying state must behave if it has placed a people and their land under occupation. The International Red Cross provides this account:

The duties of the occupying power are spelled out primarily in the 1907 Hague Regulations (art. 42-56) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV, art. 27-34 and 47-78), as well as in certain provisions of Additional Protocol I and customary international humanitarian law…

The main rules of the law applicable in case of occupation state that:

  • The occupant does not acquire sovereignty over the territory.
  • Occupation is only a temporary situation, and the rights of the occupant are limited to the extent of that period.
  • The occupying power must take measures to restore and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety.
  • To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the occupying power must ensure sufficient hygiene and public health standards, as well as the provision of food and medical care to the population under occupation.
  • Collective punishment is prohibited.
  • The taking of hostages is prohibited.
  • The confiscation of private property by the occupant is prohibited.
  • The destruction or seizure of enemy property is prohibited, unless absolutely required by military necessity during the conduct of hostilities.

Israel has violated each of these provisions. Let us simply go down the list:

As far back as 2017, Israel passed a bill to annex Palestinian lands illegally, As a report from the BBC points out in its discussion of Israel’s annexation of Palestinian land, “Annexation is the term applied when a state unilaterally proclaims its sovereignty over other territory. It is forbidden by international law. A recent example was Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.” On that basis if we condemn Russia’s annexation of Ukraine we should likewise condemn Israel’s annexation of Palestinian land, that is if we are to be morally consistent.

Far from being “temporary,” the Occupation has been in effect since 1967. Rather than ensuring the safety and well-being of those under its occupation, Israel has deprived (via its illegal blockade) and is now in its actions of collective punishment depriving the civilian population of Gaza of hygiene, public health, food and medical care.

Palestinians under occupation are not tried in civil courts, but rather in military courts which deny basic constitutional rights to Palestinians, including children, who are not only prevented from quickly obtaining legal representation, but also often from seeing their parents, sometimes for crimes as minuscule as throwing rocks at military vehicles. This suspension of legal protections and the abuse of minors is a form of hostage taking for the purposes of silencing protest and resistance.

The unbridled appropriation of Palestinian property by Israeli settlers, armed and protected by the Israeli state, has existed for decades, but has increased exponentially under the rule of Israel’s far-right government, which tens of thousands of its own citizens have been protesting for months precisely because of its attacks on the Israeli court system.

While Israeli Jews have the right to protest when Netanyahu deprives them of their constitutional rights, Palestinians are beaten, incarcerated and killed for protesting the assault Israel has made on their lives and the rights guaranteed to them by international human rights law.

To silence the monitoring of violations of international humanitarian law, Israel has declared civil society human rights organizations “terrorist” organizations. To the grave concern of international law jurists it expelled former Stanford Law student Omar Shakir, who serves as Human Rights Watch’s director in Israel-Palestine.

In condemning the egregious violations of international humanitarian law performed by Hamas, but not acknowledging those of the other protagonist in the conflict, the statement by the president and provost, at the same moment it declares the importance of maintaining the University’s “neutrality,” effectively exonerates the State of Israel. This makes it impossible for the Stanford community to have any discussion or debate on this topic — those critical of Israeli state policies already run the risk of being labeled “anti-Semites.”

Saller and Martinez have made invisible precisely the basis for Palestinian claims to the rights guaranteed to them by international humanitarian law; they have exploited and desecrated the very law they use to advertise their moral goodness. 

Once again — whose lives matter?  Whose lives deserve justice?

This article was written by David Palumbo-Liu, who is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor at Stanford University, and a professor of comparative literature and by courtesy, of English.

This article was updated on the request of the author to directly substantiate their claim that Israel violated this provision: “The occupant does not acquire sovereignty over the territory” within the laws of occupation set out by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The post From the Community | Urging the president and provost to condemn atrocities in Gaza appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/16/from-the-community-urging-the-president-and-provost-to-condemn-atrocities-in-gaza/feed/ 0 1233540
From the Community | SJP leadership should apologize https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/15/from-the-community-sjp-leadership-should-apologize/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/15/from-the-community-sjp-leadership-should-apologize/#respond Mon, 16 Oct 2023 03:34:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1233468 The refusal to acknowledge the loss of life and the equating of Hamas terrorists and Palestinians should disqualify SJP leaders, writes Adam Lifshitz.

The post From the Community | SJP leadership should apologize appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
I, along with hundreds of other Jewish students at Stanford, woke up last weekend to the earth-shattering news that over a thousand of our brothers and sisters in Israel were senselessly slaughtered by Hamas terrorists. Like many of my fellow students, I immediately looked to the news to find relevant information about the terror that took place. 

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post all provided the horrible details of the attacks and on-the-ground testimonies of infants slaughtered, women raped and dead bodies paraded in the streets of Gaza. When I looked to The Daily, however, I saw a front page op-ed titled “From the Community | Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine” written by SJP leadership rationalizing the attacks. The op-ed stated the importance of putting the “attack” in “context” “as the world witnesses the atrocities committed in Palestine.”

Authoring this article in the aftermath of the recent terrorism is not only emotionally tone deaf but also morally reprehensible for failing to acknowledge the loss of life and instead attributing blame to the victims. Those who author such articles should be held responsible for their actions. Accountability is key to preventing the wanton disregard of norms of decency that should guide university discourse. Those who seek to influence our classmates should be held to a higher standard and be forced to reckon with the impact of their influence on our community.

As a law student, I celebrate open discourse. I enjoy discussions about hotbed issues and seek out opinions different from mine. But writing this article before the blood of innocent children dries is appalling. It displays no humane mutual respect and should not be endorsed by The Daily or any other organization. I am sure that the leader of SJP does not speak for all SJP members. In fact, his support and his rationalizing of Hamas’ actions this weekend likely indicate that he is not the right person to be leading an organization that is supposed to value human rights. He should salvage any remaining shreds of his dignity by stepping down from SJP and issuing an apology for his offensive article. His lack of empathy is not only directed toward a people who, just two generations ago, fought for their existence, but also toward his fellow classmates who aspire to foster an environment of respect for human life and the destruction of evil.

Palestinians do not deserve to carry the same fate as Hamas terrorists. Misguided statements insinuating that Hamas acts as a “resistance” for the Palestinian people weakens the Palestinian cause. It risks creating association between helpless Palestinians and Hamas, which is an authoritarian terrorist organization beholden to Iran. SJP does not have to stand alongside baby murderers and rapists to support the Palestinian cause, and even if they choose to, they certainly should have enough self-awareness and common decency to still acknowledge the terrible loss of life that took place last weekend. The time has come for leaders who serve their constituents and not their own egos. I call on SJP leadership to resign immediately, apologize for last week’s op-ed and acknowledge that they were not speaking for all of the organization’s members when they issued their statement. 

Adam Lifshitz is a third-year J.D. MBA dual degree candidate at Harvard Law School and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

This article was updated to correct a line. This error was introduced due to a lack of consistency across drafts.

The post From the Community | SJP leadership should apologize appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/15/from-the-community-sjp-leadership-should-apologize/feed/ 0 1233468
From the Community | The impact of Hamas’ devastating attack https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/13/from-the-community-the-impact-of-hamas-devastating-attack/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/13/from-the-community-the-impact-of-hamas-devastating-attack/#respond Fri, 13 Oct 2023 09:50:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1233476 Hamas' terrorist acts will bring Palestinians no closer toward achieving their legitimate claim to self-determination, writes Matthew Wigler.

The post From the Community | The impact of Hamas’ devastating attack appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Shabbat this past Saturday, Oct. 7, marked the holiday of Simchat Torah, a joyous day on which Jews complete our yearly reading of the Torah and begin the sacred cycle of reading our holy book anew. However, this year, Jews who were looking forward to celebrating in the holiday’s festivities awoke to the devastating news of a surprise attack and a declaration of war. 

Heartbreaking images and videos have streamed our Israel since Hamas began its attack. As of Wednesday, Oct. 11, Hamas, in pursuance of its explicitly genocidal agenda against the Jewish people, has launched over 5,000 rockets into Israel and sent its armed fighters across the border for the purpose of slaughtering civilians. Hamas rejects any distinction between Israeli civilians and soldiers. They have murdered over 1,300 innocents (including 22 Americans) and injured at least 3,300 more. At a holiday music festival turned bloodbath, where Hamas cut down 260 young people alone, a current Stanford student’s family member was amongst the many lost. In its wake, Hamas perpetrated the mass rape of Jewish women beside the bodies of their slaughtered friends. They have taken over one hundred and fifty hostages — including both the young and the elderly, as well as citizens of countries including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Thailand and more — whose loved ones fear they will never see them again. They reduced homes in Tel Aviv to rubble. 

These terrorist attacks are unacceptable. Hamas’ violence has unleashed the bloodiest conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in nearly fifty years, and their blatant transgression of legal and moral norms shocks the conscience. The Jewish people have been persecuted for 3,000 years. Hamas’ actions this Saturday made it the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. Never again is now.

Like most Jews, I support Palestinians’ aspirations for justice and independence. However, that future will not come under the banner of Hamas — a designated terrorist organization with a long history of torturing and killing not only Jews but Palestineans (even including one of their own top commanders for alleged homosexuality). While recognizing the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people, terrorism and war crimes cannot be condoned under any flag or cause. International law offers no sanction for Hamas’ brutal actions — which, in fact, are flagrantly illegal violations. Hostage-taking, attacks intentionally targeting civilians and rape are clearly proscribed under all circumstances during armed conflicts under Article III of the Fourth Geneva Convention (common article III of the 1949 Geneva Conventions), customary international law on rape and Article VIII of the Rome Convention, to which Palestine is a signatory.

There is nothing to celebrate in a mass slaughter of Jews. Hamas knows well that its action will bring Palestinians no closer toward achieving their legitimate claim to self-determination, but will instead tragically set that goal on a backward trajectory at the cost of innocent lives. Hamas’ pursuit of genocide against the Jewish people has come at the expense of the Palestinian people, who have been their primary victims. As Hamas makes clear in its own words in Article 13 of its Covenant, it will never, ever make peace. To free Palestine requires freeing Palestinians from Hamas. Its radical tyranny over Gaza must end.

As distressing as it already is to process the trauma of a modern-day pogrom and grapple with fear for our loved ones in Israel that is keeping many of us awake at night, it is doubly devastating to do so while also processing the extent to which many around the world and in our own community are desensitized to Jewish bloodshed, with some even celebrating it. Even as we worry about Jews in Israel, Jews around the world are now being forced to question their own safety where they live. The palpable threat of a former Hamas leader’s call for a global ‘Day of Rage’ on Friday, Oct. 13, has led to synagogue and school closures and demanded an urgent increase in security for Jewish institutions facing targeting. In Britain alone, reports of antisemitic incidents have shot up 300% since the war broke out. On the steps of the Sydney Opera House, protestors chanted “gas the Jews.” In Alexandria, Egypt, a police officer shot and killed two Jewish tourists along with their Egyptian guide. From Utah to Chicago, U.S. synagogues have faced a flood of bomb threats. American universities too have been the scene of mounting antisemitism since Hamas’ attack. For example, on Wednesday, an Israeli student at Columbia University was beaten with a stick in front of the library while putting up posters with the names and photos of Hamas’ hostages.

Unfortunately, Stanford has been no exception to the devastating trend. Too many students here have posted on social media sites such as Fizz and Instagram, justifying Hamas’ mass murder. As many students feared loved ones being burned alive while watching Israeli homes and towns set alight by Hamas rocket fire, a banner was hung at Tresidder Union emblazoned with the words “The Illusion of Israel is Burning.” The word choice felt like a calculated attempt to exploit that fear and trauma — as it reminded many Jewish students of the image of the mass burning of Jews during the Holocaust, a scene which Hamas is now replicating. Students biking to class past White Plaza on Wednesday morning were subject to the cruel taunts of chalkings with messages lauding violence against Jews, including “Viva Intifada” (which refers to two historical episodes of terrorist violence that claimed thousands of Israeli lives) and “Israel is Dead.” 

Jewish first-years eager to learn in their required “Civil, Liberal and Global Education” class were singled out and harassed by their instructor based on their identity in a disgraceful public shaming. The instructor, who has since been suspended, asked Jewish students to identify themselves and then separated them from their belongings, claiming that this was what Jews were doing to Palestinians. According to what students in touch with the targeted first-years told the San Francisco Chronicle, after asking them how many people died in the Holocaust and receiving the accurate answer of six million, the instructor responded “Yes. Only six million,” before adding, “colonizers killed more than six million. Israel is a colonizer.” Such incidents make many Jewish students at Stanford afraid to come to class.

The Stanford Jewish community appreciates the courage and moral clarity of those who have stood up as allies to the Jewish people over past days. President Joe Biden has rightly called out Hamas’ attack as “an act of sheer evil” and taken important steps to defend the lives of Israelis and Jewish Americans in these threatening times. His leadership in uniting the world behind Israel’s defense and Hamas’ destruction sends a clear message (see his letter, co-signed by Stanford alumnus Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the United Kingdom, along with the leaders of Germany, France and Italy). President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has also expressed strong support for Israel in response to Hamas’ attack, connecting his own country’s struggle against Russia’s invasion to Israel’s defense against Hamas’ invasion (as well as accusing Russia of supporting Hamas’ operations). Here on campus, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brought comfort to many by taking the stage at Tuesday night’s White Plaza community vigil to express her support for Israel and Stanford’s Jewish community.

Like most Jews, I seek the peace and security of Israel as a Jewish state in the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people, a safe haven after millennia of persecution where Jews can finally claim control over their own destiny. Likewise, like most Jews, I also dream of a future of dignity and freedom for the Palestinian people, who, by the very same principles of self-determination, deserve a state of their own in a land that they too have called home for many centuries. 

However, Hamas’ ideology of hate and methods of terrorism are contrary to that vision. The wanton bloodshed and carnage that these past days of terror have brought are obviously not the path to liberation; they are instead the harbinger of continued large-scale, unnecessary suffering for innocent Israelis and Palestinians alike. I fervently hope for a day when all Israelis, Palestinians and others living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea can live together in peace as neighbors. As we yearn for that future, please join me in praying for the memory of 2,000 civilians, Israeli, Palestinian and others, who have lost their lives in the past five days of violence. For their sake, from the destruction of war, we must build a better future.

“May the Maker of peace in high places make peace for all of us and for all of Israel.”

Matthew Wigler ’19 J.D. ’25

Co-President of the Jewish Law Students Association

The post From the Community | The impact of Hamas’ devastating attack appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/13/from-the-community-the-impact-of-hamas-devastating-attack/feed/ 0 1233476
From the Community | There is no justification for terrorism https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/12/from-the-community-the-killing-of-civilians-must-not-be-justified/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/12/from-the-community-the-killing-of-civilians-must-not-be-justified/#respond Thu, 12 Oct 2023 07:00:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1233328 The killing of civilians is never justified, whether by Israel or Hamas, writes Benjamin Driscoll.

The post From the Community | There is no justification for terrorism appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Content warning: This article contains references to violence and sexual assault.

The killing of civilians is never justified, whether by Israel or Hamas. The opinion penned in The Stanford Daily by Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on the current Israel-Palestine conflict is vile and despicable.

As the great Martin Luther King Jr. intoned in his Nobel speech, “[v]iolence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral […] It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.”

While I take deep issue with the treatment of the people of the Gaza Strip over these past decades and staunchly supported their cause many years before that position was “trendy,” there is no justification for Hamas’s terrorism. Hamas has massacred Jewish men, defiled and raped Jewish women — parading their bodies in front of jeering crowds — and littered the streets with the bodies of Jewish children. In Article Seven of their 1988 charter Hamas wrote, “[t]he Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Hamas’s dream is not to expel Israel from the Gaza Strip, nor even to exterminate Israel as a nation. Their dream is the extermination of the Jewish people. There were many Israelis who advocated for the lifting of the Gaza blockade. How many of them did Hamas murder? While the Israel Defense Forces have, at times, committed grave injustices against the people of the Gaza Strip, there is no equivalence here.

SJP excuses child murder, rape and terrorism as freedom-fighting. The SJP’s article draws a false parallel with Ukrainian soldiers who are bravely fighting to protect their country from autocracy — perhaps SJP believes Russia’s propaganda about the Azov Brigade but takes no affront. SJP paints Israelis as colonialists, ignoring that the Jewish people have suffered persecution and genocides for thousands of years, ignoring that Israel is a nation besieged by antisemitic powers. Hamas is funded by Iran via Hezbollah and by the Gulf States. Finally, let us not forget the treatment of women by Hamas. SJP, under a faux shroud of progressivism, defends a group which, in 2021, determined that women should not be allowed to travel freely without the permission of a male guardian.

That SJP would call upon the Stanford community to “educate themselves” is frankly insulting given that their article reflects a lack of compassion and a poor understanding of history. To understand the current conflict, one must understand that Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, as they reaffirmed in 2017. Hamas rejects the notion of any long-term, peaceful solution. While Israel bears some responsibility for the failure of long-term negotiations, Hamas has, at numerous times, incinerated peaceful dialogue. For instance, in 2003 Hamas ended a cease-fire with the suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem.  

That students at this university could be so thoughtless and base as to defend terrorism, sitting safely in their dorm rooms and living privileged lives, speaks poorly of American society and of social studies departments, which have evidently equipped students with the language to discuss colonialism, but a paucity of understanding.

An anecdote: tucked away under my mother’s desk is an old box of family photos, passed down to us by my great grandmother. A group of wonderful people sit in that box, people my mother was robbed of the opportunity to know by the Nazis and the German concentration camps where they died torturous deaths. Most of their stories my great grandmother took to her grave. It was too painful to talk about them.

I urge the members of SJP to reconsider their position and not, led astray by good intentions, to don the attitudes of Nazis and terrorists. I would rather welcome them as brothers and sisters.

Benjamin Driscoll is a Ph.D. student in the computer science department at Stanford University.

This article was updated on the request of the author to clarify that their position is that Hamas, not SJP, rejects the notion of any long-term, peaceful solution.

The post From the Community | There is no justification for terrorism appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/12/from-the-community-the-killing-of-civilians-must-not-be-justified/feed/ 0 1233328
From the Community | Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/10/from-the-community-stanford-students-for-justice-in-palestine/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/10/from-the-community-stanford-students-for-justice-in-palestine/#respond Tue, 10 Oct 2023 09:28:52 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1232986 Palestinians have a legal right to resistance to resist occupation, apartheid and systemic injustice, Students for Justice in Palestine writes.

The post From the Community | Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
To the Stanford community and concerned individuals everywhere, 

We, the members of Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), feel compelled to address the recent and ongoing injustices faced by the Palestinian people. As the world witnesses the atrocities committed in Palestine, it becomes increasingly clear that these events are not isolated incidents, but rather part of the protracted struggle against settler-colonial oppression.

On Saturday, as a part of the ongoing, decades-long struggle against Israeli oppression, Palestine forces attacked Israel. The media’s depiction of Saturday’s resistance as a one-off event is fundamentally reductionist: no conversation about Palestine can be conducted without the context of the decades of systematic oppression, discrimination and violence the Palestinian people have faced. 

Israel currently places a “land, water and air” siege on the Gaza Strip. Regularly cutting off water and electricity, Israel vindictively rules and occupies the Gaza Strip. Israel also regularly forces Palestinian produce to spoil rather than allowing it to pass through checkpoints to where it can be sold. Israel’s choice to lay siege to Gaza has caused Gaza to become an “open-air prison,” a term being used by the Human Rights Watch. These conditions should provoke all of us to take action and fight for safety in the world. 

We are embarrassed to live in a world that tolerates this level of consistent, systematic and unrelenting violence. The fact that people can be treated like this in the 21st century is a stain on our history. 

Palestinians, like all peoples, have the legitimate right to resist occupation, apartheid and systemic injustice. Saturday’s events underscore the structural violence, displacement and daily hardships Palestinians have faced for decades under a regime that seeks to undermine their basic human rights and dignity. It is essential for us as an academic community and as global citizens to recognize the roots of this conflict. While it might be easy for some to view the issue as a distant geopolitical dispute, the reality is far simpler. Western media will hail the Ukrainians who defend their homeland as valiant heroes; however, there is a distinct double standard at play when it comes to the resistance of the Palestinian people against the settler colonialists of Israel. 

Furthermore, while Palestinian resistance is legal under international law, Israel’s breathtakingly violent actions are illegal collective punishment under the Geneva Convention. For example, Israel’s destruction of Palestine Tower, a media and residential building, constitutes a war crime, since news and civilians are not legitimate military targets under U.N. law.

At its core, this message is about an oppressed population striving for equality, freedom and self-determination in the face of systemic subjugation. We are dismayed by the fact that institutions like Stanford, which proclaim values of justice, equality and human rights, continue to be entangled with companies and entities that directly or indirectly support the machinery of this oppression. Our association with such entities not only undermines our collective values but also tacitly condones the perpetuation of this injustice. Furthermore, between 2008 and 2020, Palestinians have endured 96% of the total casualties resulting from the conflict, demonstrating the one-sided nature of the situation. 

We stand firmly with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, echoing their call for immediate action to cease all military, security and technological collaboration with those implicated in the ongoing colonization of Palestine. We also demand an end to any partnerships with companies that actively participate in the dispossession of Palestinians. We recognize the strength and resilience of the Palestinian people, who, despite facing overwhelming odds, continue to rise and assert their undeniable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Their resistance is not just a testament to their spirit but also a reminder of the universality of the human desire for justice and freedom. Injustice anywhere hurts all of us. The fact that Palestinians must endure such brutal conditions is an embarrassment to the modern human condition. The only thing that Israeli apartheid has succeeded in doing is creating violence and misery, which can be heard all around the world. 

In solidarity with the Palestinian cause, we call upon the Stanford community and individuals everywhere to educate themselves, raise awareness and actively challenge complicity in this system of oppression. 

Justice for Palestine is justice for all. 

This article was written by Hamza El Boudali and other members of Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) leadership. SJP is a pro-Palestinian student activism organization.

The byline above has been updated to include Hamza El Boudali. A previous version of this article was attributed to SJP inconsistently with our anonymity policies. The Daily regrets this error.

This article has been updated to contextualize the events on Saturday, Oct. 7 referred to by the authors.

The post From the Community | Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/10/from-the-community-stanford-students-for-justice-in-palestine/feed/ 0 1232986
From the Community | The big problem with R&DE’s small plates https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/09/from-the-community-the-big-problem-with-rdes-small-plates/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/09/from-the-community-the-big-problem-with-rdes-small-plates/#respond Tue, 10 Oct 2023 06:06:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1232720 Stanford student Eliana Fuchs comments on the detrimental effects of downsizing dining hall plate size on restrictive eating and self image. They write, "intentionally-restrictive plates are not a viable option."

The post From the Community | The big problem with R&DE’s small plates appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Content warning: This article contains references to eating disorders.

I am concerned about the downsizing of plates in the dining hall. As someone who has struggled with an eating disorder and has many friends who have struggled with eating disorders on this campus, interventions like these make recovery harder. This kind of behavioral nudge presents a serious community health issue.

The new dining hall plates this year are tiny. They have an eight-inch diameter, compared to standard dinner plates that have 10-inch or 11-inch diameters. This means that the new plates have about 60% of the area of a standard plate.

People eat less food when provided with smaller plates. One study published in the Food Quality and Preference Journal asked participants to draw the amount of food they expected to eat for dinner on two different plate sizes. On average, they drew 24% more food on larger plates.

These results have been corroborated time and time again. Another study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that nutrition experts given larger bowls served themselves 31% more ice cream. As Bryan Wansink, professor of consumer behavior at Cornell, wrote, plate size “can subtly suggest how much food is reasonable, normal, typical and appropriate for us to be serving ourselves and consuming.”

This perception leaves people thinking they have eaten enough food, or even too much food, when they haven’t. For this reason, “use smaller plates” is common dieting advice.

The amount of food that can fit on the new dining hall plates is not enough for a meal for me — a semi-active, five-foot-four woman with a medium metabolism. This amount of food is also not enough for many of my friends, with one exclaiming, “Oh! That’s why I’m so hungry,” an hour after dinner when I brought up the small plates.

The default meal plan amounts to around two swipes per day, and there is little to no access to free food between meals for most students on campus, so not eating enough at one meal affects students throughout the day.

An obvious workaround would be for students to take multiple plates if they need more food. However, people struggling with restrictive eating disorders likely will stop themselves from getting another plate, thinking that needing more than one plate worth of food means they have failed, makes them fat or means they are overeating (this is an eating disorder recovery blog post reframing getting seconds).

Even for people without formally diagnosed eating disorders, there is a stigma associated with getting seconds or taking multiple plates of food. 

Eating disorders are commonplace among college students. Between 10 and 20% of women and 4 to 10% of men in college currently suffer from an eating disorder, according to the Child Mind Institute. Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) should be taking steps to ameliorate this alarming prevalence, especially because eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all psychological conditions. With the known ubiquity of disordered eating on this campus, Stanford Dining has no excuse for forcing the student body to follow dieting advice.

In addition to harming students who struggle with disordered eating, small plates can aggravate other existing problems.

  • Limited swipes, exacerbated by small plates when students are more likely to accidentally leave a meal hungry, cause stress to people who have dealt with food insecurity. Larger plates will not fix everything, but they will at least not be a regression away from helping these communities. 
  • Since many people are getting multiple plates, smaller plates result in more work for the dishwashers and dining hall workers, who are probably not seeing a pay increase due to the change in plate size.
  • Small plates are an accessibility issue: bigger plates can be used to perch glasses and bowls on the side for people who only have mobility or strength in one arm or otherwise only have the ability to carry one item at a time. I have a broken arm that has kept me from getting two plates when I need to. There are other people with much more long-lasting and salient accessibility concerns in this regard. Since we don’t have trays in the dining hall, people need to use plates to balance bowls and cups.
  • Small plates are an allergy issue: People are resorting to piling food items one on top of the other to fit them all on the plate. This piling is more likely to result in serving tong contamination than if there were clean space on the plate to put new food items.

I am sure that this change was instituted with good intentions, maybe as a food waste prevention program or to save costs on food in the dining halls. While it can be argued that portion control is an important life skill, I firmly believe that protecting college students who are particularly vulnerable to disordered eating is more important. And there are other ways to prevent food waste that don’t result in hungry students struggling with whether to go back for seconds. 

  • Education about food waste can help.
  • Having some food available outside of dining hours (cereal, etc.) could lead to less of a scarcity mindset. This food availability could keep people from putting more than they can eat on their plates or gorging themselves to prevent getting hungry between meals (something I did many times before living in a co-op where we always have food available). 

I don’t know all of the solutions, but intentionally restrictive plates are not a viable option.

Eliana Fuchs wrote this article.

Cameron Lange, Vai Crevoisier and Elena Sierra contributed to this article.

The post From the Community | The big problem with R&DE’s small plates appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/09/from-the-community-the-big-problem-with-rdes-small-plates/feed/ 0 1232720
Letter to the Editor | Across diverse backgrounds, we are more aligned on how to approach Stanford’s fossil fuel engagement than you might think https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/05/letter-to-the-editor-across-diverse-backgrounds-we-are-more-aligned-on-how-to-approach-stanfords-fossil-fuel-engagement-than-you-might-think/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/05/letter-to-the-editor-across-diverse-backgrounds-we-are-more-aligned-on-how-to-approach-stanfords-fossil-fuel-engagement-than-you-might-think/#respond Thu, 05 Oct 2023 08:02:47 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1232379 Six graduate students speak up on the Doerr School's entanglement with fossil fuel companies, suggesting a set of recommendations for Stanford's Committee on Funding of Energy Research and Education.

The post Letter to the Editor | Across diverse backgrounds, we are more aligned on how to approach Stanford’s fossil fuel engagement than you might think appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Dear Editor,

We are a group of six graduate researchers with diverse professional backgrounds and opinions on fossil fuel companies’ role in funding affiliate program research. Three of us have been actively protesting fossil fuel funding at the Doerr School. Three of us are in favor of maintaining an open dialogue with fossil fuel companies. We agree that addressing climate change is serious enough to demand a clear strategic response from the University. Working together, we have reached a consensus on recommended criteria for evaluating the sources and objectives of research funding through affiliate programs, as well as a set of actions for enforcing these criteria. 

We all endorse the following recommendations and we hope that they will contribute to a university-wide decision to adopt enforceable standards for research funding provided by fossil fuel companies through affiliate groups. 

In December of 2022, Stanford’s Office of the President established the Committee on Funding of Energy Research and Education (CFERE), charged with “exploring and reporting on the issues raised by Stanford’s accepting funding from fossil fuel companies.” The committee has thus far not made any findings publicly available. We are concerned that the committee’s recommendations may come too late or fail to embody the leadership that Stanford must play in the energy transition. 

Our alignment on these recommendations demonstrates that stakeholders with different backgrounds and interests can find common ground rooted in our values of integrity and transparency. This work represents a model that we believe could achieve widespread support for reasonable, actionable and verifiable criteria for supporting research at Stanford. We have shared the below recommendations with the CFERE and hope they will incorporate them into their own findings. There is no cause for further delay. 

Recommendations prepared and approved by:

Choi, June

Fraces, Cedric

Grekin, Rebecca

Kashtan, Yannai

Long, Wennan

Wettermark, Daly

Summary of recommendations for industrial affiliate programs
To take effect immediately: Review, identify and eliminate benefits to industry donors that present a direct conflict of interest. In particular, by enforcing Stanford’s existing policies for industrial affiliate programs.
Dissociate: Eliminate financial sponsorship from any company, trade group or other organization that engages in any of the following (see below for details on each criterion): Does not provide a credible transition plan, does not provide transparent data, has plans to conduct their operations in a manner that is at odds with a Paris-aligned transition pathway.
Establish a third-party enforcement board tasked with: Enforcing existing policies for industrial affiliate programs, including establishing consequences for any violations in line with Stanford’s Code of Conduct, overseeing dissociation and future re-association processes with industry partners on a case-by-case basis. Develop a concrete timeline for the above
Disclose: Strengthen existing disclosure requirements across the University, including by writing specific guidance for conflicts of interest involving the fossil fuel industry.
Establish a transition pathways research initiative: Support the creation of an initiative tasked with evaluating partners’ transition pathways and creating standards for emissions accounting.

Details for Recommendation #2: 

Dissociate: Eliminate financial sponsorship from any company, trade group, or other organization that engages in any of the following:

  1. Does not provide a credible transition plan. A credible transition includes, but is not limited to, all of the following:
    1. A plan for diversification of assets, such as increasing percentage investment (i.e. capital expenditures) for clean energy supply and end use efficiency
    2. Net-zero emissions pathway that achieves a significant reduction in absolute level of emissions and does not rely on carbon offsets
    3. Changes in management incentive structures, for example through Key Performance Incentives
  2. Does not provide transparent data necessary to evaluate the above, including:
    1. Its emissions and carbon intensity of its upstream operations (Scope 1 and 2 emissions)
    2. Lobbying expenditures and funding of citizens groups/front groups
  1. In the last five years, has obstructed climate policy, as evidenced by actions including, but not limited to, the following:
    1. Documented decisions to publicly downplay or contradict peer-reviewed climate science 
    2. Documented lobbying against pro-climate legislation, including but not limited to, lobbying
      1. For a lower social cost of carbon
      2. For less stringent greenhouse gas emissions regulations
    3. Documented opposition to renewable energy projects, directly or via “astroturf” front groups (e.g. the California Drivers’ Alliance)
    4. A record of false or misleading advertising, as adjudicated in court decisions and/or peer-reviewed literature (for a database of court decisions, see Columbia Law School’s Global Climate Change Litigation database)

Details for Recommendation #3:

Establish a third-party enforcement board: We define “third party” as a panel of Stanford affiliates, including students, who are not directly responsible for financing of industrial affiliate programs. To address conflicts of interest, any board members must disclose funding from fossil fuel companies. This board shall review existing industry partners based on the above criteria and oversee the dissociation and re-association process. This would involve:

  1. Communicating to any violating industry partners and associated principal investigators the actions they must take in order to abide by the above criteria and provide a 60-day period for them to respond. The 60-day timeline originates from Princeton Fossil Fuel Dissociation. This serves as an example to demonstrate a concrete timeline.
  2. Appropriately sanctioning affiliate programs who continue to receive funding from violating industry partners after the 60-day period 
  3. Establish a process by which an industry partner may re-associate (i.e. re-enter as a funder in an affiliate program) with the University if it has demonstrated compliance with the above criteria
  4. Oversee implementation of a phase out fund to support the transition of any research programs whose operations would be impacted by dissociation

Sincerely,

June Choi is a Ph.D. candidate in earth system science. Her research focuses on quantifying the impacts of climate change to inform adaptation strategies. Her previous work involved tracking global climate finance flows, setting standards for green bonds and sustainable finance integrity.

Cedric Fraces is a Ph.D. student in the energy sciences engineering department. His research focuses on a new class of numerical methods for the simulation and uncertainty characterization of CO2 sequestration in geological formations. Prior to this work, Cedric spent a decade working as a reservoir engineer on major oilfields in the Middle East and Latin America, as well as CO2 sequestration projects in the U.S. and Canada.

Rebecca Grekin is a Ph.D. candidate in energy sciences engineering looking at ways to reduce carbon emissions from the commercial building sector from heating and cooling systems by changing the operations of these systems. Prior to this work, she completed a master’s in the same department studying Scope 3 emissions, doing a deep dive into developing automated systems to estimate emissions from food purchasing.

Yannai Kashtan is a Ph.D. candidate in earth system science, an organizer for the Coalition for a True School of Sustainability and a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. His doctoral research focuses on the health-related hazards of residential fossil-fueled appliances.

Dr. Wennan Long is a recent graduate from the energy science and engineering department at Stanford, where he was advised by professor Adam R. Brandt. He has expertise in energy engineering and life-cycle assessment. His research interest is building simulators to calculate upstream greenhouse gas emissions across the oil and gas supply chain. Dr. Long led the team on the Archie Initiative to calculate the global oil upstream carbon intensity.

Daly Wettermark is a master’s student in environmental engineering studying operational efficiencies for wastewater treatment and reuse. She is also a climate activist, and she has previously worked as an engineer in product development and corporate sustainability in the water industry.

The post Letter to the Editor | Across diverse backgrounds, we are more aligned on how to approach Stanford’s fossil fuel engagement than you might think appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/05/letter-to-the-editor-across-diverse-backgrounds-we-are-more-aligned-on-how-to-approach-stanfords-fossil-fuel-engagement-than-you-might-think/feed/ 0 1232379
Letter from the Editor | Apply to the Editorial Board https://stanforddaily.com/2023/09/29/letter-from-the-editor-apply-to-the-editorial-board/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/09/29/letter-from-the-editor-apply-to-the-editorial-board/#respond Fri, 29 Sep 2023 09:43:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1232117 The Stanford Daily is welcoming applications for its relaunched Editorial Board.

The post Letter from the Editor | Apply to the Editorial Board appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Dear Readers,

Applications for the Editorial Board of The Stanford Daily are once again open. You can see our previous editorials here

The Editorial Board aims to break down the most pressing issues on Stanford’s campus. To that end, we’ve written about everything from academic freedom and affirmative action to Greek life and Stanford’s more unsavory alumni. 

No matter the subject, we commit to investigating the facts and engaging with opposing perspectives behind each editorial that we write. We aim to go beyond examining the status quo and to consistently offer actionable steps toward a better future for Stanford and its community members.

The Board will consist of seven members in total, including experienced editors and writers from The Stanford Daily as well as members of the Stanford community. We will meet to discuss issues weekly and write editorials biweekly under a shared byline. 

Whether you agree or disagree with what we have previously written: If you want to be part of a powerful campus voice that moves the conversation forward, apply by Oct. 8.

Joyce Chen

Vol. 263 & 264 Editorial Board Chair

The post Letter from the Editor | Apply to the Editorial Board appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/09/29/letter-from-the-editor-apply-to-the-editorial-board/feed/ 0 1232117
Letter from the Editor: Food https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/29/letter-from-the-magazine-editor-the-food-issue/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/29/letter-from-the-magazine-editor-the-food-issue/#respond Fri, 30 Jun 2023 01:08:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1223756 I’m writing this letter from Stanford’s study abroad program in Florence, which is to say: for the past several weeks, I have had gelato nearly every day.

The post Letter from the Editor: Food appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Dear reader,

I’m writing this letter from Stanford’s study abroad program in Florence, which is to say: for the past several weeks, I have had gelato nearly every day. Food, I suppose, has been top of mind for reasons beyond the theme of this magazine.

After all, meals are sacred in Italy. You won’t find open laptops at the dinner table, or hear “Let’s grab lunch soon!” tossed around as an empty send-off. I have yet to see an Italian eating on public transport; the person who simultaneously walks and gnaws away at a panino, I’ve realized, is probably a tourist. Here, mealtime is not an occasion suited to multitasking — it’s something to be cherished and experienced in its own right.

But perhaps I’m romanticizing, exaggerating these cultural differences a bit. For there is a culture of gratitude and appreciation at Stanford vis-à-vis food, as evidenced by the stories in this issue. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, as Serena Lee ’25 reports, you can visit the lively farmers’ market at White Plaza. On Saturday mornings, you can follow in the footsteps of Ananya Navale ’25 and work in the Lane B community garden with Conrad Schmidt, Stanford’s resident “plant connoisseur.” On weekdays, you can stop by Olives and hopefully, like Aditeya Shukla ’23, make lifelong memories over sandwiches brimming with fillings. And whenever you’re feeling up to cook in your dorm’s kitchenette, you can test out some tried-and-true recipes courtesy of our very own Daily staffers.

If you’re looking for something to watch: Amelia Butala ’24 offers her movie recommendations “for the jaded eater,” Lauren Koong ’26 tells us about a popular new student-run food vlog and D’Andre Jorge ’24 and Natalie Shtangrud ’26, of The Daily’s Video team, ask Stanford undergrads about their favorite on-campus dining options.

I’d say, too, that you could solve Lana Tleimat ’23’s crossword over breakfast, but that wouldn’t be very Italian of me.

Thank you for reading and buon appetito,

Jared Klegar ’24

The post Letter from the Editor: Food appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/29/letter-from-the-magazine-editor-the-food-issue/feed/ 0 1223756