The much anticipated Faculty Senate Meeting of February 11, 2021 included a provocative presentation Professors David Palumbo-Liu, Josh Landy, David Spiegel, Stephen Monismith to vote on a resolution to build:
an Ad Hoc Committee to conduct a thorough and comprehensive review of the current relationship between Stanford University and the Hoover Institution, and report its findings to the Faculty Senate for a full and comprehensive discussion.
Covering a series of wide-ranging issues about Hoover as a “partisan institution” the presenters highlighted problems, ranging from Harvard Professor and Hoover Senior Fellow Harvey Mansfield’s misogynist statements to Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson’s efforts to harass a student in Cardinal Conversations to Senior Fellow Scott Atlas’s misinformation about COVID. The presentation invited much larger questions about Stanford's mission, the political climate on campus, and free speech. Indeed, the senate enjoyed a lively, rigorous debate about these questions, even as the Chair of the Senate Professor Judith Goldstein struggled to maintain the focus on the vote over the proposed Ad Hoc commission. In the end, neither side got what it wanted coming in. No Ad Hoc committee, nor a blanket endorsement of Hoover’s role at Stanford.
But the Faculty Senate did get to test important truth claims about our university in a public setting. Was Professor Etchemendy correct when he retorted that “Stanford has moved too far to the left?” Why did Professor Daub object to the comparison of Hoover as a policy institute with a mission and values to the Clayman Institute? Was Professor David Spiegel right to assert that “faculty should stay within their fields of expertise?” Professor Phil Levis, what did he mean by declaring there is a difference between “opinions and ideas?” Why did all four male professor panelists repeatedly address Provost Drell and Professor Rice by their first names during a formal parliamentary debate where everyone else was called “professor?”
The outcome disappointed many. The Stanford Daily reports the Faculty Senate’s February 11th meeting on The Hoover Institute as though it were a failure:
... the Faculty Senate passed an amended resolution putting Provost Persis Drell and Hoover Director Condoleezza Rice in charge of “increasing interaction” between the Hoover Institution and the University — at a time when many faculty and students are calling on Stanford to sever ties with Hoover altogether.
But was the goal really to “sever” ties? True, in his Activitate Stanford Newsletter Professor Palumbo-Liu declared that problems at Hoover go “to the core of our moral and ethical universe,” and that his and his colleagues' presentation would “shock, infuriate, and dismay” audiences, suggesting the need for serious reconsideration of Hoover’s role on campus, if not a cause for a clean break. In the meeting, however, the presenters declared severence was not their goal, and it remains to be seen what conversations arise between faculty, students, Povost Drell and Hoover as Professor Rice moves forward in her new role director of the Hoover Institution. Hopefully, Professor Rice will shine more light in, Hoover will become more welcoming to students, more accountable, and remove misinformation from the website. All in all, a very good start.