Stanford U president interviewed by San Francisco Chronicle
Sidetracking to identity politics and AI
“touched on antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Jewish students “excluded from diversity efforts, and “veer[ing] toward artificial intelligence, a “major priority.”
Nanette Asimov San Francisco Chronicle 9-13-24
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/stanford-president-jonathan-levin-19759041.php
On the last day of classes at Stanford University this spring, a dozen students broke into the president’s office to wreak havoc. Outside, their allies defaced stone buildings with threats against the police, America and Israel.
The vandalism not only capped a tumultuous year of pro-Palestinian protests against the war in Gaza, but also served as a difficult welcome to Jonathan Levin, who took over as Stanford’s 13th president on Aug. 1.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Chronicle, Levin said he hopes this year will be different.
“We’ll try to offer more opportunities for students and faculty to engage in dialogue around all sorts of issues,” he said.
Levin, 51, an economist who was dean of the Stanford business school and on President Joe Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, is a Stanford alumnus who joined the faculty in 2000. He succeeds Richard Saller, a professor of American classicism who took over in September on an interim basis after then-President Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned amid questions about the accuracy of neuroscience papers he co-authored.
The interview with Levin touched on antisemitism and Islamophobia — the subjects of two devastating campus audits this spring — as well as artificial intelligence, Stanford’s first class in half a century admitted without affirmative action, the potential loss of legacy admissions and the university’s touchy town-gown relations with Santa Clara County.
Yet Levin declined to detail his plans and opinions on some of the tenser topics, and limited the interview to half an hour over Zoom.
Top of mind among many students across the country is whether their universities will again see pro-Palestinian tent encampments dominate campus quads, as they did at numerous schools last year, from Stanford and UC Berkeley to Columbia University.
Michael Drake, president of the University of California, announced a ban last month on encampments at UC’s 10 campuses this year.
Levin declined to say whether Stanford will do the same.
Pro-Palestinian activists set up tents at Stanford’s White Plaza after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and killed more than 1,200 people, triggering the ongoing war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians. The encampment persisted on and off throughout the year, despite rules against overnight camping.
Levin said he will announce new rules of behavior before classes resume on Sept. 23.
“We will try to do two things: to enforce those rules and be as clear as we can about them — and we’ll try to create an environment where students and faculty will have a chance to speak about it,” he said.
Larry Diamond, a professor of sociology and co-chair of Stanford’s subcommittee on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, supports the idea.
“That’s what we need,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine the polarization being made worse.”
Reports of campus antisemitism have been on the rise across the country, spiking after the Hamas attack. Stanford was no exception.
“Antisemitism exists today on the Stanford campus in ways that are widespread and pernicious,” Diamond’s subcommittee concluded in its May 31 report after interviewing dozens of people and conducting “listening sessions” attended by hundreds. Jewish students reported being excluded from diversity efforts, dismissed by residential advisors, and having the small parchment holders known as mezuzot pried off their door frames.
House Republicans have subpoenaed leaders of prominent universities — including Harvard, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and UCLA — to explain how they are addressing antisemitism. These tense hearings pushed some academic leaders to crack down harshly on pro-Palestininian protesters last year, and contributed to the resignation of Harvard’s and Penn’s presidents soon after they appeared.
Asked if Congress reached out to Stanford, Levin referred the question to spokesperson Dee Mostofi, who said the university has “kept an open line of communication with Congress, including regularly updating them, and will continue to do so.”
A parallel study by Stanford’s Muslim, Arab and Palestinian Committee found that “MAP” students, too, experience discrimination. They “have felt afraid for their safety, unseen and unheard by university leadership, and silenced through a variety of formal and informal means,” the report concluded.
Associate Dean Abiya Ahmed, the committee’s co-chair, said she was looking forward to “working with senior leadership” on the issues. Levin said that Stanford will soon update its rules around discrimination to better comply with the federal civil rights law known as Title 6, but he declined to provide specifics. The new requirements, however, “will be excellent and very responsive to some of the concerns raised last year,” he promised.
With about 9,700 graduate students, nearly 8,000 undergraduates and no fewer than 20 Nobel laureates on campus, Stanford is consistently ranked among the world’s greatest universities. Its endowment tops $36.5 billion, about the size of Nicaragua’s gross domestic product, and its annual budget is about $2 billion.
Naturally, the discussion with Levin veered toward artificial intelligence, a “major priority,” he said. “It is going to open up just an extraordinary set of directions for discovery across almost every field,” Levin said, warming to the topic more so than campus politics.
He expects that AI “will accelerate discovery,” particularly in the sciences, from health care and the human body, to weather patterns. “There’s no question that we at Stanford should be at the forefront of this, as the home of some of these tools and methods,” he said.
As Stanford’s aim is to flourish intellectually, so it intends to expand physically.
Last month, the university announced progress on its effort to buy Notre Dame de Namur University, when the city of Belmont released an environmental-impact report. If the project succeeds, the struggling Catholic university’s 300 students would move to a smaller site, while Stanford would turn it into a satellite campus for 2,500 students.
But Stanford’s overall growth ambitions are more evident in its failed 2019 effort to gain approval from Santa Clara County for a $4.7 billion expansion — on 3.5 million square feet — that would have added nearly 10,000 more students and employees over two decades.
Town-gown relations crashed that year, as the county deemed Stanford’s project too big and its benefits to residents too few.
Now, Susan Ellenberg, president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, said she expects Stanford will come back with a new proposal. “They’re very interested,” said Ellenberg, who will meet Levin for the first time ahead of his inauguration on Sept. 27.
Since its rejection, Stanford has “likely learned a lot about what our expectations are,” including “carrying their share of the responsibility for providing more affordable housing in our community,” Ellenberg said. “I imagine it will be a productive reengagement.” Levin said he hopes so, and recognizes that the university must still “build a relationship with Santa Clara county that is productive and beneficial.”
This year’s freshman class is the first to be admitted since the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in college admissions in 2023, making it illegal for all but military schools to consider race when accepting students. It’s been outlawed for California’s public schools since 1996, when voters approved Proposition 209. But the state’s private schools are now barred, too.
Last fall, Stanford’s freshman class consisted of 27% underrepresented minorities: Latino (17%), Black (9%) and Native (1%) students.
What about this year? Harvard, for example, just saw Black freshman representation drop to 14% from 18%.
“Some schools have made announcements. We have not,” said Levin, adding that “this is a new world where race can’t be part of admission. So we’ve been thinking about strategies to try to expand the applicant pool.” He did not elaborate.
Nor would he comment on “legacy admissions” — the boost given to relatives of alumni and donors. Last fall, 13.6% of undergraduates admitted to Stanford received legacy consideration, or 295 students.
Studies show that wealthier students benefit most from such consideration, and efforts to outlaw the practice have accelerated since the end of affirmative action.
Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering whether to sign AB1780, which would outlaw legacy and donor admissions in California next year. Levin declined to opine on the bill and said, “If it passes, we’ll say what we think.”