1. WE DEMAND that Stanford expels Panda Express from campus, since its food is culturally appropriative, and celebrates the harvesting of the endangered panda bear.

2. WE DEMAND that Stanford renames White Plaza to Black Plaza. Naming a central plaza after a race is hateful.

3. WE DEMAND that Stanford recognizes that half-lives matter, and establishes a committee to fund the Chemistry and Physics Departments accordingly.

Et cetera. Some of them were funny, some of them were lame. But campus snowflakes melted down. The College Fix collected some of the social media rage:

Sorry fam for putting this out here, but the Review just loves being disgustingly offensive. April Fools or not, this is no joke. These are people’s lives and cultures and struggles. Stop throwing out slander. Stop throwing out garbage. And I see no one wanted to put their name on this one either. That’s the only smart thing y’all did with this article. …

Y’all think you’re being hella cute and funny with this don’t you? Like, are you forreal? Do you still not get it? There are no words. Honestly I’m tired. Blatant disrespect. Have some freaken respect. Have some ounce of understanding. Oh but wait, too busy crying cis white male tears that I still don’t really see the point in collecting?????? …

So, another day, another absurd day on an elite American campus. But here’s where it gets well and truly pathetic. The administration of an actual Ivy League college elite American university e-mailed this drivel to all students on Friday:

Dear Stanford Student,

When you joined Stanford University, you became part of our diverse, vibrant community founded upon academic excellence, innovative thinking, collaborative engagement and civic responsibility.

The challenge for us all is to balance freedom of thinking and expression with our responsibility to others. At Stanford, we believe one way to do this is for community members to engage in respectful conversations with each other. The goal of these exchanges is to foster a learning environment that includes multiple perspectives and life experiences different from our own, thereby affirming the value of all identities as distinctive strengths of our university community.

At Stanford, we are each responsible for our words and actions, and we are accountable to the people in our community who are impacted by what we say, regardless of the initial intent.

Free speech is paramount to the success of our academic community, and, at the same time, we must reject language that encourages or reinforces stereotypes and bigotry including racism, anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia [sic], sexism, homophobia—discrimination of any kind. As James Baldwin says, “Language is a political instrument.”

There is a long history in the United States of racial animus through satire that we all need to recognize. We must be careful of participating in and perpetuating inequities. Parodies or stereotypes of people of color, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientation and gender non-conformity have the effect—whether intended or not—to undermine the legitimacy and value of already marginalized people.

Thus we must be particularly alert as to how our language, including the use of humor, can undermine the climate of respectful dialogue that we are building and be careful that it does not work to delegitimize critical claims toward the diversity that Stanford affirms.

Humor and satire are powerful tools that can be provocative and profound; they can also be insensitive, hurtful and cruel. When we employ such tools, we need to measure the impact of our words and be responsive to those whose own experience is the basis for the intended humor.

We know many in our community have felt the pain of recent events. And, as members of this community, we acknowledge your hurt. We want you to know that we care about you and value you.

Integrity, empathy and accountability are foundational to our community, and it is our responsibility as ethical citizens to practice these actively with each other.

Sincerely,

Greg Boardman
Vice Provost for Student Affairs

Harry J. Elam, Jr.
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

Patricia J. Gumport
Vice Provost for Graduate Education

These people. I swear. First of all, does it not occur to these adults that by acting like nursemaids to a bunch of spoiled privileged children, they are only making their lives and the life of the university worse? Here’s an audio version of that letter, for your listening pleasure.

Second … really, Stanford administration? You’re trying to tell college students that they can’t poke fun at favored minority groups? This paragraph is asinine:

Free speech is paramount to the success of our academic community, and, at the same time, we must reject language that encourages or reinforces stereotypes and bigotry including racism, anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia [sic], sexism, homophobia—discrimination of any kind. As James Baldwin says, “Language is a political instrument.”

Translation: “We have to say that free speech is important, because we like to tell ourselves that. But you should not feel free to say anything critical of favored races, Judaism, Islam, women, gays, or, well, anybody. As the party commissar says, “Language is a political instrument.”

Honestly, somebody help me here. What kind of actual adult college administrators draft a response to an humorous op-ed in a student newspaper in the first place?

The Stanford Review editorial board responded, in part:

Time to address the elephant in our inboxes. We are disappointed that, in the middle of student elections, Stanford’s administration has chosen both to politicize themselves and to ignore by far the clearest abuse of free speech this campus has seen all year. An April Fools’ Day joke commanded 300 words of commentary from Stanford. Anti-Semitic comments from a sitting student Senator? Two words, and in passing.

Our administrators claim that students must be “accountable to [those] impacted by what [they] say, regardless of the initial intent”. If this were true, nobody would dare engage in discussions of controversial topics at all.

Of course, there are limits to speech. Words that directly incite violence should be condemned and prohibited. But offense is subjective. At Brandeis, the Asian American community created a gallery of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?”, only for another group to deem the gallery itself offensive and demand it be taken down. Punishing people for statements that cross a line known only to the person hearing them leads to fearful silence, and a campus unwilling to push boundaries or ask questions that matter.

Neither the Review nor the administration has called on Stanford to prohibit speech like Senator Knight’s. However, condemning speech and attacking its merits is itself an exercise in free speech. And leveraging administrative power and procedures to threaten and stifle words because you do not like them, or because they intrude on campus “empathy”, is arbitrary and wrong.