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How Stanford Failed the Academic Freedom Test


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2023 Jan 12, 11:03am   2,360 views  26 comments

by Bd6r   ➕follow (2)   💰tip   ignore  

A nice article by Jay Bhattacharya, one of creators of the Great Barrington Declaration.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/stanford-failed-academic-freedom-test

We live in an age when a high public health bureaucrat can, without irony, announce to the world that if you criticize him, you are not simply criticizing a man. You are criticizing “the science” itself. The irony in this idea of “science” as a set of sacred doctrines and beliefs is that the Age of Enlightenment, which gave us our modern definitions of scientific methodology, was a reaction against a religious clerisy that claimed for itself the sole ability to distinguish truth from untruth. The COVID-19 pandemic has apparently brought us full circle, with a public health clerisy having replaced the religious one as the singular source of unassailable truth.

The analogy goes further, unfortunately. The same priests of public health that have the authority to distinguish heresy from orthodoxy also cast out heretics, just like the medieval Catholic Church did.
...
On Oct. 4, 2020, along with two other eminent epidemiologists, Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, I wrote the GBD. The declaration is a one-page document that proposed a very different way to manage the COVID-19 pandemic than had been used up to that date. The lockdown-focused strategy that much of the world followed mimicked the approach that Chinese authorities adopted in January 2020. The extended lockdowns—by which I mean public policies designed to keep people physically separate from one another to avoid spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus—were a sharp deviation from Western management of previous respiratory virus pandemics. The old pandemic plans prioritized minimizing disruption to normal social functioning, protecting vulnerable groups, and rapidly developing treatments and vaccines.

Even by October 2020, it was clear that the Chinese-inspired lockdowns had done tremendous harm to the physical and psychological well-being of vast populations, especially children, the poor, and the working class. Closed schools consigned a generation of children worldwide to live shorter, less healthy lives. In July 2020, the Centers for Disease Control released an estimate that 1 in 4 young adults in the United States had seriously considered suicide during the previous month. The U.N. estimated that an additional 130 million people would be thrown into dire food insecurity—starvation—by the economic dislocation caused by the lockdowns. The primary beneficiaries of the lockdown—if there were in fact any beneficiaries of these drastic anti-social measures—were among a narrow class of well-off people who could work from home via Zoom without risk of losing their jobs.

It was amply clear by October 2020 that the lockdown policy adopted by many Western governments, with the exception of a few holdouts like Sweden, had failed to stop the spread of COVID. It was in fact too late to adopt a policy goal of eradicating the virus. We did not have the technological means to achieve this goal, then or now. By the fall of 2020, it was abundantly clear that COVID-19 was here to stay and that many future waves would occur.

Governments had imposed lockdowns on the premise that there was nearly unanimous scientific consensus in support of them. Yet an extraordinary policy like a lockdown requires, or should require, an extraordinary scientific justification. Only near unanimity among scientists, backed by solid empirical data, suffices.

Like Gupta and Kulldorf, I knew that such unanimity did not exist. Many scientists worldwide had contacted us to tell us about their qualms with the lockdowns—their destructiveness and the poor evidence of their effectiveness. Many epidemiologists and health policy scholars favored an alternative approach, though many were scared to say so. It seemed clear to the three of us that as the next inevitable wave appeared, there was a risk that the lockdowns might return, and that scientific evidence against such steps would be ignored and smothered, at tremendous social cost.
...



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1   Bd6r   2023 Jan 12, 11:10am  

Please read all of it, it is absolutely worthwhile. There was no scientific consensus about lockdowns, everything was decided by unelected bureaucrats, and in general this is a very depressing read. Western civilization as such is dying, as academic freedom is severely eroded and rational behavior is no more:

A precedent has now been established. Faculty at Stanford should rightly worry whether their professional work will lead to deplatforming, excommunication, and political targeting. In this environment, professors and students alike would be wise to look over their shoulders at all times, in the knowledge that the university no longer has your back. And members of the public should understand that many of those urging them to “trust the science” on complicated matters of public concern are also those working to ensure that “the science” never turns up answers that they don’t like.

Note the following from the article:

I started receiving death threats and racist hate mail.

And: On a progressive-dominated campus, these posters were clearly an incitement to violence. The group placed them on kiosks all over campus, including near a campus coffee shop that I frequent. For a few days, I feared for my physical safety.

Which means that it is the progressive left that are raycist.
2   Ceffer   2023 Jan 12, 11:27am  

I watched Jay Bhattacharya from the early days, from slightly baffled but altruistic academian who thought that this Covid controversy could all be cleared up by a bit of rational investigation and enlightened scientific discourse, in which everybody would simply yield to obvious proofs. I already knew it was a fraud, but he was compelled to place faith early on in the establishments as a matter of agog belief.

How the wheels turn, as he became progressively mired in realizations about what is actually going on and is now regarded as an off the reservation radical.
3   Patrick   2023 Jan 12, 11:50am  

The amazing thing is that Stanford used to be thought of as the "conservative" university relative to Berkeley.

But now Stanford has fallen, hook, line, and sinker for fad fictions which make leftists feel better about themselves. I think it has something to do with the election of Trump, and his threat to the idea that only the elite should be allowed to have opinions in public.
4   Bd6r   2023 Jan 12, 12:06pm  

Patrick says

I think it has something to do with the election of Trump, and his threat to the idea that only the elite should be allowed to have opinions in public.

Happened earlier, probably in early 2010's, when the last vestiges of logic and rationality went out of window at universities.
5   Bd6r   2023 Jan 12, 12:15pm  

Ceffer says

slightly baffled but altruistic academian who thought that this Covid controversy could all be cleared up by a bit of rational investigation and enlightened scientific discourse, in which everybody would simply yield to obvious proofs.

That was the old-style academic attitude. My PhD advisor was booted off all hiring committees after questioning wisdom of hiring according to genetics. Of course, there was no rational discourse.
6   Ceffer   2023 Jan 12, 12:24pm  

Like Malone early on, they were both a bit dazed and confused for a while as they stood on the beach watching the ten trillion dollar Covid Fraud hurricane blowing in.
7   stereotomy   2023 Jan 12, 1:19pm  

"They" - Bhattacharya, Malone, etc. feel, I think, a lot like I feel. The world we grew up in and learned to navigate has been taken away from us. The new "rules" are unspoken and unexplained, and are only learned when one transgresses them. This is communism/lysenkoism.
8   Patrick   2023 Jan 12, 1:37pm  

I added the image from the linked-to web page to the original post.

Makes it easier to quickly see and remember on the home page.
9   Shaman   2023 Jan 12, 1:47pm  

The thing that stuck out at me from the article the MOST was the assertion that the NIH controls funding for research, without which scientists and professors can’t get paid or get tenure. And Lord Fauci was the king of the NIH, with the ear of two Presidents, and his word was law in this domain. The power of the purse is indeed mighty! By corrupting Fauci, the instigators of this conspiracy managed to quell nearly all dissent from the very people who should have been debating health policy and vaccine safety the MOST strenuously. But the were nearly all AWOL from the discussion, hiding under their well-appointed desks while homespun internet sleuths were left to sort through meager data and examine hypotheses for plausibility.

When we needed the experts the most, they failed us by either becoming shills for big pharma/government or just lacking the moral courage to speak up in the face of the bastardization of Science itself by venal, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.
10   Ceffer   2023 Jan 12, 1:49pm  

Since Stanford and adjunct Sand Hill Road are now seen to be the cynosures of DARPA related information technologies, as always were a sucker punch to deceive, dominate, spy on and control the population, Stanford's descent into blatant flagrant KommieKunt Globalist corrupt propaganda isn't so surprising. None of the Ivies with their secret handshake organizations, covens and political ties are coming out of this smelling like roses.

FTX brainstorming came out of MIT.
11   Bd6r   2023 Jan 12, 3:00pm  

Shaman says


By corrupting Fauci, the instigators of this conspiracy managed to quell nearly all dissent from the very people who should have been debating health policy and vaccine safety the MOST strenuously. But the were nearly all AWOL from the discussion, hiding under their well-appointed desks while homespun internet sleuths were left to sort through meager data and examine hypotheses for plausibility.

When we needed the experts the most, they failed us by either becoming shills for big pharma/government or just lacking the moral courage to speak up in the face of the bastardization of Science itself by venal, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.

It is much worse than you say. Many if not most QUALIFIED experts thought like Jay Bhattacharya but they were purposefully silenced by State administrative apparatus which was supported by University bureaucrats who live off NIH overheads. Barrington declaration was signed by tons of scientists; Nobel Prize winner at Stanford was supportive of Jay Bhattacharya.
Even if 98% of experts would be against masking/lockdowns/etc, we would hear in MSM only about 2% who support the New Idiotic Thing (TM). We are run by an incompetent, self-serving bureaucratic apparatus.
12   Eric Holder   2023 Jan 12, 4:11pm  

Bd6r says

There was no scientific consensus about lockdowns, everything was decided by unelected bureaucrats


... who were basically parroting CCP policies while ignoring all previous Western research and experience wrt infectious diseases.
14   Patrick   2023 Mar 15, 11:26am  




Stanford must expel those law students who shouted down a federal judge because he is white, or admit that Stanford itself is a failure.
15   Ceffer   2023 Mar 15, 11:55am  

LOL! What do we call these KommieKunt installed creatures? Diversity Glowies? Looks like the standard issue gall bladder candidate: fat, fertile, forties, likely hypertensive and diabetic, of the innominate persuasion, who would have used to have been hanging on the porch with glitter nails and Colt 45, loud, aggressive tank of minimal intellect and maximum screech.

The speaker was set up from the get go for this struggle session. It looks like the diversity diarrhea products of these 'educations' will cause massive avoidance shuttling in the future in the institutions that are forced to digest them.

The true, non merit elites, of course, will always have their private clubs and pathways.
16   richwicks   2023 Mar 15, 1:40pm  

Shaman says

The thing that stuck out at me from the article the MOST was the assertion that the NIH controls funding for research, without which scientists and professors can’t get paid or get tenure. And Lord Fauci was the king of the NIH, with the ear of two Presidents,


5 presidents. He's been there since Reagan. He's the one that pushed for AZT to be used as a treatment for AIDS. It was a failed chemotherapy drug that was withdrawn from the market because of severe side effects. It probably didn't help anybody with AIDS.

He was the villain in the film "Dallas Buyer's Club"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Buyers_Club

Fauci's main job is military work, really. The FDA is now part of the MIC. All BSL-5 labs are military for biological weapons development. The whole point of gain of function research is really to develop weapons while at the same time developing vaccines to inoculate the population. It's a complete violation of treaty, but treaties are useless today.
17   DhammaStep   2023 Mar 15, 2:35pm  

Patrick says

Stanford must expel those law students who shouted down a federal judge because he is white, or admit that Stanford itself is a failure.

I'm a glass half full kind of guy. When they get their Marxist utopia that they crave so badly, they'll be the first to be put to execution.
18   Patrick   2023 Mar 15, 2:58pm  

Patrick says

Stanford must expel those law students who shouted down a federal judge because he is white, or admit that Stanford itself is a failure.


Ah, it's not just that he's white, but he's very non-woke and he was appointed by Trump. He has argued against same-sex marriage and as a judge refused to use a transgender litigant’s chosen pronouns.

Stanford apologied, but failed to expel those law students who prevented the judge from speaking.


The apology letter finished by stating: “We are taking steps to ensure that something like this does not happen again. Freedom of speech is a bedrock principle for the law school, the university, and a democratic society, and we can and must do better to ensure that it continues even in polarized times.”


Stanford has a death jab mandate even now:

https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/covid-guidance/covid-19-testing-vaccination-and-health-check-requirements/vaccination-requirement

Stanford requires all undergraduate, graduate, and professional students to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19.


So presumably, anyone with a brain has already left Stanford Law School, leaving only woketards who can't sit still long enough to let an invited guest speak.
19   Patrick   2023 Mar 15, 3:01pm  

An easy search finds one Stanford Law student dead after the vaxx:

https://obits.dallasnews.com/us/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/name/dylan-simmons-obituary?id=32417392

No cause was ever reported, as far as I can tell.
21   Patrick   2023 Mar 23, 5:42pm  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11895943/Stanford-law-equity-dean-sparked-fury-challenging-conservative-judge-BRAGS-behavior.html


Stanford equity dean who sparked fury when she ambushed conservative judge at law school event and stoked woke students' protests BRAGS about her behavior and refuses to apologize


https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/stanford-law-official-who-admonished-judge-during-speech-is-leave-dean-says-2023-03-22/


Stanford Law official who admonished judge during speech is on leave, dean says ...

Stanford Law School will not discipline students who disrupted a campus speech by a conservative federal judge earlier this month, but an official who appeared to intervene on the protesters' behalf is now on leave, the law school's dean said Wednesday.

In a 10-page public letter, dean Jenny Martinez detailed the school's response to the March 9 protest of 5th U.S. Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a 2018 appointee of former President Donald Trump. The letter said Stanford Law administrators did not enforce the school’s speech policy, which prohibits shutting down speakers through heckling. ...

Steinbach did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday, and a law school spokeswoman did not respond to requests for clarification on whether Steinbach's leave was imposed or voluntary.


If Stanford does not expel those students, it should not be considered a serious law school at all, and should lose it accreditation.

Seriously, if no one can speak at Stanford Law and not be shouted down unless they are woke as fuck, that's not a school.
22   HeadSet   2023 Mar 23, 6:42pm  

Patrick says

Seriously, if no one can speak at Stanford Law and not be shouted down unless they are woke as fuck, that's not a school.

True, it is a woke-drassa instead.
23   Ceffer   2023 Mar 23, 6:49pm  

Guess she ticked a lot of ethnic, political and sexual identity boxes, so they could have a single Heinz 57 wokester instead of a squadron.
24   Patrick   2023 Jul 22, 10:39am  

https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/what-i-find-odd-about-stanford-university


I no longer expect any integrity from the establishment academia. I am married to a Stanford alum (from early 90’s) and have a lot of friends who went to to Stanford. Marc Tessier-Lavigne presided over turning the university previously open to all ideas into a DEI insane asylum. Thought police administrators are assigned to each student, monitoring their social media and other forms of expression. If a slight dissent from the controlling narrative is detected, re-education sessions and signing of pledges ensue. Cultural houses (Italy, Germany, Slavic) are now verboten, as if learning foreign languages and cultures somehow threatens diversity and inclusion. There are “ethnic theme” dorms catering only to Latino, African and Southeast Asian “themes”. There is a “special” Physics PhD program for minority students which does not require much knowledge of physics. I wish I were making this up.

Of course they went covidian-mad, and devised extra special mental and physical torture rituals. Zimbardo would have been proud, I suppose. All of that was before they started requiring mRNA poison to be injected as condition of attending the Stanford prison camp, granting exemptions to faculty but not students.
25   Ceffer   2023 Jul 22, 11:19am  

My nephew had a special, cushy live on campus docent position more or less tailored for him. He gave it up voluntarily recently, went back to his own house. I wonder if the requirements for vax and struggle sessions got too much.

These premium NASCAR uni's are clearly sacrificing their plebeian shells to the Globalist KommieKunt agendas. I would imagine the handshake groups' brats are unvaxxed and attend an entirely different, sheltered internal university. The plebs and the pidgin diversities should probably all be required to wear Mao suits.
26   richwicks   2023 Jul 22, 11:39pm  

Patrick says

If Stanford does not expel those students, it should not be considered a serious law school at all, and should lose it accreditation.

Seriously, if no one can speak at Stanford Law and not be shouted down unless they are woke as fuck, that's not a school.


University is about making connections, not about being competent. Believe me on this one.

Some of the stupidest most incompetent people I know have graduated from Ivy League - they're useless, but that doesn't prevent promotion and it allows connections.

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