A while back, one of this blog’s self-exiled commenters told me that he left because I had become more hostile to the Left in recent years, in contrast to my position when Ethics Alarms started in 2010. He’s right, of course. In 2010, this story would have been unimaginable. My standards haven’t changed. But one whole side of the political spectrum has been abandoning ethics and core American principles with increasing arrogance, aggressiveness and ruthlessness.
I am in shock over this latest episode.
After a photo of a Stanford student reading Adolf Hitler’s autobiography “Mein Kampf” circulated on campus, The Stanford Daily revealed that administrators were working with the students involved to “address” the incident. Two campus rabbis emailed Jewish students saying administrators “are in ongoing conversation with the individuals involved, who are committed to and actively engaged in a process of reckoning and sincere repair.”
Reckoning—for reading something? “Repair”? Is that the strong stench of re-education I feel in my nostrils?
Stanford was tipped off about the evil reading choice thanks to its Protected Identity Harm (PHI) reporting system, a Soviet-style snitch process that Stanford claims helps “address incidents where a community member experiences harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.”
You know, “harm.” As in “having to go to school with someone whose political and social views are different than yours.”
The Office of Student Affairs states, “We hope to provide a path to resolution for the affected individuals or communities who need to heal” by having the students participate in one of a “menu” of exercises like “mediated conversations, restorative justice sessions, or Indigenous circle practices,” to “help move towards resolution.”
That stench is getting stronger…
What one chooses to read in public or private cannot be considered misconduct based on its content. A reader is accountable for any reasonable assumptions someone else makes about his or her character, taste or intelligence based on the choice of reading material, whether it is a comic book or Dostoyevsky. There may be some locales where a particular book or magazine is inappropriate: I once got in a nasty battle over whether a manager in his office reading Playboy during his lunch break was engaged in sexual harassment.
But as FIRE, which is on the case, writes, “Stanford’s PIH system can be used, as here, to target and reform views students or administrators dislike, while cloaking it as a purely educational exercise.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is now pressing Stanford to explain itself, and points out that this process is coercive:
Administrators with disciplinary authority formally notifying students they’ve been accused of “harm,” when they’ve done nothing more than read a book, and asking them to “acknowledge” what they’ve done and “change” their ways through restorative justice-type exercises undoubtedly chills student speech. As we wrote:
“The power differential between university administrators and students is significant. When the Office of Student Affairs, which has disciplinary authority, formally contacts a student about a complaint filed about their conduct and asks them to engage in a reconciliation process to address alleged harm, that student is unlikely to interpret the request as genuinely voluntary. Rather, such an invitation strongly suggests a student’s actions were problematic, and they may accordingly self-censor.”
This process is not conducive to the atmosphere of free expression Stanford not only commits to, but is required to provide by California’s Leonard Law. The PIH “resolution” process targeting students for intensive institutional intervention will almost certainly chill speech.
The process also raises serious compelled speech and thought reform concerns by pressuring students to take “accountability” and “change” their behavior or views.
FIRE’s letter is here.
So far, not a peep from the ACLU.
I had to read Hitler’s book on the way to my American Government major in college. The incident is puzzling, since Stanford’s woke, like all totalitarians, are in sympathy with so many of Adolf’s tactics and methods.
Ethics Alarms 
But if you read it, you might notice the parallels. Have to nip that in the bud!
One of the most enjoyable co-counsels I worked with was a delightful Jewish guy expert in forfeitures. He was an expert, I was not. I’d bring up this concern or that concern, and he’d invariably cut through the fog and say, loudly, “So WHAT?” which was probably English for some Yiddish equivalent. I can’t believe the rabbis at Stanford didn’t do the same when they were approached by the Stanford campus thought police.
Such a largely unreadable book, too. My sympathy is with the poor student stuck reading the stupid thing.
You’d think Adolf’s editors would have tried to make it make more sense.
But, yes, the assumption that someone reading “Mein Kampf” can only be someone who agrees with its muddled political screeds irks me.
I was literally just about to post this to the open forum.
Jack wrote:
Two campus rabbis emailed Jewish students saying administrators “are in ongoing conversation with the individuals involved, who are committed to and actively engaged in a process of reckoning and sincere repair.”
This isn’t just Orwellian, this is Minority Report taken to the extreme. When simply reading a book becomes the equivalent of a “hate crime” red flag, the Leftist crazies have jumped the shark and continued completely out of the atmosphere into orbit.
What one chooses to read in public or private cannot be considered misconduct based on its content.
Well, we know now that this is wrong in spades. Stanford is showing you just how wrong, too. Hopefully, this will not stand, but Stanford is a private university. This is an excerpt from the part of their policy that is at work here, according to FIRE’s database:
A PIH incident is conduct that adversely and unfairly targets an individual or group on the basis of one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics: race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, marital status or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
Notice how subjective and ambiguous this policy is. At a public university, this would be flagrantly unconstitutional, as it takes pains NOT to define what is actually prohibited. Basically, this reads to me like a “we know it when we see it” policy that is comprehensively in the eye of the beholder, and given the willingness of administrators to just roll over under any complaint, it’s hard to see how anyone can go there and read anything not completely anodyne without running afoul of this provision if someone with an axe to grind files a complaint.
There is no safe behavior. This could theoretically be weaponized by all sides of the political debate if they can find enough people to bitch about it loudly enough.
It looks to me like their policy protects them from any adverse consequences. Based on this, I think FIRE’s rating of Stanford as merely yellow is overly generous.
The enormity of the Authentic Frontier Gibberish being blithely tossed around by Stanford is terrifying.
I tend to collect odd “classics” somewhat for the fun of it. I just received a copy of the Napoleonic Code, which is relevant both to my profession, and to my current trek through War and Peace.
I picked up a copy of Poetry by Mao Tse Tung because…why not? Plus, various additional screeds by Mao and Lenin.
Other ancient legal codes.
A bunch of essays and letters disputing Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying…
I have two books entitled, “Nigger,” one by the comedian Dick Gregory and the other a scholarly work about the word itself. There was a time when I read quite a bit of Malcolm X, slave narratives, etc, and those fit the profile of what I was reading at the time. Try reading that on Campus; Those who decry right-wing book banning would probably have their heads explode if they put Dick Gregory’s book in a public school library.
Which brings us to Mein Kampf. There was a time when I frequented a used book store that had a copy. I was always tempted to buy it, but $5.00 was much more precious to me back then. Now, I could easily get it, but have kind of lost interest.
Anyway, the fact that it contains Hitler’s formulation of “The Big Lie” makes it a relevant document to today’s society.
-Jut
Oh, bloody hell.
I’m just getting to the point where I’m hoping to write a blog piece or two every week (the goal is 100 for the calendar year). I was getting a little momentum on one piece, then I saw Glenn Logan’s post about the AP stupidity on the open forum, so I started writing about that instead… and now this, which, curiously enough, I didn’t hear about from FIRE directly. But it deserves comment, and soon.
If I were as narcissistic as the average politician on either side of the aisle, I’d think the stupidity being manifested by a whole lot of people (my last blog post was “Stupid Is As Stupid Does,” with short takes on a few stories, a couple of which I first encountered here) is simply a conspiracy to get me so overwhelmed I’ll stop writing. At this point, it just might work.
It took a bit of tracking down the store based on a half remembered event, but given that a janitor was punished for reading a book mentioning the KKK back in 2007 (https://www.thefire.org/news/victory-iupui-student-employee-found-guilty-racial-harassment-reading-book-now-cleared-all), this doesn’t surprise me at all.
I would like to have asked the rabbis the difference between being “actively engaged in a process of reckoning and sincere repair” and Sonderaktion Krakau.
[2nd attempt to post this; no idea what happened to the first attempt.]
I’m a little late to this discussion, but this issue and the discussion about it once again illustrates that something is lacking, as is occasionally the case here. The something lacking is a contemporary Paul Harvey who could provide us with “the rest of the story”.
We are told “Stanford Wants To Punish A Student For Reading A Politically Incorrect Historical Document.” But, was the concern someone merely reading Mein Kampf, or was there something more that got Student Affairs energized? We, of course, do not have the rest of the story, but there seems to be and there probably is something more involved. What it is we don’t know, and we may well never find out.
In what apparently is an email about this situation, we are told that “Rabbi Hahn Tapper and Student Affairs staff are in ongoing conversation with the individuals involved, who are committed to and actively engaged in a process of reckoning and sincere repair.” If the individuals involved are so committed, then maybe there is more than simply reading, or maybe they are frightened into cooperating or appearing to cooperate. We just don’t know.
One apparent comment on the story by The Stanford Daily states that it wasn’t just someone simply reading the book, but individuals making some kind of joke about the holocaust that was considered inappropriate. Is there something to this apparent comment, or is it a troll muddying the waters? We just don’t know.
I understand the value of immediacy, calling out unethical conduct as soon as possible. But, I also understand the value of getting the full, accurate story, and how that is essential to maintaining credibility.
I’m sorry HJ—it was spammed. No idea why.
Stuff happens, eh? 😉
More and more often!
Which is why FIRE has asked for an explanation from Stanford.
But a Holocaust joke is also not grounds for any university action.
“A reader is responsible for any assumptions someone else makes about his or her character, taste or intelligence based on the choice of reading material, whether it a comic book or Dostoyevsky”?
Ugh. Sloppy AND with a typo! I meant accountable rather than responsible, and fixed that, with the typo. It’s still not exactly what I mean, but it will have to do until I figure out a better phrasing.
The typo was not material, but it didn’t seem to read properly as it was and even putting in a “not” didn’t seem to work well either, so I just raised it as a query.
Thanks. I needed that.