Letters to the Editor

Protestations

Two days ago I was going through some old boxes, preparing for retirement. To my surprise, I came across an ancient Stanford Daily from the spring of 1968. The front page has a large photo of a sit-in, and I recognized myself as one of the participants. The previous fall I had arrived as a freshman from a conservative Midwestern family, dutifully signing up for ROTC during the first few days on campus. By spring, I had changed forever.

Then yesterday I received Stanford with a cover story on contemporary student activism on the Farm ("Something Is Stirring," May/June). I am pleased to see students getting so engaged in the issues of our time. Activism on and off campus during my years at Stanford was as integral to my education as the classes I took. It challenged my understanding, transformed my values and sharpened the application of my academic learning.

While I appreciated the thoughtful articles in the magazine, I was disappointed in one comment made by Kevin Cool in "The Case for Discontent" (First Impressions). He briefly referred to activism in terms of "the youthful instinct to rebel." This trivializes engagement and implies that it is a temporary stage that is to be outgrown. I suggest that what is involved for these students is something far deeper: an intuition of one's interrelatedness with all people and the entire community of life; a realization of one's universal responsibility; and an instinct to defend those who are suffering injustice and to fight those who are oppressing people and the planet.

Those qualities may be youthful in the energy generated, but they can shape your entire life. The world needs more people who follow the example of Stanford's student activists.
David Barnhill, '71, MA '79, PhD '86
Hazelhurst, Wisconsin

Thank you for a well-presented view of seeking societal change. I have long thought that peaceful protests can be useful in demonstrating a commonality of support for a cause in order to provoke examination of an issue, regardless of that cause.

I have also believed that more aggressive actions are not only arrogant, as Sophia Raday suggests, but counterproductive as well. They would get an F in my class, if I taught one.

Perhaps a little less protest and a little more hard work to bring about what one espouses would make a greater difference, as in Teddy Roosevelt's "Daring Greatly." While working for something you want is harder than criticizing others, it can also be far more rewarding.

And more effective.
Bob Olson, '60
San Ramon, California

How quaint that your publication should feature student activism, particularly when directed at faraway targets like Ferguson, Staten Island and even Palestine.

One wonders if your predecessors offered such condescending coverage ("every college graduate should have some experience with civic dialogue") ("The Case for Discontent," First Impressions, May/June) in the 1960s and '70s when Stanford was neck-deep in Pentagon research and David Packard, '34, Engr. '39, as [deputy] secretary of defense, was responsible for procuring and delivering napalm, Agent Orange and other weapons that contributed to the deaths of up to 3 million Vietnamese.

No, I take that back. In fact, I thank you for placing student activism, finally, on the front cover, where it belongs.

What is disturbing, however, is President Hennessy's amoral response. "Just following policy" is not an intellectually adequate reply. The university can, and should, do better. There is, of course, deep and current importance to the issues at hand. No place is better for exploring these than Stanford. For example, it is not just deplorable police racism that begs examination, but also the recruiting, training and compensation policies that cause our generally well-intentioned law enforcement officers to err so egregiously. It is not just Israel's unacceptable occupation of Palestinian land that deserves opprobrium, but also the intransigence, violence and sexism of her detractors.

Stanford is a place where these discussions should be aired. That is its moral obligation, front cover of Stanford and all. Like each of us individually, the university, when confronted with injustice anywhere and at any time, is either a resister or a collaborator. You must decide.
Dan Rosenfeld, '75
Beverly Hills, California

If you plan on publishing any more covers like the one in May/June, please mail them in a plain brown wrapper. I would prefer that some of my neighbors, who were trapped by those selfsame activists on the San Mateo Bridge for hours, not know that I graduated from Stanford.

In the last century, we valued the Stanford education such that we wouldn't have taken time off from our studies to participate in Civil Disobedience 101—but then it wasn't offered as a major.
R.B. Griffiths, '51
Danville, California

I am 93, and gave up over two years of my undergraduate years, as did most of my peers, to join the fight against Hitler and Tojo, and we didn't complain about it. I told these stories in my little book Firemission 109, which you can find at the library in the alumni center or at Green Library.

Tell the Stanford "students" they never had it so good, and to stop the whining.
Bob Farrar, '44
La Jolla, California

Imagine my dismay when, as an alum, I see pictures in Stanford of (presumably) Stanford students with their protest signs about police brutality. Even though they are Stanford students, their minds are still full of mush that includes liberal propaganda. Maybe not enough people are protesting because police brutality is not a real issue. It follows the myth of "white privilege." Since the drive-by media seem to be overly selective in choosing white police abuse of blacks, let's realize the real stats. About 120 blacks have been killed by cops this past year. Over 690 whites have been, and thousands of blacks have been killed by blacks just in Chicago in one year.

The real problem is a culture where 70 percent of births are to single parents, indicating most are fatherless. Additionally, the fostering of punk and "gangsta" rap and the misogyny of "b's & ho's" don't help. Over $16K per student is poured into Baltimore public schools, yet 18 percent cannot read in the seventh grade. Maybe there's a problem, but it's not police brutality. Since this new urban myth has been emphasized, the killing of cops has risen 89 percent. Stopping stop-and-frisk policies in New York City has led to a 125 percent increase in crime in the poorer boroughs. Under Obama (and a Democratic Congress for two years), black unemployment rose into double digits, and teen black unemployment is approximately 25 percent. New York City Mayor DiBlasio is shutting down charter schools that could compete with the crappy public school education. The permissive fostering of riots (Can you say Baltimore mayor?) is likely to discourage businesses from going into the inner city, [considering] what their insurance premiums will be.

The way out of the ghetto isn't more welfare, socialism or nationalizing the police. The way out is to change the culture. Maybe the students should be listening to people like Sir Charles Barkley and Steven Smith rather than carrying on about the Sharpton-inspired urban myths of police brutality and white privilege. Just because it "feels good" doesn't make it so.

If the Stanford students are so desirous of protesting, let them decry the treatment of women and gays in Arabic countries; or the fact that our politicians, some in the State Department, take tons of money from these human rights violators; or that we have a corrupt Department of Justice that seeks to selectively prosecute only those who don't defend the president. Or is that too politically incorrect and too unglamorous?
Clay McCord, '66
Klamath Falls, Oregon

The Arab League and the local Arabs are still officially at war to destroy Israel. Therefore, it is nonsensical to see "police shootings, sexual assault, fossil fuel consumption, water conservation and Israeli government policies affecting Palestinian people" in "Something is Stirring."

There's no admission that, despite left wing denials, the leaders of Hamas have openly admitted to Hamas members killing the three yeshiva students and using their own people as human shields when Israel responded to tens of thousands of rockets intentionally fired at civilians. There's no condemnation from those same Stanford students of the Palestinians whom an Indian TV crew documented using civilian areas from which to fire missiles. There's no acknowledgement of the hypocrisy in complaining about lack of concrete for Gaza when the BBC aired Hamas members bragging about new tunnels that used the concrete that should have built homes.

Rather, they'll ignore all that while complaining about Israel killing civilians, even though a New York Times analysis of names released by Hamas points out that "women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71 percent of the population and 33 percent of the known-age casualties."

The lack of clear education on the left, which leaves out facts, context or the simple reality that the world didn't begin in 1967, means a lumping of Israel with other things. Blaming Israel is just like what [protesters] claim they want to change regarding sexual assault: It's time for them to blame the attacker and realize that just because the West isn't perfect doesn't mean that Islam and the Arab world are better.

When those kids and the teachers who brainwash them can learn to demand that the people who unconditionally rejected peace, unconditionally declared war and have unconditionally waged that war unconditionally end the war, only then will they be working for the same kind of justice they demand in the other cases.
David A. Teich, MS '88
Spokane Valley, Washington

While I truly look forward to reading the mostly profound articles in the magazine when it arrives, I was very disappointed in your choice of a cover story and a cover picture. "The reason we're out protesting is that most people aren't"? There is so much unrest, protesting, rioting and "activism" right now that you appear out of touch. I would expect Stanford to be innovative in helping to provide solutions and ideas—not fueling the fire of feelings of unrest. Negative isn't interesting. Doesn't the Stanford community desire to be on the forefront of peacemaking and bridge building? So sorry that a historically great institution just seems mired in it. I will recycle this copy of the magazine.
Liz Bishop, Parent '09
Los Angeles, California

I found the piece disheartening. That our alumni magazine would give voice to those activists whose shortsighted and illegal tactics have continually degraded the level of discourse on campus was particularly saddening. The magazine effectively perpetuated and legitimated the false narrative used by lawbreaking students to justify their media-seeking protests.

There are countless Stanford students (and alumni) who have reached out across political, social and cultural divides to promote understanding. Those students were not arrested blocking traffic or offending others with their vitriolic and reductive comments on and off campus. Those students were perhaps more concerned with the importance of the bonds they have built with peers holding the opposing viewpoint than with media attention. Perhaps they realized that reconciliation is achieved and solutions are found not in the streets but across a table at the CoHo, in a dorm room on a weekday evening, or during a Dead Week study break via respectful communication. Perhaps they were simply too preoccupied with their coursework and the varied opportunities, academic and otherwise, offered by Stanford to engage in this charade of activism. Which of these two groups of students should our alumni magazine be celebrating?
Jason Lupatkin, '13
San Francisco, California

While I was a student at Stanford, I headed up the Political Union and brought in such diverse figures as Gus Hall (president of the American Communist party) and Dr. Fred Schwarz (head of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade), much to the benefit of our "compare and contrast" learning environment.

Mario Savio was in prime form over at Cal.

Stanford students came to occupy our campus' administrative offices in protest over a number of causes, mostly around Vietnam.

But Stanford "activists" blocking public rights of way for people who have to get to work, for ambulances that need access, for access to schools and classrooms throughout the Bay Area is absolutely over the top. It's embarrassing and doesn't help their cause, and I'd toss them out of school for a year or two.

I know, because I was tossed out of Stanford in my freshman year—and allowed back in after I served my "growing up" in the Army.

Activism that tries to shove a broomstick into the spokes of the public's daily life is an intrusion—and counterproductive.

Sure turns me off.
Vic Preisser, '62, MBA '64
Pasadena, California

I wish I could say it's great to be back on the Farm, but the Farm I knew back in the Pleistocene Era no longer exists. The students and faculty at that Stanford were eager to hear dissenting views, not just because they believed in the principles of free inquiry, but because they were hoping that a dissenting voice would say something that made them think, "Hey! That's really interesting. I never thought about this subject in the way the speaker has presented it. I want to know more about his point of view!"

At that Stanford, the world was an exciting place where all sorts of opinions popped up in unexpected places, where students' minds were constantly stimulated and broadened. At that Stanford, students received an invaluable education, which exposed them to the wonderful variety of human opinion, from communist doctrine to cutthroat capitalism, from racial bias to all-accepting secular humanism. At that Stanford, all words spoken and written stimulated their minds, and when they encountered opinions they found hateful, they hastened to debunk them with facts and reason, not catcalls and epithets. At that Stanford, the prevailing view was that a nation could be truly free only if the most hateful opinions were given a hearing, just as Stephen Douglas's opinions were given a hearing when he and Lincoln debated the morality of slavery.

At that Stanford, the ideas of Mr. Justice Brandeis and Mr. Justice Holmes held sway—The remedy for hateful speech is more speech; The test of true freedom is the ability of an idea to succeed in the marketplace of ideas.

At the Stanford I attended, people wouldn't regard a free society as such a fragile construct that dangerous opinions must be conflated with dangerous actions, that offensive ideas lead inevitably to criminal acts, and that our society is so corrupt that the principles of free expression must be trodden upon to protect enlightened people from the beastly ignorance of the common herd.

Die Luft der Freiheit Weht was the motto of the Stanford I attended, but when I look at today's Stanford all I see is a dead calm beneath a polluted inversion layer of hatred and intolerance. At today's Stanford, it seems that the most offensive idea is that free speech admits of no impediments. At today's Stanford, the practice of chipping away at free speech is applauded, and self-appointed thought police crush the expression of views that offend their sensibilities, as if giving offense isn't contemplated in the purview of free speech.

Injustice, offensive speech, institutional bias, racism, sexism, etc. are merely words, and such words mean whatever those who use them want them to mean. Such words aren't arguments! Arguments require thought; arguments can be supported or rebutted. When you call someone a racist the only possible responses are "I'm not a racist" or "Yes, I'm a racist." You've strayed into a sterile world where discussion is limited to binary opposites, where ideas are subordinated to visceral emotions. That world was nowhere to be found at the Stanford I attended, but to all appearances today's Stanford inhabits that world, and the members of this community are much the worse off for it.
Robert H. Pilpel, '63
Tallahassee, Florida

Thank you for your editorial, "The Case for Discontent" (First Impressions, May/June). I have a standard letter to the editor to organizations who demonize their enemies categorically instead of inviting the open-minded ones to the table for civil dialogue and a search for a solution to the problem. I think Neil Conway would agree with me: "the facts have little to do with the current furor over campus sexual assault: It is driven by ideology and fear" ("Preventing Assaults," Letters, May/June).

Although Stanford is my legacy beneficiary, I reduced my donation this year because of its boycott of coal stocks. Some coal companies are sequestering carbon dioxide and others are using torrefied biomass, a renewable product that can be burned in coal plants without modification. I was reluctant to visit South Africa in the 1980s because I didn't want my tourist dollar to support apartheid, but when I made my trip (visiting all the "homelands"), I realized that some foreign investors like Stanford were the ones educating black South Africans and sowing the seeds that would end apartheid. As President Hennessy said, "Any divestment request needs to focus on individual companies, including specific evidence that their activities cause direct and substantial social injury."
Clydia J. Cuykendall, '71
Olympia, Washington

Alternative to Suicide

With all due respect, my personal experience as a pastor for the past 16 years offers a counterpoint to Mariah Burton Nelson's article, "A Feminist's Suicide" (Journeys, May/June).

Three times I've seen firsthand "miracles" when simple prayer to Jesus Christ, asking for his healing, reversed what doctors and hospice decreed was impending death from cancer that had spread throughout the body. On another occasion a young man who overdosed on drugs to such a degree that he was declared "likely to die" by three different doctors during a three-month hospital stay was completely healed by simple, fervent prayers. He's drug-free today and a street preacher rescuing others. Each time our fellowship stood on the words found in the Bible that there is a healer, Jesus Christ, and that healing is available to those with faith in him.

For that reason, assisted suicide misses the mercy and love and last-minute miracles of a living God who left his blood on a cross for each one of us so that we can be healed in every sense of the word, including an eternal healing from our separation from him. He is the far better alternative and gives abundant life in the process.
Jeffrey Daly, '63
Middletown, California

Too Few Parties?

"Uncivil Tongues" (Farm Report, May/June) makes some interesting points and raises a troubling issue without realizing it.

The subtitle reads, "As society polarizes along party lines. . . . " To the extent that this is true, it is because the United States has failed to create an alternative to the two-party lock on American politics. I am a lifelong registered Republican, but I have always voted for the candidate and not for the party; over the years a considerable number of Democrats have gotten my vote.

To many of us (regardless of party registration), the real issues are honesty, good will and common sense.

Long ago, I was deeply offended by such left-wing dishonesty as the Tawana Brawley rape hoax (I'm still waiting for the Rev. Sharpton to apologize for that one) and some of the comments and behavior of Jane Fonda during the Vietnam war (a sincere gesture from Fonda would still be most welcome). More recently, the shrill accusations often leveled at anyone who questions any aspect of hot-button topics from gay marriage (homophobe!) to affirmative action (racist!) to male/female equality (misogynist!) are highly offensive and stifle rational discourse.

Rational people are also deeply offended by phenomena like the "birther" movement (we're still waiting for Donald Trump to either reveal the "incredible stuff" he claimed his "people" were discovering in Hawaii during the peak of the birther frenzy or apologize) and by Tea Party types who advocate dismantling, say, the Department of Energy "because it doesn't have any function." (Never mind the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads currently cared for by the DOE.) Then there are the frenzied fantasies of the "they're coming to take our guns!" element. And comments like those recently made by the governor of Texas (Are military training exercises really a front for a federal takeover of Texas?) are eerily similar to those made every year by Kim Jong-un on the occasion of the annual joint U.S.-Republic of Korea training exercises in South Korea.

The point is that all too often we are forced to choose between narratives like (White) America the Evil on the one hand and antigovernment conspiracy theories and belligerent ignorance on the other. The lack of a viable third party channels all the destructive nonsense into two opposing packages that suffocate the sensible element on each side.

Perhaps if there were an alternative package (How about the "Reality Party" for a title?), this country might be able to start dealing with the very real problems we face in a rational and constructive way.
David Rearwin, PhD '73
La Jolla, California

Shrinkage Reconsidered

In "Alterations" (End Note, May/June), Robert Funk explains how he lost three inches in height. Take courage, Professor Funk. I am 75 and have lost three inches, too, having run around the world at the equator about one and a half times. I always blamed the incredible shrinking man phenomenon on the incessant pounding of those daily 10Ks, which went on for years. Perhaps my age would have had the same effect. Or perhaps you also ran too much and too long.
Philip A. S. Sedlak, PhD '75
Washington, D.C.

Weighing In

My last year in rowing was the Stanford team's 1996-97 season, the February of which was so stormy that we sank two boats and my crew was stranded on an island in the Bay. As a coxswain, I used "way enough" to have my rowers lift their oars from the water—a flashy way to end a workout or a race. "Let 'er run" meant "stop rowing"—with oars planing the surface. In fact, "way enough" is probably more correctly spelled "weigh enough," from an old meaning of "weigh" as "lift." While we were trained to look on rowing's archaisms as evidence of its historical merit, I will admit the phrase sounds the same screeched through a megaphone either weigh.
Miles Townes, '00
Arlington, Virginia

Military Accountability

"Duty Calls," a profile of Gen. Dana Chipman by Romesh Ratnesar (March/April), presents a compelling depiction of an increasingly rare sort of public servant, the kind who seems to serve principles, rather than parties or power. I appreciate Gen. Chipman's unsuccessful efforts to hold Marines responsible for mass murdering Iraqis in Haditha, despite my disappointment in his participation in the ultimately partisan exercise known as the Benghazi Select Committee and his successful role in imprisoning whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who revealed U.S. military complicity in international human rights atrocities, including the murder of journalists.

To the extent Gen. Chipman is genuinely concerned about intelligence failures, potential cover-ups, and the promotion of accountability for military violations of clear legal and ethical principles, I wonder why he chose not to focus his post-military career on promoting executive accountability for torture? Torture not only failed to provide actionable intelligence, but also undermined U.S. prestige and power around the world, and the rule of law (by inviting every authoritarian regime around the world to follow our nation's lead). It also led to the deaths of U.S. service members who died at the hands of militants enraged and driven into conflict by continuing unaccountability for U.S. human rights abuses.
Shahid Buttar, JD '03
Washington, D.C.

The story about retired JAG Dana Chipman reveals a classically American "rags to riches" boyhood and career of which he and Stanford are duly proud. However, one comment by Gen. Chipman that does not ring true is the justification of his opposition to Sen. Gillibrand's bill, which would have removed from commanders the authority to decide whether to prosecute in cases of sexual battery and rape and instead vested this power in the JAG office.

His objection is that if the authority to prosecute rape were removed, commanders would wash their hands entirely of any responsibility and would not be motivated to initiate meaningful change concerning the issue. This argument is misguided in that the decision to prosecute rape has nothing to do with preventing rape in the first place. Commanders can and should be held accountable for what they do or do not do about preventing criminal conduct by their subordinates. Commanders need not have authority to prosecute rape in order to have both the authority and responsibility to prevent it.

The problem of "command control" over criminal prosecutions in general is well known to Gen. Chipman. It is especially applicable to prosecution of rape cases. I am also very familiar with the problem, having served as a criminal investigator in the USAF for four years. The first component of the problem is that most commanders are male, and the predominant attitude within the military is that accusations of rape are most probably motivated by "the price wasn't right" (the victim was a prostitute who didn't get paid); or "she asked for it" (the victim was to blame); or "she's seeking revenge for being jilted" (the victim is lying about the rape). The second component is that commanders are extremely reluctant to prosecute senior officers and non-coms. Such makes the commander "look bad" and is contrary to the good ol' boy network of military omerta. The third component is that rape is extremely difficult to prove in many cases and, if properly investigated and prosecuted, consumes more resources than any other felony (except perhaps procurement fraud).
James Luce
Peralada, Spain

Rebuttals

The depth and breadth of letters on the topic of sexual assault at Stanford reveals a refreshing openness by the editors to give voice to Stanford alumni, and it also provides a brief glimpse of some of the hurts suffered by women students ("Preventing Assault," May/June).

One writer (Class of '76) claims that Stanford was "a highly intelligent, rationally competent community."

That statement is not true of Stanford in the Sixties. Instead, the structure of Stanford life repeated the sexist structures of the outside world. Here are just a few of the practices that made women second-class citizens on campus.

Women undergraduates were admitted at the ratio of one woman to two men; the ratio of graduate students was one woman to five men.

Dorms were segregated by gender until the late '60s. Women's dorm regulations confined us to a sort of house arrest after 10:30 on weeknights and midnight (or so) on weekends—not the case for men. Plus, undergraduate women were forced to live on campus—and therefore in a dorm—while men could live off campus as undergrads.

Possibly the most heinous crime of all: I did not have a single female professor during my four undergraduate years. I had female TAs and a female "para-faculty" who taught German, but not professors. One anthropology class had lectures by a woman with a PhD, but she was there because her husband was the recognized teacher of the class.

This may seem trivial, but if a woman had a job on campus, she was forced to wear a dress to work. This meant bicycling all over campus in skirts. I still bear the scars on my legs.

This was before Roe v. Wade, so finding an abortion ended college life for some women I knew; pro-life students who became pregnant had their education truncated because they couldn't be pregnant on campus. No consequence for the men.

For men, yes, Stanford may have felt "intelligent" and "rational." For women, there were irrational rules, hierarchies based on gender, and a "community" which inflicted its own form of trauma.
Marilyn Dilworth Patton, '70
Santa Cruz, California

Laurie J. Seibert, '92, MS '96, ostentatiously declaims: "We all need to hear a commitment from the administration that they will do everything they can to stop future rape from occurring and that their goal is to completely eliminate sexual assault from our school."

To the best of my knowledge, Stanford has yet to "completely eliminate" illegal parking, an offense far more frequent than sexual assault.

How, precisely, is an aberrant behavior to be "completely eliminated"?
David Altschul, MA '76
Nashville, Tennessee

Times have changed a bunch since I was a freshman in Roble, but I cannot help but consider that the rise in sexual assaults started soon after the university did away with single-sex dormitories. What a surprise. Not!
Lynn Cox Titus, '49
Arroyo Grande, California

Next Step?

It is with regret we see a year go by without apparent follow-up by the Board of Trustees on its investments in fossil fuels. Back then, President Hennessy said that in fulfilling its "responsibility as a global citizen," divestment from coal was a "small, but constructive, step" (Stanford Report, May 6, 2014).

Since then the university has continued to develop an impressive array of on-campus efficiencies. Unfortunately, it has not matched that localized progress with the urgent broad efforts necessary to minimize climate havoc, instead undermining that progress with the power of a $20 billion endowment.

The call for fossil fuel divestment is not set at some arbitrary level. It was designed to keep global warming at 2 degrees C, a harmful but sufferable level. Now that goal is slipping away as we retain planet-wide energy on a trend to heat our oceans and atmosphere 4 or even 6 degrees C, a level we cannot wish on anyone we care for.

In this past year, just to look at local developments, Stanford's notoriously apolitical but scientifically straight Noel Diffenbaugh has affirmed the connection between global warming and California's drought. There's a cost. Audubon, with perhaps the world's largest long-term database of species' populations and ranges, has published their findings that climate change will deprive half of our birds half to all of their current seasonal ranges. There's a cost. Chevron spokesman Van Ast asserted that "Protection of people and the environment is a core value for Chevron," but the company continues to contribute robustly to climate change. There's a liability. And with similar muscle-flexing, Shell is conducting its terminal invasion with oil rigs at Seattle's port, preparing to bring more fossil fuels into our energy stream. Another liability.

And Stanford? Its investments in those liabilities continue. Or maybe the university is quietly divesting, protecting its portfolio during a covert operation toward human values. Maybe. But if so, it should go public quickly, for the practical benefit of divestment is motivational, and every passing day and month we commit to an uglier climate scenario that sabotages portfolio and life values.

A year has gone by, and we are in worse shape than we were a year ago. Coal divestment was good, but thoroughly inadequate to the challenge. It is past time for Stanford to take a large and constructive step.
Jeb Eddy, MBA '73
Palo Alto, California
Dan Greaney, '79
Redding, California

Carl Djerassi

One further remembrance of the late Professor Djerassi ("'A Phenomenon of Nature'," Farm Report, March/April): In the mid-'60s as an undergrad chem major, I had the opportunity to do an independent research project in Djerassi's lab under the direction of one of his grad students. One afternoon while I was working alone in the lab, Professor Djerassi entered and saw me at the lab bench. He said to me, "Young man, do you know what you're doing?" I answered, "Yes, sir." He replied, "Then I congratulate you," spun around and left the laboratory.
Charles K. Thomas, '66
Prescott, Arizona

'False Narrative'

It seems to me that Stanford students should be more rational and circumspect when voicing their protests, instead of blindly perpetuating the false "hands in the air" narrative that has been adopted by the race-based protesters across the country ("Something Is Stirring," May/June). I would have thought that Stanford students were learning to gather and examine the facts before making public statements of protest and perpetuating a lie. Isn't promulgating the truth part of the university agenda anymore? It is very disappointing. I expect better from my alma mater.
Kevin Bruce, MLA '99
Scottsdale, Arizona

So the fad-protest lemmings are flaunting their risk-free self-righteousness yet again. But you won't see these overprivileged kids protesting against any of the atrocities perpetrated in the name of Allah.

They lack the courage to confront evildoers who might possibly retaliate. And they'll shout down any dissenting groups who express views they deem "offensive."

Theirs is an essentially totalitarian vision of public debate, a view that their assumed moral superiority entitles them to crush dissenters by any means necessary.

And you won't catch any of these kids speaking to groups that disagree with them. That, too, would require more courage than they possess. And the idea that they might take a solitary stand before an audience of dissenters is beyond their comprehension.

The fact that even Eric Holder's Justice Department has concluded that the "martyrdom" of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin was in fact a consequence of their own thuggery (one of the countless words banned by the language police) cuts no ice with them.

They believe that their status as kids accepted by Stanford entitles them to denigrate mere mortals. And when confronted by reasoned arguments they can't refute they resort to name-calling and physical intimidation.

Not for them is a willingness to meet reason with reason. Their minds are made up and they cling to their opinions like shipwreck survivors cling to a rubber raft, terrified that they might be washed away by a wave of logic and facts.

To them I offer the cautionary words of Oliver Cromwell—"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, believe that you may be mistaken."
Robert H. Pilpel, '63
Tallahassee, Florida

So, college students in the United States, Stanford included, seem to have found inspiration in Mark Weber, the leading U.S. holocaust negationist, and his recent speech at the Grosvenor Hotel in London, on the occasion of one of the largest Holocaust negationist assemblies, in mid-April (see the Mail on Sunday, April 18, 2015). His words, under the title "The Challenge of the Jewish-Zionist Power," are sadly similar to what is being said in students' associations and irresponsibly interpreted as "activism." This peculiar form of "activism" brings up memories of 1930s Germany, none of them happy ones.

But I applaud these students, and I encourage them to go all the way. Destroy your pen drives, this evil creation of Israeli minds; let's make huge bonfires and throw away all your smartphones, so full of malignant Israeli-conceived parts and systems; and beware before taking your next medication—it may well include poisonous Israeli-researched and developed formulations. And, what a curse, you may well end up working in a WeWork office, this perverse creation of an Israeli mind!

As for Jewish and non-Jewish students feeling confused but valuing Judaism, centuries-old ethics and a permanent quest for justice, take a look at JJAC, and see the plight of 900,000-plus Jews forced to leave Arab countries from 1948 on.
Ruy Flaks Schneider, MS '65
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Provocative?

[Concerning] the article "Untangling the Knot" (January/February), more specifically the phrase "much-cited federal figures stating that one in five college women are assaulted," a question may arise. Besides [assault] caused by drug abuse, what is the role of behavioral attitudes (many inspired by today's media) frequently associated with many modern young women using both provocative clothing and postures?
J.A. Vasconcelos
Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal