Letters to the Editor

Home Revisited

Your "home" issue was the best I've ever read! I devoured it in a single sitting—reading back to front. My favorite articles were "The Birds in Your House," "Rethinking the Nest" and "Writing Home." But the whole issue was artfully crafted, with fun diversions like "The Stanford Diaspora" and "From Moomba to MemChu." After putting it down, I felt grateful to my alma mater for giving me a few moments to think broadly about a theme that affects all of us.

This was a nice change from issues where I have felt the topics were less universal.

Thank you for a great reading experience.
Nancy Thelen Rehkopf, '75
San Rafael, California

The issue on "home" (July/August) is brilliant. I'm not usually a big reader of the magazine, but I read every word of every article. You found a topic of universal interest and developed it with impressive variety and authenticity. Well done.

For what it's worth, I edit an alumni magazine, so I have some idea how hard it is to accomplish what you pulled off—congrats!
Trudy Palmer, MA '85, PhD '90
St. Louis, Missouri

Talking Points

In your July/August issue, Washington Post staffer Spencer Hsu claims that HUD Secretary Julián "Castro has quietly linked his family story to the Obama administration's broader efforts to strengthen the economy, and reduce poverty . . . and racial division" ("A Sense of Place"). First, let it be said that the "link" is so quiet that Hsu never quotes Secretary Castro on that theme.

Second, let's reflect on the propriety of quiet in the face of not only a 29 percent decrease in middle-class net worth, an all-time high in the percentage of Americans on federal aid and the lowest percentage of home ownership in a half-century, but also the racist policies ranging from termination of the prosecution of New Black Panther Party members who'd already been convicted of voter intimidation to the president himself exhorting the domestic terrorists in Ferguson, Mo., to "stay the course."
David Altschul, MA '76
Nashville, Tennessee

Conspicuously Absent

When I arrived on the Farm as a 17-year-old freshman in 1950, coming from what was then the Belgian Congo, it felt like landing on Mars. Sixty-five years later, looking at "The Stanford Diaspora" (July/August), Stanford seems to remain the same old elite country club. Its graduates heavily cluster in North America, Western Europe, Australia and the Far East. Huge swaths of South America, the whole of Africa (including my benighted Congo), the ex-Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the entire Middle East, Central Asia and India remain conspicuously blank spots. Even within the United States, a vast sweep of the South, and the middle and far West, still look like sagebrush country.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Pierre L. van den Berghe, '52, MA '53
Seattle, Washington

I know I have definitely scattered to a far corner of the planet when my home country does not even make it onto your world map!
Ralph Samuelson, '75, MA '82, PhD '84
Wellington, New Zealand

About Mars

Your piece "A New Kind of Martian" by Sam Scott (July/August) fulfilled the magazine's need to compete with other pubs in having something to say about sending folks to Mars. At least it makes it somewhat clear why those folks will die.

But the author does the same as do too many others—writing about a Mars trip as if it were simply a permanent vacation from life. Mars is uninhabited for some very good, basic reasons we should all grasp before wasting vast resources and lives on such "fun" trips. (Many millions are enduring un-fun "trips" on Earth today.)

a) There likely was life on Mars a couple billion years ago, when life here was inventing photosynthesis.

b) There's been no life on Mars for almost that much time because Mars lost its atmosphere.

c) Mars has no atmosphere because it has no organized magnetic field.

d) Mars has no magnetic field because its metallic core is about solid.

e) A planet without a magnetic field has no defense against the solar wind or mass ejections (both blasts of protons) and no defense against perennial cosmic radiation (particles and gamma rays).

f) Mars thus had its atmosphere blown away and has long been too dangerously radiated for any surface life to survive.

g) Earth has its magnetic field and atmosphere because our core remains sufficiently molten due to the heat of uranium, thorium and potassium isotope decays. We also have 1kW/square meter of surface sunlight available for power—Mars has too little, thus our latest rover there is nuclear-powered.

h) Mars (and the Moon) has abundant thorium deposits, from our orbiter data, so a Mars colony could indeed be efficiently nuclear-powered, as NASA has long planned for any Moon base, where nights are two weeks long.

i) But, because Stanford allowed its nuclear engineering department to wither, our university is now in a poor position to educate future Mars/Moon-colony designers—windmills and solar "farms" won't do it (nor will they on Earth).

It was good to see that the article's graphic left out solar panels, but sadly there was no mention of what engineers, scientists and even the Dalai Lama know must be our long-term, clean energy source—nuclear.
Alexander Cannara, Engr. '66, MS '74, PhD '76
Menlo Park, California

Parents in Need

It's always a bit unsettling to see a documentary that details the plight of the unfortunate, partly because the unfortunates continue to be so, while the documentarian uses their situation to go on to bigger and better things ("A Midnight Ride," July/August).

Let's hope that Lo (or someone else from the Stanford community—perhaps some of the high-minded protesters who blocked the San Mateo Bridge not long ago?) will take the trouble to inform the aged, homeless bus riders about California's filial responsibility law (Family Code, Section 4400-4405), which reads in part: "Except as otherwise provided by law, an adult child shall, to the extent of his or her ability, support a parent who is in need and unable to maintain himself or herself by work."

There is also Penal Code Section 270c, which says that "every adult child who, having the ability so to do, fails to provide necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical attendance for an indigent parent, is guilty of a misdemeanor."

Assisting the indigent, elderly homeless in asserting their legal rights for food and shelter would be a great project for socially responsible Stanford students to undertake.
David Rearwin, PhD '73
San Diego, California

Catching Up

I read President Hennessy's column on " 'Usefulness' Education" with both delight and dismay (July/August). Wonderful news that Stanford is pursuing experiential learning and merging "ways of doing with ways of knowing." Sad that it has taken so long. Progressive secondary schools have experimented with "learning by doing" since the 19th century, and industry has practiced "action learning" to train managers since the mid-20th. Perhaps now undergraduate education can catch up with the past.
Harry Hutson, MA '72
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Local Color

I thoroughly enjoyed Aidan Biggar's article about translating from "Strine" to U.S. English ("From Moomba to MemChu," Student Voice, July/August). It brought to mind my wife's exchange [visit] to Box Hill College (now Box Hill Institute) in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne in 1993 and a paragraph in my journal:

" . . . they had an 008 number in the window (800 number—drive on the left, turn signals under the right hand [my left turns were announced by a flapping of the windscreen wipers], light switches are down for ON, dial 0 for an outside line, 9 for the operator, single quotes first and then doubles for quotes within quotes, hang on for grim death instead of dear life, an all in brawl, the bank address is exchanged with the account holder's home address on checks, numbers on a sun dial run anti-clockwise. The southern hemisphere turns everything upside-down)."

Susan Biggar's book, The Upside of Down, reviewed two pages later (Shelf Life), suggests the same thing. Aidan's mother? [Editor: Yes.]

Our greatest gaffe came after lunch at Henry VIII on the flanks of Mount Dandenong, when the server asked if we wanted anything else. From the journal: "Virginia got everyone's attention when she said she was 'stuffed.' We laughed, the waitress shrugged and said she just thought Virginia was swearing. Virginia changed it to 'full' which, of course, turned her from sexually active into a drunk. Ah, the Aussie idioms."
Bob Steinbach, MS '62
San Diego, California

Wrong About Chicago

As a longtime Chicagoan and Stanford alum, I cannot let Clay McCord's hysterical remark pass unchallenged ("Protestations," Letters, July/August).

In a contentious letter (filled with debatable comments), McCord writes: "and thousands of blacks have been killed by blacks just in Chicago in one year."

This is completely and wildly inaccurate. Chicago has a lot of homicides but not an exceptionally high murder rate among U.S. cities. And yes, disproportionately many of the victims and perpetrators are African-Americans. But we do not have thousands of homicides! The highest number in recent history was 943 in 1992; after that, there was a marked decline, and currently the annual numbers are in the 400s.

Every homicide is a tragedy, but let's be accurate about the facts.
Larry Garner, '65
Chicago, Illinois

'Divergent Viewpoints'

Once again I write to thank and commend you for the variety, quality and quantity of the letters to the editor that you publish. I found especially thought-provoking the letters under "Protestations" and "Too Few Parties" in the July/August issue. No disrespect intended to the rest of your magazine, but I find reading the letters is often as worthwhile as many of the feature articles. Among other things, it helps inform this older alum about the divergent viewpoints among the various classes represented.
David Holton, MS '55
Pleasanton, California

Divestment Won't Affect Climate

Our common experience with hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, blizzards, floods, droughts and volcanic eruptions should lead to the commonsense conclusion that weather and climate are controlled by natural laws on an enormous scale that dwarfs human activity ("Next Step?" Letters, July/August). Those laws engender forces and motions in our atmosphere and oceans that are beyond human control. Weather and climate existed long before humans appeared on Earth and will continue to exist in the same way long after we are gone.

Those forces and motions are driven by the following: First, the motions of the Earth relative to the Sun—the periodic changes in its elliptical orbit, its rotation about its polar axis, changes in the tilt of that axis, and the precession of that axis.

Second, the variation in solar activity that influences the radiant energy reaching the Earth and modulates cosmic ray activity, which controls cloudiness.

Third, the distribution of land and water on the Earth's surface, which controls its temperature distribution, moisture availability, monsoon effects, hurricanes and other storm tracks.

Fourth, the topography of the Earth's surface, which causes copious precipitation on the windward side of mountains and aridity on the leeward side.

Fifth, the fluid motions within the Earth's oceans that determine moisture availability and ocean surface temperatures (El Niño and La Niña cycles).

Sixth, volcanic eruptions that throw large amounts of dust into the atmosphere, increasing the Earth's albedo and periodically blocking portions of solar radiation from reaching the Earth's surface.

Water in all its forms is a main agent through which those forces operate. It provides vapor in the atmosphere, heat transport by evaporation and condensation, and the enormous, circulating mass of the ocean whose heat capacity dominates. And finally it provides the clouds, snow and ice cover that control the radiative balance between the Sun, the Earth and free space.

While the presence of 0.04 percent of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is essential for life in the biosphere, the notion that such a minor constituent of the atmosphere can control the above forces and motions is absurd. There is, in fact, not one iota of reliable evidence that it does. Equally absurd is the notion that divestment from fossil fuel companies will have any effect on global weather or climate. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but an essential ingredient within the Earth's ecosystem.
Martin Hertzberg, PhD '59
Golden, Colorado

On Activism

If I could ask one question of the students demonstrating against alleged police abuses ("Something Is Stirring," May/June), it would be "Have you ever considered becoming an officer?" If you believe the criminal justice system is rife with racism and other forms of bigotry, why not become the kind of police officer who introduces equal treatment under the law to the neighborhoods you do not believe receive it? If your postgraduation vision is to enter a profession that allows you to aid and protect those who desperately need it five, 10, 15 times every workday, there is no finer job than police work.

I know this to be true because after graduation from Stanford and three years in the United States Marine Corps, I joined the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. Over the 22 years of my career, I served as a uniformed patrol officer, and narcotics, homicide and public corruption investigator, retiring as a patrol sergeant. Like many Stanford students, I did not arrive at the university with a police career in mind. By one of those fluky events that change lives, however, as I completed a tour of duty in Vietnam as a rifle platoon commander, I found a magazine story [that] challenged '60s college graduates who demonstrated loudly for better treatment of poor and oppressed minorities to put their concern, and courage, to the test by becoming big-city cops.

I had learned overseas that Vietnamese peasants, black Marines from South Side Chicago and white farm kids from rural Kentucky all shared one common demand: to be respected and treated as equals. I answered that [magazine's] call in part to offer service in our country equal to that which I had attempted to provide overseas and in part to test the theory that a white cop could earn the trust of suspicious inner-city African-Americans by the same show of genuine respect. For me, experience proved the truth of that belief.

Another lesson I learned in Vietnam and on patrol as a beat cop was that there are very bad people in this world. Decrying the conditions that make some people this way doesn't alter their choice to employ violence and fear to get what they want, and in doing so they deny the vast majority of innocent men, women and children in their neighborhoods the simple peace and safety they seek.

What are the qualities of a good cop? [From] my observation, there are two. The first: respect for every soul encountered. The second: aggressiveness. Not the brutality associated with that trait these days, but the courage and determination to patrol the most dangerous spots in the most dangerous neighborhoods and confront criminals who terrorize their innocent residents. Well-meaning and respectful police do no good if they are unwilling to face and if necessary arrest those who threaten the lives of so many others. In a more subtle way, they are as great a liability to the quality of life in high crime areas as loudmouthed, arrogant officers who display no respect for the individuals who live and work in their patrol areas.

Still another lesson I learned was that an investigation commenced with a conclusion already determined would almost always end badly. The best investigators performed their duties in the same way professors and students at Stanford should apply critical and objective analysis to their areas of study. The most disappointing photograph in the Stanford article showed students with their "hands up, don't shoot" pose and a "Ferguson" sign. Did these students review Attorney General Holder's Department of Justice report that exonerated Officer Darren Wilson of wrongdoing on the basis of forensic evidence and credible testimony from courageous African-American witnesses who faced intimidation for telling the truth? I'm skeptical that they did, in the rush to apply the same broad brush to every use of deadly force by officers.

It might interest these students to know that in the law enforcement community, white, black, Hispanic and Asian-American officers alike have been willing to critique the actions of officers that led to the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice or Walter Scott. In some cases, that has led to support for the officer; in others, condemnation and support for criminal prosecution. Like many other police veterans, I knew officers who were killed because they did not shoot, were overpowered by a stronger assailant and were murdered with their own service weapons.

Are there trigger-happy police officers among the approximately 600,000 men and women patrolling U.S. streets? Sadly, yes. Are there vastly more officers who serve their entire career without using deadly force and want nothing more than to maintain peace in their beat area and return safely home to their families? Yes. Finally, is there a more direct and intensely personal way to serve the poorest of our fellow Americans than as a street police officer? I don't know of one, and if you think I'm wrong, I suggest you review the last two months of shootings and homicides in West Baltimore, Md., where even the finest officers have been cowed into inaction by civic leaders and demonstrators prejudging and condemning every action they take.
Philip Burton, '68, MBA '78
Arlington, Virginia

I was a student representative-at-large on the Faculty Senate of 1987; every now and then administrative issues would generate intense debates. One such issue was the question of locating President Ronald Reagan's Memorial Library on the Farm. The division in the senate was sharp and discussion very heated. I was not privy to the background of the case, whereby an approval in principle to house the library at Stanford had earlier been given by the Board of Trustees. Its chair, Warren Christopher, opened the one-point agenda of the day's meeting by appealing to the senate to honor the board's commitment. Many senate members criticized the prominence of the site selected (on the slope of the hill overlooking the campus); the imposing design of the proposed building; the heavy traffic and activity that the library would generate. They feared that the library would associate Stanford politically with the Reagan legacy, especially the controversial "Reaganomics." Supporters talked about academic and institutional benefits to the university and presented the choice as an indication of Stanford's significance.

There was apparently equal fervor and commitment on both sides, and the deliberations went on and on. It was in that hanging debate that one senate member brought up the need for student input. I made a brief statement praising the student community for not sharply politicizing the issue, although there was a general sentiment against the proposal, which I conveyed. I added that going ahead with the proposed library could stoke ongoing debate, polarizing opinion, and sided with the members opposing the motion. This input tipped the balance; the motion was defeated. This ended the controversy and the proposal.

With hindsight, I admire the prevalent viewpoint of the students then and the prudent decision of the senate, which saved the university from an image of partisanship favoring reigning personalities/ideologies—as well as from the eclipsing effects of the library's activities.
Gulfaraz Ahmed, MS '85, PhD '90
Islamabad, Pakistan

Your May/June cover with "ACTIVISM NOW" in red, bold print provided immediate relief for me, as I had been a protestor just a year previously right in Palo Alto, a community of long-established dignity and good manners. I had been taught good manners by my parents and tried to maintain them during my happy years at Stanford, then at Stanford Medical School and thereafter in my medical practice. But then an issue arose that demanded intervention.

The offender was a play scheduled in Lucie Stern Theater for June 2014: The Farnsworth Invention by Aaron Sorkin. Both my fellow protestor, William Helvey, MD, and I were upset, knowing that the contents of the play were basically untrue. It demeaned the real inventor, Philo Farnsworth, and his wife, "Pem"; glorified RCA's chief David Sarnoff as a dignified, polite, thoughtful executive; and glorified his employee Vladimir Zworykin as the brilliant inventor of electronic television. The huge problem was that Zworykin could not make his 1923 patent application concept work nor produce a working prototype until he spent three days in Farnsworth's lab in San Francisco learning the technology.

Farnsworth had already been awarded the patent, and he wanted to license it to Westinghouse. Zworykin submitted his own revised patent application two weeks later, a modification of Farnsworth's patent. Zworykin went to Sarnoff at RCA and promised he could produce an electronic television picture if RCA hired him. This past June on the National Geographic channel, American Geniuses presented "Farnsworth vs. Sarnoff," which declared Farnsworth the inventor and revealed Sarnoff's true duplicitous character.

The high point of Sorkin's play, the reading of the final decision by the Patent Office, declared RCA/Sarnoff/Zworykin the winner, deliberately misleading audiences who did not know the actual history.

Dr. Helvey and I notified the police that we intended a peaceful protest. With support from Paul Schatzkin, author of The Boy Who Invented Television, Dr. Helvey told the Palo Alto players that we meant no harm or criticism of them, only the play itself. We handed out information sheets documenting the true story and were joined by other Farnsworth supporters. Our protest with a banner and signs was quiet and peaceful.

The protest was featured on the front page of the Palo Alto Daily Post for two days. The next day Sorkin issued a letter of apology to Dr. Helvey and me, acknowledging that Farnsworth was the inventor. The apology was widely printed. We felt our peaceful protest was worthwhile and within the parameters of good manners. The violent, destructive, obstructive protests that President Hennessy decries are not acceptable.
Don McCleve, '53, MD '56
Monte Sereno, California

I was a student during the period of Vietnam War activism, and I can tell you activism is thinly disguised violence. It is physical intimidation aimed at forcing another individual or group to act against their will, usually in violation of their human/natural rights.

There are only two means to resolve our differences. One is argumentation; the other is violence. There is no middle ground. Unfortunately, argumentation demands that we respect and understand the worldview and human rights of others. This is hard, and violence is too easy an out. This includes passing laws that subject hapless individuals to police guns and cages.

I would urge the Stanford academic community to teach their students well. Stanford is populated by politically powerful students and faculty. I was not one of these, and I felt excluded in some fundamental way from Stanford society. I suspect this is still happening to students. This is easily corrected by teaching a little of the facts of power so that students understand how people are governed and manipulated to conform to the ideas of the powerful without the use of violence/activism. Simply having a mandatory freshman course on the methods that Benjamin Franklin used to get people to conform to his sense of correct living (including a violent revolution against their government) would provide students who want to have their will imposed upon others a productive and nonviolent (non-activist) method for doing this. It would not hurt to teach students to discover the second- and third-order consequences of their actions (such as how banning DDT killed more than 1 million disadvantaged humans).
Joseph F. Iaquinto, MS '71
Leesburg, Virginia

Your article on the new brand of extremely divisive student activism ("Something Is Stirring," May/June) has clarified for me the negative aspects of increasing political correctness on today's college campuses. This balkanization trend may have innocently started by insisting that "victims" have a right to define their own victimhood. Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence, this noble idea has morphed to the point that any "offended" group may self-righteously proclaim which words and ideas cannot even be expressed in a public forum. This is a slippery slope that has the capacity to completely shut down necessary public discourse.

However well-intentioned, political correctness is shredding one of America's most cherished principles, freedom of speech. This constitutional right was set in place not to protect speech which is considered correct for a given time and place, but for firebrands (such as activists, ironically) to have their opinion heard and considered as well. If this ugly trend on college campuses (in my time, a bastion of free speech) weren't so tragic, I would smile at the thought of what activist comedian George Carlin would say about such closed-mindedness.
Eugene Tatum, '78
Nashville, Tennessee

Unfortunately for Stanford's annual fundraising effort, my May/June issue arrived about the same time as the Annual Fund appeal. I was disgusted with your cover story and photo of maybe 10 "activists" making a scene for the media on the San Mateo Bridge. You missed a great opportunity for the cover with your article about Jennifer Dionne, clearly an accomplished young woman and role model for Stanford students. Her success brings significant credit to Stanford as well as herself.

Your choice to give credence to a small bunch of chanting miscreants panders to the agenda of those elements in our once great nation who want to divide it along racial lines, not because of personal rights or opportunity but rather because they stand to personally profit from race baiting and ongoing confrontation, seeking personal power, control and wealth from a new political order in America. As for the Annual Fund, since 80 percent of my contribution would go to support those protesters, per the Shark Tank: "I'm out."
Jim Mago, '65
Granger, Texas

Can vs. Must

The letters you printed in the May/June issue about sexual assault ("Preventing Assaults") made many excellent, well-reasoned points, and parts of the brave letter from Laurie J. Seibert were no exception. But Seibert's letter began with a position that really disturbs me and ended with another one.

First, she reacted to your cover as if it had read "Must Sexual Assault Be Prevented?" When did it become impossible to ask "Can we prevent X?" without being accused of implying "X is OK"? Surely "Must HIV Be Cured?" and "Must Middle East Violence Be Stopped?" would be infuriating titles, while "Can HIV Be Cured?" and "Can Middle East Violence Be Stopped?" invite constructive discussion. To confuse "can" with "must" is dangerous to discourse. And discourse, not dogma, is central to Stanford's (and Stanford's) main mission.

Second, it's dangerous to use absolute terms such as "everything [the university] can" and "completely eliminate." If citizens gave their government the goal of doing "everything they can to completely eliminate school shootings," the authorities might come back with, "Well, we can't make guns completely illegal, for constitutional reasons, and even that wouldn't achieve the goal; we'd still have a shooting every twenty years or so. But we did find a way: We'll close all public schools and make private schools illegal except for home schooling. That's guaranteed to completely prevent mass shootings in schools." There are always competing goals. Would anyone really want to see the university do "everything it can" to "completely" eliminate male-on-female sexual assault? Retry the old solution of sex-segregated housing? Ban all parties? Launch research into why our species has this quirky year-round sex drive and how the next generation can be genetically engineered so that the class of 2050 will have a mating season limited to summer quarter?
Bob Kanefsky, '82
Mountain View, California

A Fountain's Source

I was enormously proud to see not one, but two photos of The Claw featured in the March/April issue ("My Space," First Impressions and "Blue-Sky Proposition," Farm Report). As you may know, I had the honor and privilege to have been selected as the sculptor to design and fabricate the White Memorial Fountain, installed in 1964, to commemorate the tragic loss of two sons, William N. White and John B. White II, brothers in the class of 1949. The two young men died in separate accidents before they graduated. Their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond B. White, donated the money for White Memorial Plaza and for the fountain to honor their lives, cut too short by these separate tragedies.

The sculpture was designed such that the pattern of water would never be defined, by virtue of changes in climate, wind, temperature and the like. Just as we would never know what these two young men might have become, or what they might have accomplished in their later lives, so the water would change each day, creating anew a dream and an image of a life of promise, unfulfilled.

Within days of my completing the fountain, formally titled the White Memorial Fountain, the students rechristened it "The Claw" or "Mem Claw" for short. During these last 50 years, my association with it, and with Stanford, has been an enormous sense of pride. I have smiled at the stories and photos of decades of students frolicking in the fountain and using it as the host for an array of other campus rites of passage. I have hoped, too, that the fact that The Claw became an iconic part of the Stanford campus gave some solace to the White family, to know that the memorial to the memory of their sons has given so much joy and provided so many fond memories to so many other Stanford students.

With the fountain dry because of water conservation, I was thrilled to see the proposed acrylic-on-canvas image that artist Sukey Bryan envisioned, to install with students, on the bottom of the sculpture pool face. How exciting to think that a new artist and contemporary Stanford students would contribute to the longevity of this iconic piece. To me, this clever way of addressing societal needs is a testament to Stanford's reputation for innovation, and to the use of technology to enhance our world, in the face of environmental challenges. Hats off to you for creating this virtual collaboration. And thanks to Sukey for suggesting a solution for all our sculpture fountain clients during this period of drought.
Aristides (Aris) Burton Demetrios
Montecito, California

No Such Thing?

My interest in new learning was piqued by the July/August letter (“Protestations”) in which Dan Rosenfeld, ’75, referred to “Israel’s unacceptable occupation of Palestinian land.”

Just two years after Rosenfeld left the Farm, Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee member Zahir Muhsein told a reporter at Trouw that there was no such thing as “Palestine” and no difference between self-proclaimed “palestinians” and the people of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

I wish I had access to Rosenfeld’s more authoritative sources.
David Altschul, MA ’76
Nashville, Tennessee

Embarrassing

Kevin Cool’s article in the May/June issue (“Something Is Stirring”) was embarrassing, to say the least.

Back in the “old days” when I attended Stanford (1953 to 1959), students focused on obtaining an excellent education; generally we were busy with classes, studying and working part time. Our limited free time was spent participating in social or athletic activities. Apparently today, with the availability of student loans and grants, many students do not have to work at an outside job, and they have more free time to devote to activism.

It is interesting that Stanford’s reputation was generally founded on science and technology, and led to what is now known as Silicon Valley. Is Stanford’s goal now changing to providing an education in activism? How productive is that?

Behavioral scientists believe that the frontal cortex (the part of the brain that has to do with judgment and impulse control) does not mature in people until their early 20s to mid-20s. So why is Stanford apparently accepting and promoting activism? Should we really accept disturbances based on incomplete or inaccurate information that students use to raise hell—and severely inconvenience innocent folks? Is it more fun to gather on a busy bridge or to be concerned about the publicized (and perhaps inaccurate) Israeli-Palestine issues than to put efforts into learning something that will be worthwhile in the student’s future?
Bill Pahland, ’58, MS ’59
Chester, California