“Freedom of speech is a bedrock principle for the law school, the university, and a democratic society.”
Law school dean Jenny Martinez and university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne issued an apology to U.S. Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan following the disruption of his talk “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter” at a recent student Federalist Society event on campus. “We are very clear with our students that, given our commitment to free expression, if there are speakers they disagree with, they are welcome to exercise their right to protest but not to disrupt the proceedings,” they said, adding that freedom of speech is a “bedrock principle for the law school, the university, and a democratic society.”
In a subsequent message to the law school community, Martinez explained why the disruption of Duncan’s speech violated university policy and outlined next steps resulting from the incident, which include a mandatory half-day session for all law students on the topic of freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession, as well as additional training for staff to ensure that university rules on disruption of events will be followed.
Martinez’s message broke down the reasons why the “sustained heckling” of some protestors—many of whom sought to draw attention to LGBTQ+ rights in the current legal environment—was not protected by the First Amendment and related California law, whereas others’ “permissible, non-disruptive counter-speech” was. She also emphasized that university administrators must avoid exercising their authority “in ways that can chill speech.”
“It bears emphasizing,” she wrote, that it “is not inconsistent with principles of academic freedom for the university administration to say that our LGBTQ+ students, faculty, and staff are valued members of our community of scholars. That goes to the basic norms of pluralism that underpin our operation as a university, in the same structural way that the normative commitment to free speech underpins those operations.” The Federalist Society, she said, “has the same rights of free association that other student organizations at the law school have. Students calling for the law school administration to restrict the organization or the speakers it can bring to campus are demanding action inconsistent not only with freedom of speech but with rights to freedom of association that civil rights lawyers fought hard in the twentieth century to secure. To do so would also be inconsistent with the Stanford Statement on Academic Freedom’s requirement that ‘[e]xpression of the widest range of viewpoints should be encouraged, free from institutional orthodoxy and from internal or external coercion.’ Unless we recognize that student members of the Federalist Society and other conservatives have the same right to express their views free of coercion, we cannot live up to this commitment nor can we claim that we are fostering an inclusive environment for all students.”
Giving us all the feels.
Whether you want a tattoo that functions as a credit card or a bandage that gleans energy from radio waves to help heal your wound, Zhenan Bao may soon have you covered. The professor of chemical engineering is on a mission to develop medical devices that mimic the abilities of the original wearable electronic system: skin. She and her colleagues have created heart sensors that adhere like postage stamps to locate atrial fibrillation, wireless sensors to monitor tumor growth, and soft, implantable sensors that tuck into brain and gut tissues to measure dopamine and serotonin levels. Soon, her bracelet/anklet that can provide continual, noninvasive blood pressure readings on the tiniest premature babies may get FDA approval.
Of particular importance to Bao is a stick-on patch that detects physiological signs of depression. She hopes it will offer psychiatrists new metrics to assess the condition. Detecting cortisol in minute amounts of sweat was a challenge, but according to Bao, it’s better to be bold. “If we don’t set down an ambitious goal,” she told Stanford magazine, “we will never get to it.” Watch Bao’s recent Grad Alumni Day micro-lecture on skin-inspired electronics.
All the world’s a stage, and, yes, we know we’re quoting the wrong play.
Photo: Stanford TAPS
As part of Citizenship in the 21st Century, the winter quarter course in Stanford’s reimagined curriculum for first-year students, students staged a modern-day Julius Caesar. Shakespeare’s tale can be “read as a play about a single decision, and that is: What should we do if we think someone is going to become a tyrant?” said director Michael Rau, an assistant professor of theater and performance studies. The play had a present-day feel, including modern backdrops and depictions of Roman senators Cassius and Brutus (portrayed by sophomore Sierra Michelle, above) as female politicians.
BYO potato salad.
You may be convinced it was your aunt’s sketchy side dish, but it’s nearly impossible to know for sure what gave you food poisoning. That’s because in most cases it takes hours—even days—for symptoms to appear after you consume bad food. Denise Monack, a professor of microbiology and immunology who studies salmonella, says that even a poll of your dining partners may not reveal the culprit. Not every person who ate the criminal canapé will get sick, she told Stanford Medicine’s Scope blog, and those who do won’t all lunge for the Pepto Bismol at the same time. Food poisoning is often the result of undercooked meat, raw seafood, or raw produce or grains contaminated with feces. (Pause for effect/retching.)
In the United States, where sanitation systems are broadly adequate, food poisoning is less serious health issue and more revolting inconvenience. But potluck picnic season is coming, so if you do find yourself engaged in a close study of your bathroom tile, Monack advises avoiding antibiotics, which are sometimes prescribed as treatment. While they can kill the little buggers that are keeping you down, they also annihilate the good gut bacteria that help you recover. Monack doesn’t want pathogen paranoia to rule our lives, though. “I eat my hamburgers slightly undercooked,” she said. “I like them that way."
No one cares about brave robots.
Human heroes have the option to run away from danger but instead run toward it—sometimes at the risk of their own lives. “That vulnerability is what makes us respect them and feel inspired by their courage,” said Szu-chi Huang, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Business. In the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Huang explains that while human helpers can inspire us to support one another, robot help can actually demotivate us to get involved. Machines are seen as being programmed (rather than choosing) to help and could make people feel as though human assistance isn’t needed. She found, for example, that consumers donated fewer items of clothing after watching news highlighting robots’ (vs. humans’) assistance in a mudslide disaster. This “backfire” effect on people’s prosocial tendencies might be mitigated, Huang said, by making robots seem more autonomous and vulnerable—which may make people think of them as more courageous, and thus be more inspired to do their own part to help.
But wait, there’s more.
“Preventing a bank run by uninsured depositors should be of central focus to bank regulators and policymakers,” said Amit Seru, a professor at the Graduate School of Business, who, with colleagues, examined more than 4,800 U.S. banks and found that 10 percent of them have had larger unrealized losses than Silicon Valley Bank. Their analysis shows that the combination of $2.2 trillion in losses and nervous customers could result in more bank runs.
Taylor Swift isn’t just a pop culture icon with 11 Grammys—this winter, she was the subject of a Stanford course. Students in section five of ITALIC 99 spent 10 weeks studying the singer’s 2012 hit All Too Well. NYU, the University of Texas, and Queen’s University in Canada also have Swift on the syllabus.
In the Escondido Village kitchen of Shreyas Lakhtakia, you may find a rocket scientist. Or an expert on Constantinople. The visitors each Friday vary, but Lakhtakia, a master’s student in management science and engineering, offers fresh coffee and a smile as he greets whoever arrives for his once-weekly “intellectual salon” to connect with fellow students.
In a study published last month, Stanford researchers showed that easily obtainable data can help forecast malaria outbreaks with new precision. Using satellite information, land-use maps, and socioeconomic survey results, researchers trained a model to predict which villages would be hardest hit, even among those separated by only a few miles. The predictions, which accurately pinpointed more than half of the communities that would have the highest rates of malaria transmission, could help prioritize and distribute limited health care resources.
The oldest member of the sophomore class was once the youngest member of London’s Royal Ballet. Beatriz Stix-Brunel, ’25, spent a decade dancing her way into a first soloist position before applying to Stanford. Now she plans to major in symbolic systems, with a particular interest in the intersection of the humanities with medicine, AI, and machine learning.
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