Leftist Profs Ask Stanford University to Investigate the Conservative Hoover Institution
“Too much of what we have seen coming out of the Hoover has made a travesty of honest intellectual debate, because an excess of partisanship”
Think tank Hoover Institution is part of Stanford, which gives a voice to people like Victor Davis Hanson. This is nothing more than a political witch hunt.
Campus Reform reports:
Stanford profs, including Antifa apologist, want investigation into Hoover Institution
Left-leaning professors asked Stanford University’s faculty senate to investigate the Hoover Institution.
During a February 11 presentation to the Stanford Faculty Senate, Stanford professors Joshua Landy, Stephen Monismith, David Palumbo-Liu, and David Spiegel told their colleagues that they have “concerns” about the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and want “an impartial committee” to “delve deeper into the relationship between the Hoover and Stanford.”
“Some aspects of the Hoover work not only to the detriment of Stanford, but also in fact to the detriment of the Hoover’s aspirations to be truly excellent.” They framed their presentation as “a way to signal where weaknesses lie and where improvements might be made to make sure the relationship between the Hoover and Stanford University can progress and grow in ways that benefit both.”
“Too much of what we have seen coming out of the Hoover has made a travesty of honest intellectual debate, because an excess of partisanship has led some Hoover fellows out of the realm of fact, science, and good faith argumentation,” the professors said in their introduction. “One of the fundamental difficulties we see is that while Stanford is an academic research institution, we believe that the Hoover is a partisan think-tank, and this has deep consequences with regard to the way each defines the roles its citizens should play.”
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Comments
Pure projection. I used to think that that was because of a blind spot in the way leftists think.. These days, I think it’s more likely a conscious choice.
“Dear sniveling professors. We have investigated. Yes. The Hoover Institute is still there. signed – the people you bothered about this.”
How ’bout we take a microscopic look at the Confucius Institute at Stanford first?
Racist!
Every quote in the story could just as easily be made against the various anti-racism centers that are being established (or proposed) on various campuses.
However, I would propose a blanket policy that whenever a major research university embeds another organization on its campus or forms a “center” outside the normal departmental structure, there should be an external objective evaluation at least every 5 years. These universities have asperations “to be truly excellent.” Hence, the need for quality control and protection of the brand. For example, Prof. Kinde was head of a center at American University and abruptly left to take a better deal heading up a center at BU (where he brought in a $10 million grant.) The American University center has been limping along with an acting Executive Director. Would AU be better just killing it off, rather than settling for a mediocre anti-racism center that is not “truly excellent?” Perhaps we could fly in Profs. Landy, Monismith, Palumbo-Liu, and Spiegel to write an evaluation of it.
The Left smells and tastes blood in the water and they are attacking everybody, everywhere. They know that this is their window to try to pull off their “final solution “ that they have been seeking since Woodrow Wilson
Hoover should move to an institution where it is welcome and where its scholars are treated their due dignity and deep respect rather than stay at the Pinko Palace of Indoctrination and Propaganda aka Stanford.
I have now read the entire presentation to the Stanford Faculty Senate along with the associated slide deck. It was a very impressive presentation, and asks for a further fact-finding by an ad-hoc faculty committee.
I would recommend an external evaluation of the Hoover Institution with at most one representative of the Stanford faculty and one representative of the Hoover Institution. Hoover and and should separate from Stanford if there is no longer a good fit between the two groups.
The same would be true of any Presidential Library that is connected to a University.
Further, there are many think-tanks that are outside of academia and have no connection to a university. Also, some military research labs that were originally connected to a university, have since separated their connections following the anti-war sentiments out of the Viet Nam era. People at that point became convinced that the link between universities and national labs were no longer beneficial.
So, there is a long history of amicable “divorce” between universities and embedded institutions. For example, from 1898 to 1903, New York established the “New York State College of Forestry” at Cornell. In 1903, New York cut off its appropriations and later established a school at Syracuse University. These things happen, and we all know there is a political component to every such move.