I recently received an email that made me laugh. It started with: “On a campus as intellectually diverse as Stanford …”
I don’t find Stanford to be intellectually diverse, not really. Even when different opinions do arise, established campus groups and the social media mob are quick to crush them. I write and edit for The Stanford Review, which means that I have had 43 “Acts of Intolerance” complaints submitted against me by people who remain anonymous, at least to me. My colleagues’ external jobs were threatened: Activists contacted their employers and demanded their firings. I am lucky, by contrast: I don’t have a job to lose.
I’ve heard that no man is an island, but classes at Stanford often give me the contrary impression. I have opposed affirmative action in class discussions, only to be called a racist and told that I have offended another student, as if a classmate’s reaction to a policy stance were grounds for its silencing. And perhaps it will be; if Stanford were to accede to the demands of a prominent activist group on campus, my position on affirmative action would be deemed a “microagression” and be classified as hate speech. The message gets through loud and clear: They would rather I stay silent.
My student representatives treat Israel as the Jew among nations, singled out for special condemnation. In fact, pro-Israel activists ask me to not write in support of Israel because they worry that the cause will suffer in the eyes of Stanford students just by its association with me. I have to put up with students arguing for abortion because “it reduces crime,” indifferent to the obvious implications. I am told that my race (white) and gender (male) invalidate my opinion; being Jewish doesn’t earn me minority status at Stanford — in fact, it’s just the opposite.
But I am a conservative, and I expect such reactions. I do not need anyone’s help to speak my mind. I argue in class discussion sections that Justice Antonin Scalia was an intellectual titan, that the surge in Iraq was the most admirable policy decision in my lifetime, that the Constitution helped to end slavery, not perpetuate it, that America is the greatest force for good on earth and that the Bible is its greatest source of wisdom. It is the genuine liberal at Stanford — not a progressive and thus hilariously termed a centrist — who has not been warned about the insularity of this college campus. This is the student who is shocked, silenced and reduced to meekly walking up to me after class and thanking me for airing their hidden beliefs. Sometimes I think I am the only thing keeping discussion sections interesting. If I weren’t there, would students just agree with each other for 50 minutes?
Every student says they want diversity of thought, but I hesitate to take them at their word. Did they know that evangelical Christians make up a quarter of the country? How many do they think there are at Stanford? From what I hear, especially (and shamefully) in pro-Israel circles, I don’t think students are at all troubled by the underrepresentation of evangelicals.
Intellectual diversity means more pro-life students, but then students would call them anti-woman and anti-choice and anti-reproductive rights and hate them for their views. Intellectual diversity means more students opposed to gay marriage, but then students can’t wait to jump on the bandwagon to boycott North Carolina or Georgia for not forcing Christians to bake cakes they don’t want to bake or for their bathroom laws.
Intellectual diversity means more skeptics of climate change action, more believers in gender differences, more opponents of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, taking stances that other Stanford students find repellent. Intellectual diversity is not an easy position to maintain, because it involves listening to other viewpoints with respect.
If students want to silence me and people like me, they are not for intellectual diversity. They know they are right, and they do not want to waste their time listening to “retrograde” views. But then again, Stanford students turned down U.C. Berkeley for a reason, didn’t they?
Elliot Kaufman is a sophomore at Stanford University. He is the news editor of The Stanford Review, Stanford’s conservative publication, and a former vice president of Cardinal for Israel, Stanford’s pro-Israel group. He hails from Toronto. This essay first appeared in the Stanford Daily.