By Francesca Block, Princeton '22
March 23, 2023
The system of punishment at Stanford is more than a decade old. Class of 1977 alum Bob Ottilie, . . .who has represented over 100 students investigated by Stanford since 2011, said a majority choose to admit responsibility and accept a lesser punishment through an “early resolution option,” which is like a plea deal. While some take this approach because they committed the violation, he said many choose it because they feel the odds are stacked against them. He sees Stanford’s disciplinary process not as a system designed to find truth, but to punish “bad behavior.” “Think about that,” he added. “That’s a presumption of guilt.” . . . In an April 2021 report, [a Stanford] committee concluded that the university’s disciplinary process is “overly punitive” and “not educational.” Less than one year later, Katie Meyer was dead.
Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The University of Virginia and Dartmouth College have become the latest higher ed institutions to publicly reject the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education." Now just three of the nine institutions that the federal government originally presented with the document have yet to announce whether they will sign.
Daniel Miller and Jaweed Kaleem
LA Times
Excerpt: The University of Southern California on Thursday rejected the controversial education compact the Trump administration offered it and eight other schools, saying it would undermine “values of free inquiry and academic excellence.”
Sarah McLaughlin
FIRE, The Free Speech Podcast
Excerpt: FIRE Senior Scholar Sarah McLaughlin discusses her new book, "Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech."