Stanford's War Against It's Own Students

July 24, 2023 1 min read

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.

 

Read the full article:


Leave a comment


Also in National Free Speech News & Commentary

UVA, Dartmouth Latest to Reject Trump's Higher Ed Compact

October 17, 2025 1 min read

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. 

Read More
USC rejects Trump education compact aimed at shifting the university to the right

October 16, 2025 1 min read

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.”

Read More
Authoritarians in the Academy

October 15, 2025 1 min read

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."

Read More