On January 6, 2021, I was outraged by the events on Capitol Hill incited by President Trump, and the long delay before he said anything to stop the rioting. I posted a tweet and asked friends and colleagues to retweet my post.
I also created a webpage which expressed that opinion, highlighting the comments of General James Mattis, Trump’s former Secretary of Defense and a colleague of mine here at the Hoover Institution. I then invited all my colleagues at Hoover, fellows and staff, to add their name to the website. Click here for the text of that message.
You can see the result of that appeal here. The list of colleagues begins with a Nobel Prize laureate and includes at least one Republican. I also got supportive messages from several people who were Hoover staff or visitors.
My message went out in the afternoon of January 7. That evening, a Stanford professor asked me if I had used LISTSERV. I told him I did not know what LISTSERV was. I learned later that Stanford uses LISTSERV to send out emails. I am a Mac guy and used my Mac email server to send out the messages. I sent my emails from home, did not get any help from any Stanford person, and did not use any Stanford resource except for my computer. I assumed that I could use my computer for personal communications.
Early the next morning, Stanford expressed disapproval of my outreach:
“Please discontinue sending emails to Hoover Staff that do not involve University business. …
If you continue to send emails to Hoover Staff that do not involve University business, then I will request that University Human Resources consider disciplinary action.”
After that message I stopped adding names and did not do any publicity. I ignored the many staff people and visitors who wanted me to add their names because their status at Stanford is not as secure as those whose names appear on the webpage.
I asked several Stanford people to point me to the rule that expressly forbids me to send Stanford people messages that do not involve University business. Ordinary professors told me that they had never heard of such a rule, and the bureaucrats I asked did not respond.
I regarded this as interference with my freedom of speech. However, I am aware of the limits on free speech for employees of private organizations like Stanford. See, for example, a Hoover video on this matter. Moreover, this was consistent with my past experience with Stanford lawyers. Below is the last paragraph of the initial message to my colleagues.
Let me tell you about one of my interactions with Stanford lawyers. Many years ago, I attended a sexual harassment training session and participated in a moot court where a Stanford supervisor was criticized for displaying French postcards in his office. After the many moot juries delivered their decisions, I asked the moot court judge about the importance of Freedom of Speech in this matter. A Stanford lawyer did not allow the judge to answer and emphatically declared “There is no freedom of speech at Stanford.”
I thought it was safe at Stanford to criticize Trump. It appears to have been permissible at Harvard, Duke and Northwestern. Many Stanford people signed an open letter organized by other people without (as far as I know) Stanford making any objections. Some might say that Stanford rules are not consistent, but when, as the Stanford lawyer declared, “There is no freedom of speech at Stanford” you can also conclude that Stanford University officials have unlimited discretion when dealing with such issues.