Buried in a Wall Street Journal article about Stanford is a sentence that UC campuses are somehow outsourcing a bias complaint system to an outside private firm. We reproduce excerpts from the article as it appeared today in UCOP Daily News Clips. Is it true that UC is engaging in such outsourcing? Apart from the obvious free speech issues discussed in the article, exactly what the role of a private firm is in the process raises questions.
A group of Stanford University professors is pushing to end a system that allows students to anonymously report classmates for exhibiting discrimination or bias, saying it threatens free speech on campus. The backlash began last month, when a student reading “Mein Kampf,” the autobiographical manifesto of Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, was reported through the school’s “Protected Identity Harm” system.* The reporting system has been in place since the summer of 2021, but faculty say they were unaware of it until the student newspaper wrote about the incident and the system, spurring a contentious campus debate. “I was stunned,” said Russell Berman, a professor of comparative literature who said he believes the reporting system could chill free speech on campus and is ripe for abuse. “It reminds me of McCarthyism.”
The system is designed to help students get along with one another, said Dee Mostofi, a Stanford spokeswoman. “The process aims to promote a climate of respect, helping build understanding that much speech is protected while also offering resources and support to students who believe they have experienced harm based on a protected identity,” she said. The Stanford faculty’s effort is part of broader pushback against bias-reporting systems around the country. About half of college campuses have one—more than twice as many as five years ago—according to a 2022 survey by Speech First, a conservative nonprofit. Free-speech advocates have taken several schools to court and forced them to change their systems, alleging they inhibit the exchange of ideas.
The systems were more widely used during the pandemic, when students were encouraged to report on classmates for not wearing masks, said Cherise Trump, executive director of Speech First. The pandemic also coincided with a spike in hate crimes. At Stanford, students can report a “Protected Identity Harm Incident,” which is defined as conduct targeting an individual or group on the basis of characteristics including race or sexual orientation. The system is meant to “build and maintain a better, safer, and more respectful campus community,” according to the school’s website. The system defaults to anonymous reporting and most students file that way. They use an online form to describe how the bias was demonstrated, which triggers an inquiry within 48 hours. Both parties are contacted.
Participation in the inquiry is voluntary. But it may not feel that way to accused students, said Juan Santiago, a professor of mechanical engineering who favors getting rid of the system. “If you’re an 18-year-old freshman and you get contacted by an administrator and told you’ve been accused of some transgression, what are you going to do?” Prof. Santiago said. “They may not call that punitive but that can be very stressful.”
Prof. Santiago said he is wary that anonymous complaints could be exaggerated or used to attack someone. He helped collect 77 faculty signatures to petition the school to investigate free speech and academic freedom on campus, the first step to getting rid of the anonymous-reporting system...
The reports are stored in a platform operated by a third party called Maxient, a Charlottesville, Va.-based company that has contracts with 1,300 schools—mostly colleges and universities in the U.S., said company co-owner Aaron Hark. Only Maxient and a small number of people within the student affairs office have access to the records, said Ms. Mostofi. She declined to say how long they are stored. A dashboard maintained by the school lists a few incidents students have reported using the anonymous system, including the removal of an Israeli flag and a racial slur written on a whiteboard hanging on a dorm-room door.
At the University of California, which includes 10 campuses, the reporting system collected 457 acts of “intolerance or hate” during the 2021-22 school year. Of those, 296 were defined as offensive speech. The UC said those incidents include “gestures, taunts, mockery, unwanted jokes or teasing, and derogatory or disparaging comments of a biased nature.”...
Full story at https://www.wsj.com/articles/stanford-faculty-moves-to-stop-students-from-reporting-bias-anonymously-cbac78ed.
Are the academic senates at the various UC campuses aware of the system and the outsourcing?
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*The incident's context has never been clear, since the book is assigned in classes. For information on the incident: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/30/stanford-questioned-over-response-mein-kampf-photo.
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