Stanford University’s Faculty Senate will weigh dueling motions this week about whether to rescind its 2020 condemnation of Scott W. Atlas, a Hoover Institution senior fellow who was an adviser to former President Donald Trump about Covid-19.
At the height of the pandemic, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution criticizing Atlas for promoting “a view of Covid-19 that contradicts medical science.” It cited his remarks that discouraged mask-wearing and that encouraged Michiganders to “rise up” against their governor in response to public-health measures, among others. The November 2020 resolution, which was approved by 85 percent of the senate membership and drew national attention, characterized Atlas’s behavior as “anathema to our community, our values, and our belief that we should use knowledge for good.”
A group of faculty members is now arguing that the passage of the resolution lacked transparency and set a “dangerous precedent” for free speech at Stanford. On Thursday, the Faculty Senate will vote on a motion to reverse it, according to meeting materials obtained by The Chronicle.
“Our motion to rescind the censure of Atlas is not about relitigating the 2020 motion but about restoring due process, which everyone recognizes was not given to Atlas,” John W. Etchemendy, a former Stanford provost and one of the faculty members behind the effort, said in an email. “I believe the great majority of senators acknowledges the flawed process and is in favor of correcting that mistake.”
At the same time, the Faculty Senate committee that sets the agenda has proposed a competing motion: to table the call for a retraction until it undergoes further discussion.
The resurrection of a three-and-a-half-year-old debate, in which both sides say they are upholding free-speech principles, is giving some at Stanford whiplash. David Spiegel, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and one of Atlas’s most vocal critics, called the timing “odd” and the proposed repeal “a terrible idea.”
“It’s appalling to insult the judgment of the Faculty Senate by asking them to rescind what was simply free speech about what Atlas was saying,” Spiegel said.
The resurrection of a three-and-a-half-year-old debate, in which both sides say they are upholding free-speech principles, is giving some at Stanford whiplash.
Prior to and during his service on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, from August to December 2020, Atlas argued that to avoid lockdowns, school closures, and other mitigation measures that disrupted society, the virus should be allowed to spread among young, healthy people and only “vulnerable” populations, like older adults, should be protected. Those views and others were strongly opposed by other experts, including at Stanford. Roughly 100 doctors and researchers signed a letter condemning Atlas’s “falsehoods and misrepresentations.” In response, Atlas threatened to sue for defamation. In another letter, more than 100 faculty members noted that Atlas — a former Stanford chief of neuroradiology — had “no expertise at all in epidemiology” and that they were “profoundly troubled” that Stanford’s name was being used to “validate such problematic information.” (Atlas is a senior fellow in health policy at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank affiliated with Stanford.)
Atlas disagreed with the 2020 senate resolution at the time. He also said that, contrary to how some of his comments had been interpreted, he did not mean to encourage violence against citizens and public officials. Atlas did not respond to a request for comment on the movement to rescind the censure.
Etchemendy said that he and two colleagues hatched the idea, and then drafted a letter signed by about 60 faculty members before presenting a proposal to the senate a month ago. They invited Jay Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis, professors at the Stanford School of Medicine who had advised Atlas during his time on the task force and promoted views of Covid that aligned with Atlas’s, to speak to the senate about “their experiences during the pandemic,” Etchemendy said.
Etchemendy and his collaborators say that the senate did not give Atlas advance warning in November 2020. According to them, the resolution did not appear on the official agenda distributed ahead of the meeting; instead, it was circulated by email about 24 hours beforehand. Atlas also wasn’t given a chance to defend himself or to appeal, they say.
“Leaving the precedent in place casts a continuing pall on the openness of discourse at Stanford: If you disagree with a dominant group of your colleagues, you could get censured by the senate without notice and without recourse,” states a memo to the senate written by Etchemendy, Bhattacharya, finance professor Jonathan B. Berk, and mechanical-engineering professor Juan G. Santiago.
Spiegel, who no longer serves on the Faculty Senate, said that the moment to have this discussion was a long time ago. “If Atlas wanted to come back to the senate and present his point of view and argue with us, he would have been welcome to come,” he said. “We never heard a word from him.”
Etchemendy and his colleagues have called the resolution “an exceedingly harsh punishment.” But Spiegel said, “We took no action that involved punishing him. We simply expressed our opinion, and we were correct in our opinion.”
The senate’s Steering Committee has proposed sending the motion to rescind to a subcommittee, the Planning and Policy Board, for discussion. That group would weigh questions like whether the senate represents the institution or the faculty as a body distinct from the institution, whether it is appropriate to censure a member of the university community, and what are the principles and procedures to follow if so.
“Just as concerns about due process and hastiness have been raised about the original resolution, so too have similar concerns been raised about the idea of bringing a vote to rescind,” the proposed motion says, so the Steering Committee “sees a need to first consider core issues of senate governance.” Committee leaders did not return a request for comment.
“I think it’s reasonable to have a deliberate and thoughtful discussion about whether or not it’s within the Faculty Senate’s purview to censure a member of the faculty,” David Palumbo-Liu, a professor of comparative literature, said by email. Should the discussion lead to a change in senate policies, the original resolution could remain intact but receive a footnote explaining the update. “That way,” he wrote, “the historical record is clear.”
