Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article stated that The Stanford Review provided Robert Spencer with their article on Professor Palumbo-Liu for publication on his blog, however the Review and Mr. Spencer have denied this and the Daily could not confirm the columnist’s claim. In addition, Mr. Spencer was banned from entering the UK for statements with the potential to cause “inter-community violence” and “foster hatred”, not because he was deemed a “national security threat”. The Daily regrets these errors.
Over the course of my time at Stanford, one of the oddest things I have noticed is the strong interest many professors express towards the Cultural Revolution in China — specifically, the vicious attacks on university professors and academics that led to many being fired, arrested, hurt or even killed.
Hearing horror stories from that era is almost like watching something out of “Black Mirror”: something distinctly awful and dystopian, made all the more chilling because it could easily happen to us, right here and now. The professors affected by the Cultural Revolution were just like ours, the only difference being that the accident of birth placed them in a different country a few decades earlier. So on some level, I understand the visceral appeal and relatability of these stories to many of my professors. But these stories are ultimately about traumatic, horrible events, made palatable to us as conversation fodder only because of the privilege we have of being removed from ever fearing that our professors’ lives would be endangered by what they have to say.
Well, we had that privilege.
If you haven’t been following closely, the Review published a hit piece against David Palumbo-Liu, an esteemed professor on campus and also one of the first to be affiliated with the Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity program. In the piece, the Review calls Palumbo-Liu a “thug,” and makes absolutely baseless claims of him supporting violence, despite the professor stating the exact opposite during his interview with them. The Review’s article then found its way onto the blog of Robert Spencer, a noted right-wing bigot, who is banned from entering the UK for “statements which may ‘foster hatred’ and lead to ‘inter-community violence'” in the country. Next thing we know, a respected Stanford professor and his family are getting death threats all because of completely unsubstantiated slander from a student group that disagrees with his views.
And while the Review clearly did not call for violence against Palumbo-Liu, their falsification and villainization certainly had a role to play in what came after. Moreover, I think it is safe to say that they knew the kind of attention these manufactured falsehoods could garner from certain people.
Forget banning speakers or liberal bubbles — this is an infringement on free speech in its purest and ugliest form: using the threat of violence and force to silence those who disagree. It is designed to intimidate and make sure that those who disagree stay silent rather than speak up. The Review loves to hide behind “free speech” when it is convenient, but frankly, for all their self-proclaimed victimhood, campus conservatives like the Review and the College Republicans exercise their right to speak just fine. They were able to bring in their speaker and let him spew his hatred while being protected by $7,000-a-night security personnel paid for, mostly, by your ASSU funds.
Where is Palumbo-Liu’s right to speak without fear of reprisal? Where is his $7,000-a-night security to keep him and his family safe? If this is not the height of hypocrisy on the part of the Review, I don’t know what is.
Over the past years, I’ve been told by many people whom I deeply respect that the best way to deal with provocateurs like the Review is to ignore them and withhold the attention they need to be relevant. And I used to believe this too. But as this episode proves, there are some things that this strategy isn’t good for. Lying about a professor to generate fake controversy requires no readership or attention from the Stanford community if those lies can simply be exported to external actors, who are all too happy to advance these falsehoods. The Review was able to perform this grievous misrepresentation of a professor and face — so far — absolutely zero repercussions for what they have done. And if this is going to be the new normal, I am gravely concerned about what more is to come.
The thing about fascism and authoritarianism is that it happens gradually and incrementally so that individual incidents within that process tend to fall under the radar for most people. What happened here is still thankfully a far cry from teams of Red Guards causing wanton murder and destruction in the name of Chairman Mao, but it is still too close for comfort. I’m generally not fond of slippery slope arguments, but calling a highly-regarded professor a thug and slandering him in an article that caused death threats against him and his family is also no ordinary incident, and we cannot simply allow it to slip by unnoticed. Stanford deserves better. We all deserve better.
Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu