To the editor:

This is my first letter to Stanford since graduating in 1972. I don’t remember any politically polarized person being invited to speak at Stanford when I was a student there. We already had the world’s experts teaching on a variety of subjects.

In a case like this, it would be best for the visiting judge to sit down in a group and have a Goethean discussion, with each person’s comments adding to the comments before, with the intent to arrive closer to truth. That being impossible, where such a large group was interested in either cheering on or opposing the ideas of the judge, it would have been better to have a true debate, with someone of equal stature having the opposite point of view on stage debating the issue with the visiting judge.

The audience would not only learn about true debating but be able to judge the winner. Shame on you Stanford for setting up a forum that was likely to end the very way it did.

John Riedel MD