On Friday, the Hoover Institution will be hosting Governor Ron DeSantis. If you don’t know who he is, I envy you. As a Florida resident, immigrant and woman – or as someone with common sense – I can only call him what he is: a racist, queerphobic, sexist, power-hungry and bootlicking politician.
When I moved from Brazil to South Florida in 2017, the Trump anti-immigrant rhetoric was already on full blast. So, witnessing DeSantis come to power in 2019, I initially saw him as just another voice in the choir of racism and xenophobia, not unlike the man at Walmart who screamed at my mom to “speak American” soon after we arrived.
Except, he’s a racist with power. He promptly signed a state bill prohibiting any local government from passing sanctuary city bills, which would prohibit local police from assisting ICE and have been credibly found to lower crime rates. He was behind the 12-million-dollar scheme that tricked 48 asylum seekers in San Antonio, Texas – yes, you read that right, it was outside his state – into taking private flights to Massachusetts, only to be abandoned upon arrival. Today, DeSantis is an ardent supporter of the increasingly Gestapo-style ICE – recall Alligator Alcatraz – which has rapidly escalated its family separation, brutality and illegal kidnappings.
Oh, but how could I forget! Hoover is such a bastion of freedom. So, in the name of free speech, this Stanford institution will platform a governor who passed the notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
The day that law was signed, students in my high school skipped class to protest. We held our signs under the blazing sun and sticky Florida humidity. My public school, being in a majority-blue district, has consistently fought against DeSantis’ anti-freedom policies. He threatened to pull funding from school districts that set masking policies during the height of a global pandemic, a medically irresponsible breach of districts’ authority. He has championed the banning of books in classrooms, which visibly fueled my English teacher’s stress and drove her to make sure we read Toni Morrison, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and other works by Black women that DeSantis would have banned altogether. Today, Florida has by far the most book bans in the country.
When it comes to protesters, he’s been pretty forward. “If you drive off, and you hit one of these [protesters], that’s their fault for impinging on you,” he exclaimed earlier this year.
It’s not just about the glaring hypocrisy of a walking threat to free speech being welcomed where the “winds of freedom” are supposed to blow. It’s not just about his hateful speech. By willingly giving him a platform, Stanford is overlooking the real, material violence of his policies. Systemic violence is violence.
In states with abortion bans like Florida, women are twice as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth. States that pass anti-transgender laws have shown a 72% increase in suicide attempts among transgender and gender-nonconforming teens — as someone with a transgender sibling, I know firsthand how destructive such legislation is. DeSantis passed one of the most extreme laws banning gender-affirmative care for youth and restricting it for adults. Seemingly to make sure the healthcare system discriminates against more people, he also made it legal to deny healthcare based on a patient’s “religious” or “moral” beliefs.
Abortion bans are violent. Anti-sanctuary policies are violent. Encouraging the killing of protesters is violent. Gutting Medicaid is violent. Transphobic and ableist laws are violent. Anti-environmental health policies are violent. Anti-gun safety laws are violent. Stanford is platforming someone who has encouraged violent policy.
It is not new for Stanford to not just welcome but protect speakers with hateful views from Judge Kyle Duncan to Matt Walsh. I’d like to believe that they truly outdid themselves this time, but perhaps next up, we’ll host a political candidate endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi leaders – like Donald Trump! Unless it’s a Free Palestine protester with a megaphone outside 12-1 p.m. protest hours, it’s all free speech, right?
What Stanford overlooks is that DeSantis’ spew of violence and hate affects most of the campus community the university is supposed to protect — anyone who can get pregnant, anyone who can be racially profiled by ICE, anyone who can’t afford high medical bills. Those not in the immediate line of fire all know at least one person who is. All of us need to be angry that, amidst a rising fascist regime, Stanford welcomes its perpetrators with a comfy chair and a mic. We all deserve better.
This is not education. It’s fascist propaganda.
This problem could very easily be solved. Stanford must have ethical guidelines for speaker selection. A good ethical policy, with student and staff input, would prevent bigots from being given an even larger platform.
I don’t particularly have faith in University president Jonathan Levin or the Board of Trustees to take this basic step – they have yet to follow the ‘divest from genocide and apartheid’ part of their ethical investment guidelines. They are probably too scared that, if they dare to do the right thing, Trump will cut federal funds, and they will have to sell more assets from their whopping 41–billion–dollar endowment. Scariest of all, they will have to finally take a stand.
It’s up to us to be empathetic towards those suffering and angry at those causing suffering in whatever way we can. To not let ourselves become numb and callous. To organize, to write, to criticize. To stand up for each other when Stanford refuses to. That must include calling out perpetrators of bigoted violence instead of giving them a stage.
Amanda Campos ’26 is a Public Policy & Earth Systems major and a student activist from Brazil and Florida.