Two months into my freshman year at Stanford, I was sent a folder titled “NATO Applicants.” Inside, I found resumes, transcripts, letters of recommendation and other sensitive academic materials from upperclassmen applying for a highly competitive internship they had spent years working toward. Here I was, a freshman who still did not know where the Huang Basement was, being asked to evaluate candidates only months after graduating high school. I was even asked to interview them because I, a nineteen-year-old freshman, was apparently fit to decide who should intern at NATO that summer despite never earning one of these fellowships myself.  Weeks later, I quit my position on Stanford in Government’s (SIG) Fellowships and Stipends committee, leaving Stanford’s supposed “premier” place for government service. 

My experience reviewing applications exemplifies a fundamental issue with the partnership between Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service and SIG, a student-run club to which Haas has outsourced much of its pre-professional government programming. Consequently, Haas provides a weak institutional home for students interested in government service, while SIG has been tasked with performing functions that require far more professional oversight — like evaluating applications for NATO. The result has been a dubious selection process for fellowships and stipends, limited ideological diversity and an unprofessional public-facing image for Stanford’s main government-service pipeline.

In its mission statement, SIG calls itself “a key part of the Haas Center’s public policy pathway” for students interested in government service. Indeed, undergraduates in SIG hold the keys to some of Stanford’s most coveted government internships and public-service stipends: opportunities connected to the World Bank, the United Nations, NATO, Congress and elected officials. From what I observed during my time in SIG, most decisions were made in good faith, but good faith is not enough. Applicants’ materials were not anonymized, and in a tight circle of government-interested students, personal bias inevitably shapes outcomes. Why would the Stanford Haas Center trust a handful of undergraduates to help decide, behind closed doors and with limited oversight, which students receive such important opportunities? Haas, with a yearly budget of 11 million dollars, certainly has the resources to ensure that fellowships and stipends are managed entirely by professional staff, not by makeshift undergraduate committees.

SIG also claims that it “reflects Stanford’s hallmark entrepreneurial spirit with its completely student-run programming — a characteristic that sets it apart from similar organizations at peer institutions.” In reality, the opposite is true: SIG’s student-run operations set it below similar organizations at peer institutions. With its informal student management, SIG often appears less like Stanford’s institutional home for government service and more like an ordinary student club. That would be fine if SIG were just a student club, but a place considered Stanford’s premier place for government service owes its students a more serious institutional identity. 

Beyond an unprofessional reputation, ideological diversity is also limited within the Haas Center and SIG’s public-service ecosystem, despite a mission of welcoming diverse perspectives and experiences. Again, a major reason for this shortcoming is structural. Haas appears to partner largely with NGO service programs that often share a similar ideological orientation — gender equity, LGBTQ+ rights, environmental justice, indigenous sovereignty and related causes. This creates a public-service culture that feels overwhelmingly left-leaning. The natural space for students with different political perspectives is usually government-related programming, which is largely nested in SIG. Of course, conservatives are known minorities on elite college campuses; however, SIG has not hosted a single conservative speaker in over a year, suggesting a largely liberal membership base despite presenting itself as nonpartisan. Whether this issue stems from ideological spillover from Haas or from a precedent of liberal student leadership left unaccountable to SIG’s institutional values is unclear. Either way, it remains a serious problem.

For comparison, consider the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP), a serious, professionally run organization where government service is central to its mission. It also demonstrates considerably more ideological diversity. Stanford does not need to replicate UChicago’s program, but it is troubling that a peer institution offers a far more professional, centralized and ideologically diverse model for students interested in public service. At first, the Hoover Institution might seem to be Stanford’s rendition of an IOP, but compared to UChicago’s undergraduate-oriented IOP programming, Hoover engagement remains elusive and exclusive for those without an official research position. The institution may be an extraordinary think tank, but its events, built for scholars, policymakers and professionals, are not designed for cultivating a broad undergraduate community of students engaged in government and politics. For instance, just this past October, Hoover turned away scores of undergraduates, including myself, after we had signed up to hear from Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at one of the institution’s few events open to undergraduates. 

Other organizations have tried to make up for the Haas-SIG shortcomings, but the result has been an ad hoc, chaotic and decentralized public service ecosystem. Stanford Democracy Hub was created in part to address this problem and has recently worked to better coordinate these organizations. Though quitting SIG initially felt like a step backward — especially given Stanford’s branding of the club — it led me toward the kind of fulfilling political engagement I had expected to find there. Soon after, I found my home at the newly re-energized Stanford Political Union, which has helped fill the gap in ideological diversity and political discourse. Meanwhile, many of my peers have found their homes at student-run political organizations like Stanford Democrats, Stanford Abundance and other clubs that provide students with opportunities for political and government engagement outside of SIG and Haas. Still, it is disappointing that at one of the wealthiest and most notable universities in the world, an eclectic group of undergraduate clubs must compensate for the deficiencies of a multimillion-dollar public service institution. 

These issues are solvable. SIG should be more directly integrated into Haas, giving the organization an IOP-like professional structure and the institutional accountability it needs. The change would require Haas to incorporate more government programming, naturally broadening its political culture, while professional staff, rather than undergraduates, would be held accountable to SIG’s nonpartisan mission. Stanford students deserve a government-service infrastructure that protects applicants from informal student gatekeeping and finally provides a centralized, professionally run and genuinely nonpartisan pathway into public life worthy of the university it represents.