Washington and Lee and the Stanford Law School
When I arrived at Stanford University in the fall of 1964 to begin four years of graduate study in chemistry, the place was an island of almost bucolic tranquility. It was nicknamed “The Farm” because the beautiful Olmsted-designed campus was situated on what was once railroad magnate Leland Stanford’s vast 8,000 acre horse ranch near Palo Alto, California, a happy circumstance that afforded the sequestered academic preserve quiet relief from the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area clamor. My later years at Stanford, however, saw that tranquility sharply infringed when student protests against the Vietnam War erupted on campus, eventually prompting the university to the extremity of abolishing its ROTC program in 1973 — that decision providing a telling presage of recent university actions, notable instances of which include the renaming of facilities named for historical Stanford figures now deemed by the school as racist or in other ways guilty of unacceptable discrimination, as judged by modern values.
One victim of this renaming campaign was David Starr Jordan, the university’s first president. Jordan shepherded Stanford through the major financial crisis that followed Leland Stanford’s death two years after the institution had been founded and funded by Stanford in 1891; and Jordan once again rescued the young school’s fortunes after the great earthquake of 1906 caused program disruption and massive structural damage to campus facilities. These daunting challenges were not unlike those faced by Robert E. Lee in his effort to rescue Washington College from physical and financial ruin after the Civil War. Nor were Lee and Jordan unlike in the successes of their respective endeavors. Jordan further resembled Lee in promoting at Stanford a modern, innovative curriculum that introduced areas of study in the practical arts. Nevertheless, Jordan’s advocacy of the eugenics movement of his day, together with his racial views, led Stanford in October of 2020 to remove his name from the university’s former Jordan Hall, Jordan Quad, and Jordan Way, the school’s president stating that due honor would continue to be paid to Jordan for his “monumental” contributions to Stanford, but now only in designated campus settings with “historical displays and educational programming,” where Jordan’s “complex” legacy could be fully explored and appreciated. (Sound familiar?)
A similar fate befell Junipero Serra, the Catholic priest who founded the system of 18th Century Christian missions in California when the territory was under Spanish rule. In 2018 Stanford determined that Serra’s missions had “inflicted great harm and violence on Native Americans,” that they “contributed to the destruction of the cultural, economic, and religious practices of indigenous communities. . . .” Serra’s name, therefore, has been removed from two campus buildings and the pedestrian/bicycle mall fronting the campus, the university again promising to “pursue new educational displays and other efforts to more fully address the multidimensional legacy of Serra and the mission system in California.” (Again, paralleling W&L’s approach to the removal of Lee’s legacy from prominent view.)
Incredibly, however, Leland Stanford himself, though a self-professed racist, remains unscathed in Stanford’s renaming frenzy. In a message to the California legislature in 1862, while Stanford was Governor of the State, he wrote, regarding the importation of Chinese laborers into California, that “the settlement among us of an inferior race is to be discouraged by every legitimate means,” adding that “There can be no doubt but that the presence among us of numbers of degraded and distinct people must exercise a deleterious influence upon the superior race. . . .” This message gained Gov. Stanford much popular applause in California until it was revealed that Stanford was himself importing Chinese laborers for rail construction work. To my knowledge, Leland Stanford’s language cited above is more blatantly racist than anything on record as having been said or written by either Robert E. Lee or George Washington; yet, unlike W&L, Stanford University has given no serious consideration to removing the Stanford name from that of the university — even though it can be added against him that Leland Stanford, commonly designated a Gilded Age “Robber Baron,” has never been credited with the degree of redemptive virtue of character and conduct attributed to Lee and Washington. Indeed, as far lost in the Woke swamp as Stanford University now seems to be, that institution appears to value its namesake brand more than W&L values its own.
Such, then, is a brief snapshot of some milestones in Stanford’s journey into deep Wokedom, the shocking results of which are nowhere more stunningly on exhibit than in the widely reported March 9 incident at Stanford Law School, a disgusting, utterly disgraceful spectacle, vividly described and analyzed in the linked article below, written by Victor Davis Hanson, noted conservative author and commentator, and a Stanford graduate himself. Regrettably, those who seek a place where civility and free speech are dead, need look no further than the Stanford Law School. And to think that this elite school’s current students will one day be among the nation’s leading jurists, is to think of a country where justice itself will soon be dead. See link to “What Happened to Stanford” below.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14455
And what about the Washington and Lee Law School? The recent behavior of W&L students at Rodney Cook’s Lee Chapel appearance, and more recently in anticipation of Matt Walsh’s visit to the campus, gives reason to expect that a visit by Judge Duncan to the W&L Law School would be no better received than at Stanford.
Respectfully,
Kenneth G. Everett ’64
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