Being honest about their histories can help universities regain trust - The Washington Post

On Wednesday, Stanford University released a report documenting the university’s antisemitic practices to limit the number of Jewish students admitted in the 1950s. Those exclusions were followed by decades of denials intended to mislead students, alumni and the public. Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne called the antisemitism, an “ugly component of Stanford’s history.” He observed that the university must “acknowledge” and “confront” this chapter and “seek to do better.” As scholars on the Stanford faculty who helped research and write the report, we see our work as similar to recent reckonings at Georgetown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton universities and elsewhere. Yet these isolated institutional research projects are, at best, only the beginning of what might be an ongoing undertaking by universities to contend with their pasts. In doing so it may be possible for higher education to repair its eroding relationship with the American public. Public trust in universities has

On Wednesday, Stanford University released a report documenting the university’s antisemitic practices to limit the number of Jewish students admitted in the 1950s. Those exclusions were followed by decades of denials intended to mislead students, alumni and the public. Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne called the antisemitism, an “ugly component of Stanford’s history.” He observed that the university must “acknowledge” and “confront” this chapter and “seek to do better.” As scholars on the Stanford faculty who helped research and write the report, we see our work as similar to recent re