Stanford University’s Pernicious Snitching Apparatus

Stanford University’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) debacle showed that Stanford bureaucrats, like their Orwellian prototypes, are eager to make a Newspeak dictionary with ever-fewer approved words. But they are doing something even more sinister: using software to track the behavior of campus community members and encourage them to report one another for alleged bias incidents. It is time to ask just how close elite American universities will come to the tactics of, say, the People’s Republic of China.

The EHLI already included a plan to provide “financial rewards for finding/reporting” the use of such language. At a recent faculty senate meeting, Juan Santiago drew attention to another bureaucratic invention at Stanford, the Protected Identity Harm (PIH) Reporting system. It allows anyone to report anonymously any incident that “adversely and unfairly targets an individual or group on the basis of one or more . . . actual or perceived characteristics,” including “race,” “sex,” “disability,” “gender identity or expression,” and other categories. The website says the process exists to address “situations involving real or perceived incidents” and even encourages students to report incidents that “may involve constitutionally protected speech.”

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About the Author

Steven McGuire

Steven McGuire is the Paul and Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

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Stanford University’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) debacle showed that Stanford bureaucrats, like their Orwellian prototypes, are eager to make a Newspeak dictionary with ever-fewer approved words. But they are doing something even more sinister: using software to track the behavior of campus community members and encourage them to report one another for alleged bias incidents. It is time to ask just how close elite American universities will come to the tactics of, say, the People’s Republic of China.

The EHLI already included a plan to provide “financial rewards for finding/reporting” the use of such language. At a recent faculty senate meeting, Juan Santiago drew attention to another bureaucratic invention at Stanford, the Protected Identity Harm (PIH) Reporting system. It allows anyone to report anonymously any incident that “adversely and unfairly targets an individual or group on the basis of one or more . . . actual or perceived characteristics,” including “race,” “sex,” “disability,” “gender identity or expression,” and other categories. The website says the process exists to address “situations involving real or perceived incidents” and even encourages students to report incidents that “may involve constitutionally protected speech.”