Stanford University, like many colleges, has been neutral about student expressions of support for Hamas, which massacred more than 1200 people in Israel, including at least 14 Americans, 12 people from Thailand, and 10 students from Nepal. It claims it has to remain neutral about “geopolitical issues and news events.”
But Stanford has not been neutral in the past. As a recent Stanford graduate noted, “The Stanford administration had a statement within hours of multiple Trump executive orders they didn’t like, statements on racism hoaxes, and about the Paris Climate agreement. It’s been almost 3 days since a terrorist invasion of Israel, banners all over campus, and…Nothing! Crickets.”
Stanford regularly takes ideological and political positions, such as about news events and climate change, reports Campus Reform:
In a statement acknowledging campus displays celebrating this weekend’s Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, Stanford University has released a statement vowing to help students find proper placement for the displays and insisting that the school “does not take positions on geopolitical issues and news events.”
Stanford acknowledged the banners in a Monday statement, clarifying that it would not take a stand against the “content or viewpoint expressed,” but rather was working to find the students responsible for hanging the banners so that it could help the students hang the displays in an approved area.
”An effort is being made to identify the individuals who hung the banners so they may be advised where the banners may be posted without violating university rules,” reads the statement signed by Vice Provost for Student Affairs Susie Brubaker-Cole and Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life Tiffany Steinwert.
”These removals are based on the location of the banners, not the content or viewpoint expressed,” it clarified.
But…Stanford has condemned the content of displays as recently as May, when it issued a statement in response to swastikas drawn on a whiteboard affixed to a student’s dorm door.
In 2021, a Stanford statement about an individual student’s expulsion following racist social media posts asserted that “Threats to members of the Stanford community, whether those threats are direct or implied, are unacceptable,” adding “Identity-based attacks, of all kinds, are antithetical to our values.”
Stanford’s claim that it does not comment on “geopolitical issues and news events” contradicts several past statements, including a 2021 statement from University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne about the then-ongoing George Floyd case, and a 2015 letter sent to French officials detailing specific policy recommendations ahead of the Paris Climate Summit.
If Stanford criticized pro-terrorist students, that could raise the hackles of the campus left. Some left-wing activists and journalists are happy about the massacres of civilians in Israel by Hamas fighters. They view it as a successful form of “decolonization.”
That includes some campus racial-justice activists and Black Lives Matter chapters. “It’s particularly disturbing to me to see some BLM chapters cheerlead the slaughter of Jewish civilians, including children. Jews have historically been among the first to march with blacks and to this day Jews are consistently among the most receptive audiences for antiracism,” says the black writer Thomas Chatterton Williams.
Hamas’s actions raise inconvenient questions that progressive campus officials may not want to think or talk about, such as the role of progressive American appeasement policies in spawning Hamas’s terror attacks.
Hamas seized hundreds of hostages from Israel, mostly Israelis but also some Americans and Europeans, such as ten Italians. The seizure of these hostages came soon after Hamas’s sponsor, Iran, received a $6 billion ransom this year from the Biden administration for releasing five American hostages.
Hamas confirmed that Iran provided the weapons it used in its attack on Israel. “We thank the Islamic Republic of Iran who provided us with weapons, money and other equipment! He gave us missiles to destroy Zionist fortresses, and helped us with standard anti-tank missiles!”
The Biden administration has also released millions of dollars to the Hamas-controlled government of the Gaza strip — money that the Trump administration had withheld.
