A group of Stanford professors is calling for an end to a system on campus that allows students to anonymously report on each other for what they perceive to be biased or discriminatory conduct.
At least 77 professors recently sent a petition to Stanford administrators, arguing that the university’s online reporting system, called Protected Identity Harm (PIH) Reporting, threatens free speech on campus and provides an opportunity for abuse, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Stanford Business School professor Ivan Marinovic told the news source that the University’s bias-reporting system “reminded him of the way citizens were encouraged to inform on one another” in the communist governments of the Soviet Union, East Germany, and China.
“It ignores the whole history,” he said. “You’re basically going to be reporting people who you find offensive, right? According to your ideology.”
Ironically, the practice of free speech is what provoked the professors to act.
On Jan. 22, the school’s student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, reported about a Snapchat screenshot showing a fellow student reading “Mein Kampf”—the autobiographical manifesto written by Nazi Party leader and orchestrator of the Holocaust Adolf Hitler—that circulated around campus until finally at least one person reported the incident through the school’s PIH reporting system.
The protocol had been in place since 2021, but the professors said they were unaware of it until the newspaper published the article.
“I was stunned,” professor of comparative literature told The Wall Street Journal. “It reminds me of McCarthyism.”
Some students and Stanford alumni readers of the article were outraged, inspiring them to leave comments in response.
“They’re not allowed to read a book?” one person asked. “It’s just a book. You aren’t a nazi just because you read Mein Kampf.” The poster further inquired, “aren’t Stanford students smart enough to be able to read something they disagree with without turning into that thing?”
“If I remember correctly, Mein Kampf was required reading,” a Stanford alum from the early 1970’s wrote. “Honestly, it’s a pretty boring pile of drivel … but in that moment, it was dangerously influential, something current readers should understand … Know thy enemy.”
Another wrote, “I’m not sure why this should lead to such milksop-like tremblings among the Stanford community,” adding, “I’ve read the works of imperialists, Fascists, Nazis … and genocidal tyrants. I have not done this because I one day hope to be … Pol Pot.”
“It’s theater,” another concluded. “The complainant is being a drama queen. And yet the university has to undergo an expensive process to cater to the complainant, lest they seem uncaring.”
Speaking to The Wall Street Journal about the PIH protocol, Stanford spokeswoman Dee Mostofi explained that the system “is designed to help students get along with each other.”
The Protected Identity Harm Protocol Explained
According to the FAQs on the PIH website at Stanford, university staff from both the Office of Inclusion, Community and Integrative Learning (ICIL), and the Office of the Dean of Students oversee the program.
Emphasizing that the system is not intended as a “judicial or investigative process,” Stanford states the “PIH process is centered on healing and restoration.”
Students, who wish to report an incident, are encouraged to fill out an online PIH report form, which is “anonymous” as a default. The form is lengthy, requiring specific details about the witnessed or experienced incident. Students are able to not only report on something that happened to them but also on behalf of someone else.
Informers can choose to be contacted or remain anonymous, though absolute anonymity is not necessarily guaranteed as the form clearly states that “information provided will be kept confidential to the extent possible depending on the details of the incident.”
Once forms are submitted “via a secure server,” if students choose to report anonymously, the information they provided will go through the “Data Route,” allowing the University to glean “a more accurate picture of the campus climate,” according to The Stanford Daily, and inform future University decision making.
If students include their names, the PIH website explains, their information goes through the “Connection Route,” where they will receive “resources and support.”
The type of support they receive promotes “healing” and “harm reduction,” ensures that students “feel listened to” and “heard,” and comes in a variety of ways, which Stanford calls “a menu of resolutions.”
According to a video on the site, these options include “one-on-one wellness coaching, restorative justice sessions, indigenous circle practices,” or student- or staff-mediated conversations between the informer and the perpetrator if both parties agree.
A staff member from the Division of Student Affairs will contact the reporting student within 48 hours to follow up and begin managing the process.
A staff member may also contact the incident’s perpetrator, but only “if there’s a desire from the informing party” to seek a mediated resolution option.
In an Oct. 21, 2021, letter addressed to the student body, sent when the University first introduced the system, associate vice provost for ICIL Emelyn dela Peña and senior associate vice provost and dean of students Mona Hicks described the PIH protocol as a “critical tool in addressing incidents of bias,” which they define as “conduct or incidents that adversely and unfairly target an individual or group on the basis of one or more actual or perceived characteristics: race, color, national or ethnic origin, gender or sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.”
Peña and Hicks gave examples of what the University considers biased conduct, which they said includes posting racist remarks on social media, making “sexist jokes at a party,” or calling someone an ethnic slur.
“These incidents can range from micro-aggressions to macro-aggressions and can happen on campus, off campus, or online, and can be perpetrated by a known or unknown person,” they wrote.
They differentiated incidents of bias from “more severe” hate crimes, such as defacing the side of a building with a swastika, that could potentially escalate to legal action or referral to other departments within the University to investigate.
Though Stanford acknowledges that “some speech is protected,” students “are encouraged to report all PIH incidents … so the University can take appropriate action to help improve the campus climate,” the website says.
A dashboard, maintained by the school, lists some of the incidents recently reported, including the anonymous removal of an Israeli flag from “an undergraduate internationally themed dorm,” an anonymously handwritten note left at a Dia de los Muertos altar in a residence hall that read, “This is pure idolatry. Exodus 32:4-6,” and a halftime show performance during a Stanford-Brigham Young University football game that mocked the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an incident that made national headlines in Nov. 2022.
Data Gleaned From PIH is Stored at Third-Party Contractor Maxient
The PIH website reports that, once submitted, data is stored at a third-party platform called Maxient, which dubs itself “the experts in student conduct software.”
Founded in 2003 and based in Charlottesville, Va., Maxient has over 1,300 clients, mostly colleges and universities, ranging from small private liberal arts colleges to the largest public institutions across North America.
According to its website, the company receives 7,000 reports daily.
The website goes on to reassure potential clients that data is stored in the United States.
“An exception is made for our Canadian friends,” the company clarifies, “We can store your data in Canada!”
Stanford spokeswoman Mostofi told The Wall Street Journal that “only Maxient and a small number of people within student affairs have access to the records,” but declined to say how long the data is stored.
A 2022 study (pdf) by conservative nonprofit Speech First found that 56 percent of top private and public college and university campuses across the United States run bias-reporting systems (BRS).
That statistic is a 230 percent increase in public and a 175 percent increase in private institutions of higher learning, based on data collected from a previous study that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) conducted on the same topic five years ago.
The Speech First study also found that 80 percent of college students in the United States self-censor for fear of being canceled or ostracized.