Tag: stanford

Stanford partnered with Twitter, Biden admin to censor ‘stories of true vaccine side effects’: Twitter Files

Matt Taibbi has unearthed still more evidence of collusion and censorship at Twitter, all done by people and institutions who believed that they were righteous in their efforts to ban and block Americans from telling the truth about their own personal experiences with the Covid vaccine. This time, it’s Stanford University and their Virality Project that told officials what information should be banned.

Taibbi reports that Stanford’s Virality Project took issue with accounts that used factual information to question the “expert guidance” of Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the NIAID. He notes that accounts that questioned the “Wuhan wet market” origin story of Covid, instead suggesting that the virus could have leaked from a Wuhan Virology Lab, were suspect per Stanford. That “lab leak” theory is now the primary Covid-origin theory per officials.

Accounts that purported that natural immunity was as good a protection against Covid as the vaccines, if not better, were also suspect, as well as what the Virality Project called “worrisome jokes.” Over the past few years, jokes have gotten many accounts in trouble with Twitter censors, and some mainstream media outlets questioned whether or not satire itself was an actionable offense.

All of these, Taibbi reports, were “characterized as ‘potential violations’ or disinformation ‘events’ by the Virality Project, a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billions of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs.”

The Virality Project had targeted “stories of true vaccine side effects” as actionable content, and in 2021, they “worked with government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content. At least six major Internet platforms were ‘onboarded’ to the same JIRA ticketing system, daily sending millions of items for review.”

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Stanford University Accused of Racial Engineering, Reducing Number of White Students

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. This is the end product of the left’s obsession with equity.

The Stanford Review reports:

Stanford’s Racial Engineering

Stanford’s enrollment rate for white students in the Class of 2026 was 22%, a drop from 40% for the Class of 2016 just ten years ago. While Stanford claims that “the University does not use quotas of any kind in its admission process,” a further exploration of Stanford’s enrollment statistics by the Review reveals that the university has seemingly taken part in racial engineering over the past several years—practically exchanging white applicants for Asian applicants while holding other racial group enrollment rates constant.

Over an eleven-year period, the data demonstrates that Stanford has decreased enrollment of its white students by approximately 15% and increased the enrollment of its Asian students by about 10%. All other racial groups, however, have remained roughly the same.

In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke that racial quotas were unconstitutional. Stanford claims to comply with Bakke, but the data points to a different story. Black and Hispanic enrollment rates for the Class of 2026 vary only by 0.76% and 0.44% from their enrollment rates for the Class of 2015, respectively. Whites and Asians in the Class of 2026, however, vary by 12.35% and 8.37% from their enrollment rates over a decade ago in the Class of 2015.

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Stanford professor blasts woke tattle-tale software which lets students anonymously report one another for discrimination, including boy spotted reading Mein Kampf: Creators live in $900k mansion and own VINEYARD

A group of Stanford professors are fighting back against a woke tattle-tale tool that lets students anonymously report each other for discrimination.

More than 75 professors argue in a petition to school administrators that the online tool threatens free speech on campus, with one telling the Wall Street Journal it reminded him of systems in place in the Soviet Union and China. 

The Maxient reporting system, employed at 1,300 institutions around the country, has already been challenged by free speech advocates in Florida, Texas, Michigan and Oklahoma.

It has apparently made Aaron Hark, 42, a millionaire, owning a $900,000 dollar home in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his family’s own vineyard. 

Hark set up the firm with wife Celeste, 41, with the pair now enjoying the fruits of their woke online hall monitor software in more ways than one. 

Back at Stanford, school administrators say the system is necessary to ensure a respectful campus, despite criticism that it is creepy and Orwellian. 

The school has been using the third-party system since 2021, when it became widely used at universities across the country for students to report their colleagues who were not wearing masks. 

But university professors said they did not know of the system, run by third-party contractor Maxient, until the school newspaper reported on an incident in which a student was reported for reading Mein Kampf.

‘I was stunned,’ Russell Berman, a professor of comparative literature who created the petition, told the Journal. ‘It reminds me of McCarthyism.’

According to the company’s website, Maxient is the ‘software of choice for managing behavior records at colleges and universities across North America.

‘Our centralized reporting and record-keeping helps institutions connect the dots and prevent students from falling through the cracks,’ it says, noting: ‘Maxient serves as an integral component of many schools overall early alert efforts, helping to identify students in distress and coordinate the efforts of various departments to provide follow-up.’ 

Maxient was founded in 2003 and is now being used at more than 1,300 institutions across the United States.

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Stanford gives black students preference on bus rides and movie tickets, prompting complaint

Stanford University’s Graduate Student Council gave black students preference for tickets and a bus ride to a screening of the second “Black Panther” movie, prompting a federal civil rights complaint by a former senior Trump administration official.

Adam Kissel’s onetime employer, the Department of Education, won’t acknowledge it received a complaint about the incident, however, or commit to investigating it.

Stanford is on the hook under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because the GSC is part of the student government, which is recognized by the university, Kissel told the department’s Office for Civil Rights San Francisco division in a Nov. 18 complaint shared with Just the News. (Complainants don’t have to be victims themselves.)

The GSC has “discriminated on the basis of race in a program or activity and emailed students about this discrimination,” he wrote, pointing the feds to the email reprinted by The Stanford Review, the independent campus newspaper cofounded by then-student Peter Thiel, the Trump-supporting venture capitalist.

Tasked with supporting graduate student organizations and “providing community events,” the GSC informed students it had organized back-to-back Nov. 10 private off-campus screenings of “Wakanda Forever,” with 450 tickets available.

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Obama is expected to call for more internet censorship in Stanford speech

President Barack Obama is today attending Stanford University to give a speech about censoring “misinformation” online. He has delivered such speeches multiple times over the past year.

According to The Chicago Tribune, Obama “is expected to add his voice to demands for rules to rein in the flood of lies polluting public discourse.”

“In private meetings and public appearances over the last year, the former president has waded deeply into the public fray over misinformation and disinformation, warning that the scourge of falsehoods online has eroded the foundations of democracy at home and abroad,” the New York Times said.

Recently, Obama talked about censorship at an event organized by the Atlantic and the University of Chicago. He said social media companies should censor what is not good for society.

“I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms to make money,” Obama said. “But say to them that there’s certain practices you engage in that we don’t think are good for society.”

In a tweet Tuesday, Obama promoted censorship, arguing misinformation is a threat to democracy.

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New research suggests COVID was less deadly than thought in first year of pandemic

COVID-19 was less lethal across nearly every age group in its first full year than previously thought, according to an updated review of global research from Stanford University’s Meta-Research Innovation Center (METRIC).

Between summer and Christmas 2021, METRIC’s estimates of deaths from infection fell by half in multiple age groups, including young people, and less sharply in others.

The international estimates, which have not been peer-reviewed, are not substantially different from the CDC’s own “best estimate” of COVID mortality in the U.S., last updated in March. They use different age ranges, making exact comparisons difficult.

The findings raise questions about ongoing COVID restrictions and mandates, particularly for schoolchildren and college students, who remain at the lowest overall risk from infection. 

The risk-benefit ratio of vaccine boosters is also under scrutiny, with international authorities souring on their wide deployment and a new Israeli study finding that a fourth dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines doesn’t stop the Omicron variant.

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Stanford University sends email to students blaming Trump for mass shootings

An email sent out to Stanford University students from a group of administrators and faculty blamed Donald Trump for the recent spate of violent incidents against people of Asian descent.

The email was sent by Cindy NG, the director of the Asian American Activities Center, and signed by several other dean-level personnel as well as 14 other professors.

According to Campus Reform, the letter reads, in part:

“the recent exponential increase in violent attacks has been fueled by a former president who blamed the COVID pandemic on the Chinese.”

“anti-Asian racism and violence must be addressed in the context of dismantling structural and institutionalized systems created to maintain white supremacy.”

“We have a right to be angry, we have a right to demand justice. We know that anti-Asian racism and violence must be addressed in the context of dismantling structural and institutionalized systems created to maintain white supremacy. We are committed to this work.”

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