From the Community | President Levin's first task: the task of academic freedom

This winter marks the fourth anniversary of the deadliest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. As an infectious disease researcher with an interest in using science to develop evidence-based guidelines, I think it is time we have an open discussion about why such guidelines have often not been implemented during COVID-19. This type of discourse has been fleeting: Since 2020, I have seen early career researchers intimidated over their stance on COVID-19 and witnessed entire research programs being abandoned due to censorship campaigns. That's why I was happy to see that Stanford planned to host a pandemic policy summit on Friday on exactly these issues. Until I read more.

I and others have already examined in detail the problems with the pandemic statements made by participants at this summit, as they clearly contradict both the scientific consensus and university policy. To name just a few highlights: The organizer, Jay Bhattacharya, was an expert witness against COVID countermeasures and testified that the American Academy of Pediatrics and several judges contained numerous errors (including knowingly citing a retracted study). Meanwhile, Sunetra Gupta, Marty Makary and Monica Gandhi have made repeated failed predictions about COVID disappearing as early as July 2020. John Ioannidis, Eran Bendavid, and Bhattacharya conducted a deeply flawed seroprevalence study in which they postulated an infection fatality rate for COVID-19 so low that it would have required the entire population of New York City to be infected by early April 2020. Most clearly, Scott Atlas, Bhattacharya and Gupta argued for a policy of deliberate mass infection to achieve herd immunity against the virus before the introduction of a vaccine.

I want to be clear: although I think this summit has minimal academic value, I fully support the right of those involved to hold the event. However, I am shocked and deeply disappointed that new Stanford President Jonathan Levin '94 is using his platform to give this event a sense of legitimacy through opening remarks. This is unusual. During my time at Stanford, the president rarely spoke at academic events—let alone small, departmental events. The president also avoided attending highly political, controversial events like Friday's summit to maintain the appearance of institutional neutrality. I am deeply concerned that the president's appearance calls into question his commitment to a core value of the university: academic freedom.

When his appointment was announced, President Levin promised to “reinforce our commitment to academic excellence and freedom.” Although the summit ostensibly aims to promote academic freedom and vigorous debate, careful examination of the speakers' actions is required to understand what they actually mean. Although many of the speakers at Friday's summit complained that their viewpoints were not adequately taken into account during the pandemic, some of them were key advisers at the highest levels of government, pushing those of President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the British prime minister Boris Johnson. Anders Tegnell, for example, served as Sweden's state epidemiologist while Atlas was Trump's COVID-19 adviser. Several panelists have testified multiple times before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

To be clear: Academic freedom is under significant attack at Stanford. In reality, those who will speak at this conference are the main perpetrators of these attacks. By participating on Friday, President Levin appears to be not siding with academic freedom, but actually opposing it. Take, for example, the speaker list for the ironically named panel “Misinformation, Censorship, and Academic Freedom,” which includes Scott Atlas and Jenin Younes. When a group of nearly 100 biomedical faculty at Stanford University wrote an open letter correcting Atlas' “falsehoods and misrepresentations of science,” Atlas, then a government official, tried to silence the faculty by threatening to shut down the group to sue for defamation if they did not retract the letter.

Younes, meanwhile, played a central role in even broader legal efforts to silence disinformation researchers at Stanford University. In Murthy v. Missouri, Younes represented a group, including Bhattacharya, who claimed government officials pressured social media companies to censor their comments about COVID-19. A 6-3 majority of Supreme Court justices concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing – they had failed to provide evidence to support their conspiracy theories while making several “clearly false” claims.

But the damage was already done. The original lawsuit contained false and misleading statements about the Stanford Internet Observatory, a research group at Stanford that conducted cutting-edge research on topics such as online rumors about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Based on the allegations in the lawsuit, a district court in Louisiana barred the Stanford Internet Observatory from communicating its research findings with government actors.

Stanford's own lawyers filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing that this decision violated the academic freedom and free speech rights of researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory. The report concluded that the decision “sent a chill in the academic world as an example of the political targeting of negative speech by state governments and the federal judiciary.” But the legal attacks came from several directions. Younes also served as lead special counsel on the House Judiciary Committee's Weaponization of Government Subcommittee, which made similar arguments about creating a “chilling effect” on misinformation research. Because of these attacks, the Stanford Internet Observatory was closed this summer. Its staff, many of whom did not have the protection of permanent employment, no longer have the freedom to pursue this line of academic research.

Several people involved in this summit also targeted certain Stanford researchers, including students. Bhattacharya amplified Twitter threads that harassed student researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory. Ioannidis personally attacked a graduate student who criticized his work in the appendix of a published paper (although he apologized and removed the statement after significant criticism). In an appearance on Fox News, Atlas baselessly accused Stanford researchers testing pediatric COVID-19 vaccines of violating medical ethics and called an immunology postdoctoral fellow who enrolled her child in the study “brainwashed.” subjected” and “psychologically damaged”. These incidents contradict the summit's purported goal of “promoting vigorous discussion and debate.”

Across the country, scientific researchers on topics from climate change to public health are facing increasing anti-science aggression and need university support. Scientists working in politicized areas, especially junior researchers without tenure, expect assurances from university management that they will be protected. And yet, less than a month into his term, President Levin is instead siding with the same people who launched fraudulent and damaging attacks that have suppressed research at Stanford.

It is disheartening that President Levin is so willing to encourage the latest spectacle in a long line of efforts to use the power of academic institutions to distort the scientific consensus and control the resulting policy. When Andrew Wakefield launched the modern anti-vaccination movement with a fraudulent, now-retracted study, the dean of his medical school attended a press conference at the hospital where he worked. Peter Duesberg, a biologist at UC Berkeley, convinced leading scientific journals Science to investigate his claims that HIV does not cause AIDS in the name of “balance” (they concluded his theories were wrong). Dark money think tanks helped prop up a cadre of pseudo-experts who worked to sow doubt about the scientific conclusion that greenhouse gases could alter the climate and that tobacco could be harmful to health (some of these groups, including the Hoover Institute, have worked closely together). ). with summit panelists). These campaigns caused great and lasting damage: resurgent measles outbreaks, 330,000 preventable AIDS deaths in South Africa, widespread smoking-related illnesses estimated to cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, and a climate catastrophe that is just beginning to unfold.

So, yes, we need to have an honest conversation about how a handful of prominent controversial academics backed by corporate interests continue to advance evidence-based policies, including COVID-19 protections. We must invest in efforts to increase public understanding of science and to identify and combat harmful lies about scientific topics—exactly the kind of work that led the Stanford Internet Observatory. And we must stop allowing “academic freedom” to be used by the most powerful people on campus with the biggest platforms to silence their critics.

Indeed, academic freedom urgently needs to be protected, at Stanford and across the country. Scientific researchers need legal protection, stable employment protected from outside pressure, protection from threats of violence, and assistance in debunking lies about their research. We deserve a university leadership capable of recognizing and rebuking these attacks, not a president who supports them.

Mallory Harris is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland. She received her Ph.D. in biology from Stanford University in 2024.