The Stanford Daily, the only student publication to have made endorsements in this year’s ASSU Elections, has retracted their endorsement of Gabriel Knight owing to his “insensitive” comments. The Daily‘s opinions columnist now calls his initial decision to support Knight’s endorsement “the single worst decision of my career”.
This incident follows Knight’s controversial statement at a Senate meeting on anti-semitism Tuesday night. Knight, a current sitting Senator as well as a candidate for next year’s ASSU Senate, claimed that it is not anti-semitic to question whether Jewish people control the “media, economy, government and other social institutions.” His remarks were met with outrage from sitting Senators, ASSU election candidates, Stanford students and Jewish community organizations on campus.
In an opinions piece, Winston Shi for the Daily commented that “[t]his is not about partisanship: it is about condemning the condemnable”. They added that this incident is a reminder that “anti-Semitism, though stupid, is not the sole provenance of stupid people”.
Polls are open throughout Thursday and Friday at ballot.stanford.edu.