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Earlier this evening, Forbes reported that Stanford is under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) for discriminating against men. Kursat Pekgoz (a real estate agent) and James Moore (a Stanford alumni and Professor emeritus at USC) filed the complaint in 2019. They argued that Stanford discriminates against men in 27 Stanford women-only programs.
Interestingly enough, it's not a white Republican who is responsible for the OCR's decision to investigate the issue. The Trump-era Department of Education passed on the complaint for 2 years. However, the Department of Education is now headed by Miguel Cardona, a Democrat appointed by President Biden. It must be bad if the party that can’t even describe what a woman is thinks that there’s bias against men.
The Forbes article describes how the OCR is investigating four organizations in particular: Stanford's Women in Business, Women in Stanford Law, Stanford Women in Design, and Stanford Society of Women Engineers. These four organizations, which only allow women (or womxn) to join, provide their members with opportunities for exclusive workshops, networking events, and job opportunities.
A quick search of Cardinal Engage reveals that the groups above are just a tiny subset of the organizations dedicated to “empowering” about 51% of the campus population:
- Asian Women’s Alliance
- GSB Women in Management
- Mechanical Engineering Women’s Group
- SLS Women in Politics and Public Service
- SLS Women of Color Collective
- Society of Women Engineers
- Stanford Graduate Society of Women Engineers
- Stanford Women Association of Physician-Scientists
- Stanford Women in Earth Sciences
- Stanford Women in Finance
- Stanford Women in Fluid Dynamics
- Stanford Women in Law
- Stanford Women in Medicine
- Stanford Women in Politics
- Stanford Women in Women’s Health
- Women in Computer Science
- Women in Aeronautics and Astronautics
- Women in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computational Engineering
- Lastly, there’s Womxn of Color in Engineering (WOCE) — literally pronounced: “woke.”
Meanwhile, a similar search for men reveals only one all-male organization, the Black Men’s Forum, which still excludes 93% of Stanford men. Another possible option is the Physics Undergraduate Women and Gender Minorities group — of course, you can join if you’re anything except a man! To find community in a pre-professional group, a man could become the Lia Thomas of his specialty, but most have more dignity than that.
The complaint’s authors also argue that the Gabilan Provost's Discretionary Fund — an anonymous gift of endowment that aims to recruit women faculty in the life sciences and engineering — is discriminatory. The fund specifically supports the hiring and retention of women faculty, not men. Next time you board a plane or drive across a bridge built by a female Stanford alum, just hope that she was chosen for her actual qualifications and not her gender.
It’s disingenuous to claim women still face structural impediments within higher education. Not only do women outnumber men in the college-educated labor force, but women have outnumbered men in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded since 1982. Women also enjoy an advantage when it comes to admissions — year after year, more men apply to Stanford, but more women get admitted.
The fact that women are dominant in majors like English and Human Biology is a direct indictment of the claim that women need assistance to break into these (or any) majors. Universities shouldn’t try to force women to have the same interests as men — most don’t. Is superimposed equity by universities meant to help one find their genuine interests or best contribute to society? Of course not. But, this might be another arm of the progressive political machine trying to force gender equity where it cannot and should not exist.
Nevertheless, if the Stanford intelligentsia insists on gender parity then we should offer more support to the sex clearly facing institutional discrimination: men. We could support men in female-dominated majors such as English and Biology. We could even galvanize gender studies experts to teach about how men are systemically oppressed around the world — like getting harsher prison sentences than women, making up the vast majority of the homeless population, or the fact men commit suicide at nearly four times the rate of women. We could even have classes about more fun masculine topics like testosterone, weightlifting, or how to retain custody of your children in a future divorce.
If you are a man at Stanford and you feel erased, excluded, and oppressed, join the Review. Even though our Editor-in-Chief is a woman, our staff is majority male so you’ll feel right at home! We meet Mondays at 7 pm in Old Union, hope to see you there.
