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Stanford's annual Democracy Day, purportedly designed to foster civic engagement and open dialogue, features a roster filled exclusively with left-leaning speakers.
The event's keynote speaker, Valerie Jarrett—former senior advisor to President Obama and current CEO of the Obama Foundation—sets an unmistakably partisan tone. Hosting a sole, prominent Democrat as the keynote speaker puts the event's commitment to diverse political perspectives into question right at the outset.
Jarrett is not the only obvious partisan. The lineup for the day further reinforces this ideological homogeneity with event after event.
Another speaker event on the agenda features Bridget Algee-Hewitt, Senior Associate Director at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity, a self-described social justice warrior, whose work focuses on the “hierarchies of identity ingrained within our immigration, medical, and legal systems” and it’s “relationships to displacement, poverty, and violence among marginalized communities.” One couldn’t create a sentence filled with more woke intersectional buzzwords if they tried. For more, look to another prominent event on the rise of the “Far-Right” in Europe, by Christophe Crombez, another partisan leftist, whose most recent Twitter feed is filled with partisan pro-Kamala and pro-abortion stances.
Even the event's social gatherings are unmistakably partisan. The lunch social features an Environmental Justice and Abolition Teach-in. The concern here isn’t that Republicans aren’t featured, but that the programming of “Democracy Day” is to the left of the Democrats!
Perhaps even more telling than what is present is what's absent. Despite housing the Hoover Institution, which is filled with an extensive list of some of the most distinguished conservative scholars anywhere in the world, Stanford's Democracy Day showcases not a single right-leaning voice or perspective. No Condoleezza Rice, no H.R. McMaster, no Jay Bhattacharya, nobody. This deficit of right-leaning voices might be partially explained by the fact that many of these initiatives are run by a progressive student body, but some events, like the keynote, are directly organized by the administration.
The administration’s proclivity towards ideological exclusion reflects a broader pattern at Stanford. Just this week, the Faculty Senate pushed a vote—for the second time—to rescind the censure of Dr. Scott Atlas, who was silenced with no chance to defend himself, when he started advising the Trump administration and advocating against lockdowns.
The irony here could not be more palpable—an event with the stated purpose of celebrating democratic values has become nothing more than a show of ideological conformity. The very idea behind democracy is the contest of ideas and the exchange of diverse viewpoints. By systematically excluding and censoring conservative voices, Stanford's so-called Democracy Day undermines the principles it claims to champion. Ultimately, this event serves as a chilling reminder of the intellectual monoculture in American higher education, rather than a true celebration of democratic ideals.
