Dear President Levin,
On October 4th 2024, the month before the most consequential election of our lifetime, you opened a conference titled Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past. Prior to this, I shared my thoughts with you in an article titled Don’t Censor Drs. Scott Atlas, John Ioannidis, Sunetra Gupta, Marty Makary, Monica Gandhi, Jay Bhattacharya, and Vinay Prasad. Amplify Their Voices. I wrote:
You are giving the introduction to the conference, meaning you are setting the tone and giving your personal stamp of approval to it. I am sure we both agree it’s important to have an accurate account of the pandemic and to reject cancel culture. In that spirit, I believe you are obligated to boost these doctors voices. The attendees and the general public deserve to know what they said and the policies they pushed.
I also provided you with multiple clips of these doctors saying absurd, obviously false things, though you didn’t care about any of that. None of their repeated errors of basic fact bothered you in the slightest.
In a follow-up article, I noted that instead of accurately reporting the speakers’ records, you covered up their misinformation and sanctimoniously scolded scientists who tried to warn you in books such as The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science. It’s worth sharing your speech again, especially in light of what’s happened since and that several of the speakers are cheering it on. You said:
Good morning and welcome to everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Now, you might wonder: Why is Jon Levin opening this conference on pandemic policy? You might say, Jon is no public health expert. And I might say: Well, I did run a business school during the COVID pandemic, so I have some experience making pandemic policy decisions. They also say you learn most by making mistakes. So I think there are probably a thousand Stanford MBAs who are willing to argue that I’m basically a world expert.
However, that’s not why I’m here.
When I was invited to participate in this event a few months ago, it was with the understanding that the goal was to bring together people with different perspectives, engage in a day of discussion, and in that way, try to repair some of the rifts that opened during COVID.
That struck me as a valuable goal, and the sort of goal we should aim for at Stanford. So I agreed to give a few brief remarks to that effect.
What followed was disappointing. When I was invited, I asked around and indeed the organizers were talking to some well-known people with quite different views who were likely to speak. However, it was not so straightforward. Some invitees weren’t able to make it, or withdrew, or didn’t want to participate in an event with other speakers whose views and behavior they found attacking or abhorrent.
When an initial and partial agenda was posted, it was immediately perceived as one-sided, and as I’m sure you all noticed became the subject of op-eds and social media posts.
Ironically, instead of repairing rifts as intended and perhaps spurring fresh thinking, the process seemed to reopen old and existing divisions.
As an observer and as the leader of this university, I found the episode dispiriting, in a way that goes beyond the specifics of this particular event.
We have many issues today at Stanford, and on other campuses, where views are divided, and in some cases, like this one, where feelings are raw.
Yet I believe we need to make every effort to get people who disagree, even sharply, in dialogue with one another. I believe it’s essential for us to do that as members of the faculty and university leaders – not just because it’s a way to advance knowledge, but because we need to model that behavior if we want to expect it from our students. And in today’s world, we absolutely need to ask and expect our students to be able to engage with, listen to, and debate with people with whom they disagree. My view is that we need to err on the side of talking to one another.
So I hope today’s conference will come off in a way that involves just that – thoughtful and robust discussion across different perspectives. I hope it yields some important insights about future pandemic policy – we certainly need that. Perhaps it does even bridge a few divides among those in the room.
And I hope even more that all of you will join in the larger project of trying to make Stanford and other campuses forums for the type of robust and thoughtful discussion that is at the heart of universities when we’re at our best.
A lot has happened since then, and none of it will bridge divides, repair rifts, or advance knowledge. Donald Trump won, RFK Jr. will lead the HHS, and two of the conference speakers, Drs. Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya, are poised to lead the FDA and NIH. Shortly after Dr. Bhattacharya’s nomination, you said the following:
Jay Bhattacharya has been nominated to be the director of the National Institutes of Health, which is the most important funder of biomedical research in the country, in fact in the world. I think he’ll do an exceptional job in that role.
I know Dr. Bhattacharya’s track record very well, and nothing in it suggests he’ll do “exceptional job” or that he disapproves of anything that’s currently happening. But hopefully you are right, and Dr. Bhattacharya will ride to the rescue. Maybe 4 years from now we’ll marvel at the excellent state of science in the US. He’s our best hope, which says a lot about the situation we are in.
As you know, the headlines read Stanford to Lose $160 Million in NIH Funding Change and the courts seem powerless to stop it. Meanwhile, decent people are being purged from the NIH. This is what myself and many others were afraid of. I am not going to pretend I anticipated the specific threats to institutions like Stanford. That wasn’t my job. But the doctors I warned about and you applauded didn’t exactly hide their grievances, conspiracies, or intentions.
Fact check: No one suggested a devastating take down of scientists, just their “premises.”
While you obviously didn’t have the power to stop this on your own, you had a platform to sound the alarm. Instead, you chose to ignore and obscure the risk. You had the opportunity to hold important people accountable by doing nothing more than playing videos of them talking. You had the chance to present evidence that these speakers said false and dangerous things, and you passed it up. Incredible.
These videos are the reason I was never invited to speak at such a conference by the way. These doctors’ desire for “debate and discussion” didn’t include someone like me, who would have been willing to remind them of what they said.
I can’t help but wonder if authority figures had simply been honest about the existence of misinformation and its dangers if that could have moved the needle in a meaningful way. Sadly, we’ll never know. Like you, nearly all of them prioritized phony “thoughtful and robust discussion” over blunt, uncomfortable truths. They greeted misinformation with a shrug and yawn, and now we all face “many potential issues,” as you gently put it.
We both want funding to be restored to Stanford and everywhere else. Until then, I hope you’ll take a moment to read how I ended my second article:
When someone spreads dangerous, blatant misinformation, honest brokers call it out, even if the person spreading the misinformation has fancy credentials and can speak in scientific jargon… It doesn’t bode well for the future that leaders of major American institutions say naked emperors are wearing beautiful clothes.
I think my stark warning aged much better than your banal cliches about “different perspectives’. It turns out there’s a steep price to pay when “leaders” refuse to acknowledge that naked emperors are naked. $160 million is a lot of money, especially when you consider its not just money. It’s lost dreams, careers, and discoveries.
Worst of all, we are just getting started and these guys are in charge.
