Dear President Levin:
In October 2024, just before the election, you gave the introduction at a conference titled Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past. This exemplar of the COVID Amnesia Project conference featured disinformation superspreaders and advocates of herd immunity through mass infection, nearly all of whom never treated COVID patients.
None of this bothered you, however.
You didn’t care that these laptop class doctors predicted that the virus would kill 10,000 – 40,000 Americans. You didn’t care about their false declarations of herd immunity. You didn’t care that they vastly overhyped vaccines in 2021, helping to create distrust in them later on. You didn’t care that they repeatedly botched basic facts – no, the flu didn’t kill more children than COVID. You didn’t care that they treated rare, temporary vaccine side effects more seriously than literal death from COVID. You didn’t care that they falsely said children had “no serious risk” or that COVID’s risk kicked in at age 70. You didn’t care that they mocked people who suffered from Long COVID or who tried to avoid the virus in the first place. You didn’t care that they glorified “natural immunity.” You didn’t care that they made rank propaganda movies in which they falsely blamed prominent scientists for the origins of the virus. You didn’t care about their overt political activism. You didn’t care about their close associations with overt pro-tobacco, child labor advocates and paranoid conspiracy theorists. You didn’t care that they dunked on masks, testing, and vaccines, literally anything that slowed the spread of the virus. You didn’t care that they tried to use unvaccinated people under age 60-70 as human shields to theoretically protect the “vulnerable” and end the pandemic in 3-6 months. There was many things that you didn’t care about.
Let’s call this what it is, toxic apathy. It was about life-and-death matters and it was hardly unique to you. This indifference is utterly incomprehensible to me, and prior to the conference I pleaded with you to simply show videos of what these doctors actually said. I wrote:
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. The speakers claim to have been “silenced”, and you have a unique opportunity to remedy that injustice.
I thought it was important for the audience hear what the speakers had to say in their own words.
You disagreed.
Instead, of simply showing the truth, you covered it up. You glorified the speakers and sanctimoniously scolded their critics, the people who corrected their factual errors. You said:
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. The doctors who spent the pandemic boasting on Fox News and Twitter about all the amazing things they “would do” were given an opportunity to prove their mettle in the real world. Several of the conference speakers, namely Drs. Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makary, and Vinay Prasad, gained great power in MAHA/MAGA, though only Dr. Bhattacharya remains. “I think he’ll do an exceptional job in that role,” you said after Dr. Bhattacharya was nominated to lead the NIH.
So, how do you feel they are doing?
Given your past comments, I think you owe it us all to weigh in on their job performance. Have they proven themselves to be “exceptional” leaders? Are they doing a good job containing contagious diseases? Is free speech thriving under their leadership? What do you think about their efforts to decimate the routine vaccine schedule? How do feel about their censorship, both at the CDC and FDA, of studies that cast COVID vaccines in a positive light. What about their cancellation of research into mRNA vaccines? Do you agree with them that Trump and Kennedy are defenders of science and the scientific method? What are your thoughts about their disinformation in office- that Tylenol causes autism, that leucovorin cures it, and that the COVID vaccine killed children. How do you feel about their continued efforts to blend science and right-wing politics? Have these doctors restored trust? Is the future of American science and medicine brighter thanks to their efforts? What do you think about respected scientists being arrested, threatened, and abused by powerful MAGA politicians? Are we better prepared for a pandemic under their leadership? That was a core theme of the 2024 conference, after all.
I’d also like to make a further suggestion. Given your previous endorsement of MAHA/MAGA doctors, I think that you are obligated to host an updated conference on the state of STEM under their leadership. You should the invite scientists they’ve censored and purged. You should invite public health workers who lost their jobs and students who were forced to abandon careers in science. You should invited the parents of children who suffered from measles and people who suffered from cyclosporiasis. You should invite Americans who were detained and locked down to contain Ebola and hantavirus. You should invite researchers whose grants have been cut for political reasons and scientists who’ve left the country. You should invite pediatricians who rightfully view the U.S. government as a barrier to providing accurate information about vaccines.
You should also invite those of us who tried to sound the alarm bells two years ago. Former Stanford student Dr. Mallory Harris, for example, wrote a prescient article before the conference titled President Levin’s First Order of Business: Abandoning Academic Freedom that said:
Academic freedom actually does urgently need protection, at Stanford and across the country. Scientific researchers need legal protections, stable employment that is insulated from outside pressure, security against violent threats and assistance with debunking lies about their research. We deserve University leadership that is able to recognize and rebuke these attacks, rather than a president who endorses them.
Personally, I’d be happy to present the videos you refused to show. I’ll remind everyone the warning signs were out there for all to see. All anyone had to do was care, which you, obviously, did not.
You previously claimed to value thoughtful and robust discussion across different perspectives, and that’s exactly what I am proposing. Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with these empty, vacuous words, always uttered in defense of MAHA/MAGA doctors, never in defense of their critics.
However, you have the opportunity to prove you were sincere back in 2024. Until then, you’ll be a poster child of a powerful academic who turned a blind eye to obvious disinformation agents, surrendered in advance to MAHA/MAGA, and made others pay the price.