As a sometime contributor to the Stanford Alumni Association I’ve just received a nice printed copy of Stanford president John Hennessy’s speech, “Pursuing Academic Excellence in Challenging Economic Times,” which he delivered to the Academic Council last May. (A transcript can be found here.)
I found two embarrassing items in it, one in the speech itself and one in a comment by Stanford Law Dean Kathleen Sullivan on a panel that followed the speech.
Hennessy, of course, said all the expected things about “diversity,” but one of his comments struck me as a bit unexpected: “… in February we joined MIT in filing an amicus brief in support of the principle of considering ethnicity as one factor in the admissions process.”
I read the Stanford/MIT brief (and may even have cited it; don’t have time to check now), and I’m pretty sure it defended the principle of racial as well as ethnic preferences. Has Hennessy forgotten this, or is he embarrassed to remind people that Stanford favors discriminating on the basis of race? Maybe ethnic favoritism has less of a negative ring to it.
Dean Sullivan, however, had a real howler. (The transcript of her remarks are here, but they vary in a small way from the printed version Stanford mailed me.)
President Hennessy started out by saying that the law school is a small school — which it is — but small but distinguished, he is sometimes likely to say. And it reminds me that in my discipline we all study an early John Marshall case, a decision by the Supreme Court that concerns Dartmouth College, in which they said, “It is a small school, sir, but there are those who love it,” as their alumni do.
The printed version I received said of this famous quote: “… in which Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, ‘It is a small school, sir….'” But no matter: neither the Supreme Court (“they”) nor John Marshall uttered those famous words: the author was Daniel Webster, representing his alma mater, in his argument to the Court.
Perhaps Dean Sullivan should return to class.
