Stanford University is rich — $30 billion endowment, all that silicon valley money flowing their way — and you’d think that would translate into well-supported education. Working against that, though, is that universities, even private universities, tend to be ruled by regents chosen for their wealth and conservative bias, and somehow they always decide against egalitarianism and education. Senior faculty also become jealous and protective of their privilege, and can do great harm to their discipline. That’s how great universities erode into mediocrity.
So now the university has decided to terminate a prestigious creative writing program.
I want to add more detail below to the decision made last week by Stanford University: All twenty-three Creative Writing Lecturers were told they’d be fired, some this academic year, some next academic year. This is a group of lecturers who have — along with our students — built one of the top CW programs in the country, and who have done so with very little university support over the last four years, since the death of our fierce, mighty, and visionary program director Eavan Boland.
Creative writing programs are an important part of a liberal arts curriculum. I can tell you having taught creative writing, a lot of students have a dull, plodding approach to writing and it takes a great deal of effort to teach them to add a little fire or music to their writing. Stanford can afford to maintain a great creative writing program, but apparently doesn’t want to. Why? There are hints in the pattern of firings.
- The Jones Lecturers asked for a raise in 2023 (many lecturers made around $52,000), and exactly a year later, all of the lecturers who asked for pay raise were told they’d be fired. This seems beyond suspicious to us and to our students, and is in fact outrageous.
- The deans and our own director clearly indicated in the August 21 meeting that we would be replaced with younger and lower-paid lecturers. This is also evident in the university’s online statement here. Again, completely outrageous.
- It was the Senior Professors of our Creative Writing Program who voted to fire us, their junior colleagues, but interestingly… it was only the MALE professors who voted to fire us. Not one woman professor voted to fire the Jones Lecturers. And the decision to fire us was clearly not unanimous, and in fact received pushback from the English Department and in other quarters in the university.
Oh. They fired all the professors who had dared to ask for a raise ($52K/year would be a stretch in Morris, Minnesota, but Palo Alto? Insane), they are completely changing the program to be taught by adjuncts with one-year appointments, and huh…it was the men among the senior professoriate who decided to kill the program.
They’re turning a bunch of skilled writers loose with a solid dose of resentment? That’s a great way to build your brand, Stanford.
Judging by the photo, Stanford really is a big prick.
@1: That is Hoover Tower, home to the Hoover Institution, a conservative “think tank” on the Stanford campus. Their current director is Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State under W.
So, if not led by the one in charge of kidnapping suspects to black sites where they vould be tortured, at least led by the one arranging with other countries to let it happen on their turf.
Charming.
For $52k in Palo Alto, they were probably all roommates in a 1 room studio
Ditching creative writing is a horrendous mistake. I say that as a career scientist who took two courses in creative writing as an undergrad Bio major. The most memorable one was a workshop in poetry writing. I’m glad I didn’t pick verse writing as a career choice, but it helped my command of the language in more ways that I can count. Case in point: Even when I had a grant rejected the pink sheet would inevitably say: “… but the proposal is very well written.” ;-)
A university as prominent as Stanford needs Creative Writing for the benefit of every student!
Home to an anti-vax loon (Bhattacharya), proudly hosting an anti-vax quack fest (see Aug. 26 Science Based Medicine), and now this, it really is Leland Stanford JUNIOR University.
$52K, after taxes, wouldn’t pay the yearly rent on a 300 sq ft flop house room anywhere in the south bay, at least if the person wanted to be able to eat.
Besides, who needs to be creative when LLMs can pick up the slack?
BTW, they do know what happened to the perpetrators of that other red wedding, right? (looks at my collection of deadly mushrooms and herbs).
The MALE professors… right, I need to set up the viral DNA so it only replicates in the presence of genes from the Y chromosome. They are making it too easy.
Malcolm Harris”s excellent Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World is all about Stanford, Hoover, the early Silicon Valley tech industry, and California’s fantastically racist past (not that it’s perfect now). Highly recommended to anyone wondering how “Big Tech” started and grew, and its intimate relationships with the military, conservative politics, and other right-wing ideas.
Those salaries are about half the median income in CA and under a third of the median income for Palo Alto.
https://www.city-data.com/income/income-Palo-Alto-California.html
Even Trumpian “black jobs” in Palo Alto pay better according to that site.
Unions.
Jr faculty at Stanford may want to look into it…
$52k In Palo Alto? Where do these people live? Do they all commute from Nevada? Who can afford to live in Palo Alto on a paltry $52k/yr?
Just found out about Stanford’s soon to be gone Creative Writing course. Not a Stanford guy, just a humble wannabe writer from Malaysia interested in this course.
Anyway we can reach out to these lecturers? Is there a list of them?