Stanford Professor of Medicine Jay Bhattacharya: ‘Academic freedom is dead’

As I get older I become more and more disenchanted with, it's hard to say, what, exactly - America? Performance in the pandemic, refusal to even consider different ideas, rhetoric around elections and so on. Shameful that scientists and doctors are silenced when they disagree with our largely unelected leaders - but much worse and much more shameful is that the people responsible for our terrible COVID response will remain in power - same as the people responsible for foreign policy disasters and so on.

It sounds like he took a controversial opinion during a time of great fear and death, and wasn’t fired or in any way censored by his workplace. He continued to enjoy substantial access to politicians and the press, and someone wrote and stuck up a mean poster about him (which he describes as a physical threat, but doesn’t seem to have actually been according to the description.) Academic freedom means the right to say unpopular things without losing your job. If you want to see what the opposite of that is, take a look at the McCarthy era or some of the professors who lost their jobs for saying unpopular things about US allies.

Stanford didn&#x27;t shut Bhattacharya down, but I think he has a point that Stanford probably isn&#x27;t a great place for public debate or discourse on controversial and&#x2F;or political topics.<p>Even something as seemingly appropriate and educational as hosting a prominent former government official (Mike Pence) can be controversial - some students arguing[1] that he should not be invited to the university, lest it be seen as a tacit endorsement of his ideas, policies, and rhetorical tone. Pence&#x27;s topic (&quot;Save America from the Woke Left&quot;) presumably irked them further.<p>“The main goal of the protest is to demonstrate the fact that we don’t want to tolerate someone who spouts very hateful rhetoric coming on campus,” one of the frosh protesters said [1].<p>To Stanford&#x27;s credit, Pence was permitted to speak, with minimal disruptions [2].<p>As I understand it, most faculty don&#x27;t seem particularly interested in wading into the morass. Perhaps they think that Stanford&#x27;s (presumably intelligent) students should be able to figure out the obvious on their own.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stanforddaily.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;17&#x2F;students-plan-protests-walk-outs-ahead-of-mike-pence-scr-event&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stanforddaily.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;17&#x2F;students-plan-protests-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stanforddaily.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;18&#x2F;pence-calls-on-students-to-be-the-freedom-generation-embrace-conservative-values&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stanforddaily.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;18&#x2F;pence-calls-on-students...</a>

For those (like me) not familiar with the site: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mediabiasfactcheck.com&#x2F;the-college-fix&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mediabiasfactcheck.com&#x2F;the-college-fix&#x2F;</a>

I recommend reading some of the articles he’s written about COVID as well as consider when they were written (like the one in the WSJ from March 2020 entitled “Is the Coronavirus as deadly as they say?”), against the backdrop of uncertainty and medical systems under heavy strain and some cities like NYC unable to cope with the volume of deaths and inability to treat other patients, and then compare that with his proposed strategy of driving towards herd immunity while trying to protect the vulnerable, etc.<p>From where I sit, his experience isn’t quite one of academic freedom, but rather that he tried to change and influence policy, which backfired.<p>I’m open to being wrong though.

Scientific progress proceeds one funeral at a time. Preferably by natural causes.