Dear Readers of Dear Stanford,
It has been a little while since we provided an update on the situation in our Creative Writing Department, and I am writing today with some news. On this Substack on November 15th, we shared a letter that one of our current students sent to the deans and faculty on behalf of 157 students and alums, requesting a meeting to discuss the crisis in our program, which is impacting student experience and interest. For example, our Levinthal Tutorial program, which offers undergrads an opportunity to work one-on-one with Stegner Fellows, has seen a 40% drop in applications this fall, and I have talked to students who are questioning whether they want to pursue Creative Writing at Stanford, or be English majors period. You can read the letter that was sent to faculty and deans here in petition form:
Alas, this week, we learned that the faculty refuses to meet with their own undergraduate students (whose salary, by the way, pays the faculty’s hefty salaries). You can read more about this denial of a reasonable student request here:
https://stanforddaily.com/2024/12/06/deans-dismiss-student-petition-creative-writing-program/
There’s a great Bonnie Rait song, covered very beautifully by Bon Iver, I Can't Make You Love Me If You Don't - I guess this version is called, “We Can’t Make You Meet With Us If You Won’t.” We have written to the entire chain of command, from the faculty to the deans to the provost all the way up to the president. Students have been told that the Creative Writing Faculty made this decision, and that, because they made this decision, it would be inappropriate to reconsider this decision in a meeting. It’s been a Kafka-esque romp through the halls of contemporary higher education, and it’s been indescribably frustrating and depressing. I can only conclude that I work at a morally compromised institution.
The whole situation can be winnowed down to a particular moment in the “coffee chats” Director Nicholas Jenkins offered to concerned students. During one of these sessions, he told a student of ours to stop talking so much. In this I see a metaphor for how the university is treating what should be its most important voices.
As for my voice, as you know, I have refused to be silent in the face of this decision, but I don’t know that there is much more that I can do personally to continue fighting my own program. I will finish this year of teaching and next year, and then my teaching career will likely be over. The people who fired us will remain, and Stanford University will have the Creative Writing Program it deserves (while the students, of course, deserve much better).
As a student told me, we haven’t failed. To the contrary, we have brought to light a decision made in the dead of summer and drawn the attention of the wider academic and literary worlds. The faculty may succeed in pushing out the teachers who teach 95% of the undergraduate classes, but they have failed to do it in secret. And I have met countless amazing students and alums I wouldn’t otherwise have met, and connected with countless amazing people via this Substack. We know how moving the student and alum letters were - this Substack will remain up forever, a testament to the power of our students’ writing, writing that we Jones Lecturers helped them hone the skills for in our classes, classes that will be harder to take now, if they exist at all. Every character in this story knows how they behaved, and that knowledge shall be punishment and reward. Those who behaved shamefully will always know that, and those who behaved honorably will always know that, as well.
So I refuse to say that we failed. It is the faculty that has failed to meet with their own undergraduate students. We have succeeded in standing up for our program, for the students we love, and for the value of the humanities period.
I will have much more to say about this situation in future writing I intend to do in different forums. In the meantime, on behalf of our students and alums, I want to thank you for all of your support. We’ve raised almost $1000 for an as-yet-undetermined Bay Area educational non-profit. If you’re familiar with this space, please reach out, as I am accepting suggestions as to who to donate the money to. Also, you may still donate via this Substack through the “Pledge” option if you wish - it would be a good holiday gift to support educators in the wake of this terrible act of disrespect towards beloved teachers.
Thank you again for being a reader of this Substack, and for your support these last few difficult but illuminating months. I wish you a beautiful holiday season.
Austin Smith