Austin Smith to President Levin and Dean Satz

Hello everyone, and happy new year. Thank you again for all your support in the fall. The appeal is in process, and we will let you know when Dean Linda Boxer of the Stanford Medical School comes to her decision.

In order to conclude our work of last year, and, regrettably, in order to close some windows of communication I had laboriously struggled to open, yesterday I sent the following letter to Jon Levin, President of Stanford University, and Debra Satz, Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. The interview in which President Levin mentioned the advanced age of the lecturers as a reason for our firings can be found here:

President Jonathan Levin looks back on his first quarter

Finally, as a Bay Area-based writer, I’m praying for everyone with ties to LA, and am especially concerned as to how adjuncts and low-income students are experiencing the disaster. Thank you again for supporting us and ours,

Austin

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Dear Jon and Debra (if I may):

I hope this finds you both well and enjoying the new year and the new quarter. I wanted to write to thank you both for engaging with me in the fall - by email and in person - regarding the firing of the 23 Jones Lecturers by our own Creative Writing faculty colleagues. Jon, I will always be grateful to you for responding to that first email I sent you. I cannot imagine how busy this fall must have been for you, and I want you to know that I deeply appreciated your words at that time. And Debra, I will always be grateful for that meeting you, Gavin and I had in your office. I was excited that that meeting would mark the beginning of a conversation about how to fix this egregious mistake. You yourself said that we needed to keep talking. But nothing came of it all.

Indeed, despite all the emails, meetings, student petitions, national media attention, and so on, here we are in 2025 and nothing has changed. The new structure for bringing in lecturers to teach Stanford undergrads is being implemented, and it is proving already to be a disaster. Of the open jobs we were offered as compensation for being fired, most of the first wave of open lines haven't been filled. What's more concerning, lecturers who have been more vocal about protesting the firings have not been hired. It is clear that those of us who spoke out are being retaliated against, and I myself am concerned that my contract will not be renewed for next year, my final year at Stanford, and all because I stood up for my students and for the program we love.

I am disappointed that this decision was not reversed - though the appeal currently in progress is uncovering very serious process concerns as well as several instances of workplace bullying - and I am confused as to why the tenured Creative Writing faculty refuses to meet with representatives from the student and lecturer communities to discuss these firings and the negative impacts they are already having on our students. As Chair of English Gavin Jones told me, student tuition pays faculty salaries, and for our own faculty to vote to fire the teachers who teach 95% of the undergraduate classes, then refuse to meet with our students to answer their reasonable questions as to why, is beyond disappointing.

We were also surprised to read, Jon, in your interview with The Stanford Daily, where you said we were fired in order to offer opportunities to younger scholars. Of course, to be fired over the age of 40 (I am 42) for reasons relating to age is illegal in the state of California. If you could clarify for me what you meant by this, I would personally appreciate it, especially considering the fact (to introduce a little levity here) that I'm a young 42!

Also, just to be clear, the Stegner Fellowship and therefor Jones Lectureship is unique in that writers of any age and any nationality, with or without degrees or even citizenship, can be fellows, as was the case with my fellow Fellow, NoViolet Bulawayo from Zimbabwe. So a new Stegner Fellow - and, therefore, a new Jones Lecturer - is not necessarily younger than the current lecturers who are being fired. Indeed, to suggest that they would be younger is irresponsible, as it suggests that this fellowship is for younger writers, when instead it has always been for writers at the beginning of their career (even if they're beginning at the age of 70). If the tenured faculty is selecting Stegner Fellows who are younger - rather than at the beginning of their writing careers, regardless of their age - they are going against the "original intent" of the fellowships and should be removed from those committees.

What is clear is that the stated reasons for the firings - and they have been numerous, from "original intent" to "values" to giving opportunities to younger scholars - are not the real reasons we were fired. I can only conclude that we were seen as expendable, which means our students were seen as expendable. And our students recognize this - Levinthal Tutorial applications have dropped 40%. Students have told me they're no longer interested in the Creative Writing minor or the English Major in general. Without a vibrant Creative Writing undergraduate program, interest in the English Major will plummet, and all of the CS students who took our classes will stay in CS. Students are no longer attending readings because the lecturers who would have told them about these readings have been fired and so obviously don't feel like going. The upcoming fiction job search is laughable. Even the best faculty hire cannot reverse the morale - or the morals - of our program.

Our program. I have taught in it since 2014 and I promise you that it will only continue to atrophy without lecturers like myself around to carry it forward. New lecturers won't be around long enough - even with the abrupt change to a five-year term-limit a week after the Red Wedding - to invest energy into the program, and students will sense this and turn towards programs they feel are being invested in, both financially and emotionally. The faculty will get what they apparently want - short-term, underpaid adjuncts who will get to say they got to teach a few years at Stanford University before committing to a different institution, whereas the 23 of us who were fired were committed solely to Stanford. Indeed, I wonder sometimes whether this isn't the real reason we were fired - our devotion to our students must embarrass our tenured faculty colleagues, who come to campus a few times every few years.

Over break it became clear to me that my efforts to salvage our tortured program would better be spent writing about the issues these firings raise. As for my teaching, it also became clear that I can no longer commit to this university, considering the way this university has treated me. I will finish my time here responsibly, teaching this year and next, as my severance offer has it (assuming I am not retaliated against and my contract not renewed), working with my beloved students to make their experience as memorable and enriching as possible. I will be a respectful and responsible Stanford employee until August 31st, 2026. But it is clear that Stanford is not the right institution for me, and perhaps never was. The great teachers I have had here - Tobias Wolff and Eavan Boland being the greatest - have retired or passed away, replaced by faculty who seem to think that the university is for them, not for our students. One of our faculty was overheard saying, before heading over to Madrid to teach abroad: "I'm just trying to get as much out of Stanford as I can." In my thirteen years here, eleven as a teacher, I have only ever tried to give to this institution, and it is beyond hurtful to be treated like this by a school I have given so much to. Meanwhile, that tenured faculty member will stay for decades, teaching mediocre classes, writing mediocre poems, collecting millions.

But perhaps this is all for the best. Though my career as a Jones Lecturer is obviously coming to an end, and my time at Stanford too, I am still a teacher, and always will be, no matter what some "working group" decides. One of my favorite novels, Stoner by John Williams, has not strayed far from my mind throughout this entire ordeal. If you haven't read it (if you haven't, you should), there is a scene early on when the titular character, William Stoner, is informed by his teacher, Archer Sloane, that he, William Stoner, is born to be a teacher too. Here's the scene:

Sloane leaned forward until his face was close; Stoner saw the lines on the long thin face soften, and he heard the dry mocking voice become gentle and unprotected.

“But don’t you know, Mr. Stoner?” Sloane asked. “Don’t you understand about yourself yet? You’re going to be a teacher.”

Suddenly Sloane seemed very distant, and the walls of the office receded. Stoner felt himself suspended in the wide air, and he heard his voice ask, “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Sloane said softly.

“How can you tell? How can you be sure?”

“It’s love, Mr. Stoner,” Sloane said cheerfully. “You are in love. It’s as simple as that.”

I have been in love with teaching, and will continue to be beyond my time at this university. I have loved my students and will continue to love them beyond the last class, the last classes. We are fired from jobs - not vocations.

I wish you both all the best in your respective tenures and in your lives beyond Stanford.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Austin Robert Smith