'Dear Stanford': Letter 3

A Collection of Letters in Support of Stanford's 23 Jones Lecturers

On August 21, 23 Creative Writing lecturers were ‘future fired’ in a meeting with Deans, Directors, and Professors that oversee the program. Writing against the firing and in support of their teachers, students and alumni’s letters to the administration alike have received autoreplies and brief responses to their concerns. This Substack is a space for these letters. This one is from alum Ben Schwartz '23.

Dear Stanford,

My name is Ben, and I'm a recent Stanford English grad, '23. I'm extremely concerned about the Stanford English department's recent decision to terminate the contracts of all current Jones Lecturers and transition the position to shorter-term appointments for recent Stegner fellows. While I'm sympathetic to the goal of offering more opportunities for Stegner Fellows to stay involved at Stanford, I think this decision will have disastrous consequences for the creative writing program, the department, and the broader undergraduate population at Stanford.

The Jones Lecturers are incredible instructors, mentors, and pillars of the undergraduate community—no doubt due in part to the program's, the department's, and the School of H&S's discerning selection process. They are the best of the best at running workshops and offering mentorship to undergrads, and are the reason that creative writing is the school's most popular minor. To argue otherwise would call into question your and your colleagues' own competency as hirers and administrators. There is no department or program on campus whose instructors are universally beloved by its students—but if there was one, it would be the creative writing program.

Shannon Pufahl, one of the Jones Lecturers under fire, was my major advisor in the English department. She writes breathtaking prose. She is a world-class instructor and workshop facilitator. And she has been such a supportive and insightful mentor to me over the past three years. The opportunity to spend this time under her mentorship is the reason I switched my declared major from economics to English. I can't imagine I would have graduated with English on my diploma if that opportunity didn't exist, as it won't if the Jones Lectureship transitions to shorter appointments for less experienced writers. And though Shannon has been especially impactful on me and my education, every interaction I've had with a Jones Lecturer and everything I've heard from other students tells me many share these qualities. All three abilities are incredible assets to the program and to the school—ones it would be foolish to jettison.

Creative writing is the most popular major emphasis in the English department and the most popular minor on campus. Jones lecturers teach 90% of the classes in the program. How do the department and the School of H&S hope to sustain this monumental success with a staff of 0 permanent lecturers? Whatever Wallace Stegner's original intent was in 1946, under Eavan Bolan the program grew to have a much greater impact on undergraduates. The dismissal of the Jones Lecturers destroys a core offering for students who wish to pursue writing. But it impacts students outside of the department as well. In the past few days, I've heard from several friends who majored in STEM but took a creative writing minor, or just took a creative writing class to fulfill a CE or just for fun. They have shared universal praise of these classes, and most of all their incredible instructors, who they feel offered invaluable opportunities for personal growth and enrichment beyond the pragmatic, objective-oriented world of engineering. In my opinion, Stanford's greatest competitive advantage over its peer engineering schools is the fact that it offers a world-class humanities education as well. The true triumph of this unique excellence is that the engineering students love the humanities and arts classes just as much as the "fuzzy" kids. The Jones Lecturers' termination erodes that advantage and degrades the horizon-broadening offerings of this institution that I love.

The most frustrating part of this whole debacle is that I haven't seen a positive vision of the program's future under this new policy, only a negative one of how to undo the present. How does the department plan to provide the same quality and quantity of creative writing course offerings for Stanford undergraduates following this decision? How does the program plan to provide excellent advising for undergraduates who wish to study creative writing? And how will Stanford maintain its reputation as a school with world-class undergraduate offerings in the arts and humanities as well as in science and engineering as it undermines its most successful creative arts program? I eagerly await an answer to these questions in your reply.

In the strongest of terms, I encourage you and your colleagues to reconsider this disastrous decision and reinstate all 23 Jones Lecturers.

Sincerely,

Ben Schwartz
Bachelor of Arts in English, Stanford '23