'Dear Stanford': Letter 35

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

On August 21st, 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 alums’ letters to the administration alike have received auto-replies and brief responses to their concerns. This Substack is a space for these letters. The author of this letter wishes to remain anonymous.

Dear Stanford,

The courses I have taken with Jones Lecturers have been some of the very best during my time here. I took my favorite Stanford class, a poetry course with Austin Smith, last winter. I took the course because I had read a little bit of poetry and wanted to read more. I thought that it would be a cool way to learn more about a different area of study from mine. I didn’t expect it to change my perspective of Stanford so much. Before the course, I didn’t really feel like I fit in here. I was from very far away and a freshman at such a giant school with people stressing about everything all around me. In this course, however, I felt different. It was smaller and it felt like everyone there really cared about one another. We could connect over how poems were written and the importance of their messages. I learned not only about poetry but about how poems can connect us. It didn’t matter that we were all from different parts of the country, or that I was a freshman because we all found beauty in this type of writing, of art. Without Austin Smith, I truly don’t think the class would be the same. His passion for the subject was contagious. He helped us all see the beauty in writing and taught us all how to write better. He made poetry an important part of my life, a way for me to process life and view the world differently. But even more importantly, he created space for each of us to share what we’d written. This course really mattered to me because I felt like I could be vulnerable and think in a deep way which is much harder to do in different courses where the main point is to absorb information, not to reflect and collaborate. Everyone in the course shared personal things and together so much trust was built. I am so sad that this experience won’t be possible for students in the future because of the potential loss of the incredible Jones Lecturers. Please fight to protect these faculty who I know care more about their students and Stanford’s writing program than anything else.

Sincerely,

A student from the class of 2027