Purely Political Stasi/Stanford
Don't go to Stanford (or any other Ivy League college) unless you want to live like an East German did under the thumb (and ear) of the Speech Police.
The Stasi Comes to Stanford
If you have never seen The Lives of Others, a German film released in 2006 and which won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, you should try to obtain a copy. None other than National Review founder, the late William F. Buckley, wrote in his nationally syndicated column that The Lives of Others was possibly “the best movie” he ever saw.
The film, set appropriately enough in George Orwell’s favorite year – 1984 – in East Berlin, and directed by a first-time director (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck) is about life under what had become a surveillance state in East Germany under Soviet Communist rule. It’s a cautionary tale for those of us in the U.S. as 17 different “intelligence” agencies (and probably even more that function under the radar and that escape any kind of congressional scrutiny) operate within the United States, and whose putative mission is “protecting our homeland.”
The Ministry for State Security (Stasi) was the name of the East German secret police in charge of monitoring the movements of its citizens.
All its citizens.
All the time.
And because there are so many so-called intelligence agencies crowding out office space and apartments in the “homeland” capital of Washington, D.C., we are now in danger of falling into the same trap East German citizens found themselves living in before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
Listening in on private conversations were everyday affairs for Stasi officers and were important methods of gathering “intelligence.” Even more important was the wide web of civilian snoops who’d regularly report on friends, neighbors, strangers and/or acquaintances. Because so many fellow residents regularly reported to Stasi, it had become nearly impossible to ascertain who was a friend and who was not. Everyone and anyone could be an informant. Even one’s “best friend” or lover could be a collaborator. Political opinions voiced during private conversations were offered cautiously if at all, in fear that someone may be listening… and reporting.
Turns out also that one could not be too cautious, for as soon as someone – anyone – hinted that you may harbor conspiratorial or anti-regime thoughts, Stasi was on it. Every room in your apartment could and would be bugged, including your bathroom, your bedroom, your car if you had one, even your outdoor patio if you were lucky enough to have one of those too.
The plot revolves around an internationally renowned playwright named Georg Dreyman who publicly avows his solidly communist views but who secretly despises everything about the East German government and has been communicating with Western sympathizers hoping to expose the evils of communism. Unbeknownst to him, his apartment has come under surveillance by a Stasi team who’ve set themselves up in the top floor of his apartment building and are conducting around-the-clock listening details. The writer’s girlfriend has been compromised by a relationship with the high-ranking East German Minister of Culture, the man who has ordered the initial surveillance.
The plot thickens.
After a friend who had been betrayed and blacklisted by those he believed were friends commits suicide, his death is not reported as such, and Dreyman publishes an anonymous article in Der Spiegel, a West German weekly. The article accuses the German Democratic Republic (GDR) of hiding statistics on the startlingly high suicide rates in the country. Embarrassed by the article, The Ministry of Culture is determined to track down and punish the author.
East German law required every typewriter to be registered but after Stasi receives a copy of the manuscript, it is unable to determine its source and could not match the typeface to any of its registered devices; Dreyman had written his article on a secretly supplied typewriter from the West German daily Der Spiegel designed to escape detection. Dreyman, of course, had to hide his typewriter and did – under a floorboard in an interior doorway of his apartment – and the only other person who knew its whereabouts was his compromised girlfriend.
I won’t reveal any more of the plot, but I did want to compare life under Stasi to life as a student at Stanford University and/or in fact, virtually every Ivy League and state-run institution of “higher learning.”
Along with more “administrators” than it knows what to do with, the Stanford experience features an Anonymous Bias Reporting System, under which students are advised that they could and should report any perceived incidence of bias, prejudice, hate speech, intolerance, or other anti-social speech or behavior they witness or are privy to.
Recently, Federal Appellate Judge Kyle Duncan (a Trump appointee and, dare I say it: a conservative) had been invited by a branch of the Heritage Foundation to speak to students at Stanford Law School. His subject: “Guns, Covid Mandates, and Twitter. For his troubles, he was shouted down, denounced as “scum” by various peace-loving law students, and then castigated by Tirien Steinbach, Stanford Associate Dean of Diversity! Equity! and Inclusion! for the “harm” his work had caused.
After delivering a pre-written six-minute tirade, she invited any students “who felt threatened” by the judge’s presence and/or his undelivered statements, to leave if they wanted. On cue, many did just that.
On its website, Stanford claims its bias reporting system is meant “to address incidents where a community member experiences harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.” A caller reporting any such “incident” is not required to identify himself or herself, and no evidence is required to lodge a complaint. A “Protected Identity Harm Incident” claim can be made about any “conduct or incident that adversely and unfairly targets an individual or group on the basis of one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics: race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, age, viability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, marital status or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.”
Whew!
The Stanford bias reporting system has been in place for two years and the company that designed the program – Maxient – boasts that more than 1,300 other colleges and universities have signed up with them. In the 2021-22 school year, apparently, “457 acts of intolerance or hate” involving “gestures, taunts, mockery, unwanted jokes or teasing and derogatory or disparaging comments of a biased nature” were reported within the UC system alone.
The good news is that colleges in Michigan, Texas, and Florida have dismantled similar programs after a series of successful lawsuits successfully challenged the constitutionality of such programs.
Any high-school student or parent should be aware that protocols encouraging students to secretly inform on fellow students and professors are in place in many colleges and universities throughout the U.S., particularly in the Ivy League, where Free Speech goes to die.
Until all and any such “bias reporting systems” are dismantled and thrown on the ash heap of history, potential college students should analyze and reconsider where to spend their money on those most important years of their lives.
It certainly should not be at an institution such as Stanford that encourages fellow students to turn each other in to the Speech Police.
Lenin's term for these types of unreflective, unthinking revolutionaries: Useful Idiots. Then when the real revolution kicked-in, they were the first to go.
There are a few differences between life under the Stasi and life as a student at Stanford: Very few of the students need monitoring because almost all of them are committed leftists. And the few independent thinkers who attend Stanford are mostly open about it, like the members of the Federalist Society. So very little spying is necessary. And the only penalty for departure from accepted group think is a harangue like the one delivered by the DEI Dean.