Stanford University

On June 29, 2023, Stanford's President issued a "message regarding [the] Supreme Court ruling on race-conscious university admissions" which states the following: "I am deeply disappointed by today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upends the long-standing practice of race-conscious university admissions to help achieve a diverse student body. I know that many of you in our community are disheartened. Now, our task is to respond in ways that allow Stanford to continue expanding opportunity and fulfilling our mission in a diverse and changing world."

In a statement on "Diversity and Inclusion" released by Stanford's Provost, he stated, "We strive to ensure that a diversity of cultures, races and ethnicities, genders, political and religious beliefs, physical and learning differences, sexual orientations and identities is thriving on our campus."

Creating Anti-Bias training for staff and Anti-Racism orientation requirements for incoming students.

Stanford University’s Office for Inclusion, Belonging & Intergroup Communication offers LINKS workshops. LINK workshops have been designed to “engage students in dialogue about essential topics related to equity and inclusion.” This fall they are hosting a LINK workshop for students to gather with their peers to “connect and reflect on identity while exploring concepts related to community cultural wealth.”

Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences offers its departments "the opportunity to request workshops that will support staff’s professional development, knowledge, and skillset of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging." Workshops included are "Anti-racist Bystander Intervention Strategies" and "Power, Privilege, and Systems of Oppression."

Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning offers strategies to minimize the "negative effects" of implicit bias and microaggressions in the classroom which "can significantly impact your students' ability to learn and succeed."

Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning's IDEAL (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in a Learning Environment) Pedagogy program "provides a unified curriculum around inclusive and equitable pedagogy to represent all dimensions of diversity, promote student belonging, and equalize access for all students." The program is designed for "instructors and departments and programs enrolling Stanford undergraduate and graduate students, across schools and disciplines."

Stanford's "Our Vision" website states the following: "Infused throughout the vision is a dedication to fostering a diverse and inclusive environment on our campus and in our research, and to addressing racial justice in our community." The site continues, "Through the vision, Stanford is assuming a greater responsibility for the societal and ethical impact of our research and education by embedding ethics in a curriculum taken by all first year students."

The Center for Teaching and Learning encourages "practices that support the success of members of underrepresented groups." Several recommendations are made for educators, which include "[examining] assumptions we might hold about different populations, including our students" and "[encouraging] students to examine their own assumptions and become more informed, more sensitive, and more conscious about ethnic, racial, and gender issues, as well as other issues unique to a college population."

The Center to Support Excellence in Teaching (CSET) states "We operate from the belief that education is a conduit for social justice." The CSET has developed a "Social Justice Framework" that defines and guides its work and is pivotal to the "design of [its] professional learning and research projects."

The Wall Street Journal reported that Stanford University's anonymous student bias reporting system, "Protect Identity Harm Reporting", stirred up a lot of controversy and 77 professors from across the seven schools signed a petition asking the university to investigate free speech and academic freedom on campus, with the first step being to getting rid of the anonymous-reporting system. In the WSJ article, Stanford Business School professor Ivan Marinovic said the bias-reporting system reminded him "of the way citizens were encouraged to inform on one another by governments in the Soviet Union, East Germany and China."

Amid national pressure against its "Orwellian" Protected Identity Harm reporting system, Stanford made edits to its bias reporting system in April 2023. The reporting system is no longer anonymous, requires students to sign in using a Stanford log-in, and specifies that incidents reported should occur outside the classroom.

The University currently prioritizes "the diversity of the faculty, especially faculty from underrepresented backgrounds including racial and ethnic minorities and women in STEM."

Research grants for the IDEAL fellows program and new Center for Racial Justice (Stanford Law School) will be given to research societal problems, injustices, and race/ethnicity.

Stanford University’s Office for Inclusion, Belonging & Intergroup Communication (IBIC) has created the Dialogue Grant Program that “offers grants to students, staff, or faculty members who seek to carry out a project that centers diversity, inclusion, belonging, and equity through intergroup communication. Projects are accepted on a rolling basis and could be awarded up to $300 per individual or $500 per group.

Through the "President's Awards for Excellence Through Diversity," individuals and programs can be recognized for their "exceptional contributions to enhancing and supporting diversity (broadly defined) within the Stanford University community."

Under the Black Community Services Center, students can join the "Ernest Houston Johnson Scholars Program." During the fall semester, students will participate in "Black at Stanford," where students will hear from "Black faculty and staff" who "share their educational experiences and career trajectories" and for their final project, students "have to produce an infographic highlighting an aspect of Black life at Stanford."  During the winter quarter, students are required to "work in groups to imagine a Black Utopia."

The Stanford Department of Public Safety released an "Affirmation of Values" that stated the following, "We condemn any form of violence or discrimination against individuals based on their race, ethnicity, or any other characteristic" and "the actions of the former police officers that lead to the death of Tyre Nichols violate the principles and values which we believe in and stand for as a department." The Department stated its plan to work on and build "trust and accountability between law enforcement and the community [it] serves."

All of the University's police officers receive training on how to avoid "implicit and explicit bias" with the learning goal to "recognize the existence of implicit bias and how it can influence decision-making and procedural justice."

The Stanford University Department of Public Safety released a general order titled “Acts of Intolerance” in order to affirm the Department's "commitment to unbiased, fair, and impartial policing." The order stated, "All employees should draw upon their training and use their critical decision making skills to assess whether there is criminal conduct and to be aware of personal implicit bias and bias by proxy when carrying out their duties."

Official University Resources/literature encourage “allyship,” continued “protests,” and anti-racist mindset changes to combat and dismantle “systemic racism.”

The Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute offers resources on "Anti-Racism Education," including Ibram X. Kendi's "How to be an Anti-Racist."

The Office of Student Affairs offered educational materials including a link to “Anti-racism resources."

The Office for Inclusion, Belonging and Intergroup Communication offered resources on "Exploring Racism & Anti-Racism," such as Kimberle Crenshaw's talk titled "The Urgency of Intersectionality" and the "Seeing White" podcast.

The Stanford Libraries started the KNOW Systemic Racism (KSR) project. Using the project, users will know: "Systemic Racism Actually Does Exist; How Systemic Racism Interconnects; How to Help Fight Systemic Racism."

Stanford University Libraries has dedicated a guide to anti-racism and protest movement. This guide offers research materials in the following areas: healthcare, criminal justice, employment, food, healthcare, housing, literature, politics & economics, psychology, and technology.

Stanford University’s Office for Inclusion, Belonging & Intergroup Communication offers a peer facilitation program. The Stanford Peer Facilitation Program was designed to “engage in structured conversations and learning experiences around Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) with their peers in their respective student-based-spaces – organizations and dorms.” The mission of the program is to “nurture equitable student communities at Stanford University through peer-led explorations of social identity and power… by creat[ing] a cohort of student leaders who foster a campus culture where every student feels seen, heard, and valued.”

Stanford University’s Office for Inclusion, Belonging & Intergroup Communication (IBIC) offers workshops for staff and faculty that allow them to interact with topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This fall in train-the-trainer, Stanford faculty and staff will learn “how to facilitate courageous conversations.”

Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences offers a "Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) Change Makers Certificate" and an "Inclusion in the Workplace Certificate" and states that "The School of Humanities & Sciences affirms its commitment to fostering a community that actively addresses issues of power and inclusion by forwarding social justice and equity at Stanford and beyond."

The University Office of Faculty Development, Diversity, and Engagement provides "Anti-bias Training Resources" for faculty, including a guide for "Recognizing and Addressing Microaggressions."

University apologized to its departments for following president's order against diversity training.

Stanford University’s Office for Inclusion, Belonging & Intergroup Communication (IBIC) partners with the Institute for Diversity in the Arts to host long-standing NSO program Faces of Community. Faces of Community is “designed to introduce new first-year and transfer students to the diversity of identities, stories, and talents of current, fellow students in the Stanford community.”

On January 30, 2023, University officials sent a message regarding the death of Tyre Nichols and stated, "it is particularly gut wrenching to see this happen to yet another member of the Black community – a community that experiences these grievous acts at a higher rate than any other in our society."

Stanford's Provost issued a statement on diversity and inclusion and stated, "Despite our current commitments to equity and access, our collective history is built on the efforts of populations that have been historically marginalized and denied equal access to higher education" and "student advocacy led Stanford to reevaluate the names of several buildings and streets and to rename some of them, recognizing that retaining the existing name in some cases was 'inconsistent with the university’s integrity and harmful to its research and teaching missions and inclusiveness'".

The University holds an annual "Black Graduation" which is a separate event from commencement and is meant to "celebrate the long tradition of cultural awareness at Stanford."