Pricey President Levin,
On October 4th 2024, the month earlier than essentially the most consequential election of our lifetime, you opened a convention titled Pandemic Coverage: Planning the Future, Assessing the Previous. Previous to this, I shared my ideas with you in an article titled Don’t Censor Drs. Scott Atlas, John Ioannidis, Sunetra Gupta, Marty Makary, Monica Gandhi, Jay Bhattacharya, and Vinay Prasad. Amplify Their Voices. I wrote:
You might be giving the introduction to the convention, that means you might be setting the tone and giving your private stamp of approval to it. I’m positive we each agree it’s essential to have an correct account of the pandemic and to reject cancel tradition. In that spirit, I imagine you might be obligated to spice up these docs voices. The attendees and most of the people should know what they mentioned and the insurance policies they pushed.
I additionally offered you with a number of clips of those docs saying absurd, clearly false issues, although you didn’t care about any of that. None of their repeated errors of fundamental truth bothered you within the slightest.
In a follow-up article, I famous that as a substitute of precisely reporting the audio system’ data, you coated up their misinformation and sanctimoniously scolded scientists who tried to warn you in books akin to The Lethal Rise of Anti-Science. It’s value sharing your speech once more, particularly in mild of what’s occurred since and that a number of of the audio system are cheering it on. You mentioned:
Good morning and welcome to everybody. I admire the chance to be right here.
Now, you would possibly surprise: Why is Jon Levin opening this convention on pandemic coverage? You would possibly say, Jon is not any public well being knowledgeable. And I would say: Properly, I did run a enterprise college in the course of the COVID pandemic, so I’ve some expertise making pandemic coverage selections. Additionally they say you be taught most by making errors. So I feel there are most likely a thousand Stanford MBAs who’re prepared to argue that I’m mainly a world knowledgeable.
Nonetheless, that’s not why I’m right here.
After I was invited to take part on this occasion a number of months in the past, it was with the understanding that the aim was to convey collectively folks with completely different views, have interaction in a day of debate, and in that method, attempt to restore a number of the rifts that opened throughout COVID.
That struck me as a useful aim, and the type of aim we must always purpose for at Stanford. So I agreed to offer a number of transient remarks to that impact.
What adopted was disappointing. After I was invited, I requested round and certainly the organizers have been speaking to some well-known folks with fairly completely different views who have been more likely to converse. Nonetheless, it was not so simple. Some invitees weren’t in a position to make it, or withdrew, or didn’t need to take part in an occasion with different audio system whose views and habits they discovered attacking or abhorrent.
When an preliminary and partial agenda was posted, it was instantly perceived as one-sided, and as I’m positive you all observed turned the topic of op-eds and social media posts.
Satirically, as a substitute of repairing rifts as supposed and maybe spurring recent considering, the method appeared to reopen outdated and present divisions.
As an observer and because the chief of this college, I discovered the episode dispiriting, in a method that goes past the specifics of this specific occasion.
We now have many points immediately at Stanford, and on different campuses, the place views are divided, and in some circumstances, like this one, the place emotions are uncooked.
But I imagine we have to make each effort to get individuals who disagree, even sharply, in dialogue with each other. I imagine it’s important for us to try this as members of the school and college leaders – not simply because it’s a technique to advance information, however as a result of we have to mannequin that habits if we need to count on it from our college students. And in immediately’s world, we completely have to ask and count on our college students to have the ability to have interaction with, take heed to, and debate with folks with whom they disagree. My view is that we have to err on the facet of speaking to at least one one other.
So I hope immediately’s convention will come off in a method that entails simply that – considerate and sturdy dialogue throughout completely different views. I hope it yields some essential insights about future pandemic coverage – we definitely want that. Maybe it does even bridge a number of divides amongst these within the room.
And I hope much more that every one of you’ll be a part of within the bigger venture of attempting to make Stanford and different campuses boards for the kind of sturdy and considerate dialogue that’s on the coronary heart of universities after we’re at our greatest.
Loads has occurred since then, and none of it’ll bridge divides, restore rifts, or advance information. Donald Trump received, RFK Jr. will lead the HHS, and two of the convention audio system, Drs. Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya, are poised to steer the FDA and NIH. Shortly after Dr. Bhattacharya’s nomination, you mentioned the following:
Jay Bhattacharya has been nominated to be the director of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, which is a very powerful funder of biomedical analysis within the nation, in reality on this planet. I feel he’ll do an distinctive job in that position.
I do know Dr. Bhattacharya’s monitor document very nicely, and nothing in it suggests he’ll do “distinctive job” or that he disapproves of something that’s at the moment occurring. However hopefully you might be proper, and Dr. Bhattacharya will journey to the rescue. Perhaps 4 years from now we’ll marvel on the wonderful state of science within the US. He’s our greatest hope, which says so much concerning the state of affairs we’re in.
As you realize, the headlines learn Stanford to Lose $160 Million in NIH Funding Change and the courts appear powerless to cease it. In the meantime, respectable persons are being purged from the NIH. That is what myself and plenty of others have been afraid of. I’m not going to faux I anticipated the particular threats to establishments like Stanford. That wasn’t my job. However the docs I warned about and also you applauded didn’t precisely conceal their grievances, conspiracies, or intentions.
Truth examine: Nobody advised a devastating take down of scientists, simply their “premises.”
Whilst you clearly didn’t have the ability to cease this by yourself, you had a platform to sound the alarm. As a substitute, you selected to disregard and obscure the chance. You had the chance to carry essential folks accountable by doing nothing greater than taking part in movies of them speaking. You had the possibility to current proof that these audio system mentioned false and harmful issues, and you handed it up. Unimaginable.
These movies are the rationale I used to be by no means invited to talk at such a convention by the best way. These docs’ want for “debate and dialogue” didn’t embrace somebody like me, who would have been prepared to remind them of what they mentioned.
I can’t assist however surprise if authority figures had merely been sincere concerning the existence of misinformation and its risks if that would have moved the needle in a significant method. Sadly, we’ll by no means know. Such as you, practically all of them prioritized phony “considerate and sturdy dialogue” over blunt, uncomfortable truths. They greeted misinformation with a shrug and yawn, and now all of us face “many potential points,” as you gently put it.
We each need funding to be restored to Stanford and in all places else. Till then, I hope you’ll take a second to learn how I ended my second article:
When somebody spreads harmful, blatant misinformation, sincere brokers name it out, even when the individual spreading the misinformation has fancy credentials and may converse in scientific jargon… It doesn’t bode nicely for the longer term that leaders of main American establishments say bare emperors are carrying stunning garments.
I feel my stark warning aged a lot better than your banal cliches about “completely different views’. It turns on the market’s a steep value to pay when “leaders” refuse to acknowledge that bare emperors are bare. $160 million is some huge cash, particularly when you think about its not simply cash. It’s misplaced goals, careers, and discoveries.
And we’re simply getting began and these guys are in cost.