https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/save_stanford_appoint_scott_atlas_or_jay_bhattacharya_as_president.html
Stanford University’s reputation is in freefall as this once-revered university makes headlines for all the wrong reasons. Recently, a mob of law school students shut down a conservative judge’s speech, screeching insults at him to the approval of a Diversity Dean and the disgust of the country. Then there’s the FTX fiasco, in which a Stanford-linked cryptocurrency company collapsed amidst lurid charges of fraud and money laundering. Victor’s Davis Hanson’s lament “What Happened to Stanford?” adds other disasters to the list, including the arrest of a Chinese agent and the disclosure of $64 million in Chinese donations.
I’ve been studying Stanford’s decline for a while, and I think I have a partial explanation: the fish rots from the head. Stanford’s president is a renowned neuroscientist currently under investigation for scientific fraud. Dr. Tessier-Lavigne made his reputation studying Alzheimer’s, but evidence has emerged that has critics alleging that he may have manipulated images in multiple influential papers published in Science and Nature.
Americans are losing faith in their institutions, and the story of Dr. Tessier-Lavigne exemplifies why. His first problematic study dates back to 2001, but that didn’t stop his meteoric rise through biotech pioneer Genentech to the presidency of Rockefeller University and then Stanford in 2016. Now that his alleged frauds have come to light, Stanford’s Board of Trustees has opened an investigation, but it’s being conducted by Board members, instead of outside experts. To many observers, it appears that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne may be getting the privileged treatment awarded those with favored credentials and opinions.