Stanford’s man in Washington
AStanford study published in Nature last week used cell phone mobility information to demonstrate the efficacy of closing or limiting occupancy of restaurants, gyms and other highrisk places in preventing the spread of the coronavirus. The lead author, Stanford computer scientist Jure Leskovec, told The Chronicle, “It really gives some empirical evidence for the importance of stayathome orders and social distancing.” His team made its data public to help officials finetune restrictions to maximize safety benefits while allowing as much economic activity as possible.
And then there’s Stanford’s betterknown contribution to our understanding of the pandemic — or, more precisely, our misunderstanding. Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution turned White House adviser, has become the pseudointellectual face of President Trump’s laissezfaire coronavirus strategy. A sort of anti Anthony Fauci, Atlas lends a patina of expertise to the administration’s determination to let the virus run rampant, guiding our national nonpolicy on the pandemic based on his extensive training as a ( checks notes) radiologist.
A few days after Stanford’s computer scientists advanced our collective knowledge, its wayward physician was fomenting mass ignorance and possibly worse. Responding to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s recent rollback of indoor dining and other highrisk activities — an order echoed by
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and others as infections surged across the country in recent weeks — Atlas wrote on Twitter, “The only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept.”
Given Michigan’s restive rightwing militia movement and some of its members’ recently foiled attempt to kidnap the governor, Atlas’ tweet read to some as a dangerous incitement to violence. He attempted to clean it up by claiming he was advocating peaceful protest and nothing more. Even according to the most charitable interpretation, however, Atlas was undermining the responsible, evidencebased, statelevel disaster management necessitated by the White House’s neglect of its duty to respond to a national emergency.
The doctor’s questionable diagnoses of the nation’s ills have provoked an uproar within Stanford’s faculty, among other circles. Robb Willer, a Stanford sociology professor, told The Chronicle that Atlas’ statements are “embarrassing to us, both morally and scientifically.” Thomas Mullaney, a history professor, told the Stanford Daily that the university should “stand up and condemn ... this absolute, obvious, clearcut wrong.”
What Stanford produced instead was “insipid and spineless,” as Mullaney accurately put it. An official statement said the university supports “using masks, social distancing, and conducting surveillance and diagnostic testing” as well as “strictly following the guidance of local and state health authorities.” It added wanly that “Dr. Atlas has expressed views that are inconsistent with the university’s approach in response to the pandemic,” which are “his personal views, not those of the Hoover Institution or the university.”
The impression of a Faustian bargain is inescapable. Headed by Condoleezza Rice, a former Stanford provost and secretary of state under George W. Bush, Hoover has given Stanford clout in this and other presidential administrations. For that the university appears willing to bear the high reputational and moral price of its association with the likes of Atlas and the reckless policies he endorses.