Review Celebrates 20th Anniversary
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Nearly fifty alumni, donors, guests, and current staff members celebrated The Stanford Review’s 20th anniversary as Stanford’s conservative paper with a two-day reunion in Palo Alto and San Francisco. Notable speakers included David Friedman, son of the late economist Milton Friedman, and conservative author Dinesh D’Souza.
Nobel Prize-winning economist and Hoover Senior Fellow Milton Friedman was originally scheduled to give the keynote address on the first day of the reunion, but his passing two months ago at the age of 94 caused a change in plans. Instead, Emeritus Professor of Economics and of Health Research and Policy Victor Fuchs, Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation Senior Fellow Greg Forster, and UC Berkeley Post-Doctorate Fellow Konstantin Magin spoke about Freidman during the Tribute to the Life of Milton Friedman. They were followed up by Friedman’s son, David Friedman.
Before the Friedman tribute, however, Stanford Economics Professor and Hoover Senior Fellow John Taylor spoke on the economic success of the United States during the life of The Stanford Review. Since 1982, the United States has had almost uninterrupted growth, with only three small recessions. He attributes this primarily to our increased understanding of the economy. Due to Milton Friedman’s influential teachings, strong monetary policy has replaced Keynesian economics as the guide for the Federal Reserve to stimulate economic growth.
Victor Fuchs, a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Stanford, explored the personal side of Milton Friedman, recounting his and others’ anecdotes of their experiences interacting with him.
Friedman and his wife formed the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996 to promote school choice, an idea that has been loosely adopted in eleven states and which aims to provide school children with vouchers allowing them to attend a school of their parents’ choice. School choice, of which Friedman first wrote in 1955, had been a focus of his attention in the last decade of his life. Forster spoke on the foundation’s work and the progress they have made. He said it was Friedman’s view that the public school system would continue along with little changes until it reached a crisis point and the public would be willing to make the controversial switch to a voucher system.
Konstantin Magin spoke of how he first learned of Freidman and how the great economist changed his life forever. Magin was born in the Soviet Union, where he took a secret interest in market economics after reading about Friedman as a high school student. While in college, Magin managed to communicate with the economist using an elaborate and time-consuming process of smuggling letters into and out of the country via a ballet troupe that preformed in Kiev and Great Britain. From London, the letters were then forwarded to the Philadelphia Philharmonic Society, and then on to Friedman. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Freidman was able to help Magin immigrate to the United States where he continued a personal relationship with Friedman.
David Freidman, a professor at the Santa Clara University Law and Business schools, dealt more with the personal side of his father. He briefly mentioned some childhood stories, such as the time the family took a cross-country train trip. Milton offered his kids the choice between sleeping in an overnight car or staying in regular seats and keeping the extra money themselves. They chose the money.
Friedman, an anarchist economist, then began the main portion of his talk, Market Failure: The Case For and Against Government. He argued that government is largely unnecessary and that all that we need are mediators to work between different groups in society. These mediators are made necessary by occasional failures in the market economy—a system based upon individuals making the best decision for themselves, which doesn’t always serve the interests of the group. To illustrate this concept of individual-induced market failure, Freidman presented a hypothetical medieval battle. If a line of cavalry is charging a line of pike men, it is in the pike men’s best interest as a whole to stay and fight. Some will die, but most will live if they are victorious. The best interest of the individual pike man is to run and let the others fight off the cavalry. That way, you likely still win the battle, but your survival is guaranteed. However, if everybody were to make this same decision, the whole line would retreat and the cavalry would easily kill all of the pike men. Thus, market failure can occur when the group’s interest and the individual’s interest conflict.
The next day there was a panel consisting of five Stanford Review Alumni: Candice Jackson, David Sacks, Keith Rabois, Aman Verjee, and David Wallace. Jackson works for Judicial Watch and is author of the book Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine. Sacks was the Chief Operating Officer for PayPal and recently produced the movie Thank You for Smoking. Rabois, a former Vice President of PayPal, is a current Vice President at LinkedIn, a networking website for professionals. Aman Verjee is currently a Vice President at PayPal. Wallace, after working at PayPal, founded Veritas Christian Academy, a private school for kids in the 6th through 12th grades.
Each panelist spoke on how politics affects their businesses, as well as how their time at Stanford helped to prepare them for the world ahead. After their time on The Farm, all of the panelists except Wallace went on to get law degrees. Though none of them currently practice law, they agreed that the skills they learned have helped them navigate the business world.
Dinesh D’Souza, a best-selling author and former senior analyst for President Ronald Reagan, then spoke about his college days on the staff of The Dartmouth Review. He also talked about his new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, in which he argues that the Muslim world is primarily opposed to the liberal culture of “Blue America.” At the same time, D’Souza claims, the American Left prefers to fight Bush than Bin Laden. As he stated, “The Left is willing to risk an Islamic fundamentalist state in Iraq in order to improve its prospects of defeating conservative government here in America.” In other words, instead of combating the evils of terrorism, liberals are more afraid that “Bush will impose Sharia in Boston.” Meanwhile, as liberal culture continues to infiltrate traditional societies like Iran, it is turned around and used to prove that the U.S. is an evil and immoral society aiming to subvert traditional customs.
The 20th Anniversary of The Stanford Review was without a doubt a resounding success. Its esteemed alumni and fascinating speakers dealt with both accomplishments and challenges, old times and new horizons. But as we celebrated its storied past, The Stanford Review promises an equally bright future.
