Secret Democracy

Students recently decided their dorms’ publications distribution policy—door-to-door or centralized. Didn’t know? That’s because ResEd didn’t tell you, and continues to resist openness. Last year, The Stanford Review went through a protracted battle with the Stanford administration and Residential Education over the door-to-door distribution policy for Stanford publications.

Anxious Talk, Perpetual Threats

Stanford trotted out the big guns—Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Former Secretary of State George Shultz, and President Hennessy, amongst others—for its alumni last weekend. This “roundtable,” entitled “Anxious Times: Seeing a World of Perpetual Threats,” drew enough alums to fill about two-thirds of Maples Pavilion; the 9AM start time seemed to deter most students from attending.

Stanford: Not the Harvard of the West

On September 12, Harvard University announced that beginning with students applying in fall 2007, it will no longer offer the option of applying single-choice early action, but rather will consider all students under their current regular admission option. Similarly, six days later, Princeton University announced it will follow suit. As members of a university community, we can easily recall our own college admissions process, whether as few as one year ago or several years ago. Many of us were accepted to Stanford under its early action policy, and Harvard’s and Princeton’s announcements have certainly perked our ears.

Dealing with Iran: The Battle Against Nuclear Proliferation

The recent conformation that North Korea tested a low-yield nuclear weapon brings new urgency to the West’s confrontation of nuclear proliferating renegade states. Iran continues to enrich uranium, and has admitted doing so, in strict defiance of the rest of the world. Eventually this impasse will break down and change the status quo.

Integrity and Humanity: Remembering Daniel Pearl

On October 17, Kresge Auditorium overflowed with hundreds of spectators anxious to hear the inaugural Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture. Pearl, a Stanford alum, was tragically murdered by Islamic extremists while covering a story in Pakistan for the Wall Street Journal in February 2002. Coming on the heels of 9/11, the world gasped as Pearl was kidnapped, beaten, and beheaded.

Tolerance and Treachery

Harvard University needs a better sense of humor. Only an institution suffering from an excess of self-importance could fail to see the joke in inviting a former president of the world’s largest state sponsor of Islamist terrorism to give a talk about the “Ethics of Tolerance” on September 10, 2006. Mohammad Khatami, the celebrated “moderate” from within Iran’s fanatical Islamic theocracy, ostensibly came to the Kennedy School of Government to share his dreams of a harmonious future, free from violence and sectarian strife. No doubt, the event’s organizers congratulated themselves on having shown their commitment to the free exchange of ideas by welcoming a leader from the Islamic world to speak his mind on the anniversary of 9/11.

Eliminated in the Playoffs

Having played high school football in Texas, I can tell you that one of the first things a prospective player will hear before his first practice before his first game before he first breaks through a butcher-paper pep banner is that if he hasn’t got something to bring to the table, it’s better that he doesn’t show up at all.

Strike in Northeast Asia

On Monday, October 9, the government of North Korea announced that it had successfully completed its first test of a nuclear weapon. The morning test, according to the communist government, was “conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent” and was a “historic event.”