From the Community | Stand up to the Trump administration’s probing

Audrey Shafer, M.D. ’83 is a professor emeritus of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine.  

Your voice matters. Student privacy matters. Cardinal Courage, a Stanford alumni-led (allies welcome!) group urges you to sign an open letter to University president Jonathan Levin ’94 and Dean Lloyd B. Minor supporting our University’s leadership in protecting student privacy. 

Late last month the Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, informed three medical schools, including Stanford University School of Medicine, that their admissions policies and practices were under investigation. Should extensive data about the previous seven years of admissions, including zip codes of applicants, ties to donors or family relationships to alumni, as well as all internal correspondence related to admissions, such as messages about diversity, not be delivered by April 24, 2026, then the federal government would withhold federal funding.

The other two medical schools are at UC San Diego and Ohio State University.

Why, specifically, are the federal government’s demands intrusive? First, the request for data and communication is overbroad and far exceeds that which might be required to assure compliance with the Supreme Court 2023 decision, a judgment which did not include authorization of such a wide sweep of admissions data, and certainly not without evidence of unlawful admission practices. Second, constitutional rights, particularly First Amendment rights, could be violated by disclosure of personal data and correspondence, as release of such information could chill or suppress expression by students, admissions committees and others. Third, size matters. The federal government has strong-armed other universities to release data on their thousands of college applicants. Our medical school enrolled 90 first-year medical students last year. The smaller the cohort, the easier to breach student privacy. 

I am a retired faculty member from Stanford medical school and also an alum from the class of 1983. I cherish Stanford: the people, the education, the place and the many, many doors of understanding it has opened for me. I would not be me without my history with the University. I feel assaulted by the federal government’s intrusion and overreach into higher education. 

The current federal administration seems to purposefully want to create chaos, instill fear and force silence of any opposing opinions. However, silence disempowers those who otherwise desire a voice. 

I joined Cardinal Courage, which is part of the larger Stand for Campus Freedom community. Similar alumni and ally networks for Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania help keep people informed and provide hubs for positive action. Cardinal Courage is a robust group of alumni and friends who care deeply about Stanford, and it has helped me find my voice.

Cardinal Courage is sponsoring the open letter to protect student privacy. This is an urgent call — we need signatures by April 21. 

Find your voice. Please read, sign and share. 

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