Author: Glen

Andrew Wright, friend, fel­low blog­ger, and stu­dent in Chi Alpha, refers to a pos­i­tive impact I had on his life:

[Tobias] Wolff destroyed any resid­ual inter­est I still had in Ayn Rand and Objec­tivism, com­plet­ing the process begun by a series [of] sum­mer con­ver­sa­tions with Glen in 2002.

I hoped I was mak­ing sense back then. That was real­ly one of my first min­istry chal­lenges at Stan­ford. Andrew was our very first stu­dent in Chi Alpha (and he turned into our house­mate with­in weeks of our arrival).

It’s bit­ter­sweet see­ing him grad­u­ate in a few months. On the one hand, my job as a min­is­ter will be MUCH eas­i­er with­out Andrew ;), but on the oth­er hand he’s our last link to the begin­ning. We will have offi­cial­ly cycled a stu­dent gen­er­a­tion.

I was pret­ty heart­ened by his last para­gaph:

Com­menc­ing the last quar­ter at Stan­ford – the last 3 months of indis­cre­tion of my life, but to cram all of the fun and fol­ly of the past 4 years into one quar­ter would prob­a­bly kill me. Rather than resolv­ing to live it up, I’m hop­ing to end on a note that is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly reflec­tive and for­ward look­ing, a sort of tran­scen­dent Bud­dha-like coast­ing into the next high­er phase.

We’ll be watch­ing, Andrew. 🙂

Creepy squared:

In one of the most con­tro­ver­sial sci­en­tif­ic projects ever con­ceived, a group of uni­ver­si­ty researchers in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Sil­i­con Val­ley is prepar­ing to cre­ate a mouse whose brain will be com­posed entire­ly of human cells.

Researchers at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty have already suc­ceed­ed in breed­ing mice with brains that are one per cent human cells.

In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from abort­ed foe­tus­es to cre­ate an ani­mal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human.

No, you did not mis­read. Stan­ford sci­en­tists are plan­ning to make a mouse whose brain is com­posed of dead babies’ brain cells.

Rats of Nimh, any­one?

full sto­ry (or read anoth­er, broad­er sto­ry on the same issue)

I some­how missed this arti­cle from the Stan­ford Dai­ly a few weeks ago : Chris­t­ian Groups Sue Uni­ver­si­ties Nation­wide.

some Chris­t­ian groups have been suc­cess­ful in forc­ing col­leges to allow them to bar gay stu­dents and athe­ists.

That’s an awful­ly loaded inter­est­ing way to describe what’s been hap­pen­ing. It makes it sound as though the Chris­t­ian groups are agi­tat­ing for rights pre­vi­ous­ly denied them instead of react­ing to new uni­ver­si­ty poli­cies which under­mine their beliefs. For a dif­fer­ent take, read Chris­tian­i­ty Today’s weblog (and this fol­low-up).

Junior Ros­abelle Ori­bel­lo, the LGBT [Les­bian, Gay, Bisex­u­al, Trans­gen­dered] Center’s liai­son to on-cam­pus res­i­dences, believes the cur­rent polit­i­cal atmos­phere at Stan­ford will help pre­vent the out­break of such a con­tro­ver­sy.

“I don’t think it will hap­pen at this cam­pus because the mes­sage the cen­ter has got­ten from the reli­gious groups has been that they are pret­ty affirm­ing of LGBTs,” she said. “Though I don’t know what it’s like on oth­er col­lege cam­pus­es, we have a pret­ty lib­er­al cam­pus and that goes far in reduc­ing the chances of these kinds of con­flicts.”

While many reli­gious groups at Stan­ford clear­ly do affirm what­ev­er sex­u­al choic­es you make, many oth­ers do not. You would have no clue based on this arti­cle. That’s odd.

[Scot­ty] McLen­nan agreed with Oribello’s rea­son­ing.

“Stan­ford is a very plu­ral­is­tic envi­ron­ment, reli­gious and in oth­er ways,” he said.

Many stu­dents believe that it is this polit­i­cal­ly-homo­ge­neous atmos­phere that pre­vents the dif­fi­cul­ties faced at oth­er schools.

The con­trast between one sen­tence and the next is strik­ing: “plu­ral­is­tic envi­ron­ment” switched to “polit­i­cal­ly homo­ge­neous.” That it was­n’t caught by the reporter or the copy­ed­i­tor is revealing–the plu­ral­ism that Stan­ford pre­sup­pos­es is a super­fi­cial plu­ral­ism which focus­es on col­or, cul­ture, and sex­u­al con­duct but which usu­al­ly ignores con­vic­tions. In oth­er words, ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty is the one sort of diver­si­ty that is frowned upon.

On that note, I find it curi­ous that the author appar­ent­ly did­n’t seek to inter­view any­one who dis­agreed with his pre­sup­po­si­tions. Of the three reli­gious groups he did inter­view, none had been involved in the law­suits on oth­er cam­pus­es. That’s worth not­ing sim­ply because the arti­cle men­tions Inter­Var­si­ty at Tufts by name and there’s a very active Inter­Var­si­ty chap­ter here on the Farm. I won­der what they would have said had they been asked?

If you’re inter­est­ed in stuff like this, Andy Crouch has a great arti­cle called Cam­pus Col­li­sions that explains why Inter­Var­si­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, is more like­ly to get involved in law­suits than the rest of us.