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A group of Stanford professors is fighting a gossip tool that allows students to report discrimination against one another anonymously.
More than 75 professors argue in a petition to school administrators that the online tool threatens free speech on campus, with one telling the Wall Street Journal it reminded him of the systems in force in the Soviet Union and China.
The Maxient reporting system, used at 1,300 institutions across the country, has already been challenged by free speech advocates in Florida, Texas, Michigan and Oklahoma.
It has apparently made 42-year-old Aaron Hark a millionaire, owner of a $900,000 home in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his family’s own vineyard.
Hark founded the company with his wife Celeste, 41, and the couple are now enjoying the fruits of their Wake online hallway monitor software in more ways than one.
Back at Stanford, school administrators say the system is necessary to ensure a respectful campus, despite criticism that it is creepy and Orwellian.
Russell Berman, a professor of comparative literature, created a petition for Stanford University to investigate free speech and academic freedom on campus after learning of an online tool that allows students to anonymously report their peers for discrimination.
The school has been using the third-party system since 2021, when it became widely used at universities across the country for students to report colleagues who were not wearing masks.
But university professors said they were unaware of the system, run by outside contractor Maxient, until the school newspaper reported an incident in which a student was sued for reading Mein Kampf.
“I was stunned,” Russell Berman, a professor of comparative literature who created the petition, told the Journal. It reminds me of McCarthyism.
According to the company’s website, Maxient is the “software of choice for managing behavior records at North American colleges and universities.”
“Our centralized reporting and record-keeping helps institutions connect the dots and prevent students from being left behind,” he says, noting, “Maxient serves as an integral component of many schools’ overall early warning efforts, helping to identify students at risk and coordinating the efforts of various departments to follow up.’
Maxient was founded in 2003 and is now used in more than 1,300 institutions in the United States.
At Stanford, students can use the system to report a Protected Identity Harm Incident, which is challenged as conduct directed at an individual or group based on characteristics such as race or sexual orientation.
The system defaults to anonymous reporting, allowing students to describe how they saw bias, which would trigger a query within 48 hours.
Both parties are then contacted, but participation in the research is optional. Administrators would then work with students to resolve the matter.
Only Maxient and a small number of people within the office of student affairs have access to the records, Stanford spokeswoman Dee Mostofi said, though she declined to say how long the records are stored.
However, a board maintained by the school, the Journal reports, lists some incidents students reported using the anonymous system, including the removal of an Israeli flag and a racial slur written on a white board hung on a dormitory door.
Stanford University has been using the Maxient system since 2021, allowing students to anonymously report a protected identity breach incident
School officials say it is necessary to maintain a peaceful and respectful campus.
It is intended to “build and maintain a better, safer, and more respectful college community,” according to Stanford’s website.
As Mostofi explained to the Journal: “The process is intended to promote a climate of respect, help people understand that much speech is protected, and at the same time offer resources and support to students who believe they have been harmed based on identity. protected”.
Professor Juan Santiago helped Berman collect 77 teacher signatures, saying the system could make students with different views feel left out.
DailyMail.com has contacted her to clarify her claim that “much speech is protected” given that the First Amendment gives all Americans the right to full free speech.
And senior Christian Sanchez, executive vice president of Stanford University Associated Students, the school’s student government, said he thinks the system is necessary, noting that he chafes when another student refers to it as ‘ G’, short for gangster because he’s Latino
Sanchez told the Journal that he lets those comments slip off his back, but the Maxient system provides less-tough students a path to redress.
“People need to be aware of what they are saying and who they are saying it to,” he said. “There are a lot of cases of stereotyping,” she said, “and people should have a resource to report it if they want to.”
But free speech advocates say the system is draconian, and Stanford mechanical engineering professor Juan Santiago says it could leave students with different views feeling left out.
‘If you’re an 18-year-old freshman and an administrator contacts you and says you’ve been accused of some transgression, what are you going to do?’ she asked, rhetorically.
“They may not call it punitive, but that can be very stressful.”
Since then, Santiago has helped Berman collect 77 faculty signatures to petition the school to investigate free speech and academic freedom on campus, the first step in getting rid of the Maxient system at the school.
Among them was Professor Ivan Marinovic, who said the system reminds him of the way residents of the Soviet Union, East Germany and China were encouraged to alert authorities to anti-government rhetoric.
“Ignore the whole story,” said Marinovic, a business professor at the school. ‘You’re basically going to report people you find offensive, right? According to his own ideology.
The Maxient system was created in 2003 by 42-year-old Aaron Hark. He is pictured with his wife Candice and his two children.
The Harks own a sprawling nearly 5,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom home in Charlottesville, Virginia, with an estimated value of $900,000.
The system is still in use at other schools, including all 10 University of California campuses.
During the 2021-2022 school year, the university system registered 457 acts of ‘intolerance or hatred’. Nearly 300 of those reports were defined as using offensive speech.
The University of California said those incidents include “unwanted gestures, taunting, taunting, teasing or taunting, and derogatory or disparaging comments of a biased nature.”
Free speech advocacy groups like the Goldwater Institute, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and the Alumni Free Speech Alliance have challenged the system at other schools.
As a result, the universities of Texas, Michigan, and Central Florida dissolved their systems.
And an ongoing legal case against Oklahoma State University for using a partial response system lists three students as plaintiffs.
They say in court documents that they don’t believe abortion, same-sex marriage or affirmative action should be practiced, and they think the Black Lives Matter movement to race relations.
But, they argue, they are afraid to discuss their views publicly on campus for fear that students who disagree with them will report them to the school’s bias response team.
In 2015, the couple purchased 70 acres of open land to build their own vineyard.
Hark Vineyards announces that it offers “spaces for meetings and tranquility”
Meanwhile, the man who created the system seems to be doing well by himself.
Aaron Hark owns a sprawling nearly 5,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom home in Charlottesville, Virginia with an estimated value of $900,000.
And he and his wife, Candice, also run their own vineyard in the city.
The Hark Vineyards website says that Aaron and Candice first purchased the original 70 acres in 2015.
“In the years since,” he says, “the land has been methodically farmed to maximize the wine-growing potential of the site, create gathering spaces and tranquility, and bring to life the vision that is Hark Vineyards.”