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Last week, I made a decision to give up teaching “MGE,” a signature second-year course at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Two-plus decades earlier, I’d made a similar decision at a time when students were regularly skipping classes to pursue Internet fortunes. In lieu of continuing to irritate them with homework assignments, I’d opted to take a sabbatical. And when the dot-com bubble predictably burst, I’d returned to enjoy what eventually became a magical 30 years in the classroom.

What follows is the story of how I’ve decided, once again, that the time has come to cut back.

Throughout my tenure at Stanford, I’ve sought to help students of every race, creed, nationality, and gender to become great business leaders. I’ve encouraged them to consider how business success depends at its core on securing: 1) maximum value to customers, 2) meaningful jobs for employees, and 3) superior returns to shareholders. And the traits necessary to achieve these 3 fiduciary imperatives fall within three categories: 1) character, 2) competence, and 3) commitment.

When the (African American) Chairman of Microsoft and the (female) CEO of Yahoo! visited class and both spoke of a duty to be “color blind,” I offered first-hand experience at assembling remarkable teams from every cohort. Thus, I was shocked to receive a call from the Dean informing me that students had formally complained of my reluctance to subordinate these 3 categories of requisite traits to emergent DEI quotas based on superficial attributes.

I could not have been more shocked when this complaint was followed by another. This time, the Jewish Business Student Association had labeled as “hate speech” a LinkedIn post I’d entitled “Great Leaders Always Tell the Truth.” To remind the reader how lying leads to tragedy, I’d alluded to propagandist Joseph Goebbels having engineered an unspeakable evil by repeating a “Big Lie.” After students construed this article as “hate speech,” out of genuine affection for those imagining insult, I simply deleted the post.

As I was puzzling over what could possibly have been the justification for such a high-velocity accusation, I received a letter from Stanford Student Affairs issuing a weekend alert over “deeply troubling news.” Reporting that a “horrific discovery” would “shake our community,” they informed everyone that a hate crime investigation was underway. Naturally, I hoped the reported discovery of a noose near a student residence would prove as dubious as the Smollett claim, as questionable as BLM’s misapplication of funds, or as exaggerated as the FBI’s dispatch of 15 agents to the Talladega Superspeedway.

However, based on its Sunday urgency and tone, the letter prompted me to again reflect on the spurious hate speech accusation just leveled at me. Furthermore, it forced me to grapple with an inclination I’d perceived on the part of the administration to take the side of those on the lookout for offense. Had walking on eggshells become a permanent feature of life in the academy?

By now, feeling I’d been deliberately misinterpreted, directly accused, and even menacingly “doxxed,” the image that came to mind for the quashing of diverse viewpoints on campus – along with those who held them – was the 17th-century clubbing to extinction of the dodo bird.?As a member of a dwindling “waddle” (an assembly of dodo birds), while saddened by a lack of support, I’ll forever be proud of every student who has worked on becoming profoundly competent, impeccably high-character, and resolutely committed to changing the world for the better.

And I hope those inclined to embrace grievances and to divide people by tribe, skin color, belief system, gender or political affiliation, will eventually find a better way to lead.