Stanford University

School of Humanities and Sciences

Stanford, CA 94305

​

August 26, 2024

 

Dear Dean Satz, Dean Safran, and Stanford University,

 

I write to express my tremendous disappointment in the decision summarily to terminate the employment of twenty-three Creative Writing lecturers, including the perverse choice to do so en masse over Zoom, the so-called “Red Wedding” already notorious across the nation.  I know that these were the decisions of senior faculty in English and Creative Writing, and I write in the hope that you and other administrators might reverse them.

 

You will already be aware, of course, of the obvious impacts of this decision: that lecturers advise over ninety percent of students in Creative Writing and teach over fifty percent of the classes in English; that two-thirds of English majors select a focus in Creative Writing; that current and past Jones Lecturers have been among the most committed and longest-serving members of the faculty in English; that, through the work of these lecturers, thousands of Stanford undergraduates have been able to experience real individual attention as writers and as people.  No doubt the ambition to “restructure” the Stegner Program—an unfortunate bit of corporate jargon, coming from ostensible humanists—will obviate some of these impacts, but certainly you recognize that incoming Stegner Fellows, emerging writers just beginning their careers, will serve Stanford undergraduates far less effectively than would current Jones Lecturers.  And if such “restructuring” indeed needs to take place, of which I am skeptical, surely it could have been phased in as current lecturers leave.

 

This kind of decision, along with the manner in which it was announced, runs contrary not only to the spirit but to the remarkable history of the Stegner Program, since its inception under Stegner, and through its long stewardship under figures like John L’Heureux, Denise Levertov, and Eavan Boland.  I am not sure if you knew Eavan, but I imagine that she would have been appalled at this decision, both because of its impact on the program and because of its effects on people she carefully hand-picked for roles as lecturers. 

 

This decision is beneath the dignity and reputation of Stanford University.  It would not have happened, and certainly not in such a callous way, at any other institution I have attended or taught at, and I am mortified that it happened to a program I so dearly love.

 

I hope that you and other Stanford administrators are able to reverse this catastrophe, and I thank you for your attention.

 

Dr. Christopher Kempf

 

Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry, 2012-2014

 

Assistant Professor

Department of English

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign