Diegetics

That's pretty messed up. And short sighted. If he would stop and think for a minute he would realize that educating Iranians at an American university is maybe the smartest thing he could do. As well, blaming 20 year old kids for something they can't effect is just assinine.

To achieve gobsmacking levels of stupidity, an advanced degree is often an asset.

The sweet thing about Stanford is that one can drop a class the day before the final with no consequense for your transcript. It's like you were never there and spared the opportunity to fail or get a B+. So I hear.

That teacher is a goof.

But in most American universities there is minimal discrimination, in comparison to most other countries. There are many thousands of professors in hundreds of academic institutions in the United States. This Stanford professor was influenced by his own political views. But I am sure that you will agree that in government-controlled Iranian universities you will find an even higher percentage of professors who base (or who are forced to base) their academic decisions to conform with the political views of the ruling party.

Just because you found a few bad professors is somehow giving you the right to condemn the American system.

Incidentally, as an immigrant in the United States, I have experienced a certain amount of prejudice by some professors, as well as some students, but this did not make a difference because I was able to put this in perspective since I knew that elsewhere the percentage of prejudiced people is even higher.

But the most important advice I can give you is this: If you do well in the United States, they can't flunk you in any course or qualifying exam. (This is at variance with what happened to a cousin in a very civilized European university during the 1970s, where he was absolutely one of the best students in his class, but the racist director of the college found a reason to give him a low grade.)

I don't see where the concept of free speech removes one's rights to be an asshole from time to time. Maybe a nice fatwa will smooth things over?

As to the question of getting into Stanford CompSci: "Probably not" applies to about 99.9% of humanity. Iranian humanity included.

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/pub/iranian.html

This raises interesting legal questions. I'm not up on the relevant California or US statutes, but there is no way this professor could keep his job under Canadian law. Blatant Charter violations.


I think the stupidity of "I'll punish these members of a group for something some other members of that group said or did" has been pretty much covered already.

The final irony is that foreign-educated youth are the segment of the Iranian population most overwhelmingly opposed to the current regime there.

I don't have the time to check the histrionics above to see if anyone checked things like... oh I don't know... the response from Stanford, that makes it clear this guy is retired?

http://goo.gl/2TO3B

Or his webpage, where you can read the remark in context: he is responding to spam emails about admission and says; I post in full here, because clicking on a link might sooo hurty for those who prefer their little hissy fits:

"Question: Can I get into Stanford?

Answer: Probably not. At least I can't help you. Admissions for undergraduates are not handled by faculty at Stanford or any US school. For graduate work, a committee of faculty and students selects admittees. The process is honest and fair; no faculty member can or would influence the process."

http://goo.gl/Oi28J

I even bolded the part that places his comment in context for you twerps. Am I not merciful?

Speak to my post ALI!