The changing use of the words, part of what Stanford officially refers to as the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI), stems from a multi-phase, multi-year project that began in 2020.
Stanford explains as part of the EHLI published Monday that the intent of the initiative “is to eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased (e.g., disability bias, ethnic bias, ethnic slurs, gender bias, implicit bias, sexual bias) language in Stanford websites and code.”
“The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use,” the EHLI says. “Language affects different people in different ways. We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all informal uses of language.”
The website even includes a bolded disclaimer: “Content Warning: This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.”
Among the myriad changes is a shift from “American” to “U.S. citizen,” due to the insinuation “that the U.S. is the most important country in the Americas” even though the Americas are composed of 42 countries overall.
Gabriella Hoffman, a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, tweeted a quote from former statesman and U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster in response: “I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.”
“Take that, Stanford!” she added.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford and senior fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, also tweeted his displeasure.
“I remember how proud I was when I became a naturalized American citizen,” Bhattacharya wrote. “I’m still proud to be an American, and I don’t care that Stanford disapproves of my using the term.”
Elon Musk also chimed in, tweeting, “Stanford disapproves of saying you’re proud to be an American? Whoa.”
Dee Mostofi, a spokesperson for Stanford University, told Newsweek that the university’s style guidelines are meant for internal use, often for individual workgroups.
“In this case, the EHLI website was specifically created by and intended for use within the university IT community,” Mostofi said. “It will continue to be refined based on ongoing input from the community.”
On Tuesday, Stanford clarified that the word “American” isn’t banned. The school said in a statement that the entry was intended to highlight instances where “US citizen” may be “more precise and appropriate.” Standford acknowledged they “missed the mark” and added that the use of the word “American” is “absolutely welcomed.”
Other words and terms that should no longer be used, according to the ELHI, include: “lame,” “tone deaf” and “walk-in” as they “can trivialize the experience of people living with disabilities.”
The term “spirit animal” is also nixed, as equating it with an animal that guides or protects “is to demean the significance of the term.” As is the word “tribe,” as Stanford says it has been “historically used to equate Indigenous people with savages.”
And instead of saying “freshman,” it is encouraged to use the words “frosh” or “first-year student” as it “lumps a group of students using masculine language and/or into gender binary groups that don’t include everyone.”
Nicole Holliday, an assistant professor of linguistics at Pomona College, told Newsweek that when she first heard about the list she “thought it wasn’t real.”
She noted that the context of the interpretation is important, as it was not supposedly issued for broad interpretation but rather a set of internal recommendations for the school’s IT department. As far as she could tell, there’s no mechanism for enforcement of these standards, and so they function more like suggestions.
The controversy surrounding such guidelines comes from “two noble but possibly conflicting goals,” she added. One involves “tension,” in realms such as Twitter, in which inclusivity and unlimited free speech are often pitted against one another.
“In the big picture, these guidelines seem designed to make people aware of how they talk about discrimination against marginalized groups,” Holliday said.
“However, both learning and growth are continuous processes, so I think it’s crucial that discussions around sensitive language take into account that individuals may be at different points on their understanding of what constitutes offense and what does not,” she added.
While words on the list like “hermaphrodite” or “Oriental” can be perceived by many on college campuses to be damaging, Holliday said other terms are generally not considered offensive by most people—“especially if their etymology is not transparent.”
She pointed to words like “dumb” or terms like “peanut gallery,” for instance. She said that as a Black woman, she continues to use the term “people of color” as opposed to the term “BIPOC” because she believes BIPOC “is both confusing and sometimes not accurate for what I want to describe.”
“The challenge with creating a set of guidelines like this one is that language is democratic, and meaning is both contained in an individual’s mind and in their society. While any one of these terms may or may not be offensive to me, the person I’m talking to may have a different set of experiences that cause them to interpret the word differently.
“I think this is the impetus behind the list in the first place: to make people aware of terms that may unintentionally cause offense to others. However, it does strike me as a bit heavy-handed and not necessarily understanding of the fact that meanings are contextual and continuously changing.”
Update: 12/21/2022 1:51 p.m. EDT—This article has been updated with additional comment from Stanford University.
