Peter Thiel & The Stanford Review by Stanford Politics

Stanford politics magazine

“It’s honestly amazing he still meets with us for dinner every quarter.” PETER THIEL & THE STANFORD REVIEW: 30 YEARS ON

NOVEMBER 2017 | ISSUE 02 STANFORDPOLITICS.ORG

Your weekly rundown of Stanford news and commentary on campus, local, US, and world politics.

STANFORDPOLITICS.ORG/MONDAYMEMO

EDITOR’S NOTE Over the last three years, Stanford Politics has come to be known for its thoughtful and original commentary on national and international politics. In the last few months, we’ve sought to do even more. While we’re still in the process of redefining our mission, one of my top priorities as editor in chief has been to incorporate more reporting into our work. The cover story for this November 2017 issue was several hundred hours in the making. It started last January, when Andrew Granato — then a contributing editor for Stanford Politics — read an article in Gawker, the now defunct media company thanks to Peter Thiel. Titled The Free Speech Peter Thiel Will Defend, the story was about a former Stanford Review editor who had made offensive comments about homosexuality 25 years ago and whom Thiel had stood by at the time. However, the Gawker article noted that the Stanford Review’s online archives were incomplete; so in Jan. 2017, Andrew decided to look through the paper’s physical archives at Green Library to see what else might turn up. 10 months later, after extensive research and countless interviews, we are proud to present his findings. The piece paints a comprehensive picture of the ever-controversial Thiel and the newspaper he founded (and remains involved with to this day). And while we’re well aware of what he did to Gawker, we at Stanford Politics feel that it is necessary and important journalism to publish. Not to mention, we are confident that the over 8,000-word piece is thoroughly reported, with over a dozen different corroborating sources. The rest of this November 2017 issue also showcases a good range of the current types of content we wish to bring to our readers — from campus event coverage to an interview about international politics. If you like what you see, please consider financially supporting us. And lastly, what lies in these pages couldn’t be done without the tireless efforts of our committed staff, but the meaning of our work depends on you: Please read, share, and discuss our content. Quality journalism is only as good as it informs the public.

MASTHEAD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RUAIRÍ ARRIETA-KENNA CHIEF OF STAFF MADDIE MCCONKEY

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER LANDON ELLINGSON

MAGAZINE DIRECTOR DANIELA GONZALEZ

MANAGING EDITOR ZOE SAVELLOS

MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR KAYLA GUILLORY

SENIOR EDITOR JONATHAN FAUST

SENIOR EDITOR BROOKE TEFERRA

SENIOR EDITOR JULIAN WATROUS

ASSISTANT EDITORS GREGORY BLOCK RALEIGH BROWNE SEJAL JHAWER SIERRA MACIOROWSKI JONAH REIDEL EMILY ZHANG REBECCA SMALBACH

EVENTS EDITOR VIVAN MALKANI INTERVIEWS EDITOR JAKE DOW PHOTO EDITOR AMELIA LELAND CAMPUS POLITICS EDITOR AMBER YANG LOCAL POLITICS EDITOR ALLIE DOW

GRAPHIC DESIGN & LAYOUT NATHALIE KIERSZNOWSKI ASA KOHRMAN TAYLOR SIHAVONG DANIEL WU LEA ZAWADA SPECIAL THANKS TO SAM GORMAN FOR COPY EDITING ASSISTANCE.

CONTENTS

CATALONIA’S QUEST FOR INDEPENDENCE: TWO PERSPECTIVES FROM CATALONIA TO CALEXIT

Russia’s Obsession with Global Separatism SARAH MANNEY

CATALONIA IS CONSTANTLY SHORTCHANGED

A Conversation with Joan Ramon Resina GRACIE NEWMAN

COVER STORY: PETER THIEL & THE STANFORD REVIEW 30 Years On

ANDREW GRANATO

THE FOUNDING OF A LEGACY

A RICH NETWORK

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

HILLARY CLINTON on Technology, Democracy, and “A New Kind of Cold War” EMILY LEMMERMAN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF PETER THIEL & THE STANFORD REVIEW Andrew Granato ’17 was a contributing editor at Stanford Politics until his graduation in June 2017. He majored in economics and pursued his interests in economics and politics through organizations like Stanford in Government and the Stanford Economics Association. At Stanford Politics, he wrote on a variety of topics, including social mobility and class at Stanford and the Bay Area’s housing crisis. He is currently pursuing a career in academic economics.

CATALONIAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S QUEST FOR INDEPENDENCE TWO PERSPECTIVES FROM CATALONIA TO CALEXIT

CATALONIA IS CONSTANTLY SHORTCHANGED

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Josep Renalias / WikiCommons

SEPARATISM

FROM CATALONIA TO CALEXIT:

RUSSIAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S OBSESSION WITH GLOBAL SEPARATISM SARAH MANNEY

SEPARATISM Since last month, Spain has been reeling after its northeastern region of Catalonia held an independence referendum in contravention of the Spanish constitution. The Oct. 1 vote reportedly garnered 90 percent support in favor of secession, according to its leader Carles Puigdemont, although its overall turnout represented less than half of all Catalans. Government forces attempting to block the referendum have clashed with protesters, resulting in general strikes and hundreds of people injured. European leaders have largely sided with Madrid, yet Catalonia’s display of autonomy has shaken the stability of both the country and the European Union. Catalonia’s referendum is only the latest in a series of separatist movements to rear its head over the past few years. Last month, Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region held a decisive vote to separate, and before that, independence movements in Scotland, Flanders, Crimea and even California and Texas have gathered momentum. What these efforts have in common is that they tend to emphasize ethnic and linguistic ties at the expense of political structures, drawing on the doctrine of self-determination established by Woodrow Wilson in the aftermath of the First World War. Moments like this, according to traditional international relations theory, are ripe for “rising powers” — countries with an interest in redefining the balance of power in their favor. It is perhaps no surprise then that a second element many of these movements have in common is their patronage under a former superpower: Russia. With this background, several curious facts about support for the Catalan movement — at least over social media — become clearer. Why, for instance, did some of the most influential Twitter accounts lending their support to the Catalan movement belong to individuals with no apparent connection to Spain, but considerable connections to Russia? According to trend analysis by the Australian company Fairfax Media, Twitter users the likes of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Wikileaks, and RT (Russia Today) ranked as the most widely-shared accounts for the hashtag #Catalonia. The Spanish newspaper El Pais alleges that such popularity was not organic but rather a result of “bots,” automated accounts that retweet messages at a rate intended to amplify their reach and influence Twitter trends. Preliminary analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab confirms that the retweet pattern exhibited by some of Assange’s tweets suggests manipulation: it spikes in Russia has a history the first minute at roughly of backing separAtone retweet per second, and then continues downwards ist movements, both thereafter (whereas unam-

along their borders and in regions where they seem to have no apparent interest.

@Snowden

@JulianAssange

@wikileaks

@RT_com

@ NicolaSturgeon

@AFP

Accounts listed in order of number of retweets of the hashtag #Catalonia. Based on an analysis by Fairfax Media using the Twitter service Hastagify.

plified tweets typically grow in traffic gradually over their lifetime). Moreover, El Pais claims (and the DFRLab confirms) that several news sites with ties to Russian intelligence amplified messaging pertaining to Catalonia with a distinct pro-independence bias from larger media sources like Sputnik and RT. The extent of coordination between Assange, Snowden and Kremlin-backed media is not known, nor has connection been established between these patrons and the leaders of the Catalan independence movement. Indeed, it is unlikely that Puigdemont and other figures have made any active effort to secure Moscow’s support. Russia has a history of backing separatist movements, both along their borders and in regions where they seem to have no apparent interest. A media analysis by blogger Conspirador Norteño of trending hashtags related to various “exits,” including Britain’s Leave campaign and others, reveals that RT and Sputnik rank among the most prolific tweeters, even though none of the movements in question concern Russia directly. This figure raises the question of why Russia is so interested in enabling the self-determination of nationalists around the world. In Ukraine, its interests were more or less obvious: to punish and weaken a westward-leaning neighbor, to promote Russian-language nationalism, and to effectively secure warm water ports formerly

CATALONIA SEPARATISM living in Russia for the past year. One such Kremlin-connected group provided space to open a Californian “embassy” in Moscow, although the office has since been closed down. (Marinelli recently left the Yes California campaign to live in Russia permanently.) What interest did a former Republican and non-resident of California such as Marinelli have in Californian separatism? Whether he was motivated by a real change of heart (Marinelli says he “consider[s] [him]self to be a Californian”), a desire for fame or glory, or something more, the country who offered his cause patronage has several reasons to rejoice that many Californians, as one supporter posted on Twitter, want to “take [their]avocados and legal weed and go.” They are perhaps the same reasons that led Russia to recognize contested border regions like Abkhazia or South Ossetia in Georgia, to provide support to Nagorno-Karabakh separatists on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, or even to allegedly deploy social media bots behind the independence movement in Catalonia. What Russian media’s interest in Spain suggests is that the country’s ambitions are not, as previously thought, driven by an ethno-linguistic fervour to unite the Russian-speaking ‘russkiy mir,’ nor even a revanchist dream of piecing together the Soviet Union. By amplifying or at least concentrating on the events in Catalonia recently, Russian media advanced a number of short-term and long-term goals. Most immediately, it helped fan the flames of chaos in a major A photo posted by Louis Marinelli on Twitter showing him on Red Square western European country and potentially complicate Spain’s relaalongside leaders of several other nationalist movements. tionship with allies. More subtly, it harmed the democratic image under Soviet control. of the West by portraying Madrid’s actions as violent, repressive, Yet the Kremlin’s latest pet projects around the world don’t con- and illiberal. fer territorial, military, or evident political gains. Undermining the West’s democratic image is a key tool used by Even where international extremist movements are concerned, the Russian media in order to make what Cold War scholars call recent disclosures from Facebook make clear that Russian funding “whataboutisms” — relativistic justification for reprehensible beis not limited to right-wing ideas that appear to align with Russia’s havior. Before you criticize Moscow’s actions in Crimea or Chechnown strand of nationalism, but rather the Kremlin’s reach extends ya, what about Madrid’s in Catalonia? One can hear the next epiacross the political spectrum, to movements gram quipping. on both the far left and far right. Finally, Russia benefits by spreading diviA perfect example of how diverse the bensions in Western societies, particularly the Undermining the West’s kind of deep, class-based, cultural and ethnic eficiaries of Russian financial and rhetorical support have become are the cases of “Calexdemocratic image is a key animosities upon which both the Catalonian it” and “Texit” — California’s and Texas’ leave and Californian movements to some degree campaigns. tool used by the Russian feed. None of this should be read to prejudice Texan separatism is not a particularly new the validity of either movement but rather to media in order to make warn both opponents and proponents that phenomenon, but California’s movement, officially known as Yes California, only picked matter which side one favors, our focus what Cold War scholars no up momentum in the immediate aftermath on internal divisions may be actively desired of the 2016 election when many liberals and by powers hostile to Western democracy. The call “whataboutisms.” Clinton-supporters signed a petition calling Kremlin has proven it cares less about the for California to secede. Calexit, for which platforms of political movements than what the platform seemingly consists of issues regarding environmental they may bring: divisiveness, chaos, and uncertainty. protection and healthcare expansions, makes a strange bedfellow alongside other Russia-backed alt-right groups in the United States. Sarah Manney is a senior studying political science. She is the founder Curiously, the founder of Yes California, Louis Marinelli, not and president of the European Security Undegraduate Network (ESUN). only recently took a trip partially funded by Kremlin-connected ESUN publishes a weekly column in Stanford Politics called “Cardinal groups to visit Red Square in Moscow, but he has actually been Richelieu.” This was originally published on Oct. 6, 2017.

CATALONIA

IS CONSTANTLY SHORTCHANGED A CONVERSATION WITH JOAN RAMON RESINA GRACIE NEWMAN On Oct. 1 of this year, an independence referendum was held in the Spanish territory of Catalonia. This region, which includes the city of Barcelona, has historically had many conflicts with the Spanish central state over political, economic, and cultural disputes. The vote was declared a violation of the Spanish Constitution of 1978, and Spain employed many tactics to suppress the vote, including the detention of Catalan leaders and forceful deterrence at ballot stations by the National Police and Civil Guard. On Oct. 27, Catalan lawmakers approved a motion to declare the territory an independent republic. On that same day, Spanish President Mariano Rajoy announced that he had dissolved the Catalan parliament and removed the Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont from office. Professor Joan Ramon Resina is a professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He also serves as director of the university’s Iberian Studies Program. His work explores the intersection of Iberian cultural identity, literature, and modernity. Born to Catalan parents in Barcelona under the Spanish military dictator Francisco Franco, Professor Resina specializes in Catalan issues.

TO WHAT EXTENT IS THE CATALAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT SIMILAR TO AND/OR DIFFERENT FROM OTHER RECENT SEPARATIST MOVEMENTS, SUCH AS BREXIT AND CALEXIT? It’s interesting to hear Brexit referred to as a separatist movement, since it’s a decision to exit the European Union, which is not a nation-state. Separatism is mostly a negative term usually applied to the breaking away of portions of a nation state. The Catalan movement for independence has a long history. It’s easy to make a superficial interpretation, to say it’s a response to globalization, that it has to do with the recent economic crisis, and so on. The Catalan struggle for self-government goes way back to the early eighteenth century and even beyond.

THE RECENT REFERENDUM SHOWED 90 PERCENT IN SUPPORT OF SECESSION, BUT VOTER TURNOUT WAS LOW. DO YOU THINK THE 7

INDEPENDENCE RESULTS OF THE REFERENDUM ACCURATELY REPRESENT THE WISHES OF THE CATALAN PEOPLE? You would need to count as ‘no’ all those who didn’t vote and a hypothetical 70 percent participation instead of the actual 43 percent to neutralize the triumph of the ‘yes’ vote. You also have to factor in all the people that were prevented from voting, including the vote of the Catalan diaspora, which was deterred. There’s a lot of debate in terms of the numbers, but looking at the people signed up to vote at the 140 polling stations that were closed by the police, 700,000 votes were prevented from being cast. This is not to say all of them would have voted, and no one can appropriate their ballots, but they would certainly have added to the participation.

eas. Its geopolitical location in the Mediterranean, between Europe and the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, is important. It would be a great blow. Spain’s debt is enormous. It is almost unpayable and Europe counts on the Catalans to shoulder much of that debt. Another problem between Catalonia and the central state is that Catalonia’s contribution to Spain is not only large, but unbalanced. I mean this in the sense that Spain does not significantly reinvest the taxes it siphons from Catalonia into its infrastructure, social services, hospitals, etc. Catalonia is constantly shortchanged by an unsustainable amount. Each European country contributes to the EU; Germany contributes 4.1 percent of their GDP, France 4 percent, Italy even less. If you imagine Catalonia as a separate country and look at its contribution, it’s 6.9 percent, the highest of any European economy, whereas Spain is a net receiver of funds. If Spain loses the money from Catalonia, it would not just be in danger of bankruptcy but it would send political shock waves that would change its way of life to an extent hard to imagine. Madrid has always relied on this imbalance to finance itself and its culturally-germane regions, and this goes back to the nineteenth century and even earlier. This is one reason why Catalans want to leave.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE EXPRESSED CONCERNS REGARDING POSSIBLE RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE WITH THE VOTE. DO YOU THINK THESE CONCERNS ARE VALID? THE UN’S HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL HAS BEEN No! The people who launched the coup d’état in 1936 were worried IN CONTACT WITH THE GOVERNMENT IN about Catalonia becoming an independent communist nation in the MADRID ABOUT THE PROJECTED POTENTIAL 1930s. Now there is a contradiction, because on the one hand there are these Russian rumors, but on the other hand I’ve seen rumors saying UNREST AND GOVERNMENTAL VIOLENCE IN the CIA is supporting the separatist movement in Catalonia. The only THE COMING WEEKS. DO YOU PREDICT THE basis for these tales is that Putin accused the European Union of hyTENSE POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE WILL ESCApocrisy, because they recognized Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, LATE INTO FURTHER CHAOS OR VIOLENCE? which is an ally of Russia. Putin clearly disapproves of Catalan secession. However, what he wants is for Kosovo to revert to Serbia. He has said these events are internal matters. Putin agrees that Spain should treat Catalonia’s independence movement as an internal affair, the way he thinks Kosovo is an internal affair of Serbia. That’s all there is to it. Most Catalans don’t sympathize with Russian positions. All the mainstream parties in Catalonia are extraordinarily pro-Europe. You could say that it is in Russia’s interest to weaken the European Union, but Europe’s response to any such risk should be precisely to support Catalan independence. Or at least to work to give Catalonia, which is strongly supportive of the EU, something to impede a kind of Brexit in Spain. Unfortunately, Merkel and Macron don’t see it that way. They want to protect the existing state.

I don’t like making these predictions. I think Rajoy has enough warnings, not only from the UN Human Rights Watch but also from the European partners. Although EU officials and influential heads of state like the German Chancellor and the French President have come out in support of Rajoy, I find it hard to believe that they are not warning him to go easy. Although he is willing to use force and many radicals in his party are asking him to crack down hard, more images of police brutality will not be welcome in Europe. I think Rajoy will try to do things with the least necessary use of violence, but we already saw how easily it escalates. Rajoy is caught in his own spider web, because he needs to satisfy to some extent the ultra-right asking him to proceed violently. At recent counter-independence demonstrations in Barcelona, people were chanting, “shoot the Catalan president.” That is the demand he is hearing on the streets.

WHAT WOULD THE CONSEQUENCES FOR SPAIN BE? WHY DO YOU THINK FRANCE AND GERMANY Clearly Spain doesn’t believe it’s going to happen. The Spanish gov- ARE SUPPORTING THE CENTRAL STATE? ernment will use everything they have, including the army if need be. That very desperation indicates that Catalan independence would be a severe loss for Spain. The economic consequence is clear; Catalonia is at least 20 percent of the nation’s GDP. It is one of the most vibrant ar-

The EU is a clump of nation states, and Spain is a core member. That is why Putin, among others, is asking Europe why it encourages self-determination in other places but does not in Spain. Europe re-

Partido Popular de Cantabria

Mariano Rajoy, current president of Spain.

sponds that the difference in this case is that it’s happening in one of their core member states. But then, they do have a double standard! European states fear that the Catalan independence movement could set off other movements within the European Union, like Flanders in Belgium. Also, dignitaries of the EU will not say it, but they know that Catalonia is contributing more in terms of its GDP to the EU than their countries are. If Catalonia were to become independent, its contribution would have to be scaled down. So, in the event of Spain requiring financial rescue, the other [EU countries] would have to provide more. The EU talks about human rights and all that, but by its demeanor, it proves that’s all rhetoric. They are concerned about the Spanish debt, and they want to be sure that the debt will be repaid. The rights of citizens take a backseat.

DO YOU THINK THIS WOULD BE ENOUGH PRESSURE FOR SPAIN TO CONCEDE TO SOME OF CATALONIA’S DEMANDS? It’s not that Spain would but that Europe might. If it becomes an affair of the entire European economy, EU leaders might consider cutting their losses and pressuring Spain to behave democratically. Europe has leverage on Spain.

IF CATALONIA WERE TO BECOME AN INDEPENDENT NATION, DO YOU THINK THE EU WILL PUT PRESSURE ON SPAIN TO ALLOW WHAT ARE THE GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS OF CATALONIA TO JOIN ITS RANKS? THE CATALAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT? If Spain proceeds with the repression, what can Catalans do? They can organize general strikes and hurt the economy. It would mean shooting themselves in the foot, but they must weigh what’s worse for them in the long run. Spain constantly needs to borrow money, but because its debt is perceived as riskier than that of other countries, Spain’s lenders require more interest to cover the risk of buying Spanish bonds. The higher the interest that Spain must pay, the closer it comes to default. If there is conflict, this risk interest will go up fast. And if it does, the European economic system will be under pressure. The euro will immediately suffer. In an interconnected economy, local problems quickly become global problems.

I think so. It wouldn’t happen immediately — there would be theatricals — but the EU needs Catalonia. There is all this talk about Russia, and Russia might be happy to see the EU weakened, but a more likely ally of Catalans could be the United Kingdom, precisely because of Brexit. The UK might be interested in linking up economically with a territory within continental Europe and having a foothold on the European continent that is not just Gibraltar, which Spain can easily isolate. The geopolitical consequences are multiple, and I think if we ever got to the point of Catalonia becoming an independent state, the EU would do whatever it takes to make sure that Catalonia remains within the EU. Gracie Newman is a freshman staff writer for Stanford Politics. This interview was originally published on Nov. 5, 2017.

THIEL & THE REVIEW 30 Years On

THE FOUNDING OF A LEGACY

A RICH NETWORK

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

PAGE 13

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ANDREW GRANATO

eter Thiel is a billionaire serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the most prominent supporter of President Trump in Silicon Valley. And in a world where money is power, Thiel is not afraid to wield his power. On Oct. 28, 2015, several months before Thiel was revealed to be the funder of a lawsuit that bankrupted renegade media company Gawker, which had covered his political activities negatively and outed him as gay in 2007, the Stanford grad (BA ’89, JD ’92) giddily told several Stanford undergraduates in a private meeting at his San Francisco home about his imminent destruction of what he called a “universally reviled organization.” Four undergrads present at the meeting confirmed the story, a seemingly out-of-character — however vague — disclosure from the quite private Thiel. But why would he divulge such a thing to a small group of students? And why was he meeting with them in the first place? Thiel has become a national figure of controversy for, among other things, claiming that “the extension of the franchise to women…render[s] the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron,” saying, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” funding a fellowship that specifically tries to get undergraduates to drop out of college, and donating $1.25 million to Donald Trump’s campaign a week after a tape was released in which the then-candidate discussed how he could grope young female actresses and get away with it. But 30 years ago, as a sophomore at Stanford, Thiel was a lightning rod for a much smaller-scale reason: He co-founded (with Norman Book ’91) the Stanford Review. The Review, a campus publication often associated with conservatism and libertarianism, was created to, as Thiel wrote in his first editor’s note, “present alternative views on a wide range of current issues in the Stanford community,” “create a forum for rational debate,” and “challenge those who, after reading this paper, still

disagree with us…to respond in kind — with rational argumentation and workable solutions of your own.” Thiel’s articles in The Review and the articles he published as its first editor-in-chief, many of which are available in Stanford Libraries’ Special Collections & University Archives, as well as interviews with over a dozen current and former Review affiliates paint a picture of Thiel as a committed political fighter whose work and outlook today can be traced directly to his college years. But even further, Thiel’s legacy — and presence — remains with The Review, now an established contrarian institution on campus, to this day. Thiel continues to meet with the publication’s editors, and he is substantially more open with them about his beliefs than he is with the general public, including on highly controversial issues like race and immigration. And across the Bay Area, many of The Review’s alumni, spearheaded by Thiel, have built a relatively small but tight-knit network that extends across three decades and has a net worth that extends into the billions.

THE FOUNDING OF A LEGACY

II.

Most Stanford students who follow campus politics are quite familiar with The Review. Its often controversial articles are widely shared and discussed, allowing for the paper’s style and voice to become pretty recognizable. Reading over its original volumes from 30 years ago, the paper’s consistency in tone and topic is immediately evident. In its first few volumes (it generally has two volumes per academic year), The Review condemns a “vocal few” who have monopolized discussion, and it presents itself as an alternative to a stifling, overwhelmingly left-wing campus orthodoxy. In various articles, Thiel and the editorial board critique how the phrase “open-mindedness” seems to them to merely refer to “those who agree with one position.” They advocate that Stanford should focus on “institutionalized liberalism” rather than “the supposed ‘institutionalized racism.’” And they argue that the university should not abolish the then-existing ‘Western Culture’ literature program but rather “actually strengthen the current program’s focus on the West.” The fate of the ‘Western Culture’ academic program, which was soon to be replaced with a ‘Cultures, Ideas, and Values’ program that mandated more works by female and non-white authors and also mandated more non-white faculty teach in it, was then a major flashpoint of controversy on campus and an inspiration for founding The Review.

The Review presents itself as a renegade paper, calling out perceived left-wing censors on campus while offering itself as a contrarian outlet willing to engage with out-of-fashion ideas and ideologies like conservatism and libertarianism. The paper includes articles about both national political issues as well as campus controversies, some quite somber and some excitedly mischievous. Having founded The Review at the end of his sophomore year, Thiel was also the paper’s editor-in-chief his junior and senior years, during which he included an editor’s note with each volume, generally reflecting on his vision for the paper as a vehicle for stirring the pot and breaking up politically correct platitudes. Thiel’s editor’s notes are titled, in chronological order, Stanford Review Is Here to Stay, Open or Empty Mind?, Institutionalized Liberalism, Western Culture and its Failures, Welcome to the Farm, Stanford and the Real World, and The Importance of Being Honest. At least one volume is missing from the archive, so presumably he wrote more.

THIEL & THE REVIEW

STANFORD REVIEW IS HERE TO STAY “Welcome to the first issue of the Stanford Review. Our motivation in writing this paper is threefold. First of all, we would like to present alternative views on a wide range of current issues in the Stanford community. On many of these issues, a vocal few have succeeded in dominating the discussion. Often with views very different from those of the Stanford mainstream. Many of the more moderate students in the Stanford community remain silent, believing that it makes little difference whether they speak out or not. By presenting these alternative views, it is our hope that the Stanford Review will succeed in bringing about some much-needed debate. Secondly, we would like to create a forum for rational debate. Whenever debates do take place within the Stanford community, they are too often confined to an emotional level. Name-calling (“that’s racist,” “he’s a communist,” “you’re fascist,” etc.) is the norm, even though it rarely leads anywhere. In the Stanford Review, we will confine ourselves to rational argumentation, which will hopefully lead to rational thought and rational solutions. The emotional type of debate, on the other hand, has had a dismal track record of polarizing views and provoking irresponsible solutions. Finally, the Stanford Review challenges those who, after reading this paper, still disagree with us. We do not challenge you to merely voice your opposition and tell us that we are wrong; rather, we challenge you to respond in kind — with rational argumentation and with workable solutions of your own. Only when we transcend the emotional level of debate will we be able to move towards the sort of constructive dialogue that results in progress. On the other hand, we encourage those of you who are heartened by the Stanford Review to write for us. The Stanford Review is here to stay, and we hope to come out on a monthly basis next year. Have a good summer, and we’ll see you next year!”

Thiel’s first editor’s note, June 9, 1987.

THIEL & THE REVIEW

IiI.

Thiel left Stanford’s campus in 1992, but The Review exists to this day. How has it lasted for 30 years while countless other student organizations have formed and dissipated, often in the span of a single year? One reason was articulated in the National Review by former Stanford Review staffer Michael New (Ph.D ’02): “Why is it that [campus conservative] papers like the Stanford Review and the Dartmouth Review have enjoyed continuity while most others have not? The simple reason is that both the Stanford Review and the Dartmouth Review succeeded in developing reliable networks of alumni donors early in their history. Of course, the fact that Review founder Peter Thiel went on to found PayPal has certainly helped the paper’s financial condition. However, the success of Thiel and other undergraduates at developing a solid fundraising base placed The Review on solid financial footing well before the dotcom boom of the late 1990s.” Historically, New is correct that the paper has been quite effective at raising money for a relatively small student publication (a typical volume has around eight to 10

$75K

$50K

$25K

1997

Annual donations received by the Stanford Review, according to available ProPublica nonprofit data.

people in editor positions and another dozen or so writers), and Review archives show that the paper had an “Alumni Relations Director” position as early as 1990, only three years after its founding. The Review is incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit that first filed in 1990 and maintains that status to this day. Its 1997-2010 IRS filings are accessible online through ProPublica’s NonProfit Explorer. In the IRS filings available, The Review

A 2004 infographic (left), and an early Review article (right).

2010

averages donations of about $65,000 per fiscal year, with the bulk of its expenses going to printing and shipping its volumes on campus and to alumni and contributors. (Over the past few years, it has moved online and only occasionally prints issues for the campus.) The Review also generates income from investment returns and advertisement sales, but donations account for over 97 percent of the publication’s revenue.

IV.

Another reason for The Review’s longevity is that, on a campus that has a reputation for being pre-professional, the publication is a locus for debate over politics and ideas. Jennifer Burns, a historian of modern conservatism, believes that the relative lack of undergraduate institutions for political and philosophical conversation at Stanford means that The Review has an outsize impact on campus dialogue. Burns said she has also noticed that, in classes, Stanford students hesitate to claim conservative identity, for fear of peer disapproval. The Review, by contrast, is unafraid to be judged, taking on campus liberals as well as Stanford’s small but highly vocal far left in spite of frequent (and sometimes vicious and personal) backlash. And while The Review does publish some moderate pieces, its right-wing articles are its historical hallmark and tend to get the most attention. In recent years, the Review has tackled Western Civ curricula, endowment divestment campaigns, and sexual assault policy, among other hot-button issues. But although The Review is often described as a “conservative” or “libertarian” paper — and these adjectives are not wrong; the paper has even described itself as “the conservative voice of Stanford” in the past — ideological descriptors do not adequately capture how the modern paper conducts itself or sees its purpose. Anna Mitchell ’19, the current editor-in-chief, sees the paper “as a voice for thoughtful and contrarian perspectives on Stanford-related issues.” “I don’t see The Review as innately conservative and libertarian,” she said. “I think that The Review’s institutional voice is consistent not because our members hold a particular political view but because they share skepticism toward the status quo of campus political opinions. It happens that college campuses tend to be very liberal, so our arguments are usually more right-wing.” Asked about what she thought was The Review’s greatest accomplishment, Devon Zuegel ’16, a former editor-in-chief, pointed to a 1995 episode in which the paper successfully sued Stanford over its speech code. The code banned insults based on

THIEL & THE REVIEW

AT THE CENTER OF THE STORM After graduating, Thiel attended Stanford Law School, leaving his creation in the hands of students like Keith Rabois ’91, now also a wealthy entrepreneur and venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and also a part of a network of old and new Review alumni. The Review was provocative from its inception, but an infamous incident on Jan. 19, 1992, during Thiel’s third year in law school, turned up the heat significantly. Rabois, who had become known as a vocal conservative on campus through The Review and was then a first-year student at Stanford Law, yelled “F****t! F****t! Hope you die of AIDS!” and “Can’t wait until you die, f****t!” at the Otero dorm, which was at that time the residence of lecturer Dennis Matthies. Rabois claimed to the Stanford Daily that he was protesting a culture of smothered speech, particularly under Matthies. The backlash, including a statement of condemnation from Stanford President Donald Kennedy, was immediate; several law students even wrote to hundreds of law firms across California to insist that they not hire Rabois as a summer associate. Rabois, loathed across campus, transferred to Harvard Law. In the 1995 book The Diversity Myth, co-authors Thiel and David Sacks ’94 (also a former Review editor-in-chief) conceded that “Keith had said something rude,” but they also portrayed Rabois as a martyr, including a reference to him in the book’s acknowledgements section as a “victim of multiculturalism.” Later, in 2006, Thiel called Rabois’ conduct “offensive and stupid.” Rabois and Thiel collaborated at PayPal in 2000 and have worked together on several business ventures since. Both Rabois and Thiel are gay. Thiel was publicly outed by Gawker in 2007 and Rabois came out in 2013 after being accused of sexual harassment by a male employee at Square, a financial tech company at which Rabois was then the chief operating officer. The 1992 incident in particular, in which a gay man yelled harsh anti-gay slurs, purportedly to make a point, and another gay man defended him, at least initially, is indicative of how seriously Thiel and many of his compatriots took their mission to be provocateurs against liberal orthodoxy. They were willing to go to shocking lengths in the service of that cause. As a general note, in The Review’s early years, when homosexuality was much less socially acceptable than it is today, the paper contained numerous articles by staffers and guest authors that took jabs at gay people. For example, in February 1988, while Thiel was editor-in-chief, Rabois wrote a satirical article in which he states, “I was wondering… don’t you feel sorry for the homosexual community because the U.S. Olympic Committee won’t let them use the name ‘Gay Olympics’…if they’re good enough, why can’t they compete in the real Olympics?” And on Jan. 7, 1992, one week before the infamous Rabois yelling incident, The Review published a letter to the editor that advised liberals to “encourage homosexuals to seek counseling in order to overcome their prejudices and psychological insecurities.”

THIEL & THE REVIEW

DOES THE REVIEW HAVE A LIMIT ON HOW FAR IT WILL GO AGAINST THE GRAIN? In fall 2016, The Review ultimately decided against sponsoring notorious provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, then going on “The Dangerous F****t Tour” of colleges across the country (Yiannopoulos is gay), but the decision was not made lightly. Yiannopoulos, then a technology editor for Breitbart, built his career on toying with white nationalist rhetoric and harassment of women. Mackenzie Yaryura ’17, the editor-in-chief at the time, wrote that “we want silenced voices to feel comfortable speaking up to The Review. As a staff, we believe that sponsoring Milo Yiannopoulos to campus would be detrimental to our goal.” Mitchell ’19, who was against sponsoring Yiannopoulos because she says she “[does] not believe that being provocative is a virtue in itself and didn’t think that Milo brought enough original thought to justify an invitation,” described The Review as “very internally divided” over the issue. Elliot Kaufman ’18, a former Review managing editor, criticized Yiannopoulos in the National Review the following summer. Kaufman quoted an “influential editor” of The Review as saying, in favor of an invitation, “Best-case scenario is that the SJWs [Social Justice Warriors, a pejorative term for confrontational and highly vocal leftists on social issues] freak out and we get another Berkeley,” a reference to a riot by militant leftists in response to UC Berkeley’s Yiannopoulos event that injured several people and caused an estimated $100,000 in damages. Thiel himself has not shied away from Yiannopoulos, meeting with him and contributing a blurb for Yiannopoulous’ new book, Dangerous: “If you don’t use your freedom of speech, one day you might find that it’s gone. Buy this book while it’s legal.”

race and sex, and the Santa Clara County Superior Court struck down the code as “unconstitutionally broad and based on content.” Robert Corry (JD ’94), a member of The Review who helped to bring the case to court, described the victory as — in language quite consistent with The Review’s historical mission statement — “a victory for academic freedom and free speech.” Virtually every Review and former Review member I asked emphasized the paper’s role as a counterbalance to orthodoxy (Zuegel and Harry Elliot ’18, also a former editor-in-chief, both used the phrase “Devil’s Advocate”) rather than fealty to a particular set of beliefs. Several also noted that the modern Review is ideologically varied, containing not just social traditionalists or techno-libertarians but centrists and liberals as well. Elliot believes that “The Review attracts a particular kind of person. It’s a very particular sort of ‘contrarian’ who’s willing to walk into a room full of people who large numbers of people on campus at least subtly say are hateful.” The Review takes their contrarian role sufficiently seriously that three former editors noted that it has occasionally published articles over the past few years that the authors themselves didn’t agree with. One former editor disapprovingly referred to the practice as “intellectual dishonesty,” while others saw it as part of The Review’s stated task of representing unpopular thought in campus discourse. While The Review has had a continuous presence on campus since its inception, one former editor admitted that the paper has had periods of lulls in the past, and that in those times he could imagine that Thiel would not have been satisfied with what it was doing. This is because, although The Review is a student-run publication and Thiel has not been the editor-in-chief since 1989, by no means has Thiel vanished from The Review’s orbit. As one former editor put it, “it’s honestly amazing he still meets with us for dinner every quarter.”

A RICH NETWORK

After Stanford Law, Thiel worked as a lawyer at the prestigious, traditional firm Sullivan and Cromwell, which he has often described as a place where everyone inside was trying to get out and everyone outside was trying to get in. He quickly left corporate law and worked as a trader for Credit Suisse, then returned to the Bay Area in 1996 to work in the booming and less constricting technology sector, starting a fund called Thiel Capital Management. Thiel co-founded payments processor PayPal in 1998 to achieve, as early PayPal executive and former Review edi-

THIEL & THE REVIEW tor-in-chief Eric Jackson ’98 has described it, “global currency liberation”; PayPal’s success made Thiel a multimillionaire. He then founded a hedge fund named Clarium Capital in 2002 and co-founded data analysis firm Palantir in 2003. In 2004, Thiel became one of the earliest investors in Facebook; Facebook’s success made Thiel a billionaire. Thiel is an active venture capitalist, having co-founded the firms Founders Fund, Valar Ventures, and Mithril Capital, and he has by all accounts become one of the most powerful and financially successful people in Silicon Valley. Thiel has invested in over a hundred technology companies, many of which have become titans, including LinkedIn, Lyft, Spotify, Reddit, Airbnb, and SpaceX. He also continues to meet with the undergraduates who staff the paper he founded, generally its editors. Highlighting both the intimacy and exclusivity of these gatherings, one email invitation to such an event in 2015, shared by a former editor, reads in part: “Hi, We will be having a Review dinner at Peter Thiel’s house next Wednesday…This is not an open invite; please do not talk about this opportunity with anyone else, especially at the [Review staff] meetings.” Thiel’s influence on the autonomous Review’s on-campus activity should not be overstated: Students are always in control of the paper, and Thiel does not attempt to orchestrate their conduct. The great majority of The Review’s activity involves its independent writing and reporting on the issues of the day and its weekly meetings, which often feature boisterous political debates. (Amy Shen ’18, the current executive editor, says she enjoys the meetings as a place where “you are judged on the basis of your ideas and nothing else.”) But Thiel does occasionally host dinners and reunions with Review editors at local restaurants as well as his home in San Francisco, give suggestions of issues to focus on, donate money, and de facto lead a burgeoning network of alumni concentrated in Silicon Valley, many of whom have worked with or for Thiel directly. As one former editor put it, “[Thiel] sees The Review as his people.” Speaking about Thiel, many Review and ex-Review affiliates insisted on anonymity. They clearly respect him. Yaryura ’17, a former editor-in-chief, says, “my only experience is that [Thiel’s] been really welcoming, really interesting, being willing to answer questions and share knowledge.” To what degree does Thiel still care about The Review’s activities on campus? One former editor believed “he obviously had zero interest in getting to know us as individuals. He was there to figure out what was going on on the campus.” Harry Elliot voiced that “to be honest the thing which most Review alums are really interested in, not just or specifically Peter, is: they want to know what the issues de jour are, what the average Stanford student is like, and what we are doing to try and ensure that viewpoints that are usually not heard are heard.” A third former editor agreed that, as Thiel is obviously

busy and does not have time to keep up with campus goings-on, that meeting with The Review was a way of staying in touch. Several people agreed that while Thiel is certainly not going to babysit The Review, he does want it to continue with its founding mission.

VI.

Thiel tends to reveal much more about his own views and activities with Review affiliates than he does with the public. Mary Carolyn Manion ’19, a former Review editor, attended an event with Thiel where he discussed politics, economics, and technology, including topics like a “network for Trump-supporting Silicon Valley types who were not going to go public…because of the California culture.” Thiel did not elaborate on specific names. At The Review’s 30th Anniversary event, hosted on Stanford’s campus the January weekend of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Thiel spoke about his involvement in the presidential transition. As per the accounts of six Review editors, Thiel discussed how he had offered to take the lead on developing a spreadsheet to fill jobs in the new administration and claimed to be deeply involved in the transition’s internal workings. (In February, Politico reported that “Peter Thiel’s fingerprints are all over the administration.”) He seemed optimistic about Trump. At the event, Thiel was asked how he knew that Trump was going to winafter all. Wasn’t it extremely risky to go all-in for Trump when he was down in the polls and Silicon Valley strongly supported Clinton? Thiel replied that, two weeks before the election, some of his closest advisors and confidants wondered to him if they had backed the wrong horse and if it was too late to back off supporting Trump. Thiel, according to his own retelling, responded, “Are we allowed any knowledge other than social scientific knowledge?” And he argued that while the polls did seem to indicate that Trump would lose, he was more confident in his personal assessment of how the world works than the polls. Thiel’s confidence, of course, was vindicated when Trump won. A former editor described Thiel’s response as “very much in character” for him: “On every major platform he’s built in his life, whether fighting a government authority or an upstart competitor, he tends to come up with ideas and dig in deep to them, and he doesn’t walk away.” In Oct. 2016, shortly after Thiel donated $1.25 million to Trump, Thiel publicly apologized for passages in his 1995 book The Diversity Myth, such as claiming that some alleged date rapes were “seductions that are later regretted,” saying in a statement, “More than two decades ago, I co-wrote a book with several insensitive, crudely argued statements. As I’ve said before, I wish I’d never written those things. I’m sorry for it. Rape in all forms is a crime. I regret writing passages that have been taken to suggest otherwise.” But three months later, during the after party of the 30-year anniversary event at Thiel’s home, according to a former editor, Thiel stated that

“It’s honestly amazing he still meets with us for dinner every quarter.”

THIEL & THE REVIEW

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS A Buzzfeed investigation of Milo Yiannopoulos revealed that Yiannopoulos had been in contact with Curtis Yarvin, known online as the blogger “Mencius Moldbug,” and that Yarvin had watched election night returns come in for Trump at Thiel’s house. Yarvin’s blog, Unqualified Reservations, is a keystone of “neoreaction,” a far-right ideology that believes that the world is so off-track that what we need to do is return to how things were hundreds of years ago, including rule by king-like figures (or, alternatively, as Yarvin calls for, “a national CEO [or] what’s called a dictator”). Among many other things, Yarvin has argued that “the relationship of master and slave is a natural human relationship.” Thiel is an investor in Yarvin’s tech startup, Urbit. Also, a Yarvin enthusiast, John Burnham, cofounded with Yarvin Urbit’s corporate arm, Tlon, while the recipient of a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship. Buzzfeed reports that Yarvin claimed he had been “coaching” Thiel on politics and that Yarvin described Thiel to Yiannopoulos as “fully enlightened, he just plays it carefully.” However, a former editor relayed to me that, upon being questioned about Yarvin during the 30-year reunion after party, Thiel described Yarvin as “interesting” but ultimately “crazy,” someone who would “lecture you for an hour.” However, the editor remembered that Thiel did offer to set up a meeting between Yarvin and the Review staff member who asked about him.

his apology was just for the media, and that “sometimes you have to tell them what they want to hear.” Thiel was long perceived as a libertarian, but in recent years, as his support for Trump illustrates, his politics have taken a more futurist-nationalist flavor that critics have described as bordering on authoritarian and white nationalist. Only a few days before Trump’s inauguration and The Review’s anniversary event, Thiel attended the pro-Trump and heavily alt-right attended “Deploraball,” which had been organized in part by Jeff Giesea ’97, a former Review editor-in-chief who once worked at Thiel Capital Management. Also, a former editor relayed to me that Thiel told The Review during the 30th anniversary after party that he is “funding” American Greatness and American Affairs, two ‘Trumpist’ journals founded to provide intellectual ammunition to Trump’s replacement of the movement conservative old guard. Thiel also mentioned that he had met Michael Anton, a prominent ‘Trumpist’ writer who now works as a national security staffer for Trump, in a reading group that focused on philosopher Leo Strauss.

A former editor reported that at the same event in 2015 where Thiel obliquely referenced the imminent destruction of what turned out to be Gawker, he also endorsed cutting immigration to the United States by “80 percent,” but at the same time supported increasing “high-skilled” immigration. Another former editor described Thiel’s views on immigration as “foundationalist”: “he believes that the people who come into a country are the identity of that country, and a decision to change the people who come in irrevocably alters the identity of that country.” (Thiel was born in Germany, and his parents immigrated to the US when he was one; he also lived in South Africa and what is now Namibia for part of his childhood.) Another former Review editor told me that in fall 2014, also at Thiel’s home, during a discussion of Charles Murray’s controversial book on IQ, The Bell Curve, Thiel wanted to “entertain” the thought of there being a biological reason for racial gaps in test scores. The editor said Thiel cited the ancient Chinese administration, which he described as a situation in which the people who scored higher on tests got more power and were more sexually successful, and he seemed curious about the idea that a civilization could, over time, end up being more intelligent than others.

THIEL WANTED TO “ENTERTAIN” THE THOUGHT OF THERE BEING A BIOLOGICAL REASON FOR RACIAL GAPS IN TEST SCORES.

Articles have been written about the influence of philosopher Ayn Rand, a libertarian and “objectivist” who believed that selfishness was virtuous, in Silicon Valley and on Thiel in particular. However, multiple Review affiliates opined to me that the philosophers who had the greatest impact on Thiel were not Rand, but Strauss and especially Rene Girard, a Stanford philosopher best known for advancing a theory of ‘mimetics’: that all of human desire is borrowed from the desires of other people and that all human conflict is fundamentally based on this tendency of imitation. Thiel funds an institute dedicated to mimetic thought, Imitatio. Historian Jennifer Burns told me that when she met Thiel in 2012 at an event dedicated to Girard, Thiel mentioned to her that he hadn’t really read Rand until recently.

THIEL & THE REVIEW We contacted Thiel’s office with all the quotes sources attributed to him to see if he would elaborate on or dispute any of them; through a spokesperson, Thiel declined to comment on any of them.

VII.

There is another way in which Thiel interacts with Review affiliates: across Silicon Valley, many of them work with or for him. The “PayPal Mafia,” a term for PayPal founders and prominent multimillionaire executives whose post-PayPal careers include founding and investing in dozens of prominent tech companies, is stacked full of Review alumni, including Ken Howery ’98, David Sacks ’94, and Eric Jackson ’98 (all former Review editors-in-chief) as well as Keith Rabois ’91 (a former Review executive editor), and Premal Shah ’98 (a former Review staffer). Other early executives at PayPal from The Review include Paul Martin ’04, a Review business manager who dropped out of school to join the company in 2000; Nathan Linn ’93 (a former Review editor-in-chief); Aman Verjee ’96 (another former editor-in-chief); and Norman Book (a former managing editor and Thiel’s Review cofounder). In Jackson’s book The PayPal Wars, he describes Martin’s 2003 departure from PayPal: Thiel and Sacks “vigorously tried to convince Paul to change course. Though both officers were duty-bound to try to retain such a valued employee, I sensed they also had a personal desire not to lose Paul. He was the first Stanford Review alumnus to leave PayPal, something Peter took to heart, especially since the ten alumni from the newspaper had played a vital role in shaping the direction of the company.” While the nine Review alumni above are all significant figures in Thiel’s circle, an alumnus who was then merely an intern at PayPal would turn out to be perhaps Thiel’s most frequent collaborator. Joe Lonsdale ’03, also a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, has been described as “the living embodiment of Silicon Valley” and a “protégé” of Thiel. In 2002, Lonsdale interned at PayPal. After graduating, he worked at Thiel’s Clarium Capital Management and then launched a meteoric career. He has founded or cofounded companies Addepar, Backplane, OpenGov, and Shogun and venture capital firms Anduin Ventures, Formation 8, and 8VC. (Thiel is an inves-

tor in Addepar, Backplane and OpenGov, and Thiel and Lonsdale have both invested in several companies including Oculus Rift, Caplinked, Flexport, and Radius.) But he is best known for being a co-founder, along with Thiel, of data analysis juggernaut Palantir, whose valuation has reached $20 billion. A third co-founder of Palantir, Stephen Cohen ’05, is also a former Review editor-in-chief, meaning that three out of the five founders of one of Silicon Valley’s crown jewels ran the same student newspaper. (A fourth, Nathan Gettings, was a former PayPal executive, and the fifth, Alex Karp (JD ’92), was a social theory Ph.D who knew Thiel from Stanford Law, where they were roommates). In total, I have identified 23 current and former Review affiliates, spanning the paper’s entire history, who have held positions at Palantir, including a board member (Adam Ross ’95) and the company’s first employee (Alex Moore ’05). In a PowerPoint presentation giving an overview of The Review, on a slide titled “Perks of Staff,” one of the bullet points listed is “priority at dinners and lunches with faculty and alumni.” Lonsdale has remained particularly involved with the on-campus Review community, hosting lunches and recruiting. Over the summer, an email went out on The Review’s listserv advertising an internship at Argive, a Lonsdale-funded nonprofit, that noted that “[we] suspect we’ll find some great candidates through the Stanford Review.” Lonsdale is the co-founder and chairman of a currently 13-person startup, Shogun, where Anthony Ghosn ’15, who has worked at Formation 8 and 8VC, is the co-founder and CEO and Brandon Camhi ’16, who has worked at Thiel’s hedge fund and OpenGov, is the Vice President of Marketing. Both Ghosn and Camhi are former Review editors-in-chief. On Ghosn’s LinkedIn profile, Joe Lonsdale wrote a recommendation that reads in part: “I met Anthony while he was at the Stanford Review and was impressed…I hired him to be my chief of staff when he was a Junior at Stanford.” And when asked about how he had hired employees for Shogun, Ghosn began, “It’s all network.” Lonsdale has also served as a Board Member of the Seasteading Institute, which Thiel funded, and invested in startups of other Review alumni. He is married to Tayler Cox ’09, now Tayler Lonsdale ’09, a former Review executive editor.

In 2014, Lonsdale was banned from campus after an undergraduate he had been dating accused him of rape and Stanford found that he had “engaged in sexual misconduct and harassment.” In 2015, “as a result of new evidence that came to light during litigation,” Stanford determined that Lonsdale did not violate Title IX and lifted Lonsdale’s ban. The undergraduate, who had filed a civil suit against him, dropped her suit, and Lonsdale dropped his countersuit. In the past seven years, many current Review affiliates or recent graduates have worked or interned at various other Lonsdale properties, especially OpenGov (five affiliates) and Formation 8 (four recent affiliates, plus Gideon Yu ’98, a former Review business manager who is a founding member of Formation 8 and former CFO of Facebook). Besides Lonsdale, there are a wide variety of connections between Review alumni. With respect to Thiel’s other companies, I have found 14 Review alumni who have worked for Thiel Capital Management and Clarium Capital Management, including several vice presidents; five who have worked for Founders Fund, including a cofounder, Howery; two at Valar Ventures; and three more who worked at PayPal who joined after the first few years. Many other Review alumni have worked at a wide variety of nonprofits Thiel has funded, like The Independent Institute, OpenAI, and the Thiel Foundation; or worked at companies in which Thiel has invested. Review alumni fill the investor and executive ranks at companies like Yammer and Caplinked. Several Review alumni have published books, including The PayPal Wars, at World Ahead Media, founded by Book and Verjee. Review alumni have been roommates, invested in each other’s companies, and collaborated on political activities; the full spreadsheet of activities I was able to catalogue can be found online at stanfordpolitics.org.

Overall, I identify almost 200 employment and investing relationships between Review affiliates to 40 different institutions that are founded by Thiel or Lonsdale or otherwise feature multiple Review alumni prominently, virtually all of which are in Silicon Valley. Of the 58 people who have served as Review editor-in-chief, at least 25 have worked or interned for at least one company founded or cofounded by Peter Thiel or Joe Lonsdale; most of those 25 have actually worked for several. This pattern is, if anything, stronger in recent years: of the last eight editors-in-chief, six have worked or interned for a company founded by Thiel or Lonsdale. Outside of Silicon Valley, a few Review alumni have worked on the Trump transition team, over which Thiel claimed to have great influence, and now work in Trump’s administration. Two connections have been noticed: the Wall Street Journal reported that Kevin Harrington, a former Review staffer who attended Stanford as a graduate student in the late 1990s and worked at Clarium Capital, worked on the transition at the Commerce Department. ProPubli-

ca reported that Candice Jackson ’98, a former news editor who published a book with World Ahead Media, now works in the Department of Education. I also find that Tristan Abbey ’08, a former editor-at-large who has worked at Clarium Capital and Founders Fund, worked on the transition at the Department of Energy and went on to work as a senior analyst there, and that Paula Stannard (JD ’90), who was an assistant editor under Thiel, was on the transition at the Department of Health and Human Services and now serves as a senior counselor there. Building a trusted network team is not a passive habit of Thiel’s; it is a mantra he repeatedly discusses in his startup advice book Zero to One. When giving in-person advice to a startup in which he was investing several years ago, Thiel reportedly told the company’s employees to come up with the three smartest people they knew because “we should try to build things through existing networks as much as possible.”

THIEL & THE REVIEW

VIII.

There is an alumni Board of Directors of The Review made up of both recent and veteran alumni; in the past, Thiel has been the chairman (though he is not on the board currently) and David Wallace ’91, Book, and Rabois have each been president. According to his LinkedIn, Verjee has been the Chairman since 2004. The board helps communicate with alumni and signs off on each new editor in chief, though the approval is basically a formality. Review members told me that most current members do not really interact with the board specifically. Alec Rawls (a former econ grad student who dropped out before finishing the degree) wrote for The Review throughout the late 1990s and into the 2000s and was at one point the opinion editor. He has since been on the board for 13 years, including serving as its treasurer. Discussing the board, Rawls recalled, “the board has worried at times, especially during the early Obama years, whether the student members were too cowed by Obama’s popularity on campus and were keeping their heads down” and claimed that “we have to monitor the content of the Review, keep track of who is actually

conservative and who isn’t, and try to make sure that the members who aren’t actually conservative don’t get the reins of the student organization.” Rawls also noted, “I met Peter and other first-generation figures [after Thiel left Stanford] at Review dinners and reunion events, which is one of the great aspects of the Review: that it tries to maintain ongoing connections, which for quite a few Reviewers have turned into important business connections.” “Of course there’s a Review network,” says Devon Zuegel, “and of course there is a connection between the group’s mission and the types of projects those people go on to do together afterwards! There’s also a Stanford Daily network, a Stanford Triathlon network, an EBF network, and a Stanford in Government network. Each of these organizations has their own goals and style, and that spirit is carried on as people do things with the friends they’ve made there afterwards.” In interviews, some recent Review editors knew a good bit about the alumni network, but some other editors and many staffers seemed to be only vaguely, if at all, aware of how extensive it is.

“ONE OF THE GREAT ASPECTS OF THE REVIEW [IS] THAT IT TRIES TO MAINTAIN ONGOING CONNECTIONS, WHICH FOR QUITE A FEW REVIEWERS, HAVE TURNED INTO IMPORTANT BUSINESS CONNECTIONS.”

A HIGH TOLERANCE Since its founding, The Review has clearly been willing to go ‘against the grain’; the same seems to go for its Board. Rawls has claimed that Obama “maintains extensive ties to Islamofascists while lying about his Muslim upbringing” and repeated his claim in alumni meetings with recent and storied members present. When asked about it, Rawls told me, “Of course I am fully ready to defend these comments.” He told me that he had made this argument about Obama “many times” and argued that Obama, among other things, “handed Iraq back to the thoroughly defeated al Qaeda in Iraq, which became ISIS. Obama is not just a Muslim, he is an Islamofascist, fully on the side of our terror war enemies.” Rawls remains on the alumni board.

IX.

The Review, a complex, heterogeneous, and committed group, was founded with the motto fiat lux (“let there be light”). For 30 years, it has fought Stanford’s liberal and left majority, and over that time it has built a history and network quite impressive for a publication of its size. And in Silicon Valley, Review alumni have built an infrastructure that spans many billions of dollars in both company market value and personal wealth. One former editor told me, “The guy in charge of The Review [Thiel] has become an icon, and I think we all kind of respect that he continues to meet with us.” As I was concluding an interview, the editor explained to me that he or she could not be quoted directly for various comments because “these people run the world.” As one of the people who runs the world correctly announced in his first editor’s note 30 years ago, the Stanford Review is here to stay. Fiat lux. Andrew Granato, who graduated with a degree in economics in 2017, is a former contributing editor of Stanford Politics. Additional on-campus archival research was contributed by Stanford Politics reporters Daniel Ferreira and Emily Katz.

The Stanford Review

Norman Book and Peter Thiel, co-founders of The Review, taking questions about the paper’s earliest days, at the 25th anniversary reunion event.

THE REVIEW: IN THEIR OWN WORDS

In the course of reporting “Peter Thiel & The Stanford Review” I interviewed over a dozen current and former Review affiliates, many of whom I talked with at length. The following is a collection of quotes from Review affiliates I interviewed discussing the publication and Thiel’s role in it. Interviews were done in person, over the phone, or through email.

“ On Thiel:

“My personal contacts with Peter have been limited to meeting him a few times at Review events. I have read a lot of what he has written. I would say that he sits squarely within, one of the two main types of Review participants over the years. He’s a philosophical libertarian who is willing to fight. The other Review strain has been religious Christians, and people who are not familiar with these groups might be surprised to find out how many very religious Christians, what I would call fundamentalist Christians, are philosophical libertarians. I have known MANY through the Review.” ALEC RAWLS, FORMER OPINION EDITOR

On Silicon Valley and the Review network:

“I think a lot of what makes The Review successful is also what makes particularly companies in the tech space successful. You spot something basically unquestioned or unchallenged in some way and you at least probe why that is the case and you are willing to see things without the dogma that weighs other people down. In some industries, that’s more successful than others. It certainly has enormous obvious apparent benefits in finance and in venture capital in particular and in the way you approach startups… …The thing I would say is that there are like-minded individuals. The Review attracts a particular kind of individual and those individuals tend to do pretty well in certain spaces where the skills of thinking outside the box, being willing to challenge dogma and not be afraid to speak truth to power are useful, and it is often the case they find themselves aligning particularly well with companies that share similar values that perhaps not surprisingly often come from The Review itself. So technology comes to mind and I wouldn’t go much further than that.” HARRY ELLIOT ’18, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF “Obviously [Thiel]’s not meddling in the day-to-day affairs, and he’s not really following what’s happening on campus...The reason

the network exists at all is because this tends to exist for any sort of minority, and it’s weird calling a group of predominantly white people a minority, but in some sense, when there’s a group of people that share an uncommon characteristic and they’re in the relative minority, they tend to stick together…It’s like, you have this group of thinkers who are fairly unorthodox in terms of the college context, and they find solace and comfort and companionship in one another, but also there’s a certain sort of willingness to say what hasn’t been said, or explore what hasn’t been explored...So that’s why I think there’s such a strong network, because, you know, there is this culture of being on the fringe, and that’s hard to come by in society these days.” FORMER EDITOR When writing for The Review, is there sometimes an element of performance? A couple people have told me that they wrote articles for The Review that they didn’t actually believe the thesis of but they thought it was important that the viewpoint should be represented even if they didn’t themselves hold that viewpoint. “The Review will put up a front, but you have to remember that it’s a collection of pretty diverse individuals to be quite honest. Most of the meetings are debates and they can get really fierce. There are people who are classic Republicans and there are people who voted for Obama, and who are very liberal characters. Some EICs [editors-in-chief] have actually been very liberal in their own personal beliefs [but served] for the sake of that dialogue.” FORMER EDITOR On internal debates and alternative perspectives: “We [The Review] have really intense debates over things. People paint The Review picture as one sort of person or one sort of idea; [in reality,] each individual writer has really different ideas...A big thing we tried to push is that if you disagree with a Review article, write it and publish it in The Review!” MACKENZIE YARYURA ’17, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF What do you see as the mission of The Review? Is this something that you think has changed over the years? And potentially a similar question: does the Review have a consistent institutional voice? “The mission of The Review is to voice thoughts that are worth considering but absent in the broader campus discourse. There are a lot of good ideas that are ignored by the broader intellectual community due to their controversial nature, their complexity or strangeness, or just plain bad luck, and that’s a shame. When any group is in broad alignment on any question, it risks missing out on valuable ideas outside of that consensus. Now of course not all controversial, wacky, or unlucky ideas are good ones- the consensus can be and is right on a lot of things- but it’s worth pushing the boundaries of what that is instead of blindly accepting it. This is valuable for the fact that it may help us get a bit closer to the truth. It is also valuable in its own right as an intellectual exercise. Stanford is a university, after all. The

THIEL & THE REVIEW role of college in my view is to expand your understanding of the world, and not just the part with which you’re comfortable.” DEVON ZUEGEL ’16, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF “To give voice to unheard (or underheard) opinions). To my understanding this hasn’t changed. I think pursuing that goal is the “institutional voice” – beyond that, staff is pretty heterodox.” PHILIP CLARK ’18, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF On past Review volumes:

backlash, we also published a piece praising ethnic housing that received much less attention. Also, The Review is very diverse. Members hail from New York to Michigan, and hold very different opinions. Discussions are heated and thoughtful- I haven’t found a higher caliber of discussion anywhere else at Stanford. People in The Review tend to be well-read and skeptical, not ideologues. I joined The Review for the people and the discussion, and I think it’s unfortunate that people judge The Review without ever having attended a meeting or reading a fair selection of articles.” ANNA MITCHELL ’19, CURRENT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ALEC RAWLS, FORMER OPINION EDITOR Under your tenure as editor-in-chief, The Review was at the center of campus discourse. You were named [by Stanford Politics] the number one ‘politico’ on campus. Do you view that as a success in terms of the Review’s mission? “I think it is important for The Review to be in the center of discourse especially when you identify a time when you have an editorial staff that is willing to face the public to some extent and say ‘this is what we believe’ and make that clear. A Review that has sufficient power and sufficient strength of message to be able to combine the two can make a genuine difference in the way that people think about stuff. And I don’t think that’s going to be available to Review members all the time and I don’t think it’s something The Review should strive to all the time but sometimes the pieces come together. I like to think we change campus substantially for the better.” HARRY ELLIOT ’18, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Clearly there is at least some fraction of campus that objects quite loudly and harshly to The Review. Do you think most Stanford students have a good understanding of what The Review is about? “No, I don’t think they do. Many Stanford students seem to see The Review as a bastion of rich white male conservatives who just want to publish articles that stir everyone up and hurt minorities. I don’t think this is accurate at all. Just by the nature of social media, the Review gets the most attention for its most contentious articles. But we publish many more moderate articles- for example, while our piece opposing ethnic housing last year received much

“I think the answer to that question is a bit cyclical. There have definitely been periods when swaths of campus appreciated the stories and initiatives we put out and times when that was not as much the case. We maintain editorially consistent standards on our side, but the nature of voicing underheard opinions is that not all of them will be wildly popular.”

“

“I always had things to say and continued to write opinion columns, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, for quite a few years, which allowed me to meet whole generations of Review editors and writers. Many of the volumes were hilarious. It is not for no reason that the left tries to shut down opposing speech. In any direct contest of ideas they get annihilated and The Review was full of people who loved to annihilate leftist idiocies. It didn’t require any kind of extremism. It just required rationality, and a contest between rationality and irrationality inevitably raises irresistible opportunities for humorous wit, which at times became a Review specialty. Aman Verjee and Bruce Gibney were masters of the craft, but many partook. Other volumes were staid. Every group had its own personality.”

PHILIP CLARK ’18, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

“The most thoughtful people I knew did have a good understanding of The Review’s mission to expand the universe of discourse on campus. Ours is a meta discussion, an argument that debate on campus is far too constrained to a limited range of ideas. Many of my closest friends were people who disagreed with me vehemently on object level issues (e.g. the role of guns in society) but appreciated that I wanted to learn more about the issue, where they were coming from, and about myself. In return I deeply value that in others, more than any one view someone holds on a specific political issue...In my four years at Stanford, the campus reception of the publication varied quite a bit. This was in part because of variance in The Review’s nuance and ability to communicate its message and also in part because of changes in the student body, broader community, and current events. Overall, I’d say that most students did have a good understanding of what The Review is about, while a vocal minority did not.” DEVON ZUEGEL ’16, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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HILLARY CLINTON

on Technology, Democracy, & “A New Kind of Cold War”

EMILY LEMMERMAN Former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke about digital democracy at Stanford on Oct. 6 as part of a daylong launch of the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi) at Stanford’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). The launch of GDPi, Clinton said, “could not be at a better time or a better place.” In front of a packed Cemex Auditorium of over 500 students, faculty, staff, and other guests, Clinton delivered a keynote titled “Digital Technology, Diplomacy and Democratic Values,” before sitting down for a discussion with Eileen Donahoe, who served as the first US ambassador to the United Nations Hu-

L.A. Cicero / Stanford News

man Rights Council during the Obama Administration, was director of global affairs at Human Rights Watch, and is now executive director of GDPi. Clinton stressed the seriousness of cybersecurity, calling Russia’s use of technology to threaten democracy in the US and across the world “a new kind of Cold War.”

“Our country and other democracies are facing serious and urgent challenges from the nexus of technology, propaganda, terrorism, espionage and cyberwarfare.”

HILLARY CLINTON

A NEW DOCTRINE “I believe that it is time for the United States to declare a new doctrine, stating that a cyberattack on our vital infrastructure will be treated as an act of war.” Clinton proposed five key ways in which the US must move to protect itself against the “clear and present danger” of increasingly sophisticated uses of technology. First, she underscored the importance of public-private partnerships to develop offensive and defensive technology as a deterrent to cyberwarfare. She stressed that “corporate America needs to see this as an urgent directive.” Second, she advocated getting “tough with Putin,” calling the current administration’s lack of action “shameful.” In her remarks, Clinton supported arming the Ukrainian government to resist Moscow. Third, Clinton raised the importance of closing “legal loopholes in our election process,” particularly around preventing non-citizens from purchasing political advertising. She mentioned a recent finding that some of the online advertising during the 2016 campaign was paid for in rubles, which should have raised some concern. Fourth, Clinton called for a more comprehensive investigation of the 2016 election, specifically for an independent commission with subpoena power, such as the one that investigated the 9/11 terrorism attacks. Clinton called Russian interference in 2016 “a brazen assault by a foreign adversary determined to mislead our people, inflame our divisions and throw an election to their preferred candidate.” Regarding her own judgement of how much Russian interference affected her electoral loss to Donald Trump last November, Clinton would only say that it was “something of a perfect storm” and that “there were many factors that influenced the outcome of the election.” At the same time, she went so far as to call the hacking her campaign experienced “a virtual Watergate break-in.”

The final component of Clinton’s fivepart proposal was a call for all Americans, particularly students, to “fight back against the assault on truth and reason and rebuild trust in our institutions.” She suggested two tactics for waging this battle: breaking out of “echo chambers” to encourage dialogue based on a “reverence for facts, reason and evidence” and teaching children how to distinguish fact from opinion at an early age.

FAKE NEWS “We’ve gotten used to people not being held accountable for any kind of truth. What do we do? We have to begin in pledging our allegiance to factbased deliberation, fact-based policy.” Clinton saw the Russian hackers as taking advantage of our national weaknesses of political polarization, a lack of faith in government, and failure by the media to hold elected officials accountable. She suggested that a leniency regarding truth pervades our society at large: “There has become an industry of fabrication for the purpose of gaining advantage: commercial advantage, partisan advantage, ideological advantage.” Clinton pointed to the ability of the socalled Pizzagate conspiracy theory to get as much attention as it did as proof of the vulnerability of the American political situation. Clinton connected the Pizzagate “scandal,” in which Clinton and Podesta were supposed to be running a child trafficking operation out of a pizza shop in downtown DC, to Russian election interference: The scandal was based on speculation over John Podesta’s emails that were released by WikiLeaks. Clinton suggested that media producers and consumers may have been drawn to the false Pizzagate story because “if something looks like it’s secretive, it’s got to be more interesting.” She called on members of the media to think more carefully about what news they report on, and she encouraged more fact-checking of the media by citizens.

She did, however, note that such interference as occurred in 2016 was “unprecedented,” and she called for vigilance going forward.

SILICON VALLEY “As we all know, the 2016 campaign revealed a darker side of the intersection between technology and democracy.” Clinton, speaking at the very center of Silicon Valley, had to address the roles major social media and IT companies as well as rampant, unchecked technological advances played and continue to play in enabling anti-democratic agendas. She claimed that companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter accelerated the spread of fake news. Clinton said that it’s time for Facebook “to demonstrate real transparency and accountability” and for Twitter “to stop dragging its heels and face up to the reality that its platform was — and is — being used as a tool of cyberwarfare and propaganda.” While her words called for action, she was also optimistic about the benefits technology may bring, noting that online terrorist recruitment and child pornography have been curbed by the awareness and accountability of tech companies. Clinton urged Stanford students to “strike the right balance,” emphasizing that while technology can be a powerful tool for good, students must more intentionally contemplate the profound economic and social impacts that may accompany technological advancements. Stanford’s Global Digital Policy Incubator, led by Eileen Donahoe and Larry Diamond, seeks to address the kinds of issues raised by Clinton, through supporting policymakers and gathering resources to address challenges to governance and democracy posed by technology. Emily Lemmerman, a junior studying sociology, is an events reporter for Stanford Politics. This article was originally published on Oct. 7, 2017.

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