Privacy

Recent years have witnessed the rise of social media and a concomitant increase in litigation around speech. These developments have had a drastic impact on classrooms, lectures, and the public square, and have impacted Stanford’s educational mission as well as the free flow of ideas and critiques required for successful research. The speech of faculty, students and staff may be chilled when their exercise of freedom of expression results in threats of violence, reputational harm or financial liability. Stanford has taken the measures outlined in this section to minimize these threats and consideration of additional steps is ongoing. 

Doxxing in particular involves the malicious publication of personal information online without a person’s consent. Because doxxing can lie close to speech protected under the First Amendment and the Leonard Law, California’s anti-doxxing statute and Stanford’s anti-doxxing policy are narrowly drafted. The university as well as students, faculty, and staff can, however, take other steps to protect personally identifying information and foster a free exchange of ideas, as detailed in the pages below.