Letter from Benjamin Yan, Stanford ’24, about the Jones Lecturers in Creative Writing
We’ll feature some of the letters from the wonderful “Dear Stanford” Substack. We’ll bold particular sections. Today’s feature is from Benjamin Yan, who just graduated in June 2024. He writes “I grew and learned more from the Jones lecturers than anybody else here,” and much more below.
All letters are in response to Stanford University’s decision to ‘future fire’ all 23 of the Jones Lecturers in Creative Writing, a year after those lecturers lobbied for increased salaries.
Dear [Stanford],
My name is Benjamin Yan. I was an undergraduate at Stanford University from 2020 to 2024, completing a B.S. in Mathematics, B.S. in Computer Science, and a Minor in Creative Writing (prose concentration). I write to express my profound heartbreak and dismay at the decimation of our Creative Writing program. That is, the firing of all our beloved Jones lecturers by a subset of their senior colleagues — a cruel and bizarre plot twist that is being widely denounced by students, writers, alumni, parents, and the broader community as the ‘Stanford Red Wedding’.
I believe it is deeply unjust, even disturbing, that they would be fired despite a diamond record of teaching excellence, years of devotion and service to the university, and evaluations at the snow-peak zenith of what is humanly possible. Not to mention this decision was made a year after they asked for livable wages and compensation. How perverse. These are lecturers who deserve the world — not for their world to be pulled out from beneath them. Accentuating the tragedy is the extinction of everything they have so carefully, lovingly built over decades with us.
Before you respond with a vague, copy-paper statement of how this is “for the best”, I implore you to reconsider who, if anyone, this decision is best for. The students or their treasured program? This is very hard to believe, and the desultory online statement by the senior faculty obviates the fact they advise less than ten percent of Creative Writing students; that no student or Jones perspective was factored into this decision; that it is the underpaid lecturers who teach the vast majority of courses, who are deeply involved in our student community, and who gift our work and lives with close, heartfelt attention. They are people who we could confide in as we navigated dark and distressing times. They are the beating heart of the program. For when I say I loved creative writing more than anything else at Stanford, I by and large do not mean the senior faculty — whose academic lives (oak-paneled offices, plush velvet armchairs, and lantern lights in Margaret Jacks) to mine have the stately and surreal detachment of a still-life painting. They are impressive, but an impression by itself does not leave a lasting mark on my education.
Instead, I speak of the writers and lecturers who stayed close to us. People who, from the beginning, taught us to write fluid, daring prose, and to find courage, beauty, and truth in our art and others. People who, over the years, moved heaven and earth to create entire new star systems of learning (Novel-Writing Intensive, Young Adult Fiction, Queer Stories, Fiction into Film, Humor Writing, Writing Off the Page, Family Stories, Nature Writing, Leaving Patriarchy, and many more). These are rare, creative safe spaces for us to tell stories with rawness and vulnerability from our lives, proffered by long-time teachers with the experience, continuity, and wisdom to responsibly lead its workshops. It is vital to the program’s mission to furnish such writing spaces, which will utterly vanish without the lecturers who built and nurtured them.
Doubtlessly, the firing of 23 acclaimed lecturers — many of whom have ten to twenty years of teaching acumen — and turning the once-venerated program into a revolving door, a circus carousel will devastate and pauperize the student experience. This is especially true at a time when enrollment demand is soaring, and our campus faces a moribund crisis of mental health, anxiety, and suicide. I ask you to ponder carefully the many students who are seeking safety and brave self-expression in Creative Writing, which accords a special place for individuals across many diverse fields, identities, and backgrounds. It is by far the most popular minor on campus for a reason. Two-thirds of English students select a Creative Writing emphasis. Thousands enroll in its classes; waitlists stretch to outer space. I find it appalling that an institution — especially one as world-renowned and endowed as mine, that we pay thousands upon thousands to attend — can so terribly mistreat its lecturers and is enacting cuts that deprive students of their academic and sociological needs. It is further disenchanting the ruse to replace our teachers with newer, inexperienced lecturers on viciously austere and disempowering contracts. I believe we can concur they will be unable to support their vulnerable undergraduates anywhere near as effectively as their veteran counterparts.
It was my great privilege to take courses with experienced, sui generis lecturers such as Nina Schloesser Tárano, Kai Carlson-Wee, Tom Kealey, Scott Hutchins, and others. They are many of the best teachers I’ve ever had, and indisputably, they accumulated insight from years of teaching, their methods like iridescent, living layers of coral. Nina taught my first and most Creative Writing classes. In all four courses I took with her, she treated her students as fellow writers and respected practitioners; we learned immensely from her in empowering, empathetic discussions, she learned from us. I am beyond honored to call her the teacher I’ll remember most and a friend. It was Nina who inspired me to embark on a total of eight Creative Writing courses, eleven English courses overall, and an overseas Oxford Tutorial in Creative Writing, which I completed with highest marks. It was Jones lecturers who read, annotated, and encouraged my poetry and fiction line by line, no matter the quality or stage of revision. It was lecturers Tom and Scott whose ardent You can do it! enthusiasm made it possible for me to write two novels (50,000 words each) in one month, shattering the record (by 20,000 words) for the NaNoWriMo class since its inception in 2010.
And it was a Jones lecturer who, in my junior year, with her kindness lifted my heart across a very dark abyss — when I didn’t know if I was going to see the next morning. I had told no one I attempted suicide in the days prior, that years of depression and self-harm had gutted my will to live; no one really could have known. But art tends to reveal what the body will not, pale glimmers to the sagacious eye, and around that time, my prose was descending into a kind of frightening hadal zone. It was a necessary outlet for my catharsis; I would have self-imploded otherwise. That week, my lecturer treated my work and workshop with gentle, astonishing care. At her suggestion, we talked privately after class; I will never forget her heart-mending and generous words to me then, which moved me to tears. It was the first time in college I cried in front of someone, and it proved to be a much-needed intervention. Soon after, I sought vital, life-saving help. A summer later, in another brave space (my NaNoWriMo class), I was comfortable enough to write, in just sixteen days, a novel drawing heavily from the darkest moments of my life. It was a lightspeed, no-looking-back pace that finally enabled me to “exorcise the demons”. A second, much happier novel followed.
I grew and learned more from the Jones lecturers than anybody else here — more by a lifetime, one could say. That I, a year after attempting suicide, graduated alongside my friends, with a Creative Writing minor I’m deeply proud of, two majors on my diploma, and tears of joy and relief, is a testament to the community that has rescued my education and livelihood. I am tempted to say that my life is indebted to them, which is true in spirit but doesn’t sound quite right, and knowing my Jones lecturers, they would not want that. A debt is not something that can belong to you, while I more than ever, and thanks to their beautiful guidance — feel ownership of my voice and future. And right now, I am using this voice to join countless others in advocacy of their reinstatement.
So, from the depths of my heart, and from the depths of my life, I hope that you, the Stanford University administration, can walk back on this catastrophic decision.
Benjamin B. Yan
