What W.E.B. Du Bois Demands of Stanford University

Abstract

While institutions such as Stanford emphasize knowledge, leadership, and professional preparation, Du Bois insists that higher education also forms character, judgment, and moral purpose. Drawing on Du Bois’s writings on religion, the Black church, higher education, and Black freedom, this essay shows that he understood faith as both a resource for moral formation and a force requiring critical scrutiny. Du Bois ultimately challenges Stanford to acknowledge that questions of character, moral inheritance, and meaning are central, not peripheral, to university life.