Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative

Sep 09, 2023

“Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative”, published by Stanford University on December 19, 2022, describes itself as such…

The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) is a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford. EHLI is one of the actions prioritized in the Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Action, which was published by the Stanford CIO Council (CIOC) and People of Color in Technology (POC-IT) affinity group in December 2020.
The goal of the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative is to eliminate* many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased (e.g., disability bias, ethnic bias, ethnic slurs, gender bias, implicit bias, sexual bias) language in Stanford websites and code.
The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use. Language affects different people in different ways. We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all informal uses of language.
This website focuses on potentially harmful terms used in the United States, starting with a list of everyday language and terminology.** Our "suggested alternatives" are in line with those used by peer institutions and within the technology community.***

At this point in their text, they footnote…

***These are a list of our sources:
Brandeis Suggested Language List
Terminology at XSEDE
Trans Glossary 101
The Colors of Cybersecurity
Offensive/Profane Word List
List of ethnic slurs (Wikipedia)
Inclusive Language Guide

They then issue the following infantilizing message in large bold lettering…

Content Warning: This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.

They then provide their list of language categories. Each item on the list expands to include an explanation and a table of harmful terms, suggested replacements and to provide some context.

One may be reminded of the passage in Orwell’s 1984 where we read,

We’re destroying words…It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words…You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words…Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.

SOURCES

“The Stanford Guide to Acceptable Words” by The Wall Street Journal (December 19, 2022)

“American, grandfather, brave and master: Words Stanford University includes in its index of 'harmful language' because they are 'ableist, sexist or racist'” by The Daily Mail (December 20, 2022)

“Stanford University Releases List of ‘Harmful’ and ‘Racist’ Words to Eliminate – Including ‘American,’ ‘Grandfather,’ and ‘Long Time, No See’” by The Gateway Pundit (December 20, 2022)