An obscure webpage that Stanford University had quietly published seven months earlier made a huge splash in late December.
It was the product of the university's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, a "multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford." The goal was to remove dozens of undesirable terms from university materials. Among the offenders were crazy, for "trivializ[ing] the experiences of people living with mental health conditions"; guys, for "reinforc[ing] male-dominated language"; American, for "insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas"; and Karen, for being "used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors."
