Taunting Target in War on Drugs : Outspoken Stanford Lecturer Set Out to Challenge Laws and Authority

Stuart Reges says he wants to world to know that he is not another Timothy Leary.

He says that he never advocated widespread drug use to his students at Stanford University, where he has been a highly esteemed lecturer in computer science for 11 years.

“I think most people shouldn’t do drugs. But what I would like to see is a balanced view of drugs presented to people and allowing people to make their own choices,” Reges said in an interview from his office at the Palo Alto campus.

But those views, aggressively presented in letters to federal anti-drug officials, have placed the 32-year-old in a national controversy that seems likely to cost him his job. He was put on paid administrative leave last week while Stanford administrators investigate Reges’ defiant admissions that he carried drugs for his personal use onto campus and that he advised a student off-campus to experiment with MDA, an amphetamine that produces euphoria.

Reges said he has used speed, cocaine and MDA (“my own personal favorite”) at times but declined to talk further about his drug use, stressing that such a discussion would cut into his privacy rights. However, he added that drug use has “been a very positive experience in my life. A lot of the intellectual growth I’ve had would not have been possible without drugs.”

He described himself as a Libertarian Party member and openly gay man who purposefully challenged the government rule that a school can lose all its federal funds--from research grants to freshman scholarships--if a student or employee is allowed to violate drug laws. However, critics describe Reges as a foolish and dangerous man who has brought trouble on himself.

“The fact is that this guy is waving a flag and saying, ‘Look at me!’ ” said a source in the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “He’s wearing a bull’s-eye on his back.”

Certainly big guns are aimed at that bull’s-eye.

In a letter last month, Reges dared Bob Martinez, head of the national drug office, to take action against him. About a week ago, Martinez did just that by threatening Stanford’s sizable federal funding if the university did not move against Reges. This week, U.S. Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, said he was appalled by Reges’ statements.

“Educators carry an additional responsibility since they are supposed to be role models for our youngsters,” Rangel said in a prepared statement. “Free speech is one thing, but speaking freely about an illegal activity such as drug abuse and drug possession should not in any way be rewarded.”

In a letter to the student newspaper last week, Stanford President Donald Kennedy was critical of Reges, to whom he handed a faculty service award six years ago. “It seems to me unconscionable for responsible persons on this campus to recommend the use of illicit drugs,” wrote Kennedy, who went on to detail the drug trade’s harm to American cities and Third World nations. “Those privileged intellectuals who argue in support of what is in fact an industry based upon exploitation are, I think, morally disoriented.”

Reges’ friends on campus are cynical about Kennedy’s statement. They point out that Reges first published his views about drugs in opinion articles in the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, five months ago, but that the university suspended him last week only after Martinez became involved. Reges’ supporters suggest that Kennedy, badly stung by investigations into spending of federal research money, is eager to avoid more friction with Washington. Kennedy’s aides say the two issues are not linked.

And Reges, who has a master’s degree from Stanford, charged that the school is hypocritical. He contended that dormitory counselors usually don’t punish students for discreet smoking of marijuana and that professors don’t ask students for proof of age at receptions where wine is served. “The question is what do we think of college-age students,” Reges said. “Are they children who need to be protected or young adults who can make their own decisions? I agree that children should be protected from drugs and alcohol. But the government is trying to move that boundary.”

Still, even some of his friends worry that Reges acted recklessly, even if conscientiously.

Stanford’s computer science department took an informal but divided vote, 9 to 2 (with seven abstentions), to support Reges. “Roughly the question was: ‘Who is stupider, Reges or the university?’ ” said Jeffrey Ullman, department chairman. However, Ullman added, “Obviously a lot of people are undecided. I think it’s a general feeling that Stu took a dumb position first by getting Martinez and then Don Kennedy to overreact.”

Ullman said he’s never heard complaints from students about Reges and drugs advocacy. The chairman said he strongly disagrees with Reges’ views and told him so after the essays appeared in the Daily last fall. “I told him he was going to get himself in trouble and neither I nor the department would defend him if he did. Now a lot of people who wouldn’t support his point of view or what he’s done, assuming he’s done anything, are developing sympathy for him,” said Ullman, who has taken over teaching Reges’ classes.

That sympathy is reinforced by Reges’ reputation as an award-winning teacher.

“The only reason I’m a computer systems engineering major is Stuart. He shines above any other lecturer or professor. He makes you feel comfortable dealing with a difficult topic,” said Bryan Rollins, a sophomore from Alaska. Reges’ suspension will harm freedom of expression at school, Rollins said, explaining: “I don’t want to go to a professor and have him worry about what he can and can’t say to me because he is worried about getting fired.”

On the other hand, Allyson Dickson, a sophomore from Atlanta, said: “I think it’s inappropriate for him to be an instructor here and advise people, saying, ‘I did it, yeah, it’s fine, go ahead.’ I think that’s irresponsible. His personal opinion is the opinion of an instructor, a great instructor, and so carries a lot more weight. I would fire him if I were an administrator.”

In recounting the incident that seems to upset officials the most, Reges recalled that a Stanford student approached him last fall on an airport bus and asked him about the possible dangers of MDA. Reges admits that he told the student MDA is not physically addictive and does not make one lose control if taken in moderate doses.

(Pharmacists at the Los Angeles County Medical Assn.’s Regional Poison Center said MDA is a hallucinogen that may produce psychological and heart problems but that the drug hasn’t been tested enough to prove such dangers.)

“I told him I had very positive experiences on the drug. And he seemed intent on experimenting,” the lecturer said of his advice to the student, who already had tried marijuana and LSD. Reges wrote about the encounter in his letters to federal officials.

Such anti-Establishment actions are not new for Reges. He said he was barred from his Virginia high school in 1988 after he proposed talking about gay issues with students there. Reges said he later presented himself at two different Virginia police stations, proclaiming that he had broken the local anti-sodomy law. But the police did not arrest him. (His isolation as a homosexual teen-ager contributed to his suicide attempt during his high school senior year, Reges said.)

Now, Reges said, he assumes his teaching career is over, although he said sympathizers have offered him jobs in the computer industry. But is his stand worth sacrificing a $50,000-a-year job at a prestigious university? “People keep asking me that,” Reges replied. “If the university is going to cooperate with the federal government with the war on drugs, I guess it’s better for me not to be here. I believe it’s an issue of personal freedom.”

Correspondent Manjusha Pawagi at Stanford contributed to this story.