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This picture, being shared on Twitter, alleges that Valerie Jarrett, former Senior Advisor to the President, during the Obama administration, claimed to be of Iranian descent and of Islamic faith in her yearbook.

Image of a purported quotation by Valerie Jarrett

Image reads

Take a look at the 1977 Stanford Yearbook

I am a Iranian by birth and of my Islamic faith. I am also an American Citizen and I seek to help change America to be a more Islamic country. My faith guides me and I feel like it is going well in the transition of using freedom of religion in America against itself.

Did she say this in Stanford's '77 yearbook?

Brythan
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Evan Carroll
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4 Answers4

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No; the caption is written in the Calibri font. This font was not developed until 2002.

Source: https://www.fonts.com/font/microsoft-corporation/calibri

Arcanum
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    This doesn't address the claim in the question about whether the person said/wrote the quote in question. I see no claim that the picture represents an actual photographic excerpt from the source in question (as opposed to a citation of a quote within it in an arbitrary form). – David Foerster May 31 '18 at 10:40
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    @DavidFoerster - Disagree. The question clearly ends with "...in her yearbook." So conclusive proof that the only evidence presented to back this extraordinary statement up, a photograph, cannot possibly have come from a 1977 yearbook, appears quite definitive. Somebody clearly went through extra effort to fake a yearbook "photo", which means the claim itself was fundamentally fraudulent. – T.E.D. May 31 '18 at 13:40
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    @T.E.D. Nowhere in the post is it implied that the image is taken directly from the yearbook... the asker wants to know if the quote is in the yearbook, not if the quote, font that hadn't been invented yet, photo that hadn't been taken yet, and surname that hadn't been used yet are in the yearbook... – helrich May 31 '18 at 19:23
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    The image that is being passed around as proof heavily implies that it is supposed to be an actual photo of her actual yearbook entry. – Monica Apologists Get Out May 31 '18 at 19:27
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    @helrich - That's only correct in the most academic sense. The clear implication of making the statement and including the picture is that the picture is from the yearbook mentioned in the statement. The difference between intentionally misleading people and flat out lying might be important in a court of law (might). But here in the real world its effectively nonexistent. For all practical purposes, this was a lie. – T.E.D. May 31 '18 at 19:58
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    @helrich - I'm not sure what you think "take a look at the Stanford 1977 yearbook," along with a graphic that is supposed to be a yearbook capture is supposed to mean, but that is the "evidence" being offered in the original claim that OP is asking to verify. If we can confirm that all aspects of the original claim are fraudulent - her last name, the fact that Iran was a supported ally in 1977, use of a font that did not exist, why is there a need to further prove the negative, when the original claim is shown to be wholly fraudulent? – PoloHoleSet May 31 '18 at 21:11
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    @T.E.D.: That implicit claim appears in the cited picture but not in the surrounding question though. If OP wants to ask whether a specific explicit or implicit claim or all claims in a source are true, they should state so. I agree that it would be reasonable to question the implicit claim in the picture in addition to the stated claim here. – David Foerster May 31 '18 at 21:20
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    @DavidFoerster - If we say "we're not worrying about the yearbook part of the claim," then you have a claim that has no basis, at all, to start with. So why are we even evaluating it, if there is no evidence offered that she ever said anything of the sort? – PoloHoleSet Jun 01 '18 at 13:44
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    @PoloHoleSet: What? Do you not understand the difference between the the claim of the fidelity of a verbal quote in a specific context and the claim of graphical fidelity, i. e. that something was printed in a certain way? The claim in the question is without a doubt about the former (at least when taken at face value). Both can be worth our doubt but they are still different claims with different implications. – David Foerster Jun 01 '18 at 14:30
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    @DavidFoerster - Except there is no claim that she ever said that to anyone at any specific time, place, event or situation, just the claim that the quote appeared in the Stanford yearbook. And then the claim is "see, here it is." We're pointing out that "no, that clearly is fake," which makes this a completely unsourced claim. "Here is a quote that I claim someone said, except I offer no evidence or even allegation that this person actually said the words." - that's what we're down to if we're not assessing the *only* claimed "evidence" that this quote happened. – PoloHoleSet Jun 01 '18 at 14:37
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    @DavidFoerster - They can both be different claims, but you have one that is completely not noteworthy, because it is not a credible claim in any way. – PoloHoleSet Jun 01 '18 at 14:38
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    Exactly. If we've established that the image is fake, and we have, where is the notable claim that she wrote it anyway? Who is out there claiming that she really did write this in the yearbook even though they acknowledge this image is fake? Someone can trek down to the Stanford library and search every page of the book if it matters, but there has to be some basis to believe it before anybody is going to waste their time on that. There isn't any such basis, because the image is fake. – Zach Lipton Jun 01 '18 at 23:57
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    -1 Superficial answer. The quote could be retyped from the actual yearbook. – Pertinax Jun 02 '18 at 12:34
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    @Pertinax There are indications of extraction artifacts around the quote that indicate that the quote in question is a direct copy from the one in the yearbook. – Nzall Jun 04 '18 at 12:23
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    Am I the only one who'd like to see some evidence that it is indeed Calibri and not just a font that looks a lot like it? – SQB Jun 05 '18 at 07:08
258

The Stanford yearbook in 1977 is mostly photos without captions.

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

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(There is no Valerie Bowman on this page anyway, because she didn't graduate until 1978.)

It does have a few short comments that seem to deal with everyday life on campus.

enter image description here

The faculty and staff kept reminding me to take advantage of all the benefits available to me because I was at this prestigious university ... My career placement counselor told me how to gather impressive recommendatiions and explained how to best present my litany of apprenticeships to land the job I wanted or get into the grad school of my choice. ... [unsigned]

I took these photos from an eBay listing and thus cannot look at every last page to confirm that the quoted statement does not appear, but I think the idea that a yearbook that looks like this contains a manifesto of violent Islamic revolution is frankly an absurd far-right fever dream. 1977 was before the Iran revolution and political Islam was not on the American radar.

Avery
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    Bravo! I wish I could upvote twice. Once because it actually focuses on debunking the claim by investigating the source and twice because it gave the most fitting answer with the available evidence: we're not sure, but probably not. Great find! This should be the accepted answer. – Just J for now May 30 '18 at 21:10
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    @Jordy, this answer provides zero evidence. The quote from Snopes in the OP's answer about her name being Valerie Bowman in '77 is proof that the photo in the question was altered. – CramerTV May 30 '18 at 21:23
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    I find this contribution valuable as it testifies to the attributes of the yearbook which seem to not be conducive to such a claim, but I find the circumstances of the claim itself more valuable: for example the greatest piece of information in this post is that the claim predates political Islam being on the American radar. My own answer provides more to the circumstances of the claim, so I'm still content with it being chosen. But I gave this an upvote. (@Jordy) – Evan Carroll May 30 '18 at 21:23
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    @cramertv, how can you say that there is no evidence? It gives the zeitgeist and shows that it's highly unlikely that students were directly quoted like nowadays. And as discussed at length in Carroll's answer, it doesn't make sence to quote her as Bowman because nobody is claiming that that part of the photo is actually from '77, her last name doesn't prove anything. – Just J for now May 30 '18 at 21:36
  • @Jordy, Just to be clear, we're both talking about her name in the small font attribution line directly under the 'quote' and not the large font line at the bottom of the image, right? – CramerTV May 30 '18 at 21:43
  • @CramerTV, yes I think we are talking about the same line, basically: why would you reference the source of a quote within the source? It doesn't make any sense. – Just J for now May 30 '18 at 21:47
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    Well that's not exactly true. That's not what Snopes doing: it is a matter of opinion. You value the qualities of the yearbook more as inferred from 3 pages. I value more the maiden name, marriage date, and geopolitical situation. The three pages of a yearbook, and the events in time and pertaining to the VJ are all circumstantial. But I certainly don't think the three pages are of a higher standard. – Evan Carroll May 30 '18 at 21:50
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    @Jordy This makes no sense as superior evidence. The lack of quotes on three pages of the yearbook tell us nothing about the contents of the other ~97 pages. If your hypothesis is that the image doesn't claim to be a direct image of the yearbook, then why does the content of three particular pages matter at all? There could easily be quotes on the very next page. – Ryan Cavanaugh May 30 '18 at 22:19
  • What do you mean by "proems"? The definition I found doesn't seem to describe anything related to what the text in the yearbook would be. – jpmc26 May 30 '18 at 23:53
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    @Jordy You can always use the bounty feature to award an answer if you think one upvote doesn't suffice. – pacoverflow May 31 '18 at 04:23
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    The Stanford University Library has copies of Stanford's yearbooks available for browsing, so if someone in the Bay Area really wanted to check it's easily doable. – 1006a May 31 '18 at 18:17
  • are those lockers on the page opposite the arches? – Mr.Mindor Jun 01 '18 at 14:04
  • @Mr.Mindor They're post office boxes. My college had the same ones, last time i was there in 2009 – Avery Jun 02 '18 at 05:26
  • @RyanCavanaugh doesn't Occam's razor apply to the suggestion that the 1977 Stanford yearbook consisted of some pages of black-and-white headshots without captions all taken against the same background, and some other pages with color images with a different aspect ratio, a different background, a wider framing of the subject's body with a different pose, much more space between images, and a text caption apparently chosen by the student alongside the image? –  Jun 05 '18 at 14:40
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    @jwg Jordy's claim is that the image (which is clearly fraudulent) may still be an accurate quoting of text found in the yearbook. The visual styling or precise content of any particular page is therefore irrelevant; yearbooks contain a variety of content depending on section and we cannot assume that there isn't a "Controversial statements by students" section because we saw a standard headshot layout section. – Ryan Cavanaugh Jun 05 '18 at 18:35
  • I'm not sure that is Jordy's claim @RyanCavanaugh –  Jun 05 '18 at 20:12
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    @user43536 It is. In the discussion (moved to chat) he said "there is nothing indicating that the picture is a photocopy of the alleged yearbook" and "nobody is explicitly claiming that that part of the image is from the actual yearbook itself". – Ryan Cavanaugh Jun 05 '18 at 21:10
  • Is anyone claiming that the photo and text are photocopied from the yearbook? If I see a story in the news containing a quote from, say, a Supreme Court decision or the text of a law, I don't say "ah, these are in the same font as the rest of the article, clearly not photocopied from the original document, therefore the quote is proven fraudulent". – Mark Daniel Johansen Jun 08 '18 at 20:36
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    The fact that 3 random pages from the yearbook do not contain this sort of quote tells us zero. It's like saying, Here are 3 pages from the New York Times: the front page, a page of sports news, and a page of cartoons. None of these contain political commentary. Therefore, the claim that the New York Times had an editorial page is proven false. – Mark Daniel Johansen Jun 08 '18 at 20:40
  • That's not true Mark. Context is important: for example, what did students at Stanford want to put in their yearbook? Did they use it like a newspaper? Was it being edited with a political slant? Etc. – Avery Jun 09 '18 at 03:11
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    "the idea that a yearbook that looks like this contains a manifesto of violent Islamic revolution" ??? That's a straw man. There's no mention of "violent revolution" in the claimed quote. – Acccumulation May 26 '21 at 04:11
185

Just addressed by Snopes apparently,

The quote to attributed “Valerie Jarrett, Stanford University, 1977” about her “seek[ing] to help change America to be a more Islamic country” is an unfounded one that has no source other than recent repetition (primarily on right-wing web sites and blogs). It’s also an anachronism, as “Valerie Jarrett” didn’t exist in 1977: she was born Valerie Bowman and didn’t take the latter surname until she married William Jarrett in 1983.

Also according to Snopes there is no evidence she's Muslim and her parents aren't Iranian -- though she was born in Iran.

Evan Carroll
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82

In the first place the photo is not a photo of Valerie Jarrett from 1977. It is a photo taken at a later date in her life. Probable a photo after she became a successful business women. You can tell that by comparing it to photos from the year book that was shown as evidence. The features don’t look anywhere similar to the other students the clothes, hair are all wrong for that year.

Second under the statement you can see the name Valerie Jarrett but Valerie Jarrett’s her name in 1977 would’ve been Valerie Bowman. Because she was born Valerie June Bowman to James E. Bowman and Barbara T. Bowman. She did not become Valerie Jarrett until 1983 when she married William Robert Jarrett.

Personal details

Born: Valerie June Bowman, November 14, 1956 (age 61), Shiraz, Imperial State of Iran

Political party: Democratic

Spouse(s): William Jarrett (m. 1983; div. 1988) Parents: Barbara T. Bowman, James E. Bowman

Education: Stanford University (BA), University of Michigan (JD)

Source: Wikipedia page

Batman
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Roger Wiltfong
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