Stanford University hosted the first major university-sponsored conference where different viewpoints on the appropriate management of pandemics were aired and debated. For much of 2020-2022, critical debate about the wisdom and effectiveness of mandatory Covid policies ... was treated with deep hesitation at best and outright hostility at worst. Professors and students who publicly questioned the mainstream consensus were censored on social media, vilified by their colleagues, and, in the case of Covid vaccine mandates, fired by administrators. Universities failed in their mission to promote academic debate and freedom during the most significant domestic policy issue of this century. During these years, colleagues and students with critical, sceptical viewpoints and countless members of the public [asked] why institutions of higher education were not hosting reasoned debate. The pandemic taught us a valuable lesson for those interested to hear. We need more freedom of expression and academic debate during crises and emergencies, not less. Many are tired of the vapid arguments of ideologues and hungry for a return to the ... academic tradition of debate. By that standard, the Stanford Covid conference was a huge success. The panels addressed key issues regarding the evidence for Covid lockdowns, the management of information and censorship, the impact of lockdowns on the world's poor, and the contentious question of the origin of the virus. Experts who supported early school closures reasoned together with those who did not. Those who support the lab leak hypothesis argued their case with those who disagree. And they disagreed about the wisdom of social media censorship in a pandemic. In the end, the conference achieved its stated purpose: to bring serious thinkers and scientists into constructive dialogue with one another.