I don't fully doubt you, but it seems to me that there was a period of VERY tense relations between Stanford and East Palo Alto a few years back. I don't have time to research right now, but I'm fairly certain this is an accurate statement.
Yes, I think it had to do with East Palo Alto having a reputation for having a higher crime rate than it actually does and Stanford taking over management of a high school there and trying to give East Palo Alto blight a face-lift with renovations, investment, and economic growth in a way that benefited the people of East Palo Alto. I don't think it was anything like what we're seeing in Durham and is more like what we see in many areas where the wealthier part of an area, through community planning and investment, undertakes to improve a blighted area. I think there was an ebonics issue that cropped up when Stanford took over management of the high school, but there was no rioting, people in the streets, Black Panthers, Al Sharpton - the usual race merchant suspects - involved, nor was it particular to an incident or specific people such as the Duke case.
The undercurrent of tension started slowly after white flight from East Palo Alto began in the late 60's and continued throughout the 70's. By the late 80's it was clear that East Palo Alto was decaying, so the blacks who lived there of course blamed the wealthier white people connected to the academia at Stanford just a few miles away. There's nothing new or unusual about that. There was some controversy about supposedly misstated crime statistics when redevelopment of blighted East Palo Alto was being considered, but that was ironed out through a lot of dialogue between East Palo Alto city leaders and various bodies within stanford and greater Palo Alto several years ago. I believe some of the redevelopment has already occurred, but I doubt if Stanford or greater Palo Alto planned to completely redevelop East Palo Alto, nor would that be desirable for the people of East Palo Alto. For one thing, gentrification would occur and the poorer blacks who live there would be driven out.
I don't think there was anything uncommon about these events. We see it in a lot of urban areas where the division between poor and black vs. white and middle-class is apparent. Whites move out as the black crime rate rises, then the blacks who remain wonder why their community turned to a piece of crap. It's easy for the blacks to focus on nearby institutions that appear to embody the white, middle-class structure that they won't work toward achieving for themselves due to their own cultural roadblocks. Nevertheless, leftwing white guilt rules the day and we continue to pour money down the same rathole, when what is really needed are the cultural changes within predominantly black communities that would allow such investment to be successful and the people of those communities become prosperous on their own merit and at least part of their own dime. "Gimme, gimme, gimme" doesn't cut it without a substantial commitment and evidence of cultural change.