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In 1900 Stanford was an upstart institution at the furthest edge of the American frontier; a century later it would have faculty and alumni influential in virtually every domain of domestic and international policy. Historian Emily J. Levine and sociologist Mitchell L. Stevens, both faculty members of the Stanford Graduate School of Education, will offer an account of how this transformation occurred. Integrating recent theoretical developments in political history with original research in the Stanford University Archives, they will depict how ambitious alumni and faculty moved back and forth between Washington and Palo Alto, building careers that leveraged the dual affordances of academic and government organizations. In the process these alumni and faculty contributed to the development of a hybrid domain of civic action that we now call public service, and moved Stanford closer to the political centers of power. Professor Levine and Professor Stevens will conclude by considering the implications of the current US Presidential administration’s efforts to renegotiate the relationship between elite universities and the federal government. 

Geoff Cox, Senior Associate Dean for Finance & Administration, Graduate School of Education, will be the moderator.

Emily J. Levine (MA ’05 and PhD ’08)  is Associate Professor of Education and (by courtesy) History at Stanford University. She is the author of Allies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University (University of Chicago Press,  2021), and Dreamland of Humanists: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky, and the Hamburg School (University of Chicago Press, 2013), and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The LA Times.

Mitchell L. Stevens is Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University. He is an organizational sociologist with longstanding interests in educational sequences, lifelong learning, alternative educational forms, and the formal organization of knowledge. At Stanford he convenes the Pathways Network (pathways.stanford.edu) and the Futures Project on Education and the Learning Society (learningsociety.io).

Sponsored by the Stanford Historical Society and co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Education.

Walk-ins are welcome.

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*Visit the newly-opened Graduate School of Education campus! Our event takes place in the renovated ANKO Building, formerly known as Cubberley. Enjoy the spacious Forum, with its art installation, Gravity of the Sun, by Jacob Hashimoto, as well as the space formerly occupied by Cubberley Library, now the Shriram great hall.

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