Alexander Kerensky was the charismatic leader of the Provisional Government that held a tenuous grip on power in Russia between the fall of the Romanovs in February 1917 and the storming to power of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. Kerensky first visited Stanford in 1955 and spent much of the next ten years on campus, conducting research in the Hoover Library & Archives, teaching seminars, giving guest lectures, and appearing on panel discussions devoted to the latest...

Through some simple archival detective work, the staff of Stanford University Press (SUP) unearthed the long and lesser-told history of the Press, from its humble origins in 1892 to its myriad transformations over the course of the 20th century. This history, studded with the stories of plucky pressmen, master craftspeople, and intellectual luminaries reveals a deep tradition of the Press’s pioneering spirit, its indelibly Californian character, and an unremitting commitment to plumbing even...

Laura Jones, Joseph Stagner and James Sweeney talked about the history, the transformation, and the current state of the energy system at Stanford.

Elena Danielson, Hoover Institution Archivist, Emerita, gave a talk on Herbert Hoover, a geology graduate at Stanford, and how he was the original Stanford techie.

With the re-opening of Roble Gym in the fall of 2016, the Department of Theater & Performance Studies reflected on the rich history of theater, dance, and performance at Stanford. In a conversation with TAPS Chair Branislav Jakovljevic, Professor Janice Ross and Professor Emeritus Bill Eddelman traced the evolution of the performing arts in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Leland and Jane Stanford founded their university amidst the kinetic tumult of Gilded Age America. It was a time of swashbuckling capitalist ambition, let-‘er-rip financial finagling, and epic corruption. It was also a time of accelerating immigration, the rapid peopling and development of the great American West – and the golden age of American philanthropy, when so-called Robber Barons like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and the Stanfords' lavished their millions on building lasting...

Between 1865 and 1869, thousands of Chinese migrants toiled at a grueling pace and in perilous working conditions to help construct the railroad. The railroad, which could not have been completed without these Chinese workers, was the main source of the fortune with which Leland Stanford founded Stanford University. The history of these Chinese workers is a transnational story, told from both U.S. and Chinese perspectives, that the Chinese Railroad Workers Project tries to document and share....

"As America entered World War I in 1917, Stanford University leased three-fourths of its Palo Alto land to allow the creation of an Army training camp, Camp Fremont, headquartered in present-day Menlo Park. The camp brought the war and its controversies home. Stanford adapted to the proximity of 28,000 soldiers, and the foothills acquired a trench ground and artillery range where dugouts and unexploded ordnance occasionally still emerge decades later. Peace broke out before most Camp Fremont...

On January 13, 2016, Elizabeth Jerison (Harvard) delivered a talk on Stanford campus for the Center for Computational, Evolutionary and Human Genomics (CEHG). She discussed her study of trade-offs after adaptation to different environmental conditions, for which she evolved 260 populations of budding yeast to 13 different environmental conditions.

A presentation and celebration of the history of the Faculty Club. Founded in 1908, the original Faculty Club was burned to the ground in the 1960s. A new building was dedicated in 1965 in a ceremony presided by President Wallace Sterling.

Join Canopy and the Stanford Historical Society as we explore the rich mosaic of Stanford trees on a journey through the past, present and future.

Philippe Cohen, Executive Director of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve and Stephen Palumbi, Jane and Marshall Steel Jr. Professor in Marine Sciences and Director of the Hopkins Marine Station were the featured speakers. They talked about the rich history and recent activities of the Stanford field stations.

"Three large nave windows were painstakingly restored in recent years by Clerkin Higgins Stained Glass of New York City. Mary Clerkin Higgins will address problems encountered in the conservation treatment and highlight the skills of the artist and artisans who created the windows. Ms. Higgins is an award-winning artist and conservator who has worked in stained glass for 39 years. She has written about and restored glass from the 12th century to the present for numerous museums and...

University Architect David Lenox described the historic evolution of the campus and its architecture from its earliest incarnations to its current state, and provided a glimpse into the future development of the campus. Chris Wasney (B.A 1980) presented some of his firm's work on buildings from virtually all of the eras of Stanford's development. http://historicalsociety.stanford.edu/programs.shtml

Stanford Pioneering Women Video Series captures the memories and reflections of distinguished faculty members about their early experiences as women in predominantly male-dominated fields at Stanford. The purpose of this series is to illuminate the experiences of women who arrived at Stanford in different periods in the University’s history. http://historicalsociety.stanford.edu/ohistoryinterviews.shtml

The panel explored the role that VIA played at Stanford during the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s at a time of student activism, and the ways that VIA complemented Stanford’s engagement with Asia. The panelists also discussed how Stanford participants engaged with the dramatic changes in Asia in the past 50 years and how the VIA experience affected their lives. http://histsoc.stanford.edu/programspast.shtml

President Hennessy discussed the history of the relationship between Stanford and the Silicon Valley in the last thirty years.

Stanford University’s unofficial motto, “Die Luft der Freiheit weht” (translated as “The wind of freedom blows”), was the theme of Gerhard Casper’s 1992 inaugural address as Stanford president. In his speech, he talked about the nine aspects of a university’s freedom. Twenty years later, as president emeritus, Gerhard Casper reflected on the freedoms of and at the university in his new book, The Winds of Freedom: Addressing Challenges to the University. The freedoms of and at the university...

The teaching of human sexuality at Stanford is usually associated with Herant Katchadourian’s course Human Sexuality (Human Biology 10) which was initiated in 1968 and enrolled over 20,000 students over the next several decades. While that course was the first to explicitly focus on sex, there have been earlier courses about topics that most probably touched on the subject in one way or another. Some of these courses go back all the way to the founding of Stanford. Between 1891 and the...

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Stanford in Government (SIG) during the seismic social change of the mid-1960s, a panel moderated by Larry Diamond ’73, MA ’78, PhD ’80, SIG faculty advisor, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow and faculty co-director of the Haas Center for Public Service, explored Stanford’s emergence after World War II as a national and international institution with complex ties to government. Drawing on their personal experiences, panelists discussed...

Professor Kennedy talked about "The Modern American Military," which is also the title of his most recent book (Oxford Press, June 2013) and Stanford's tangled history with ROTC.

With its establishment in 1947, the Department of Music began a steady expansion of academic courses that had initially been offered as part of the curriculum in Education. In keeping with Stanford's tradition of combining theory and practice, knowledge and invention, community service and individual discovery, the Department has always sought to connect its programs to a broad range of scholarly and creative activities, which today embrace performance, composition, electroacoustic music,...

Since the mid-1960s, one of the most distinctive aspects of student life at Stanford and most visible features of the university’s on-campus culture has been The Incomparable Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band. This panel presentation will address the genesis and development of the Band as we know it today, beginning with the “Band Strike” in 1963. The discussion will be moderated by John Mannion, ’89, and will feature Dr. Arthur P. Barnes, emeritus professor of music and the...

Malcolm Beasley, Sidney Drell, and Alexander Fetter discuss The Physics program at Stanford and how it has grown over the years.