When I’m writing a feature story, I begin thinking it’s about time to wrap up the reporting phase when the themes of the interviews start to converge.
For our profile of Jonathan Levin, ’94, that happened during the fourth interview. I had six more scheduled.
The people with whom I spoke used a remarkably consistent set of adjectives to describe Stanford’s incoming president: Kind. Humble. Calm (or unflappable, if you prefer the 50-cent version). Optimistic.
Michelle Bhatia had a similar experience when she applied to be chief of staff at the Graduate School of Business, where Levin is dean for about two more weeks. “I’ve interviewed for a number of jobs, and what was interesting is that every single person used the word kind,” Bhatia says. “Yes, kind. And it’s not a word that comes up with executives often. They’ll say they’re nice, they’ll say that they’re collaborative. The word that came up with Jon was kind. And I will assert that that is very accurate.”
“Jon is so humble,” says professor of medicine William Robinson, ’89, PhD ’95, MD ’96, Levin’s longtime friend and wilderness companion. “He’s very down-to-earth and just wants to be part of the group working together to make everybody successful and to help everybody be as effective as they can in their own roles.”
‘He listens well, and he thinks through what he’s hearing and comes up with solutions that are sensitive to multiple perspectives and multiple needs.’
“He is so calm,” says economics professor Liran Einav, one of Levin’s most frequent scholarly collaborators. “Maybe twice in 20 years I’ve seen him get slightly irritated. He’ll be great in terms of not letting the emotional part of the job, or people complaining, affect what he wants to do.”
“I think his very can-do, optimistic spirit is exactly what we need,” says Paul Oyer, the GSB’s senior associate dean for academic affairs. “He will sit down with the anthropologists and make them feel like he’s excited about their research, because he probably will be excited about their research.”
Levin’s signature qualities, his colleagues say, make him a superlative choice to lead Stanford at a time when higher education is under pressure nationwide. “It’s a tough job, but I think he has as good a chance as anybody I’ve ever met for overcoming the challenges that a university president faces right now,” says economics professor and Nobel laureate Paul Milgrom, MS ’78, PhD ’79. “He’s able to hear the concerns of people from a whole variety of backgrounds. He listens well, and he thinks through what he’s hearing and comes up with solutions that are sensitive to multiple perspectives and multiple needs. That’s a big conflict reducer.”
Plus, of course, he’s one of us: the first Stanford alum to hold the presidency since 1968. “I think alumni can expect someone who gets Stanford,” says GSB associate dean of external relations Derrick Bolton, MA ’98, MBA ’98. “He genuinely cares what alumni think about Stanford today, about how Stanford shaped them, about advice that they have for him as a leader.”
Those are just a handful of the observations—albeit characteristic ones—I gleaned in those 10 interviews. You’ll find more in the article itself. Here’s to a future of kindness, humility, calm, and optimism.
Kathy Zonana, ’93, JD ’96, is the editor of Stanford. Email her at kathyz@stanford.edu.
