During an interview in his Building 10 office a few days before the final gup authorization, President John Hennessy reflected on what the University learned as it negotiated its new land-use agreement, and how it will use those lessons.
Stanford: Clearly, Stanford's policies, especially those involving land-use practices, will be subject to intense public scrutiny going forward. Has the University had to adjust to being more squarely in the public eye?
Hennessy: We've had to adopt a different mindset. I think we're already through it; we probably knew it was necessary even before we entered this planning process. But this kind of public involvement is new for us, whereas Berkeley, for example, has been there for a long time. We can either rail against it, or we can deal with it.
Given that greater public oversight of Stanford's development will limit its options, will the University have to lower its ambitions?
We probably will have to compromise. The key is to understand what those compromises are as you're making them. I think it's useful to remember that Stanford's rise to prominence is a relatively recent event--it's not more than 40 years old. We're still rising toward our peak. As a result, trying to decide how to go forward remains difficult. We know, for example, that we want to develop an interdisciplinary program in the neurosciences, an absolutely explosive area in which Stanford has tremendous strength--from psychology to the basic neurosciences to engineering. Bringing that all together presents the opportunity to have something that perhaps only one or two other institutions in the world could match. That has to be the thing that continues to drive us.
The General Use Permit and Community Plan govern the University's new construction for the next 10 years. Can you see beyond that when determining the needs of the academic program?
It's very difficult. Think back 50 years. There were no integrated circuits, computer science was not yet a discipline, the first electronic computer had been running for about four or five years, the first commercial computers were just being delivered. dna had not been discovered. People just don't realize the scope of change that has occurred. The technologies that built this world and that will sustain the economy for some time to come are probably not the technologies that will sustain it 50 years from now. We have to maintain some flexibility in our planning because we can't know what the academic needs of the institution will be in the future.
As land-use policies tighten, it seems likely that Stanford, and universities generally, will need to make a persuasive case that the public interest is served when academic programs grow. What would be the basis for that case?
What has made this area prosper? What has made the United States prosper? Clearly, one would have to argue that research universities in the United States have been a source of fundamental strength in the country. It's important for people to understand that it's not a God-given right that the United States has the most advanced technologies in the world and the strongest economy.
How do you respond to the argument that Stanford can afford to give up some of its land because it is a wealthy institution?
There is a sentiment that we're "rich." I find it hard to understand that sentiment when we are struggling to meet even the basic needs of our graduate students, faculty and staff. Here's a dilemma that we face: our students come to Stanford with the expectation that tuition will increase at something close to the cost-of-living increases across the United States. But our costs are going up according to the local cost of living, which for the past several years has risen at a much higher rate than in the rest of the country. The next dorm that we build is going to cost 6 or 7 percent more than it would cost nationally, and our salaries must increase at a much higher rate to keep pace with the local economy. I wish we were rich, because then we could start buying up houses in Palo Alto for our faculty.
How do you defend the University's past decisions to use its land for non-academic purposes such as the Stanford Shopping Center?
If you look at the founding grant, it states that the land should be used for the purposes of the University, including generating revenue. Now, when the Stanfords originally wrote that, they probably envisioned us running a ranch, raising horses or maybe growing grapes. Obviously, we use it in other ways, but every single penny goes to support the core mission of the University. The research park is a good example. The trustees a few years ago decided to dedicate a larger fraction of that income to deal with the housing crisis. The $7 million we're using to subsidize housing for our graduate students comes directly from research park income. Directly. The only reason we could find that money was because rents at the research park have gone up appreciably in the last few years. For us, it's always a question of figuring out how we balance all of the pieces that make the whole equation work out well.
How concerned are you that the contentiousness of this latest permit process will result in lingering ill will toward the University?
I think it's inevitable that there will be some people who think the University didn't do enough. It's critical as we go forward with anything, certainly anything related to land use, that we be absolutely clear about how the function relates to the core mission of the University. That concern about ill will is one of the reasons it's important not to make promises we can't keep. I would rather say "we can't do that" and have the possibility that somebody thinks we're not responding to them or aren't cooperating as much as we should than put ourselves in a situation where we make a commitment that some future president or Board of Trustees would have to break.
