Jody Maxmin says her head is "still spinning from the generosity of the Hewlett family."
The associate professor of art history and classics likely speaks for many in the School of Humanities and Sciences, which received $300 million -- in largely unrestricted endowment funds -- from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation on May 2. The foundation gave another $100 million to Stanford's Campaign for Undergraduate Education. According to the New York Times, the combined $400 million is "believed to be the largest gift ever to a university."
Hewlett-Packard co-founder William R. Hewlett, '34, Engr. '39, who died January 12, established the foundation in 1966. The gift honors his "lifelong devotion to Stanford and his passionate belief in the value of a liberal arts education," says his son, foundation chair Walter B. Hewlett, ms '68, ms '73, DMA '80. "Had he lived, I am certain this is something he would have done himself."
Established in 1948, h&s is the largest of Stanford's seven schools, responsible for about 80 percent of undergraduate teaching, with 500 faculty members in 28 departments ranging from art to applied physics. But raising unrestricted funds for the school has historically been difficult. The Hewlett Foundation gift to h&s should pay out about $15 million per year, and University officials plan to use it as a challenge to raise a total of $1 billion in endowment funds for the school.
How the income from the gift will be spent is not yet clear. As a hint of the many ways the funds might bolster the school, however, Stanford asked professors what they would do with $5 million.
French professor Brigitte Cazelles: What a great dream! I would organize a series of undergraduate seminars that would take place in situ -- that is, in a specific region of France, to explore texts in close connection with the "cultural geography" whence they originate. For example, On the Track of the Troubadour Poets, a seminar whose itinerary would follow the emergence and development of love poetry in southern France, from the region of Poitiers, associated with Guillaume d'Aquitaine; to the southwest, associated with Jaufré Rudel; to the south center, associated with Bernard de Ventadorn; down to the southeast, associated with Foulques de Marseilles.
History professor Paul Seaver: If I had gobs of money, I would immediately increase the stipends of our graduate students [in] the humanities. What an impoverished society we are creating if we ignore philosophy, literature, art, music and history. If there was any money left over, I would try to start an undergraduate honors program in history and literature, which has always seemed to me to be the one aspect of Harvard's overrated undergraduate education worth emulating.
Biological sciences professor Paul Ehrlich: The vast majority of "educated" people are ignorant of basic science and mathematics, the nature of the scientific enterprise and its sociology, and the escalating importance of science in human affairs. I would use the money to establish and support a world-class, three-quarter course sequence that would be required of every undergraduate.
Biological sciences professor Joan Roughgarden: I feel the time is long overdue to bury the hatchet between the humanities and sciences. It's hard to find topics on which scientists and humanists need to know the other's scholarship. While I love Shakespeare, I don't need the latest commentary on the old bard, and a humanist who loves bird-watching probably doesn't need the latest demography of bird populations. Yet one major area [of crossover] does exist: human diversity. Humanists of many disciplines have written about cultural and historical aspects of human diversity, and biologists have written about the material, bodily and behavioral aspects of human diversity. Neither has consulted with the other, though. I propose that the University create a research center devoted to the intersection of science and the humanities on the topic of human diversity.
