Cowgirl on the court.
At the end of the first case she considered as the first woman on the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, ’50, LLB ’52, sat at the table with the eight other justices and prepared to break a 4–4 tie. “To be in that room and have an equal voice at that table was just an electric feeling,” she told Stanford in 2006. She would be the deciding vote many times during her 24 years on the nation’s highest bench, ultimately writing 645 opinions, including landmark decisions upholding the right to abortion and affirmative action in higher education. O’Connor, who once asked that her headstone only reflect that she had been a good judge, died December 1 of complications from dementia. She was 93.
Changing the face of American justice wasn’t on her docket when she enrolled at Stanford as an undergraduate. (She once so loved a geology course that she considered majoring in that.) But she was inspired by the logic and legal reasoning of Professor Harry Rathbun, Class of 1916, Engr. ’20, JD ’29, and applied early to Stanford Law School. She was one of just five women admitted to the class of 1952, and after graduating, her only job offer was for a secretarial position, contingent on her ability to type. Despite becoming the country’s first female state senate majority leader, the Arizonan was as surprised as anyone when President Reagan nominated her to the Court.
O’Connor grew up far from the marble hallways of Capitol Hill, and her childhood on a sprawling desert ranch was reflected in her chambers, which were decorated with Southwestern art. “Her approach to law was pragmatic and reflected the spirit of freedom and openness of the American West,” said Stanford provost and former Law School dean Jenny Martinez. The Farm, too, remained an enduring part of the justice’s life. When a former clerk visited her this August, he said she was cradling a pillow bearing the name of her alma mater: “in love with Stanford right till the end.”
Stanford condemns calls for genocide.
In recent weeks, the Israel-Hamas war has fueled protests on U.S. college campuses. Last week, Claudine Gay, ’92, president of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, and Liz Magill, president of Penn and a former dean of Stanford Law School, testified before Congress regarding campus antisemitism. Their responses to questions of whether calls for the genocide of Jews violated their schools’ rules or codes of conduct, as well as whether they would discipline students making those statements, made headlines. “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” said Magill, who announced her resignation on Saturday.
On Thursday, Stanford president Richard Saller and provost Jenny Martinez released a statement on the topic: “In the context of the national discourse, Stanford unequivocally condemns calls for the genocide of Jews or any peoples. That statement would clearly violate Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, the code of conduct for all students at the university.” Stanford has gathered resources for the campus community on safety and well-being, as well as information about protected speech on California college campuses. Additionally, the university has hosted multiple educational events on the Israel-Hamas war, some of which are available online. “As our community witnesses and responds to the Israel-Hamas war, we continue to urge productive and respectful dialogue on our campus. Stanford is a community of scholars, and we have the opportunity to share knowledge and promote reasoned discussion around this set of challenges,” said Saller.
The scientist and the cells.
Plenty of people look at cells through microscopes. Siddhartha Mukherjee, ’93, listens to them. “Cells speak to me, especially blood cells,” he said. Mukherjee is a hematologist, an oncologist, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning author whose most recent book, The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, chronicles the discovery of the cell and the promise of medicine’s cellular therapies. The 496-page crash course in cellular biology may not sound like the curl-up-by-the-fire holiday read you were looking for, but don’t be too sure. “He’s very artful in telling stories that make you feel the humanity behind the science stories,” said Tyler Johnson, a clinical assistant professor of medicine in oncology. Mukherjee’s desire to make sense of science through writing dates back to his oncology fellowship, when he started keeping a journal to process the suffering he saw every day. Today, he treats the sickest of sick patients in the clinic—those who have relapsed after chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants. He writes out his weightiest questions, spends years researching them—sharing some of that research and reporting in books like Song of the Cell—then brings his ideas back to the lab and, hopefully, his patients.
Talk about tasty.
Photo: H. Taghap
In Tresidder Union, you’ll find two snowmen winking, bright lights blinking, and dozens of gingerbread people wearing corrective lenses. We’re plotting how best to nibble around the delicious-looking doorway undetected, but if you’re too stressed about upcoming holiday get-togethers to indulge in gingerbread pilfering, GSB lecturer Matt Abrahams, ’91, has some festive conversational bullet points to guide you through small talk and any potential for conflict. They include: Make it your goal to be interested, not interesting; read the room before you speak; and appreciate varied points of view, such as whether candy roof shingles or frosting icicles taste better.
Small mix-ups.
To find a socioeconomic melting pot, you might want to trade New York City for Bismarck, North Dakota. A Stanford research team that conducted an analysis of GPS pings from 9.6 million cell phones across 382 U.S. metropolitan areas concluded that large cities fostered socioeconomic segregation. In the 10 most populous metropolitan areas, people were significantly less likely to interact with people of different socioeconomic statuses than were people in areas with fewer than 100,000 residents. “That seems like a counterintuitive observation,” said Jure Leskovec, a professor of computer science. “But there is a large variety of choices in big cities. In New York, you can spend $10 on a dinner or $1,000 on a dinner, whereas if you live in a place with only one diner, everyone goes there, rich or poor. That seems to be the main mechanism for this phenomenon.” The researchers also found that big cities that placed shopping and dining hubs between (instead of at the center of) neighborhoods were less segregated. “Those hubs act as bridges, allowing people to see each other and interact,” said Hamed Nilforoshan, a doctoral student in Leskovec’s lab and first author on the paper.
But wait, there’s more.
Need some holiday cheer? Browse Stanford’s most feel-good stories of 2023. There’s a log roller, a grad student brewing free coffee and chaos on a pink Cadillac.
Three Stanford students have been named 2024 Rhodes Scholars and will pursue graduate degrees at Oxford. Co-term student Kate Bradley, ’23, will study energy systems and economics; Sid Suir Dhawan, ’22, a current Stanford master’s student in biology, will pursue a doctorate in clinical neurosciences; and co-term student Pranav Gurusankar, ’23, will work toward master’s degrees in public policy and applied digital health.
Copycat? More like copy can’t. Less than half of all psychology studies can be replicated, for instance, and researchers across the sciences are hard pressed to reproduce one another’s findings, leading to a crisis of confidence. A new paper shows that using painstakingly rigorous research practices can boost replication rates to near 90 percent.
Juan Aguayo, ’97, MS ’98, is the fifth-best birder of 2023 in Dallas County, Texas, but he’s not doing it for the Lone Star fame. His pandemic hobby started as a way to get outside during the pandemic. These days, he said, “a lot of it’s the chase.”
Stanford setter Kami Miner, ’25, has been named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, Pac-12 Setter of the Year (twice), and first-team All-American. This season, which ended in a heartbreaking loss to Texas in the regional final, she also racked up 33 aces—and that’s not even counting the one in the stands, dad Harold Miner, former NBA star, still USC’s leading career scorer in basketball, and always Kami’s No. 1 fan.
The women of Stanford Sailing have won the Open Dinghy National Championship, the first time in history that an all-female squad has nabbed the coveted title.
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