Justice Stephen Breyer retires.
If a Supreme Court judicial nominee is confirmed without issue, Justice Stephen Breyer, ’59, won’t be returning to the bench after this year’s summer recess. “I have found the work challenging and meaningful,” he said in a January 27 letter to President Biden announcing his retirement.
Breyer has been an ebullient intellectual force on the nation’s highest court for nearly 28 years. He wanted the law to work “in the real world for ordinary people,” Stanford Law School dean Jenny Martinez wrote in the Washington Post. That meant no complicated footnotes on legal opinions, a broad and flexible view of the Constitution, and close attention paid to the practical consequences of the Court’s decisions.
Breyer’s final months round out 50 consecutive years during which at least one Stanford alum has held a seat on the Supreme Court. We owe that impressive stint, in part, to his parents. He “longed to go to Harvard,” reads the 1995 Stanford profile of Breyer. “But his parents were concerned he was too bookish and instead made him go to Stanford, where they believed he would be less isolated. He was furious.”
Cardinal through and through.
John Arrillaga Sr., ’60—the pioneering Silicon Valley developer and one of Stanford’s greatest benefactors—died in January, leaving a legacy literally built into every corner of campus. Over decades, Arrillaga’s donations, drive and hands-on work transformed the layout of the university, from the Escondido Village Graduate Residences to the Physics and Astrophysics Building to the refurbished Old Union. Most famously, he built and largely paid for the reconstruction of Stanford Stadium. His legacy, however, transcends the physical. Coming from modest means, Arrillaga was only able to afford Stanford because of a basketball scholarship, an opportunity he repaid over and over. He went on to fund the education of more than 300 Stanford students through need-based and athletic scholarships. In 2009, Arrillaga was awarded the Degree of Uncommon Man, Stanford’s highest honor, for his service to the university. “Our community mourns the loss of John Arrillaga, whose extraordinary generosity has had a profound impact on our university for more than half a century,” President Marc Tessier-Lavigne said.
Now we’re cooking with . . . uh-oh.
Over a third of U.S. homes have gas stoves, and that’s a bigger problem than we realized, according to a new Stanford-led study. Lead author Eric Lebel, PhD ’20, and his team measured the methane and nitrogen oxide released from stoves in 53 homes across 18 brands, and found that methane isn’t in the air only while you’re cooking—it’s persistently leaking out also when the stove is off, affecting indoor air quality. What’s more, using a 20-year timeframe, the annual methane emissions from stoves from those 40 million U.S. homes is comparable to the annual carbon dioxide emissions from about 500,000 gasoline-powered cars. For a hunk of metal designed to cook stuff, this is not hot. “I don’t want to breathe any extra nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide or formaldehyde,” said Rob Jackson, professor of earth science and a senior author of the study. He advocates switching to electric stoves. “Why not reduce the risk entirely?”
Do you want to build a snowman?
Photo: Jose Mercado/Stanford News Service
Stanford isn’t known for its winter sports (the last time it snowed on campus was 1976). But the 2022 Beijing Games includes at least one (future) member of the Stanford family. Eileen Gu is an admit and the world’s top female freestyle skier. She’s competing for China and yesterday took gold in the big air freestyle competition. Even if the Farm doesn’t produce a lot of curling champs, watching the Olympics and Paralympics can provide opportunities for family discussions about stress, cheating, sportsmanship and more. In a 2018 Stanford story, Denise Clark Pope, ’88, PhD ’99, founder of Challenge Success and senior lecturer in the Graduate School of Education, explained how.
Cloudy with a chance of turnover.
Volatility is brewing on the work-from-home horizon. Researchers—including economics professor Nicholas Bloom, who has studied remote work for 20 years—asked 17,000 U.S. employees about their attitudes toward working from home, and the desires of many workers were in direct opposition to the desires of managers. About 50 percent of respondents who have worked from home during the pandemic said they would prefer a hybrid arrangement (some days in the office, some days remote) once the virus is under control, with people of color and those with young children valuing flexible work arrangements at higher rates than others. But most large companies are run by older white men, the group that is the most enthusiastic about returning to the office.
Some employers, like American Express, are testing out creative hybrid options, like being in the office full time for 11 months, with a floating remote month once a year. But Bloom said that could become logistically unwieldy. Ultimately, with more than a third of employees willing to quit their job over remote work restrictions, companies may not have the option of requiring staff to be on-site. “You have executives pushing for a return to the office, employees wanting to work from home and a tight labor market.” Bloom said. “It’s a perfect storm.”
Everything I need to know I learned from an alum.
Last fall, 15 low-income U.S. high schools offered a well-known Stanford course—CS 105: Introduction to Computers—and several Stanford alumni reprised their role as teaching fellows alongside current students. The TFs logged in from around the world to lead sections and office hours with students, helping Stanford build more equitable pathways to advanced education. Stanford Digital Education launched the pilot in September through a partnership with the National Education Equity Lab, which connects universities to low-income high schools. Two more Stanford courses, in Structured Liberal Education and introductory college writing, will take place during winter and spring quarters. “This opportunity gave me a real insight into what a competitive college course looks and feels like,” said Janet Perez, a junior at All City Leadership School in Brooklyn, New York. “And it’s given me confidence when looking at colleges [where] I want to apply.”
But wait, there’s more.
Love is in the air, and the Marriage Pact is no longer limited to Stanford. What began as a student project for an Econ 136 class has spread to more than 60 colleges. Thousands of students signed up last year for the chance to be matched with a potential mate based on their responses to statements like “I would keep a gun in the house” and “gender roles exist for good reasons.” Liam McGregor, ’19, who started the project with classmate Sophia Sterling-Angus, said it’s not clear how many actual weddings the Pact can claim, but 3 to 4 percent of respondents date for a year or longer. By comparison, he said, only 1 to 2 percent of matches on traditional apps even meet.
Jessica Watkins, ’10, is headed to the International Space Station for a six-month mission that will make her the first Black woman to spend extended time in orbit. Watkins, a geologist, is one of four astronauts on the mission, which is scheduled to launch in April.
Nathaniel Eisen, ’11, first encountered ramps—wild leeks—as a 19-year-old working on an organic farm in upstate New York. In the 12 years since, he’d foraged for them only a handful of times, but exhausted by the pandemic, he writes in Stanford, he felt a call to resume the search.
Not sure whom to root for during the Super Bowl? We at Homer HQ urge you to throw all your psychic energy behind the Cincinnati Bengals, who count among their ranks two former Cardinal players, Michael Thomas, ’12, and Trenton Irwin, ’19, as well as wide receiver coach Troy Walters, ’99, MA ’00. The Rams’ Cardinal cupboard is, meanwhile, bare. Give ’em the Axe!
Graduate School of Business professor Jennifer Aaker, PhD ’95, studied data sets from more than 500,000 people and found as people become wealthier, they experience greater happiness. But people with lower incomes were more likely to tie happiness to a sense of meaning.
To improve upon smartwatches and fitness trackers, which can measure calorie burn inaccurately, Patrick Slade, MS ’17, PhD ’21, has created a calorie-counting device that gathers data through bands around the wearer’s waist and leg. Want one? He put all the code online so anyone can make their own and test it out.
No scrubs. Roses are red, violets are blue, our Med School students are better at social media than you. If you’ve ever wanted to see future doctors and physician assistants get down to songs by TLC and from the musical Hamilton, this is your shot.
Summer Moore Batte, ’99, is the editor of Stanfordmag.org and the Loop. Email her at summerm@stanford.edu.
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