Stanford and Its Worlds: Confronting and Teaching Difficult Histories at Stanford University

Over the past several years, Stanford University has engaged with challenging aspects of its past. These projects have included historical inquiries into the legacy of former Stanford president and prominent eugenicist David Starr Jordan and discriminatory admissions policies upheld by the Stanford administration in the mid-twentieth century, both of which culminated in task force reports and policy recommendations to Stanford University’s president. In addition to historical research and institutional reform, Stanford faculty have translated these insights about Stanford’s past to the classroom: in the course Stanford and Its Worlds: 1885–present and its corollary Stanford Archive Lab, undergraduates encounter the history of Stanford in collaboration with education historians and the University Archives, engaging in the study of their institution’s pasts and contexts. Scholar of higher education history and associate professor of Education and (by courtesy) History, Emily Levine served on the Antisemitism in Admissions Task Force, co-designed the Stanford and Its Worlds course, and has been invited to address the Faculty Senate on the history of academic freedom and its role today. She will reflect on Stanford University’s reconciliation efforts thus far and how ongoing collaborative self-reflective institutional storytelling can have consequences for campus culture.