A Leading Global University

Casper, Rice, Hennessy, and Etchemendy

(1990s-2016)

After the 1977 New York Times article “‘Harvard of the West’ Climbing in Ratings,” Stanford began to be seen as a leading global university.

Instead of becoming an institute of technology, Stanford has always been making an effort to commit to the arts and humanities. The multidisciplinary Stanford Humanities Center, the first of its kind in the nation and still the largest, opened in 1980 to advance research in history, philosophy, literature, art, and culture. Although the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused damages to the university, during Gerhard Casper’s tenure (1992–2000), the physical infrastructure of the campus improved substantially, including the reconstructed Bing Wing of Cecil H. Green Library. The 1893 Leland Stanford Junior Museum became part of an expanded complex, the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, which includes the largest collection of Rodin bronzes outside Paris.

In 1993, Condoleezza Rice became the first female, first African-American, and youngest provost in Stanford’s history. She returned to Stanford after serving as Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009, once again furthering the connection between global leadership and Stanford, especially Hoover Institution, where she has been the director since 2020.

In these decades, Stanford established its world-class reputation in scientific research. The 1990s saw an unheard-of four-year streak of Nobel Physics winners from the Stanford faculty with the support of SLAC: Perl (1995), Osheroff (1996), Chu (1997), and Laughlin (1998). Then the 2010s saw a three-year streak of Nobel Chemistry winners: Kobilka (2012), Levitt (2013), and Moerner (2014).

Nevertheless, the arts were not neglected. The world-class Bing Concert Hall opened in 2013 (Zinko, 2013), across from the Cantor arts museum and sculpture garden. Together with the McMurtry Building and the acclaimed Anderson Collection of 20th-century American painting, they form the Stanford arts district for experiential arts learning.

In the 21st century, Stanford further explored interdisciplinary collaboration, a hallmark of university President John Hennessy’s tenure (2000-2016). The James H. Clark Center for Biomedical Engineering and Sciences opened in 2003 as the geographic and intellectual nexus between the schools of Engineering and Medicine. The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d.school) opened in 2005, bringing design and engineering students and faculty together to develop innovative, human-centered solutions to real-world challenges.

Under the leadership of President John Hennessy—2017 Turing Award winner and Chairman of Alphabet Inc.—and Provost John Etchemendy—logician, philosopher, and co-director of Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), Stanford became the top computer science school and an incubator for start-ups, coexisting with the Silicon Valley tech industry and private equity firms. Various tech leaders, such as Jerry Yang (co-founder of Yahoo!) and Jensen Huang (founder of NVIDIA), donated buildings to the Engineering Quad.

In 2012, the Stanford Challenge raised $6.2 billion, then the largest fundraising campaign undertaken by a university, to fund bold new initiatives.