WSJ: Stanford is #1

Rodin's Burghers of Calais in Memorial Court, Stanford

Many years ago I was accepted to Stanford's undergraduate program but didn't go. Though grateful for how everything worked out, I do feel a twinge of road-not-taken regret when I see yet another article extolling the glories of the Farm:

Stanford University tops the list of the best U.S. colleges in the latest WSJ/College Pulse rankings.

Unlike other school rankings, this list emphasizes one point: How well did the college prepare students for financial success? More than any other factor, it rewards the boost an institution provides to its graduates’ salaries, beyond an estimate of what they could have expected from attending any college.

Stanford returns to the top of this list for the first time since the 2017 rankings. Ivy League schools also figure prominently, with Yale University, Princeton University and Harvard University finishing third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Two other Ivy League schools—Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania—come in at eighth and ninth, respectively.

Beyond the marquee names, the rankings’ distinct methodology highlights some institutions that don’t have as much name recognition but still help their students achieve remarkable success.

Babson College—the small Wellesley, Mass., school focused on business and entrepreneurship—retained its No. 2 spot from last year. Claremont McKenna College, near Los Angeles, clocked in at No. 6, and Davidson College, near Charlotte, N.C., ranked 10th.

The University of California, Berkeley, is the best-ranked public school, at No. 7 overall, and five other public schools from the state cracked the top 25...

The value of Stanford
Stanford scored well across the rankings’ metrics, including a high graduate salary score and a short amount of time to pay off the net price of college.

Raj Palleti, a 2024 Stanford graduate, says his computer-science education at the school has opened doors. While at Stanford, he interned at Nvidia and co-founded an AI startup, alphaXiv, where he is the chief operating officer. The company’s community platform helps researchers accelerate work with AI tools.

Palleti credits Stanford for fueling students’ drive and talents for innovation. “They have so much of an emphasis of like, ‘Oh, you should just build cool things,’ ” he says.

Karuna Taesopapong, a Stanford economics major who graduated in 2024, recalls discussion-focused, hands-on courses. One involved an energy-market simulation, where students had to navigate supply shortages and power outages to maximize profits.

“That’s the reason why you go to Stanford, because you try to get those niche insights and hear about stories that you wouldn’t necessarily get anywhere else,” she says. She now is the growth leader at a startup called Onton, an AI-powered home-decor shopping engine.

Ever since Business School Dean Jonathan Levin became its president, Stanford has been tacking toward the political center, a wise place to be for one of the world's top universities.

A Condition That Was Caught in Time

Pulmonary embolism (Cavallini/Science Source/WSJ)

I had been feeling pretty chipper until the beginning of September. As the month proceeded, my asthma got worse, and I could no longer take 30-45 minute walks in the morning. Last Monday I showed for a scheduled doctor's appointment; the nurse took my vitals and immediately called for oxygen.

The doctor strongly suggested that an ambulance transport me to emergency. Of course, my wife could have driven, but the ambulance had the necessary equipment and personnel if the situation worsened.

Over the next two days I was poked and prodded at Stanford General. There were ultrasounds, chest X-rays, CT scans, echocardiograms, and dozens of blood draws. The good news was that most of the tests were negative. I was short of breath because the asthma had been exacerbated by a blood clot that had formed in the right lung. I will have to take the blood thinner Eliquis indefinitely. I was discharged Wednesday, and my condition wasn't serious enough to warrant being on oxygen at home.

Considering the possible outcomes, I was pretty lucky:

About 900,000 people are diagnosed with blood clots—deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism—in the U.S. each year, according to the American Lung Association. For many, the first symptom is sudden death.

“I call it the people’s disease. It doesn’t spare anyone—rich, poor, male, female,” says Dr. Parth Rali, director of the pulmonary embolism response team at Temple University Health System in Philadelphia... “You could be the healthiest person in the world and unfortunately it can still happen to you.”

Some lifestyle factors increase your risk of blood clots, such as obesity and smoking....Dehydration can thicken the blood. And taking hormonal contraceptives... also raises the risk.

Then there’s movement, or lack thereof. When your legs stay still for too long, the blood may begin to form clots, which can then travel through the heart and into the lungs.

Yes, more things to worry about, but better than the alternative.

Don Peter

Don Peter (1938-2025)

Donald Gene Peter was a bear of a man. 87 when he died last month, he still looked the part of the offensive lineman who pushed aside linebackers for Stanford. We were on the Farm in different decades--he in the '50's and I in the '70's--but they may as well have been in different centuries. When Don played, Stanford's mascot was an Indian, the school was part of the Pacific Coast Conference (one of the predecessors to the Pac-8), and face masks on helmets were not required.

High school and college football was just the start of a lifelong devotion to sports:

Along with teaching history, Don coached football at Downey, Mills, and Burlingame High Schools. He also founded and coached the Burlingame Rugby Club that won the national championship.

It's cliché, but up until the very end Don was giving to his extended family, to his church, to his community, and public education:

Don's parents instilled in him the importance of contributing to his community. In the 1970s, he oversaw the conception and building of two creative playgrounds at Herbert Hoover Elementary in Burlingame with his first wife, Sally. He organized dozens of reunions and hosted backyard parties with his second wife, Elizabeth.

At the memorial service on Saturday we arrived a few minutes early but had to park at the shopping center across the street. The church was filled, and we sat in the overflow room in the back. His children said how much they loved him and will miss him. I will, too.

Stanford to California: We Don't Need Your Money

Last September California banned "legacy" admissions in private colleges, i.e., the practice of favoring the children of alumni during the admissions process.

The law is difficult to implement, since many applicants have impressive resumes and it will be nearly impossible to prove that being a legacy was the deciding factor in a candidate's admission.

Stanford University decided not to play the game of prove-that-I'm-violating-a-complicated law. Stanford announced that it will continue to give preferential treatment to legacies: [bold added]

With three weeks to go before California’s ban on legacy admissions takes effect at private universities that receive state funding, Stanford has made a stunning decision: To preserve that perk, it’s pulling out of the Cal Grant program that benefits hundreds of low-income students at the pricey campus.

By declining Cal Grants, Stanford can continue giving admissions preference to hundreds of students who are related to alumni or whose relatives have given money to the university. The statewide ban on such legacy and donor-driven admissions takes effect Sept. 1 under Assembly Bill 1780, which was signed into law last year.

Stanford officials say they will cover the canceled aid with university money, and that it will cost just $4 million a year...

Stanford is one of six California private schools that last year reported giving preferential admissions to the children of alumni or wealthy donors. Stanford said it admitted 295 students this way in fall 2023, or 13.6% of all undergraduates admitted that year. The other private schools that relied on the practice were Santa Clara University, the University of Southern California, Northeastern University Oakland (formerly Mills College), Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College. None has said it was pulling out of the Cal Grant program.

Jonathan Levin

Without considering the moral arguments, Stanford's decision can be justified on a dollar-and-cents basis:

Stanford's endowment exceeds $36 billion and can easily cover the loss of Cal Grant's $4 million per year.

If it did forsake legacies, Stanford would risk future donations by billionaire alumni like Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Nike's Phil Knight and thousands of mere millionaires.

There are no Federal laws against legacy admissions, and therefore Federal funding to Stanford will not be jeopardized by this decision.

With the elevation of Business School Dean Jonathan Levin to its Presidency, Stanford appears to be pulling back from the egalitarian excesses (anti-Semitism, DEI) that have plagued it and the nation's most prestigious universities.

Still Appreciated by Termites, Though

Your humble blogger went to school before mobile phones, before the Internet, even before there were personal computers (I received my MBA in 1975, one year before Apple was incorporated).

Mine was a generation that did all its research in libraries, and index cards were the pathway to getting information. Today most index card drawers are empty--if they haven't been tossed out--but at Yale they have been repurposed:

If you open one of the hundreds of card catalog drawers that line the south side of the Sterling Memorial Library nave, you won’t find any cards; online catalogs have rendered them obsolete.

But you might find a surprise. Over the past few years, students and other visitors to the library have created a tradition of leaving notes in the drawers to be found by others. Some are inspirational (“keep chasing your dreams, but don’t be afraid if the path to your dream changes”) and some are aspirational (“2016. In eight years, I’ll return as a Yale student”), and they are written in many languages. It’s a delightful adaptive reuse: hardware that was once used to organize the search for knowledge now holds the promise of serendipity.

Now if I can just find a use for my slide rule....

Stanford Medicine

Charging stations can be found in every building

Since the beginning of 2024 family members have often used the medical facilities at Stanford. We have availed ourselves of the services in neurology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, dermatology, oncology, radiology, and early drug development, as well as the laboratories and emergency rooms.

The personnel, equipment, and buildings are uniformly excellent. If we must be critical, we have experienced an occasional slip-up in scheduling, probably due to growing pains from Stanford Health's multi-billion-dollar expansion program.

But the greatest drawback, IMHO, is something that Stanford can't do much about, namely the difficulty getting to its facilities quickly. The tony Peninsula towns Palo Alto and Menlo Park have blocked traffic improvements, so cars must traverse the same local streets as they have since World War II. Getting from the freeways to Stanford can be heavy going, especially when one considers the growth in the Silicon Valley economy.

Nevertheless, we'll live with the inconveniences. Both Stanford and UCSF have world-class medical facilities, and we know people who fly here for treatment. The quality of medical care is one benefit of living in the Bay Area that we don't often hear mentioned.

Great Moments in Real Estate Marketing

You don't need this home if Susie just wants to go to Cal (Street view/Merc)

Palo Alto homes have always commanded a premium over already-pricey Peninsula real estate because of PA's highly rated school distrct. This, however, is next level. [bold added]

A home listed for sale at $4.8 million on Friday in Palo Alto boasts that since its 2017 rebuild, the children of every subsequent owner have gone on to Harvard or Stanford, “paving the way for even greater achievements.”

“Now, it is ready to pass on its extraordinary energy to the next family,” the listing reads.

The five-bedroom, four-bathroom home appears to have been staged to highlight the children’s academic success — the framed diplomas and acceptance letters are poised above the mantel, featuring prominently in some of the photos.

That's a lot of pressure on the child. If he or she doesn't get into Stanford or Harvard (or an Ivy or MIT or CalTech), the parents will have overpaid substantially for a comparable house that they could have gotten for at least $1 million less in other Peninsula cities.

Let's hope the feng shui is strong with this one.

Disappointing, But It's Better to Walk Away Now

Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont (Mejia/Chron)

Six months ago we reacted enthusiastically to the prospect of Stanford University expanding into Belmont. Now that project has been cancelled.

After nearly four years of deliberation, Stanford University has decided not to move forward with its plan to purchase the Notre Dame de Namur University campus in Belmont.

In a statement released Tuesday, the university cited several unforeseen factors that influenced its decision, particularly the changing landscape of higher education and financial challenges.

“As we were engaging with the Belmont community and City leaders, we were also exploring possible academic uses for a Stanford Belmont campus,” said Stanford officials. “This process has clarified that identifying and establishing those uses for a potential Belmont campus will take significantly longer than we initially planned.”

Stanford entered into an option purchase agreement in 2021 to acquire the historic 46-acre Catholic university property with plans to create a satellite campus for 2,500 students, faculty and staff.

The proposed site, roughly 13 miles from its main campus in Palo Alto, would have been called Stanford Belmont and was positioned as a short 20-minute drive up Highway 101...The proposed layout included pedestrian paths, bicycle lanes and green spaces aimed at creating a communal atmosphere...

Local leaders in Belmont had hoped the campus could help revitalize the historic property, which has struggled financially in recent years.

The Italianate Ralston Hall Mansion, built in 1867 as the summer home of banker William Ralston, is a state and national landmark that has been closed for years. The building is currently undergoing a renovation project that Notre Dame de Namur University cannot afford to complete.

Belmont Vice Mayor Gina Latimerlo noted in August that the sale would help fund renovations to Ralston Hall and provide community benefits such as improved athletic facilities and infrastructure upgrades.

With Stanford’s plans for the Belmont site now on hold, the future of the property remains uncertain.

The creation of Stanford-Belmont looked like a win-win for both the university and rhe city. The reason for the cancellation--“This process has clarified that identifying and establishing those uses for a potential Belmont campus will take significantly longer than we initially planned”--is typical public relations gobbledy-gook.

These are words that are used because Stanford had to say something about the loss of its deposit and four years of work, but reveal nothing. There's only a slight chance we'll know what really happened, but as someone who makes (small) donations to the University and wants them to use funds wisely, I hope we find out.

Hospital Chaplaincy

Spiritual care volunteers and staff at Stanford Hospital Chapel

Before an Episcopal priest can be ordained, he or she must complete several months of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). In CPE the students minister to non-Christians as well as Christians, much as priests do in the real world.

Clergy that I have spoken to have said that their most intense and rewarding experiences have occurred while they did their CPE as hospital chaplains. [bold added]

Hospitalized patients and their families often struggle with religious and spiritual quandaries but can’t attend their houses of worship or don’t have one. Chaplains thus fill crucial gaps. As the religious makeup of the U.S. has changed in recent years, their profession has begun to do so too. Board-certified chaplains are now increasingly trained to help patients of diverse beliefs. To learn about their vocations, I [note: Columbia prof. of psychiatry Robert Klitzman] recently conducted an in-depth study, speaking with 50 chaplains from across the country and from different faiths.

While chaplains aid countless patients, they are in many cases marginalized and underfunded. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services allows for direct reimbursement for spiritual services only within the Veterans Affairs system. Offering spiritual care for hospice patients enrolled in Medicare is mandatory but not directly billable. As a consequence, many hospitals have no chaplains; some rely on local volunteer clergy, who know only their own faith, or on other healthcare professionals to fill in for spiritual care...

Chaplains are often the only staff with time to talk to patients, whom they can therefore get to know well. I learned of one patient who phoned the on-call nurse every day at 2 a.m., complaining of pain. The staff tried altering his medicine without success. Finally, a chaplain spoke to the patient, who turned out to be carrying significant guilt from his mother’s suicide when he was 18. When the chaplain arranged for the man’s elder siblings to talk about it, they were “aghast,” the chaplain told me. “They reminded him that their mother had mental-health issues: ‘Don’t you remember?’ It was like a 50-pound weight had been lifted. After that, he never again called the nurses at night.”

Chaplains also serve as critical mediators in conflicts among patients, families and physicians. At another hospital, a teenager who was dying wanted to donate his organs. Soon he was brain dead and on life support, which surgeons planned to remove in the operating room. The boy’s family wanted to be present when he died, but the surgeons refused for fear that they’d disrupt the procedure.

Presented with an impasse, a chaplain negotiated a solution: The family would dress in sterile gowns and stay in the theater for three minutes. The family and physicians sang “Amazing Grace,” the boy’s favorite song. When he died, the mother said to the chaplain: “Thank you for that gift. . . . We got to sing my son into heaven.”

In my research it wasn’t uncommon to learn of medical professionals wary of spiritual care, which they saw as having no medical benefit. Yet spiritual counseling can help patients choose palliative care when the treatments available are both futile and painful.

In facing serious disease, millions of patients find themselves pondering the eternal. Most of us will die in hospitals, far from any religious institution, and might benefit from chaplains’ care. Our healthcare systems would do well to recognize and value them more.

Spending one or two nights in a hospital changes a person. Although WiFi is now commonplace, the hospital environment is not conducive to endless Internet surfing or scrolling through social media. The patient confronts thoughts he may not be accustomed to having, especially if he is non-religious.

In his hour of need, there may not be family members the patient is comfortable talking with, and he can't bother medical personnel, whose focus is usually confined to the health of our physical bodies.

That leaves the hospital chaplain, whose job has expanded to being ready to converse with those who are members of different faiths-or no faith at all. In an increasingly irreligious society the irony is that the need for chaplaincy services has never been greater.

Cancer: Too Much Information

We're lucky we live close to two research centers

This is troubling but not surprising: many oncologists can't stay abreast of new developments in cancer research. [bold added]

Cancer care is getting more complicated, thanks to a better understanding of cancer’s molecular underpinnings. Doctors now think of cancer as more than 100 distinct diseases, with cancers including lung, breast and bladder broken into subtypes.

That complexity is contributing to a divide in how patients fare depending on where they go.

Oncologists at magnet cancer centers that dot the U.S. develop expertise in just a few cancer subtypes. They draw from a rapidly expanding arsenal of new drugs for specific and sometimes rare cancers, including experimental ones that aren’t widely available.

But most people get treated locally to be near home and jobs. Local oncologists, faced with a range of cancers, can’t stay up-to-date on everything. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network updated its nearly 90 guidelines across cancer types more than 200 times in the past year.

A third of 120 patients who sought a second opinion at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York had their treatment changed, a 2023 review found. MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston said about one in five of its new patients are rediagnosed or restaged. Patients at academic centers have better outcomes for cancers including lung and multiple myeloma, studies show.

“It’s possible that one out of five patients in America is getting the wrong treatment,” said Dr. Peter WT Pisters, MD Anderson’s president.

I don't fault oncologists for finding it hard to do keep up with the research while treating patients by day. This is one obvious application for artificial intelligence, i.e., sifting through haystacks of information to find the needle that may apply to a patient.

Meanwhile, it behooves us all to stay alive as long as possible to give us the best chance for the science to cure the diseases that might kill us.

Dr. Bryant Lin

Bryant Lin teaching a class on Oct. 23 (Merc photo)

A member of our family has been seeing Dr. Bryant Lin at Stanford Health for years. Lately Dr. Lin has been unavailable. Now we know why; he has been battling lung cancer.

“If you look at the survival curves, you would give up. But you may be one of the lucky ones. You need to have optimism, tinged with reality,” said Lin, a beloved clinical professor and 50-year-old nonsmoker with two teenage sons who was diagnosed with advanced metastatic lung cancer earlier this year.

...Lin initially dismissed an annoying cough that started last spring. But it continued to worsen, causing him to wheeze.

“I’ve never had a puff of smoke of anything in my life,” he said.

In one week, he got stunning news. What he assumed was just a normal spring allergy was diagnosed as stage IV non-small cell cancer, which had already progressed to his bones and liver, with 50 lesions in his brain.

The diagnosis, about a month before his 50th birthday, “was so drastically different than what I was expecting,” he said. He was quickly hospitalized...

Lung cancer causes more deaths than any other cancer, with survival rates decreasing as the severity increases. While smokers make up the majority of those cases, 15% to 20% of people with lung cancer are non-smoking, like Lin. There is new evidence of an increase in the incidence of lung cancer in nonsmokers, although no one knows why. It is largely a silent disease that goes undetected for a dangerously long period.

The gene mutation that causes the cancer disproportionately affects those of Asian descent.

While not cured, Lin’s scans are strikingly improved after an innovative medicine called osimertinib, which targets his specific mutation. It blocks proteins that control cell growth and division. His cough is gone, and he is almost symptom-free...

With roles reversed, Lin says he is learning both how to be a patient and how to more fully be a doctor.

He urges doctors to not focus just on “medical science things” but the emotional and practical challenges of their patients. He urges patients to build tight community of support and deepen their relationship with their doctor, who can act as an advocate when things go wrong.

He’s not sure how much time he has left. “One year? Two years? Five years?” The class, he said, “is to give back to my community as I go through this.”

After receiving his terminal diagnosis, Dr. Bryant Lin continues not only to fight the disease but teaches classes at Stanford Hospital, including his own life experience in the content. None of us know with certainty how we might react to such news; character reveals itself in such moments.

Stanford's Creative Writing Contretemps

Part of the School of Humanities and Sciences (CEO World)

IMHO, it didn't look like "-isms" (for once) had anything to do with this decision, but after award-winning writer Joyce Carol Oates hinted that sexism was a factor, a "national backlash" resulted.

Stanford creative writing layoff ‘scandal’ ignites backlash among authors and students

Stanford University’s announcement that 23 creative writing instructors will be pushed out of their jobs and replaced has set off a national backlash in the literary community and among students in the program.

“Why would senior faculty vote to fire their colleagues who are doing so much of the work of teaching?” celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates posted on social media, raising questions about whether Stanford’s decision was meant to save money or was inspired by rank sexism.

“I am puzzled most by the lack of simple collegiality & generosity at one of the most wealthy universities in the world,” Oates wrote. “Stanford’s endowment could support an entire nation. Yet, much-admired (writing instructors) were fired after having requested modest raises which would have brought their salaries to levels far below senior faculty.”

Also, she noted, “only male senior professors voted to fire.”

Background from the Chronicle article: Pulitzer-prize winning author Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) founded Stanford's creative writing program in 1946. At the same time Texas oilman E.H. Jones, brother of Stanford English professor Richard Foster Jones, established both the Stegner Fellowships and Jones Lectureships.

The Fellowships were monetary grants for the students and the Lectureships funded short-term teaching appointments that the Stegner fellows could apply for. Over time the short-term appointments morphed into long-term positions.

A Stanford working group

decided to restore the intent of the Jones lectureship and give new Stegner Fellows “the opportunity to apply to be Jones Lecturers once they have completed their fellowships,” [Dean of School of Humanities and Sciences Debra] Satz said in her letter...

The new appointments will be one year “with the possibility of renewal for up to four more years.”

Undoubtedly there are some excellent instructors who have been let go, but I applaud Stanford for forcing new blood into the lectureships, but more importantly "restor[ing] the intent of the Jones lectureship." Too often we have seen donors' wishes being disregarded, and it's a sign to future donors that Stanford will abide by their instructions as best it can.

Friendly Takeover

With some of the largest, most successful companies (Tesla, Oracle, HP, and now Chevron) in the Bay Area moving to Texas because of onerous taxes and regulations, it's hard to name a company that is certain to be here a century from now.

Even trillion-dollar "megacap" corporations like Apple, Nvidia, Google, and Facebook can have their fortunes worsen suddenly, and California, seeing taxpaying individuals and companies fleeing its hostile business climate, will devise ways to squeeze the remaining golden geese. Those companies better have their "go bags" ready.

There is one private entity, however, that not only will stay here but has expanded its footprint throughout the 20th century and will do so in the 21st.

Koret Field at Notre Dame de Namur University (Chron photo)

Headline: Plans for Stanford’s new Bay Area campus move forward. [bold added]

Stanford University’s plan to purchase a historic Catholic university property on the Peninsula and turn it into a satellite campus for up to 2,500 students, faculty and staff is taking shape, according to newly released documents.

Belmont officials this month released a draft environmental impact report, the first public document detailing Stanford’s option to purchase the nearly 46-acre site of Notre Dame de Namur University in the city. In the works since 2021, the deal — if it goes through — would continue Stanford’s push into San Mateo County after local concerns about growth forced the university’s withdrawal of a huge expansion plan for its main Palo Alto campus in 2019.

Stanford already operates Stanford Redwood City, a 35-acre health care facility and administrative satellite 5 miles north across the Santa Clara County line. The proposed new acquisition, to be called Stanford Belmont, is 13 miles from the Stanford campus and a 20-minute drive up Highway 101.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, which had a $36.5 billion endowment in 2023, has the deep pockets and structure (e.g., no quarterly earnings reports to shareholders) to endure the lead times necessary for Bay Area real estate projects.

The University also has a growing long-term demand for its education and health services that will populate its projects as soon as they are completed.

The installation of Economics Professor and Business School dean Jonathan Levin as its President, the arrest of demonstrators who took over and damaged its property, and the reinstatement of standardized admissions tests indicate that Stanford is setting aside the excesses of Progressivism, DEI (diversity,equity, and inclusion), and wokeness, which is more reason to expect it to survive into the next century and beyond.

Stanford: A Reconsideration

Cleaning the mess at White Plaza (Chron photo)

Maybe, just maybe, Stanford University has had enough of the extremes of Progressivism, DEI (diversity,equity, and inclusion), and wokeness: [bold added]

Thirteen people were arrested at Stanford University in a protest led by pro-Palestinian students, university officials confirmed Wednesday.

"All arrested students will be immediately suspended and in case any of them are seniors, they will not be allowed to graduate," the university said in an emailed statement.

In the demonstration, students "unlawfully entered" Building 10 where offices for both the president and provost are located, according to the statement. Stanford officials said the offices were damaged and a public safety officer was injured "after being shoved by protesters who were interfering with a transport vehicle." The university did not elaborate on the severity of the injury.

Richard Saller, 71, the former Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences and specialist in Roman history, is Stanford's interim president and was willing to tolerate the pro-Palestine protests up to a point. However, the arrests, suspensions, and refusal to confer degrees on arrested seniors showed where his red line was.

(After seven years as Stanford president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned in 2023 after an investigation showed his research lab had produced reports that contained "falsified information." He had been cleared of personal misconduct.)

Jonathan Levin, the Dean of Stanford Business School for the past eight (8) years, will become Stanford's next president on August 1st.

Jonathan Levin, a renowned economist, comes to the top spot of one of the world’s most prestigious, and wealthiest, universities at a challenging time in higher education...

Levin, 51 years old, will begin his new job Aug. 1. A Stanford alum and son of former longtime Yale University president Rick Levin, he has been dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business since 2016.

Jonathan Levin has a glittering pedigree, as well as an unsurpassed record of achievement. He was born in New Haven to Yale Assistant Professor Rick Levin, who rose through the ranks to become Yale's President from 1993 to 2013.

Earning degrees from Stanford, Oxford, and MIT, Jonathan Levin "received the John Bates Clark Medal as the outstanding American economist under the age of 40." As the Dean of the GSB, he kept Stanford atop the Business School rankings.

Successful business educators and leaders know that they must keep their organizations from taking political positions that will alienate customers, suppliers, and governments. Based on his record, Jonathan Levin will strike the balance between free speech, protest, and the rights of all Stanford students to receive a quality education.

I know that this has as much realistic impact as declaring which politician I will vote for, but I am reconsidering my decision to never make another donation to Stanford.

Financial Therapy

(WSJ Illustration)

When I was going to business school 50 years ago, I admired the select few who were in the JD/MBA program. They had to be accepted separately to both the law school and business school--each of which was tough to get into--and devote four years to complete their studies.

But I'm not impressed by this latest dual credential, the financial therapist: [bold added]

The goal of financial therapists ultimately is to help people make good financial decisions, typically by raising their clients’ awareness of how their emotions and unconscious beliefs have affected their sometimes messy experiences with money...

Financial therapists tend to come from mental-health and financial-planning disciplines, and there are signs that their ranks are rising: The Financial Therapy Association has 430 members, up from 225 in 2015. Still, according to the group, fewer than 100 financial therapists have completed its certification process, introduced in 2019. You can be an association member without being certified by it...

Still, there are possible pitfalls when hiring a financial therapist. One major drawback: Anyone can claim they are qualified to practice financial therapy.

No government agency regulates the young profession. Candidates for certification by the Financial Therapy Association must take online courses designed by the association covering financial and therapeutic techniques, counsel clients for 250 hours and pass a 100-question test. But you can call yourself a financial therapist and not be certified by the association.

Meanwhile, the cost of financial therapy varies widely—from $125 to $350 an hour, [Financial Therapy Association President Ashley] Agnew estimates. Insurance rarely covers the tab.

Because of recent well-publicized policy mistakes, "experts" have lost the deference that their credentials used to afford them. However, credentialing and licensing do have their place in verifying that a person has a certain level of knowledge to practice often-complex professions.

The fact that there are zero certification requirements in "financial therapy" will result inevitably in scandal, defalcation, and possibly worse outcomes for clients. I wish it weren't true, but sad experience teaches otherwise.

The Lines Were Quick

Khaled Meshaal (NY Post/Reuters)

Last month there was a moment's trepidation when I booked a flight on Friday the 13th.

Bah! rational guys like me shouldn't let superstition rule their lives. I clicked the pay-and-submit button.

It was more than superstition that paralyzed some people with fear yesterday. Former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal designated yesterday as the "Day of Jihad":

The former leader of Hamas called on Muslims to stage global demonstrations in support of Palestinians on Friday, and urged Arabs in neighboring countries to take up arms against Israel.

In the Bay Area some schools cancelled classes:

Schools and universities across the Bay Area said they were bolstering security measures — and in some cases canceling classes — amid so-far unsubstantiated threats of pro-Hamas violence.

Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto, Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City and South Peninsula Hebrew Day School in Sunnyvale said they would be closed Friday amid concerns that Jewish institutions could be targeted, Jewish Weekly reported.

Stanford Law School announced it would be holding all of its classes Friday on Zoom in the wake of students’ fears around safety on the “Day of Jihad.”

Just in case TSA had installed extra procedures, I showed up 2½ hours before the 8:20 AM flight. The caution was unnecessary as the lines were quick, and I spent an hour nursing a coffee and croissant before boarding.

We disparage law enforcement, the FBI, the CIA, and other alphabet agencies, but a point in their favor is that there has not been a major terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Because of that record, there is still hope that the agencies can be fixed.

And yes, the flight went well.

P or Not P

Dr. Nirao Shah

Stanford researchers have found the specific cells in the brains of male mice that activate sexual desire. They were able to manipulate desire through the application of a protein called "Substance P."

[Nirao] Shah and his team found buried in mice brains, a bit above the roof of the mouth, tiny neural connections that are tasked with processing information from the outside world.

They tell a male mouse whether another mouse is female, and feeling flirty.

If so, this good news is relayed to an adjacent set of brain cells, located on the same circuit. Then a small protein, called Substance P, issues a call to action — like a Marvin Gaye groove.

The team focused on a set of genetically distinct neurons in the amygdala that do something special: They secrete a small and slow-acting peptide dubbed Substance P.

Then the scientists watched a different set of neurons in the preoptic hypothalamus that had receptors for this Substance P. Those two groups of neurons work together, like lock and key.

When Substance P binds to these receptors, it gradually sensitizes the neurons so they become increasingly active...

Normally, male mice are slow to warm up, taking 10 to 15 minutes before mounting. Afterwards, they take a five-day break before regaining interest.

But when the researchers directly infused Substance P into mice brains, the animals turned into love junkies.

Rather than waiting to mate, the mice were ready instantaneously. They even fell in love with lab equipment, mounting plastic tubes adorned with the tail end of a toy mouse bought on Amazon.

They could also become prim, proper and prudish. When researchers silenced the neurons and switched off the circuit, dialing down production of Substance P, the mice lost desire.

We're years away from determining if there's a similar mechanism in the brains of human males and whether the human version of Substance P can be administered (or turned off) safely. If that can be achieved, the control of man's biggest sex organ, the brain, is around the corner.

Of Bullwhips and White Tails

B-School Professor Hau Lee with teaching aid

Stanford Business School Professor Hau Lee's paper on the bullwhip effect was "voted one of the 10 most influential papers in the history of Management Science":

When you are a cowboy and you crack the whip, you move the handle 60 degrees and the tip will move more than 360 degrees. Sometimes, a signal can move a little bit from consumer to retailer to distributor to wholesaler to manufacturer to supplier. Everyone adds something to the signal, and it results in a big surge, up and down.

The pandemic is a great illustration of this. Even the media used the term “bullwhip”: bullwhip of toilet paper, bullwhip of hand sanitizers, bullwhip of everything. We were relying on short-term data and then we produced a whole lot more. Consumers panicked, too. They didn’t realize there was ample supply coming in. Some students told me they’re still using the toilet paper that they bought in 2020.

Small imbalances in supply and demand can manifest in upstream surges and shortages. Every link in the supply chain "adds something."

Your humble blogger saw this boom-bust phenomenon when he worked in commercial aviation, when an uptick in summer travel, reinforced by low interest rates and an economy coming out of a recession, resulted in a surge of aircraft orders.

Aircraft require at least two years between order and delivery, and later new airplanes came off the line when the economy was softening. If the glut was bad, buyers even preferred to lose their deposits by canceling orders, and new airplanes were "white-tailed" (painted without an airline's logo).

Boom and bust cycles have been studied for over a hundred years, and Prof. Lee's vivid metaphor helps to bring the concept home.

Pictures on the Wall

A family member had an appointment with an opthalmologist, and so it was that we were at the Stanford eye clinic, three miles east of the university's main campus.

Rather than look at my phone I prowled the halls and gazed at the collection of '60's pop art. There were Andy Warhols and Roy Lichtensteins (pictured above) on both floors, along with less well-known artists like Allen Jones, Mel Ramos, and Guy Dill.

The screens will always be there, and when you're in a new place, even as nondescript as a doctor's office, you can be pleasantly surprised by getting up and looking around.

Not as Gaudy, But Content Nonetheless

Having been out of the job market for a while, I view a story like this with astonishment:

Stanford MBAs now make a median $175,000 salary after graduation.

The median compensation amount includes a median $175,000 in base salary for 218 graduates who received full-time job offers and disclosed their compensation. In addition, 65% of those students expect a median of $45,000 in annual performance bonuses and 47% of those students had a median $30,000 signing bonus.

The starting salary is ten times what I made on my first job back in the 1970's. On the other hand, in that decade I was able to buy a new sedan for $4,000 and a 3 BR home in the East Bay for $45,000. That same home goes today for 25x its original price, and no, I didn't hold on to it.

On balance I was lucky to have come up when I did.

At the 40th reunion of the Stanford MBA Class of 1975