The Latest Era

(2016- )

At the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, hosted by Stanford, President Barack Obama praised the university as “a place that celebrates our ability as human beings to discover and learn and to build, to question, to reimagine, to create new ways to connect and work with each other.” (Stanford University)

In March 2020, Stanford moved its classes online and evacuated the students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The evacuation process, however, was not well-organized or well-informed, leaving many students to return to missing properties. Stanford also took a minimalistic approach to providing financial support to its graduate students during this pandemic (Groupp & Russo, 2020). In January 2021, Stanford cancelled the freshmen move-in the day before move-in day. In September 2021, classes returned to in-person.

In 2021-22, under the leadership of Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Stanford launched its Neighbourhood system to build better residential communities.

In May 2022, famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr donated $1.1 billion to Stanford University’s new School of Sustainability. This is historically the largest donation given to a university for the establishment of a new school and is the second largest gift to an academic institution. In September 2022, the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability opened, launching a new era of interdisciplinary research involving renewable energy, environmental justice, and climate policy. As Doerr claimed, “Climate and sustainability is going to be the new computer science.” (Gelles, 2022)