Letter from the President

TEACHING AND RESEARCH

By Gerhard Casper

lrich, the “Man Without Qualities” in Robert Musil’s great novel, closed the folder filled with suggestions for improvement received by Count Leinsdorf, the inventor of the “great patriotic action” for the Jubilee of Emperor Franz Joseph:

“It is amazing,” he said, “that half of them seek salvation in the future and the other half in the past. I don’t know what we are to make of that. . . .

“It’s amazing how many people tell us that the world was better off in earlier times. . . . Without counting the understandable slogan Back to Religion!, we still have a Back to the Baroque, Back to Gothic, Back to Nature, Back to Goethe, to ancient Germanic Law, to Moral Purity, and quite a few more.”

This sounds very familiar to a university president. I, like Count Leinsdorf, receive letters every day from alumni and members of the public that one could gather under the heading “Back to . . . !” Among these are the subcategory: “Back to pure teaching!” or “No trade-offs between research and teaching!”

Yet, if one truly looks back, research and teaching always have been linked at Stanford. Our university and its great American contemporaries ­ universities

President’s Column (Plain text)

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