Stanford Report, September 10, 2003

In Print & On the Air

HISTORY PROFESSOR CLAYBORNE CARSON, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, was quoted extensively in media coverage of the 40th anniversary of King's Aug. 28, 1963 "I have a dream" speech. In addition to a first-person article in the San Francisco Chronicle recalling his participation in the historic March on Washington, Carson told National Geographic News that King's message was larger than civil rights. "King was fighting for justice," he said. The New York Times reported that Carson, then aged 19, was excited about attending the march. "If someone had tapped me on the shoulder after the march to tell me that in years to come I would be a professor teaching African American history at Stanford, it would have been akin to telling me that I would be living on Mars," he said. "It was inconceivable. There wasn't anyone who looked like me teaching history at Stanford, and African American history wasn't a field."

THE LOS ALTOS TOWN CRIER reported that President JOHN HENNESSY discussed how his values and religious beliefs inform his personal and professional life during an Aug. 21 talk in the city's St. Nicholas Church. "Integrity and honesty are fundamental to me," he said. "Once you make up your mind up, stick to it." The article noted that Hennessy credited an unconventional source for teaching such values: Dr. Seuss's book Horton Hatches the Egg. "[I] first learned that from an elephant," he said. "Horton said, 'I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.'"

LAW STUDENT LAURA DONOHUE, an acting assistant professor of political science, argued in the Sept. 7 issue of the San Jose Mercury News that the Internet serves as a pressure valve by which militant groups can let off steam. "We can look at terrorism as a symptom of a blocked society," she said. "We need to open the discussion of these ideas. The way to counter an idea is with another idea, not with shutting down a computer." HANNAH BLOCH, a former Knight Fellow, wrote the article to coincide with the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. "One thing we can say for sure is that the power of the Internet is in some odd way a leveler," Bloch wrote. "Supremely powerful governments cannot shut it up easily. And Islamists who reject many aspects of modernity have found it irresistible to spread their message on a medium that is redefining the modern world."