At an event hosted by the Stanford Emeriti/ae Community, President Jon Levin and his father, Yale President Emeritus Rick Levin, discussed the continued role of emeriti/ae faculty in university life, technology, and generational shifts in student communities.

While much of the conversation, moderated by Iris Litt, chair of the Emeriti Council and professor emerita of pediatrics, focused on emeriti/ae concerns, they also touched on other aspects of campus life as well, including the transformative impact of technology in higher education. Rick Levin reflected how during his tenure as Yale’s president from 1993 to 2013, he experienced the rapid growth of digital and social media and how that upended campus life and communication norms.

“The whole way communication happens is different,” Rick Levin said.

Jon Levin added that these technological shifts have already redefined student interactions. “They’ve changed many, many things about being an undergraduate student, starting with the fact that the students know each other before they arrive [on campus],” he said. “It’s not necessarily [the case] that the person in the room next to you becomes your friend group.”

While Rick Levin navigated the transformations of social media to the student experience, for Jon Levin it will be advancements in AI. Jon Levin noted, “I think it’s still early days, but I think that’s going to really have a big impact on education, starting in early childhood.” Universities will have to evolve in how they teach students how to think, he said.

The current state of athletics at Stanford was also raised, with one attendee observing the intense travel schedule student-athletes are under as a result of last year’s realignment to the Atlantic Coast Conference. Jon Levin acknowledged this difficulty for student-athletes, as well as what is happening more broadly with the increased professionalization of college sports and the ways in which the student-athlete model is changing. He also emphasized the academic excellence of Stanford’s student-athletes and how inspiring it is for the entire community to have such incredibly skilled sports players on campus.

“I actually have not seen anything on the Stanford campus that people care about more and just feel passionate about as much as our athletics programs,” Jon Levin said. “They just love them, and they’re so inspired by the athletes and the Katie Ledeckies and the Andrew Lucks – I mean, it’s like having giants walk among us in a certain way to have people who are that good at what they do.”

Emeriti/ae life

As Litt shared in her opening remarks, Stanford’s Emeriti/ae Community consists of about 1,200 people who collectively represent approximately 45,000 years of Stanford history, experiences, and knowledge. “What we have in common is the wish to continue to serve Stanford, our pursuit of continuing scholarship, and the desire to do it in the context and in the presence of our community of peers, all the things that you lose when you retire,” Litt said.

Jon Levin emphasized the importance of engaging emeriti faculty in the broader academic culture. He shared his own experiences as a junior faculty member in Stanford’s Department of Economics, where he got to know Victor Fuchs, a pioneer in the economics of health care who was one of the department’s most senior scholars.

“Victor had long been retired by the time I got to know him,” Jon Levin said. “He kept writing into his 90s – he was hugely prolific. He was the one who got me excited about writing papers in health economics.”

Fuchs, along with Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who taught in both the Department of Economics and what is now the Department of Management Science and Engineering, became sources of scholarly inspiration for Jon Levin. Later, Levin would even go on to co-author a paper on health care reform with Arrow.

“I benefited enormously as a junior faculty from being around the emeriti faculty,” Jon Levin said. “I think a lot of colleagues can do that as well. It’s not just the emeriti that can benefit, but I think the younger faculty can often benefit as well.”

Over the hour-long discussion, ideas for strengthening emeriti/ae engagement emerged. Rick Levin praised Stanford’s initiatives, such as emeriti/ae participation in the Continuing Studies program. He and his wife are currently taking a course being taught by David Kennedy, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus.

Rick Levin also shared how Yale University supports their retired faculty, including the establishment of a dedicated campus center during his presidency offering lifelong learning opportunities and a classroom for faculty-led seminars.

Jon Levin underscored the mutual benefits of emeriti/ae participation, particularly in mentoring students and contributing to faculty discussions.“It adds a lot to the overall community to have people who have seen everything and can bring all that accumulated wisdom into the classroom and into the faculty discussion,” Levin said. “I would love for us to be creative in this regard in the next couple of years.”

During the Q&A session, Litt, along with attendees, discussed ways the university can further support contributions from emeriti/ae, such as policy adjustments and expanding online education offerings. Challenges in integrating emeriti into departmental activities were also noted. One attendee pointed out the tension between welcoming new talent and fresh ideas and the wisdom that comes from decades of experience.

Rick Levin acknowledged this careful balancing act, recalling his early work at Yale on eliminating mandatory retirement while designing early retirement incentives. “It’s healthy for departments to circulate, and retirement is a natural and indeed productive thing for the life of the ongoing university,” he said.