The Stanford Board of Trustees approved the 2025-26 provisional budget, engaged with faculty and students on civil discourse, learned more about Stanford’s role in AI and data science, and moved a building project forward, among other orders of business, during its final meeting of the academic year.
Trustees met on June 11 and 12, during which time they toured Stanford Redwood City, where staff provide critical support to the university’s education and research missions. Trustees also attended the final Faculty Senate meeting of the year and Stanford’s 134th commencement ceremony, which included the largest graduating class in the university’s history.
President Jonathan Levin told trustees that the university is navigating a complex federal landscape as it works to address risks to research funding, impacts on international students, a potential reduction to the indirect cost rate, and a proposed increase to the endowment tax.
Trustees also approved a “modified continuing resolution budget” for the 2025-26 year, a provisional spending plan developed this spring that largely mirrors current-year spending with modest adjustments. Provost Jenny Martinez presented the provisional budget to the Faculty Senate on June 12 and said cuts to university spending are likely to be announced this summer as the university confronts federal funding risks and uncertainties.
The meeting was Jerry Yang’s last as board chair, a position he has held since he was elected to the position in 2021. Lily Sarafan, co-founder and executive chair of the senior in-home care provider TheKey, will succeed him as chair, and Yang, Yahoo! co-founder and venture capitalist, will continue to serve on the board.
Leading with curiosity
Fostering an atmosphere of open inquiry at Stanford is foundational to the university’s research and teaching missions, Martinez said while introducing a student-faculty panel on civil discourse.
“Having a habit of curiosity and not being orthodox in one’s views is essential,” Martinez said. “It’s really hard to do and we’re facing a lot of headwinds in society in general, but we have fantastic faculty and students and have been working on this for years. If we can leverage our expertise on campus, we can do something really special at Stanford that will benefit both us and the world.”
Debra Satz, dean of the School of Humanities & Sciences, said the university is integrating efforts to address challenges in constructive dialogue as part of a major reset of campus culture. This includes the first-year Civil, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) requirement, the Stanford Civics Initiative (SCI), and the Democracy and Disagreement course.
“The loudest voices have been drowning the speech of everyone else for some time, and there’s a lot of hunger for the thoughtful, open conversation that is critical for both democracy and the production of knowledge,” Satz said.
In the campus-wide initiative ePluribus Stanford, students are directly exposed to skills that support constructive dialogue and critical inquiry. This begins the summer before matriculation, such as in the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society’s Summer Frosh Civil Dialogues Program, and continues in their curriculum, residential life, and co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, said Norm Spaulding, faculty co-director of ePluribus Stanford.
“Rather than assume these skills will be acquired informally and over time, we seek to empower students, staff, and faculty to engage difficult issues by teaching the skills and providing early and sustained opportunities for feedback and practice,” Spaulding said.
In COLLEGE 102, the curriculum focuses on the importance of how people talk to one another, the practice of citizenship, and the rules of free speech in a democratic community, said Dan Edelstein, faculty co-director of ePluribus Stanford. Students tackle a wide range of controversial topics and examine text criticizing how Stanford has conducted itself with regard to academic freedom.
“We discuss the rationale of free speech. A lot of students don’t see the point anymore and say ‘Why should we let people say horrible things?’” Edelstein said. “We talk about Stanford events, so this isn’t some abstract topic, but these issues that happen on campus.”
During the panel, Edelstein and Spaulding spoke with undergraduates Hannah Dimock and John Hurlbut, about their experiences in COLLEGE courses. Hurlburt said that while some students on campus have been ostracized for conservative viewpoints, the course is very welcoming to different beliefs.
“I got the sense very quickly that I could state my opinions and would not be shot down and that made a big difference, not just for me, but in setting the tone for class,” he said. “We had productive conversations in that class that are very difficult to have in another setting. It’s crucial to have professors who set the expectations to be respectful.”
Dimock said studying at Stanford has given her opportunity to challenge her ideas. “I had never been asked to defend my views before and it was a totally new experience to do this type of reflection,” she said. “There’s so much division and distance on the political spectrum, and in this class, we had very respectful conversations.”
Both students said they appreciated the small, discussion-focused atmosphere and that it was common for students to continue conversations after the class ended.
The AI, data science revolution
Several university leaders and scholars discussed Stanford’s role in the AI and data science revolution as it develops tools and scientific applications, and helps shape its use in education.
“We’re generating a breadth of ideas across the university in how AI will be used in the future,” Levin said. “It’s amazing what’s going to happen in research and education in the next ten years.”
Chris Manning, the Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Machine Learning, professor of linguistics, professor of computer science, and senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), discussed how universities developed many technology breakthroughs that have fueled dramatic recent progress in AI. Manning said most top industry AI labs now restrict researchers from publishing in scientific journals, making universities critical to the future of the AI innovation ecosystem.
To continue to lead in this space, Stanford needs to invest more in graphical processing units (GPUs), the chips fueling research and development of AI, he said.
Since 2018, HAI has funded 393 Stanford faculty through $50 million worth of HAI research awards to faculty in all seven schools, increasing interdisciplinary collaboration. John Etchemendy, former provost, James Landay, the Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan Professor of Computer Science, and Fei-Fei Li, the Sequoia Capital Professor of Computer Science, serve as the Denning Co-Directors of HAI, and Russell Wald serves as HAI’s executive director.
Brian Hie, assistant professor of chemical engineering and faculty fellow in Stanford Data Science, discussed Evo 2, a generative AI tool released earlier this year that can predict functions of DNA and proteins across all domains of life, identify molecules useful for bioengineering and medicine, and run experiments in a fraction of time it would take a traditional lab.
Evo 2 was developed by a multi-institutional team co-led by Hie and could help with predicting mutations that lead to pathogenicity and disease like cancer.
“Machine learning has revolutionized the study of molecules and we are returning value to humanity by applying AI to fundamental biology and human health,” Hie said. “Training Evo 2 is very hard but we were able to do it and to a degree that’s competitive with the top AI labs. If you give students the resources and opportunity to do cutting edge industry-leading model development, they can rise to the occasion.”
David Studdert, vice provost and dean of research, and Jennifer Widom, dean of the School of Engineering, discussed how Stanford is driving discovery and education in AI and data science during this watershed moment for society and the academy.
The university already has a rich history of advancing AI and data science through its long-standing Stanford AI Lab and leading statistics department, and more recently through the HAI and Stanford Data Science.
“Stanford has faculty across the university who are innovative and willing to try new things as we also think about how AI and data science will impact society, whether it is being used in a trustworthy fashion, and how to approach regulation,” Widom said.
As an example of a grand challenge Stanford could tackle, Studdert discussed the intersection of AI and neuroscience. AI methods are poised to revolutionize discovery of how a brain functions and malfunctions. At the same time, a deeper understanding of human intelligence has enormous potential to advance the science of AI.
Stanford is focused on investing in faculty and the next generation of talent, sustaining a dynamic environment for fundamental breakthroughs in AI and data science, supporting and accelerating the use of AI and data science in discovery across the university, investing in shared computing infrastructure, and providing advanced compute access and specialized open-source models.
Dan Schwartz, dean of the Graduate School of Education, said the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and HAI are already leading in AI and learning but there’s much more to do to advance discovery and innovation and reshape the world learning ecosystem. He cited several examples of interdisciplinary work underway at the university, such as the Autism Glass Project, an assistive tool to help children with autism recognize facial emotion.
Schwartz also discussed the strengths and challenges in education for AI automation, in which AI automates tasks and processes, and AI augmentation, which are the assistive roles of AI. For example, automation can help scale personalization in learning, but it can also entrench old ways of teaching.
During the meeting, board trustees tested out some generative AI tools used at the AI Tinkery, which provides the Stanford community with AI guidance and access.
“We’re preparing all learners for a future infused with AI and data science, and realizing the potential of AI and data science to advance teaching and learning,” Schwartz said.
Enhanced housing
The board also granted concept approval for the second phase of renovations of the Liliore Green Rains Houses, which houses graduate students and is one of Stanford’s largest housing complexes.
The first phase of renovations was completed in 2015, and phase 2 renovates the remaining buildings. Construction is expected to commence in 2026.
For more information
Edelstein is the William H. Bonsall Professor of French and professor, by courtesy, of history and of political science. Etchemendy is a senior fellow at HAI and the Patrick Suppes Family Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Landay is a senior fellow at HAI. Li is a senior fellow at HAI and professor, by courtesy, of operations, information, and technology at the Graduate School of Business. Spaulding is the Nelson Bowman Sweitzer and Marie B. Sweitzer Professor of Law.
Author
Chelcey Adami
