Glen Davis

This weekend was Stanford’s homecoming celebration, highlighted by a victory over the Arizona Wildcats!

Reading the Stanford Daily news article about this homecoming, I was once again struck by how influential this school is. I already knew that four of our nine Supreme court justices are Stanford alumni, but I didn’t know that Stanford could also boast of Robert Mueller (the F.B.I. director) and former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

What a mission field–today they learn, tomorrow they lead!

Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister and Stanford grad, spoke in Memorial Auditorium last night.

Read the school paper’s write-up, which contains several interesting anecdotes, such as this one about how Barak, who served in the Israeli Defense Force for over 30 years and is often described as Israels most decorated soldier, illustrated the need for ruthless resolve as he recounted some of his most memorable operations against Palestinian militants. He told the audience about a successful raid he led on a hijacked airplane, and he described the execution of a Hamas leader he carried out while disguised as a female brunette with everything in place, he laughed, gesturing toward his chest.

of course, such an event could not pass without protest (albeit peaceful)

and in an interview beforehand he made an observation that I found particularly relevant to my calling as a campus missionary: Though Barak ultimately left his mark on the world not through academia but rather through the military and politics, he said that he considers universities to be at the forefront of international leadership.

Somehow, the university is the place where the leadership of the future in all areas of life is formed, he said. Since the best and the brightest are coming through … these institutions, they have a great influence on the leadership of this nation and nations as a whole. (source universal remote divx )

Wow–the Cardinal was just trounced by the ignobly-named Wazzu, with a final score of 36–11.

Paula and I were able to attend because I did the morning devotional for the Wazzu team (the team chaplain is the Steve Barke, the Chi Alpha director up in Pullman, and he asked me to fill in for him while his team was on the road).

In any event, they gave me a pair of comp tickets right in the middle of the fan Cougar section. Not only did we see Stanford get spanked up and down the field, but we did it while sitting in front of a former cheerleader and her slightly inebriated companions who let the whole world know what they thought of Stanford’s lack of prowess.

It was a sad, sad day for Cardinal fans, but the Cougar fans must be ecstatic.

On the up side, the opposing coach had a nice comment to make after the game: I feel like this Stanford team is about ready to explode and do really well on offense, so I think our defense did a nice job of keeping them at bay. It won’t be too long before Stanford gets their offense going. I think their penalties were a result of a lot of frustration on their part. They’re going to spoil somebody’s Saturday real soon, and I’m just glad it wasn’t ours. (source)

Yesterday Paula and I had the chance to get together with Stanford Law Prof Jeff Strnad (who’s quite a swimmer).

Anyway, we were walking through White Plaza on our way to meet him, when all of a sudden we were confronted by a clipboard-wielding graduate student asking us if we wanted to ‘talk to a robot.’ We looked around and saw a Dalek-like construct sitting outside, apparently engrossed in conversation with a student. I was extrememly interested, but we were almost late for our meeting with Jeff and so we passed.

We had a great lunch at the Stanford Faculty Club, which has great food a cheap prices (but you have to be a member or the guest of a member to eat there).

As we were leaving, Jeff mentioned that the guy at the table next to us was a Nobel laureate in the field of economics. I didn’t catch the name, but I figured it would be easy to go online and figure out which prof at Stanford had won a Nobel in the economic sciences–I didn’t count on 8 laureates in one field!

Overall, Stanford lays direct claim to 23 laureates (14 of whom are still living), and indirect claim to many more, among them novelist John Steinbeck, who attended Stanford but got a C in his freshman English class and dropped out before graduating.

Wow–what a school!