History Corner
Jane Stanford’s Allowance Saved the University
How the widowed co-founder rescued the Farm.
125 years ago (1893)
Stanford’s death creates financial chaos
After Leland Stanford died at age 69, the university, which had been managed as part of the Stanford estate, suffered a severe financial crisis just as a national depression developed. As the senator’s estate went into probate, assets were frozen and income to the university stopped. Advised to shut down the institution, Jane Stanford went into seclusion. After two weeks, she told President David Starr Jordan that the “university will go ahead and fulfill its mission.” The probate judge granted her $10,000 a month from estate proceeds, most of which she turned over to Jordan for expenses and salaries.
75 years ago (1943)
College trains soldier-students for war
The Second World War dominated the campus. Under the Army Specialized Training Program, a federal initiative that used collegiate facilities to train junior officers and technical specialists, the first soldier-students arrived at Stanford in spring 1943. By June, nearly 2,400 soldiers were registered in intensive coursework in engineering, language and area studies, psychology and premedicine, with the number jumping to 3,000 that fall.
50 years ago (1968)
Students get amnesty for CIA sit-in
On May 6, more than 200 students began a three-day sit-in at Old Union, protesting the suspensions of seven students who had demonstrated against the Central Intelligence Agency the previous November. That evening, 1,500 more individuals gathered in the building’s courtyard, where a majority voted against the sit-in tactics but in favor of amnesty for the original anti-CIA protesters. Against the recommendations of the faculty’s own elected Executive Committee, the Academic Council, in special session, voted 284 to 241 to recommend that the president set aside the proposed suspensions and take no disciplinary action against those sitting in at Old Union. President J. E. Wallace Sterling reluctantly agreed to these recommendations, saying he had “confidence that the great majority of students and faculty on this campus disapprove of coercive tactics and will make that belief known.” The 57-hour sit-in ended soon thereafter. •
History Corner is produced by the Stanford Historical Society, historical society.stanford.edu.
