Stanford Faculty Voices
Professor Mark Cutkosky
Fletcher Jones Chair II in the School of Engineering
“Florence is the birthplace of the artist/engineer, a great place for Engineering students to immerse themselves in a culture where no apology is made for the role of art in engineering and vice versa. The tradition continues today in industries located a short train ride from the Florence campus, not to mention the fashion firms like Gucci and Ferragamo right in town. Florence’s surroundings are simply inspirational."
Professor Pamela S. Karlan
Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law
Co-Director, Supreme Court Litigation Clinic
"Florence, especially in the person of Nicolo Machiavelli, is the birthplace of modern republican theory and political philosophy. Particularly in a time when the United States is confronting existential questions about issues such as what it means to be a republic, whether immigration contributes to the richness, in both senses, of a polity, and what makes for ethical political leadership, being in Florence leads to a lot of reflection. Just one example: when you visit Botticelli's painting "La Calunnia" at the Uffizi Gallery, you see that rulers taking bad advice and listening to "fake news" has been with us for centuries."
Professor David M. Kennedy
Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus
“Italy has more history, and more of it accessibly displayed, than any country in the world. And no Italian city has a richer stock of that visible history – not to mention an abundance of beauty and sheer enchantment – than Florence. My own studies in Florence as a Stanford undergraduate altered my sense of history itself, of time’s scale and weight. I also fell in love with a culture, a language, and a people in ways that have deeply affected my life ever since.”
Professor Oriana Skylar Mastro
Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Assistant Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
Director, Indo-Pacific Policy Lab
"Italy exemplifies the ongoing debate in Europe more broadly about the tensions between economic engagement with China and its security and values-based relationship with the United States. The energy in Florence is dynamic as strategists but also every day people debate the future of Italy and its role in the international order. Florence is also a great place to take a breath and think deep thoughts, about politics and their role in society but also about one’s personal journey."
Professor Jonathan Payne
Dorrell William Kirby Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Biology
"The Earth sciences are inherently place-based, and each part of the planet has a different story to tell. Italy has a high level of tectonic activity and a long history of human societies dealing with extreme risks from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural hazards. It also has a rich fossil record of ancient mass extinction events that can serve as natural experiments to help us understand how life may respond to current global changes. There is no better place than Florence to learn how Earth, life, and society coexist."
Professor Luigi Pistaferri
Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
"As an Economics Faculty in Residence, I had a wonderful time interacting with students who had broader interests than the ones I typically interact with. By tailoring my class to students with a wider range of experiences and backgrounds, I tried to create a distinctive learning and knowledge opportunity where I gained as much insights as my students did. The classes offered at BOSP Florence are rooted on arts and classics themes, but the ingenuity of faculty and students makes these classes a genuinely modern, cross-disciplinary experience and a hallmark of the Stanford educational ethos."
Professor Roger W. Romani
Professor, Physics Department
"On the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius, I had the pleasure of leading a BOSP Florence course for non-science majors on the telescope and how it has changed our worldview. Beyond lecture, we toured the city, visiting astronomical images in renaissance art, the science museum and Arcetri (at night). To me a particular highlight was assembling duplicates of Galileo's first telescope from kits and taking them out to observe the moons of Jupiter, to see how the scientific revolution was kicked off, exactly where and as Galileo initiated it."