Winter 2015
Stanford Historical Society
Volume 39, Number 1
Teaching Sex at Stanford

The Human Biology Program: A Look Back
In this Issue
The Stanford Program in Human Biology: A Look Back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Herant Katchadourian: Teaching Sex at Stanford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Stanford through the Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Upcoming Society Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back Cover
Above: In 1929, faculty women,
alumnae, faculty wives, and other
university women gathered at the
Women’s Clubhouse (now called the
Clubhouse), which opened along with
the Stanford Union (now Building 590)
on Lasuen Street in 1915 (see page 20).
stanford universit y archives
Cover: Herant Katchadourian,
emeritus professor of Psychiatry and
Human Biology, initiated Stanford’s
undergraduate course on Human
Sexuality, in 1968. More than 20,000
students took his course over three
decades.
stanford universit y archives
2
The Stanford Program in
Human Biology: A Look Back
S
ince it was founded in 1969—a time of social and political upheaval—the Program
in Human Biology has prepared undergraduate students to confront complex
issues about the use of technology, the role of scientists in society, and revolutionary
discoveries in biology and medicine that raise ethical, social, and political issues. The
curriculum, which integrates the study of biology with related social sciences, consists of
basic core courses in the natural and social sciences that have been continually evaluated
and revised, followed by upper-division courses on particular issues, topics, and areas of
interest. Soon after its founding, Hum Bio became one of Stanford’s most popular majors;
by 1973, it was the university’s third largest.
In a December 2012 program sponsored by SHS, early faculty from the Program in
Human Biology gathered to discuss the concepts behind Stanford’s largest interdisciplinary,
interschool program and why it has been so successful for more than four decades. The
panel—moderated by Carol Boggs, former Bing Director in Human Biology—included:
n
Sandy Dornbusch, Reed-Hodgson Professor in Human Biology and Professor
of Sociology, Emeritus, restructured Stanford’s Sociology Department and cofounded the Program in Human Biology. He taught in the program from 1970
until the mid-1990s. Dornbusch also served as director of the Stanford Center for
the Study of Families, Children and Youth and co-founded Stanford’s Center on
Adolescence.
n
Shirley Feldman, former associate director, Program in Human Biology, and
senior research scientist, Division of Child Psychiatry.
n
Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies and Senior Fellow at the
Woods Institute for the Environment.
n
Herant Katchadourian, professor of Psychiatry and Human Biology, Emeritus.
n
Donald Kennedy, University President, Emeritus, and Bing Professor of
Environmental Science, Emeritus.
This article has been adapted from their remarks.
3
Carol Boggs: What made the Human Biology
program work in the beginning and has contributed
to its longevity?
Psychiatry Department. Norm Kretchmer, the first
head of the Human Biology Program, was chair of
the Pediatrics Department. Kennedy was chair of
Biology. I had chaired Sociology for five years. Paul
Ehrlich was well known for his pioneering research,
writings, and excellent teaching and administrative
skills, and Al Hastorf, former head of Psychology,
was soon to become dean of Humanities and Sciences.
In the beginning, Norm Kretchmer and I were
put in charge of negotiating a grant with the Ford
Foundation. As experienced academics, we knew we
needed more than operating expenses. We needed
an independent endowment for faculty. Without
that, we would alienate the academic departments
by having to compete against them for university
funding to hire faculty.
The Ford Foundation at first offered us its
maximum grant of $1 million to fund a five-year trial
period. I was the one who had to say, “No, we won’t
take it,” because it wasn’t enough for an endowment.
As I walked out of the room, Norm Kretchmer put
his arm around me and said, “Sandy, you’re in
the big leagues now.” Shortly thereafter, the Ford
Sandy Dornbusch: The late 1960s were a time of
considerable chaos within the university, and there
was some disposition to be a little bit revolutionary.
There was also a great sense that things were not
going right for the undergraduates—that traditional
academic disciplines were not preparing them to face
issues of the future that demanded interdisciplinary
solutions.
But we really had no idea what we were doing. At
first, we thought we would have about 50 students,
but as the program began to take shape, we suddenly
discovered that hundreds of students were going to
come. We worried about that. But we had one terrific
advantage. All of us involved in the faculty had
relatively friendly relationships. And all the founders
were highly respected scholars. Half of them were
department chairmen. Josh Lederberg was a Nobel
laureate and headed the medical school’s Genetics
Department. David Hamburg was chair of the
chuck painter/stanford news service
Donald Kennedy, University
President, Emeritus,
and Bing Professor of
Environmental Science,
Emeritus, co-founded
and taught in the Human
Biology Program. After
serving as commissioner
of the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration and
Stanford’s provost and
president, he returned to
teach Hum Bio until 1998.
4
The late 1960s were a time of
considerable chaos within the
university; there was a great sense
that traditional academic disciplines
were not preparing undergraduates
to face issues of the future that
demanded interdisciplinary solutions
Foundation’s board of directors overruled their own
officers and gave us $1.6 million, which we used
as the base to fund four endowed chairs: the Bing,
Reed-Hodgson, Josephine Knotts Knowles, and
Benjamin Scott Crocker professorships.
The other big thing was our very simple desire
to have this program completely oriented to teaching
undergraduates. Josh Lederberg was one of the most
forceful proponents of this. He wouldn’t allow the
slightest emphasis on any graduate work. He was
sure that most of us, as researchers, would spend too
much time helping the graduate students and would
have them take over. He wanted us to be 100 percent
for undergraduates.
And we had no tenured appointments, to ensure
that faculty who taught in the program did so solely
out of interest in teaching undergraduate students.
Faculty who did not maintain the high level of
teaching excellence the program demanded could
be dropped. Sadly, it was once my turn to tell Josh
Lederberg that, although he was a great scientist, we
didn’t want him to lecture anymore; he could only
teach seminars. The continuing emphasis on good
teaching, I think, was responsible for a lot of our
success.
was dean of the graduate school at Princeton. The
question then was, “How do we get the dean of the
graduate school at Princeton?” We had expensive
housing at Stanford, and so forth. It turns out that
trout fishing was the answer. Colin had invested a
large amount of time in the classical trout streams
of the East. He also had a place in Wyoming, and he
was quickly persuaded that the commuting distance
to Wyoming would be substantially improved if he
came to Stanford. He did, and his reputation became
enormous. He was terrific.
Boggs: Professor Donald Kennedy, whom many of
you know as president emeritus of the university,
taught in Hum Bio until 1977, when he became
Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration under President Carter. He came
back to serve as provost and president. But then,
instead of resting on his laurels and founding a think
tank, he came back to Hum Bio until about 1998.
Don, what do you think has contributed to its success?
Dornbusch: Like Don, I admired Colin Pittendrigh.
His teaching was incredibly good. It wasn’t just good,
it was spectacular. Lots of us would sit there during
his lectures and think, “Why can’t I teach like that?”
He was so wonderful. Shortly before he died, he said
to me, “You know, Sandy, one of my pleasures is that,
when I’m dead, I know I’ll be remembered as a great
teacher.” He was a very good prophet.
Donald Kennedy: I want to mention a couple of
things. I think there was a lot of agreement that
we should get exactly the right person to do an
outstanding job as a lecturer in the core part of the
program. It turned out that there was interest from
a wonderful guy named Colin Pittendrigh, who
Kennedy: Shirley Feldman also joined our very
enthusiastic group and was very important in the early
years. Shirley had taken an interest in the program,
and her own research specialty was of great interest
to the undergraduates. She was a super teacher, and
she also took an enormously important, leading role
in matching students with the honors program.
5
chuck painter/stanford news service
and really shaped a lot of the upper-division
curriculum. Shirley, what are your thoughts about
Hum Bio’s success?
Shirley Feldman: I think there are a number of
reasons why we became such a popular program.
First, we always aimed to be interdisciplinary. We
talked to each other and worked very hard to find
areas of study where we could bring many different
perspectives, and we’d work on them in conjunction
with other faculty members.
We also had a broad vision of what an
undergraduate education should look like. While we
were each, individually, very committed to advancing
our own fields and doing research—that meant
being narrow at some level and very deep—we
understood that, for undergraduate education, that
might not be the way to go. So we began to push
ourselves to think more broadly: Is there another
viewpoint to a particular issue?
Taking the example of premature birth, we
could look at the nature of the development of the
fetus, what happens at birth, what happens if there is
limited oxygen at birth, and what the effect is on the
child. But then we began to realize that we could ask
questions about the psychological sequelae that were
attendant on being a premature infant. So we decided
to take all 250 undergraduates to the premature
intensive care nursery, in groups of 10, to see what
a one-pound or one-and-a-half pound baby looked
like. We ended up having to pair students off and
almost have them hold hands, because every so often
somebody would faint on us when they were looking
at these babies. But I think this exemplifies the efforts
we went to to enrich the education in Hum Bio.
We also understood very early that, while
knowledge for knowledge’s sake was really important
for us as academics, we might want to explore the
policy implications in our classes. So policy became
a very important component of the program and
something that the students responded to very
well. In the core course—especially in the first 10
or 15 years—students worked in teams on policy
Sandy Dornbusch, Reed-Hodgson Professor in Human
Biology and Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, co-founded
the Human Biology Program in 1969.
Boggs: Professor Feldman, who started teaching in
the core in 1972, was actually the first woman in
Hum Bio. She taught in the core nearly continuously
up until the 2000s. She also taught upper-division
courses in childhood and adolescent development
and was Hum Bio’s associate director. For many
years, she headed the Upper Division Committee
“We worked very hard to find areas
of study where we could bring
many different perspectives, and
we’d work on them in conjunction
with other faculty members.”
6
“We also understood very early
that...we might want to explore the
policy implications in our classes.
So policy became a very important
component of the program.”
challenges. They really felt that they were engaged
in thinking that was consequential. We focused on
getting students to see that what we were teaching
had real-world implications and that, in not too many
years, they might be required to deal with these
problems. That really contributed to their passion for
our program. They felt they weren’t studying just to
pass an examination.
We also listened to each other’s lectures. That
really raised the bar in a number of ways. First of all,
we began to engage in intellectual discussions about
the material and see linkages that we hadn’t seen
when we were working from our own perspectives.
Secondly, knowing that Don Kennedy, Herant
Katchadourian, Sandy Dornbusch, and Jane Goodall
were sitting in the hall when we were going to give a
lecture led us to do even more preparation than we
normally would. I think students appreciated that.
wanted to do. Some of them had absolutely no idea
why they were here—they had come for want of
something better to do, or their parents wanted
them to come here. Now, if you don’t know what
you want to do and you declare a major in one of the
departments, you will stick out like a sore thumb,
because everybody else seems to know why they are
in Biology or Psychology or Sociology. In Human
Bio, you did not have that problem because so many
Boggs: Professor Herant Katchadourian taught in
Human Biology after he started a pioneering new
course called Human Sexuality. Herant, why do you
think students majored in Human Bio?
jose merc ado/stanford news service
Herant Katchadourian: I learned some of the
answers to this question through a longitudinal
study of the class of 1981, which I conducted. Some
students wanted to have a broader education than
could be gotten in the departments. Human Bio had
the advantage of breadth, whereas the departments
had the advantage of depth. A small number of
students, who knew exactly what they wanted to do
and wanted to customize their own education, felt
the departments would lock them into a predefined
curriculum. Stanford students could craft their own
majors, but it was such a high threshold and very
difficult to get approved. You really had to spell out
exactly what you wanted to do. So Human Bio, being
much more flexible and focused on breadth, allowed
these students to craft their own major more easily,
to their own specifications.
Then there were quite a few students who
came to Stanford without a clear idea what they
Genetics Professor and Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg,
shown here in 1963, co-founded the program and strongly
believed that it should exclusively teach undergraduates.
7
Hum Bio has been very good
at finding faculty who are not
only good teachers, but who have
wide-ranging interests and who
thought on a big scale, not just
deeply about one particular area
Also, in some ways, it was easier to go through a
Human Bio major than a departmental major. The
main requirement in Human Bio was the core. The
rest of the courses were largely electives. We also got
a lot of premed students, particularly since the rates
of admission to medical school for Human Bio were
no different than Biology.
But perhaps the most important reason was
the quality of teaching in Human Bio. As Sandy
mentioned, the primary interest of departmental
faculty is research, then graduate students, and then
undergraduates. Hum Bio got some of the very best
teachers at Stanford who were genuinely interested
in teaching undergraduates.
other students in the program didn’t know what they
wanted to do. Human Biology provided an excellent
opportunity to find out. By the time they were
juniors, most Hum Bio students had developed a
fairly good idea of what they wanted to do with their
education and their careers.
Feldman: I think Hum Bio has been very good at
finding faculty who are not only good teachers, but
who have wide-ranging interests. We always, from
the very beginning, wanted to draw faculty from
different schools—from the Medical School, the Law
School, and Engineering, as well as Humanities and
Sciences. In the early days, we didn’t have money
to pay them, but it wasn’t difficult at all to attract
them, because there are some very fine minds whose
thinking is not confined to normal disciplines, but
extends beyond them.
Our search for faculty with broad interests led
us into fields like astrobiology. We have a really fine,
scientifically based course in astrobiology that is not
offered in many universities. We have even allowed
non-faculty members with specialized interests to
come into the program to teach for restricted periods
of time. That also gave us very enriched offerings
and exposed students to people who thought on a
big scale, not just deeply about one particular area. I
think the program was strengthened as a result.
chuck painter/stanford news service
Dornbusch: I was just going to add that the faculty
are not the human biologists. The human biologists
are the students. They are much more flexible, they
learn a lot more, they teach a lot to the teachers,
and they escape much more from departmental
pressures than do the faculty.
In 1969, Donald Kennedy and other co-founders of Hum
Bio recruited Colin Pittendrigh—dean of graduate studies
at Princeton and a gifted lecturer—to teach the program’s
introductory course. Pittendrigh became the first Bing
Professor of Human Biology and directed the Hopkins
Marine Station from 1976 to 1984.
8
chuck painter/stanford news service
Feldman: One thing we haven’t mentioned yet is
how much support we’ve given to undergraduates
in our program. Quite early on, we provided career
counseling in response to students’ concern—even
more their parents’ concern—about what on earth
their children were going to do with this strange
degree that nobody else in the country had ever
heard of. How would they get into graduate school
or medical school? What kind of jobs would be open
to them? So we employed Audrey Bernfield, who
had very good relationships with the students and
became nationally eminent for providing career
counseling options for college students. She did that
in the context of Hum Bio.
We also recognized that, much as we like
students to hit the books—to think analytically
and in terms of putting together a synthesis of
material—they often liked hands-on knowledge. So,
from the very beginning of the program, students
were required to do an internship. Over time, that
internship became anchored to possible career
directions they might pursue. We would ask them
what they were interested in, and then we’d get them
into real-world service-providing organizations—
for example, working in the environment or in
school systems so they could reflect on their
experiences. This was less typically academic and
Shirley Feldman—former associate director of Hum Bio,
senior research scientist in the Division of Child Psychiatry,
and the first woman to teach in the program—shaped
much of the upper-division curriculum.
very experiential. Students saw it as an opportunity
to apply what they’d learned and to think about how
it might link to careers.
We were also the first to provide what we call
“honors college,” an intensive two-week program
before the academic year began for those going
on to do an honors degree. We now have a junior
honors college, so we can prepare students a year in
advance. We have given a lot of other supports. We
taught methodology courses, and we made students
feel very welcome. In the departments, students
are often seen as impediments or something of an
aggravation—they clutter the hallways and get in the
way. Well, we went the other direction. We created
a lounge area for undergraduates. We provided
free coffee for them in recent years. We made sure
there was room for them to hang out and talk to one
another. Perhaps even more importantly, we engaged
their incredible enthusiasm in teaching. We were, I
believe, the first to use undergraduate assistants and
“As much as we like students to hit the
books—to think analytically and in
terms of putting together a synthesis
of material—they often liked handson knowledge. So, from the very
beginning of the program, students
were required to do an internship.”
9
course assistants. We also put undergraduates on all
the major committees, and they were accorded the
full respect of the committee members. We listened
to them. They were the voice that got to us. I think
they recognized that they were really welcome and
that we were truly a student-oriented major. That
was very important to our success.
agencies, conducted fieldwork in Bogotá, Colombia,
and pursued laboratory projects, such as assisting
Nobel laureate Linus Pauling in his biochemistry
research. Dave Hamburg also arranged for Jane
Goodall, the world-renowned primatologist, to teach
in Human Biology for many years. One of the most
memorable early fieldwork experiences occurred
at Goodall’s Gombe Stream Research Center in
Tanzania. Eight Hum Bio students each year studied
the social behavior of chimpanzees for six months
under her guidance at Gombe. Goodall divided her
time between Gombe and Stanford, and with Dave
Hamburg, she developed an outdoor primate research
facility at Stanford—informally known as Gombe
West—that operated for a few years and provided
research opportunities for Hum Bio students.
The Tanzania experience was wonderful while
it was working well, but it didn’t have a particularly
happy ending. In May 1975, two senior Hum Bio
students and a graduate student in neurological and
behavioral sciences were kidnapped by members
of Zaire’s People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP). Dave
Hamburg immediately went to Tanzania, and after
two months of difficult negotiations, the students
were released unharmed. After that, however,
Gombe was considered too dangerous for students,
and the Hum Bio fieldwork program there ended.
But it shows how we were constantly thinking of
innovations—how to make education alive and
important, how to engage students, challenge them,
and give them responsibility.
Katchadourian: I think we had much more of a way
of connecting what students were learning in their
heads to what they were going to do with their lives.
And this created, I think, the kind of family feeling
that typically one does not find in departments.
Feldman: Chemistry Professor Carl Djerassi, “the
father of the birth control pill,” was very involved in
the Human Biology program. He taught a course
on the chemistry of birth control and how it related
to decisions that students and adults make. He was
also very interested in birth control in the third
world. He raised money to send students, over the
summer, to Indonesia and Africa, so they could
collect data. What a wonderful opportunity that was
for students. I mean, this was important data, and
he used it, and the research was an extension of
students’ course work. It made them feel that this
was a serious intellectual enterprise, something very
useful for the world.
Students also worked as interns in architectural
firms, city-planning offices, and government
Katchadourian: As for Hum Bio’s success, I think
the issue of making innovation acceptable at the
institution is very important. The people who
founded Human Bio were very innovative, but they
were also very solid citizens of the university. So
the faculty couldn’t likely say, “Who are these flaky
people coming up with this idea?” The combination
of people well-established in their fields, with
impeccable credentials by all conventional criteria,
who wanted to do something new, made the Human
Bio Program possible and acceptable.
The combination of people wellestablished in their fields—with
impeccable credentials by all
conventional criteria, who wanted
to do something new—made the
Human Bio Program possible
10
jose merc ado/stanford news service
In August 1975, David Hamburg (right)—
chair of the Department of Psychiatry
and co-founder of Human Biology—
spoke to reporters with Stanford
students Steve Smith and Barbara Smuts.
The students had just been released by
Zairian guerrillas, who had kidnapped
them in May from The Gombe Stream
Center, a primate research facility in
Tanzania. Until the kidnapping, eight
Human Bio students a year studied
the social behavior of chimpanzees
at Gombe, under the guidance of
primatologist Jane Goodall.
Boggs: Professor Paul Ehrlich was one of the
founders of Hum Bio. He has been a leader in
bringing population and environmental problems
to the world’s attention. For his work in population
biology, he won the Crafoord Prize—the equivalent
of the Nobel Prize in that arena. Paul, what is it
about Hum Bio that allowed the program to continue
to evolve, adapt, and continue to grow for more than
four decades?
different things and working in different ways. And
the material in the course is constantly changing.
It reminds me of a National Institutes of
Health Committee I was on that focused on mental
retardation. One day, as a treat for us, they brought
in one of the world’s greatest geneticists to tell us
the latest news from the field. He said, “Let’s start
with what you all know,” and he mentioned four
discoveries. Everybody was nodding. Then he said,
“The news is that all four of those findings have been
disproved within the last year.”
In a way, that’s what we have in Human Bio.
We have a world that’s changing, enormously
quickly, with respect to scientific findings and their
applications, the world of policy, and so on. We
have a structure that can handle that. New people
take over with new interests, new desires, and new
abilities. I think that means that we can survive.
Paul Ehrlich: I think the answer is very simple. It’s
the only program I’ve ever been associated with in a
university, or this university, that was totally focused
on the undergraduates. That’s the key. One of my
pleasures being at Stanford is that I’ve never taught a
graduate course. It’s either a freshman seminar or a
course that’s open to everybody. And I think it’s the
focus on the students that has kept us fresh. One of
the nice things about being at Stanford is that you
have brilliant students, and the students keep Hum
Bio going. Human Biology is a bottom-up, not a
totally top-down operation.
For more reflections on the
Human Biology Program and other
Stanford stories, please visit
http://historicalsociety.stanford.
edu/ohistoryinterviews.shtml
Dornbusch: This program has never been wedded
to any particular discipline. It’s not wedded to any
particular set of facts or issues or problems, and it
keeps changing. We have teachers in this program
now, as well as students, who hardly know that
there were generations before them. They’re doing
11
Herant Katchadourian:
Teaching Sex at Stanford
Since coming to Stanford in 1966, Herant Katchadourian, emeritus professor of Psychiatry and Human Biology,
served as university ombudsman, dean of undergraduate studies, and vice provost of undergraduate education.
His course on Human Sexuality, initiated in 1968, enrolled more than 20,000 students over three decades.
Katchadourian has received many awards, including Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Award and the Lyman Award from the
Stanford Alumni Association. In a December 2013 program sponsored by the society, he reflected on his legendary
course and the history of sex-related instruction at Stanford. This article has been adapted from those remarks as well
as his 2013 oral history interviews, conducted by the SHS.
H
linda a. cicero/stanford news service
ow did a nice boy like me got mixed up with
the sex business? It’s a good question. I will
begin by explaining how that happened.
I was born in a small town in Turkey called
Alexandretta, which is now called Iskenderun. I
lived there until I was six years old. In 1940, my
family moved to Beirut, and I lived in that city until
I graduated from medical school in 1958. A friend
of mine, who was two years ahead of me, was a
psychiatric resident in the United States, at the
University of Rochester. He suggested that I come to
Rochester, too, and it turned out to be just the right
place for me.
Then, in 1962, I went to the National Institute of
Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. That’s where
I met David Hamburg, who would be responsible
for my coming to Stanford. A month after I arrived
in Bethesda, David left to become the first chairman
of Stanford Medical School’s new Department of
Psychiatry.
At the end of that year, I decided to return to
Lebanon—the long way, over the Pacific. I stopped in
the Bay Area for a few days and saw David, who told
me, “If you ever get tired of Lebanon, I hope you’ll
Herant Katchadourian, winner of the Dinkelspiel Award
for distinctive contributions to undergraduate education,
joined Stanford’s faculty in 1966.
12
“I was the only child of a conservative,
respected family in the Armenian
enclave of Lebanon. The word
‘sex’ was never used in my family.
I never heard it in school.”
think of Stanford.” I said “thank you” to him and
put it out of my mind. For the next four years, I did
research in Beirut. Then, when I was thinking about
what to do next, I remembered what David Hamburg
had said to me about Stanford. So I went to the
library and found the Stanford catalogue. I looked
at the pictures and realized that it was a very good
university. So I wrote a letter to David Hamburg,
and he wrote back around two weeks later, saying, “I
want to offer you a position at Stanford.” My wife,
Stina, and I packed our bags and came here in 1966.
So if your problem is ignorance, don’t worry about
it.” After that, I thought, “Why not? I’ll teach this
class. These kids probably don’t know anything, so
I’ll just go to the library, read a few books, and create
a course.”
But I went to the library and found nothing.
There were two Kinsey volumes and some outdated
books, so I panicked. I started asking around, and
somebody said, “Hey, you should go to Bloomington,
Indiana, to the Kinsey Institute.” I’d never heard of
it, but I got on an airplane and went to the Kinsey
Institute for two or three days.
At the time, it was a really informal place, and
they were more than helpful. They told me, “Just
look around and ask us whatever questions you have.”
So I started looking through books and pictures and
movies. It was kind of fascinating for a day, and then
I got totally sick of it. But I saw that somebody was
teaching some sort of course on marriage and sex,
and I got the syllabus. With that, I had something
to go by. I came back and put together the course,
without a textbook. It was an Undergraduate Special,
and the first time it was offered, 62 students showed
up. The following year, 420 students registered. And
suddenly, it was becoming a big deal.
One of my teaching assistants, a very
entrepreneurial guy, said, “You know, we should
write a textbook.” At the time, there was no textbook
on the subject by anyone. So I said, “OK, sure.” I put
together an outline of the book that was basically the
Origins of “Human Sexuality”
In the late 1960s, the sexual revolution was in full
swing. David was serving on a committee on student
health, but it was a total waste of his time, so he had
me replace him on that committee. I didn’t have very
much to say about the discussions, which typically
focused on premarital sex, pregnancy, and venereal
diseases, as we used to call them. But I thought that
I should say something. So I said, “If you are all so
concerned about this subject, why doesn’t somebody
teach a course?”
There was dead silence. Then someone looked
at me and said, “That’s a very good idea. You do it.”
I replied, “No, no—that’s not what I had in mind.
There are many reasons why I can’t and shouldn’t
do it. Foremost is that I really don’t know very much
about the subject.”
It was true. I was the only child of a conservative,
respected family in the Armenian enclave of
Lebanon. The word “sex” was never used in my
family. I never heard it in school. When I went to
medical school, obviously I learned something
about the reproductive system. Then, when I was
becoming a psychiatrist, I learned what Freud had
to say about it. But these were not the ingredients for
an undergraduate course. Then Bob Sears, dean of
Humanities and Sciences, said, “Listen, I have been
here for 30 years, and ignorance has never stopped
anybody from teaching anything at this university.
13
When the first class entered Stanford,
there was a course called Hygiene
and a second course called Gymnasia;
with those beginnings, there was a
string of hygiene courses over the
next 60 years
down the antecedents of my course. I was astounded
to find out that, when the first class entered Stanford,
there was a course called Hygiene, taught by a
physician named Thomas Denison Wood. There
was also a second course called Gymnasia, taught by
Miss E. Lowell. With those beginnings, there was a
string of hygiene courses over the next 60 years.
Now, why were they called “hygiene” courses? It’s
difficult for us to realize now the enormous threat
of infectious diseases in those days. To give one
example, the 1918 influenza epidemic affected 500
million people—one-fifth of the population of the
world—and killed 50 million people, far more than
the 16 million casualties of World War I. There were
also tuberculosis, malaria, and venereal diseases—in
sequence of my lectures. But who in the world would
publish this? David Hamburg said to me, “Holt,
Rinehart & Winston published a book for me, and I
know the editor. Why don’t I give them a call?” He
did call them, and suddenly, we had a publisher. We
wrote the book, Fundamentals of Human Sexuality,
on evenings and weekends. It was ready for the third
year of the course, when enrollment passed 1,000
and we had to move to Memorial Auditorium. With
a textbook, the course was now much easier to teach,
and it turned out to be a very good textbook that
went through five editions and was translated into
several languages.
In the meantime, because of the large number of
students taking the course, I had been approached
by Norm Kretchmer, the Director of the Human
Biology Program. He said, “Why don’t you make
this course a Human Bio offering?” So in 1969, it
became Human Bio 10. I taught that course for 32
years, and the book went through five revisions.
stanford universit y archives
The history of sex instruction
at Stanford
Now, in the early 1980s, some people wanted to
publish a multi-authored book on sex education in
the United States. They asked me to write a chapter
on sex education in college. I said I couldn’t write a
chapter on colleges nationwide, but I could certainly
write the story of my own course at Stanford. They
agreed, and I thought it would be interesting to track
Dr. Thomas Denison Wood taught Hygiene of Sex and
numerous related courses in the university’s early years.
14
stanford universit y archives
Dr. William Snow (far left), who taught courses in Hygiene, posed with Stanford Health Services faculty members around 1901.
particular, syphilis. In some ways, syphilis was what
AIDS later became in our lifetime, but the numbers
syphilis affected were much greater. Between
1880 and 1921, 10 to 15 percent of Americans were
infected with it. The people most vulnerable to
syphilis and other venereal diseases were prostitutes.
Next came single men, because prostitutes were
their only access to sexuality. When they got married,
they transmitted syphilis to their wives, as did some
young married men. The women then transmitted
the disease to their babies. This was a huge concern
in an institution like Stanford, with 500 or 600 men.
The university had to do something, and that’s why
it started the hygiene courses. The university would
not use the word “sex,” because it would have been
too provocative. But if you dig into this, you see that
it was a very important part of what the courses were
teaching.
Things became more explicit when Dr. Wood
began teaching a course called Hygiene of Sex.
Unfortunately, there is no description of the contents
of the course, so I don’t know exactly what Wood
was teaching. But the number of these courses
gradually increased. The 1906–1907 catalogue listed
11 courses in hygiene, nine of them taught by Dr.
William Snow and two by Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher.
Snow was educated at Stanford and received his
MD degree from Cooper Medical College in 1900.
He did post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins with
two of the legendary figures in American medicine,
William Osler and William Welch. He returned to
Stanford in 1903 and became a leading figure in
public health. President Eliot of Harvard called him
the most effective man in the field.
Clelia Mosher was not as well-known nationally,
but she was a remarkable woman. She graduated
from Stanford in 1893, obtained her MD degree at
Johns Hopkins, and returned to Stanford in 1910 as
assistant professor of personal hygiene and medical
advisor to women. She published 21 papers. Her
research on menstruation was based on a study
of 2,000 women and 12,000 menstrual cycles.
Mosher debunked the idea that women breathed only
through the intercostal muscles of the chest and not
their diaphragm—a myth that contributed to the
notion that men were physically superior to women.
Mosher demonstrated that women breathed through
their chests because their tight corsets contracted
their stomachs. Nobody had ever examined women
undressed before.
Mosher’s most groundbreaking work was her
study of the sexual habits and attitudes of American
women—the first such study and a unique record of
female sexuality in the Victorian culture of the late
nineteenth century. The book was never published
during her lifetime, because of the subject’s
sensitivity. Fortunately, in 1973, Stanford History
15
stanford universit y archives
the school’s courses, Individual Hygiene in Wartime,
mostly discussed the prevention of venereal disease.
Over the next two decades, a department of Physical
Education was also established for men and then for
women, headed by Professor Storey.
In 1943, when Donald Tresidder became
president of Stanford, institutional priorities
changed. Tresidder did not view physical education
and hygiene as serious academic subjects, and the
School of Health was closed. Some of its courses,
however, were moved to the School of Education’s
Division of Health Education. A new course
also appeared in family health. This marked the
beginning of a new sequence of courses, taught
by Professor George Lockett, that focused not on
hygiene, but on interpersonal relationships in
courtship and marriage, as well as discussions of
pregnancy and venereal diseases.
In the 1950s, the School of Education began to
shift away from undergraduate to graduate education,
but the Division of Health Education remained
under Professor Oliver Burt, a nationally known
figure and prolific author of 80 books. Burt was the
central figure in this area at Stanford in the 1950s
and 1960s. He replaced the course on family health
with a new course called Marriage and the Family.
In its 1962 version, there is specific mention of mate
selection and sexuality, but little substantially was
changed. For instance, Professor Burt’s well-known
textbook of college hygiene opens with a chapter
on health and marriage, in which sex is hardly
mentioned. There is a section on dating, which says
that hand-holding, a kiss, and linking arms are
not taboo in most social circles. However, sexual
intimacy between unmarried couples was linked to
social disapproval, with grave consequences.
Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher—shown here in 1894, a year after
she completed her undergraduate degree at Stanford—
studied the wives of Stanford faculty and women of similar
backgrounds. Their overwhelmingly positive sexual attitudes
and willingness to discuss their sexual lives contradicts the
stereotype of repressed, inhibited Victorian women.
Professor Carl Degler discovered her manuscript in
the Stanford Archives, and the book was published.
The subjects of Mosher’s study were wives of
Stanford faculty and women of comparable social
backgrounds in the area. Although these women
were better educated and more liberal than the
average American woman, their overwhelmingly
positive sexual attitudes and willingness to discuss
their sexual lives contradicts the stereotype of
repressed and inhibited Victorian women.
Ray Lyman Wilbur, who became president of
Stanford in 1916, viewed hygiene as an important
issue for education and personal development.
He established Stanford’s School of Hygiene and
Physical Education, which later became the School of
Health, headed by Professor Thomas Storey. One of
Broad perspectives
When I set out to teach my course, I had no idea
about any of this past history. I was equally oblivious
of what was happening on other campuses. I learned
16
later that, in a 1973 survey by the American College
Health Association, 42 percent of 215 institutions
taught some type of course on some aspect of
sexuality. Four of the oldest courses had started in
1969, a year after I initiated my own course.
My interest in teaching undergraduates was
driven by two considerations. One was that, from
an academic perspective, I did not know of any
form of human behavior that could be explained
in isolation by biology, psychology, or sociology. So,
as far as I was concerned, the only way to look at
complex behaviors, like sexuality, was from as many
perspectives as possible. I also thought that, while
the primary purpose of the course should be to
impart information and help students think about
these issues, it should also have, when possible,
some positive impact on their personal lives.
Consistent with this view, my course started
with the biological aspects—anatomy, physiology,
hormones, contraception, conception, and so
on. Then the course went on to the evolution
of sex, sexual development, gender identity, the
problem areas—casual sex, divorce, pedophilia,
pornography—and the wider cultural perspective
covering historical, moral, and legal aspects.
Slides were an important component. In fact,
my lectures were an ongoing commentary on a
series of slides. Why? Because the purpose of the
course was to transmit information, and with this
subject, images are much more effective than words.
If you look at an image for 10 seconds, you receive
a tremendous amount of information. What can
anybody say in 10 seconds that could have a similar
impact? I used two projectors simultaneously—and,
when applicable, one presented the male and the
other the female perspective. I had 50 slides per
lecture and ultimately learned to time myself to
spend more or less one minute on each slide, so I
would start and finish like a Swiss train. Left to my
own impulses, I would tend to wander around in
and out of topics, but the slides kept me on track,
and they liberated me from the need to have a text
or notes. Also, slides turned out to be very helpful
in maintaining the attention of a large group of
students. It’s much harder to fall asleep looking at
slides than it is listening to somebody drone on.
If the subject made students nervous, I often
started with illustrations from past times. That put
things at a little bit of a distance. I also used a fair
amount of what I hope was tasteful humor, because
students were often rather jittery, especially at the
beginning of the course. They had never seen
anything like this. If they had seen it, they thought
they shouldn’t have. And the fact that I looked quite
conventional and not like a hippie further reassured
them.
The one principle I always followed was that I
would never show anything controversial—an explicit
picture or film—unless it fulfilled a clear, selfevident, academic purpose. And I made a point of
always presenting two sides of a question, when there
were two sides to be presented. In the case of sexual
violence, there were no two sides. But with abortion,
there were. Half the population of this country is on
one side or the other of the divide. So at the end of
my lecture on abortion, I would ask the class, “How
Clelia Mosher graduated from
Stanford in 1893, obtained her
MD degree at Johns Hopkins, and
returned to Stanford in 1910 as
assistant professor of personal hygiene
and medical advisor to women; her
most groundbreaking work was the
first study of the sexual habits and
attitudes of American women
17
stanford universit y archives
Ray Lyman Wilbur, who became
Stanford’s president in 1916,
established Stanford’s School of
Hygiene and Physical Education.
One of its courses focused on the
prevention of venereal disease.
many of you could tell from listening to my lecture
which side I am on?” Only a few hands would go up.
They did not actually know which side I was on—
they were just hoping that I was on their side.
Politically and socially activist students would
come up to me and say, “You are doing a good job
explaining this side and that side, but that is not
enough. You have to stand up and be counted.” I
would reply to them, “There’s a difference between a
lecture and a sermon. They are both very useful and
valid, but you can’t mix them up. The podium is not
a pulpit. So when I’m lecturing, my own personal
thoughts are nothing that you need to worry about.”
While I could not claim to be free of my own bias, I
would not willfully push a particular line of advocacy.
I also made it clear that this was a serious
class. It was not an easy A. The grades were curved
to conform to the Human Biology core grades.
And the course was very broad. Students learned
everything from anatomy to morality and everything
in between. Also, I think it came across that I cared
about them as individuals—who they were and their
health and happiness. It was comforting to have
somebody who could tell you what to do and what
not to do without preaching to you, without making
you feel guilty or ashamed.
I worked hard on my course and kept revising
it. A lot of the changes I made reflected what was
happening in society at large. For example, in
1973, the American Psychiatric Association took
homosexuality out of its diagnostic categories, which
meant it was no longer a psychiatric illness. That
obviously called for an adjustment in the course.
Then, same-sex relationships became a topic in itself,
and we gradually paid more and more attention to
it, because it affected more and more people, and
there was more interest. With the start of AIDS, sex
became a matter of life and death, so that had to be
dealt with. Rape was in the course from day one, but
nobody talked about sexual harassment, date rape, or
marital rape. So those things required new attention.
Culture changes over time. I know, for example,
that I could not have started teaching the course
five years earlier. There just would not have been
the social receptivity and tolerance, and I was not
interested in having my head bitten off. The 1960s
ushered in a whole new world.
18
“When I set out to teach my course, I had no idea about any of this past history.
I was equally oblivious of what was happening on other campuses…As far as I
was concerned, the only way to look at complex behaviors, like sexuality, was
from as many perspectives as possible.”
By the beginning of the 1980s, students became
more conservative. Enrollment went down to 600,
500, and 400 because the turmoil of the 1960s and
the fascination with sex subsided. But it remained
a large class, and I taught it irrespective of whatever
else I was doing. All told, over 20,000 students
ended up taking the class over several decades.
A few years after I stopped teaching Human
Sexuality, I got a note from Jeff Wine, who was then
Director of Human Bio, saying that students were
agitating for a successor to the course. “We don’t
know what to do,” he wrote. “We want you to come
back and teach it.” I wrote back and said that it was
as though I had heard from a lover with whom
I’d had a wonderful 30-year relationship. Now she
was beckoning me back, but age and decrepitude
no longer made it possible. I advised him to get
somebody younger. But it never happened.
There is now an undergraduate program in
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality studies that offers
54 courses. Eighteen of them have some reference to
sexuality. Fifteen courses in eight departments have
the word sex in the title, but none refer to sexuality
alone. They’re always linked to something else or
some special aspect, like gender; religion; queer
literature and film; topics in the history of sexuality;
or sexual violence. The offering that comes closest
to a course in human sexuality itself is adolescent
sexuality, Human Bio 143, which has about 40
students. So, for better or for worse, there is now no
course on human sexuality that is a successor of my
course. That makes me rather sad, but nothing in
this world lasts forever. I am willing to accept that.
19
Stanford through the Century
1915–2015
100
y e a r s ag o
(1915)
The Stanford Union (later
known as the Men’s Clubhouse
and now Building 590) opened
in February on Lasuen Street.
Hoping to restore the “solidarity
that existed between students and
faculty in the old days,” Herbert
Hoover in 1909 had proposed
a student union, to be paid for
and maintained by students and
alumni. Fundraising lagged,
and construction did not begin
until Hoover and his wife, Lou
Henry Hoover, gave a significant
donation. The Union, for men,
soon would include a barbershop,
a haberdashery, and a restaurant
(first operated by a Japanese
cook, later renovated and called
The Cellar). Tables, chairs, and
bookcases from the Stanford
family home provided part of
stanford universit y archives
The Women’s Clubhouse on Lasuen Street, which opened in early 1915, included
a large clubroom and a spacious dance floor.
20
the furnishings for the large
clubroom, the reading and writing
room, and a committee meeting
room; Jane Stanford’s long-time
secretary and companion, Bertha
Berner, donated portraits of three
generations of the Stanfords. In
1922, the Union would be renamed
the Men’s Clubhouse when the
third and largest building of the
complex, the new Spanish-style
Stanford Union, opened.
Across a courtyard from the
Union, the Women’s Clubhouse
(now just the Clubhouse) opened
two weeks later, with President
David Starr Jordan the only man
present. Female faculty, faculty
wives, alumnae, and others
contributed toward furnishing
the building, and university
trustees provided a sideboard,
library table, chairs, hall table, and
mirror from the Stanford house.
Bertha Berner donated portraits
of Senator and Mrs. Stanford,
and an illuminated text of Mrs.
Stanford’s words to women of the
university. The structure included
a large clubroom on the first floor
and a spacious dance floor on the
second. The third floor was not yet
complete.
stanford universit y archives
75
y e a r s ag o
(19 40)
Former President Herbert
Hoover and current First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt spoke at
Memorial Auditorium four days
apart in April. Hoover answered
questions put to him in writing
before his session on topics
ranging from the war in Europe to
such domestic issues as migrant
labor camps, unemployment,
and university finances. On
April 8, the day word came of
Germany’s invasion of Norway
and Denmark, a capacity audience
greeted Eleanor Roosevelt with a
standing ovation. Speaking under
the auspices of the men’s and
women’s journalistic societies, she
discussed the role of young people
in the future of America.
50
y e a r s ag o
(19 65)
In February, the dog “Ralphie,”
recipient of a heart transplant
from another dog, died eight
months after the experiment.
Surgeons had been experimenting
for more than five years, but the
dogs had never survived this
long. Knowledge gained from the
research helped pave the way for
human heart transplants.
Faculty and students
protested American involvement
in Vietnam, beginning with a
combined rally of 400 on February
12. In March, 144 faculty members
The first Stanford Union, across a courtyard from the Women’s Clubhouse,
featured a restaurant, barbershop, and haberdashery.
signed a petition sent to President
Lyndon Johnson urging an end to
involvement. Petition drives and
rallies continued in April, and a
teach-in was held in May.
Following a history of conflict
between national fraternities
and their Stanford chapters, in
April Sigma Chi fraternity was
suspended for one year by its
national after pledging a black
student. In November 1966,
the Stanford chapter voted
unanimously to sever ties with
the national, which refused to
change a policy that allowed any
of 60 individuals on the national
membership committee to veto
any chapter pledge.
In loco parentis was beginning
to fade, as the university
liberalized social regulations
for women students, including
21
extending freshman dormitory
closing hours from 10:30 p.m.
to midnight daily (instead of
only on weekends) and granting
permission for junior and senior
women to extend their unlimited
late leaves from 2:30 a.m. to as late
as 6 a.m.
25
y e a r s ag o
(19 9 0)
In the face of a projected
budget shortfall, Provost James
Rosse launched a $22 million
“repositioning” program
to cut nearly 6 percent in
administrative and support
services from the university’s
$388 million operating budget.
Contributing to the budget
problems were government cuts
in reimbursement of indirect
costs for research, an unexpected
decline in research volume,
stanford news service
In 1990, the Cardinal women’s basketball team won its first NCAA championship.
damage to university buildings
from the 1989 earthquake, and
the poor state of the national
economy. In October 1991, Rosse
announced an additional twoyear $43 million program of
budget cuts and reorganization—
including academic program
reductions—to reduce the
operating budget by almost 12
percent. Additional budget-cutting
and income-growth programs
continued until fiscal 1997.
The women’s basketball team
won its first-ever NCAA crown,
beating Auburn, 88–81. On the
season, Stanford won 32 games,
while losing just once (by 3 points).
Along the way, the team broke 100
school, conference, and national
records. Jennifer Azzi was named
to the All-America team a second
time and won both the Naismith
Award and the Margaret Wade
Trophy, the two most prestigious
awards in the sport. Coach Tara
VanDerveer was named Pac-10
Coach of the Year and the
Naismith National Coach of the
Year. In April 1992, the women
again would win the NCAA title,
this time defeating Western
Kentucky, 78–62. In 1995–96,
VanDerveer would take a leave of
absence to coach the American
women’s basketball team to its
Olympic gold medal victory.
—karen bartholomew
22
O
n Sunday, April 26, from 1 to 4 p.m., the Stanford Historical
Society’s Historic Houses Project will offer a tour that
provides rare glimpses into the history and architecture of
the campus’ Upper Lomita neighborhood. The tour, called Hidden
Gems of Upper Lomita, features a number of residential properties,
some of which were later converted to academic use. Architects
represented on this year’s tour include Charles Hodges, Louis
Christian Mullgardt, John K. Branner, and Milton Pflueger.
The Upper Lomita neighborhood has a large number of
interesting buildings within a compact area. Those dating to
Stanford’s early development include Rogers and Mariposa Houses
(1892) and the Fire Truck House (1902). A series of romantic
buildings from the 1910s and ’20s can be found here, including
Louis Christian Mullgardt’s The Knoll (1918), which was constructed
to serve as the University President’s residence. It later became the
Department of Music and now houses the Center for Computer
Research in Music and Acoustics. The Kingscote Gardens
The Knoll
Apartments, Bechtel International Center, and Roble Hall dormitory
also date to this period. Several mid-century modern properties are along our route, including Florence Moore
Hall and the “Lake Houses” by John Carl Warnecke. Several of the properties have distinguished gardens.
Self-guided walking tour
This year’s tour differs from previous tours in several important ways. There are twelve buildings on the route,
which is less than a mile in length, and it is an active walking tour, with no shuttle service. The Knoll, which sits
on a hill, may be a challenging trek for some, but guests will have clear views of the building from below. The tour
focuses on social and architectural history, and access to interiors will be limited. This outdoor format allows for a
family-friendly experience. It includes an educational “treasure hunt” that is designed to challenge children from 6
to 12 years old.
Tickets purchased by April 11 will cost $10 per adult. After April 11 and on the day of the tour, tickets will cost $15.
There will be no charge for children ages 12 and under.
Mail a check (payable to Stanford Historical Society)
to Stanford Historical Society, c/o Sweeney, P.O. Box
19290, Stanford, CA 94309. Checks must be received
by April 11 for tickets to be mailed. Tickets ordered
after April 11 will be available for pickup at the tour
registration desk at Bechtel International Center.
For tour information, parking directions, and a
map, consult the Stanford Historical Society’s Web
site at http://historicalsociety.stanford.edu/hhouses.
shtml. Or call Susan Sweeney at 650-324-1653 or
Charlotte Glasser at 650-725-3332; or e-mail susan.
sweeney@stanford.edu or cglasser@stanford.edu.
Serra House
23
l aur a jones
smwm architec ture
Stanford Historical Society Walking Tour: Hidden Gems of Upper Lomita
Winter 2015
Volume 39, Number 1
Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Palo Alto, CA
Permit No. 28
Stanford University
P.O. Box 20028
Stanford, CA 94309
Susan Wels, Editor
Stuart Chan/Ison Design,
Designer
Stanford Historical
Society
Board of Directors,
2014 –2015
Troy Steinmetz, President
Norm Robinson,
Vice President
Steve Dunatov, Treasurer
Pedro Gonzalez Jr., Secretary
Drew Bourn
Richard W. Cottle
Branden Crouch
Steve Dunatov
Marie Earl
Pedro Gonzalez, Jr.
Andrew Harker
Daniel Hartwig
Laura Jones
Michael W. Kirst
Susan Maher
Stephen Player
Norm Robinson
Susan Schofield
Steve Staiger
Peter Stansky
Troy Steinmetz
Gail Woolley
Staff
Allison Tracy, Oral Historian
Charlotte Kwok Glasser, Administrative Officer
stanford historical societ y Membership
Membership is open to all who are interested in Stanford history and includes
the following benefits:
n annual
subscription to the society’s journal, Sandstone & Tile, mailed to
members three times a year
n invitations to free on-campus programs on aspects of Stanford history.
Membership Categories
n Current
n Sustaining
n Society
Stanford Student $10
Member $50
n Contributing Member $150
n Supporting Member $250
n Benefactor
Member $500
Circle $1,000
n Historian Circle $5,000
Membership is for one year and is tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Membership dues are payable by credit card or by check.
To join or renew by credit card, visit our Web site at historicalsociety.stanford.edu.
Click on the Membership link at the left and then click on the “Make a gift now”
link to the Development Office Web site. You may also make out a check to the
Stanford Historical Society and mail it to the society office (see lower left on this
page for address). Please use the enclosed envelope for additional donation or
gift membership only.
P.O. Box 20028
Stanford, CA 94309
650-725-3332
E-mail: historicalsociety@stanford.edu
Office: 351 E, Green Library
Web site
historicalsociety.stanford.edu
Upcoming Societ y Activities
April 26 Stanford Historic House Tour:
“Hidden Gems of Upper Lomita”
May 12 SHS 39th Annual Members’ Meeting
& Reception featuring Philippe Cohen and
Stephen Palumbi on Hopkins Marine Station
and Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve