Summary
Directed Studies (DS), which began in the 1940s as “an experiment in liberal education,” celebrated its 70th year March 31-April 1 by inviting to campus hundreds of the program’s alumni for a series of talks and panel discussions.
Alumni and faculty members who have taught in the DS program described its lifelong impact, agreeing that DS was a transformative experience for them.
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Pamela Karlan ’80, ’84 M.A., ’84 Ph.D., the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School, told the large audience in the Whitney Humanities Center that to this day she still recalls three passages from her DS readings of classics that continue to shape her life. Reading in Dante’s “Inferno” about the Futile — souls of the dead who did nothing remarkable in life — convinced Karlan of the importance of “making a commitment to things,” she said. A passage in Thucydides’ “Pericles’ Funeral Oration” about the fragility of democracies inspired her to spend her life working on issues of democracy, especially voting rights. The third passage, from Plato’s “The Symposium,” deals with the subject of friendships, and the alumna said it has been an impetus for her to carefully nurture her own. “For me, friendships have been one of the most important things in my life, and I don’t think I thought about friendship in that critical way” before reading Plato, she said.
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