Farm Report

NEWS FROM INSIDE CAMPUS DRIVE AND BEYOND

Quote "I could lay down my life for the University." -- Jane Stanford, in a 1900 letter to founding President David Starr Jordan, quoted in a December 1, 1999 Stanford Daily article naming her Stanford's most important person of the century.

Yalies on the Farm IVY TOUR: Levin led the delegation. Michael Marshland/Yale They toured the Quad, met with President Gerhard Casper and heard Stanford officials speak on everything from campus planning to technology systems. No, they weren't prospective students or big-time donors. They were members of the Yale Corporation, that university's board of trustees, and they came to Palo Alto in October on a three-day fact-finding mission. All 16 board members made the trip, which focused on "areas of common concern" to both schools, Yale President Richard Levin told the Yale Daily News. "We had a fascinating series of discussions," says Linda Lorimer, vice president and secretary of Yale, "and a wonderful dinner at President Casper's house." Casper, who has a master's in law from Yale, says the visit was "the next best thing" to a proposal he made in 1993, when Levin, '68, was named Yale president. "Maybe the time has come," he wrote then, "to consider a merger of the two institutions. We could . . . combine elements of both names: you would get to keep 'University' and we would get to keep 'Stanford' so that that the new transnational institution would be known as Stanford University."

The First American 'Test-Tube Baby' Grows Up THANKS, MOM: Samantha, top, is grateful her parents were pioneers. John Burgess/The Press Democrat Jon and Laurie Haughton met at Round Table Pizza on University Avenue in 1966. It wasn't long before they fell in love, got married and dreamed of having a family. In 1982, their daughter was born -- the first American test-tube baby. Samantha Steel, now a senior at Maria Carrillo High School in Santa Rosa, Calif., has grown into a budding fashion model with a love of travel and a part-time job at a juice bar. Last spring she spent two months on the runways and in photo studios in Tokyo. "I want to see the world," she says. "I really get that adventuresome side from my parents." Samantha was born in England, where Jon, MS '68, and Laurie were living while Jon studied for a degree in veterinary medicine at Cambridge and Laurie attended London's Royal College of Music. The couple joined in the earliest tests of in vitro reproductive technology. Samantha was the world's fourth child conceived outside the womb. "She knows that her parents went to great lengths to have her, and it pleases her," Laurie says. "I know it does."

Glenn Matsumura

A Sporting Legacy The family dynasty began with Dorothy Hindle, who arrived at Stanford from her native England in 1909 carrying, among other things, a field hockey stick. Four generations of scholar-athletes followed in her footsteps. There was Hindle's daughter, Liz Johnson, '51 (synchronized swimming), her grandchildren, Craig Johnson, '76 (tennis), and Christal Johnson Neal, '74, (tennis), and her great-granchildren, Tyler Neal, '98 (volleyball), and Sarah Neal, '99 (volleyball). Not to mention Liz's husband, Ric Johnson, '48 (intramural football) -- father of Craig and Christal -- and Christal's husband, Dale Neal, JD/MBA '74, (rugby) -- father of Sarah and Tyler. Got it? In all, the family has accumulated 10 Stanford degrees -- and five NCAA championship rings. "If you didn't play sports in this family, you weren't anyone," laughs Ric, who chaired the Stanford Athletic Board from 1978 to 1979. The family also endowed a tennis scholarship in 1977. The championship rings belong to Craig, Tyler and Sarah. Craig picked up two for Stanford's national tennis triumphs in 1973 and 1974. Sarah won a pair -- for the women's volleyball titles in 1995 and again in 1997. And Tyler has one for his role in men's volleyball's NCAA success in 1997. With genes like these, Stanford sports fans might start thinking now about Dorothy Hindle's great-great-grandchildren. In This November Election, a Stanford Candidate EL PRESIDENTE? Maduro in Honduras Courtesy Ricardo Maduro Ricardo Rodolfo Maduro spent more than a decade working as an appointee in Honduran politics and government. But it was the murder of his son in 1997 that convinced him to run for public office himself. In his campaign for the Honduran presidency, Maduro, '67, is pushing for reform of the nation's education programs and advocating greater independence for the nation's judiciary. He also wants to help put an end to the kind of lawlessness that led to the death of his 24-year-old son at the hands of kidnappers. The candidate's first test will come in the November 2000 primary, where he will seek nomination by the Partido Nacional. A recent Gallup poll found that 70 percent of his party's voters support him. "It would be good if the election were tomorrow," he jokes in an interview from Tegucigalpa. A former economics major, Maduro credits Stanford with fostering the qualities needed to lead the country of 5.1 million. "It strengthened my sense of social responsibility and taught me how to think and analyze," he says.

When Annie Leibovitz Calls . . . OPEN BOOK: Sullivan's spread in the new Leibovitz collection. Glenn Matsumura The day after she was named dean of Stanford's Law School last February, Kathleen Sullivan was sitting in her office when the phone rang. "Hi, I'm Annie Leibovitz," came the voice on the line. "I'm a photographer from New York. I was wondering if I could come shoot you for a book I'm doing on women." Sullivan said yes "after I picked myself off the floor," she recalls. The next day, the famed photographer arrived on campus to make a portrait of Sullivan, a leading constitutional scholar. The shoot lasted four hours and included an entourage of black-clad assistants, a truckload of lighting equipment and a wind machine. "She was remarkably warm and charming, yet incredibly focused and intense," Sullivan says of Leibovitz. The new dean says she likes the portrait "very much. It is direct and serious and captures the gravity of the job I had just learned I was taking on." Sullivan isn't the only Stanford face in the photographer's new book, Women (Random House; $75), which was published in November. It includes portraits of drama professor Anna Deavere Smith (in full thespian mode), astronaut Eileen Collins, MS '86 (decked out in a flight suit), Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, '76 (ensconced in the cabin of a corporate jet), and actress Sigourney Weaver, '72 (stretched out in a fishnet catsuit).

TV TALK: Nelson hosts his own show. Fox News

For Cable Viewers, 'Jerry Springer With Brains' As a student at Principia College in Elsah, Ill., Rob Nelson was so afraid to ask questions in class that he wrote them down instead. Evidently he's conquered his fear. Nelson, JD '98, now hosts The Full Nelson, a weekly talk show on the Fox News Channel. He calls it "Jerry Springer with brains -- smart talk about issues with a fun, daytime feel." Some episodes take on serious topics, like whether people can be "converted" from gay to straight. Others, like "dating and the singles life," are on the lighter side. The show debuted in August and has enjoyed steadily increasing ratings. Nelson is animated and witty in a mobile-phone interview from a Manhattan Starbucks, where he's taking a break from shooting promos. He playfully tosses around an idea for a segment on the legal system featuring prominent professors as guests: "It would be like the revenge of the Socratic method. 'I say when you can talk.'" He pauses, wondering whether the episode would have broad-based appeal. "People are smarter than TV producers give them credit for," he concludes. Nelson, 35, got his first taste of television in the early '90s. In those days he was a talk-show guest pushing the agenda of Lead or Leave, the political action group he co-founded to confront Congress about the deficit and Social Security. He is just as opinionated as a talk-show host. "People want fresh ways to look at things; they want to be provoked," he says. "I'm saying what the truth is, even if it makes me vulnerable. I think people like that." He's also written a 300-page "half memoir, half manifesto," Last Call, which will be published in February. Not bad for a guy who wouldn't speak up in class.