Developing leaders: The skills and vision needed to change the world
In this special episode, Eli Cahan (2019 cohort) and Willie Thompson (2022 cohort) speak with John Hennessy, co-founder and inaugural director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars (KHS). John imagines a world where the next generation will provide the leadership that is so desperately needed in all walks of life.
John shares the story behind the founding of Knight-Hennessy Scholars, providing insight into why a commitment to young people lies at the heart of his vision for change. He also discusses the importance of forging and nurturing strong relationships, including the role that Knight-Hennessy scholars play in building the culture of KHS.
Finally, John shares more about his life, recounting how a job as a grocery store bagger led him to meet the love of his life, and recounts a surprising conversation with the Dalai Lama. John also expresses his hopes for the future of Knight-Hennessy Scholars and for higher education as a whole.
Guest
John L. Hennessy is the Co-Founder and Shriram Family Director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars, the largest fully endowed graduate-level scholarship program in the world. He is Chairman of the Board of Alphabet and serves on the Board of Trustees for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Formerly the tenth President of Stanford University, he is also a computer scientist who co-founded MIPS Computer Systems and Atheros Communications. He co-won the National Academy of Engineering’s Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering in 2022; shared the 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Prize with Dave Patterson; and received the 2012 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor.
Imagine A World team
Imagine A World's theme music was composed and recorded by Taylor Goss (2021 cohort). The podcast was originally conceived and led by Briana Mullen (2020 cohort), Taylor Goss, and Willie Thompson (2022 cohort), along with Daniel Gajardo (2020 cohort) and Jordan Conger (2020 cohort).
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
Full transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated by machine and lightly edited by humans. They may contain errors.
John Hennessy:
So the Dalai Lama, when I met him when he visited, I was worried because he had to fly. He lives in India, Northern India, near the border of Tibet, and he had to fly. And so he's 12 hours off in terms of... And so we were worried, did he get any sleep or anything? And so I said to him, "Geez, you're so far away from home. Did you get any sleep last night?" And he goes like this. He smiles, as big as... And he holds up both hands, "10 hours," like this. He had a real sense of humor about things. He had a sense of humor about life, which you think of this guy who's very serious, he's a religious leader, deep contemplative, meditative guy. Even talking about meditation, he said, "Some of my friends in other religions can meditate for hours and hours." He goes, "Not me." He goes," After 15 minutes, a fly lands on me, I get thirsty. That's the end of it."
My name is John Hennessy. I'm a professor of computer science and electrical engineering. I've been at Stanford for 49 years, roughly. And I've spent the last almost 10 years leading the Knight-Hennessy scholarship program. I imagine a world where the next generation of young people will provide the leadership that we so desperately need in all walks of life.
Sydney Hunt:
Welcome to the Imagine A World Podcast from Knight-Hennessy Scholars. We are here to give you a glimpse into the Knight-Hennessy Scholar community of graduate students, spanning all seven Stanford schools, including business, education, engineering, humanities, law, medicine, and sustainability. In each episode, we talk with scholars about the world they imagine, and what they are doing to bring it to life.
Willie Thompson:
Today, we'll hear from John Hennessy, co-founder and outgoing director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars. In this episode, John shares how he defines leadership, why soft skills and relationship building are so important, meeting the love of his life as a grocery store bagger, and so much more.
Eli Cahan:
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Imagine a World: Alumni Edition, the fun edition. It's fun, right? We got a studio audience today. I have a co-host today, and we have a very special guest.
Willie Thompson:
Very special.
Eli Cahan:
The Godfather.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, wow.
Eli Cahan:
The godfather. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Anyway.
Willie Thompson:
Will they have an offer for you that you can't refuse?
Eli Cahan:
He gave me an offer once upon a time that I missed, that went to my voicemail, and then I called back, and then I couldn't refuse once I locked him down on the phone. Anyway, we are thrilled to be here with John Hennessy, and I'm thrilled to have my longtime collaborator now co-host Willie Thompson with me. Willie, thanks for coming.
Willie Thompson:
What's up? Yeah, glad to be on another episode of this amazing podcast.
Eli Cahan:
So we're going to do this in the same style that we think about the alumni podcast obviously with some twists and turns. John Hennessy has been everywhere all at once and also in the past. He has done a lot of things in his career and he has also spoken about a lot of things he has done. So we are going to try not to touch on some of the things that you've said elsewhere and try to tap into what the staff has told us. I think it's important for table setting to just explain to us, give a very brief framework for how you think about leadership. What does leadership in a couple sentences mean to you? And then we'll get into kind of everything else you've done with that fundamental framework.
John Hennessy:
Well, I think leadership obviously varies a lot depending on the setting you're in, but the common factors are probably the ability, the capability to take a group of people, to take them to a place that they want to go to, but they see the path is difficult, it's dangerous, it's hard. And helping them, inspiring them, supporting them, energizing them to go do that thing that will really change the world for better.
Willie Thompson:
And when it comes to that vision, I think I speak for all of us here. We have Gil also who's helping us out with production and setup. The energy that you just articulated those sentences with is felt in the design of the program and the experiences that we have. So can you take us to the time where you were thinking about Knight-Hennessy and thinking about why a program like this was needed and why in 2017? And just for context, we're doing some research and found this wonderful article when John was first announced as president of Stanford. You were one of 500 nominees to be president, which I haven't done the long odds of that, but I think that's lower than the Knight-Hennessy acceptance rate, but someone else can correct me.
Eli Cahan:
That's a long odd.
Willie Thompson:
It is long odds.
Eli Cahan:
Listen, neither of us did a math degree.
Willie Thompson:
That's true. Okay. Yeah. I did do some finance.
Eli Cahan:
You do math in GSB?
Willie Thompson:
Yeah, a little bit. Finance. Or finance, as they do in business school. And there was this interesting quote from the board of trustees chairman Robert Bass, who is, he's a GSB alum, 1974. He said they found the right person for the right time in Stanford's history. So as you were exiting your role as president and thinking about Knight-Hennessy, what about that time in Stanford's history was so important to the inception of Knight-Hennessy?
John Hennessy:
The roots actually go back until a number of years into my presidency and some thinking I did when I took a brief sabbatical around 2012 and really became concerned about the quality of leadership. We already had a Congress in Washington that was already in deadlock a decade ago, more than a decade ago. We had dysfunctionality in terms of various governments around the world. We had immigration crisis, not just in the United States, but around the world actually. We had had the collapse of Arab Spring. And of course, the 2008, 2009 financial crisis, which was not great leadership by our financial leaders who helped get us into that jam. So I became dismayed and I thought, is there something an educational institution can do to make a difference? Why not try to build a program that develops a set of leaders that are going to do better than some of the leadership we saw in the last 25 years?
Eli Cahan:
Even at that time, there were leadership programs, right? There were some fancy schmancy programs, some of them across the Atlantic Ocean. We won't name them because it's like, this is the Yankees. We don't talk about the Mets. Anyway, we're not going to name them, but there were programs out there. And if you ask Malcolm Gladwell, Malcolm Gladwell had very strong feelings that the world did not need us spending more money on a new leadership program. What made you think to, in response to Malcolm Gladwell, in response to naysayers, in response to all the people who said, "John, you have so many things you could do with your time once you're no longer president," that this was the thing?
John Hennessy:
Well, I think if you look back at history, you can see the difference that one person, one great leader really made. My personal hero is Abraham Lincoln. One great leader at a great time made an enormous difference and took extraordinary chances in order to rid the country of its scourge of slavery that had been built into the Constitution. So I think there are people like that. And even the present time, we can see how one leader, good or bad, can do a lot of good or a lot of bad in the world. And I don't disagree with Gladwell's point that you need a whole team, but teams have captains. They have people who lead, who inspire the rest of the team to do something truly extraordinary. Our program's small. Of course, you still need the rest of the team and the rest of the university will help produce that team.
We're a small fraction of the graduate population at Stanford, right? We're about 250 people out of some 7,000 graduate students. So we're a small, but we're help trying to cultivate the people who will become the leaders and develop some of the experiences and talents they need to do that leadership.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah. And as we're looking in your office right now, I can see at least three Lincoln books, maybe five or six or seven. So the admiration for Lincoln is palpable in the room. One part of your Imagine A World statement I want to talk a little bit about is the focus on young people. Why do young people matter so much in your vision for what leadership looks like?
John Hennessy:
Because they're at the beginning of their lives. They're at a point where you can really perhaps exercise a real influence on their trajectory. And our goal is to maybe boost their trajectory a little higher so they'll get a little more accomplished in life. That's the way we think of it. These are already incredibly talented people. To get into the program, you've got to be incredibly talented as the two of you are. But we think we can add to their ability to become real leaders and to really make a difference in the world. And that's why young people.
Eli Cahan:
One of the things that struck me about the pedagogy of Knight-Hennessy as I was reviewing the website, which again, I did with much trepidation and I was blackmailed into applying. Yeah. I think I told you.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah, you did tell me the story. He did tell the story.
Eli Cahan:
I was blackmailed. Yeah. I needed a recommendation letter and John Yonadi said he wouldn't write me a recommendation letter unless I applied. Anyway, so I'm reviewing this program and it struck me that there was a tremendous focus on soft skills. And soft skills is something that I think is often overlooked. And when it's discussed, it's discussed really with lip service, not with initiatives and curricula and training. And I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, wow, this is kind of bizarre. This is like an interesting way of thinking about leadership. And I think it's shaped me in such a fundamental way as I've observed leaders. For example, I was watching West Wing last night trying to find hope in the universe and examples of good leadership. And very snappy dialogue are ubiquitous in West Wing.
And this episode in particular that I was watching, episode three, they're trying to pass a bill. And so much of getting that bill passed is about relationship building, relationship maintenance, and tapping your relationships at the right time. How do you think about relationships in general as a leadership skill? And how do you think good leaders build and maintain relationships?
John Hennessy:
Yeah. I think building a leadership core, building a team, it's one of the critical things a leader has to do. You can't do everything yourself. Yeah, you might be the expert on doing it, but you don't have enough time to do everything, particularly as you get to larger and larger responsibilities in terms of the team you're leading, the organization you're leading. You can't do it all. So building a team that can work together, encouraging people, delegating, doing a good job of delegating and supporting somebody as they learn and go through a process is a crucial skill. I agree 100% with you that teaching and figuring out how to teach some of those soft skills is critical. I do believe there are two ways you teach them. Go read great biographies of people who've gone through that, understand their mistakes and what they did well, and then practice.
It's experiential learning. It's not learning where you just go read the book and you absorb everything. You have to actually do it. And that's what we try to do in Knight-Hennessy.
Willie Thompson:
I remember at my cohort retreat at Asilomar you talked a lot about one of the hopes of the program was that we'd be friends, right? And I think that's something that's always stuck with me is I didn't have friendship as number one on the bingo card for... Well, not for the program, but to have the director of the program saying, "I want you guys to be friends at the end of the day," is something that I hadn't heard before and I've done a couple of fellowships. And so why does friendship matter so much to you too?
John Hennessy:
I think partly what we were striving for is to overcome some of the challenges that exist around the structure of graduate education, which tends to be much more isolated than undergraduate education. Undergraduate education, you live in a dorm, you're all being together, you're all living away from home for the most part for the first time. So there's a kind of bonding experience around that, which you can see. If you go to a reunion, you'll see people hanging out with people who they were in the freshman dorm with, kind of renewing things 50 years later, right? But that doesn't happen as much at graduate school. It happens a little bit, but MBAs hang out with MBAs, MDs hang out with MDs, JDs hang out with JDs, it's more... And PhDs, they hang out with their lab. It's the way it is. So we thought there's really another aspect there, and there's a lot that can be learned by having a highly multidisciplinary, global environment of scholars that you're learning with in terms of leadership lessons, in terms of cultural attitudes and approaches. So that was a key goal from the beginning.
Eli Cahan:
What made you think that these people from all across the world studying some of the most esoteric things on God's green earth would have enough in common or find enough in common that they could become friends of all things?
John Hennessy:
Well, first of all, I'm an optimist about young people and their positive attitudes, and they're at a stage in life where they're thinking positively about things, right? There isn't as much cynicism as there is when people get older. So that was a key part of it. And then I thought we get interesting people, right? And if you look at our selection process, our selection process really does try to think about how these people might work in a cohort and what they might exchange and learn from one another.
Willie Thompson:
One aspect of the... I guess one outcome of all those friendships happening is the idea of community, right? Or everything starts with a cage, so community with a cage. And it's something we talk a lot about, it's one of those soft and squishy things when you talk to people about it, people sort of say, "Oh, okay, I like community." If you're trying to talk to people about the values and benefits of the program. And one thing that I'd love to get your take on is how do you think about culture and how you've built that in a place like Knight-Hennessy? And if there are a couple of examples of initiatives you feel like you've used either at Knight-Hennessy or other places to really develop a culture that people can feel.
John Hennessy:
If you think about the arc of the program, we bring scholars together. The first retreat really is get to know your fellow scholars and really develop working and understanding among fellow scholars because when they come into winter and spring and do storytelling, people will tell stories that they haven't shared beyond their closest friends and sometimes not even with them. And they'll share stories about key moments in their lives, whether traumatic or exhilaratory. And that I think is a sense of community and trust in that community that they're willing to share those stories. And with similar programs like Deep Dive, that's a scholar directed program, people share incredible things, but they do that because there's a community, which means there's trust, which means you can share that with those kinds of stories.
Eli Cahan:
But I guess how do you think about building that from the top, right? Because part of developing community and developing a culture is allowing people the autonomy to make of this house, of Denning House, what we're sitting in, of this sort of spiritual house that we all occupy, this shared space while we're on campus, saying, "You guys figure it out," which you guys were very vocal about in the 2018 cohort, 2019 cohort, 2020 cohort, you guys are coming into something that is a lump of clay or a lump of mud. It's even before clay and you're going to sculpt this thing and you're going to fire it and you're going to put in the kiln and we're going to see what happens. Because there's this expression that I think the first Silicon Valley expression people think about is move fast and break things. The second one that I grew up on was culture eats strategy for breakfast.
And so I'm curious, as someone who has built many different organizations, initiatives, companies from the ground up and has occupied leadership role time and time again, how do you build and how do you develop culture?
John Hennessy:
Well, I think, Eli, you're absolutely right. Culture is crucial, and in the long run crucial to any organization that wants to thrive and be successful over a long term. I think you have to think really hard about what matters when you think about building culture, what are the really important elements? What's peripheral to that culture aspect? And think about how do you embody those elements? How do you share them with people? And if you think about everything we do from how we select scholars and think about that, we're thinking about how do we build a community and bring people together and get them to appreciate. One of the great things is, scholars come in and they meet their fellow scholars and they're so impressed. Their first thought is, "Maybe I don't belong here because look what these other people have done." But of course-
Eli Cahan:
Some of them have done a few fellowships.
John Hennessy:
Some of them have done a few fellowships along the way. And some of them did other things before they had the good sense to come to Stanford even. But that's okay. It makes for an interesting community.
Willie Thompson:
And speaking of that, so you mentioned we were on the heels of financial crisis and sort of gridlock Congress and how much has changed since those years of 2008.
John Hennessy:
Not yet.
Willie Thompson:
Not yet, right?
John Hennessy:
We don't have enough scholars out long enough yet.
Willie Thompson:
Okay. Well, it's funny because I remember, I forgot which alum I was talking to recently, who basically articulated this idea that what we do as scholars and as members of this community, what we do, the reverberations of that sort of won't be felt for a period of time after, five, eight, ten years afterwards. In relation to that, why do you think a place like Knight-Hennessy matters now in the year 2026?
John Hennessy:
Because if I look at the last 25 years in terms of the quality of leadership we've seen around the world, things are not moving in the right direction. At best in some parts of the world, they're static. In other parts of the world, they've decayed. Look at this international assessment of democracy around the world. The U.S. has fallen. Lots of other countries have fallen. So I think the need for great leadership is not diminishing. It's increasing. And I think that's true, by the way, not just in government, it's true in the nonprofit world. Universities, look at the difficulties universities are having now leading as we go forward. It's true in the corporate world. Particularly now as we stand on the edge of AI really changing so many things, how we deploy this technology that's incredibly powerful, but also can be misused is a crucial issue. So I think the demand for great leadership is going to go up, not down.
Willie Thompson:
Economics term, business school, demand. Into that.
Eli Cahan:
Wow, you learned something? I'm so proud. All right. We're going to move into a new segment of the podcast. This segment is, we came up with two names, at least, greater than or equal to two names. The first name that we came up is, you've been on a podcast called Leading Matters. We're going to call this Leading Vibes. One of the first core values of Knight-Hennessy is, this is something that, in fact, we had to establish a Slack channel called Cavaling. This is my legacy. This is my Knight-Hennessy legacy.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, that was you?
Eli Cahan:
Oh, that was me.
Willie Thompson:
I did not know that. I didn't know you were-
Eli Cahan:
Yeah, yeah. Leaving some Yiddish. Yeah, you're leaving some Yiddish in the game. Anyway, we had to create a Slack channel because people were not sharing the things they were doing with anybody else. And obviously we want to celebrate all the success members of our community.
We're going to depart from humility for a second because we know that you've worked with some amazing people at various stages, very, very closely. And there are a lot of leadership lessons that potentially people can glean from the variety, the mosaic of people that you've worked with in your time. So here's how this is going to work. We're going to drop a name and I want one adjective, free association, Rorschach test, first adjective that comes to your mind in terms of this person and what they exemplify as a leader. You ready?
Willie Thompson:
It's rapid fire, John.
Eli Cahan:
Rapid fire. Yeah, yeah. Shot clock is going on. You ready? All right. First name, Phil Knight.
John Hennessy:
Phil Knight. Action oriented.
Willie Thompson:
Lorene Powell Jobs.
John Hennessy:
Reflective.
Eli Cahan:
Larry Page.
John Hennessy:
Intellectual.
Willie Thompson:
Roberta Denning.
John Hennessy:
Artistic.
Eli Cahan:
Derek Bolton.
John Hennessy:
Insightful.
Willie Thompson:
Ruth Porat.
John Hennessy:
Clever.
Eli Cahan:
All right. We're about halfway through the list. Jeff Wachtel.
John Hennessy:
Caring.
Willie Thompson:
Angela Merkel.
John Hennessy:
German.
Eli Cahan:
The Dalai Lama.
John Hennessy:
Oh, humorous.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, okay.
Eli Cahan:
Wait, dark horse.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah, let's put a pin in there.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. We're going to follow up.
Willie Thompson:
Unfurl the humorous part for the Dalai Lama.
John Hennessy:
So the Dalai Lama, when I met him when he visited, I was worried because he had to fly. He lives in India, Northern India, near the border of Tibet, and he had to fly. And so he's 12 hours off in terms of... And so we were worried he didn't get any sleep or anything. And so I said to him, "Geez, you're so far away from home. Did you get any sleep last night?" And he goes like this. He smiles as big as... And he holds up both hands, 10 hours like this. He had a real sense of humor about things. He had a sense of humor about life, which you think of this guy who's very serious, he's a religious leader, deep, contemplative, meditative guy. Even talking about meditation, he said, he said, "Some of my friends in other religions can meditate for hours and hours." He goes, "Not me." He goes, "After 15 minutes, a fly lands on me, I get thirsty. That's the end of it," he goes.
Eli Cahan:
Very cool story.
Willie Thompson:
The next person we have is Oprah.
John Hennessy:
Oprah. Engaging.
Eli Cahan:
Condoleezza Rice.
John Hennessy:
Insightful.
Eli Cahan:
Fei-Fei Li.
John Hennessy:
Visionary.
Eli Cahan:
Malala.
John Hennessy:
Amazing.
Willie Thompson:
And last but not least, Andrea.
John Hennessy:
Oh, loving.
Willie Thompson:
Loving. All right. What a fitting adjective because we love to talk a little bit about your story. We discovered that you met at a wonderful grocery store, she the cashier, you the bagger, and boy did you bag. Tell us a little bit of your relationship to your wife and just take us back to grocery store John. And just for people who are listening, this idea came from the idea that when John announced that he was stepping back, now retiring, from his role currently at Knight-Hennessy, he got a standing ovation from people at town hall. How did that feel, by the way, John, to get standing ovation?
John Hennessy:
That was great.
Willie Thompson:
That was great. Through the grapevine or through the redwoods, I guess if we're going to use the abs metaphor here, when you said that when you told your wife about this, she would tell you, "Well, I remember you back when you were bagging groceries." I want to talk about that time of your life and how you all developed a relationship that stood such a long period of time.
John Hennessy:
Yeah. So we worked in the same grocery store. We got to know each other. Our first date was my senior prom and we fell in love that summer. But by then we had already made our college decisions and we were split up by hundreds of miles. I was outside Philadelphia, but she was 20 miles from the Canadian border. So this was not an easy place to get to. But we managed to hold our relationship together. And I think people have different kinds of relationships. In our relationship, we've experienced so much of our lives together so that we grew together and learned together. And we got over the difficult times of being split up from college for so many years and made that work.
Although I'll tell you, at the end of every summer vacation when we were headed back to school, it was like a crisis because I'd get ready to leave. She'd go up to her house, then she'd run back down the driveway. It was really hard. And this is a time, no cell phones, no phones in your room. There was a payphone in the hallway and that was it. And phone calls, long distance phone calls were expensive, dollar a minute. And so we were doing a lot of letter writing and things like that, but we survived that. And if you can survive that, it makes you stronger as a couple.
Willie Thompson:
What did you notice when you were a tender teen in Andrea that really made you gravitate towards her? Because I also read that you played the long game. While she was on break, you'd be bagging up her stuff, you were trying to really get into her good graces. What did you notice about that?
John Hennessy:
Yeah. So I think the key turning point was when we were working on Valentine's Day and she made me a Valentine, would be my best friend, right, kind of friendship Valentine, but a friendship Valentine. And that was probably a key point in our relationship. And we started life with nothing. I was a graduate student, she was working in a senior home and we had no money, but we had the chance to be together and that made a big difference.
Willie Thompson:
You mentioned being together for so long. Do you still feel like you all are individual people or to what degree do you feel like your lives are just so co-intermingled and intertwined?
John Hennessy:
Some things we enjoy together. Some things we have our own interests. So I'm the big reader of history and things like that. And she's the fashion person. She's going to read the fashion section in The New York Times. I'm going to just take that section and put it aside. So that's okay. So we have things like that. We're both lovers of the visual arts and we're both lovers of performances, Broadway and things like that. So we have things that we do together as well.
Eli Cahan:
Can I ask you a bagging question?
John Hennessy:
Sure.
Willie Thompson:
Paper or plastic?
Eli Cahan:
There's only one answer to that.
John Hennessy:
There was no plastic.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah. There was no plastic.
Eli Cahan:
If you have a circular thing and a square thing.
Willie Thompson:
Oh yes.
Eli Cahan:
What goes in the bottom? You put the circle, you put the yogurt tub in at the bottom or-
John Hennessy:
You put the thing that can be squished on the bottom.
Eli Cahan:
Oh, the squished thing. Okay, this is good.
Willie Thompson:
Really?
John Hennessy:
No.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, the eggs. The eggs go at the bottom.
John Hennessy:
I'm just seeing if you guys were awake or not.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, no [inaudible 00:28:10].
John Hennessy:
They scrambled themselves [inaudible 00:28:11].
Eli Cahan:
All right. Okay. Okay. All right. So settle down. Settle down. So we're going to move into another segment here. This is our popcorn segment. This is a standard segment on the alumni edition here.
Willie Thompson:
I just had some popcorn from stairs.
Eli Cahan:
Oh, that's great. What kind of popcorn?
Willie Thompson:
Is it Skinny Pop. The kettle. The kettles.
Eli Cahan:
Listen. Listen, got to get protein. Got to have protein in your snacks now. There's no peptides. It didn't happen. Speaking of Skinny Pop, first question in the popcorn segment is, what is or has been your favorite Denning House snack?
John Hennessy:
My favorite Denning House snack. I don't eat the snacks that... I guess the-
Eli Cahan:
I don't eat that slop.
John Hennessy:
Those Fig Newtons or the blueberry Newtons or something like that snack, snack wise. Those are good. Those are good. Those are good.
Willie Thompson:
I'm looking at the picture. Is that the Hagia Sophia?
John Hennessy:
That is.
Willie Thompson:
Okay, yeah. So I don't know if that was on one of the KH trips, but what's your favorite KH trip?
John Hennessy:
Oh, and the one I was on to South Africa was just extraordinary. It's just such a learning opportunity for something I really didn't have much background in. So from that experience, it was really great.
Willie Thompson:
What time of the year did you go?
John Hennessy:
We went in the summer.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, so you got a chance to experience a real winter. That's good.
John Hennessy:
Yes. Although it doesn't get that cold there.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had some adventures on that trip.
John Hennessy:
Yeah, there were some events.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, you were on that trip, Eli?
John Hennessy:
A lot of people got sick on that trip. A lot of people.
Eli Cahan:
All right. Next question. Favorite song for Knight-Hennessy dance parties, thinking in particular about Halloween.
John Hennessy:
Oh, geez. Monster Mash.
Eli Cahan:
Monster Mash. Okay.
Willie Thompson:
It was a Monster Mash. I don't have to pay royalties on that. But all right, cool. That's a good one. Favorite Palo Alto date spot. [inaudible 00:29:56] John.
John Hennessy:
Palo Alto date spot.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah, help us out.
Eli Cahan:
He needs help. He needs help.
Willie Thompson:
I need help. Yeah. Got to take the wife out to something nice.
John Hennessy:
A walk around the dish.
Willie Thompson:
Oh. Super pick.
John Hennessy:
You get a beautiful view of the valley and the campus and everything. Yeah.
Willie Thompson:
You can eat after because you're finished.
John Hennessy:
Yeah. Because you walked around the dish. You can actually-
Willie Thompson:
Get a dish.
Eli Cahan:
You get a dish. You bring a dish to the dish.
Willie Thompson:
Who said engineers and scientists don't have poetry in them?
Eli Cahan:
That's it. We all have poetry. Yeah. Anyway, you're famished because John ate all the Fig Newtons in the house. There were no Fig Newtons left. Anyway. Who is your favorite golf partner?
John Hennessy:
Oh, somebody whose game is worse than mine.
Eli Cahan:
Like who? Like who? We know you're a big golfer.
John Hennessy:
My former colleague, George Springer, who's passed away was my favorite golf partner. What he said was, "You can keep score or you can cheat, but you can't do both."
Willie Thompson:
Oh, that's funny. And last one is staff member you'd get trapped on a desert island with.
John Hennessy:
Staff member I'd get trapped on a desert island with.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah, you got to survive.
John Hennessy:
Yeah.
Willie Thompson:
Tom Cruise.
John Hennessy:
So I've got to check this out with my spouse.
Willie Thompson:
No, she's not a staff member. It's okay.
Eli Cahan:
She actually was on vacation when you got stranded. Yeah. She's doing okay. Yeah. She's in Barbados. She's good.
John Hennessy:
I think that's a hard question. I think somebody from the medical school, because if you're stranded on a desert island, you may need a doctor.
Willie Thompson:
So Eli, are you going to join John on the island as a contestant on Survivor?
Eli Cahan:
I'm a lowly civilian. I don't meet staff threshold. Also, here's the problem with the doctor and resident. They're going to diagnose everything that's wrong. They're not going to be able to help you.
John Hennessy:
Yeah, that's-
Eli Cahan:
They're just going to tell you that you're slowly dying out there. I feel that we are getting dehydrated.
Willie Thompson:
That's funny. Or you could bring an engineer with you actually, turn the saltwater into potable water or something.
John Hennessy:
Yeah, or somebody who can build a boat.
Willie Thompson:
That's true.
We're going to transition a little bit into our closing questions for the time you've given us, which has been really great. So as you mentioned earlier in the pod, you're transitioning roles, right? And the idea is that we as Knight-Hennessy scholars, the staff, everyone who's involved with Knight-Hennessy from this quarter forward will be carrying that legacy that you've set with Phil Knight and others. But you'll be involved with a little bit of lighter touch, you'll still be teaching, things of that nature. What's something that you hope for Knight-Hennessy moving forward? You've seen the program from inception in your head to the first couple of cohorts to challenges that we've had as scholars interpersonally. What are some of the things you hope that we carry moving forward as representatives, there we go, of this special place?
John Hennessy:
Well, I think lots of what the ambition we had for this program has already been fulfilled. It shows in the scholars that we have and what they're going on to do. I think universities in an attempt to be more embracing have not done an adequate job of preparing students for having a difficult discussion about a hard subject that you may disagree with and may go to your core values. So that was a lesson for Knight-Hennessy and for all of higher ed, which I think we've got to do a better job on.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah. One reflection I have. So I actually took a class with Paul Brest at the business school on universities in crisis and it was focused on higher ed, which felt particularly timely at the time he's teaching the class. And I wonder from you two things. One is this idea of the university welcoming and embracing people. And some might say who were they traditionally embracing and who they have to learn how to embrace after that, which I think is a fair criticism of higher education. What would you say, what work is there to be done by institutions like Stanford to truly set realistic expectations where people can get out of the experience of being at a four-year residential college? Because that's something that came up a lot in this class was the idea of what the university is for. And I feel like people might have different answers.
What do you think universities have an obligation to sort of set in terms of an expectation for students for things like that where they might be surprised where they have to have these conversations and do them in a respectful or civil way?
John Hennessy:
Yeah. I think the purpose of a university education is really to learn how to think and think critically, to learn how to work with others who come from very different backgrounds. One of the remarkable things about a university is it brings students together from lots of different backgrounds and puts them together in a learning community. And that is an opportunity to learn a skill that you absolutely are going to need if you're going to be successful in life because the rest of life is, it's mix and match. You're going to be working with people from all different backgrounds and different fields. So that's something which I think is crucial as we think about what the role of the university is. Of course, we want to produce good citizens. We want to produce people who are going to go on to make important contributions that benefit others as well. And that I think is something we have to rededicate ourselves to perhaps.
Eli Cahan:
What advice do you have for prospective applicants to Knight-Hennessy?
John Hennessy:
Study those improbable facts and get them down there. No, I think be yourself. Tell us who you are as a person, what motivates you, what excites you, what your dreams are. That's what we try to get from the application.
Eli Cahan:
John Hennessy, Willie Thompson.
Willie Thompson:
It's been a pleasure.
Eli Cahan:
Thank you so much for taking the time. We know how crazy your schedule is. We appreciate you being on the podcast.
John Hennessy:
Thank you, Eli. Thank you, Willie.
Sydney Hunt:
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Imagine the World, where we hear from inspiring members of the KHS community who are making significant contributions in their respective fields, challenging the status quo and pushing the boundaries of what is possible as they imagine the world they want to see.
Willie Thompson:
This podcast is sponsored by Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University, a multidisciplinary, multicultural graduate fellowship program, providing scholars with financial support to pursue graduate studies at Stanford while helping equip them to be visionary, courageous, and collaborative leaders who address complex challenges facing the world. Follow us on social media at Knight-Hennessy and visit our website at kh.stanford.edu to learn more about the program and our community.