”The Wind of Freedom Blows” – Scholar’s Perspective to Summer in the Silicon Valley
Stanford University is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, the home of many technology start-ups and the high-tech community. University Avenue, the main street of the City of Palo Alto, leads through the sandstone gates to Palm Drive, the beautiful campus way bordered by palm trees. Palm Drive, in turn, directs visitors to the breathtakingly gorgeous campus of Stanford University. The distinctive features of its architecture include local sandstone buildings with red-tiled roofs. The landmark of the campus is the Hoover Tower.
The history of Stanford is fascinating. The University was opened in 1891 and will soon celebrate its 125th Anniversary. Stanford was founded by the California Senator Leland Stanford together with his wife Jane in the memory of their only son, Leland Jr, who passed away from typhoid fever at the age of 15. Stanford family wanted to devote their fortune for the benefit of the children of California after losing their only heir, Leland Jr. The objectives of this private University were untraditional: the purpose was to provide students with cultured, yet practically oriented, useful education. Also female students were accepted, and the University was not tied to any religious organization.
Stanford is called as the Farm, and not for vain: the huge campus consisting of around 8000 acres of land was originally the Palo Alto residence of the wealthy Stanford family living in San Francisco, and hosted also stables for breeding and training of splendid race horses. All the land in the peninsula is still owned by the University, as the Stanford family ordered that no land is to be sold.
Further, reminding of the Farm’s origin, Stanford still has an active riding center called as the Red Barn. Today, however, Stanford is also one of the world’s leading universities, and has seven schools including business, earth sciences, education, engineering, humanities/sciences, medicine – and law, which brought myself to Stanford.
School of Law Provides Amazing Research Facilities
After having worked for years as technology attorney and as a relatively long time had unfortunately lapsed since I put my doctoral thesis to rest in the desk drawer, one incident lead to another, and suddenly I heard California calling, providing the long awaited spark to re-commence the research project again.
Stanford University School of Law admits into its exclusive senior scholars’ program only a handful of visiting scholars with a substantial record of professional achievement and a well-developed research agenda. Fortunately my research project on free software and patents was awarded the opportunity to be finished at Stanford. Perhaps it was destined as the motto and seal of Stanford goes ”the wind of freedom blows”. Thus, once again I packed by bags and moved to Palo Alto in Spring 2015 in order to attend the visiting senior scholars´ program at Stanford University School of Law.
While the days at Law School were long and required intensive legal research and development of doctrinal analyses, comparison of laws to other jurisdictions as well as writing after reading through hundreds of pages of court cases, statutes, treatises and other legal materials, all the gain was worth the pain.
Some of the most rewarding moments during the entire research period were the interesting discussions and reflections with professors at Stanford and the Valley as well as taking part in various events, lectures and happenings throughout the Bay Area. The research and sport facilities on campus were amazing, and the inspiring atmosphere of the Valley, the circle of new, interesting acquaintances as well as the sunlight and the warmth after the long, dark winter in Finland provided the much needed excitement to flow through the research period and complete the mission at Stanford.
Further, daily sport activities, including biking every morning from Palo Alto to the campus, and at night back home from the campus via gym or outdoor swimming pool, relaxed and cleared the mind effectively both before and after the full days of legal research. Also taking a few hours off to go hiking at Stanford Dish was a lot of fun. And last, but not least, for a passionate horseback rider like myself, the existence of the University’s top quality riding center, the Red Barn, and its riding team’s horses near the Law School was astonishing.
Thus, filling in regular riding lessons into the research program was a must. In general, Stanford Law School has a creative approach to law: the law library lends out law books side by side with cooking and dog training books, not to mention bikes, skateboards and American footballs. Otherwise the tight research schedule did not allow much, if any, spare time, but the next time I head to the Valley, I will definitely take time to visit the various national parks such as Yosemite, Redwood Park and the Death Valley located in California.
More information on Stanford University, its history and the visiting scholar’s program is available here: www.stanford.edu.
Anna Haapanen
Attorney
Roschier
