Today, Stanford is officially launching its YouTube channel (get it here). Among the videos, you will find Oprah Winfrey’s commencement speech (given this weekend) and other graduation speeches from recent years. From there, you can peruse the larger video collection. Notably, the channel offers access to some complete courses, including Clay Carson’s African-American History: Modern Freedom Struggle and Leonard Susskind’s two courses on modern Physics — Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics. (Four more Susskind courses tracing the arc of modern physics will follow.)
The Stanford Channel also features many individual speeches/lectures that currently have a strong bent toward science and business. (You’ll likely find the humanities and social sciences getting better represented over time.) One particular video worth watching is a roundtable conversation called “Anxious Times.” Hosted by Ted Koppel, the participants included Anthony Kennedy (US Supreme Court), William Perry (former US Secretary of Defense), George Shultz (former US Secretary of State), Jerry Yang (CEO, Yahoo!), and John Hennessy (President, Stanford University), among others. And they spent a good two hours thinking about the many threats now confronting the world (global flu pandemics, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, threats to civil liberties, etc.), and how we can get beyond them.
You can explore the complete Stanford YouTube Channel here and dip into other university channels on YouTube here. Meanwhile, here’s Oprah in action below.
