Home - Stanford Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series

Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies (SPCS), in collaboration with Stanford Continuing Studies, invites students in grades 9-12 to join the Stanford Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series. The series features fresh insights into history, science, politics, and culture. Each professor will present for 45 minutes, followed by a Q&A session with students.

This course is designed for the entire Stanford community, and SPCS students will be joined by Stanford Continuing Studies, undergraduate, and graduate students. SPCS offers academic enrichment courses. Registrants will not receive academic credit or a grade. Students will have access to class recordings for the duration of the course.

You can find an overview of the topics and speakers below. We hope you will join us for an engaging series of lectures.

How did an event once considered a grave political danger come to be seen as a force for progress? For centuries, thinkers from Plato to John Adams treated revolution as a threat to social order and sought to prevent it through balanced systems of government. In the 18th century, French writers began to see revolution differently, recasting it as a way to create more just and rational societies. In this lecture, Dan Edelstein traces that shift and its consequences, showing how these ideas were tested during the French Revolution and went on to shape modern political thought well into the 20th century.

What do we mean when we speak of “life”? In the early 19th century, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed one of the first evolutionary theories and helped define a new field: biology. His account of self-transforming organisms challenged the idea that life is fixed. Drawing on her recent book, The Power of Life, Jessica Riskin traces Lamarck’s ideas and the long effort to discredit them, showing how this debate continues to shape our understanding of evolution and the nature of science.