I am a current Stanford sophomore. I think that Mr. Thompson has a misguided view of what is currently happening at the school.
Stanford definitely puts a lot of emphasis on engineering and entrepreneurship but this has been the case since Frederick Terman encouraged Hewlett and Packard to create Hewlett-Packard. We've got plenty of pure researchers, especially in Artificial Intelligence and in self-driving cars. We also have Don Knuth. If you ever want to see pure academic research in CS, flip through TAOCP for a little.
We also have plenty humanities researchers and writers. The Hoover Institute at Stanford is a leading think tank about government and has a handful of researchers you've heard of (read: Condoleeza Rice). Add in our 22 Nobel Prize winners that are currently teaching at the school, and you've got a pretty established research university.
Stanford definitely puts a lot of emphasis on engineering and entrepreneurship but this has been the case since Frederick Terman encouraged Hewlett and Packard to create Hewlett-Packard. We've got plenty of pure researchers, especially in Artificial Intelligence and in self-driving cars. We also have Don Knuth. If you ever want to see pure academic research in CS, flip through TAOCP for a little.
We also have plenty humanities researchers and writers. The Hoover Institute at Stanford is a leading think tank about government and has a handful of researchers you've heard of (read: Condoleeza Rice). Add in our 22 Nobel Prize winners that are currently teaching at the school, and you've got a pretty established research university.