Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)

Professor Michel Serres was born in 1930 in Agen, France. In 1949, he went to naval college and subsequently, in 1952, to the Ecole Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm). In 1955, he obtained an agrégation in philosophy, and from 1956 to 1958 he served on a variety of ships as a marine officer for the French […]

Matthew Farley, S.J. is a Jesuit who teaches English at Saint Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, CA. He holds a B.A. from Stanford in English and Masters degrees in Theology and Philosophy, from the University of Notre Dame, and Fordham University, respectively. He has engaged in a variety of missionary works in his Jesuit […]

As a scholar of international and comparative law, legal philosophy, and human rights, Helen Stacy has produced works analyzing the efficacy of regional courts in promoting human rights, differences in the legal systems of neighboring countries, and the impact of postmodernism on legal thinking. Her recent scholarship has focused on how international and regional human […]

Peter Stansky is Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus at Stanford University, where has taught since 1968. Stansky specializes in modern British history and he has served as the director of the Stanford Humanities Center. Author of innumerable publications, including Redesigning the World, William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts (1985), […]

Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google, where he has worked since leaving MCI in 2005. At Google, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced Internet-based products and services from Google. He is also an active public face for Google in the Internet […]

Joshua Landy is Associate Professor of French at Stanford University. He has written Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust (Oxford, 2004) and has edited, with Thomas Pavel and Claude Bremond, Thematics: New Approaches (SUNY, 1994). This is his first appearance as host of Entitled Opinions. He was a guest of the show […]

Abraham Verghese, MD and MACP, is Professor in Stanford's Department of Medicine, and Senior Associate Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine. He previously served for five years as Director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas. He is the author of two bestselling books: My Own Country: […]

Heather Webb specializes in the literature and cultural history of medieval and Renaissance Italy. Areas of research include Dante, early Italian lyric poetry, devotional poetry and prose and history of the body. Her book manuscript, entitled The Medieval Heart: Circulation before William Harvey, is currently under review. She has published essays on Giovanni da San […]

Dick Davis was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1945, and educated at the universities of Cambridge (B.A. and M.A. in English Literature) and Manchester (PhD. in Medieval Persian Literature). He lived in Iran for 8 years (1970-1978), and also for some time in both Italy and Greece. He is currently Professor of Persian and Chair […]

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is the Albert Guérard Professor in Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature, of French & Italian, of Spanish & Portuguese (by courtesy), and is affiliated with German Studies, and the Program in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University. He is also Professeur Associé au Département de Littérature comparée at the Université […]