From Beth Levin to the Stanford linguistics department on 9/10:
The Department of Linguistics was officially established on September 1, 1975, and so this year is our 50th anniversary! In celebration, we will be hosting a reception from 4-6pm on Friday, October 10 in the Linguistics Courtyard behind Margaret Jacks Hall. We have invited our many Ph.D. alumni and emeriti to attend, and we are anticipating a good turn out.
An astounding number of PhD alumni have said they’re coming (going back to 1970, from the precursor to the department). I don’t know how many emeritus faculty are coming. And then there are the people currently in the department. So it will be quite a scene.
I came here first in 1980, for a year at CASBS, up on the foothills above the Stanford campus (but living in the Stanford faculty ghetto); returned several times for projects at CSLI; eventually got a visiting appointment in 1985, appearing for winter quarters (and the occasional summer) until I moved here all year round in 1998; and then served the department until I had to withdraw in 2014 from on-campus duties. But it’s been a long time since my first drive down Palm Drive onto the campus in September 1980 (though I remember every bit of that drive vividly).
Beth has gone to some trouble to assemble a quartet of grad students to get me (and my excellent Rollator outdoor walker) to the event and then back to my downtown Palo Alto condo (I am a hassle to deal with; on the other hand, I’m adept at using Stanford’s accommodations for the handicapped to get around the campus, which would otherwise be an incredibly daunting undertaking.)
So: next week at Stanford!
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