Stanford+NYC

New York City Continues Its History of Bold Initiatives

Sanjay Mody, Stanford Law School ’02, is a Former Senior Advisor to the Chairman of the Board of Commissioners, Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, 2007-2011.

On graduating from Stanford Law School almost a decade ago I was attracted to New York City by what has attracted countless others – its size and scale, its unmatched energy, its outsized personalities.  Several years later, this abstract idea – the City’s bias for “thinking big” and the ambition of those who live and work here – became much more concrete when I joined the Port Authority, the public agency that owns and operates the airports, seaports, and other trade and transportation systems in the New York City region.  
 
Through my work at the Port Authority I came to understand how much New York’s success is tied to its execution of bold projects – original and daring for their time – that transformed the City’s landscape and its economy: projects like its enormous subway system that handles more than five million riders every single day; the majestic bridges and deep tunnels that connect the boroughs of New York City to each other and to the rest of the country; the nation’s busiest airport system; the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. 
 
The campaign to build a new applied sciences and engineering campus is the latest example of New York City’s bold thinking.  What other city in the world would have the courage, even the audacity, to invite universities from around the globe to invest their time, energy and billions of dollars to build a ground-breaking campus entirely from scratch?
 
But this initiative is about much more than building physical structures.  It’s about executing a vision: helping New York City expand beyond the industries that sustained our greatness for the last generation and become a global leader in engineering and technological innovation.  In this sense, the City’s goal of attracting a new applied sciences campus is really about defining what New York will stand for in the twenty-first century.
 
On this measure New York City can find no better partner than Stanford.  Its world-class engineering and computer science programs will attract some of the nation’s greatest young minds to the Big Apple.  But what really distinguishes Stanford, even more than its superb faculty and academic programs, is something more genetic – its focus on the future, not a nostalgic reverence for the past.  
 
If, like me, you’re originally from the East Coast, one of the most striking things about visiting the Farm for the first time is how untraditional it is for a university campus.  Those with a fondness for ivy-covered Gothic buildings and musty libraries are sure to be disappointed.  But for those interested in developing new ideas and shaping the future, Stanford is the most exciting place in the world.  For there is simply no other place that compares to Stanford in celebrating innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit.  
 
That Stanford is constantly pushing boundaries and looking towards the future makes sense given the circumstances that shaped its founding – for Leland Stanford’s point of reference at the end of the nineteenth century was the wide-open Western frontier, not the settled East.  And since this culture of innovation is part of Stanford’s DNA, it isn’t something that others can easily replicate.  This is why no other university – in the United States or anywhere else – has come close to matching Stanford’s success in inspiring the start-up culture of Silicon Valley.  
 
In its quest for a new applied sciences campus, New York City is showing once again its tendency to think in bold, unconventional terms.  Stanford is the ideal partner to help the City achieve its vision.  Having inspired a universe of entrepreneurs and innovators on the West Coast  over the last century, Stanford can now help New York become a new frontier of technological innovation in the years ahead.

- Sanjay Mody