Murder, Corruption, Coverups: the Strange Dark History of Stanford University

KQED's Forum

KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jane Stanford and her robber baron husband Leland founded what would become Stanford University in 1885. 20 years later Jane Stanford was murdered, poisoned by strychnine. Historian Richard White dives into the corruption and coverups shrouding the unsolved murder in his new book, “Who Killed Jane Stanford?” His book is both a true crime mystery and a history of the corruption, inequality, yellow journalism, pseudo-science and racism of California’s Gilded Age. Forum talks with White about reviving a cold case more than a century old and the present day resonance of examining “the rich people who created monuments to themselves, and whose lives are reminders that the problem with philanthropy is very often philanthropists.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQED podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport.
0:05.3	You can fly back in time and visit SFO's Aviation Museum and Library to learn about the history of commercial aviation.
0:12.2	No boarding pass needed. Learn more at flysafo.com slash museum.
0:17.0	Support for forum comes from Broadway SF, presenting Parade, the musical revival based on a true story.
0:24.8	From three-time Tony-winning composer Jason Robert Brown comes the story of Leo and Lucille Frank,
0:31.2	a newlywed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in Georgia. When Leo is accused of an
0:36.9	unspeakable crime, it propels them into an
0:39.7	unimaginable test of faith, humanity, justice, and devotion. The riveting and gloriously hopeful
0:47.1	parade plays the Orpheum Theater for three weeks only, May 20th through June 8th. Tickets
0:53.6	on sale now at Broadwaysf.com.
0:57.0	From KQED.
1:00.0	From KQED.
1:01.0	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:14.6	Most universities do not have a murder mystery at their very foundation, but Stanford sure does.
1:20.6	The facts are clear. Jane Stanford was murdered on a trip to Hawaii, probably by one of her closest associates.
1:26.6	Then the university that bears her name covered it up.
1:30.3	According to historian Richard White, we should not be surprised.
1:33.3	Gilded Age San Francisco was violent and corrupt,
1:36.3	entangled with the infrastructure and money of the railroad barons
1:39.3	whose mansions still sit atop our highest hills.
1:43.3	Then as now, wealth warps,
1:45.3	and the Stanford fortune sucked so many
	...

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