Gerhard Casper is a political scientist who is a former president of Stanford University from 1992 to 2000, a former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School from 1979 to 1987, and a former provost of the University of Chicago from 1989 to 1992. Casper was president of the American Academy in Berlin from July 2015 through July 2016; from August 2019 to January 24, 2020, he served as the institution's trustee-in-residence.

Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center reporting directly to the dean of research and outside any school, or semi-independent of the university itself.