Social Justice & Community
Michael Stern: Championing and supporting the Humanities at UC Santa Cruz
Michael Stern has been a longtime supporter of the Humanities at UC Santa Cruz, supporting the Dickens Project, the premier center for scholarship about Dickens and 19th century literature, and establishing an internship with the Humanities Institute and the Humanities EXCEL program to uplift the next generation of journalists.
Michael “Mike” Stern is a retired attorney with a nearly four-decade Silicon Valley career and a former English professor at Harvey Mudd College. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, a master’s from the University of Cambridge, a Ph.D. from Yale University, and a J.D. from UC Berkeley.
Stern had no connection to the University of California, Santa Cruz until 2012, when a New Yorker article introduced him to the Dickens Project. The article described the program’s week-long immersive event, the Dickens Universe, which draws literary scholars, devoted Dickens readers, and critics to the UCSC campus. He has attended nearly every year since.
Hosted by The Humanities Division, the Dickens Project is a scholarly consortium devoted to promoting the study and enjoyment of the life, time and work of Charles Dickens and Victorian literature, history and culture. Now in its 46th year of operation, the Universe combines features of a conference, a festival, a book club, and a summer camp.
For Stern, the Dickens Project has connected him to a community of likeminded intellectuals, and has kept him in touch with some of the leading scholars in the literature field.
“It’s a wonderful community of very smart, well-read, and interesting people from all sorts of professions, careers, and geographies,” Stern said. “It’s a remarkably lovely, kind, and warm-hearted group of people to be part of.”
That community inspired him to support the Dickens Project philanthropically. His continued support is rooted in the value of public humanities and wanting to help keep the program thriving for future generations.
In 2015, Stern, alongside Dickens Project Director John Jordan, created the Jordan-Stern Presidential Chair for Dickens and Nineteenth Century Studies at UC Santa Cruz. The gift, matched by the UC Regents, established the $1 million chair to support research and teaching of nineteenth-century literature, and the development and implementation of programs for the Dickens Project in the Humanities Division. In addition, Stern designated a gift in his estate plans to support the Friends of Dickens endowment.
“I wanted to do something that was more than an annual, tactical kind of gift, something that would help preserve the Dickens Project as an institution at UCSC,” Stern said. “Given the different obstacles humanities education faces, the future of the Dickens Project and the Dickens Universe is not assured. So I wanted to do something that would help ground it as an institution in perpetuity.”
In addition to his support of the Dickens Project, Stern has established a scholarship in support of student journalism opportunities at UCSC. In collaboration with The Humanities Institute and The American Prospect (TAP), Stern helped create a paid fellowship for humanities students to work with the American political and public policy magazine based in Washington D.C. The internship is now part of the Humanities EXCEL Program in the Humanities Division, an initiative that connects undergraduate Humanities majors and minors with community partners for paid internships. Fellows gain valuable professional experience while exploring potential career paths.
“The American Prospect needs interns, and journalism needs people who are wanting to create a career in the field,” Stern said. “I thought it was a great intersection with the stuff I care about: politics, journalism, and employment for young people who are willing to take a risk in a changing field.”
Stern’s ties to the Prospect go back to his college days, when he attended Columbia with one of the magazine’s co-founders, Paul Starr. He and Starr were roommates and fellow editors of the university’s student newspaper, The Spectator. Stern has served on the Prospect’s board of directors for many years.
The fellowship has supported multiple UCSC students in pursuing journalism careers. Alumnus Brock Hrehor (Stevenson ’25, philosophy) interned at The American Prospect as a Humanities EXCEL fellow, an experience he credits with solidifying his decision to pursue journalism as a career.
“Working at the magazine helped expose me to a whole range of political and policy issues that I otherwise wouldn’t have engaged with as rigorously, and helped me develop practical journalism skills without abandoning a normative voice,” Hrehor said. “It also, perhaps most critically, allowed me to work at a D.C.-based outlet while staying in Santa Cruz. I was always interested in writing and reporting before working there, but my experience at TAP was what made me want to become a reporter after graduating.”
After graduating, Hrehor interned at Politico, and later secured a full-time reporting position with the Capitol Forum.
“Interns from UC Santa Cruz have gone on to get journalism jobs after their American Prospect internship, and that just feels great,” Stern said reflecting on the internship program he helped to create. “We really need to recruit young people into the business of reporting again, it’s something we need more than ever these days.”
Between the Dickens Project and The American Prospect internship, Stern’s giving is rooted in supporting the humanities, nurturing public engagement with literature and ideas, and creating pathways for the next generation of readers, writers, and journalists.
“The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz is focused on bringing the values of humanistic scholarship to the broader public,” Stern said. “Humanities skills are tools for living, they teach you how to be a person.”