At a time when peace in the Middle East can seem especially fraught, Gordon M. Bloom is giving his Stanford students a glimmer of hope. Gordon teaches Sustainable Societies Lab: Models of Israeli-Arab Cooperation and Pathways to Peace. The course provides students with the opportunity to dialogue with former top-level U.S. and Middle East leaders who facilitated multilateral cooperation and peace agreements in the region. And, because students co-create the course with Gordon, developing the syllabus and recruiting speakers, they feel particularly invested in their work. As one student writes, “I am walking away from this class with a better understanding of the Middle East, optimism for the future of cooperation and peace in the region, and — most importantly — belief that I have the ability to make an impact.”
The Sustainable Societies Lab, which Gordon co-founded, is an extension of the Social Entrepreneurship Collaboratory, which he launched in 2001 at Stanford to help create, develop, and sustain a rising generation of social entrepreneurs. Gordon subsequently took visiting professor positions at both Princeton and Harvard, bringing the incubator model with him and launching the Collaboratory at both universities. Through the program at the GSB, students have developed a wide range of innovative social enterprises, including Chirps (food from cricket flour) and Barakat Bundle (affordable and accessible new-mother education).
Since 2017, Gordon has been back at Stanford, returning to where his entrepreneurial journey began at the GSB. He currently serves as faculty director for the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab- Human and Planetary Health, a faculty fellow of the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, and a lecturer at Stanford Medicine. “Gordon was greatly gratified to see his course ongoing and similar pedagogical models proliferated across campus,” writes Gordon’s wife and fellow Stanford Professor Sara Singer, MBA ’97. “And he has rejoined and contributed ever since to this ecosystem through extraordinary service to students, the university, and the world.”
