It is hard to believe it has been more than eight years since I took up the honor of being the Sara Miller McCune Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. What a remarkable journey it has been!
During that period—with the help of Deputy Director Sally Schroeder, members of the CASBS staff, Stanford community, and our fantastic board of directors—we have collectively managed to create financial stability, augment the staff and its capacities, further diversify the fellowship cohort, fund the first new building in more than 65 years, build world-acclaimed programs and projects, improve and extend our outreach, and situate CASBS as a pioneer in establishing a 21st century institute for advanced study. I could not be prouder of what we have achieved together!
I am excited about what lies ahead for CASBS. While there is still work to do for this venerable institution to fulfill its newest grand ambitions, I have considerable confidence in its ability to do so. And I know that Woody Powell, who has so generously agreed to lead as interim director, will be a strong and imaginative partner in ensuring that the Center reaches its full potential and promise. He starts with several great advantages, not least the able assistance of our remarkable deputy director, Sally Schroeder, and the equally wonderful board chair, Abby Smith Rumsey.
As for me, I will become a half-time member of the Stanford Department of Political Science, will teach a little, and will continue to co-chair the university’s Ethics, Society, and Technology Hub. As a faculty fellow of CASBS, I will coordinate the culmination of the Creating a New Moral Political Economy program, which concludes in 2023. I will be based in Seattle and commute to Stanford, enjoying more time and trips with my ever-patient husband, Bob Kaplan.
Before turning to a report on the last six months, I first want to offer an assessment of where CASBS is now and what it still must do.
The 21st Century CASBS
One of the great achievements of CASBS is building new fields and subfields of inquiry that transform disciplines and approaches. Mike Gaetani, our communications director, has already documented some of these and is in the process of documenting more with the assistance of librarian, Jason Gonzales. The myth is that field-building resulted from serendipitous collaborations among fellows who found themselves in the same place at the same time. The reality is that groups self-consciously organized to come to CASBS to collaborate. We still occasionally have such groups, but that model is becoming harder to realize, given the increased constraints on when a fellowship year is possible, and for whom.
Field building is still a major CASBS goal but realized now through our programs and projects that involve in-person, virtual, and hybrid meetings engaging current fellows, past fellows, and other relevant thinkers. CASBS provides a location for incubation of exciting new collaborations. This was how the Mindset Scholars Network emerged from CASBS. The Center for Institutional Courage, led by two-time fellow Jennifer Freyd, is another example. We now have at least five ongoing field-building efforts and a sixth about to begin.
- Moral political economy has become a subject and a focus in multiple locations world-wide. The CASBS program is informing the new Hewlett Foundation-supported center at the Johns Hopkins University, directed by Steve Teles, current short-term fellow, with the assistance of Henry Farrell, next year’s short-term fellow, and Angus Burgin, who has been chairing the pedagogy piece of the moral political economy program. In addition, the think tank, New America, has not only co-sponsored workshops with our program but is making aspects of it part of their portfolio.
- Former fellows Jim Guszcza and Allison Stanger are leading an effort to create a new science of AI practice. Its stated purpose is to create a new field that combines computer, neuro, cognitive, and other social sciences. It will be meeting in Bellagio this summer to complete its white paper and initiate steps to instantiate this field-building in universities.
- Alison Gopnik, another former fellos, has pulled together an extraordinary interdisciplinary project focused on care and caregiving. Composed of developmental psychologists, neuroscientists, economists, political scientists, anthropologists, evolutionary theorists, and computer scientists, the aim is to generate both new research and new policy for care of the young and the old. The emphasis is on building the social and physical infrastructure that supports the intergenerational relationships and the emotional bonds that are at the heart of caring.
- CORE Economics, recently featured in the The New Yorker, is partnering with CASBS and a new educational platform, HonorEd, to extend their initial work in building a new approach to economics. Our joint program, enCOREage is meant to transform content and pedagogy to reach underserved populations in state universities and colleges, community colleges, and in programs for the incarcerated. Roby Harrington, a 2020-21 fellow, has been key to the initiation of this project and is now consulting with HonorEd.
- Through their multi-year gatherings on Organizations and their Effectiveness, Woody Powell with former fellow and former CASBS board member, Robert Gibbons, are creating the department they would have liked to have been in had it existed. Powell and Gibbons, the founders and creators of this summer institute, are now ensuring the sustainability and continuing evolution of their vision by incorporating those they have mentored into the new leadership going forward.
- The newest field-building effort and summer institute is on “how difference makes a difference.” The Diversity Institute, funded by the McArthur, Spencer and Ford Foundations, has attracted remarkable applicants. It is led by former fellows Mary Murphy, Kate Stovel and current fellow Jennifer Richeson, the most recent SAGE-CASBS Award winner.
I believe this list provides evidence that the power of CASBS lies not just in attracting terrific people as part of the annual cohort of fellows but also attracting those eager to innovate new thinking and research with potential impact on policy and practice. But what we’ve done to date are still experiments that need to be assessed. They could be the inspiration for other such efforts at the Center and elsewhere, once their dynamics are better understood and publicized.
Next Steps
Crucial to this emergent form of field-building is the actual new building, what I’ve been calling the Collaboratory. It will provide the space for both the formal and informal gatherings that are the wellspring of our programs and projects. And it’s happening. This summer CASBS will break ground. We hope that will happen in early June, although the start date may be slightly delayed by nesting birds at or near the construction site—and those birds will nest I suspect!
The Past Six Months
While CASBS remains a hillside aerie, the aerie is changing. Part of my task was to tear down the virtual moat and drawbridge that surrounded us, to incorporate the Center into Stanford, Silicon Valley, and well beyond. CASBS is now very much part of the world and thus, as it should be, affected by the changes in our society affecting the ways we work and interact.
Fellows
Seldom was a class so excited to be in residence as the 2021-22 class. Part of this is a COVID effect; they were—and are—simply excited to be with other people, enjoying lunches and seminars and intellectual discussions. Almost immediately after orientation, fellows self-organized into a series of working groups: the commons and climate change; democracy; scaling norms; and identity. This last derives from the group of fellows selected to participate in discussions of scholarship on race and difference, a major theme for the year.
I should note that our success in attracting so many first-rate scholars of race and difference also led to anticipated and necessary growth pains. In research seminars, working groups, and workshops, we as a community have been learning to confront the structural racism that pervades our societies and influences how we think and research in ways not necessarily understood or intended. Learning and growth are not always comfortable processes, but here on the hill we embrace them as healthy and welcome processes.
We have a very exciting new cohort coming in the fall. Not only is the quality of the scholars exceedingly high, it is also once again a very diverse group by every conceivable measure. The fellowship selection committee has worked hard with me and deputy director Sally Schroeder to create a fair but curated selection process as well as extend our recruitment to new networks. I am also happy to report that the 2022-23 class helps us achieve two of our major objectives as outlined in the 21st century plan: several of the fellows are participants in our programs and projects, and we continue our experiment with one part-time distinguished fellow. I should also note that we have purposely kept the class a bit smaller than usual, due to expected disruptions to parts of the campus from the new building construction project.
We also have added a new partner fellowship with CORE economics to support a fellow to help create enCOREage (discussed above). And in 2023-24, we hope to add a fellow supported by the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, the generators of the Nobel Prize in Economics. I give Sally full credit for initiating these conversations, which she and I have worked to bring to fruition since.
Programs and Projects
I am extremely proud of all that we have accomplished in this area. My dream of creating multiple three-to-five year initiatives has been fully realized.
- The Creating a New Moral Political Economy program is nearly at an end, and it will conclude with the publication of an issue of Daedalus (the flagship publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences) in January 2023 and a conference later that year. Henry Farrell, who, as mentioned, will be our distinguished short-term fellow next year, is the co-editor with me of the Daedalus issue.
- The newest program is on Humans, Nature, and Machines, chaired by former fellow Jamie Jones with the assistance of me, CASBS board chair Abby Smith Rumsey, former fellows Peter Loewen and Thomas Pradeau, and current fellows Mpho Tshivase and Jenna Bednar. The program has not yet received a major grant (we are working on it!) but it has received numerous smaller grants from Stanford. In addition, a project within the program on caregiving (mentioned earlier), led by Alison Gopnik, a former fellow and world-renowned psychologist, is supported by the Templeton World Foundation.
In terms of projects, I’ll only highlight two here, as I’ve already mentioned a few:
- A data challenge was launched by the Causal Inference for Social Impact Lab (CISIL), which is supported by the Sloan Foundation. It has been taken up by over 30 teams from across the country and will be a model of how to connect academics and government policy makers.
- CASBS also manages the Ethics and Society Review (ESR) for the Stanford Ethics, Society, and Technology Hub. Its leaders are current fellow Michael Bernstein, former fellow Debra Satz (and Dean of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford), David Magnus (Stanford Medical School), and me. The ESR has received major funding from the NSF, the McGovern Foundation, and other sources. Our work and our recent piece in PNAS are getting wide attention from industry as well as academic groups trying to develop their own review processes.
The program directors, Charla Waeiss (a CASBS consultant who is stepping in quite capably while Betsy Rajala is on leave) and Zachary Ugolnik have more than proved their worth and put to rest any doubts about the critical need for these positions. Indeed, we have been so successful as a team that we are having to learn to say “no” to many interesting offers from former fellows and even from foundations pitching to us!
Outreach
Communications Director Mike Gaetani has helped transform our public presence. He has produced 19 webcasts in our series, “Social Science in a World in Crisis,” with episode 20 coming on June 14. Episode 19, hosted in March, featured the CASBS Understanding the iGeneration team of former fellows and research affiliates Roberta Katz, Sara Ogilvie, Jane Shaw, and Linda Woodhead, authors of the book Gen Z, Explained. All the webcasts are available on the series web page, as is our podcast, Human Centered. Some podcast episodes are audio versions of the webcasts, but there is now also a new sub-series that features current or recent fellows interviewing eminent fellows from CASBS history who significantly influenced them and social science more generally.
Mike has also helped initiate several new partnerships. In addition to our ongoing and successful relationships with the Long Now Foundation and Public Books, recently he has forged two new partnerships, to be announced soon, with publishing platforms that will help extend the Center’s international reach. Stay tuned!
One of our most important forms of outreach is, of course, the SAGE-CASBS Award Lecture, nurtured in partnership with our colleagues and friends at SAGE Publishing since 2013. We once again congratulate Jennifer Richeson (2021-22 fellow) for her receipt of this prize and her incredible award lecture delivered on April 21 at CASBS.
Conclusion
It with sadness but also pride that I leave the CASBS directorship. I am so delighted to have Woody as my successor, even if on an interim basis. I thank the CASBS board, CASBS staff, and wider CASBS community for all they have done to support the Center and transform CASBS into a 21st century institute for advanced study. Hopefully, the transformation we have accomplished together implies a continuing process of evolution. I look forward to watching the Center continue to grow and develop in wondrous and perhaps unanticipated ways.
Sincerely,
Margaret Levi