CASBS is at a critical juncture. As society is awakening to the need for more knowledge about what motivates humans and how they behave, CASBS is experiencing heightened demand for its services.
We are being asked to contribute to, and even lead, endeavors in realms as diverse as climate science, high-tech and biotech, medicine, and the future of democracy. This of course pleases us, given our historical mission to bring advanced understanding of human motivations, behavior, interactions, and institutions to bear on significant contemporary challenges. We know that the application of our knowledge and skills as social scientists can help correct ill-informed policies and practices, uncover solutions to inequalities and inequities, and offer innovative frameworks for coping with the future.
This heightened demand, however, has made very clear to us that, for CASBS to remain the premier institution for innovative social science for decades to come, we need to make some important investments in our physical plant and in our program infrastructure, including our flagship fellowships. We are hard at work to raise money for site renovation, fellowship endowments, operating costs, and projects and workshops.
As I enter my fifth year as director, I happily can report a strong fellowship program and real progress in projects, workshops, outreach, and the staffing we require to achieve our ambitious goals for the Center.
Fellows. We continue to attract a cohort of extraordinary scholars and thinkers. Our fellows come from a wide range of disciplines, particularly but not solely in the social sciences. We keep track of disciplinary representation, and we are proactive if necessary. Our outstanding fellowship selection committee always does its best to curate a diverse class in every dimension. The combination of our partnership programs (Stanford's Presence Center, Berggruen Institute, government of Taiwan, National University of Singapore, and now Chinese University of Hong Kong) and our international reputation ensures a steady stream of terrific applicants worldwide. With the help of some former fellows, we currently are trying to establish new partnerships in Latin America. Our record in attracting underrepresented minorities is more mixed, and we are focusing on ways to live up to a still higher bar than we have already reached. Through dedicated endowments, donor support, and partnership programs, we have been able to host a full class of fellows, but we will need to raise additional support if we are to provide stipends and housing subsidies that make it possible for exciting applicants to relocate to our community for a year.
Projects and workshops. The projects section of our website is regularly updated with our programs, workshops, and collaborations. Particularly noteworthy are projects on moral economy, the iGeneration, and evidence-informed policy. We also are playing an increasingly important role in helping Stanford, the social science profession, and foundations think about the appropriate ethical standards for research that affect communities, particularly vulnerable communities. The addition of two superb, full-time program directors, Federica Carugati and Betsy Rajala, allows us to support our commitments, but it also enables us to think strategically about where and how CASBS can make a real difference in contributing new thinking and generating new research on significant societal challenges. Stay tuned!
Outreach. As we hope you have been learning from our email disseminations, Twitter feed, Medium page, and newsletter, we have significantly expanded our outreach over the last few years. We continue to provide opportunities for fellows to learn how to write op-eds for broad audiences and publish them in external outlets or on our Medium page. Our salon talks in partnership with the Long Now Foundation have given us new audiences for our fellows—present and former—and we also occasionally appear as part of the Talks at Google program or away from home at venues such as Soho House in West Hollywood. And other parts of this newsletter reveal, we now are experimenting with a new audio format, CASBS Conversations, to complement our rich collection of videos from our public symposia and other events.
CASBS is in great shape, but, as we know from our own personal efforts to stay fit and healthy, institutional health requires ongoing effort and evolving practices. We welcome suggestions and support of every kind as we work to ensure that the CASBS of the 21st century remains preeminent and that it meets its historic mission of bringing human motivations, behavior, interactions, and institutions to bear on the challenges of our contemporary world.
