Dear Friends,
Having now completed three years as CASBS director, I’d like to assess what we have accomplished.
The substantive focus of CASBS is clear: human beliefs, behaviors, and interactions — and the organizations, institutions, and structures that influence human beliefs, behavior, and interactions. We approach our subject from the perspectives of multiple social science disciplines, and we attempt to ensure our expertise is incorporated into problems where humans have an effect and where there are consequences for people. The Center has an ambition — one it is beginning to realize – to become the nexus in discussions of human action at Stanford, in Silicon Valley, and beyond.
We now have a series of ongoing research programs and networks based at the Center as well as a thriving summer institute. All reflect on major questions confronting society. Many are engaged with problems, such as technological transformations and climate change, where engineers and scientists are only just beginning to recognize the importance of incorporating social science into their initiatives from the beginning.
The CASBS projects have enhanced the vibrant intellectual life of the Center. Our funding and our fellowship classes also have benefited. The projects attract external support from foundations (Berggruen Institute, Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Knight Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, SAGE, Sloan Foundation), individual donors, as well as other Stanford centers and institutes.
Simultaneously, we have additional new fellowship support from the government of Taiwan and from the National University of Singapore while continuing to attract those who win prestigious fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the W.T. Grant Foundation. The effect on class composition is increasing diversity while modeling collaboration in the service of discovery and solutions.
At least two sets of factors are crucial to the success we have experienced to date. First, our fellows program remains one of the most valued in the world, and we use it as a draw and underpinning for ongoing research programs. We maintain our strength by retaining control over the final selection of fellows even when our funders have defined the parameters of the substantive work to be supported. The result is that we only pick applicants who meet our high standards; if necessary, we are prepared to forego funding rather than accept someone who is not of highest quality.
The second set of factors revolves around how our commitment to collaborative and ongoing projects facilitates our integration with Stanford in a way that both safeguards our autonomy and takes advantage of a great university. Stanford researchers often are participants in our workshops and working groups, and some even take leadership roles. Equally, perhaps more important, has been our engagement with key centers and institutes at Stanford. Sometimes the relationship is a simple co-funding of symposia, our successful public lectures. In 2016-17, the Graduate School of Education, the Clayman Institute, and the Woods Institute for the Environment were co-sponsors. Other partnerships are deeper. The Woods Institute, for example, helped us locate funding for two fellows in the 2016-17 class and is working with those fellows on a collaborative project on the “Social Life of Climate Change.” I am a co-PI on a grant to the Woods Institute and the Center for Ocean Solutions, “Harnessing the Data Revolution to Secure the Future of the Oceans;” they turned to me because of my familiarity with collective action problems and because CASBS is a conduit for accessing other social scientists. The Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) is partnered with CASBS in a multi-year initiative on “Digital Technology and Democratic Theory.” Presence in the Medical School not only is supporting a fellow in the 2017-18 class but also collaborating with CASBS on a project involving human-centered AI in medical practice and labor. CASBS recently received funding from the Catalyst Challenge at the School of Engineering to build multi-disciplinary research collaborations on issues related to automation and society. CASBS also is deeply involved with the McCoy Center for Ethics in Society, which will support two fellows in 2018-19. And the Graduate School of Business, the Hoover Institute, and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research contribute annually to the Summer Institute on Organizational Performance and Effectiveness.
The partnerships reveal an increasingly important role that CASBS is playing at Stanford. As non-social science programs come to realize that human beliefs, behavior, and institutions must be taken into account in their models, research, and prescription, they turn to CASBS for help in fine-tuning their thinking and locating scholars to incorporate in their projects. And that is happening even with Stanford centers that already draw on social science. In addition to PACS and the McCoy Center for Ethics, we also are developing collaborations with the Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Freeman Spogli Institute, and a policy initiative that Jeremy Weinstein is leading. We also engage with several of the Law School labs.
But our reach is now well beyond Stanford. The Long Now Foundation and its “Conversations at the Interval” salon series is now an institutionalized opportunity for current and past fellows to address interested public audiences from Silicon Valley and San Francisco. More recently, we have been providing speakers for the Talks at Google program. Both venues attract audiences all over the world through live-streaming and videos.
Our aim with these and other outreach opportunities is to attract new friends to CASBS. It is also part of our systematic and concerted effort to demonstrate what an important role the Center plays in ensuring that human beliefs, behavior, and actions are taken into account in any effort to explain and solve major issues facing society.
My first years as director were devoted to building the staff infrastructure and the CASBS culture to support a center truly devoted to far-reaching thinking about human beliefs, behavior, and actions. We have largely succeeded in those first steps.
The next years will be devoted to further improvement of our fellowship experience, advancement of our ongoing research programs/networks, and expansion of our strategic communications. Particularly when it comes to enhancing capacity to generate great research programs and networks, we will depend in part on our fellows, past and current, who are generally the source of ideas and leadership for these projects. But our effectiveness to make the most of these programs also depends on increased external funding for them, on staff capacity to elicit funds and help with administration, and on modernized space and telecommunications for larger collaborative working groups.
CASBS has a long and distinguished history; its future promises to be more exciting and more influential. The Center created the model of bringing together distinguished faculty on their sabbatical or transition years, and it is now defining a new model that combines traditional single-year fellowship with multi-year research programs and networks. Our next years will be devoted to making this new model an inspiring reality.
