I was a Fellow at the Center in 1987-88. I had been Chair of my department at Michigan for the previous five years, during which time I had hardly any time to turn around, yet alone do anything serious on the scholarly front. So I used my time at the Center to recharge my batteries, learn literatures that I didn’t know enough about, and get going again. I spent a lot of time reading, going to seminars around Stanford, and participating in discussion groups both at the Center and down on the campus. One of those groups, which combined Center and Stanford people, was on “ideas and politics,” and I did write one paper during that year on that general topic, which eventually appeared in an edited volume. The central notion is that ideas matter, not just self-interest, which is a pretty important change in much of the thinking and modeling in the social sciences. After that, I wrote my last book, America the Unusual, which discusses central themes in American political thought and presents a “path dependence” theory which I use to explain why America is different from other industrialized countries. That book did get its intellectual start during my year at the Center, even though I actually wrote it later.
Other Fellows at the Center that year were really important to me. I got to know Bob and Nan Keohane, Doug North, Gordon Wood, Larry Bartels, Jennifer Hochschild, and many others too numerous to mention by name, during that year. They were not only very important to me intellectually, but they have also become life-long friends. I’m still in touch with them nearly three decades later. Knowing people that I met that year has immeasurably enriched my life, not only in a scholarly sense but in a personal sense.
My son, a theater major at Kalamazoo College, visited us that Christmas season, and went to the Center with me one day. After lunch and volleyball, he turned to me and said, “Is there anything like this for theater?” What a great question. And he captured the essence of the place. It’s a wonderful chance for scholars to escape the round of university committees and other commitments that we have, to take a deep breath and reflect, to learn from each other, and to read and write unimpeded by any obligations. And in the end, it’s extremely productive, even for those of us who didn’t “produce” much that particular year. Actually, perhaps especially for us.
Thanks for giving me the chance to express my gratitude, and my hope that this sort of opportunity continues for a long, long time. Kirsten and I both plan to be at the celebration on November 9.
John Kingdon
Professor of Political Science, Emeritus
University of Michigan
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