I first heard of a renowned “Center” set in the hills above Stanford while still an undergraduate at Columbia University, sometime in 1984, as a place with no application process. There, it was said, one could pursue research in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary settings among the sharpest of visiting minds. The place sounded most intriguing so I tucked it away in my mind and headed off to graduate school at Harvard. About four years later, I heard of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences again—now finally I knew its name. It sounded akin to the institution I was in, Harvard’s Society of Fellows, with a secretive nomination-selection process and the benefits of intellectual rigor and freedom. Something to work toward, I said to myself while relocating thereafter to Stanford University for a Mellon post-doc in the History Department.
Upon reaching Stanford, I located the CASBS on a campus map. From 1991-93 I would often gaze southwestward to the hills, imagining but never daring to venture to that neo-Olympus. Finally, in July 1993, just before leaving Stanford for membership in the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, my then fiancé (now spouse) Carol and I drove up Alta Road. Entering the Center’s parking lot I didn’t have the chutzpah to stop and walk around, but do remember sharing with Carol a hope of us returning one day to the scholarly Eden.
From Princeton we moved to Bloomington in the fall of 1994 for me to take up an assistant professorship at Indiana University. Two years later, shortly after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, a letter was awaiting on campus with the return address of “Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 75 Alta Rd, Stanford, CA 94305.” Rushing into my office and ripping open the envelope, in astonishment I read of having been nominated and therefore being requested to submit materials for consideration for a fellowship sometime in the future. I know not who sent my name into the CASBS; nor do I know whether receiving the Guggenheim brought me to the Center’s attention. I got the requested materials back to the CASBS posthaste and hoped to hear back many years later. Another surprise came in two years—the delightful invitation to definitely plan on a fellowship year at the CASBS!
Once tenure and, subsequently, promotion to full rank had been accomplished, in July 2001 Carol, our son Darius who was about to enter first grade, and I packed up and drove cross country to the CASBS. We resided in a Menlo Park bungalow, and I would walk to and from the Center whenever the sun shone—which was most of the time—enjoying the sights of Stanford and the scent of eucalyptus until a spectacular view of the Bay Area would be spread out before me each day as I sat down to work at my office desk.
I finished a book and several articles between August 2001 and July 2002. Yet the enduring intellectual benefits accrued from participation in periodic workshops and seminars—especially one series organized by then CASBS associate director emeritus Bob Scott on the how and why people experience notions of the holy and another series on the mechanisms and permutations of cognition organized by then CASBS associate director Mark Turner. The impact of our readings, discussions, debates, and speculations continue to shape my approaches to the study of the histories, faiths, and societies of the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. Lunchtime at the CASBS was filled with fascinating debates amongst fellows in addition to facilitating delightful conversations with former mentors and colleagues from the university such as former CASBS fellow Peter Stansky the historian of Britain. One observation sticks in mind: almost unfailingly scientists and social scientists kept their plates on the trays while eating whereas humanists would take their plates off the trays and place them upon the deck tables. No explanation, but intriguing group behavioral patterns, usually in the crisp air and warm light of the outdoors.
Alas not all would be idyllic that 2001-02 academic year. Three hours behind the East Coast, I was awoken on September 11th by my wife who had just returned home from cycling our son over to his classes at the Menlo Park-Atherton Laurel School. Planes were crashing into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington. As I watched the scene unfold on TV, my area studies knowledge and fieldwork in the Middle East and South Asia kicked-in: I knew it had to be terrorists, most likely Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, behind that horrific deed. Driving to the CASBS quickly—it was no day for a tranquil walk—we joined other fellows in analyzing the events and evaluating possible responses. One panel, shortly thereafter, in which I participated at the CASBS focused on the most effective ways to bring justice to bear upon the perpetrators. We concluded that carefully tracking them down rather than any large scale military response would be most effective, cause minimal collateral damage, and generate the least amount of societal disruption within the US, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. But the hills above Stanford are a long way from Washington, DC, and, while we scholars at the Center were contemplative there, the politicians were out for blood. So even as the view from my office building’s deck, a vista stretching from the south side of San Francisco to the northern suburbs of San Jose, remained calm, the US went to war against terror.
In the years since 2001-02, I have written and spoken much not only academically about Iran, the Persian Gulf, Islam, and Zoroastrianism, but as a public intellectual about the permutations of Sunni terrorism in the Middle East and its global reach, and about the concomitant rise of Shiite Iran to the threshold of nuclear power. Fellowship at the CASBS came to be intrinsically bound up not only with intellectual expansion but with the realization that understanding needs to be shared. The CASBS and the year it so generously provided to a then 39-year-old will always hold a very special, memorable, indeed tender place in my career and life.
Jamsheed K. Choksy is Distinguished Professor, Professor of Iranian Studies, and Chairman of the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. He also is a Presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed Member of the US government’s National Council on the Humanities.
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