Time to Think

To scholars who cry for time to stretch the mind, a curious oasis in central California beckons like Elysium. The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, initial-named the Casbah, has been called "a resort for academic hipsters, a dreamy pad for a bunch of non-celibate monks." Its stunning redwood-and-glass buildings, sprawled elegantly on a green hill above Palo Alto, make it look like a motel for Rolls-Royce owners. It comes close to being a boondoggle--and one of the world's most exciting havens for deep thinkers.

Insights & Irreverence. One day last week, an odd procession of professors paced the place, each carrying a cornstalk. They looked like primitive rain worshipers. In a sense they were. Happy fugitives from many a brain-drying university, they were free to ponder--corn. And to their mentor. Botanist Edgar Anderson of St. Louis' Washington University, corn is the kernel of everything.

"Most of you have sharp minds not connected to your eyes," said Anderson. Brandishing his stalk, he analyzed its structure with a breathless flow of higher mathematics; he tossed in rich dollops of economics, sociology and religion. "Man's history is that of maize, the great crop," said he. "In this highly patterned world, you must see more and more complex patterns." Murmured a dazzled Dutch psychologist: "A-maize-ing."

Insights--and irreverence--are the daily Casbah pattern. The point is to give outstanding scholars a free year (at their regular salaries), and let them nourish one another "in the raw." Begun five years ago with a Ford Foundation grant, the Casbah (grants to date: $10.3 million) was built near Stanford University because scholars liked the isolation and their wives liked the weather. Already 233 fellows have passed through, representing 52 institutions and eleven foreign countries. Director Ralph Tyler, onetime dean of social sciences at the University of Chicago, has no trouble recruiting. His fat waiting list now includes 5,000 nominees.

Darts & Volleyball. Casbah's first 36 fellows got mired in false starts and misfired projects. Recalls one charter scholar: "We didn't know what to do with the freedom. By Christmas the two most popular people were the two analysts. Everybody wanted room on their couches. We began to form committees and seminar groups, until everybody began bitching about too much organization. Then we settled down, and in the last six months we did a prodigious amount of work."

This year's 44 fellows are the cream of their trades. On hand is Political Scientist Benjamin Wright, former president of Smith College. From the University of Chicago comes Allison Davis, a distinguished Negro education professor. The other scholars include three psychiatrists and two law specialists. Their universities range from Texas and Harvard to Oxford and Amsterdam. From the University of Warsaw will come the first Iron Curtain visitor. Sociologist Stefan Nowakowski. And not least is Takdir Alisjahbana, celebrated philosopher of culture at Indonesia's National University, a gentle little man "wandering up and down the universe, shopping for what he can take home."

The fellows work out their edginess with darts and volleyball, are committed to no formal schedule of meetings. They dress casually, work in private studies with a sweeping view of the Bay area and a pool of typists to unscramble their scribblings. When a scholar feels he has something worth discussing, he pins a note on the bulletin board, expounds to whoever shows up. The talk is seldom trivial. Botanist Anderson, the corn man, was grappling last week with his unique specialty: a complex new method for "seeing" evolution as it actually happens.

Needs & Wants. Not all Casbah scholars are social scientists. Recent alumni include M.I.T.'s noted Mathematician Claude Shannon and Literary Critic Mark Schorer, who worked on his biography of Novelist Sinclair Lewis. "Here I need no library," said Harvard Linguist Roman Jakobson. "If I have a question in psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, literature, I just go down a few doors and knock: 'May I come in?' "

Cross-fertilization sometimes works so well that it proves distracting. Psychologist Charles Osgood of the University of Illinois came to write a book on language behavior, wound up studying Hopi Indians at the edge of the Grand Canyon. But the usual effect is heady reappraisal. One famed fellow recalls that his pre-Casbah world had shriveled to six friends with the same opinion. At his first Casbah meal, he was plumped down with a sociologist, a historian and a literary critic. "That first luncheon," he said, "was like opening windows in a stuffy room." Equally impressive is Yale Neurosurgeon Karl Pribram's summation. For him the Casbah's value lay as much in a personal boost as in other people's ideas. "You have no administration, no classes, no students. You can evaluate your own work in terms of your own needs and wants, not society's. When you go back into the world, you can better gauge what you can fluff off--and what is basic."

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