CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY IN THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

202 Junipero Serra Blvd. * Stanford, Colifornia 94305 Telephone (415) 321-2052

Wednesday Evening Seminar: 4 January 1984
Subject: Life Before Us: Reflections on CASBS History

Speaker: Arnold Thackray “£

. Abstract

After all of sixteen weeks on the job, your historian is far from
feeling an authority on the microcosm of CASBS. And he is
disconcertingly ignorant of large parts of that macrocosm which consists
of the social sciences in the twentieth century. Through this seminar he
therefore aims to give you his first reflections or, in the language of
the behavioral sciences, some hypotheses for testing. He also wishes to
tender an invitation to you to enter into conversation, now and
throughout the remainder of the year, as to what manner of written
history you would like CASBS to have.

The reflections to be offered deal with why CASBS took the form it
did. To understand this it will be necessary to touch on the
Philadelphia Story (why not Haverford?); to think about Henry Ford
("history is bunk"); to consider the wartime experiences of a San
Francisco lawyer; to understand the needs of the US Air Force; to ponder
the role of the Harvard Business School; and to meet our own enigmatic
Third Man, in the person of Paul Lazarsfeld. The presentation will be
illustrated, and will include a movie on the Center which CBS has never
yet dared to show.

Audience: PG

Reading: Dwight Macdonald, The Ford Foundation. The Men and_ the

Millions, 1956 (originally a New Yorker series. On reserve in the
library).