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History of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. From Report to Ford Foundation, 1954

Having most recently posted brief histories of the behavioral sciences as reported by Harvard and Chicago to a larger Ford Foundation Project that was completed 1953-4, I simply couldn’t resist going the extra mile to add the corresponding chapter for Stanford University’s contribution to the project here. I have added boldface to highlight economics-specific information for those of you historians of economics in a hurry.

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[p. 6]

Chapter 3
The Development of the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford

I. PRIOR TO THE SECOND WORLD WAR

A. Teaching. When instruction at the University began, in 1891, there were at Stanford only three departments—History, Psychology, and Economics and Social Science—embracing the field of the behavioral sciences. The last of these had three divisions: I. Political Economy, Statistics and Finance; II. Sociology; and III. Political Science. Thus all the present behavioral science departments except Journalism were present in some form or other from the very start. The Economics Department retained its conglomerate character as the haven of incipient departments until the Second World War.

In the next year, 1892, there were added two new departments — Education and Law — which for a period of years were closely related to the original three. The Department of Law was not conceived on a merely vocational basis, but listed among its “ultimate aims” the furnishing of “such instruction in the elementary principles of Anglo-American law as may properly form a part of the education of an American citizen”; the furnishing of “such instruction in commercial law as may be adapted to the needs of those who intend to become merchants, bankers, brokers, etc. or to follow other lines of business”; the providing “for students intending to enter the public service, adequate instruction in public and international law”; and the furnishing “to students of political and social science, training in special branches of law related to such subjects”.1 The Department of Education in its very first year listed at least one course, “Studies on Children”, that was [p. 7] substantially a psychology course, and over the many succeeding years such courses were increased in number and scope as the Department developed into a School.

The “charter members” of the Stanford faculty in the behavioral sciences included at least two eminent figures. Andrew Dickson White, who had been President of Cornell from 1866-1885 and Minister to Germany from 1879-1881, was the first Professor of History. His service at Stanford was interrupted from 1892-1894 while he was President Cleveland’s Minister to Russia and in 1896 while he served on the Venezuelan Commission. The first Professor of Law was Benjamin Harrison, who came to his chair at Stanford immediately on taking his leave of the Presidency of the United States in 1893. The original Professor of Psychology, Frank Angell, continued in his chair until 1921 and was the last of the “charter” faculty in the behavioral sciences to retire. Amos Griswold Warner, first Professor of Economics, had been Superintendent of Charities in Washington, D. C. The stamp of his influence was reflected in the curriculum for most of the years following until the Second World War, particularly in the emphasis on social institutions, on reform and remedial legislation, and on charities and humanitarianism.

Stanford was coeducational from the start; in fact, the first person awarded the Ph.D. degree in the behavioral sciences was a woman, Mary Roberts Smith, who received her degree in Sociology in the year 1896. The first doctorate in any field had been awarded two years before in Geology. In the very first academic year, nine behavioral science degrees were awarded, 8 in History and 1 in Economics and Social Science. There were 63 student majors in the behavioral sciences that year—1 in Psychology, 49 in History, and 13 in Economics and Social Science. At the second commencement 4 students of History and 1 in Economics and Social Science were granted master’s degrees, the first in the departments’ history. The first class to complete four years’ residence, 1894-95, graduated 31 in behavioral sciences: [p. 8] 20 A.B.’s and 1 M.A. in History, 6 A.B.’s in Economics and Social Science, and 4 A.B.’s in Law.

The curriculum of the first year, especially in History and in Economics and Social Science, reflected the major concerns and horizons of that age. The Psychology Department offered only two courses, Elementary and Advanced Psychology. The History Department offered courses in Greek, Roman, and Medieval History, the History of the Christian Church, of the English Constitution, of the French Revolution, of the Pacific Slope, and American Political History — a historical diet confined largely to the history of Western Europe and Anglo-America. The History Department listed three courses for graduate students with this explanation: “The courses offered to graduate students are especially designed to afford a training in methods of historical research, through the use of original materials. The results of such investigations are presented in the seminary, to which these courses are tributary. No attempt, however, is made sharply to separate the undergraduate from the graduate department. Graduates will often find it to their advantage to take courses designated for undergraduates; while undergraduates with adequate preparation may, by invitation of the professor, be admitted to courses primarily designed for graduates.”2 The problem of graduate courses has, it can be seen, been with us from the beginning. The fuzziness of disciplinary lines is reflected in the first list of courses in the Department of Economics and Social Science. As a matter of interest it is reproduced here.

  1. Principles of Political Economy. Elementary course.
  2. Advanced Economic Theory: Bimetallism, Railway Transportation, etc.
  3. A History of Tariff Legislation in the United States.
  4. Taxation and Finance.
  5. Statistics: History, Theory, and Technique.
  6. [p. 9] Social Science: with special reference to Public Charities and the Management of Penal Institutions.
  7. A Study of Industrial Corporations.
  8. A History of Agriculture and Prices.
  9. Commercial Relations of the United States.
  10. History of Economic Theories.
  11. Civil Service Reform in England and the United States.
  12. Sociology
  13. Land and Land Tenure. The Australian System of Registration.
  14. Method in Domestic Consumption.
  15. Communism and Socialism.
  16. Co-operation: Its History and its Influence.
  17. A History of Industry, including Trade Unions, Guilds, Factory Systems, Strikes, Arbitration, Labor Organizations, etc.
  18. Municipal Administration: the Natural Monopolies, Police, Taxation, etc.
  19. Railroad Management: A Course offered in cooperation with the Engineering Department.
  20. City and State Politics.
  21. A History of Estates and Land Tenure in California.
  22. Recent Social Reform.

 

There were many changes during the University’s first fifty years. One of the early changes occurred in 1899 in the Department of Law. In that year the departmental objective was redefined: “This Department offers such courses in Law as are usually given in professional law schools.”3 in that year a three-year program leading to the Bachelor of Laws degree was inaugurated, and the A.B. in law was soon thereafter abandoned.

The changing names of the Department originally called Economics and Social Science reflect its changes in personnel and curriculum. Sociology courses waxed and waned several times in its history. Political Science ran a more even course, but it also virtually disappeared in the years from 1902 until 1908. The following table summarizes the development of this department.

Department Title:   Years

Department of Economics and Social Science:   1891-1894
Department of Economics and Sociology:   1895-1901
Department of Economics and Social Science:   1902-1911
[p. 10]
Department of Economics:   1912-1914
Department of Economics and Political Science:   1915-1918
Department of Economics:   1919 – date
Department of Political Science:   1919 – date
Division of Sociology, Department of Economics:   1926 through 1940

While the Department of Psychology expanded very slowly in its first thirty years under Professor Angell, the psychology offering in the Department of Education4 flourished in the earlier years (1897-1903) under Professor Edwin Diller Starbuck and later (1910-1921) under Professor Lewis Madison Terman. On Professor Angell’s retirement in 1921, President Wilbur designated Professor Terman head of the Department of Psychology, after which date the department grew rapidly in personnel, in curriculum, and in enrollment. Whereas in the preceding years the psychology curriculum in the Department of Education had rivaled that of the department proper in every respect, thereafter the Psychology Department was dominant.

One of the present behavioral sciences originated at Stanford in the humanities curriculum. In 1908 the Department of English Literature and Rhetoric announced that “students preparing for journalism may substitute for the more advanced courses in literature, courses in Advanced Composition, History, Economics and Social Science.”5 In 1910 Everett Wallace Smith gave a course in News Writing in this department. In 1917 Journalism became a sub-division of the Department of English. It became the Division of Journalism in 1920, and in 1924 the Division was transferred from the Department of English to the jurisdiction of the newly organized School of Social Sciences.6

[p. 11] In the years following upon the First World War there were two major additions to the behavioral science resources of Stanford, both deriving from the interests and activities of her most celebrated alumnus, Herbert Hoover. These were, of course, the Food Research Institute established in 1921 and the Hoover War Library established in 1924. “The Food Research Institute is organized under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York for the purpose of studying the production, distribution, and consumption of food,” declared the Annual Register of 1922. “The Hoover War Library is a collection of materials for research in the causes, conduct, and results of the Great War, covering also the period of reconstruction since the end of the war. These materials are of all kinds and from all the nations of the world, whether belligerent or neutral, but special efforts have been made to secure those which will be useful in research along the lines of non-military history and on social, economic, and governmental problems.”7

There was also expansion in this post-war period in the direction of a required course for freshmen not intent upon a behavioral science major. In 1923, Professor Edgar Eugene Robinson of the History Department was made director of an interdisciplinary program in Citizenship. It consisted of “a general introductory course required of all students in their first year. Designed to present the salient features in the bases and background of present-day society; to consider the place of education in modern life and the political equipment of the citizen; and to examine in detail the fundamental political, social, and economic problems of the American people.”8 Lectures were given by professors in such fields as History, Geology, Law, Philosophy, Political Science, Mechanical Engineering, Education, and Psychology. These were supplemented by smaller discussion groups. In 1935 [p. 12] Citizenship gave way to the History of Western Civilization under the jurisdiction of the Department of History, by this time headed by Professor Robinson, as the course required of all freshmen. It retained the technique of combining lectures with discussion sessions.

One may perhaps summarize the growth of the faculty over the University’s first fifty years by citing some of the better-known names among them. The Department of History included such regular members as Max Farrand, Ralph Haswell Lutz, Edward Maslin Hulme, Thomas Andrew Bailey, and George Vernadsky, and such visitors as Carl Lotus Becker, Guy Stanton Ford, Ralph Henry Gabriel, Samuel Flagg Bemis, and Carlton J. H. Hayes. The Department of Psychology had Walter R. Miles, Lewis Madison Terman, Calvin B. Stone, and Ernest Hilgard as members, and Karl Buhler, Albert Edward Michotte, Kurt Lewin, and Edwin G. Boring as visitors. The Economics Department claimed among its number Thorstein Veblen, Alvin Saunders Johnson, Harley Leist Lutz, Bernard Francis Haley, Joseph Stancliffe Davis, and Theodore Harding Boggs, and among its visitors Frank Albert Fetter, John Maurice Clark, Charles Jesse Bullock, Alvin Harvey Hansen, Jacob Viner, and Fritz Machlup. The political scientists included such permanent professors as Westel Woodbury Willoughby, Burt Estes Howard, Victor J. West, Edward Angell Cottrell, Thomas Swain Barclay, Hugh McDowall Clokie, and Charles Fairman, and such guests as James Wilford Garner, Arthur N. Holcombe, Francis William Coker, Edward Samuel Corwin, Harold Hance Sprout, Arthur W. MacMahon, Henry Russell Spencer, Peter H. Odegard, William Anderson, Clyde Eagleton, James Kerr Pollock, and Leonard Dupee White.9 Among the sociologists there were Charles N. Reynolds and Richard LaPiere. From 1907 to 1914 George H. Sabine was a member of the Department of Philosophy.

The office of Executive Head of the Department was first mentioned in the Annual Register of 1913-1914. It was early established that the Stanford [p.13] policy was to have a permanent department head rather than a rotating one, except in the Food Research Institute. The Department of Economics had two permanent heads in the period from the beginning of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War, Murray Shipley Wildman (1915-1930) and Bernard Francis Haley (from 1931). History had four chairmen: Edward Benjamin Krehbiel (1913-1914), Ephraim Douglas Adams (1914-1922), Payson Jackson Treat (1922-1930), and Edgar Eugene Robinson (from 1930). Psychology had two chairmen: Frank Angell (1913-1922) and Lewis Madison Terman (from 1922). Political Science also had two: Victor J. West (1919-1927) and Edwin Angell Cottrell (from 1927). The Food Research Institute had three joint directors, who rotated the executive directorship among them – Alonzo Engelbert Taylor, Carl Lucas Alsberg, and Joseph Stancliffe Davis. In 1942 the present director, Merrill Kelley Bennett became executive director. There were two chairmen of the Hoover War Library: Ephraim Douglass Adams (1923-1924) and Ralph Haswell Lutz (from 1924), as there were in the School of Social Sciences—Murray Shipley Wildman (1923-1930) and Edwin Angell Cottrell (from 1930)–and in the Department of Journalism— Everett Wallace Smith (1927-1933) and Chilton Rowlette Bush (from 1933).

Until the year 1908-1909 the History Department had the greatest enrollment of student majors. In that year the Economics Department overtook History and with the exception of a few years immediately following has remained the largest department in terms of total enrollment in the behavioral sciences area. The History Department, however, continued to have the greatest enrollment of graduate students throughout this period. From the beginning, the Psychology Department had the smallest enrollment in the behavioral sciences area. When the Political Science Department was established in 1919, it immediately exceeded the Psychology Department in enrollment. From the year 1922 on—the first of Professor Terman’s chairmanship—the number of graduate students was higher [p. 14] in proportion to undergraduates in the Psychology Department than in any other behavioral science department.

The table which follows summarizes the degrees granted by the several behavioral science departments in the first fifty years of Stanford’s history, and in the case of Ph.D.’s through the academic year 1952-1953.

A.B.’s M.A.’s Ph.D.’s
 

Depart-ment

 Prior 1920 1921-1940 Prior 1920 1921-1940 Prior 1920 1921-1940 1941-1953
Econo-mics 600 2998 34 82 4 41 14
History 708 917 90 223 2 55 63
Journal-ism 8 317 0 20 0 0 0
Food Research 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Inter-national Relations 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
Political Science 7 1000 1 138 0 33 26
Psycho-logy 31 303 1 70 1 49 64
Sociology & Anthro-pology * 159 * 22 1 12 9
Social Sciences 0 1161 0 9 0 1 0

*Prior to 1928, Sociology A.B.’s and M.A.’s were included as Economics Degrees.

It is noteworthy that the number of A.B.’s in Psychology increased ten times in the inter-war years as compared with the first thirty years, and the A.B.’s in Economics six times in the same period, in spite of the fact that in the later period such new departments and programs as Political Science, Sociology, and Social Sciences siphoned off elements among the students previously included under Economics. Growth in terms of the number of advanced degrees awarded is similarly reflected in comparing the two periods—with the single exception of the number of Ph.D.’s granted in Economics between 1941 and 1953. Whereas the average had earlier been [p. 15] about two Economics Ph.D.’s a year, in the more recent period it has declined to slightly more than one per year.

In all the fields there has been a great increase in the number of courses given. In the inter-war years the departments began to classify their course offerings both as to level of complexity and as to subject matter. The establishment of the lower division and the increase in the size of the faculty were among the factors leading to this change. It is also possible to detect changes in emphasis in the course offerings of the departments over the years, reflecting both the development of the subject matter of the several fields and the shifting interests of individual faculty members.

In the field of psychology, for example, in the first thirty years the courses primarily bore such all-embracing titles as Elementary, Advanced, Experimental, Applied, Systematic, Comparative, and Social Psychology and Psychological Literature. Child psychology and testing were offered in the School of Education. After the First World War, statistics, physiology, clinical psychology, child psychology, and testing, personality measurement, and vocational guidance were emphasized in the curriculum.

Throughout the first fifty years of Stanford’s history the economics curriculum was dominated by courses on economic institutions as opposed to economic theory. Courses on railroads, corporation finance, money and banking, economic history, labor legislation, accounting, insurance, tax procedure and the like comprised the major part of the offering. Secretarial training was also included in the economics curriculum. It is apparent that the primary objective of this department was to afford apprenticeship to a business career. In the later years of this period, however, there was an increase in the offering of theoretical [p. 16] courses such as capital and income, production economics, mathematical economics, value and distribution, and the history of economic thought.

Perhaps the most striking changes in emphasis over the years occurred in the history curriculum. The early emphasis on Rome, the Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance, and British constitutional history was supplemented in the first decade of the century by courses in International Law, Diplomatic History of the United States, and the Westward Movement in the United States, and such courses in the history of the Far East as the History of Australasia, the Philippines, and Tropical Colonization in the Far East. In 1911 there were added a course on Spain and Spanish America and one on international conciliation, and in 1913 the first courses in Japanese history. After the war there appeared courses in the Slavic nationalities, Russia, the Baltic States, the World War, and the Paris Peace Conference. As the number of courses on modern Europe, the history of the United States, Latin America and the Far East increased, Greek and Roman history were taken over by the Classics Department; international law and conciliation were taken over by the Department of Political Science and the School of Law; and the Middle Ages and the History of the Christian Church assumed-a lesser role.

When political science was still a part of the Economics Department, such courses as the theory of the state, methods of legislating, administration of states, cities, and towns, practical politics, modern federal government, and political theory were offered. The History Department, as has been noted, offered courses in the international field. When the Department of Political Science was organized after the war, the course offering fell into the following general areas: elementary courses in American government and state and local government, comparative government, political theory, political parties, administration, relation of [p. 17] government and industry, and international relations. As early as 1924 there was a course in quantitative measurements in public administration, and in the following year there was a course in political statistics. In 1928 a course in public law was offered for the first time. With the exception of the statistical courses, these general areas have continued to be the principal ones in the political science curriculum.

Throughout the first fifty years of the University’s history, the sociology curriculum was combined with Economics. There is, however, evidence of the development of the subject matter during this period. In the nineties there were courses in static and dynamic sociology (using as texts Herbert Spencer and Lester F. Ward), in social pathology, charities and corrections, penology, and even statistics and sociology. Static and dynamic sociology disappeared, but charities, causes of poverty, and courses of that type persisted into the war years. After the war the character of the courses changed. Problems of Poverty, of Child Welfare, Crime as a Social Problem, and Care of Dependents were courses given in the early twenties. Later, courses in population, rural society, social organization, and sociological theory were added to the curriculum, and from this developed an emphasis that persisted until the Second World War. In 1937 a course in Cultural Anthropology was included in the sociology offering, marking the beginning of anthropological instruction.

We have already noted the beginnings of Journalism in the English Department, with one course in Newswriting in 1910 supplemented in 1912 by one in Current Newspapers. By 1916 there were eight courses covering newswriting, analysis, reporting, editing, management and advertising. In 1920, as we have seen, Journalism was recognized as a Division of English and, in 1925, of the School of Social Sciences. From this time the curriculum continued to grow—with courses in geographical, [p. 18] sociological and legal aspects of journalism, techniques of propaganda and investigative methods in journalism.

From its inception the Food Research Institute offered a course in Food Research Problems. In 1934 a course for upper division students in The World’s Food was added, and in 1940 there was a considerable increase in the number of courses offered, including Consumption Economics, Commodity Prices, American Agricultural Policy, Foreign Agricultural Policy, and Agriculture and the Business Cycle.

In 1931 the Hoover Library offered a course in Problems of Research. By 1937 this had been expanded to include directed research in such special fields as the World War and Reconstruction, Austria-Hungary, the Bolshevik Party and the Third International, Soviet Policies and the Civil War, Housing in the United States, History of International Relations since 1914, European Totalitarianism, and the German Revolution, 1918-1919.

 

B. Research Institutes and Grants. The establishment of the Hoover War Library just after the First World War inaugurated the first major research development in the behavioral sciences at Stanford. The Annual Report of the President for 1920 notes that:

The Hoover War Library has grown steadily during the year through gifts and purchases. Professor E. D. Adams and Professor Ralph Lutz have been actively engaged in assembling and classifying this notable collection. Several students have already entered the University in order to do research work with the help of this collection and it is inevitable that there will be a considerable increase in the number of such students from year to year.10

In the following year the plans for establishing the Food Research Institute were announced.

[p. 19] During the year the final plans for the organization of the Food Research Institute of Stanford University have been consummated. The general terms of this gift are as follows: A contract was drawn up between Stanford and the Carnegie Corporation of New York in which the University agreed to set up the research organization ‘to study the problems of the production, distribution and consumption of foodstuffs’, to appoint 3 scientists as Directors who shall determine the research pursuits and be Professors with teaching a secondary aspect of their duties, appoint a 7 man Advisory Committee, furnish housing etc. free, and disburse the money.11

The Corporation agreed to supply $54,000 from July 1, 1921, to June 30, 1922; $66,000 from July 1, 1922, to June 30, 1923; and $73,000 annually for the next eight years. Two years before the expiration of the contract a conference would be held to determine the Institute’s future status.

The Annual Report12 went on to state that

Dr. Alonzo E.Taylor, Dr. Carl L. Alsberg, and Dr. Joseph S. Davis have been appointed as Directors of the Institute. The Advisory Committee is made up as follows: Mr. Herbert Hoover, Mr. A. R. Howard, of the American Farm Bureau; Dr. John C. Merriam, President of the Carnegie Institution of Washington; Mr. George C. Roeding, Mr. Julius Barnes, President William M. Jardine, of the Kansas State Agricultural College; President of the Carnegie Corporation, President of Stanford University. One of the original buildings in the Inner Quadrangle, formerly occupied by the Department of German, has been set aside for the use of the Directors. The Hoover War Library, which formed the main center of attraction for the Food Research Institute, is being assembled on one floor of the stacks of the new Library with an adjacent special reading room for the use of the members of the Food Research Institute and faculty and students of the Departments of History and Economics. The Food Research Institute constitutes one of the most notable opportunities for research of a wide scope that has come to any university in America within recent years.

In 1924, the specific plans for the Hoover War Library were announced.13

[p. 20] The Hoover War Library is a separate gift and has special endowment funds for the maintenance of certain of its features. It is under the general administration of the University Librarian.

In order to make it possible to:

a. secure acquisitions in the many different fields touched upon by the Library,
b. care for the interests of graduate students and others using the facilities of the Library, and
c. determine upon the lines of development,

Directors of the Hoover War Library are to be appointed with a relationship to the Library similar to that of a departmental faculty …

Many additions have been made to the collection during the course of the year. Mr. Hoover has increased his personal gifts until they now total about $90,000 in cash expended. The Directors of the library are making every reasonable effort to make it one of the great war collections of the world.

When the time came for renegotiation of the original contract of the Food Research Institute, the Carnegie Corporation acted by granting $750,000 in 1931 to provide a permanent endowment. In the brochure of the Institute describing its activities and publications14 its financial history is described as follows:

The [Carnegie] Corporation guaranteed funds for a period of ten years, while Stanford University undertook to provide quarters and facilities for the Institute and accorded it departmental status. Financial support is at present derived jointly from endowment granted by Carnegie Corporation to Stanford University in continuing support of the Institute, from University appropriations, and from short-term grants provided by foundations and other private organizations.

In 1939, the plans for building the Hoover Library building were announced

For some years we have been accumulating funds for the construction of the Hoover Library Building. With the original funds, the gift of $50,000 from Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the $300,000 from the Belgian- American Educational Foundation, Inc.,in hand, the university architects prepared plans for a monumental structure… It is anticipated that the building will be completed in 1940.15

[p. 21] With the completion of this building the two principal research facilities of Stanford’s first fifty years, and, indeed, in the lifetime of the University were solidly established.

The major grants for behavioral science research in the years prior to the Second World War, aside from those for the Hoover Library and the Food Research Institute, were the Laura Spellman Fund of the Rockefeller Foundation, which amounted to $454,838.49; funds to Professor Terman for his studies of intellectually gifted children—$60,673.29 from the Commonwealth Fund and $26,000 from the Carnegie Corporation; and funds for sex research granted to Professors Stone, Miles, and Terman by the Academy of Sciences, amounting to $73,298.73.

The principal publication output of the Hoover Library comprised a series of eighteen books of collected documents, memoirs, and special studies, and those of the Food Research Institute included seventeen volumes of Wheat Studies, three monographs in the Grain Economics Series, seven Fats and Oils Studies, and nine Miscellaneous Publications. The publications resulting from the Laura Spellman Fund are tabulated in Appendix I to Chapter 14.

[p. 22]

II. SINCE THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Since the Second World War the following major ohanges in the behavioral science field have occurred at Stanford:

 

A. New Departments and Agencies Established. The Department of Sociology and Anthropology was set up on an independent basis in 1948. Previously sociology had been under the Department of Economics. Anthropology teaching had begun with the arrival at Stanford in 1945 of Felix M. Keesing, who was to be appointed three years later as head of the new joint department. Other major additions to the staff in this area included Paul Wallin (appointed in 1942) in sociology and Bernard J. Siegel (appointed in 1947) and Bert A. Gerow (appointed in 1948) in anthropology.

The Department of Statistics was established in 1949 under the chairmanship of Albert H. Bowker. It quickly became a major center for research, which two years later was institutionalized as the Laboratory of Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Important staff appointments included Meyer Abraham Girshick (1948), Herman Chernoff (1951), and Charles E. Stein (1953).

In 1943 two professors of geography were brought to Stanford on a permanent basis. Seven years later, geography was established as a separate department under the chairmanship of C. Langdon White.

In 1951 the Committee for Research in the Social Sciences (CRISS) was set up as an inter-departmental body for the initiation, screening, and coordination of social science research. In the following year Alfred de Grazia, of the Political Science Department, was appointed its first executive officer, (see Chapter 8,III).

 

B. Remade Departments. In the years following 1945, first under the chairmanship of Bernard P. Haley and later under that of Edward S. Shaw, [p. 23] the Economics Department was restaffed with a series of outstanding younger scholars. The result has been a “planned” and well-integrated staff. The present national reputation of the department, particularly in the field of economic theory, largely dates from this period. The major additions to the staff, with their dates of appointment, are as follows: Tiber Scitovsky (1946), Lorie Tarshis (1946), Melvin W. Reder (1947), Moses Abramovitz (1948), Paul A. Baran (1949), Kenneth J. Arrow (1949).

A similar expansion tool: place in the Department of Psychology following the appointment of Ernest R. Hilgard as executive head in 1945. Here the chief additions to the staff now at associate or full professor rank included: Lois Meek Stolz (1945), Donald W. Taylor (1.945), Clarence L. Winder (1948), and Douglas H. Lawrence (1949). Last year Robert R. Sears was called to Stanford from a Harvard professorship to succeed Professor Hilgard as head of the department following the latter’s appointment as Dean of the Graduate Division.

The expansion of the Psychology Department was in three directions: (1) the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program supported by the Veterans Administration and the Public Health Service; (2) the nursery school and child development laboratory; (3) the Office of Project Research, as a “holding company” and initiator of research sponsored by the government and the foundations (see Chapter 8,V).

 

C. Changes in Other Behavioral Science Areas. Both History and Political Science have recently acquired new chairmen. In 1952 Thomas A. Bailey was appointed executive head of the former department and James T. Watkins IV of the latter. Today, of the behavioral science departments, only Journalism is under its pre-war head.

Of recent years the Department of History has pursued a vigorous policy of recruiting its staff from highly diversified academic and [p.24] geographical backgrounds. Areas in which substantial new staff recruiting has taken place include Far Eastern History—Claude A. Buss (1946), Arthur F. Wright (1947), and Thomas C. Smith (1948)—and United States history— John C. Miller (1949), Frank Freidel (1953), and Don E. Fehrenbacher (1953).

In Political Science, eight out of ten staff members of the rank of assistant professor and above are post-war appointees. Concurrently the Department has supplemented its earlier emphasis on international relations with added attention to public administration and political behavior.

The immediate post-war years saw the Hoover Institute and Library expanding its interests in new areas to which the Second World War had given increased importance. Whereas the pre-war collections had been heavily concentrated on Central and Eastern Europe, the Far East and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East now became areas of major interest. In 1941, the Hoover Library holdings on Asia and the Middle East consisted only of materials relating to mandates or colonies of European powers. Virtually none of this material was in the vernacular languages of these areas.

Since 1945, the Hoover Library has been making a systematic effort to collect and preserve the sources for the political, social, and economic history of Asia and the Middle East during the twentieth century, together with relevant background materials. The political and social movements of the twentieth century—nationalism, communism, religious movements with political significance, etc.—have formed the basis for the collections. The Chinese collection now numbers some 34,000 volumes; the Japanese collection, some 20,000 volumes; the Middle East collections, principally in Turkish and Arabic, some 8,000 volumes; the South Asian, and Southeast Asian collections are much smaller. These new interests have been reflected in the appointment of highly-trained scholars to serve as curators for the new collections—Christina P. Harris (Middle [p. 25] East), Mary C. Wright (China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia), and Nobutaka Ike (Japan).

Experiments in the application of newer techniques of behavioral science have constituted much of the post-war research in the Hoover Institute. The leading project, Revolution and the Development of International Relations (RADIR), was supported by the Carnegie Corporation.

 

D. Related Professional Schools. A further sign of the post-war tendency toward growth and change can be seen in the appointment of new deans for the School of law (Carl B. Spaeth, 1946), the School of Medicine (Windsor C. Cutting, 1953), and the School of Education (I. James Quillen, 1953).

 

E. Conclusion: Prospects for Continued Development. It is the conviction of the committee responsible for the present survey that the above evidences of development and branching into new fields of teaching and research represent the dominant tendency in Stanford today. The growth potential of the University is apparent in nearly all areas of behavioral science interest. The purpose of the present study is to look ahead on the basis of the foundations now in existence—bearing constantly in mind that for a comparatively small university the most advisable course is considerable specialization within departments rather than an effort to cover all fields equally.

 

[NOTES]

  1. Annual Register, 1892-93, p. 72.
  2. Annual Register, 1891-92.
  3. Annual Register, 1899-1900, p. 98.
  4. Became School of Education in 1917.
  5. Annual Register, 1908-09, p. 89.
  6. Established in 1924.
  7. Annual Register, 1924-25, p.240
  8. Annual Register, 1923-24.
  9. These twelve men are all former presidents of the American Political Science Association, as was W. W. Willoughby, mentioned earlier.
  10. Annual Report of the President, 1920, p. 28.
  11. Annual Report of the President, 1921, p.7.
  12. Ibid., p. 9.
  13. Annual Report of the President, 1924, p.3.
  14. Stanford University Press, 1948, p. 2.
  15. Annual Report of the President, 1939, p. 14.

 

Source: The Stanford Survey of the Behavioral Sciences. Report of the Executive Committee and Staff, July 1954.

Image Source: Library of Congress. Encina Hall, Leland Stanford Junior University (1898).