Science History Podcast

Societal problems big and small typically have a scientific element, often in a central way, yet most scientists are not directly involved in policy. My guests sought to change that in 1969 when they created the Stanford Workshops on Social and Political Issues, or SWOPSI. SWOPSI was founded by three students, two of whom are with us today: Joel Primack and Robert Jaffe. The third student was Joyce Kobayashi. Also with us today is my uncle Frank, who worked on some of the early SWOPSI initiatives. In this episode, I ask Joel, Bob and Frank: How did they hack Stanford's rules for course credit to create workshops run by graduate students? What were the goals of SWOPSI? How effective were the workshops in tackling local vs. national or international problems? How did SWOPSI help to create programs for scientists to advise Congress on technical issues? Why did SWOPSI perish as an institution at Stanford? How has US military-sponsored research evolved since the Second World War? And is SWOPSI a good model for young scientists today who want to solve societal problems?

Institutions of higher education, especially in the United States, have received a great deal of attention over the past two generations regarding their ideological march to the left, and the impacts, real or imagined, on society at large. Criticism of American universities has sharpened since Oct. 7, 2023, as the Hamas attack on Israel was closely followed by campus protests against Israel. The ensuing turmoil resulted in the temporary closure of campuses, the resignations of college presidents, the cancellations of speakers and commencement ceremonies, and congressional investigations. How did American universities get to this moment? What are the implications for free speech, social cohesion, and democracy? And what are the repercussions for scholarship and science? My guest, Bret Stephens, has written extensively on the state of American universities, illiberalism, and antisemitism. Bret worked as an assistant editor at Commentary magazine from 1995-1996, after which he moved to the Wall Street Journal. From 2002-2004, Bret served as the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, where he oversaw the most comprehensive overhaul of the paper's content in its 70-year history. He then returned to the Wall Street Journal, where he won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Bret moved to The New York Times in 2017, where he writes as an opinion columnist. He is also a contributor to NBC News and MSNBC, a contributing editor for Commentary magazine, and the editor-in-chief of SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations.

What was the Western World's understanding of the origins of humanity prior to the Enlightenment? Why did Christopher Columbus have a Hebrew speaker on his voyages of exploration? Why did the American universities founded before the Revolution have Hebrew in their curriculum? What role did linguistics play in the late 19th century modernization of the Hebrew language? What does the literary critic Edmund Wilson have to do with the science of archeology? Finally, and unrelated to science, how did the soft power of the arts - including music, theater, dance, film, literature, and television - help to shape the relationship between the United States and Israel? With us to answer this eclectic set of questions is Shalom Goldman. Shalom is the Pardon Tillinghast Professor of Religion at Middlebury College.

Archeology is the science that most directly connects us with our past, and no city in the world has been subject to more archeological interest than Jerusalem. With us to explore the archeology of Jerusalem is Jodi Magness. Jodi is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2002, she has been the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jodi's research interests focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, and Diaspora Judaism in the Roman world. She has studied ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Jerusalem, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East. Today we discuss her most recent book, Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades, published in 2024 by Oxford University Press.