Ideas

In the preface to her last book, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran,1 the late IAS Professor Patricia Crone (1945–2015) relates when and how she became interested in Iranian Studies. It was early on during her time at Oxford that her...

In recent months, the Institute for Advanced Study has issued public statements in response to the original and revised executive orders that restrict travel from predominantly Muslim countries. The orders, currently suspended, cause us great...

This interview with Sabine Schmidtke, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, was conducted by Haytham Samir and Ahmad Shaker and originally published in Arabic as“al-Dirāsāt al-islāmiyya fī Princeton,” Markaz Namāʾ li-l-Buḥūth wa-l-Dirāsāt...

Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science, has edited If Truth Be Told: The Politics of Public Ethnography (Duke University Press, 2017), which includes contributions by former Members Lucas Bessire, Gabriella...

In this public lecture, Thomas Piketty, Professor at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (EHESS) and the École d’économie de Paris/Paris School of Economics, presents new findings and reflections on global inequality dynamics as part...

One of the surprising things about chaos is that it took so long for physicists to appreciate how common it is. This is despite the fact that people seem to come naturally programmed with intuition for the basic phenomenon: that small changes to the...

Abraham Flexner’s perspective on the “usefulness of useless knowledge” has only gained in substance and breadth since his time. First and foremost, as Flexner argues so elegantly, basic research clearly advances knowledge in and of itself...

The Institute for Advanced Study came into being at the most inauspicious of times. Founded in the early years of the Great Depression, it took shape during the buildup to the Second World War and under the growing shadow of authoritarian regimes. Its first Director Abraham Flexner published his manifesto on the “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” in October 1939, barely a month after the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. Surely this was a daunting moment to defend “the fearless and irresponsible thinker” and advocate for the free expression of knowledge and curiosity. 

In this public lecture, held at the Institute on May 5, 2017, Yve-Alain Bois, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, focuses on Matisse's use of the bamboo stick in large-scale works and the bodily conception of scale it entails. In a...

and we bopped to a sync of dry leaves’ kick and crackle
with the Skip-To-My-Lou of daughter Hillary hailing
Princeton’s pre-school bus that mustered those fledgling

flocks set to soar and sing like the...