T 1 1 he Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences has weathered well its first fifteen years on its hilltop overlooking Stanford and, in fact, has come to be regarded as a kind of grand lamasery of the social and behavioral sciences. Established in the early 1950s with construction and operating grants from the Ford Foundation, the Center was dedicated to the proposition that the behavioral sciences stood poised at a pivotal takeoff point. Now, a decade and a half later, the Center's contribution to advancing the state of the art and the status of the behavioral sciences appears to satisfy the founders and their beneficiaries. As the dialetic of disruption on campus has ground forward, some faculty members have begun to look for refuge from the campus wildlife by postulating alternatives to the university and, not surprisingly, the Center has been seen as a possible prototype of the off-campus sanctuary for scholars. The idea at first flush may appeal, but in the context of American scholarly life, may well not be all that viable. In addition to raising serious financial' questions, the idea creates a fundamental conflict of loyalties for the individual scholar and, for an institution like the Center, a dilemma over purpose. At the time of its original design, the Center represented a deliberate break with the models for research institutions of the moment. The Center resembled the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton to the extent that it is adjacent to, not part of, a major university. But there the resemblance virtually ceased. The Center was not intended to have an Einstein or an Oppenheimer as presiding genius, nor was it meant to have a nucleus of fellows with permanent appointments, nor other recognizable transplants of European traditions. At the Center, fifty fellows were to be chosen annually to come into residence for a year. They were to be drawn from the full range of social and behavioral sciences and adjacent disciplines and expected to treat each other as John Walsh is on the news staff of Science magazine.