There is a quiet brilliance to Margaret Levi, the kind that doesn’t demand attention but commands it all the same. When she speaks, there is a deliberate precision to her words, the weight of a scholar who has spent a lifetime untangling the complex relationship between citizens and the institutions that govern them. But it is not just her intellect that defines her, it is her ability to bring people together, to shape conversations that might not have happened otherwise.
At the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), where she served as director from 2014 to 2022, Levi did exactly that. CASBS has long been a haven for scholars, an intellectual retreat perched on a wooded hill above Stanford, where economists, political scientists, historians, and cognitive researchers come to wrestle with big ideas. The architecture itself seems designed for such work: mid-century modern buildings with open courtyards, shaded walkways where quiet contemplation gives way to impromptu debate. It is the kind of place where thought deepens, where conversations stretch long into the afternoon, shifting from policy to philosophy over coffee on sunlit terraces.
Levi thrived in this space, not just as a leader but as a thinker. She understood that the greatest breakthroughs often happen at the intersections of disciplines, in the friction of different perspectives. Under her leadership, CASBS became more than an academic retreat; it became a place where scholars were not just reflecting on the world but working to reshape it. She cultivated programs that tackled some of the most urgent questions of our time: How do institutions earn trust? What makes democracy resilient, or fragile? How is technology reshaping governance, and with what consequences?
Her own work sits at the center of these questions. A political scientist by training, Levi has spent her career studying the mechanics of governance, how states secure compliance, what makes policies legitimate, and why people choose to follow or resist authority. She looks not just at what institutions do, but how they sustain themselves over time, how they build the moral authority that makes laws more than just words on a page. It is a field of study that requires both rigorous analysis and a deep understanding of human behavior, and Levi approaches it with both.
To watch her engage with a room full of scholars is to see someone at home in the world of ideas. She listens with care, asking sharp, unexpected questions that push a discussion into new territory. She is not satisfied with easy answers. The same quality that defines her scholarship, an insistence on looking deeper, on understanding not just what happens but why, defines her leadership as well.
When I photographed Levi at CASBS in January 2022, I saw the imprint she had left on the place. It was in the way fellows spoke about their work, in the intellectual energy that pulsed through the center’s halls. She had built something lasting, not just a program, but a culture, a way of thinking. Even now, long after she has passed the directorship to new hands, her presence lingers in the conversations that unfold in the courtyards, in the scholars who arrive searching for answers and leave with better questions.
Levi has spent her career studying institutions, but in many ways, she has also built them. She understands that the best ones are not static; they evolve, they adapt, they are shaped by the people within them. CASBS is one of those institutions, and for nearly a decade, Levi was at its heart, not just leading it, but embodying its highest ideals.
