On Thursday, Sept. 11, History of Ideas faculty and students gathered in Rapaporte Treasure Hall for an annual panel featuring faculty and student speakers. This year’s discussion theme was centered around the idea that we live in a “garden of forking paths,” and speakers were prompted to discuss a chance encounter from their lives or fields of study that ended up having an enormous impact. The event was moderated by Professor David Katz (HIST), director of the History of Ideas program. 

Katz started the panel by giving a warm welcome to its first speaker, Prof. Maura Jane Farrelly (AMST). Farrelly takes special interest in religion’s impact on history and recently published a book on the Gilded Age frontier in America. 

Farrelly began by passing out a handout to attendees containing three maps. The first map was titled “European North American claims, circa 1750,” the second was titled the “Thirteen ‘original colonies’, 1776” and the third map was titled “European North American claims, circa 1774.” She then brought up her central question: why isn’t Canada a part of the United States? 

Looking at the map of European North American claims circa 1750, the answer seems obvious enough — Canada was occupied by France while the U.S. was occupied by Britain, and the Revolutionary War was explicitly against the British government. However, as Farrelly explained, the answer is not that simple. By 1774, a large amount of Canadian land had been ceded to the British, as shown on the European claims circa 1774 map. 

Farrelly then explained the “real” reason why Canada didn’t rebel against Britain along with the U.S. On Oct. 26, 1774, a letter written by three members of the Continental Congress was sent to Quebec asking for them to join the movement against Britain. The letter pointed out that the Canadians, having been occupied by France, were mostly Catholic, while Britain was strictly Protestant. The message was printed in the Montreal Gazette, and public opinion moved toward joining the revolutionaries in America. 

However, a couple variables shifted. First: The British government passed the Quebec Act, which permitted the practice of Catholicism in Canadian colonies. Second, by pure chance, a citizen of Montreal read a letter from the Continental Congress addressed to a British citizen that harshly criticized the Catholic religion and its being permitted in Quebec. Without this chance encounter along with the context of conflicting religions, Farrelly explained, Canada might have ended up as part of the United States. 

The next speaker was Jacob Sarver ’27, a Philosophy major, History of Ideas minor and member of Brandeis’ Mock Trial team. Sarver took a more personal approach to the panel’s theme, explaining how his experiences at Brandeis have encouraged him to “stop taking opportunities for granted and work to create them instead.” 

Sarver first told the audience about his chance encounter with Katz at the academic fair during his first year, which launched his academic interests and career at Brandeis. Sarver emphasized the ease with which many people “coast along a baseline” and the importance of taking action in order to enrich your life and combat complacency. He praised Brandeis for creating a community that is interested in creating opportunities and sharing them with others. “Rise together is cliche, but I think it’s accurate,” he said about Brandeis’ well-known slogan. 

Katz then welcomed Prof. Albion Lawrence (PHYS), a specialist in string theory and quantum field theories. He told the story of Alan Guth, who is known today as one of the founders of modern cosmology. He is famous for his theory of cosmic inflation, which explains why the density of the universe is relatively homogenous. 

Guth, Lawrence explained, had been in his third year as a postdoc at Cornell University and was having trouble finding a job. His friend, Henry Tye, encouraged him to work on the magnetic monopole problem with him. Guth was hesitant, wanting to continue searching for a job, but Tye eventually encouraged him to join his project. Their work took off, and Guth was able to continue working on his and Tye’s theory at Stanford University. Today, he is a world-renowned physicist and securely employed. 

Lawrence was inspired to share Guth’s story, as it highlights the importance of being aware of problems in other fields in addition to being a tide-turning moment in physics. 

The next student speaker, Bebe Weisbard, shifted gears by talking about how her life was changed by her love for the post-hardcore band Alesana. Her introduction to the band was by listening to their song “Annabel,” which immediately captivated and intrigued her. Soon, her life was consumed by Alesana, and she was inspired to start playing the drums and eventually to start her own punk band. 

During her listening, she realized that the lyrics of “Annabel” were based on Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “Annabel Lee.” Fascinated, she embarked on a journey to understand every reference in Alesana’s discography. Her listening took her on a journey through a variety of classic literature, which became a personal and academic inspiration. As the student explained, she never would have been the person she is without stumbling upon “Annabel” all those years ago.

Katz then welcomed Prof. Muna Güvenç (FA), an esteemed architect and author of “The City is Ours: Spaces of Political Mobilization and Imaginaries of Nationhood in Turkey.” Güvenç’s research focuses on Kurdish political movements in Turkey, and how architecture is used to mobilize citizens. During her research, she spent a significant amount of time in Kurdish communities and worked to earn their trust and acceptance. 

While studying for her Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley, Güvenç had a chance encounter with another woman who was Turkish. The two discussed their research, and Güvenç told the woman about her work with the Kurdish community. What Güvenç didn’t realize was that this woman was the daughter of the president of Turkey at the time, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

One year later, in 2011, Güvenç received a phone call from an unknown number. She picked up, and was shocked to receive an invitation to join Erdoğan‘s campaign. Her work had struck a chord with his daughter, and he thought she would be an asset. Two hours later, Güvenç was in the airport on her way to Turkey. 

Being on Erdoğan‘s campaign was eye-opening for Güvenç. The way citizens treated the president starkly contrasted her experience within the Kurdish community. As she described, citizens would ignore his power or protest against him. It was a fascinating experience, and one that she would not have had without her chance encounter with Gül’s daughter in California. 

The next student speaker was Eric Cherny ’26, who has published a poetry book. Cherny described an unexpected opportunity while traveling in Vienna: the chance to go on a “Sigmund Freud tour of Vienna.” At the time, Cherny thought that psychology was pseudoscience, and was generally uninterested in it as a subject. The tour changed his mindset and was described by Cherny as “life-changing.” He saw parallels between himself and Freud, as both of them were young Jewish men looking to become lawyers. Today, Cherny is conducting psychological research and applying to Ph.D. programs in clinical psychology. 

Dr. Maria Madison (HELLER) was next, and she emphasized that the “secret sauce” of  transformative movements in society is interconnectedness, and the ability to understand individual context. She gave a few notable examples, starting with Geoffrey Hinton, an important pioneer in the creation of artificial intelligence. Hinton had been writing his dissertation in neural networks of the human brain when he decided to use programming to assist him. While trying to map out a way that computers mirror the human brain, he stumbled upon the foundations of artificial intelligence. 

Madison emphasized the importance of hearing voices that have traditionally been marginalized. She highlighted Gladys West, whose research was crucial in the development of the Global Positioning System, or GPS. Madison also highlighted Ida B. Wells, a leader of the early civil rights movement who used her journalistic prowess to expose corruption and campaign against lynching. She named Fannie Lou Hamer, who, after being forcefully sterilized, had the courage to document and fight the mass scale sterilization of Black women. 

Though Madison’s examples did not focus on any specific moment, they exemplified the power of how context and accumulated experiences can come together and create impact. 

The event’s final student speaker was Evelyn Bagley ’27, who discussed two close encounters with contingency and how people are shaped by chance and by choice. The first example Bagley discussed came up in a seminar with Prof. Janet McIntosh (ANTH). In the seminar, Bagley learned about spots in the U.S. Mexico border that are intentionally left open. They are called “death corridors," stretches of desert that are extremely dangerous to cross. Bagley also learned about Hostile Terrain 94, an ongoing exhibit by the Undocumented Migration Project that has participants make toe tags for people who died in the desert between Arizona and Mexico. The collaborative memorial gives weight to their deaths, and provides a sense of interconnectedness and grief for its participants. 

Bagley’s second encounter with contingency occurred at a school of linguistics in the Czech Republic. She studied with Dr. James Kirby, who studies East Asian Language. Bagley learned about how syntax (sentence structure) and morphology (word forms) had previously been seen as separate, but actually influence each other in significant ways. For example, Kirby’s research revealed that many speakers of East Asian languages are much more sensitive to smaller differences in tone due to the structure of their languages being more tone-centric. In this way, even small structural changes in language ripple out and dramatically shape how one views the world. 

The last faculty speaker of the event was Prof. John Burt (ENG), author of “Lincoln’s Tragic Pragmatism,” among other publications. Katz noted that this was Burt’s last semester at Brandeis after a long and prolific career. Burt, speaking on his area of expertise, analyzed a moment in the American civil war that could have become a major turning point but did not: the battle of Antietam. 

Burt explained how after Confederate forces had won the Battle of Bull Run, John Pope was discredited as the commander of the Federal Army. George McClellan took his place. Taking advantage of the Confederate victory at Bull Run, Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland and made the risky decision to split his army in half. McClellan, who had a larger army and was fighting against split forces, could have easily destroyed the Confederate army during this invasion. However, he did not, for several reasons. First, he believed that his army was smaller than Lee’s, due to false information being spread after the Confederate army had blown up bridges and cut telegraph wires. Second, he believed the army was exhausted. Lee was allowed to escape. 

After his speech, Burt was the second person to receive a History of Ideas baseball hat, a memento of his incredible work at the University. The touching moment concluded the event, a testament to the idea that even the most mundane moments have the capacity to make waves. 

— Correction: An earlier version of this article misnamed the president of Turkey. It has since been corrected to “Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.”

— Correction: An earlier version of this article expressed uncertainty regarding a speaker’s name. It has since been updated to “Bebe Weisbard.”