Mody, Cyrus C.M.Nelson, Andrew J.2013-09-192013-09-192013Mody, Cyrus C.M. and Nelson, Andrew J.. "'A Towering Virtue of Necessity': Interdisciplinarity and the Rise of Computer Music at Vietnam-Era Stanford." <i>Osiris,</i> 28, (2013) University of Chicago Press: 254-277. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/671380.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/72103Stanford, more than most American universities, transformed in the early Cold War into a research powerhouse tied to national security priorities. The budgetary and legitimacy crises that beset the military- industrial- academic research complex in the 1960s thus struck Stanford so deeply that many feared the university itself might not survive. We argue that these crises facilitated the rise of a new kind of interdisciplinarity at Stanford, as evidenced in particular by the founding of the university’s computer music center. Focusing on the “multivocal technology” of computer music, we investigate the relationships between Stanford’s broader institutional environment and the interactions among musicians, engineers, administrators, activists, and funders in order to explain the emergence of one of the most creative and profi table loci for Stanford’s contributions to industry and the arts.engArticle is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.Journal articlehistory of sciencehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1086/671380