Founded to Teach Asian Wisdom as a Path, Not a Subject

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The American Academy of Asian Studies was a graduate level school founded in San Francisco in 1950 by the businessman Louis Gainsborough, who provided its primary funding, and Frederic Spiegelberg, a Stanford professor of Sanskrit and comparative religion who served as the Academy's director of studies. Its founding premise set it apart from conventional university religious studies departments: Asian philosophy and religion were taught as living paths to changed consciousness meant to be practiced, not as purely academic subjects to be studied from the outside, a distinction the Academy's founders treated as central to its whole approach rather than as an incidental difference in teaching style.

Alan Watts joined the faculty in 1951 at Spiegelberg's own invitation, teaching alongside figures including Haridas Chaudhuri and the painter Saburo Hasegawa. The Academy brought together scholars and practitioners in a combination American universities of the period rarely attempted, treating Zen, Vedanta and Taoism as traditions to be entered through direct study and practice rather than only catalogued from a lecturer's podium, an approach that drew students seeking a different relationship to Asian religious thought than a conventional seminary or university department offered.