Steven D. Goodman, co-director of Asian and Comparative Studies, received his Ph.D. (1984) in Far Eastern Studies from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. He has lectured and taught Buddhist philosophy and comparative religion at the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara, Rice University, the Graduate Theological Union, Nyingma Institute, and Naropa Institute. In 1994, Steven was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship at Rice University Center for Cultural Studies for the study of Tibetan mystical poetry. He is the co-editor of Tibetan Buddhism: Reason and Revelation, a source book for the study of Tibetan philosophical and visionary literature (SUNY Press, 1992), and author of "Transforming the Causes of Suffering" in Mindfulness in Meaningful Work (Parallax Press, 1994).

Steven is interested in the broad issues of comparativism and cross-cultural interpretation. His specialty is the Indo-Tibetan influenced forms of Mahayana and Vajrayana (tantric) Buddhism in traditional rural Himalayan settings and in contemporary urban settings. Steven's research and travels in Afghanistan, Iran, India, Ladakh, Nepal, and Bhutan have furthered his study of the social context of East-West contact, particularly the effects of modernization on the adaptation and survival of Buddhist traditions.