Ideas By Jamil Zaki November 23, 2024 7:00 AM EST Zaki, PhD., is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He is the author of Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness I n a letter to his wife, Olga, the playwright and political dissident Václav Havel wrote, “Hope is a dimension of the spirit. It is not outside us, but within us.” Havel sent the note from a Prague jail, after being imprisoned for criticizing his