THE CHANCELLOR GOES TO WASHINGTON
Lepkowski, Wil
The chancellor goes to Washington One morning in April, a lineup of high university officials answered a call from the House Armed Services Committee to make its case for more military money. The...
...No need to amass further instances of academic New Truth...
...They give him credit for restoring higher growth levels for Federal funding of basic research and for raising Department of Defense support of academic science...
...A brochure the Office of Research prepared for academia virtually implored the universities to come forth: "We find that too often good ideas are never brought to DOD's attention," it says, "because the researcher does not see an immediate 'military application.' This is unfortunate, since the extramural researcher is not usually the person who should make this determination...
...The Federation's major agenda has always been to promote the cause of arms control...
...Many university science programs are, indeed, in poor shape...
...Instruments were far out of date...
...Simple logic has dictated ever since the first nuclear bomb went off at Trinity Site that weapons proliferation can lead only to more insecurity in the world...
...Researchers love to hear such blandishments, and there is the added enticement of the Pentagon's reputation for giving a free hand to university scientists, who are allowed to engage in "pure" science with little red tape attached...
...Its a touchy issue," he said...
...Edward J. Bloustein, president of Rutgers University, and James J. Brophy, vice-president for research, University of Utah...
...Scarcity of food, minerals, fuel, equitable and inexpensive shelter—a host of human needs—constitute security issues for all countries...
...Yet year after year, the National Academy of Sciences fails to offer an ambitious, logical critique of the whole premise of national security...
...But the issue is not the need for scientific research...
...Technology is, indeed, needed to solve problems facing the whole global system...
...Said Brophy, "In defense, our current superiorities in the technologies of missile guidance, advanced aircraft, submarines, and space defense systems rest on a foundation of research built up over the last decade or more...
...If we are to retain our lead in critical areas and remain competitive in the world market place, additional work is needed in fields such as computer sciences, materials, and advanced electronics...
...Former Defense Secretary Harold Brown accordingly added to the Pentagon a new Office for Research specifically aimed at convincing colleges and universities that DOD was back in the business of wooing universities...
...John Wright, president of the University of Alabama, Huntsville...
...It is a national problem with strong international implications...
...Not enough young people were taking up science and engineering, they lamented...
...More or less the same line of reasoning was offered by Robert Sproull, president of the University of Rochester...
...They are understandably alarmed at the decline in the number of students interested in pursuing scientific careers...
...Scientists know this...
...the issue, as Noam Chomsky has observed, is whether the academic science community should mutely allow the military culture to seep further and further into the general social system...
...Wil Lepkowski (Wil Lepkowski writes for Chemical & Engineering News in Washington, D.C...
...The academic community muffed it that morning in April...
...Of course...
...Jimmy Carter's science adviser, Frank Press, who in June becomes president of the National Academy of Sciences, is a hero to academic scientists...
...The academics obligingly argued that America's "technology base" was in impossibly sorry shape and would get sorrier unless the Government shuttled more money to academic research...
...The foremost criterion in selecting a proposal is the quality of its scientific content...
...Why the lack of comment on the new military creep into aca-demia...
...Noam Chomsky of the same institution, Seymour Melman of Columbia, George Kistiakowsky of Harvard, Herbert York of Berkeley, and Richard Garwin of IBM—along with hosts of atomic physicists whose voices are known and heard—official science takes as its main effort the promotion of growth for itself...
...Ask me something about what we're doing...
...While dissenting views are heard from such individual scientists as Philip Morrison of MIT...
...We in DOD are interested in all good ideas, and it is the responsibility of the scientific program managers, not the researchers, to decide on the applicability of a particular research project...
...Said Richard C. Atkinson, chancellor of the University of California at San Diego: "Given the immense security needs that face the nation, Department of Defense's underinvestment in basic research is alarming and cannot help but have a devastating effect on our national defense capabilities...
...never emerges as an official issue...
...Science for what...
...When Jeremy Stone, executive director of the Federation of American Scientists ("the voice of science on Capitol Hill"), was asked for a comment on the new plea by aca-demia for military funding, he begged off...
...Laboratories were falling into ruin...
Vol. 45 • June 1981 • No. 6
