Memo To Research University Presidents: Change The Ship's Course

Editor's Note: Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, director emeritus of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who is also a professor of science at the Illinois Institute of Technology, is perturbed about what he believes is a lack of zeal in the way top-level administrators at United States research universities are confronting a general decline in the fortunes of their institutions. Federal policies in the support of research and increasing administrative pressures are putting them at risk, Lederman maintains. He is concerned not only for the future of his own discipline, physics--which in the post- Cold War era has seen an effective decline in research funding as well as job opportunities--but also for the future of academic science in general. With the new and uncertain congressional mandate, he believes, the need for effective leadership of the research community is ever more pressing. In June 1994, Lederman attended a symposium at the University of California, Los Angeles, on challenges facing academia, at which many university administrators were present. The remarks of these officials prompted him to deliver a response, an edited version of which is reprinted here with a new introduction by Lederman. The U.S. university system, and, in particular, the research universities, are under considerable stress. These powerful institutions for research and education emerged after World War II as a uniquely American invention that successfully blended teaching and research, in contrast to the European models in which the two activities were separate. Graduate education in the U.S. became preeminent in the world and, even today, U.S. graduate school education is one of our most successful "exports," as almost 50 percent of the population of U.S. graduate schools in mathematics, science, and engineering are populated by foreign students. The problems facing research universities--someone recently estimated that the U.S. has about 200 such things--are primarily financial. I believe this means that they spend more money than they take in. However, other problems beset the university in this post-Cold War era. In June 1994, a symposium was convened at UCLA entitled "Reinventing the Research University." It was well attended by university administrators and representatives of government and industry, but had very few faculty members. The latter would have brought to the meeting the point of view of working scientists who are most impacted by the university problems. My personal concern for the future of the research university, and for scientific and engineering research in general, was increased after listening to the distinguished speakers. I found them increasingly defensive, increasingly focused on their own campus problems, increasingly ready to accommodate to the congressional mood of frustration and criticism of the research universities. The universities are under a double- barreled attack. On one hand, critics insist that their research must be more relevant, more accountable; on the other, there is an assumption that their administrators and professors are all crooks and have to prove their innocence. The response on the part of our academic leaders has been to describe defensive strategies, almost always relevant to individual campuses. No stirring, collective counterattack is heard in the land. For the past five years, I have been concerned about the future of science in this country. Physics will prosper or decline with the rest of science. Over and over we are now told that the magnificent research accomplishments of the past 50 years--much of which was done in research universities--was funded only because of the Cold War and that, now that the Cold War is over, research must be supported only if it can be targeted to specific national needs. The new Republican Congress is untested in this area. However, the fact that a proposed change in the name of the old House Science, Space, and Technology Committee to the Technology and Competitiveness Committee was seriously considered--before they settled, wisely, on the Committee on Science--is worrisome. A Call For Leadership I speak as a faculty member. Now I know many university presidents, provosts, chancellors, and deans. They are really wonderful people--talented, dedicated, burdened with insuperable tasks, and underappreciated. The only thing is that they don't have the foggiest notion of what is going on-- but when they find out, when we get through and explain it to them, then they will come on board and do what has to be done. I was, early on, deterred from entering university administration by a sign in the men's room at Columbia University. It was located over the hand dryer: "Push for a message from the president." Let me illustrate my confusion about the attitudes of university administrators at the aforementioned seminar with a metaphor. The Caribbean cruise of the S.S. Academia for university presidents was steaming along in 80-degree waters. The pool was crowded. Deck games abounded. Presidents and their spouses sunned themselves and sipped margaritas. Salads, fruit, and a wonderful gazpacho were served in the dining room. But then, gradually, the temperature began to fall. The pool was abandoned. Over the next few days, an astute president (a former astrophysicist) discovered that the reason for the fall in temperature was that the cruise ship was heading north. It got colder. People started dressing warmly. The kitchen served hot soup. One president, an ex-physician, gave lectures on hypothermia. A former chemist, astray in academic administration, found enough things in the pharmacy to compose a fat-growing diet supplement. A once-prominent geographer gave a seminar on the basic laws governing the correlation of temperature and latitude. Ingeniously, drapes in the ship's lounge were converted to extra blankets--but in all of this activity, not a single president thought to visit the bridge and find out why the ship was going north! My point, dear presidents, is that the major problems facing your research universities are generated by public policy, by ship's captains, not by immutable laws of nature. And, dear presidents, public policy can be influenced, and even changed. The accumulated power of our 200 research university presidents and chancellors, with their provosts and deans and their camp followers, is awesome, and never has there been a greater need for leadership. Yet from our presidents we hear only silence. Presidents complain of perceived public hostility, of congressional suspicion, of poor public understanding, yet I do not know of any major research university president who has spoken out publicly in defense of these institutions. It may have happened, but it didn't make the New York Times. The passivity of our presidents and the haste with which they confess that their campuses, their missions, and their accounting departments are badly in need of reform is very disturbing. Yes, there are internal weaknesses. Some--like the tensions and imbalance between teaching and research, the rigidity of departmental and disciplinary structures, the too-often top-heaviness of their administration--have been with us for many decades. Others are now coming to a point of essential action--like the need for new equipment and for facilities maintenance, the increasingly suspicious and burdensome congressional oversights and regulatory burdens, the increasing costs and decreasing income. All are conspiring to make the lot of the president not a happy one. A Sure-Thing Investment Nevertheless, the record of U.S. research universities is one of great success. Our graduate schools are the envy of the world. The science that has continued to emerge so prominently from the universities has changed the way people live and behave. In spite of these incomparable successes, I know of no board of trustees that took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post listing the contributions of Old Podunk University (or, for that matter, Stanford University) to America's well-being. And what is at risk was most passionately articulated at the UCLA symposium by Professor Saunders Mac Lane of the University of Chicago. He told of a 900-year-old heritage-- placed in your hands, presidents and chancellors, provosts and deans--of culture and illumination "greater than a thousand suns" and a heritage of serving society beyond measure. Former Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute president Roland Schmitt, our cochairman, insisted in one discussion that research in current times costs too much--of course, it costs too much--because, as he points out, during the Cold War, money was no problem. Anything that was perceived to be relevant to winning the Cold War was affordable. Today, decisions are dominated by budget deficits and, apparently, the political emphasis on short-term benefits. But Vanderbilt University president Joe Wyatt and Princeton University president Harold Shapiro, as quoted by UC-Santa Cruz chancellor Karl Pister in his address, have stated--far too quietly--that research and education, what we do in the research universities, is not a procurement, it is an investment, an investment that pays back. Taken in sum--even with all its associated and essential inefficiencies--it is the best investment one can make. Over these past 900 years, it has consistently and widely outperformed the Dow Jones. Curiosity-driven research is serendipitous (yes, always as part of a team), and it always pays back. I could tell stories of success from now until midnight. Then, colleagues from chemistry and biology would take over. Or, we could appeal to the economists, such as Robert Solow, Theodore Schultz, Gary Becker, Edwin Mansfield, and so many others who have studied the issue of the return on investment. It then follows that, if this nation is in financial trouble, as it is, logic would call for an increase in this sure-thing investment. And, "now that the Cold War is over . . ." should be, in any rational world, the introduction to surveying the new resources freed up for renewing investment and the social contract between government and research that was forged after World War II. For our leaders--for the ship's captain-- research and education are not a cost issue, they are a priority issue. Let me get to the new mission and action items that were called for at the symposium. Science research in this nation is under attack. You presidents, our leaders, have the awesome responsibility for the ancient heritage and for the modern potential of the now fragile research infrastructure of the country. I am deeply disappointed in your reactions. Whereas I love and respect each and every one of you, collectively, you are a disaster: scrambling desperately and with little dignity to respond to the obvious frustrations of a stressed political system. You must do better. You are presiding over the only hope for salvation of the nation. The decline of the great industrial research laboratories in recent years places an even greater responsibility on your institutions. You must, as a new mission, communicate to the public and to their elected leaders the essential service that research universities deliver to society. Perhaps you should organize yourselves to do just this: Form an Executive Action Committee to save science and the research universities. Beyond Competitiveness The peril of your passivity is not only to our national future. We are a major contributor to world science and technology, and so the problem goes beyond economic competitiveness. We live in a global village. Vast regions of underdevelopment exist in the north and south, in Nigeria and Chicago. The world is united in its desperate need for education and science literacy. We must charge our presidents/ provosts/chancellors and deans to be teachers again. Your students are the citizens of the world as well as the makers of policy. You must close ranks to protect and nurture the source of new wealth, the unique activity that has the capability of ameliorating the human condition--scienti8fic re-search and education. Only these can deliver the tools for solving problems of the environment, population, natural resources that can create new resources that will pay the costs and serve to alleviate poverty, hunger, disease; and lessen the impact of natural disasters and provide, for all the inhabitants of the planet, the elements necessary for the fulfillment of human aspirations. Of course, it goes without saying that science alone can achieve none of these things, that it does require the academic team that includes the social and political scientists as well as the humanists. Together we can sell the vision to the policymakers in government, in industry and even (gasp!) in our universities. Dear presidents, you have arrived at your high office because you are intelligent, articulate, and politically astute. The Golden Age of Science, and of the nation, was initiated by the Vannevar Bushes, Isidor Isaac Rabis, James Bryant Conants, Arthur Comptons, James Killians, and Lee duBridges--presidents and faculty. They strode the corridors of power with courage and grand vision. The cause is as urgent and compelling now as then. Lead us to turn the ship south before we all freeze! Leon M. Lederman is a professor of science at the Illinois Institute of Technology and director emeritus of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill.

Memo To Research University Presidents: Change The Ship's Course

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