Senator Fred Harris's National Social Science Foundation Proposal

Reconsidering Federal Science Policy, Natural Science-Social Science Relations, and American Liberalism during the 1960s

Bibliographic Data

ID3310065
AuthorsMark Solovey (University of Toronto, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume103
Issue1
Pages54-82
Publication date2012-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/664976
PMID22655338
OpenAlexW2079245035
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited19

During the 1960s, a growing contingent of left-leaning voices claimed that the social sciences suffered mistreatment and undue constraints within the natural science-dominated federal science establishment. According to these critics, the entrenched scientific pecking order in Washington had an unreasonable commitment to the unity of the sciences, which reinforced unacceptable inequalities between the social and the natural sciences. The most important political figure who advanced this critique, together with a substantial legislative proposal for reform, was the Oklahoma Democratic Senator Fred Harris. Yet histories of science and social science have told us surprisingly little about Harris. Moreover, existing accounts of his effort to create a National Social Science Foundation have misunderstood crucial features of this story. This essay argues that Harris's NSSF proposal developed into a robust, historically unique, and increasingly critical liberal challenge to the post-World War II federal science establishment's treatment of the social sciences as "second-class citizens

Democracy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Liberalism · Natural (archaeology · Natural science · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Academic Freedom and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Research, Science, and Academia · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments