Regulating International Knowledge Exchange

The National Security State and the American Research University from the 1950s to Today

Bibliographic Data

ID4022220
AuthorsJohn Krige (corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume60
Issue1
Pages252-277
Publication date2019-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTechnology and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/tech.2019.0008
PMID30905881
OpenAlexW2941456469
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited11

Regulating International Knowledge ExchangeThe National Security State and the American Research University from the 1950s to Today John Krige (bio) The Presidential address on SHOT's 60th anniversary provides me with an opportunity to reflect on the origins of the Society, to identify themes that remain pertinent in the world today, and to offer some thoughts about our role going forward. This perspective is necessarily very personal and informed by my intellectual predilections. Every SHOT conference attests to the rich intellectual life of our members, a diversity that has to be cherished. In this essay, I will both draw on that conversation and share some of my recent research interests that build on and go beyond it. The origins of SHOT lie in the drive and organizational skills of Mel Kranzberg, who capitalized on an opportunity provided by the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) and the Sputnik shock to launch a new society.1 A survey published in 1956 by the ASEE found that the study of the history of technology was "of special interest and importance for engineering education."2 Kranzberg chaired a committee to see what could be done to improve matters. It found "tremendous interest in the development of technology, not only among engineering educators and historians, but among all academic disciplines." Suggestions that engineering education needed to be reformed dovetailed with demands to improve the quantity and quality of American engineers in the wake of the Soviet space firsts in 1957. President Eisenhower's State of the Union Address in [End Page 252] 1958, followed by a special message to Congress a few weeks later, committed the Federal Government to playing an "emergency role" in "education in science and engineering."3 It led to the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), signed into law in August of that year. The NDEA provided $1 billion in aid for the next seven years, about a third for student loans, one third for grants to states to improve their existing teaching facilities, and $60 million for "national defense fellowships." Science, engineering, mathematics, area studies, and foreign languages were singled out as fields of study that were central to national security.4 Kranzberg tapped into an intellectual climate calling for more, and more well-rounded, engineers, securing support for projects from the NSF and for graduate student fellowships from the NDEA.5 This much is well known. What is not usually mentioned is that the NDEA required all students who accepted federal loans to sign a disclaimer affidavit and a loyalty oath to the U.S. government.6 These declarations were to be administered by the colleges and universities where the students were registered. Within four years, thirty-two institutions had either refused to participate or withdrew from the program, arguing that, to quote Senator Strom Thurmond (who strongly disagreed with them), The device of loyalty oaths and affidavits is an invasion of academic freedom: it enforces an odious conformity; it is a tactic of the totalitarian state; it undermines true patriotism; it discriminates against and points a finger of suspicion at the entire education community; it discriminates against the needy student by setting up a "double-standard" within our colleges.7 Strom Thurmond himself would have none of this. In his view, students were voluntarily signing up for a defense-related loan and should be honored to pledge their allegiance to the United States. These moves and countermoves pivoted on the meaning of academic freedom when universities explicitly engaged in activities linked to national security. Indeed, in the context of cold war rivalry, advanced knowledge was a strategic resource whose production and protection posed difficult dilemmas for governance in an open society. Advanced knowledge, produced by ceaseless scientific and technological innovation, flourished with the free circulation of ideas. It was also shared in international trade via the transfer of commodities and technical data needed to use and maintain knowledge-rich goods and processes. Yet its "leakage" to friend and [End Page 253] foe alike undercut the knowledge gap on which America depended for techno-political, economic, and military advantage.8 The state was injected into the heart of the American innovation system, its task to balance the principles

Diversity (politics) · Engineering education · Engineering ethics · Management · National security · Political science · Politics · Presidential system · Public relations · Sociology · State (computer science) · Engineering · International Science and Diplomacy · Law · Public Administration · Research, Science, and Academia · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments

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