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a comment by Prof. Yechiam Yemini originally written to the Columbia faculty on the IP distributed n
From: David Farber <>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 18:42:11 -0500
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 1994 18:27:18 +0500 From: yy () smarts com (Yechiam Yemini) [ YY is also a Columbia Professor for those who have the misfortune of NOT knowing him .. djf] To: farber () central cis upenn edu Dave, Below is an improved version of the message that is more suited for distribution. The analogy of a car driving towards a cliff is an excellent one. It is not just "maybe if I dont look all will be well" attitude it is actual defiance of all warning signals that is so amazing. Tnx YY ******************************* Folks, It is all too easy and certainly convenient to dismiss the message of the senator, or express concerns about one or another point that she raises. This message, in contrast, seeks to defend and elaborate the main message of her speech. It is best to view the senator's main theme as a friendly advise: ......
Unless we develop a new strategy that fits the realities of the new world order, science and science funding run the risk of being left out and left behind.
...... The academic science and technology research community confronts a most serious challenge: Why should tax payers invest their money to support our activities? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ No longer can such investment be justified, as it was for the past 40 years since WW-II, by the need to develop ever improved A/H/* bombs or automated pilot assistants, or battlefield management systems. Nor can academia use the traditional answer that tax payers should invest resources to support generation of knowledge for the sake of it. Surely the Eulers and Haydens among us should be supported merely to advance human knowledge; just as Euler and Hayden were supported by the governments of their time. But, the Senator's message is certainly not challenging this type of funding. Certainly, if this is the answer to her challenge then you should draw the conclusions and support reduction of the NSF to the size of the NEH. For why is it more important to fund work to advance human scientific understanding than it is to advance the state of poetry or painting? So let us simply understand the challenge as directed to most of us who are neither Euler nor Hayden. What is it that taxpayers investment in our research should buy? Perhaps we should see the senator's message as a useful advise to reconsider our current paradigms and develop new answers to the question. Instead of dismissing the challenge, it is useful to consider it seriously. Below I list some of the implications why this may be useful and important. 1. We owe it morally to ourselves and to our funding sources to justify the investment. Academia has been increasingly involved in practices of applying tax payers money that are often fundamentally wrong. We should be morally concerned not only with such practices as the use of ICR to fund the yacht of Stanford's president, or the destruction of the financial records at Columbia following an ICR audit request. We should be concerned with the mundane and daily norms. For example, it is a common practice to take funds from the taxpayers to pay Phd fellowships and assign Phds to teach courses. Surely having teaching experience is important. But is this the goal, or is it the reduction of teaching loads? Could you honestly explain to a congressional committee why taxpayers should pay to support Phd teaching of their kids who pay some $25-30k a year to be educated? Or, could you justify the layers of unaccountable administrative fats that we have built that consume all these tuition and ICR dollars, leaving departments with insufficient budgets that force these practices? Or, could you suggest that tax payers continue to invest in our summer salaries, as contrasted with investment in, say, retraining teachers for urban schools during the summer? Establishing strict accountability in using tax payers funds to deliver on their investment is our moral responsibility. 2. We have championed for years (at least in words) the concept that academic scientific and teachnology research should be funded because of its economic significance. Why should we object to deliver measureable results on this promise? Again we have a problem of increasing gap between what we promise and what we practice. For example, how many of you could defend the enormous investment of tax payers funds in our new engineering building? The entire reason why NY State invested in the building has been the promise of economic impact. Our outrageous 70% ICR collected on federal grants will continue to pay for the building for the next 40 years. Why is it outrageous to expect us to deliver economic impact returns, as we promised? Is it unreasonable to expect us to develop concrete measures of our success in delivering? Can we, in good faith, point any substantive measures that we pursued to stimulate and encourage the economic development impact that we promised? Do you feel this was a good-faith promise? Do you feel that taxpayers are better off paying for this building, rather than investing in incubation of NY high tech startups or, in improving the facilities of schools at Harlem? Can we afford not to build new paradigms that permit us to make commitments and deliver on our promises? Can any of us afford the alterantive of bad faith promises? 3. Perhaps too, the senator's call for arms should be viewed as a simple reminder to all of us that the success of academic research in the future will depend primarily on its relevance and value. That we ought to create new paradigms for this value and relevance the fit the new world. We do not need the senator to point out these realities. You may wish to contrast the evolution and role of scientific research at Columbia over the past 40 years with Stanford and MIT. Some of our trustees have been pointing this for a number of years. Perhaps it is time to begin to listen. So developing and articulating a new paradigm for the VALUE of our research is of the essence. It is really this VALUE which is at stake and not federal funding. If we can articulate and deliver value the funding will likely be there to pay for it. If we cannot, can we expect anyone to seriously consider investment in us? In the new world of information society, the role of academia in the advance of knowledge has to be reconsidered. Scientific and technical innovation and leadership are no longer restricted to academia. In many technical fields it is increasingly often the case that academia is lagging industry and the gap is growing. Nor is it clear that the traditional means used by academia to generate and disseminate knowledge can adequately survive the transition to a world of information super highways. Those of you who subscribe to technical/scientific bboards over the internet and ftp postscript documents from repositories, may recognize the emergence of new and powerful paradigms for "publishing" knowledge and accomplishing impact. This open world of generation and dissemination of scientific/technical knowledge is no longer restricted to academicians. Anonymous reviews over 2 years and publications with no readers are replaced by an involved community which publishes fast, ignores irrelevancies and reads with great care valuable work which often accomplishes immediate and significant impact. Can you ignore these new paradigms of generation, publication and value of scientific/technical knowledge defined by the Internet and its successors? Could we present the case to invest tax dollars in our research of area X, in the year 2000, if we elect not to deliver impact on the industrial/research community of X, who may use NREN as its main means of publications? Can we afford the risk of becoming irrelevant as the enterprise of scientific and technical knowledge is transformed to these new paradigms? In summary, perhaps the senator is not as articulate in the idiosyncratic details of academic thinking. But she could certainly help us contemplate the role of the university and of scientific/technical research in the new world order. Tnx YY
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- a comment by Prof. Yechiam Yemini originally written to the Columbia faculty on the IP distributed n David Farber (Feb 23)