M. Anthony Mills’s excellent essay is narrowly about the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation, but largely hinges on the question of the political accountability and future of NSF writ large. Science policy and the academy need this conversation, especially in light of the planned reauthorization of NSF next year (its authorization expires in fiscal year 2027 after being expanded in the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act).
In the formation of NSF, Vannevar Bush wanted to have abiding support for federal science but feared government overreach in light of the momentous actions of populist New Deal Democrats. Today’s populist Republican administration has rightly reacted to the overreach of a cultural and political project to shape the nation’s scientific and research institutions toward ideological priorities, including race-based hiring, a skewed science of “reproductive justice,” the denial of the biological sexual binary, and the silencing of conservative voices on campuses. But the answer to this overreach should not be doubling down on partisan control, merely from a different party, but on building safeguards against destructive control—whether by a government or university administration. Science must aim toward seeking the truth in its beauty and grandeur, safeguarded from being used to further the ends of a political agenda.
