Deeply influenced by their experiences in World War II, the military services and the Department of Defense became important and supportive funders of academic science—chiefly the physical sciences—in the postwar period. They made an implicit contract with the academy, providing support under the going rules: the pursuit of new knowledge; investigator initiative; publication of the results; and some form of peer review as the allocative instrument. In return, the academy offered new science and trained scientists. The relation persists, but changes in the political context, the internal capabilities of the Defense Department, and the growth of other forms of support have changed it in a long-lasting way. Nonetheless, there are good reasons on both sides to continue the relation, and a willingness by both to accept the terms of the implicit contract would allow it to continue.
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References
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1. In 1982, the Census Bureau, on behalf of the National Science Foundation (NSF), conducted a sample survey of those classified as “scientists, engineers and related occupations” in the 1980 census. In response to the choices offered regarding a question on what the major functional focus of their work was, 13 percent chose “defense.” This information, which has not yet been published, was communicated to me by Dr. Carlos Kruytenbosch of the Science Indicators Unit of NSF. These are overall figures, covering the whole range of scientific and engineering disciplines. In particular industries and specialties, the proportions are much higher. For instance, the six most militarily dependent U.S. industries, employing 3.3 percent of the civilian labor force in 1982, employed about 21 percent of all engineers, 24 percent of all electrical engineers, 32 percent of mathematicians, and 34 percent of physicists. See Rebecca Blank and Emma Rothschild, “The Effect of United States Defense Spending on Employment and Output,”International Labor Review, 124(6):693-694 (Nov.-Dec. 1985).
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2. The National Defense Education Act was passed in 1958, in response to the Soviet's launching of Sputnik in October. Among the other provisions, it offered federal funding of loans to undergraduates, with emphasis on those studying science, engineering, and foreign languages, and fellowships for graduate students in the same areas, with provisions for loan forgiveness for those who went into teaching. See Ronald A. Wolk, Alternative Methods of Federal Funding (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968).
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3. In fiscal 1986, the contribution of service academies and the Reserve Officers' Training Corps to the officer corps of the three services was as follows: the Army received 1023 officers from the academies and 4669 from the Reserve Officers' Training Corps; the Air Force received, respectively, 938 and 2369; and the Navy and Marines received, respectively, 849 and 1364. Communication from the Public Information Office, First Naval District, Boston.
4.
4. See Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told (New York: Harper & Bros., 1962), p. 149, and fn. 6 of this article.
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5. In 1987 there were 34 such centers: 17 administered by universities, 8 by other nonprofits, and 9 by industrial firms. The university-sponsored ones included 10 primarily funded by DoE, of which 5 were basic science research units for high-energy, nuclear, and plasma physics, 2 primarily for nuclear weapons research and design, and 3 others with a wider spectrum of activities in applied and basic research. Two were sponsored by the DoD, one by NASA, and the remaining four by NSF, all astronomical and atmospheric observatories. For the complete list, see Federal Funds for Research and Development (Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, 1987), 36:7-8. In fiscal 1985, the last year for which the data have been tabulated, all the FFRDCs received $5014 million and those administered by the universities—substantially but not exactly the same set as those referred to earlier—$2534 million; those by industrial firms, $1791 million; and those by other nonprofits, $689 million. The major supporters of university-sponsored labs were the following: DoE, $1848 million; DoD, $310 million; NASA, $231 million; and NSF, $85 million. In that year, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National laboratories were the two largest of the university-administered centers, both administered by the University of California. Livermore received $631 million, of which $584 million was from DoE; and Los Alamos $538 million, $474 million from DoE. These data are drawn from unpublished tabulations provided by Dr. Kruytenbosch.
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6. Between fiscal 1955 and 1966, total DoD obligation for research, development, testing, and evaluation doubled from $12.1 billion to $23.6 billion. The share going to academic institutions increased from 2.8 percent in 1960, the earliest year for which data are available, to 4.3 percent in 1966. See U.S. Department of Defense, The University Role in Defense Research and Development, prepared for U.S. Congress, Committees on Appropriations, Apr. 1982, tab. 1.
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7. In 1972, Draper Laboratory, run for DoD and NASA by the Aero-Astro Department of MIT, was the object of demonstrations and a faculty resolution disapproving of the relation. As a consequence, the laboratory was reorganized as an independent not-for-profit corporation, and its formal connections with MIT severed. In Princeton, an Institute for Defense Analysis research center working on cryptographic problems that was located near the campus in space belonging to the university and leased to the institute was likewise the object of student demonstrations and faculty protests. It was relocated to a site several miles away. In 1970, Reserve Officers' Training Corps enrollments in U.S. colleges and universities were 123,000; by 1974, they had shrunk by more than half to 56,000; by 1985, they had recovered to 99,000.
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Within the DoD, the peak year was fiscal 1967; the trough was fiscal 1975, at 25 percent less. The academic share was highest in 1965 at 4.5 percent; it fell to 2.4 percent in 1974, recovered to a peak of 3.7 percent in 1980, and slipped back to 3.2 percent a few years later. The absolute amount of DoD support for academic research in constant dollars fell by more than half between 1964 and 1975 and recovered its 1964 level only in 1986. In 1967, DoD, DoE, and NASA—the defense establishment— spent 70 percent as much as NSF plus the National Institutes of Health—the basic research establishment—on the support of academic research. In 1987, the ratio was 40 percent. See U.S. National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators, 1987, app. tab. 4-11, p. 245.
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9. See Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists (New York: Knopf, 1978), pp. 413-414.
10.
10. Ibid., pp. 411-13.
11.
11. Ibid., p. 413.
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12. See Everett Carl Ladd, Jr., and Seymour Martin Lipset, The Divided Academy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), chap. 2 passim, esp. tab. 4, pp. 29-31.
13.
13. Ibid., chap. 3 passim, esp. tab. 10, p. 60.
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and later in Science, 24 Sept. 1982, pp. 1233-1234.
15.
See also Gregg Herken, “The Earthly Origins of Star Wars,”Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Oct. 1987, pp. 20-28.
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16. Evidence of this attitude is reported by MIT faculty. In academic year 1985-86, I chaired an ad hoc committee of the faculty on the military presence at MIT. Among other things, the committee sent a questionnaire to all members of the faculty, asking a variety of questions about sources of faculty members' research support and their attitudes toward it. A copy of the committee report is available through the Office of the Secretary of the Faculty at MIT.
17.
17. See the statements of Donald Hicks, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, reported in Science, 25 Apr. 1986, p. 44.
