Talking Points by Martin Apple
President, Council of Scientific Society Presidents

Keynote Address:
Science at a Time of National Emergency: Be Bold, Think Big, Think Out of the Box

• The United States is facing several major national emergencies today. Science and universities will be important to solving most of them. University leaders must think outside of the box and show bold leadership.
• Universities are on the cusp of multiple intersecting trends, the uneasy coexistence of successive societal eras and generations. Universities must restore their role as big picture innovators, and develop a twenty-first century social contract with society, industry, and virtual education.
• Scientists are the constituency of the future. The grand challenges for the future include: converting the nation and the world into entirely sustainable systems; developing the human potential to learn; building healthier lives through prevention rather than treatment; stimulating economic engines that prosper without further population growth and environmental damage; developing affordable, sustainable energy autonomy; understanding and developing beneficial human behavior.
• Unlinked tax cuts, not recession or defense buildups, account for most of the burgeoning federal deficits of the last half century. Escalating deficit will constrain science to a "no growth" quiet erosion over the next decade, unless we act now in unison to change that trend.
• Federal funding of graduate student positions has already declined in several scientific disciplines, and the U.S. has lost its edge in the race to build a faster, more efficient supercomputer.
• We need a new defense strategy and paradigm.
• How can science provide a competitive advantage against networks of fanatic murderers? The Council of Scientific Society Presidents has suggested using scientific experts across the country in SWAT-teams (scientifically weighted and analyzed tactics). SWAT-teams could serve as a unique part-time National Guard that matches the agility of our opponents by their very nature as dispersed, rapid learning groups with advanced knowledge.
• Secrecy and science are diametric antitheses. New federal security regulations may not only change the way universities do business, but in fact erode the quality of science in the long run.
• Case studies: food security and high consequence pathogens. Do we need a new national center for food system security?

Read the 2002 White Paper, including this keynote address

Interview with Martin Apple on Science at a Time of National Emergency