Scholarship in the Academic Community

Abstract

After a few initial remarks I want to address myself more narrowly to the problem of the relationship of universities and government and the question of scholarship. The introductory remarks I'd like to make have a sense of urgency. If you study the political process of the U.S. government, you really realize that the spring months are months of decisions (particularly when new administrations come in), partly because all decisions involve the budgetary process — it's what Professor Huntington calls the interrelationship of strategy and structure. Obviously, whatever decisions you make you have to back up with resources. Now, I suggest, major fights and conflicts are going on in Washington over matters that are going to affect all of us. One of them that has already been touched upon is the question of the arms race. There is a lot of evidence that the country must devote between 10 and 12 percent of its gross national product to defense spending. Whether this need be so, economically, I don't know, but I have a suspicion that either putting it all in space or putting it all in cities would not be feasible unless there were some major structural rearrangements. I've also been told by a number of people that the cost of many kinds of weapons seems to go down each year. If you've got to spend between 10 and 12 percent of the gross national product on weapons, we're going to reach a trillion. Yet if certain weapons, like MIRV, for example, don't cost as much, relatively speaking, you've got to think of new types of junk to manufacture. I suggest that this present ABM Sentinel System, which is an absurdity, is going to be typical-is perhaps typical already-of all kinds of weaponry junk that has been and will be designed to keep defense spending high. There are a lot of jokes about F-111-its wings falling off. There is a study now making the rounds in Washington about the declining effectiveness of weapons systems. Now big decisions are being made on new weapons.