All series · Special series on the news website
250 Years of Science, Power, and Democracy in the United States
An eight-part series that examines how the scientific and technological power of the United States was built, and the relationships between universities, government, industry, and democracy over 250 years.
Chapter 8
Israel has outstanding universities, advanced high-tech, and high spending on R&D, but American experience shows that scientific success requires more than just initiatives: basic research, stable public funding, academic freedom, the absorption of researchers, and bridges between the laboratory and industry.
Chapter 7
In 1976, Cambridge residents demanded a say in whether to allow recombinant DNA research in their city. The confrontation between researchers and the public gave rise to a citizen oversight committee and helped shape a model in which innovation, safety, and democracy need not be at odds.
Chapter 6
Three chapters in American history reveal the complex relationship of science with power: the secrecy and lack of oversight of the Manhattan Project, the erasure of enslaved people's agricultural knowledge, and the use of eugenics to justify forced sterilization and discrimination.
Chapter 5
The American technology industry loves to tell stories about entrepreneurs who operated in garages despite the government. But Silicon Valley grew out of military orders, the space race, grants to Stanford University, immigration policy, and government aid to the chip industry – and even after it got rich, it didn't stop leaning on…
Chapter 4
From Thomas Edison’s Invention Factory to Bell Labs, American corporations have created science alongside products. Since the 1980s, much of the role has shifted to universities and startups – a system that excels in certain areas but struggles with deep-tech technologies that require…
Chapter 3
Until World War II, the U.S. government invested relatively little in research conducted by universities and companies. The state of emergency gave rise to research contracts, expert evaluations, overhead funding, and rules for distributing patent rights—mechanisms that continue to shape American science even today.
Chapter 2
When Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876, most institutions of higher education in the United States were still focused on teaching and training the elite. The new combination of original research, doctoral studies, and teaching created a different kind of institution—and later provided the infrastructure…
Chapter 1
A special issue of the journal Science returns to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the first universities to examine how knowledge, education, and freedom were intertwined in the story of the founding of the United States—and why the scientific promise has never been equally fulfilled…
