Fwd: The Crisis of Science in the US

[Christopher Green]

Dear Colleagues,

I am not certain who may have already received this message from Mitch Ash (below) already, but I suspect that many of you will be interested in it.

Best,

Chris

...........................................

Christopher D Green

Department of Psychology

York University

Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

Canada

chr...@yorku.ca

http://www.yorku.ca/christo

Begin forwarded message:

From: Mitchell Ash <mitche...@univie.ac.at>
Date: June 9, 2025 at 3:47:07 PM EDT
To: dlsc...@aol.com
Subject: The Crisis of Science in the US

Dear colleagues and friends,

I take the liberty of sending all of you a "Roundtable" with a number of comments by historians of science on the crisis of science in the U.S., which has just been published in the journal "History of Science". The publisher is struggling to make this open access, but I am authorized to circulated the PDF file. The articles were submitted in mid- to late April and therefore reflect the situation up to that time, but the general direction remains the same. The emphasis is on the natural and medical sciences, but much of this applies to the social sciences and humanities as well.

My own contribution (pp. 28-33) entitled "A Regime Change and the Scientists' Response", is a first attempt to place all of this in the wider context of the regime change now underway in Washington D.C. The following link, written in German during the week after the inauguration and published in a Vienna newspaper shortly thereafter, summarizes my take on that as well: Die USA auf dem Weg zu einer Demokratur? Der Standard (Wien), Kommentar der anderen, 29.01.2025, Seite 27. https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000254882/die-usa-auf-dem-weg-zu-einer-demokratur.

I hope to continue writing about this and therefore welcome any comments you might have for me.

All the best in spite of it all, sincerely,

Mitch

[Arlie Belliveau]

Thank you for sharing this impactful resource!

For those reflecting on the role of scholars in resisting authoritarian pressures, Mary Henle’s (1978) article on Wolfgang Köhler’s efforts to protect his colleagues at the Berlin Psychological Institute offers a compelling historical case: https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2347175_3/component/file_2347173/content

Henle included a 1934 quote from Köhler that speaks to the solidarity we're seeing among academics today, 

"My resignation is most likely to be final. Since most of the serious workers in psychology had to leave before, and since my excellent assistants would not stay without me, this means the abolition of German psychology for many years. I do not regard myself as responsible. If only 20 professors had fought the same battle, it would never have come so far with regard to German universities."

I appreciate his reminder about the power of collective action and am heartened to see such leadership in The crisis in American science (2025).

Arlie

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Arlie R. Belliveau (they/them/iel)

PhD Candidate, Historical, Theoretical, and Critical Studies of Psychology

York University, Toronto, Canada

Gratefully living and working on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations

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