Fighting Back on Capitol Hill
November 15, 2013 762
A recent article published in Nature reports some of the efforts that the Social and Behavioral Science Community have made to defend funding of social science research on Capitol Hill:
The article also discusses the short and long-term effects of the Coburn Amendment:
“Researchers say that the March bill is already biting. The law includes a provision inserted by Senator Tom Coburn (Republican, Oklahoma) requiring the NSF to certify that all political-science projects it supports will benefit national security or US economic interests. In July, the NSF made a last-minute decision to scrap one of its two annual calls for political-science grants. The agency has not explained why, but many researchers blame Coburn’s amendment. “This is catastrophic intervention in peer review,” says Jane Mansbridge, a political scientist at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who studies the democratic process. Mansbridge adds that she will not apply for funding in the NSF’s next grant call, in January, because she does not think that her proposal on the dynamics of negotiations will meet the Coburn amendment’s criteria.”To read the full article, click here.
If you or your organization would like to get involved in this advocacy work, please let us know. If you are already doing similar work, we would love to hear about it so that we can coordinate efforts. Please email camille.gamboa@sagepup.com.
