A space to explore, share and shape the issues facing social scientists
The U.S. National Science Foundation has followed other research-based government agencies in trying to ring-fence American research from collaborative and acquisitive foreign actors. Could they mean China?
The two federal agencies that spend the most on making grants to social and behavioral science research in the United States, both have their budgets shaved by an eighth in the Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal released by the Trump administration earlier this month. But the move is more symbolic than substantive.
The final agreement ending the most recent U.S. government shutdown provides $8.1 billion for the National Science Foundation, a $301 million increase over the amount appropriated in fiscal year 2018.
Even if Congress and the president succeed in breaking the logjam and approve the remaining fiscal year 2019 appropriations bills, the new Congress will find itself significantly behind schedule in the fiscal year 2020 budget and appropriations cycle. The president’s budget, which is usually delivered to Congress in early February, will likely be delayed by a month, and perhaps longer if another partial shutdown occurs on February 16. House and Senate appropriations committees typically set deadlines for requests by this time in the year, but that process is not even close to starting because of the shutdown.
During this U.S government partial shutdown, agencies including the NSF, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Parks Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and NOAA have had to stop most work. Surely that can’t be beneficial …
When the National Science Foundation tabbed Arthur “Skip” Lupia to head its Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), it was making a statement whether it meant to or not. Lupia, officially the Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, has been one of social science’s ablest defenders — and occasional critics.
Noted science communicator and political scientist Arthur ‘Skip’ Lupia will take the reins of the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences starting in September.
For the first time since 2005, a social scientist has won the Alan T. Waterman Award, the nation’s highest honor for early career scientists and engineers bestowed by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Months into the 2018 fiscal year, the U.S. Congress approved and the president today signed a $1.3 trillion spending plan for the existing fiscal year that increases National Science Foundation funding to $7.77 billion and does not cut social science research funding.
The U.S. Senate Apropriations Committee calls for a National Science Foundation budget just a hair below what the House has asked for. Both houses’ requests are far above what the president has requested.
The National Science Foundation can do a lot more to articulate the transcendent value of the social, behavioral and economic sciences in both its portfolio and its outputs, says a new report from the National Academies.
Topics this month include a look at Congress clearing the Fiscal Year 2017 budget- and rejecting the Trump-proposed cuts to NSF and NIH funding, and what’s next for the science community after the heralded March for Science.
