Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
Weekly Overview of Social Science News
Social Science in the National interest, U.S. Congress cuts Social Science out of NSF Funding, and more in this Weekly Overview of Social Science News
Will Social Science Research Cuts Affect the Human Rights Situation in the U.S.?
On social science, the sequester, and the need for a Human Rights Culture.
The Politics of Attacking Political Science
As a political scientist, I find it curious that my discipline has been singled out as being particularly wasteful of federal research dollars. How did we join welfare queens and spotted owls as convenient punching bags, things that must not be aided by taxpayer money during lean times?
Why Study Social Science
We study social science because social phenomena affect people’s lives in profound ways. If you want to start with Cantor’s focus—physical illness and death—then social phenomena are tremendously important.
The Importance of Studying the Obvious
Everyone has experience being human, and so findings in social science coincide with something that we have either experienced or can imagine experiencing. The result is that social science all too often seems like common sense.
Nobel Prize Winner Elinor Ostrom Leaves Legacy to Celebrate at a Time of Attacks on Value of Her Discipline
Last week we heard the sad news that Professor Elinor Ostrom has died. Her profound contributions to scholarship have been told often since she became the first woman and the first political scientist ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Political Science Serving the Public Interest
On May 9, the House of Representatives adopted a provision that would preclude the National Science Foundation (NSF) from supporting research in the field of political science.
SAGE opposes the Flake Amendment
Recently, the US House of Representatives passed off an amendment offered by Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) that would prohibit funding for the Political Science Program with the National Science Foundation. If enacted into law, this amendment would set an extraordinary and disturbing precedent in which Congress chooses which scientific disciplines should be funded and not funded within the NSF’s research portfolio.
