Campaign Launch Event - The National Academies

On November 17 and 18, 2000, the National Academies publicly launched Shaping the Future - The Campaign for the National Academies. The Campaign goal is to raise $300 million from private sources by the close of 2004. More than 250 people attended the two-day event, and the guests heard eleven distinguished speakers from fields such as astrophysics, medicine, education, information technology, and aeronautical engineering present perspectives on the key challenges of the 21st century upon which science, engineering, and medicine can have an effect. Excerpts of the presentations follow.

Click on each title for the audio file of the full presentation. (Requires RealPlayer.)

Welcoming Remarks
Bruce Alberts, President, National Academy of Sciences
“An inability of many of our citizens to distinguish scientific knowledge from other types of information threatens the entire rationality of our democracy. The battle for rationality in our society is a focus of all the work of the National Academies. It is really the reason for this campaign and this symposium.”

Philanthropy’s Impact on Science, Engineering, and Medicine
Norman Augustine, Chair, National Academies Philanthropy Council; Chairman, Executive Committee, Lockheed Martin Corporation
“I believe that the progress of science and technology and medicine in this country will depend, to a not insignificant degree, on both the wisdom and the philanthropic spirit of the people in this room and also the people that we represent in our Academies.”

Communicating with the Public about Science, Engineering, and Medicine
Neil de Grasse Tyson, Frederick P. Rose Director, Hayden Planetarium,
American Museum of Natural History
“There is public interest in science, but there is a two-edged sword. There is a lot of pseudoscience. A lot of people think they want to know about science and it turns out they really want to know their horoscope.”

Addressing the Challenges: The Role of the National Academies - Introduction
Kenneth I. Shine, President, Institute of Medicine
“The 21st Century holds the hope of moving increasingly, although not entirely, to integration, to synergy, to looking at connections between what we learn in one area and how it can be applied to another.”

Addressing the Challenges: The Role of the National Academies
Peter Raven, Director, Missouri Botanical Garden
“Philanthropy’s most significant role seems to be as a bridge between disciplines, industries, governments, creating a constituency that is marked by uniqueness, by its own ability to attack questions or to develop fields that might not be reached in any other way.”

Introduction
Wm. A. Wulf, President, National Academy of Engineering
“The National Academies need to start answering questions before they get asked. For one thing, there are questions the government doesn’t want to ask; they don’t want the answers. For another, the exponential increase in the pace of technological change makes it harder and harder for government officials to anticipate the advice they are going to need.”

Information Technology
Robert M. Metcalfe, Vice President, Technology, International Data Group
“As a starting point for our discussions, I am going to rip through the information technology industry’s agenda for next year: the bursting of the dot-com stock bubble; Microsoft’s reorientation; Intel’s diversification; the continuing building out of Internet infrastructure; the deployment of broadband; the upcoming broadcast entertainment Internet; post-PC computing; wireless mobile computing; speech; the open-source movement; peer-to-peer disk intermediation; the pay-as-we-go Internet; privacy paranoia; and intellectual capital.”

Health
Stuart Bondurant, Professor of Medicine, University of North Carolina
“We need to balance the economy and the quality of standardized care for all people with the effectiveness and humaneness of personalized care. There is an old clinical saying that recognizing the similarity among patients makes for efficiency, because you can make diagnoses quickly and easily if you understand the similarity between patients. At the same time, recognizing the differences between patients makes for effectiveness.”

Education
Gordon M. Ambach, Executive Director, Council of Chief State School Officers
“The United States has a university and college system that, in the area of mathematics and science, is the envy of the world. So what happened to our elementary and secondary system?”
Note: Gordon M. Ambach's presentation refers to this outline that was distributed to all participants.

Sustainability
Jane Lubchenco, Distinguished Professor and Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology, Oregon State University
“Sustainability science combines the best of the biogeophysical and socioeconomic sciences, engineering and medicine, drawing on current knowledge, but extending it far beyond. If she grows and thrives, sustainability science has the potential to guide humanity during the critical coming century.”

Globalization of Business
George M. C. Fisher, Chairman, Eastman Kodak Company
“Estonia has guaranteed Internet access to every citizen as a constitutional right. Can you imagine our bill of rights that includes Internet access?”