Barack Hussein Obama, a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, was sworn in on Tuesday as the 44th president of the United States and promptly vowed to put science and technology at the center of his efforts to restart the nation’s ailing economy.
“We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost,” said President Obama in his inaugural address. “We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”
In order to achieve those goals, the nation must “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age,” the president added in the speech, in which he issued a broad call for a “new era of responsibility.”
Health-care reform and alternative-energy development have long been at the heart of President Obama’s domestic agenda as ways to lower the financial burdens on the middle class and to create jobs. But his remark on restoring science’s “rightful place” was an unusually pointed jab at the policies of the departing president—something that new presidents generally avoid in their inaugural addresses.
The tone of the speech was further evidence that scientists may have more influence with Mr. Obama than they did with his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
Many scientists have complained that the Bush administration relied on questionable science and disregarded the recommendations of scientific advisory boards, for example, in deciding to limit federal support of stem-cell research and to refuse to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions to deal with the threat of global climate change.
In contrast, Mr. Obama nominated Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist concerned with global warming, as his energy secretary. The U.S. Senate confirmed Mr. Chu and five other cabinet secretaries by voice vote just hours after President Obama took the oath of office. The newly confirmed cabinet members include Arne Duncan as education secretary.
Academic and research associations began lobbying both Mr. Obama and the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, during the general election. In March the Association of American Universities issued an “innovation agenda” that called for more spending on basic research and increased support for undergraduate and graduate science education (The Chronicle, March 25, 2008).
In November, 180 business, education, and scientific organizations issued a similar call and asked the next president to elevate the role of science in decision making by raising the status of the president’s science adviser to cabinet rank.
